there is no yesterday’s data, only today’s voice
and all depends on what you see in the slag
nice to leave this incorrectly yet perfectly spaced; maybe you don’t read like i do
i’m pushing water down the drain so just look behind you, i don’t want you to slip
crud vectors blasting off in all directions
explosions seeking origin
brunettes nodding in soft understanding
communicating to my little harem
combustible words and their true meanings and ripple effects during wartime
Brad Pitt drinking whiskey late at night alone on the phone asking Jonah Hill if he would have drafted him in the first round - we need others to tell us how good we are; our efforts cannot cure our doubt and self-rejection alone
men only hurt themselves by projecting unrealistic expectations of togetherness on women: men are hurt because there is no glorious union possible: there is signing contracts and making the country work, with its brands governed by numbers in slots in the computer we’re sick of; is it the Constitution making us sick?
we ask so much of the numbers and standings, the state of the game: rank, file, knowledge - where we are left out, forgotten, unwanted, unnecessary - am I great enough to be given more runway? Who would give it? A busy viewer consumed with their own rises and falls, their own being included in their own vast matrix game? The matrix is other people, their thoughts and defenses, their selfishness; can the world accommodate four billion players posting 20 billion messages a day? Legion of Listeners? Then once a player wins, they talk about what they’re going to do
the grief of being alone and love not being a solve because everyone is selfish; or i’m not getting invited to dinner parties, or success is boring because there’s so much deprogramming and conversation and gratitude to do; togetherness and simultaneity isn’t interesting; money awakens i guess, but then it’s just family - kids are interesting; they might become adults not shitty like me and my middle-aged computer-based peers; today, 11/11/23, it’s hard to forgive my peers, yet we all work - work and honor and worthiness, no God but the one we say we remember; tongue solves tirednesss
we are here to be promoted to
it is so strange how vast the future is
by having few people in my life, i have more room for fictional characters in movies to really be real to me
there have never been more ways to not fit in; if you want to doubt, you can look and find something off
what needs to be taught?
being the father daughters need is a big job
if it’s below 52 degrees and wet, people are afraid of the dark - it was just the artists themselves and their girlfriends
crime partner, confidant
do you modify yourself for a partner
inherited neglect
al jarreau take five
“i don’t know what’s good for me”
takes a long time to have a clear sense of reality and what my limitations are
caught a glimpse of barely cotton-shielded nipple
the jewelry is on sale too
being dazzled to death, and choosing words, one in front of the next, in order to make the brick road to salvation and heavenly Ness and ultimate protection and womb simulation and warmth, and being turned over again, and again to stay in the game in this maze matrix of conjunction and simultaneity
dazzled to death slowly
eagerly awaiting the upload, one slow percentage point at a time
jealous of a kiss
I wasn’t crying about spreadsheets
in-person environment Google maps
looking for a guide;
David is a beautiful dancer, actor, thinker, monk, introspective individual wondering about big questions of sovereignty, peace, lifestyle, work, relationship, country, belonging, family
Sarah is dealing with grief and transition
Internet hall of fame, those with unlimited energy who just kept pumping, curating, channeling, making a place for other people to live, an honest soul to listen to, being a man, being what you are -- who did I love? Katie, Ansley, Nikol; Love is what will last. Marriage is a real thing, worship the state and stock prices, labor, commodity prices, the market, commerce, who wants what, who’s up and who’s down, Netenyahu, violence, Israel, Morrissey, Conan O’Brien, podcasts, Apple, Google and Spotify in arbitration, your mouthpiece of honesty and recognition, memory and imagination, the scissors and paste men
writing, photography, truth, poetry, psychology, culture, current events, beauty, hope, romance, family, emotions, limitation, acceptance, humility ♠️
a whole man
darkness specter
modern American Musashi
American Miyamoto Musashi
his 21 precepts
Musician
I layer harmonies like cake 🎂🔵🟡
📩
↓ ↓ Check out my other stuff ↓ ↓
you be the orgy
only because I say so
do you believe in passionate virtuosity?
