Why?

Now why would this sonnet be about love?

When love has directed me toward the thorns

Unwoven all the things that it first wove

And has made me rejoice far less than mourn

Why can’t a sonnet just be a lament?

A diss track to romance’s modern twist

Poetic attempts don’t equal assent

To allow love’s forceful grasp to persist

But let me explain, love I don’t abhor

I’ve surfed on its crests, I’ve cartwheeled its fields

It might bring pain, but it’s never a bore

Do I want to lose the frenzy love yields?

I’ve chosen: apathy is worst of all

Where’s pride in rising if we never fall?

Monday

Vicenza: Drinking bourbon and listening to songs dreaming about sex. My Monday is envious of your Monday.

Alvaro: Well you're the one I texted about that song. So your Monday had more going on than it knew.

Vicenza: My Monday blushes and bats her eyelashes in response.

Alvaro: Blush and a 'bat? Your Monday is sounding more and more like a Thursday.

Vicenza: Monday dreams often of being a Thursday. She dreams of embodying Thursday's loosening of resolve, Thursday's ability to look joyfully to the future. Getting to be so close to Friday, the hunkiest of the workdays.

Instead, she's left slammed between bittersweet Sunday and lost soul Tuesday. Covered in the world's distaste of what she represents.

Alvaro: It's not a sacrifice she's chosen, but it's one she continues to make. On her beleaguered back grow the rest, each becoming more joyous as they distance themselves from poor Monday.

Like a drab pair of shoes she toils out of the limelight, filling a role that flighty Friday would never have the gumption for.

Vicenza: Yet, if she could only see that her role is an important one, albeit thankless. She provides a service to the world, a certain order that keeps the hedonists from flinging themselves too far from reality, from those who marry themselves to Saturday, the cruel godlike day that promises light and love and freedom but passes so quickly you're left gasping into Sunday.

Monday is the dark new moon, living forever in the shadow of the more popular full moon. Providing us with a fresh start we would rather ignore but so desperately need.

Alvaro: Yet she does boast a secret side, for the true hedonists see Monday not as Monday but as another yawning maw to fill with their favorite poison. She also plays patron saint to those so wedded to their stilted definition of success that she can't even rankle them as she does the rest. At least with the rest she can play villain, but with the workaholics she's just a nameless notch in an ever-lengthening belt.

So she's caught between hate and apathy, and even as the millennia have piled nauseatingly high, she still can't decide which is worse.

At least she gets a trivia night now and again. 

Whiskey

Whiskey, neat.

Whiskey's neat.

Whiskey is neat.

Whiskey'd be neat.

Whiskey would be neat.

A whiskey would be neat.

A whiskey, neat.

A whiskey can be neat.

A whiskey could be neat.

A whiskey should be neat.

Whiskey: neat.

A few more couplets

Breaking the crusty eyed, 4-inch dust blanket bullcrap hiatus haters is inelegant at best.  Still, where there's work to be done, it doesn't due for a working man to let it lie.


She had a quick trigger and sizzling Szechuan thighs.

She had a waist to end a war and turned my brain into a bucket of lard.

She had liquid eyes and a laugh that'd melt butter.

Her words trickled down my ears like otters down streams, and drenched my mind in a surprise waterfall.

She sliced the room in half with her walk and that ass made my heart stop for 3 minutes.

She wears that dress like a leopard in fur and makes men mice.

He made Biggie Smalls look like a toll booth operator and only drank milk with his cookies.

He wrote on the wall until his writing covered the wall and then bit his fifth pen in half.

His fist made the oak desk quake and his voice bit like Arctic ice.

She smelled like hot sunshine and ate with her fork backwards.



With humble mutterings,

Millicent "Bennie" Benjamin

27 Boxes in 15 Minutes

Wistful whisky walking briskly
Tumbling warmth, a welling of my youth
Dwell in my chest, tell me truth:

You are sparse, placid, I'm drunk
At home in my chair.  I can feel your dress,
See it from here, rip it with my teeth
I'll draw Orion on your knee
You'll tell me to guess about that scar.
If only I had a memento
So tactile and bright with life
But I only grasped your hand
Clasped, more like, a fingerprint powwow
No long council, such as our hairs might have
Brown and brown, wiry and flaxen
And while you slept, I'd weave a great knot
Knitting me to you, yours to mine
So tangled it would be, so utterly dense
An elemental nonfiction
With filamental connections
To keep me next to you, sugar

The Alphabet, Part III

Things are getting hairy.  No, not down there, I hit puberty months ago.  I mean the Sasquatch I am tracking.  There are no Sasquatch on the Internet, and that is scary to me.  When absurd loses its meaning we are all Shelley's rowboat: no current current.

