Rhyming verse might have potential.
THE LONGEST WINTER
Before we see the buds of Spring
We must face the longest Winter,
friend, you and me.
As we age so too do we become sage,
and everything is only a turn of the page.
Each new day a white canvas,
a sail unfurled as we embark on our journey,
a foreign land to canvass.
Life is the work of seeking out what gives us joy
with the wonder always of a little boy.
But before lines can gird the eye,
a rocky path ahead I do descry.
The Winter of our lives
where each man must go alone,
without the wisdom of God, love or wives.
With only his conscience as a guide.
Lest he walk the road that is wide.
Then again, it might not.
THE END OF THE WORLD
Some believe the world will end in a huge
Alien War
I choose to believe it will end in Love
Those aliens may be pretty smart
but can an alien wear a hat or a glove?
Can an alien sing a song to make
ears melt and hearts swoon?
Can an alien effuse its soul in art eclectic
or eat ice cream with a spoon?
True, aliens may come one day to end planet
Earth
but when they get here they will find only dearth
For we will have killed ourselves with Love
Loving with words, fists and things
hard/soft
Love upside down, and sideways backward
Love so tart like an apple
The paradox is absurd
Love, Love, Love! = BOOM! We’re all dead!
Love, Love, Love! = The Beginning and the End.
Yeah, I think not.
Songs could be cool…if you like Pantera type of music
X
He ripped you from yourself
showed you the world
taught you how to play
then left you nailed. to. your. cross+
HATE!…it’s what you feel when you’re alone
NO DEBATE!…can appease the One lying
on His throne
Hard is life
Welcome to the world
He who is Last will always be. he. that.
SERVES!
He left his mark
He left his mark on you
He left his mark
now He’ll see you thru
He left his mark
His mark on you
He left his mark….
[repeat 'till fade out]
Yeah, music is just…I don’t know? Anyway, back to rhyming verse. If it’s done right it can have the desired effect, but it still ends up sounding ancient and formulaic.
MANIFEST DESTINY
Like ancient tomes,
dusty and old
Our destinies are written
from birth ’till we’re old.
Thoughts sprout wings
and from our mouths take flight.
We may claim ownership of them,
but we are only thieves in the night.
Our actions are stolen from the garden
of the Creator,
He is the source of everything,
our life’s narrator.
To try and outwit destiny is a life futile rather than bold.
We think we have freewill until destiny manifests
itself when we are hoary and old.
And when our lives are being told
we’d like to raise our hands and say,
“I didn’t plan it that way.”
If it’s done wrong you get something that sounds like Halmark or even worse.
STONE FREE
I set a stone free,
free from my hand.
It flew over a wall
and landed in a foreign land.
The stone flew high,
high into the sky.
When it came down
it landed like a pie in someone’s eye.
I freed a stone from my palm,
it ripped thru the night,
it hit a star away real far
and stole the heaven’s light.
A million spangles in the sky,
one by one to crash them all.
To shower down on sea and land,
by freeing a stone from my hand.
Posted in CNY Literary Scene, art, lit blog, love | Leave a Comment »
“Rider” is back
SECONDS LATER the phone rang. Patrick fumbled for the receiver and quickly put it to his ear. This time, however, it was a legitimate customer ordering three cheese calzones and a two liter of diet soda for pickup. Damn, Patrick thought. He would have loved for it to have been the crank caller again just so he could listen to the creep self-destruct.
Patrick got to work preparing the order while Freddy resumed with his cleaning. The incident with the prankster was quickly forgotten as they went about their respective tasks, but Patrick was left with a discomforting feeling which he just couldn’t shake. An eerie sensation hung over him for the remainder of the day, made all the more nagging by his inability to identify its source. It affected his concentration as he made the food. He would put pepperoni on the calzones or use the wrong kind of cheese. He moved too fast and bumped into things. At one point he burned himself.
The rain was falling harder outside and the customer called back to say they wanted their meal delivered instead. With only a half hour left on his shift, Patrick was relieved to get out of the claustrophobic confines of Del Franco’s Pizzeria. A mob of customers was now inexplicably streaming in from the wet despite the worsening weather. Why don’t these people just stay home where it’s dry and eat Cheerios for dinner, Patrick thought.
The phalanxes of drenched hungry patrons thronged around the counter where Freddy was the first and only line of defense. “Sorry, buddy,” Patrick said to him as he put on his jacket and tucked the heatproof box containing the calzones under his arm.
