Have A Good Day

I have a job. It isn't a good job, a hard job, a tiring job. It is a job. I work to get paid so I can live and work to get paid. And after every midnight shift, the walk home is a walk of shame.

You may be familiar with the walk of shame. You may have even taken one or two or twelve in recent months. You don't necessarily feel totally clean or proud of what you've done, but you know it was worth it. Or you hope it was. That is how every midnight shift at my job makes me feel. I walk home and wonder if I am really spending my time in the best way. Shifting my sleeping patterns to the undead hours, my eating habits. The sun hits my face as it rises over the diminutive buildings on the main street, a familiar roadway, and I wonder. What else could I be doing? Is there something I should be doing?

But it doesn't matter. I work to get paid so I can live and work to get paid some more. I feel a little dirty, a little self-disrespect. A level between zero and point-zero one accomplishment. Lost time. But it doesn't matter.

My workspace is tiny.
Tiny as a microorganism.
Minuscule is the impact
of the register's balance.
And yet I sit
with music on,
watching the cars drive by.

Misfortune; Treason

I am a part of history. I am the filler, the space between the big names. The air between the grains of sand or the time it takes for glue to harden. I carry the impact of a millipede and the burden of a breeze, with a voice no louder than the noise in black space. I am a day with contenting weather, a bead of sweat on a gigantic organism. The sun does not rise or shine or fall for me, the seas do not roll their waves and run their currents for me, and the books do not bend their spines into creases and breaks for me.

I am the hunter with no blade or bow, a man without fists, bearing no power to strike. The blade with no edge. The edge with no vertex. I am motion without energy, kinetics without force, friction without touching.

A wishing well has no magic; it is superstition. Success is subjective and dependent upon the context. Prosperity is in the heart. A family, for one, is a measure of worth; for another, a curse.

I am a part of history. The part that gets left out of the history books.

You are, too.

"I Told You So"

The worst part about fucking up is realizing that someone at some time told you exactly how it would end. They gave you a hypothetical situation and you found out it was a prophecy which came true.

So, now you've fucked up and what do you do? Cut your losses? Stick it through? It's a choose-your-own-adventure where every decision leaves you with your mouth full of defeat and your pockets wide empty. And unlike a c.y.o.a., your failure affects the people around you too. There isn't a thing you can do about it. You fucked up, and now they have to deal with it as well.

What do you do? Stick around so they can deal with it better, and slowly wean your way out of the mistake? Or do you abandon the ship with the women and children and leave the first mate to drown or save himself? These are the questions...

The Internet Made Me A Cunt

I know what you're going to say. Well, one possible thing you will say. "Will, you can't say cunt! That's profane!" And you are right. But you are also a cunt. It isn't your fault, and I don't mean it in a terribly offensive way. It's just a fact of life. The internet has made you a cunt too.

Now, it is true I am prone to overgeneralizing and simplifying, but everyone on some level has been formed into a lesser human being by this beautiful heroin a favourite author of mine dubbed cyberspace. First of all, it has made everyone a whole bunch less literate. My grammar feels sticky in that last sentence, but whatever. The individual may strive to keep his or her words long, but these lengthy (often three or four characters longer than the abbreviations) are always swamped by the cunts typn n shrtfm.

Additionally, the internet has made you less social. And again, I hear you voicing your protests: "I am on Facebook fifteen hours a day! How is that not social!?" to which I reply: you are a cunt. If I never had to read that eight character proper noun of a waste of time again, I would be most certainly pleased. With said web site, you can take a backseat to a friendship. Instead of actually hanging out with your pals, you can virtualize your fantastic good great times by reading a pointless survey they've filled out. Instead of having great fantastic good times with your chums, you can pretend to talk about meaningful things and type to them 'how r thngs? uni iz gr8'

I despise this. But, I must be honest. I break the rules myself. Quite frequently, even. I occasionally use too many commas, and start words with conjunctions. Sometimes, I even write incomplete sentences. Even I fall to power of the abbreviation from time. And for this I am a cunt. I am breaking the intangible laws of English because of the internet, just like you, your best friend, and all the people you pretend you care about on your friends list.

This could be a full essay but really, your patience wore thin after the first two paragraphs.

Ghosts; Admittance

There are hours in my life where I feel like someone slipped me a hefty novocaine trip. I don't know why. I've had a good day, a great day, but I want to tear the skin off a squirrel and hit someone in the ankle with a shopping cart. Out of boredom. Indifference. Apathy. The sun rises while my eyes are awake and I don't care. Bombs could fall and planes could crash and babies could die, killing their mothers during childbirth in a natal pandemic, but I wouldn't care. Wouldn't blink.

Is apathy really that terrible? Is indifference that mortal a flaw? If I don't care about a thing, nothing bad will ever happen to me, right? If I keep my mouth shut and my eyes on my own, laughing or shrugging everything off, good and bad, it's not that bad?

It's too late, my writing is shit. Don't really care. Who reads this, they'd understand. All three of them. Mind blank.

Ghosts don't stay where you leave them. They haunt you. Town to town, geographic positioning irrelevant. Your ghosts stick to you like semen on the bottoms of your feet in the shower. They don't stop haunting you until you handle them in whatever ghost-busting way works for you.

I'm a user. I have been since I found out it's easy. Every moment in my life is a transaction with at least one unknowing participant. I can't apologize for this. It's in my nature. Like a sociopath with killing or a butcher butching. I'm a manipulator. I say the things people like to hear, want to hear. I adapt myself to be who they want me to be. Slightly. And never permanently. I think I've lost myself and these are no woods. My SELF, not just myself.

Who the fuck am I.

Snips [2]

I've upgraded 'Snips' to all-out writing orgasmorgasbord. They will now include things like haikus or prose or other weird little things I have around. Perhaps photos if I take some of those.

Here is today:


all the keys he holds
unlock misery and friends;
suborned, he clicks still.

. . .

They do the big city zombie street shuffle. A little to the left, a little to the right, bobbing side to side, inch and then another. A sigh, a frustrated breath, a baby's carriage takes up space. Increased steps, passing on the shoulder and the curb. Dodge the trees, absurd.

. . .

the notebook's pages have all disappeared
he opened the cover, it was as he had thought
they took their leave, did not give notice
now he's a pen and a tongue and no place
to speak his mind.

the boat has dropped its oars to the lake
he had somewhere to row, no way to go
get out and swim? with the fish and the frogs
backstroke to the home of the beavers
they don't give dams.

a pair of broken lungs can't breathe
and a knife without a handle cuts on both ends.

Snips [1]

He smelled the mint from the woman's gum and his ears drank in the melodies from his iPod, and he thought: of a girl he missed; a girl he never knew; a girl he dreamt about

. . .

They talked about things intangible; French grammar and the similarities between une planche roulette and a sailor's she-ship.

. . .

He watched the pair sleep from across the room and had to leave. The cold concrete greeted his bare feet with welcoming shivers and he licked the lips she kissed when he bent over to brush her cheek with them.

. . .

There's a nazi on the train and I want to tie him down on the tracks and watch as his fat wrist and sagging fading tattoo turn to red pulp and charred flesh.