I.

I'll intuit a while - itching for inklings -

Sitting high on a pile of Inuit tile

Smile. I think things, I think.

J.

Joyous Hajj just south of Jersey

To abject jub-drowned jurisdiction

Jingoes judged by jilted juries

K.

Jack a whole stack of darkened 8-tracks,

For a lark in the park putting smack into sacks

Crystalline cracks lack the tact of your act

Because even when you are too good for structure, environment and assholes' opinions, you still need all of those things to express the original thought.

- Bullfrog Kauffman

The Alphabet, Part II

After E, the alphabet gets decidedly less friendly.  Consonants come out of the fucking woodwork and you'd better hope you have more than a quarter tank left when you are cruising toward its buxom midsection.

F.

Rough Kerfuffle over a tufted truffle

Enough in the duffle for a fortnight's tussle;

Suss out the fluff before the five-card shuffle!

G.

"Grand Canyon," grinned the gray Cayman.

"A great gallumphing gorge, edged by stodgy green grass,

With ledges as high as the glassy night sky."

H.

Breathy whorls huffed by homestead ranch hands

While threading husks through stretchy, itch-proof conch strands

A shy, overshorn mensch to watch the ashy badlands.

Hellbent on flooding your basement marketplace with everything short of tyranny.

-- Severino the Younger

Free! Free as the wind blows.

Maybe the wind isn't really that free.  Like, he's still a landed gent and all, just without the extreme level of wherewithal (financial or otherwise) that the song indicates.  Like maybe he balls out with frequency, but his ex says the baby is his (!) and is there anything less free than having to surrender DNA to some quack?  So he forks over a few hundred each month to keep that fair-haired hussy off his case.

Plus, he works in finance, so his sooted soul is currently chained to the bottom of the devil's grundle for t-minus eternity.

So yeah, not that free.

- Scott Philippa

The Alphabet, Part I

The alphabet begins at A and continues, jostling along until it wraps up right around Z.

A.  

An Ayatollah named Amanda Ammaker 

Amasses armfuls of almonds almost arbitrarily

B.

Bespoken for, broken, brittle, emboldened

Holding a whole fold of old mold and bourbon

In turbans, in the urban hub of Durban

C.

Coco clodhop, clean a crusty cop's clock

A crackling crock of thoracic slop

Chippy crap shot chop shop

D.

Dark and dandered dewdrops

Drip drowsily toward your end

Dopplegangers thud out drenched sound

E.

All around and everywhere

Effervescent elderwine

Venerate the velvet line:

Helvetica, by svelt design

A hop, dip and a set.

- Marmalade Ruiz

One in my hand is better than a pear in your bush

We sincerely hope that the frock-tossing, bewhiskered reader enjoys the title.  Also, we think we're going to stick with this totally radical new font, skraight drippin serif all over da place.


It's time for some couplets.  They are long couplets, which you might enjoy even more than short ones.

He had a stare like a blast furnace and

Wrapped himself in a bearskin of silence

He had twin pythons for forearms and

Wore a jacket because it made his mother happy

His footfalls like the final turn at Pimlico

We watched that bundle-of-crows hair try to keep up

His heaving chest was a bison among goats

But he preened like a kitten

He had a handshake like a warm bed and

Laughed because laughing felt funny

His face was graven as though by ancient tides but

His leather boots shone fresh as a calf at the udder

He had a back like the base of a redwood and

Broke rocks when he kicked em

She had haunches like a fleeing doe

And a stare like candied steel

His knees creaked like an old house in a storm

But his trunk was a mule and an ox

And because any structure is originally established with a view to its eventual downfall:

He was coiffed like a Hapsburg prince but

Couldn't lash two clauses together if you gave him

80 feet of spider silk and a long weekend

You've all been so lovely.  A river there chief (say it fast).