“No man, this is the home stretch,” Freddy replied making a shooing motion at Patrick with his hands. “I can handle all of these people, no problem.” He looked like an excited and happy magician about to perform his final trick of the day.
Patrick snorted as he walked out the door. I got the fun job and Freddy’s the happy one, he thought. Man, I wish I had his pride.
***
Two miles into his trip Patrick waited at a red light. The rain was coming down in torrents now, each drop of water from the sky like a dive-bombing insect on a suicide mission. Patrick watched the pregnant raindrops explode across his windshield. They were like grapes, smashing with a thud to reveal almost a fleshy inside. This is horror-movie acid rain, he thought. All the chemical pollution hovering in the Ohio sky has created a new type of aqua life form – killer rain.
Besides the rain, Patrick thought it was odd that he was stopped at a red light since his was the only car in sight. He had always known that the city planning in New Hatfield made little if no sense, but this was ridiculous. He studied the raindrops some more and softly tapped a tune on his horn.
Suddenly, just as quickly as the light changed to green, the rain began to let up. Patrick hit the gas and raced through the intersection. “That’s what I’m talking about!” he yelled.
He rolled down his window and breathed into the air. The mist of Patrick’s breath trailed behind him like an escaped spirit. He pressed down on the gas a little more weaving dangerously through the windy residential streets. Coming to a stop at a stop sign, Patrick revved the engine a few times and peered around for any onlookers. With his foot firmly on the brake pedal, he pressed hard on the gas for a few seconds. A miserably drenched black and white dog the only witness, Patrick released his foot off the brake and made the car peel out as it turned a corner. The soggy canine hardly seemed impressed or startled.
He was driving faster towards the address now. Once Patrick got this delivery over and done with, he would still have twenty minutes before the end of his shift. But since this was Patrick’s car and Del Franco’s didn’t spy on him, he could go pick up Katie who was probably waking up right about now. Patrick and Katie went back as far as grade school but they had only recently started dating. She worked the graveyard shift at the TV station. If you’ve ever watched the tube all night and wondered who is responsible for playing those commercials at 3 am – well, that would be Katie. She sits before a bank of control panels and TV screens and doesn’t have to do very much. She just pops the occasional disc into one of the DVD players, plays with the volume knobs every now and then and just makes sure that nothing explodes. It’s a fun job, she claims, and it pays well too.
Yes, Patrick thought, after this delivery I will go get Katie and then head back over to Franco’s. I should make it there just in time to clock out.
He was heading down a two-lane road now that headed away from New Hatfield. The rain had finally stopped and the cloud cover was beginning to part in some places. Patrick toyed with the radio and tried to watch the numbers on the mail boxes. He wondered if the creep who crank called him earlier lived out this way. A few trailers nestled snugly into hills next to billboards made Patrick think that he probably did.
Patrick spotted the house. It was the last domicile before civilization officially ended and what is considered “the country” to New Hatfieldians began. The couple was young and friendly and they tipped him well. They appeared to be childless but a sociable dog with a glossy coat oversaw the whole exchange of pizza, money and words of kindness. As is typical with animals that receive a generous share of unconditional love, the canine’s presence beside its owners was not unlike that of a big spoiled four-year old. Like an officiator, it appeared to mentally count the change which Patrick handed back to the wife. “If you shorted us or spit in the pies, I will find you and make your life a living hell,” Patrick imagined the dog saying if it could talk. Heading back to the car, he wondered if the beast – which no doubt held these young lovers in its grasp – would eat the third calzone.
Driving back up the road, it felt later than it did a few minutes ago. Patrick gazed out at the green hills that seemed to go on forever. A beam of sun shot through a large mountainous island of clouds like a ray from heaven. All the moisture was rapidly dissipating as more and more sun shone through the fading cloud cover. Wind blowing from the northwest was pushing the old sky away and replacing it with a new one. To Patrick, it looked as if God was taking a giant eraser and erasing all the clouds so He could gaze at this rural Ohio valley and the one lonely stretch of road which bisected it.
A lot of divine mighty work for nothing, Patrick thought.
As he envisioned God with His big eraser, Patrick realized that this wasn’t the first time he had thought of erasers today. The crank caller had said something about erasers when he had called him a Racer Head.
Wait…he didn’t call me a Racer Head, Patrick thought. He called me an Eraser Head.
