LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: Romance, Rebellion and Running Amok

forensic semantics - numbers - authenticity - tevo - thumbprints - and pragmatic resonance.

god damnit. i'm tired. julian, i don't have the energy to say anything. so, there's that.

i guess if i were to say anything it would be that i've been smoking in bed too much. i've been working from bed. i get up. piss. naked. maybe, brush my teeth - depending on how hot it is - maybe, eat a half a turkey sandwich with chipotle hummus from costco - perhaps try and tweet something significant - search my soul for that impulse and wonder why i care. losing it. gone. kaput.

i don't go crazy over ladies anymore but i do want to be good to someone and have that someone be good to me too.

i have this fantasy - lately - of finding someone to come over and sit on my chest and rub her hot spot close to my face.

i've been looking at people and asking myself, what the fuck does this one eat for breakfast and why.

i get angry quick and feel like a prick shortly thereafter. then laugh about it from the other side.

my parents gave me a better television. it has a dvd player (built in). in it, a pilates dvd. my mothercalled twice for it and suggested i get a punching bag or do some home yoga.

i downloaded my bank statements 30 days - and started to highlight my consumptive purchases with a pink highlighter but stopped to go and buy beer. i'll post statistics tomorrow. none of this money is really mine.

i feel watched.

i don't want to smear or ruin reputation but i've got to say it. i've got to talk about everything. the way i talk about it. and i'm sad, man. fucking something is fighting very hard to do some fucking thing - like float.

this is not the reward. none of this is the reward. there is no reward for your achievements. not even floating. i'm not saying this with a black cape or scowl. i'm just saying it. there's a picture somewhere on some other post here that documents this arrival. i thought certain things (like altering anatomy) or writing very openly about everything would pay off like some sort of mechanism. your know, the arrival. the divining rod. authenticity of - head - heart - action. not so much.

this is the curse of mechanism. detoured quality.

what follows is anger, disillusionment, shit fits, then gladness.

i don't know if i care about "blogging" or breaking the paradigm of press/poetry/the trenches/publication. i want to say this - that since learning the things i've been teaching myself - the kind of work that's coming together (not writing) has me feeling like a felon. i've dropped my fingerprint everywhere (the writing) and its out there. with interest. wouldn't be so bold to say that the world is searching. but when looking for a job - there are certain fields and quality of jobs that will do the semantic forensics to see what this guy, that gal, any of us so bold to slap some sort of opinion or piece of self on the internet.

i mean - its all up here. ever since myspace (or when i joined it). i'm not dropping key words into here for the search. i'm being totally honest. as i learn more and want more and love more - the definition has broadened - these days i think only of the pink highlighter and family. its all up here. the better part of at least five years and this life in the trenches i'm so awesome fucking blog - whatever. it's all up here - the quirks, twitches, tourrets, spelling errors, quests and inquisitions.

then the mechanism.

the break, the sight, the bite, and blessing.

i'm jumping all over the place. i apologize for nothing. as far as jumping around goes.

i'm interested in getting interested in transcendental meditation. i am interested in investigating the cost of a punching bag.

i am very excited about the fingerprint. these mitts of mine like otis redding's arms are hungry.

in him like me still lives mr. knowing and mrs. longing.

they make quite a slice of pie like mr. riley.

i ramble. i apologize for nothing. i hate how i watch and carry around your faces. like the other day when i was working as a p.a. for a commercial and became very agitated and crazy because i couldn't seem to get people to stop walking on the grass (it was a growth formula home improvement commercial) and i felt small in my sight for absurdity.

logic yes. logic not.

please - stay off the grass. no searching.

that being said - i feel like the true movement is for those felons of emotion and verse - pretty much anything - even if you jack off to dragon fruit and spend a lot of time snapping pics on your phone of choice which, unless you say "no" (like it matters - a no - the they have laid it out there -

they: get excited. we're geo-tagging. for those that don't know - that's basically dropping your lifestyle - both in what you snap as well as where you snap it - with both coordinates and images.

anybody with half a god damn brain can locate you.

like a dog sniffing shit to see what's for dinner and where you've been. like a waft of something else. i don't want to talk about flowers or even give this phrase but all over the place i smell jasmine.

also, i'm sorry - i heard about six pops rock somewhere within an ear shot - i smell jasmine. julian. you are dead.

i'd rather keep the place where i drink coffee the place i go to escape the hazards of working at home - instead of fall in love with love - for love - instead of giving it a go - for them behind counters - i'd rather drink coffee.

all in all though - they used to get pretty pissed at the marquis for sticking his cock in the proverbial humping pumpkin. now, i think its the time of the felons. and its time to live bravely. i think i need to demonstrate some faith in what i believe. adjust. sit in front of the fire with some hot something and drawing smiley faces on trench warfare's death strike forced perspective - aka; 3 dimensional images - aka; making assholes out of brave folks who fight like assholes in defiance to the machine gun.

no one is broken. there is nothing to fear. everybody already knows it. they keep your statements. they track your tastes. i eat a lot of soup. some of the food from costco is quite delicious. in fact i'm hungry now. and i've got some highlighting.

the ideas are coming. the world is getting bigger. there is no reward. it has happened before. its happening now. and its going to keep happening (i'm referring to writing, pumpkins, fingerprints, semantic forensics etc etc) so embrace the degenerate - us artifacts - us litmus - us who live as best we can.

punk thunk romantics - fear nothing. want everything. nothings coming. sitting here. and me, sleeping with ashes in me bed.

live openly.

and feel like you know something more when you notice things like those glass roses one may notice while spending other peoples' money and take care of each of something. we'll sort it out.

in summation, i'll take a look at this later when my eyes aren't so heavy and edit it.

watch out, friend. a comet.