- Alvaro Jefferson

Diatribe's Hard and Fast Rules for Gentle & Manly Living

Welcome back.  We have been on a many-moon hiatus, but are back now to howl at celestial bodies and your brain stem.  Thanks for reading.

This post is the first in a series attempting to amass a corpus of guiding principles that the tiger-eyed, silk-girded reader might find useful in the pursuit of Gentle & Manly Living.  Off we go.

• Do not do 'the wave.'  Just don't.  Don't encourage it or acknowledge it.

• A man should have nose hairs. [thanks, J. Donaghy]

• What's the largest animal you've ever hunted?  If it would fit in your dishwasher, go find one that won't.

• Spend more than $5 on a umbrella. 

• Here's how you know when a word is ideal for cussin': It can function as 3+ parts of speech.

• Never start a sentence with "like" or "I mean."  But the stringent high school rule of never opening statements with conjunctions is heretofore rendered void. [blow me, Mrs. McCarthy]

• When conversing in English with an ESL individual, speak back in their accent.  It will make them feel right at home in this strange barrio.

• Light beer should be reserved for days when > 1 gallon of liquid is being imbibed.

• If you venture down the path of experimental facial hair (a quintessential introspective exercise), keep your noggin' hair long.  Else-wise you will be mistaken for a a neo-Nazi, a trifling floozy, or worse, a hipster.

• Learn how to drive.  Need I say more?

• No need to wash your hands after you pee: unless you are 4 (or were cursed with an unsightly anteater) you shouldn't be peeing on your hands.  Instead wash before, so you can be sure you touch your manhood with clean, reverent hands.

• Computers are our slaves.  Treat them as such.

• If offered a drink, accept.  Arnold Palmers are preferred libation for a sunny day when school's out.

• Only write in cursive if it's at a 45 degree slant.

• Snoop Dogg has the best voice, no qualification needed.  It makes you fearful, horny and giggly at the same time.

• Be nice to old ladies, even if you're a dick to everyone else.

• Hydrate.  "But we already covered this!"  Shut up, it's important.

• Don't go to Starbucks unless you have a gift card. 

• If unfurnished with a visible name tag, most waitresses prefer to be addressed as "toots."  [well said, C. Craddock]

• Red pants indicate danger.

• Boogie Nights ... just, Boogie Nights.

Until next time.  It has been altogether real.

- Franklin Boon

A letter from my friend Rex Babin (he's Croatian)

You know, cocktail attire. Just put something on that makes me want to put my cock in your tail.

My next movie is simply going to be a documentary about how perfect it is to smoke in air conditioning.

I'm always late for my girlfriend but early for my street pharmacist. Go figure.

Four lines seems long enough for a post, no?

CHARLIE SHEEN WILL EAT YOUR FACE, AND YOU WILL LIKE IT.

"I'm sorry, man, but I've got magic. I've got poetry in my fingertips. Most of the time—and this includes naps—I'm an F-18, bro. And I will destroy you in the air. I will deploy my ordinance to the ground."

Wait, what? That's not a lead. Who said that? What kind of insane fu—

“—We work for the pope. We murder people ... we are high priests, Vatican assassin warlocks."

What the hell? Who is saying this crazy sh—

"—I am on a drug, it's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available, 'cause if you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body."

Oh Charlie Sheen! It’s you. It’s you and your adorable public relations campaign. That’s right fools and trolls; you heard it here first. Charlie Sheen is running a “Kansas City Shuffle” of a public relations campaign. This is all part of his grand plan.

Five years from now when Charlie is doing body shots off of porn stars on top of a mountain of cash and Columbian snow, you will realize. He duped us. He duped us all. That charming, tiger-blooded warlock ran a recklessly precise media maneuver. A graying Jimmy Fallon will wearily proclaim: “Charlie Sheen not only pulled the wool over our eyes, he banged the sexy shepherd girl who sheared the sheep.” And everyone will cheer. They will not cheer because of a light-up “Applause” sign. They will woot-woot and laugh because Charlie charmed the pants off of them. He broke some hearts and laid waste to his internal organs with drugs unimaginable. But you and everyone else loved him violently for it.