Eraser Head!
Patrick slammed on the brakes. That was it! I knew there was something hauntingly familiar about that phone call, he thought. Patrick got out of the car and walked around. He looked off at the hills coming into sharper focus in the late afternoon sun, and then pointed his gaze up at the empty road going back into town. An echo of thunder from miles away rebounded off the hills. All of this wide open space suddenly began to feel very small and artificial. Patrick felt like he was in a tiny room and all the scenery before him was just a big picture painted on the walls and ceiling. Claustrophobia began to set in and his chest and lungs began to thump.
Eraser Head!
The night of his accident came rushing back to him. Eraser Head was his old nickname. The evil moniker was directly tied to that dreaded evening, a point in time separating the life that could have been with Patrick’s current life.
Eraser Head!
It was a name he thought he had buried so many years ago. A cruel title even before his accident no doubt, but post-accident it carried implications of all of his grief, longings and failures.
Eraser Head!
After being injured, our hero sublimated all of his suicidal tendencies onto that one name and decided to kill the nickname instead of himself. So many nights spent drinking and drug taking were all part of a mission to forget something which ultimately stood in Patrick’s mind for personal underachievement. Many would say Patrick’s injury made him a victim, not a failure. But Patrick disagreed. Children who got cancer were victims. People killed by stray bullets from drive-by shootings were victims. But Patrick…he was not a victim. He got hurt because he was hotheaded. There was no other way of looking at it.
He knew he always had been and always would be a loser.
***
Patrick got back in the car. All he could think about was death, his death. He wanted nothing more than for his life to end right then and there. Fumbling with the keys he could hear his ancestors’ voices swirling inside of his head like a cacophony. It sounded like pure chaos, a din of confusion and worry.
Patrick yearned for some alcohol or drugs. He wanted something – anything – to stuff what was bubbling up back down. He had to force back this thing that had come to the surface. It had taken him years to bury it the first time. That was over a decade ago.
Steering the car erratically up the road, Patrick wiped the sweat from his brow.
“I don’t have years anymore,” he said out loud.
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I did not pay much attention to David Carradine until the recent news of his death sparked public grief and speculation. I can’t say that I’ve seen either of the Kill Bill movies, and his significance in the film Crank must have gone over my head. Despite having an indifferent opinion of this actor, however, there is one thing I am certain of: he had the chiseled face of a man who could stare pain in the face and laugh.
I know the face well because my father has a similar countenance. Men who came from the era of Hemingway and Dirty Harry, who remember the Duke and the Gipper, they all wear hardened masks of virility. These impenetrable masks only emit expressions of strength and pride while concealing any humbler and softer emotions. Kidney stones, cancer, prolapsed organs, twisted testicles – these men fear these things not. These masked men are the linebackers who are not afraid to get hurt and the gimlet-eyed fathers who you don’t want to lock heads with unless you crave being disowned.
If David Carradine was one of these hardened men, why was he found hanging in a hotel closet in Bangkok with his neck, hands and genitals bound wearing only fishnet stockings and a wig? If Carradine was really into kinky auto-erotic asphyxiation as some are starting to suggest, wouldn’t this make him a nancy among the fighters and desperados of his generation? James Dean, John Wayne, Papa Hemingway…the jokes will flow for eternity in heaven. I can just see what Carradine must be facing up there right now:
Wayne: Hey, Nancy. Like to have a drink or are you “tied up” with something else at the moment?
Carradine: God, I’ve only been dead a few days and you guys already heard about that?
Wayne: Well, yeah. It was only, like, a couple of dimensions over. News like that travels pretty fast, y’ know.
Why a man would have to strip naked and flog/gag himself in the privacy of a closet is beyond me. I mean, wouldn’t the human embarrassment instinct kick in at some point and make you say to yourself, “Nah, this is just too kinky. I’m too embarrassed to admit to myself that I enjoy this kind of thing.”??? There are some things which we are afraid to think of because they are just too dark and embarrassing…so we block them out. We go about our days as normal people do, but when we find ourselves alone in our closets at night these things come creeping out again. After a night spent with demons we convince ourselves the next morning that it was all a dream (or a nightmare).