clear and sober in the face of stress
you! call 9-11 now
writes creative nonfiction, sings cover songs, photographs, curates, podcasts, listens
i am very prepared for the long game of making myself more famous, to the chagrin of anyone tired who made practical choices out of fear of having to believe in yourself alone — now, i can sell information and belonging, and i won’t just criticize the futility of the game, i will play it and play very well, as well as the best in the game — i am fierce and charming; i am hard especially on my male friends who are entrepreneurial and/or creative; i can poke and push, then use dark magic so they sink their own ship and feel humiliated, and drag themselves out — with women, who i love when they’re intense and love to bulldoze men, i become an endlessly expanding cloud of smoke so there’s always further to go with her bulldozer; then, when it’s time to throw up a wall, i throw her back into her own self-doubt lonely, and her childhood and traumatized past (and misremembering it, doubting herself) does the rest
friendship is an achievement
after chasing love and money through application of ego through computing, images and software
the game
She’s cute and doesn’t need me; a new distance to sketch, loud with hunger; will mine walk in? Typical Thursday at Epoch, real life, more of the same ~ explaining, describing; resist being right, be overwritten, die nightly for a change of style: what are you telling to whom that’s going to weave a net to save you, with finance and lawyers in the program WHO DON’T YET SEE IT LIKE YOU DO! They don’t talk about their job the way you would: your uniqueness makes you lonely; none can refute the work and you working
second-year wingman out of Michigan State
i know that the tenacity, vision and profound indifference
it me irl
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gplewis/
the eroticism of one’s own purpose
rich branded families are eagerly paving
win over the barbecue dads
bamboozled and frazzled, clawing up a mountain of smoke - have you gotten the big Them to believe your intuition? we die as administrators of our inclusion - no one has survived the present
closeness to the feminine and how you relate to the market - protecting your equipment
how are you gonna make alpha male content from a twin bed? that’s literally your childhood bedroom
1 Corinthians 15:52 the dead will be raised incorruptible and we will be changed
the depth of the heart and the width of the world
how do you convince people to raise their taxes? superintendent as bail bondsman
cute little spine
i put her in the car seat
denature the enzyme
sea raptor with tilt rotor built for range
good bird (osprey backpack bros)
can you court disaster with stamina and sacrifice
the production of sacred things slowly
on the bearable unbearable time spectrum
the thumping heart against the slowness of time
was thinking of you last night too, next to me in bed, the empty space; I was reading The Way of the Superior Man
Cool to be a poet who woke up too early now worshipping the branded interchange of language and money like a scholar of some above-ground underworld (yes I’ve taken you down and up already; my peers are fathers who can’t even read a page of text, they’re so tired and shrunken to the cloth and buttons of their day, sovereign in their own state of affairs and union, rescued by the low hum of ongoing Instagram from old faces; middle age is too long I say, will induce suicide if no trophies are introduced for milestones along the way except bad health and more bad news thanks to lazy / inept politicians who never do a thing, only individuals at the grassroots level who within their own lives cultivate a culture of invitation; all this language does is unite you with assholes, with readers, with other media freaks and mavens belonging to the dim hell of the laptop and smartphone LCD screens; better to reach for love below a woman’s surface: her good heart, her loyalty the only championship worth winning. Thanks for waking me up, Charlie, and our new guest from Chicagoland whom I had a heartfelt encounter with, then Kyle appeared shirtless from around the corner, too bad I’ll have to grill him hard today about integrity and laziness! Men’s work! Where’s Barrett Swanson these days who wrote in Harper’s -- ah, rich white creative moneyed savvy overeducated wry wise patient kind beautiful aching bourgeois reading class, Twitter poetry cloud gemstones sweat lodge yearning and managing, balancing, dreaming, complaining, reading, hoping, dreaming, angry idealists I love, chosen family -- get up you athletes, stretch, eat, dress, go! Threads on the shelf and in drawers, opened by hands who used to be attached to bodies and faces I’d call friends; now loss and letting go governs everything. I write as if an angel, as if dead, posthumous; the truth is poets have a passport, a presidential seal, to travel between the realms, childhood recovered at will, virginity of mind. Wednesday 11/8/23 election day so just another day voting with dollars and surrender, throwing hands up and naming complaints; working in intelligence, monitoring and surveying the data, two hundred billion messages a day from two billion people online, ferally making shapes on this vast electronic cave wall, splendid; Thanksgiving is coming, country and family, cold and lockdown