“Can’t is the cancer of happening.”

You’re right, Charlie. So readers, come out on this limb with me. Entertain the idea that this man – like a young Bud Fox – has a plan, and the iron will to carry it out.

For those of you insane people, bros, winners, level 100 warlocks and total bitchin’ rock stars, this should be easy. I know you are with me. If Sheen can sustain this then you people have a mascot. Nay, you have a deity. For everyone unconvinced of Sheen’s charms (i.e. everyone with a conscience), just bear with me. Harbor the same hope I harbor. Believe that there is a little superhero, a little F-18, in each of us. Believe that even the most troubled among us have a dash of the supernatural in them.

Do I think Charlie Sheen really has tiger blood? Do I think he has DNA of the Greek God Adonis? Am I convinced that he cured himself with his mind? No, but I want to think those things. All I need is a little persuading.

“I am battle-tested bayonets, bro.”

Huh? OK, Charlie. You are battle-tested bayonets.

Why does he make all these absurd claims? His life was wild enough before divine genetics entered the conversation. Maybe Charlie is telling the truth. He has been pegged as insane, but I’m not buying it. His erratic is so erratic that it doesn’t seem real. He lives his life like a drunken boxing master: he gives the impression of chaos but it is just a ruse to hide his diabolical plan.

“You’d borrow my brain for five seconds and just be like, ‘dude, can’t handle it, unplug this bastard.’ It fires in a way that is, I don’t know, maybe not from this terrestrial realm.”

I’m not saying that he isn’t crazy. Of course he is. I’m saying that he is channeling his crazy for specific ends.

There is a reason why Sheen is the most buzzing Hollywood topic in years. News about celebrities is sought after, but Sheen’s life has been absurdly accessible.

Do you think that’s an accident? Of course it’s not. Celebrities have entire teams of people assigned to cultivate their image with the media. Publicists, media handlers and spokespeople cluster around their stars and try to put forth positive messages even in the face of wild tabloid crisis.

“It’s just strafing runs in my underwear before my first cup of coffee, because I don’t have time for these clowns.”

Where do you think these people are? Charlie told those clowns to stay the hell at home. He doesn’t have time for them. He told them to stay somewhere out of the way while he completes his ruthless takeover of every media medium.

Where is his pops, Martin, through all this mess? Where is Emilio? How have they both been able to avoid a camera or microphone? It’s because they are in on it. They know exactly what’s up and they are staying out of Charlie’s way too. Let’s be honest, if Martin were not in on this wild venture, he would surely have taken action. He has been confronted with a rebel warlord before in Lieutenant Walter Kurtz. He would just need to imagine himself back on the set of “Apocalypse Now,” and his killer instincts would kick in.

“The only thing I am addicted to right now is winning.”

Alright, Charlie. Let me stop you there. This part no one will believe. Of course they won’t. I don’t believe it either. And why should I? The fact that Sheen’s medicine cabinet looks like Ozzy Osborne’s tour bus does not contradict my theory in the least.

So what if Sheen hasn’t been sober since he started filming “Wall Street?” Nobody in Hollywood is. It snows all year round in that magical town of celebrities. Furthermore, people at the peak of their craft have produced some of their best work under the influence. Jimi Hendrix allegedly consumed hard drugs through his facial pores during performances. Dock Ellis, a former Major League pitcher, threw a no-hitter while under the influence of LSD.

The point is, people at the top of their craft can enjoy success under the wildest of circumstances. Charlie Sheen is no exception. He is making America laugh and giving CBS bragging rights. Can anyone say that Charlie was challenging himself professionally? That show sucks. He had about 17 minutes of airtime every week and made $2 million per show! What a cushy life! Even for a celebrity.

It wasn’t enough for our tiger-blooded friend, however. He was living a rock star lifestyle on a rock star budget but something was missing. He was living excellently and feasting on his “goddesses” and so many substances the DEA had to move to a seven-day workweek. Like Randy Moss in his Raider years, however, he was not flourishing. He was an orchid caught in a thicket of brambles.

It was time to break free. Charlie had had enough of the network TV bullshit. This F-18 needed a chance to blast off.