But the evidence Carradine left in his wake couldn’t have been more permanent and visceral. Things which the actor probably couldn’t admit to himself the whole world knows of now. It will forever be tied to his legacy, a mystery for his biographers and fans to unravel. The skeleton in the closet, the tortured and perverted soul is Carradine. In the ranks of men who are supposed to be pure, sinless and strong as mountains – men who smile as they piss nails and eat glass – he slipped up.
His final act gave us a peak into his private world, showed us another side of the Carradine who we may have never known or suspected. It is at once both embarrassing for him and for us. The graphic nakedness, the self-abuse and torture, the self-humiliation and perversion. It makes no sense. But at the same time it makes perfect sense, because exposing raw emotion is what actors do. They bleed their hearts out onto the stage. Their blood flows through the tv screen pixels to touch us, confuse us, anger us and cleanse us. It is not pornography, but it is like pornography in a way in that it is all splayed open before us, the vulnerability and fear and raw emotion exposed.
By opening themselves, actors open us.
But more than just being exposed, the late actor will also be forever bound by this posthumous embarrassment. The final kinky discovery will get entangled with all the other facts about his life. The legacy of Carradine will never be able to extricate itself from this mess.
Some things which are not part of reality should just stay in the closet, when they come out into the open they only confuse real life.
But, alas, nobody will ever be able to remember David Carradine without recalling the way he died. His name or one of the films he starred in will always invoke a smirk, or a poorly concealed half-smile. Looking on the bright side, however, in 100 years nobody will even care because we’ll all be dead, right?
David Carradine dead photos.
a better photo
Posted in The Future, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Jay Johnston, Angry Man (currently on hiatus until psychiatric/emotional injury heals)
Justin Scalzo a.k.a. “Rider”, Quill Master (Floridian and real-life 40 year old virgin)
Mr X, Proud Utican (the brains behind The Utican and a rudely conservative Italian)
Posted in CNY Literary Scene, Utica, Utica fame | 2 Comments »
Utica’s fortunate geographical location (note sarcasm) places it smack in the heart of where Appalachia and the Rust Belt converge in New York state. The overlapping qualities of blight, poverty and ignorance from these two very different – yet very similar - American hellholes are apparent everywhere. The plywood window dressings are a staple of both economically depressed regions, but Utica is truly unique in that it is a melting pot of Rust Belt Italians, blacks and Eastern Europeans as well as rednecks and white trash people who are so typical in the hills of Appalachia. Snaggletoothed old babushkas wearing kerchiefs exist alongside fat white boys in plaid suffering from Mountain Dew and/or meth mouth.
Bad dentition is a staple of both the Rust Belt and Appalachia, and to people who grew up with excellent orthodontia a hideous smile is a hideous smile (whether it’s caused from a poverty diet, Mountain Dew or illegal lethal stimulants). But living in the Mohawk Valley for as long as I have has taught me to recognize the nuance in things like bad dentition. I can now tell whether one’s hideous smile is entirely the result of never having sat in a dentist’s chair, or if other factors are at play as well.
This may be useless trivia, I know, but someday it may come in handy (like at a cocktail party or when I’m working on the next Great American Novel).
But let’s face it, things are looking pretty bleak and barren in Oneida County at the moment. The current economic recession is compounding Utica’s never-ameliorating Great Depression Era economy. Our Depression Era landscape has always been an ironic source of pride among us fools who take pleasure in all things sucky. Since we suck at everything, nobody can out-suck us. This has always been our one true claim to fame, but I’m sure Detroit, Buffalo and Celveland (not to meniton Flint, St. Louis and all other cities that dot that northeastern and Midwestern stretch of land infamously known for crippling 3rd world depression, poverty and crime) could all say the same thing. But we will never know - and they will never know we’re just like them - because, holy fuck!, nobody who lives in Utica or any of the other aforementioned places ever goes anywhere. They just drive around in circles all their lives past the same landmarks and eyesores completely clueless of what goes on in other parts of America and the world. (You can always tell who owns a tv because they appear to be the semi-cultured ones).
Anyway, with things looking so fucking miserable for us now more than ever, I have taken the thought to come up with a list of quick and easy ways to kill yourself – because let’s face it, you’re never going to leave the Mohawk Valley except in a pinewood box, so you may as well get used to dying. Actually, if you’re lucky you’ll get a proper burrial. If not, they’ll just gun you down and let you rot in the streeet until the roaming packs of dogs eat you. See…killing yourself is better because it puts you in control of your final fate. Better for you to do it than for someone else to off you.