cool to be a genius
undeniable; my will larger than any threat or critic
lacking only love; loving only the distance between me/you and what you/we love; it’s music, it’s surrender ~ Blink 182, nay, Green Day: Holiday
90s rock
00s rock
Composing what I shouldn’t send, because I know you don’t like the phone, but yesterday was lovely, I could see spending lots of time with you ~ your hands are full right now and everything in your life seems in perfect balance and flow, and I so appreciate being friends and getting to know each other and just be in each other’s space, both of us doing our thing. // Would I give it all up for you? Would I do everything I do for us? I would — it would be easy to commit to you, to be your future. I will wait for the chess moves to play out with Jason, Matt, Cam…monogamy is the end and the beginning; in your eyes, I melt and become useful, and together we are the Alpha and Omega, the union of the feminine and the androgynous, ultimate freedom and security; your face the one in my mind when I play baseball and sing, when I write and build business relationships. You probably know a man needs a woman
been thinking about Rick Rubin saying "you are successful when you send your work out into the world"
maybe it’s just the send
college girls’ homework about heat and work
it’s not simple, it’s hard, that’s why i’m talking to you, not someone else
going to the source (of paying Glassdoor to take down bad reviews)
tupac, spark
leonard cohen, women take over
will only happen if people believe it
humans better off when they give not get
spark them to lean in
lean where? in? i’m here
you, too, can come to our leadership accelerator
teacher pension funds fuel our venture funds?
she’s making an alternative capital system
the same hallucination of community
i represent the disenfranchised, disengaged and unwilling to accept bullshit any longer creators, workers
authentic dialogue of challenging assumptions
northwest hills
off of far west and mopac
the collective pain of trying to make sense of insanity
pursuit of something bigger
no separation from CEO and human
i can have everyone should me to death
“successful”
separate who i am with what i was good at
you want to fund people to do what they’re bad at
only a parent could finance that
you want that unconditional love for everybody
consigliere saying what the fuck to do next
but these high net worth individuals are also made of poetry
let us reprogram how they think of growth
castle and building
rooks and crowns
we remember authority now we are it
tag
labels
keep us in the past
rather than a virginal approach
sweetness is really what men in power want
milk
acres, amounts, larger, more; his insecurity can’t be filled with enough
so enough
that’s an obvious message and torch
so go, join the fight
there are others
it isn’t so bad after all
but i don’t want you to applaud
i want to fight
knee deep in the lather, vast landscape of bubbles, of air trying to escape, slowly realizing there’s nowhere to go
Digital slag just proves addiction: we wake up and are so hungry, we suck on this tit of light, no one can disagree we are large baby mammals looking for the womb state again, rising just to make sure we can come back home, so we paint the hearth, the place we return, nostalgia, Greece, Rome, war, church: everyone comes from here, Reunion is our job really, poets remind us we share bonds of blood, sinew, oak, wind, cold, frost — Nietzsche’s frosts and isolations! We are his MUSTACHE! Hair, pain, hope, rage, disdain -- Andre Gide who hated families; Ezra Pound saying speak against bonds, cut off all the chains says Dylan, swim from shore to shore, find the promised land, string garlands from steeple to steeple and dance; I have made a world you can hang out in for a while, the feminine arts of dressmaking, nothing better than Elena Ferrante My Beautiful Friend the television series set in Italy, television is the new fire, the fire is nightly,
Tuesday 11/7/23
I want to touch my phone but I want to touch Her--my wife, commitment to the land, our blood and its continuity; what kind of man loves like this? Music, insight, attachment and connection to the celestial workflow, ceaseless, so one draws the circle with a paintbrush dipped in Black; one keeps remembering, loving working with all sides of the ball and the offense; love was sparked today, lit, a second ride home in her Subaru; we clasped hands upon seeing, I sat with her and Cameron on the benches outside, holy location, Epoch North Loop, Maddie and Reno there today too, happy family, sexy, hardworking,
zookeeper jumpsuit
gnawing on the bishops
ready to burn the visual field
so — where is it all going? the heart, I mean.