He has always wanted to be the bad boy. Think back to the surly greaser that Ferris Bueller’s sister ogles in the police station. Sheen never wanted to be a cutesy, PG-13 star. So he needed a chance to break free.

“Resentments are the rocket fuel that live in the tip of my saber.”

Charlie needed an antagonist. He kept stoking the fire with public embarrassments and arrests. Finally, he got the goat of a few people. Chuck Lorre, co-creator of “Two and a Half Men,” shut the show down for the season, putting Sheen and everyone involved out of a job. Now Charlie had someone to attack. The “resentments” he refers to are not real. He knows he created them. But now he does have rocket fuel, and it will propel him to levels even he never imagined.

There is no end in sight for Charlie Sheen. He claims to be sober now, but who knows. What is clear, is that his media hailstorm will not stop until he has the attention of every man, woman and child on planet Earth.

Remember, this is what he wants. Mark Cuban, billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has already come to Sheen about a reality show. Who would not watch that at this point? If not that, Sheen will surely get another show soon. Or maybe a movie. There were talks of him making “Major League 3,” which I for one would reserve advanced tickets to. No matter what his next move, Sheen has the world by the balls and he can play all us media consumers like so many violins.

Charlie Sheen ran the most brilliant public relations campaign of all time. During the next few years he will cash in on that and all we will do is sit and watch. We will get a few good laughs along the way.

“I’m tired of pretending I’m not a total bitchin’ rock star from Mars.”

You know what? Boom, there it is. He totally gave it all away. I figured it out. It seems a Martian really has come down and occupied Charlie’s skin. Clearly the alien had to get back to base in just a few months, so he decided to live the ultimate human experience. He definitely achieved that goal. I just wonder how much longer Mr. Martian can keep a steady hand at the controls before all the fuses explode.

Flo Jo

Bitch I'm big like bunnies' family trees
From the Dirty like birthmarks on Drew Brees
Call me Dolla or call me Peahz
But before you touch it, please say please

Did you see the Super Bowl Halfime show???

Michael Jackson. Stevie Wonder. The Rolling Stones. Prince. Bruce Springsteen. The Black Eyed Peas.

Find the black sheep. Oh, there it is.

The NFL let America down when it chose the Black Eyed Peas to headline the halftime show at Super Bowl XLV. After all, the Super Bowl is our nation’s moment to shine.

Europe is done thanking us for the Marshall Plan. We haven’t made a sexy car since the ‘70s. And as much as our fearless leader tries to galvanize his people, we are not on the verge of another Sputnik. But what we can do as Americans is put on a show; or at least we used to know what that took.

The Super Bowl, from its name down to the millions of dollars spent on advertising, is the ultimate flexing of American muscle. That is exactly why they trot out Michael and Stevie. Even Mick and Keith managed to emerge from the haze of a champagne-drenched suite in the Bellagio to make it up to Detroit for Super Bowl XL.

How could Roger Goodell and his cronies bobble the snap on this one? Everything was going so perfectly. In 2010 the NFL was filled with intriguing stories, which led to its highest ever TV ratings for a season. The playoffs were a commissioner’s dream. Aaron “Friendly as Mr. Rogers” Rogers and his hobbled Pack caught fire, adding a 21^st century chapter to the lore of the Green-and-Gold.

It felt like we were living in Goodell’s fantasy world. His golden knight, Rodgers, took down yesterday’s crucified star, Michael Vick. Then he braved the cold and silenced the surly Jay Cutler. Next up was the Super Bowl, and everyone outside of Western Pennsylvania hoped that Rodgers had one more in the chamber to slay the poster boy for everything wrong with the league, Big Bad Ben Roethlisberger.

Finally, through all of these triumphs of Good over Evil in the NFL, Rodgers has shaken the graying, Louisiana monkey from his back. That Super Bowl MVP Award ESPN can finally drop the notion that Rodgers is motivated by residual hatred for Brett Favre.

The NFL could not have drawn it up any better. Ex-cons and sexters alike felt the wrath of Rodgers’ poise and pinpoint passing. It seemed that the stage was set perfectly for the Super Bowl.