SYLVESTER STALLONE SANDWICH by Bryan Price

SYLVESTER STALLONE SANDWICH
by
Bryan Price

*** you bet ***

9:25 a.m. The Bedroom. The Present:

Good Morning.

Someone is blasting what sounds like Public Enemy out there on the street. It started at nine a.m. They’ve been repeating it for close to half an hour now – perhaps they are narcoleptic. I think they just woke up because it stopped.

The bass rattled my windowsill. It made my penis shrivel. That’s right. I was downright afraid and it made me:

a) Sleepy.
b) Lazy.
c) Lazier.

(choose your letter wisely)

Keep your eye on the ball.

(That last line was in reference to the cup game you see street hustlers play < the kind of street hustler that doesn’t suck cock – in the tactile sense > on folks who want to make a handful of cash (perhaps in front of a young boy with a balloon in need of salve who dreams of – some way some day somehow - owning a monkey.) Some j-hole bites and throws down a ten dollar bill because they believe that the street hustler and his little ball getting shuffled beneath one of the three cups can’t lose em’.

Yes. They believe they can keep track of which cup it is under and they can, for a while because ten bucks is a good take but a few tens more is much better for the one who is doing the fleecing.

(choose wisely)

A
B
C
or the universal D.

*

The windows were rattling and I was considering calling the po-po because in my head, the Public Enemy Sound Scam was a death trap. A rouse to both lure and realize the descriptors bidding.

In my Blight Eye I saw an - almost cherry Mercury – chopped and low - like Sylvester Stallone’s ride in that 1980s movie “Cobra”. Parked with engine running. Inside “they” waited for someone to come outside and say – “seriously?”

My penis shriveled because “they” in the Mercury were shuffling cups and had automatic weapons and I felt like doing something about it to save some lives but I was a, b, c, or the universal d.

I say this because people are getting murk’d here. (Murder/Killed).

Apparently, the most recent goner was an original native who was liked very well by the intermediate inhabitants (they came at least ten years ago with light pockets and bright minds and know a thing or two about the evolution of the price of milk). Then, there is we who came next. Were drink the milk. We are the young ones. And we are young both in space and time, and ignorance).

It’s a sliding scale as far as milk goes. For instance:

The other day – St. Patricks’s day – I told a young lesbian from West Virginia who just moved here and struck up a conversation with me regarding beer prices, nightlife and West Virginia, that everything is going to be okay and not to worry.

The conversation precipitated after I dropped a pocket of dollar bills after my entrance. The stopwatch clocked in at 4.9 seconds.

You dropped something. Don’t worry. I won’t take it. I’m not from around here. i'm from West Virginia. I’m a lesbian.

She kept saying – I’m from West Virginia – I’m from West Virginia – I’m broke and a lesbian and this god damn world is weird and beer is expensive – not like in West Virginia and I don’t know what kind of beer is the cheapest – because everything is so expensive here – hey, are you at the show across the street too – no. who’s playing – i don’t know - holy shit – I don’t care. I’ll listen to anything. Fucking rednecks back home – fuck em’ I’m from West Virginia . . . then –

I told the girl that everything was going to be okay and to look at the price of beer like an asshole tax, and she’d adjust, she’d know the score, she’d figure it out, she’d get a job, she’d hit her pace and not to worry. She’s won already.

She asked if she could hug me. I hugged her and felt like a liar. But I’m not. I made a decision. And I meant it.)

I could see the contact made her feel better. But I may have fucked her over because:

“Believers are easy to deceive because they want to believe” - The origin of this quote is unknown.

As a milk drinker (I’m not young, per say but as far as time spent here spatially I am most definitely) and I like to think I’ve got the lazer beam on things.

I do know that just around the corner from me there is a home full of natives (pre-Louis) and the Sonic Boom Death Trap was a urine and fire hydrant moment for me, you, West Virginia, brick, mortar, pastries, little stories, mother, father, brother, definition, dwarf stars, supernovas, coordinates, hugs, fried chicken, wrapping paper, beach chairs, beads of sweat, and black matter.

Kind of like sticking a wet finger into someone’s sandwich before they can take a bite out it.

*

I felt like calling the cops to warn them – all of them - that something was about to go down. But AT&T sucks balls as far as cell reception goes – the satellites show classic signs of suffering from emotional abuse – and for some reason the boss doesn’t want us to break bread with them.