girls working, wide-eyed, Monday light; we’ve been here before
poetry never needs profit But you need to live — so, through agreements; the sizzling being-desired, being a good fit for a Home, a Mother
gnawing on the bootstraps
Texas is a ‘magnet’ for transplants
god damn i wanna freak with her
i just need my fucking tongue piercing changed out
hunting money in the cloud with my hands
genograph
family triangles
substance abuse
self-control issues
mmm; ass in black spandex shorts
revealing bows on the back of her quads
if you can just stand and be ~ in flow with pop music and centuries
she looks at me, i am nobody’s hero, i could’ve been hers
tiny sausage? couldn’t be me
new oligopolies just dropped
the consumer decides when to hit snapshot
i love being hated for my sovereignty, confidence, fearlessness, chill and imperviousness to shit talk — my thick skin
and championship hall of fame focus
rhino horn virility pills
jaguar fang ring
wrote you a message i didn’t send! hope you did good and had fun today ☀️ i can show you if you want, spoiler ~ i liked spending time with you yesterday
when my 4am and 4pm yearns are the same
2am video yearns, reaching
when you can sell everything you see
you don’t need to own it
mass market to massive niche
network neighbors
physical neighbors
moving from god to state to network
the networks silenced and unseated a sitting us president
warfare between state and network
kill zucchini hearse
underwater intimacy
staying and going, what reliable is moving
what was set in stone is vibrating now
like apps up for movement and deletion
the men are looking at the screen, making things familiar
40somethings keep order in the world, obedience, rules, management, threats, compliance
Nuclear strike, nuclear power; I wake up in the motions of publicity, hold nothing back Maybe, don’t even mess with privacy, live the tremble out loud in the mesh network of others: every writer connecting and connected to the whole, thrumming, a large vibrational orb of insistence on peace, refusal and protest, fighting for sovereignty, heels dug in, earning anew and condoning the world of law, gravity
which little twentysomething witch wants to get a real job and be my wife
hunting for a wife among the sexual predators and social relics, relapses,
what she wants: protection via my status, pleasure via my strength, so she can relax
and finally have a father and a house that will protect and shelter her like she should have been
you can’t oppose the corporation
how could it be so hard to read an open book?
i don’t know if i have the intention span (Reno on podcasts, he actually said attention)
Bad Markings
and we rest for a moment in Raptors at Spurs
LOL at attempt #1 to transcribe:
Hey Autumn thanks for the good questions above very important ones I do or don't believe in Arabic mortgage claimants yeah right I mean I think I'm searching for protection well it is do integration I'm trying to get in somewhere and find a way to connect but I am with others I need to move blind off all the things that isolate and separate peace so that's the work I do through my work I writing m
oat milk cappuccino with an extra shot
my father - brother dying, lost the left half of his body’s functionality, hospice, no service, no one would come, kids aren’t calling, no conversation beyond present physical needs, do you want to go out, are you hungry, are you tired, baby state, he has nothing but his siblings, Keith Lewis spending gas money from Redwood City to Petaluma, septuagenarian - the words which were long heralded are now his; the shield is mine, and the towel, the wax/grease, shine it up, make it worthy - for whom? women? children? others? not me? us? Sports - football; Mark had potential, fucked off, impregnated Mary, did drugs, didn’t really work, has been living for hunger of the hit
hunger of the Pine, alt-J, nature; Shasta; California; Bukowski on how people swallow country without thinking, God without thinking, just woof woof ~ was that V.S. Naipaul in The Paris Review talking about the world being made to put in a book to contemplate, to experience, to fall in love in
"... some poets do not see reaching many in spatial terms, as in the filled auditorium. They see reaching many temporally, sequentially, many over time, into the future, but in some profound way these readers always come singly, one by one." – Louise Gluck
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/01/14/louise-gluck-nobel-lecture-poet-and-reader/
forgot the umlaut
is that behind a paywall?