And don’t fool yourself…things are pretty rotten right now, but they are only going to get worse. So now is the time to make like lemmings and head for that big party in the sky.
#1 BULLET TO THE HEAD
It’s fast, painless and easy. Whether through the nose or through the mouth, it’s sure to get the job done in a heartbeat. Kind of makes you feel better already, doesn’t it? If I were going to off myself, this is the way I would do it. You can do it at home in your room or you could park your car under a bridge and attach a note to your chest…then - badda-bing! It’s all over. Or better yet, you could put a shotgun to your face and make your brains fly out like spaghetti in public. A good place to this would be at the podium at a rotary meeting. HA! I bet that would make the night worth it for everybody!
Potential problems: owning a gun on paper is very difficult, especially if you have a criminal record or a history of mental illness. So you would have to purchase an illegal gun which is easier than easy to do in Utica. Some stranger on James Street would be more than happy to assist you if you have 50 bucks.
There is also the problem of not hitting the brain in the right spot. If this happens you could hemorrhage to death and it could take up to two minutes to die. It would pretty lame lying there in a pool of your own piss and blood with your brain stem detached just blinking and watching the world fade. So if you’re going to put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger, make sure to aim at the roof of your mouth. Back of the mouth will only make the bullet sever the brain stem which is like being beheaded.
#2 PRETTY NOOSE
The good old-fashioned method of death by hanging has not faded in popularity over the centuries. It still remains an effective way at ending life either through strangulation or a broken neck (or both). And just like shooting yourself, it can either be a private thing or you can make a public spectacle out of it. Heck – your whole family could hang itself from the maple tree in the front yard in front of a placard that reads SEE YOU ALL IN HELL! Or what would be even better, a community hanging. YES - five hundred people could meet at Conkling Park, say, at high noon for the largest ever public suicide.
#3 THE FUNNY SUICIDE
Have you ever wanted to just let your hair down and live on the edge? Just live like there’s no tomorrow? Well, if you’re planning on killing yourself, there really is no tomorrow (at least for you). Just like Prince’s song that says to Party Like It’s 1999, the insanity which precedes suicide is even greater. It’s more like partying at the End of Time.
With it all about to end, and with nothing to look forward to and nothing to lose, you could be a god for a brief moment in time. The above video shows an oddball type of pleasure seeker who would probably meet with his own death if he were to try such a stunt today in Cornhill. Instead of a few gut punches, the last thing he would probably see is a cinder block smashing down on his skull. But what the hell, I’m sure it would all be worth it just to shout NIGGERS!!! at the top of your lungs. Let’s face it, blacks in the ghetto today could use a little lesson in humility, and the love I would be feeling at my finals moments would probably be mixed with a lot of inexplicable rage as well. Wronged people often tend to share a kind of kinship, so my racist utterance would be more like a primal scream than anything else. A denunciation to the gods of all the ills and injustices poured out upon the meek, wretched and tortured souls of the world.
The funny suicide could also entail devices which have never before been used in suicide such that the news of your death would warrant national attention for it’s sheer bizarreness. “Man commits suicide by overdosing on orgasm: a man in upstate NY killed himself by having a very powerful orgasm which stopped his heart. The man, who has been identified as so-and-so, didn’t masturbate for two whole weeks. He then bought the best porno ever made according to Adult Film Magazine and proceeded to lather his penis with KY Jelly while watching it. Since the man was overweight to begin with, the powerful blast of his four table spoon-sized load was enough to instantly kill him.”
Nobody would feel sad if this is how you went out, nobody. Even your parents would be laughing in-between their tears and your dad would no doubt be secretly jealous. You would probably go down in history as an urban legend that most people would probably think is a scare tactic meant to teach temperance when it comes to the act of fondling yourself.
***
So there you have it – three ways to kill yourself. The third method of suicide may not be as easy as the first two, but it is fun because it allows for you to be imaginative and choose your own method of self-execution intead of just opting for a boring old bullet through the head or noose death. So even a painful death could be endurable when it involves so much fun and excitement.
Let’s hope the economy improves and Utica returns to just being a dreary dump instead of the unlivable warzone that it is right now. But if you simply can’t stand these uncomfortable times, please feel free to try one of the above methods for self termination. I would gladly take my own life if I had the balls and will to do it, but my sights are set on the horizon. I still believe I can get out and have a life.
But if I didn’t believe this…
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