Then, inexplicably, the Black Eyed Peas were allowed to have their way with the halftime show. On a stage in the middle of the modern cathedral of sport that Jerry Jones built, Will.i.am, Fergie and co. butchered their performance and 111 million Americans cringed in unison.

Allow me to be clear. The Black Eyed Peas never had a chance. The fault here lies entirely with the people who selected them as the lead performer. Even if the mics had been working, even if Fergie hadn’t left her lozenges in Los Angeles and even if a number of the stage lights had not gone out, the show would have been a disaster.

The Black Eyed Peas burst onto the scene in a big way with the release of Elephunk, their first platinum album in 2003. During a time when the United States needed feel good music, they gave it to us. They gave it to us hard. Their music was like a combination of a “Fight World Hunger” commercial and Kumbaya set to the furious pace of a Jazzercise class. Even with their best performance last Sunday, they could never hold a candle to “Born to Run” or “Billie Jean” at midfield.

Maybe the planners of the halftime show knew they had to book someone cheesy when they saw the Packers making their Sherman-esque march through the postseason. That would mean that they were sacrificing a great show for a little irony. That sure doesn’t sound very American. Maybe the impending NFL lockout had Goodell so busy that he couldn’t manage to book a real performer.

Yes, I know they did have a classic face on the stage. Slash of Guns ‘n Roses made an appearance, complete with theatrical makeup and top hat. They barely let him play guitar, however, and he was forced to endure Fergie’s rendition of “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, marking the real low point of the night. The Peas then hit us with about five of their catchiest songs. I’ll blame that toe-tapping on restless leg syndrome.

There were only two saving graces. The absurd light-up costumes worn by the accompanying dancers and the Black Eyed Peas themselves made Apl.de.ap and Taboo looked like extras from The Matrix. The only moment that really absolved the whole disaster for me was Usher gracing us with some of his silky dance moves. Other than that, the halftime show gave the Super Bowl a big black eye.

Orange ya glad I didn't say banana?

something that is fucked up:

Rich people who buy shitty toilet paper (npi*). Are you KIDDING me? That's the least appreciated part of your body, dealing with shit, getting shit on and shitting itself. Hook it up for Christ's sake. If you take away that 5th Audi, you can start applying those funds to important things. Like fluffy paper to wipe your ass with.


I don't understand you, porn industry:

what is the appeal of a video entitled "handjob in car"? does the fact that this is happening in a motor vehicle somehow make a handjob enjoyable to watch? Maybe the acoustics are great in there. Who knows. Shit, no, you know what, they needed that particular hue of Miata Blue. And she is a retired hand model: just looked beautiful on that background. And if you recognized that brushed stainless wristlet, I'm not surprised because that video was financed by J.C. Penney. Great product placement.


There should be more subjects for this rant, but I don't have the storyweaving abilities of Bill Simmons. Speaking of which, fuck you Sports Guy. Simmons has the best job ever. And he shoves it in my face. It wasn't enough to just shower me with his wry wit, he also has to brag about the inanity of his columns. Which I love, don't get me wrong. He is just the most masturbatory writer of all time. It's great. In his "mailbag" column he posted an email that berated him for his absurd attention to detail of a number of reality shows that he delves into in his sports column. It must be satisfying to know that the guy reads his column enough to know how he breaks down Survivor, even if every word is painful. Bill Simmons, you are a man without a master. I envy your liberty.


*No Pun Intended

Dear Natalie

This is a poem in the style of ancient Hebrew erotic poetry, dedicated to Natalie Portman's sensual and evocative performance in the film Black Swan.

In white you were beautiful,

Were slender, tender and fragile

You floated on gusts of your own grace

You moved with girlish gentleness

But in black you struck like thunderclaps

The force of your twirls and thrusts could deafen.

Your face in striking shadow, terrifying beauty

Your lips a lustful sneer that draws me in and in

Your eyes are black magnets; I cannot escape you.