i’m in love with a German
I should have gone
I might go. — Sappho
I didn’t go. — SF Giants losing to LA Dodgers in 2021 National League Division Series, watched in the lovely, enormous, padded, furnished home of Professor at Yale Business School James Baron, father of Isaac
and in this coffee shop, Epoch, i find union
i am it, am devoured by it, become it, become my father
like Mahmoud Darwish said
in his poem, To A Young Poet
so being a poet is just a bleating beating heart
remembering too much
see the comment i dropped here
not her
never her; she does not enjoy the screen, I will wait, I will wait for you Mumford and Sons who dared to do something different and Risk losing their audience, an, Risk is the fundamental act along with
i learned from TikTok
Strength Wisdom Courage Love
just do those and it’s fine and you become a boring guy, not the main character
but can shine light on other fatherhood
Kevin Sun masterclass with City Hall towering through the glass
teaching a young boy
who wonders about worthiness
we are held by Him, we sing for Him
and there are many songs
and lists, and dollars, and Yeses and Nos
and somewhere we must belong
the poem is never over
there are friends, cities, tribes
hearts with nothing to do but, finally,
listen and help each other
i could irrigate (irritate) her desert
i have an NDA to sign in the morning
minimum viable jargon-powered belonging
but to answer your question of why i frame so much around gender,
Men are social predators, women are social parasites. Men are sexual parasites, women are sexual predators.
“just because i’m not paid doesn’t mean i’m unemployed
what do i really want to give people? the thing i never had
the way i’d emotionally justify this
spinning all these narratives about brokenness and healing
feeld, you can fuckin’ anything, blood play
found myself another burning gate
a vague ideal i can and must relate to
https://twitter.com/isabelunraveled/status/1718828194499903979
Up on the presidential podium, my mama loves me; another boy howling--now, you become real when you are a real character in a woman’s life ~ Maddie E. Wentworth on the mind today, bookish brunette I would bury my active mouth between her thighs, spread the cinnamon-vanilla forest of dew and spice, warmth, jargon of mixed feelings, her urge to be a queen and have empire, let her growth loose, let her bloom in the soil of my surrender. Every girl wants it
weird
plate it in song separately
then in conversation in union
in business or sex
romance and agreement
U-shaped talons
how much private equity fruit do you eat? whose tolerated suffering makes your life livable?
Thinker, cultural observer, social media maven, former marketer and tech recruiter, all in on writing, photography, singing, conversations, podcasts, truth, beauty and the divine. Bringing people together to be better people, more grateful, observant and militant about what matters.
1937 Remington Model 5 Streamline
Logging on to ingratiate myself to/in the chains again, remembering muscle and flight
Carrying the banner of yesterday, are we out of the dark mountains and hillsides? Andy Dufrain crawling through a mile of shit, busting out of the prison, free beneath the lightning, makes it to Xiuatanejo to meet his friend Morgan Freeman, the Pacific as blue as it is in his dreams: prison, poet laureates, ordinary friendship, listening
boondoggle
pork barrel
hot charcoal roasted
iced spiced fig
buffers for shunting
worse is a horse
i want someone to take something that really hurts ~ ansley in coyote teeth and snake vertebrae earrings
i model the framing of the house on SketchUp
cost per square foot is a dumb metric
countertop can be 10k or 2k
fixed price means getting into the details rather than cost plus
i don’t bid jobs
i’m not one of the three contractors
it’s all about relationships
all about the quality of my work
if you like me and i like you we can do a deal, if not we can have a coffee and talk about what men owe women
manage finances, what’s fair, blah de blah de blah blah blah
i’m a pretty spiritual guy, i don’t wear it on my sleeve,
i’m the middle way, the Buddhist middle way - not extreme right, not extreme left, i hate politics
past: designing computer chips and programming
i hire people to build the framing and foundation
i do a ton of graphing on the project, just need the concept
got out of high tech in 2005, formed the LLC in 2013
built my first house when i was 23 years old
married very young, 20, had first baby, i wanted my family to have a house and i didn’t have any money so i built one
my youngest is 45
grandson just graduated college
lived it all, loved it all, love where i am
will be doing this in 5-10 years