If I were to warn them about what was about to happen out there that meant I would have to get up and pick up my home phone and dial the po-po on my newly set up Vonage service (a great deal right now) and I wasn’t so much into that because, just in case I wasn’t right about the battle tactics and images in my head – I didn’t want to be the kind of dick who called in a noise complaint.

It’s unsanitary.

*

I wondered about the men in the Mercury. I thought – what dicks. Someone is going to call the cops and when the cops come they’ll walk up to the car and ask the kids in the Mercury with automatic weapons to turn down their music and they’ll say – ok and drive away.

Murk or not – this is America and in the end its nothing but music.

Prove it.

The Murk Merc Argument in a court of law would hold as much weight as this little diddy I’m tapping right here and this observational ten-ner is nothing more than the reality that I’m wagering.

I gotta tell you, sometimes I feel like my writing verges on the kind of writing that accompanies hangover classics like “World’s Most Shocking Car Crashes” or “When Beach Balls Attack.”

*

Quiet now. I wonder if it was Public Enemy. I wonder why it was on repeat. And I wonder if the lyrics had significance.

VICTORY LAP:

i feel that the aged hipsters still standing
with kids in pajamas, sitting at a Mexican
restaurant at 4pm, drinking margaritas
and shoosh-ing their youngest are less stupid
than the dead ones who shook their fist
and went, “fuck it.”

RANDOM NOTES FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BOOK:

1.
a nice lady said that my poem, dear julian was like taking a bite out of an
un-ripe persimmon. i think this is one of the best reactions ever because i
bit into an un-ripe persimmon once and haven’t been back there since.

i took no offense to this. it was accurate. i am not making fun or light
of you julian. i hope you know this.

2.
a guy named frank told me i looked like a good friend who just died.
we snapped a picture. i didn’t ask “how” or “why” but i held up my
chin for a good one. i saw him and his friends look at it then back
up at me throughout the evening.

later, i lost track of them when i told the entire room that i was in love with
my friend, the m.c. (a while back i wrote a poem and it was recorded and a
year later there was music to it and on this particular evening we were to
perform it) at a hip hop show.

i am not a fan of timed delivery and i did all i could to not be drunk by the
time of delivery and when the time came i was drunk, nervous, irritated
and jittery and as we were finishing members of the wu-tang clan
(raekwon with fans) had started filing in and i was feeling pretty dark
and vulnerable today until i remembered my natural fidelity to my nowhere
logic.

victory.

3.
i think this is the third time somebody told me i looked like a recently
dead friend. either the circles are getting smaller or i’m drinking too
much.

4.
i have gone on the offensive and i feel at war with all that loves me like
the self that sat upstairs at the venue where i told the m.c. that i was in
love with him and frank told me i looked like his dead friend and felt
like shit as i drank my first beer at 4:30 collecting my thoughts – the
most prominent of which was: “oh no”.

5.
oh no plus more. bad timing to go off my medication.

6.
it is easy for the laughter to find its mark, like a cow hopped up on
dilaudid rocking ever so gently over my hobby as the bus its on rolls
over me on the way to some gaudy hot spot while on vacation in
jamaica.

yes. mon.

7.
today, i experience withdrawal and withdraw.

8.
this morning for thirty minutes i thought i was going to read slaughterhouse five
from A to Z but was humbled by the birds chirping. i am plotting a novel. fuck
you vonnegut. nobody likes my style.

9.
i am really disconcerted with my distaste for everything.

10.
last night (with sharpie) i discovered the third feature to the stupidity paradigm:
feature 1: free range stupidity.
feature 2: those who get drunk by stamping it.
feature 3: those who remain aghast. (new feature)

(thank you)
(by now its almost irrelevant)

11)
in lieu of pharmacology the love affair continues with my friends. in lieu of pharmacology the love affair continues with the verse. in lieu of pharmacology i catch up with my self – part memory – part succubus – plus a whole heaping handful of whatever
the fuck else.

the love affair continues.

10)

admission: i jettisoned from the “slaughterhouse plan” because
i saw some snarky broad with hot bangs warming a brand while
sipping on mimosas – surrounded by paper. (thus the birds chirping)

i want to get into a sleeping bag with her and drink tea and have at
it with short punches and long kisses.

11)

dear julian. they were having another carwash today for the other guy
who done perished just after you (why would you care?) and i gave
them a crisp fiver for his going away party after i bought lunch.
(double chili cheeseburger – probably dinner too).

dear julian, i’m at the coffee shop across from where the new guy got it. the
owners mother is here from somewhere and she walked inside with an armful
of bananas.

i refrained from asking if she was afraid. i refrained from asking anybody here
about anything. its better this way.

dear julian and new guy – i make light of none of this.

dear julian, now i’m drinking Egyptian tea, feeling a little less sick as i take note
of a little girl eating an “everything bagel” with a stuffed animal on
the bench next to her.

a rabbit.

Ω
dear julian: “you can cut the flowers but you can’t stop the spring.”
dear rabbit: you bet.
dear rabbit hole: not yet.
dear alice: never again without my permission.

dear god.

never again without my permission.

the end.