-Kadetrix Bolingbroke Martini

untitled

Storm is coming

Clouds hang low, city like a cave,
Gray and red-orange overcome blue,
Restless leaves on arching trees

Storm is coming

Hear the crickets, hear the sounds
Thunderclap! I'm living now,
Flashing light, I'm living in these clouds

Storm is coming

Sky blackens to the east, sideways rain,
There's rare power up above

Storm is coming,

Now trunks are screaming, buildings too,
Engulfed in furious, liquid skies

Storm is coming

Gale is whipping, puddles become ponds

Storm is coming

We see how small we really are now

Storm is coming
Storm is coming

A Dash of Wrath

I am demented, lamented, resented. I rise up and fill the air with my voice but I do not have to scream. My toes twirl wildly, each one splaying out from its fellows as if stabbing the night. I rip layer after layer of thick white linen cloth from my body, but there is so much that it is hard to find my own skin. I rip and I claw and the shreds fall like an autumn hijacked by winter. For every torn layer, new folds of constricting textiles materialize and cling to my body. They encompass me. They are meant to be comforting, but I resent the comfort they intend. Because they don’t really comfort at all. They conceal and they limit and they euphemize. I am consumed by the frustration of such a thing. These imposing white waves are spun in a loving light, but I know that they are only meant to muffle. My frustration turns to ire and fire rushes from my spleen and out of my mouth to lick the linen with blackening venom so potent that I burn my own skin. My spine tenses with the pain, but the cool, swirling winds make nerve endings calm.

I seek new threads as I roam the night air. I plunge into a black thundercloud, pulling its edges tight against my straining tendons and darning it with knowing fingers to accommodate my immensity. This feels right. The dark moisture is symbolic of my power, ready to gush forth at a moment’s notice. The immutable nature of water lends itself to me and clothes me in a second skin. That burst of fire was only temporary. Fire I could produce, but it is inconsistent. Water is like a Hendrix riff and a deep kiss: it produces something in me. Its strange dichotomy of permanence and fluidity appeals to me. I ride away with my cloak of icevaporwater to impose my will on the imposable.

>>>excerpt from the Autobiography of Radric Brazoban

What is that? The odd, maybe twisted pleasure of leaving people behind

There you are, on that boat. There they stand, on the dock. They stand there on the planks and nails, and the beams that bear their weight sink deep into the unmoving earth.

They stand on the dock. They are at the edge of the water. They can only turn. They can only go back. As they return back to their lives, they can’t fathom the dock; they don’t even try. They must return to the roundness, to the wholeness of the land. The concept of the frontier is too large, too unpackageable to even be addressed. The frontier doesn’t even have an address. It is beyond. Beyond what? That is the use of the people on the dock. They define the frontier. The point where they collectively stop, that is the frontier. Because some people stop on the dock, the boundary exists. That dock at the edge of the cold, dark water becomes so big. The big, scary frontier that repels them back toward the wholeness of their lives.

So why did they come? Was it to squeeze your hand or kiss your mouth with convincing passion? No, they came to see if you would really get on the boat. That Martian vessel departing the wholeness and the roundness. To where? Wrong preposition! It doesn’t matter to where. The boat is an uncatchable beam of light, tangenting off of the roundwhole. It is bouncing, flying, fleeing mothers and moorings. The shadow it casts doesn’t even touch the dock. The tethers fall away and the "bon voyages" ebb as thunderous waters make way for brave tangent.

But what of you? I haven’t forgotten. You can forget forgetting. Forgetting is what happens when you try to remember. You are past all that. You have put down your cup of Kool-aid. It wasn’t too bad: it was pleasant and safe and even tasted pretty good. Too syrupy-sweet though. It is time for a hearty swig of cold, briny seawater. Now that is a substance of clarity. It stings going down and it is complicated. It is liberating and revolting. Saltwater requires sharp focus; Kool-aid requires quiet concession. Kool-aid you left behind. You’re drinking seawater now. And after the first, hesitant cupful, you start gulping it down. There’s no label indicating its safety, but its salty sting doesn’t make you seize or vomit, no limbs fall off and your pores don’t leak essential fluids. Instead, the world flows into you. You are filled with its thereness. It shakes you and makes your eyes well up. The scrutinizing wind bites chunks out of who you were. It whips you like a lash, then fills your lungs – Straboccante! – with the food for which they yearn.

You crossed the frontier when you stepped foot on that boat. And however cold and brackish and biting the beyond is, it welcomes you.

Now go to it.