on the drawing board and in my accounting and getting projects through permitting
if i could find someone who can manage the project and build for me, i would
ideas in mind of building small houses
a nice 500sq house, how much can i build that for
508 Texas Ave. until spring
call with an hour notice
other project on Avenue C
Jules Kniolek
+1 (512) 750-7903
https://www.psbcdesignbuild.com
I easily write about the absurdity of survival on the computer, and the players you meet, sweet girls with backgrounds who remember everything, whose pussies are pulsing with hunger for bearing babies -- an outsourced mirror, reliably adorable, cute, I have TikTok serving me tribe, inspiration, belonging as I’m on the baseball field, but I may change with the seasons, a few days ago was the sports equinox with all major American leagues playing hockey, football, basketball, baseball; rollerblades would save my life maybe I’ll let the ghost of J. Pierpont Morgan believe in me remember Mira firing her bank a blonde financial advisor turned yogi and shamaness we love to see spiritual girls on Instagram be their own husbands, oh Microsoft Bill Gates loves to dress in women’s clothing and pay a Thai tranny to punish him with a leather whip with many tails, talons, coils, claws; we want to win in public in suits in English on the calendar with guaranteed belonging and staging but then in private in the boudoir to be destroyed and sent to hell kiss the bedrock of the underworld good morning listeners who are still alive in the wartorn world as bombs drop on the Gaza strip in the Middle East Jed York and that asshole husband of Ivanka could solve, Donald Trump’s loneliness and wanting to be approved is the fundamental force of all human activity, he’s another failed whiny poet with no patience, no character, all selfishness no surrender, it’s a useful bandwidth for a warrior
the stakes of your conflicts
one eye on one’s own divine unique intuition, the other on other people’s careers, resisting the urge to chronograph and draw conclusions from comparisons and believe they are real — nothing needs to be real
the scout next to the sniper always writing down the windage
perform at your very best even if it goes nowhere? all this lonesome writing is meant to be discarded, not even turned around but discarded by love, and life is all that matters: the emotion of the present moment, forgetting the track record
oat milk cappuccino with an extra shot to feel close to the source; i paint my flight while innumerable others, each unique, do it too
can’t sleep, came here instead? lean into it!
my scumbag filter
convincing people
obsessing over the guitar part
making it good enough for me and god and everything i know
pursuing what never happened
fighting all night with should
how to make life livable?
hammer out the dents and re-inflate from playing guitar
John Mayer - Tetragrammaton, Rick Rubin’s podcast
just hope i catch air this time, i’m not slowing down
and if i fall that’s easy
it’s the fear of flight
that’s where to live
and conquer
and learn hope again
then teach as you go
pilgrims of the gap
i thought i lost you
i’m gonna have one more cig and then leave
transformation
Walking home with Ansley later, Thursday 11/2/23 she made it onto voice recording 304, that gets a star and a Favorite ~ call it Hope Springs Eternal? All it took was a girl in a purple jacket and a black beanie; I write about what I love and let The Best unfold from there, like roses on the dashboard -- we all long to remember
How to synchronize the attention wars, get everyone fed; programming, the schedule; media companies decide what is seen by the American voters who indeed condone with their tax dollars and the lives they lead the genocide of the inconvenient Palestinians; genocide for eugenics’ sake, aesthetics’ sake, political power’s sake, consolidation’s sake ~ my locus of power and agency is slowness, tingle and the pen; I am a child who says “I am, I am, I am” uniting himself essentially and existentially to the external
The pain of making yourself wanted. Only the brightness is your homeland, beyond the mortal
Thinking about the holidays and home, who I am to my family, why I think I am not welcome there & it isn't worth going, because they are the old regime & I understand the light that is on me & I know the lesson; so I will Stay where I am and just Be with time, talk to and touch my found friends and chosen family; I have set the table for myself here on LinkedIn by connecting with new people with whom I sense commonality; setting the table for people to talk to, study, learn from, share with, sculpt myself for ~ this leads to Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
what hell are other men in?
performing the looking for, wanting and becoming a father savior - the hell of becoming kind
car exhaust smells vanilla
Muhammad was 40 when the archangel Gabriel appeared to him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/opinion/sunday/how-to-survive-your-40s.html
“I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in . . . but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
The repetition and return to the same salt lick of the bright white etching plate (place) that makes this amusing, musical, an extra in a film falling off bridges having the time of his life; thoughts pounding upon waking, Wednesday 11/1/23 November 🎉🍂 (pop, autumn emojis) ~ translation, inclusion, music, stage, daylight, nighttime, // Messages await; I am W. Somerset Maugham, a rat burdened by memories; Lefsetz says you just gotta make it to January 1st, it’s true, the holidays will get harder, I have to find and make my friends, be glue, white dough, sticky; my morals, personality and politics revise themselves according to protection I can get (fantasized about Maddie wanting me, re-inviting me back to the intimacy we had; we hugged on the back porch, I kissed her neck and felt her butt, we left holding hands to come right here to this dim-lit room; a savage feasts on himself, a Cerberus tearing his skin and hair apart, itching for bone, something hard, sun-knocked; I am uniting myself to all poems; I am; there’s no one to show, everyone’s busy trying to get safe, do enough, be enough, strive, be worthy, have fun, enjoy before we die, but it’s a long road to the end, 30 more years of the same: I can see the end // black mountain, black smoke rising, white smoke from a community electing a pope; I am Michael Lewis earning friends, speaking the insiders’ language, ah: doling out resources. Politics: who gets what? Says who? I am happy to be an abstract of the state, consenting to my tax dollars being used to bomb the shit out of Gaza, for the sake of geopolitical harmony; genocide maybe ain’t so bad; am I a sociopath born without empathy? I think I am both the man and woman; the dark magician father, I will stick a Coke can up someone’s ass and let the wideness be the thing that makes them sprint to cure and heal; using gravity, moving boards, so the enemy’s own weight makes them fall; I use their pain, their shame, and their worry against them; I let the board and time defeat them. I win. In my mind; in real life I keep losing, because I’m too old, white and good to help; I’ll figure it out; who will I help? What ends will I cause? Justice will be capitalism-flavored; the men protected by contracts and equity cannot fall; they insist on keeping the present like the past; God, I love seeing the Conservative and Republican way of life! Mother sex slave household servant in the kitchen like 1950s but modern, am I really sorry for my mother? She is fine now, my father is …doing the same things, subject to powers beyond him, provincial
i shall make the state poetic
“Plato suggested that some of the poets be driven out of the Republic because they had the power to weaken the guardians. Poets can make it impossible to have a war-unless they tell stories that agree with the "general line" established by the state. Poets who have no metaphysics, and therefore no political line, make war impossible because they have the irresistible ability to show the guardians that what seems necessary is only possible.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
we want more than anything to share our private self with other people — the shock of intimacy’s ordinariness: it could be like this all the time
fightin’ over every last drop of nectar
i want constant nutrition
i want a banana bag
i want to be warmed and turned over
i want womb simulation
now i’m operating a goat motel
“seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility”
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/658469-finite-and-infinite-games?page=2
playful with one’s own death and disappearance
DAILY GAMBLER
keep calm and keep making yourself minuscule for judgment by powerbrokers
succeed, get therapy, wait, accept
How we choose to reward people—with our dollars, our votes, our clicks
RE-ENGINEER THE REWARD SYSTEM (to make me OK)
whom do we reward with our choices and the lives we lead?
Tri Delta in pearls and sweats
strayed beyond the amber line
https://twitter.com/kjavadizadeh/status/1102918172905213952
lost and home
“There are many elder sons and elder daughters who are lost while still at home.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming
being old, being isolated, still having a voice you’re ashamed of / i have become pure; i then doubt it and have to prove and earn it again every day; articulating the night does not save you from it — staying busy with hands translating a dream, hallucinating into the internet and possibly being heard, stirring a fever-womb of perfectly being listened to, supported by the presence of the other nodes; no voice is out of the woods, each must reach out to “the people you work with” — but i’m beauty-stricken by a particular lithe, pale, tattooed barista, so I stand transfixed and Sell it, the Picture of Me, the Special Boy, preening, foaming at the mouth, tongue hanging out, but an imaginative tongue
sweatered men work on briefs
making facts smaller, palatable
models
he dresses well and only worked three hours
the workday for the true artist: casual, playful encounter with the cold anger that has rooted itself in the deepest corners of my being, and building a road out from there, to meet others in what might be really going on; wracked with trepidation and possible rejection, pain, hunger, annihilation, disappointment and loss…or, renewal and full ownership
a cold anger that has rooted itself in the deepest corners of my being
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/169164-the-return-of-the-prodigal-son-a-story-of-homecoming
moving from box to box for/with the next lover
working with
falling in love with
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/dark-triads-toxic-personalities/675683/
how to rise up from rage
deliver a salvo
grease the pulpit
spin amiably, wildly
pit viper in the sheets
a girl flashing stretch marks, Halloween socks, a saggy ass, blue hair, a ghost beanie, a vape bulging out of her pocket, her iPhone for the war of self-regard in the back right
Does “the top” even register?
“You show me where the top is and I’ll let you know whether I’m over it or not, alright? I design where the top is.”
— Nicholas Cage
i got six hours of sleep and sat on a wet toilet seat
on the word sociopath: I look at a woman and see the path ahead to impregnate her; then I look at another one, and I imagine another path, then I look back at the first one, and I stand her transfixed, studying bug nature: human nature, but seeing myself as a bug, an insect, a chemistry experiments of trying to pattern match what I see to where I come from; yes, Origen is represented by the female, and the distance by man: boring guy in checkered dress shirt with AirPods in at laptop, staring like caveman at screen: my competition; tired man in the arts he looks like me, huffing and puffing, leaving the coffee shop. That’s my man.
enamored
was gonna say, nicotine strudel
nicotine sandal
lava lamp
It’s a safe bet to make today like yesterday -- was yesterday intolerable? Buried in questions already, just pulled up to work; luckily what’s written rarely gets across, is just bluster; speech is the real thing; writing is for record-keeping and messaging; creativity and dreams should be kept separate; imagine people who don’t do Morning Pages! Sick! Walking around with their fire house blasting others with images and sound so they see the story of their salvation in the clouds and on the sidewalk; am I confusing? I’m trying to build a world here, to get free, to learn and practice freedom -- I awake in thrall; please don’t check Messages yet, sink into my real life, a wet hunk of clay to shape through voice, commitment, showing up after the story’s over, when it’s just greed and war that runs roughshod over the human organism, because narcissism, desire, selfishness, longing for protection via familiar ways; so we make music about the impossible // WOMAN REPRESENTS THE ORIGIN, MAN REPRESENTS THE DISTANCE; Goethe said give your children roots and wings; is it nice to go home? Homelessness is a seedbed of sprouts ~ seedbed really is one word? Little-used! // very few people message me // it is very important the stories and rails we reacquaint ourselves with after sleeping, e.g. “The End of New York.” I become a writer obsessed with his career and work; do that and you’re free to have the career you want, listening in the world that will only change slowly, slowed down to the speed of human dignity and flourishing, judging good and bad, yes and no, calling balls and strikes; I was thinking of some opposites this morning but I forgot; plus and minus, positive and negative, doubt and belief ~ third spaces, meaning-making with the body, with the tongue, being human again, waking up from the graveyard of social media where we may fall prey to the worst of us: competitive and insecure, frustrating and overconfident, prizefighters refusing to go down, willing to change teams and labels, e.g. I’ve been on a thread of maybe switching to the new right, finding fans there…I have to use my voice then see what it is, then look at the world and see where I can fit
the brutal emptiness of digital arrival
smash some dessert and do it all again
there is no success, there is sound
It’s hard to tell if he approves or disapproves, which makes the Wall Street types love him all the more.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/03/michael-lewis-sam-bankman-fried-crypto-going-infinite
blinded by instinct
conservatorship
“You can choose to be free, but it’s the last decision you’ll ever make.”
― Franz Kafka
at least she’s not all “they”
free for the pleasure of being rejected, kept in circulation and ambulation
what to add to the top of this? Admit everything I want? Learn again today on earth I can't and won't have it, get it? I can only refine me and give it from within? Yes, the sick truth; if you can get a pause from worshipping the blockchain and resuming marketing activities to appease the seated whites, get yourself some sex, love, drink, dance, cheer, song, crumpled bedsheets - do laundry for sex's sake
my problems are mutual work; how is anyone's love and justice work disconnected from someone else's?
nothing new to say about marriage, mortgage, employment, obedience, acting, finding work and doing the work, showing up for it, resting & protein, foresight, balance — it’s all done and being done; it’s the past and the present, it’s the air and the turning in this very room, in this hour — we are here & dumbfounded at the vastness, how we labor amid broken hearts, how we keep doing the job (America is everyone doing what they think they’re supposed to be doing, or what they have told themselves they have to be doing in order to pay the bills, keep body and soul together, one nation, under rent ~ dancing the survival dance, going to lower registers of existential philosophy when we can get a breath and some snorkel gear for the plummet, descent; now, I remember these words and notice these truths about us, but what can you do but witness, not, shout Amen silently with your taps on the screen
https://gplewis.substack.com/p/selfing-in-progress-means-forgetting
there is no yesterday’s data, only today’s voice