In Diegesis

What does lucid love feel like?

There was the time when I was stoned and horny. For three or four years on and off. Sex every night just seems like a dream these days. A streetlight, cars’ shadows tracing across the walls, a resin-caked bowl next to the bed, two bodies blurring the difference between awake and asleep. Sex seems like such a dream.

I still get horny. Strangely. Mostly I like to imagine tiny pixies with wings and pointy ears and a dark gleam in their eyes with magical mouths that work like Mary Poppins’ handbag. Vines growing around my waist and arms tying me to the bed. Branches sprouting from the lampshade.

Or if I really want to connect to a human willing me to pleasure, I just imagine a good friend (any will do) wearing all of his or her or their clothes just smirking at me, thinking, Go ahead buddy, for crying out loud; you cannot pornotize my soul, but if you must feel as though there’s nothing wrong with what you’re doing then by God you have my Platonic endorsement. But hurry up, my spirit is required back at MY body. I transmit gratitude as I fall on my knees in the shower.

This is real; I shouldn’t have to say that; that’s not your fault; it’s mine.

Trust issues…

It’s amazing how much porn there is. I like to just behold it all, the infinitum of arousal. The ego in the One Mind – how vast it stretches. Makes me wonder about my own chosen interests. Film, writing, philosophy. How when considered in the context of the potential for humanity’s self-destruction (or at the least, self-destructive apathy), any of those supposedly noble and fine pursuits could prove utterly impotent, and perhaps sooner than later. God only knows.

I just watched this video of a real couple. A loving blowjob, then the wife mounted him and really rode him without him lifting a finger. It reminded me of those cars’ shadows on the wall. Ancient dreams. I liked the woman in this video. She was very beautiful and by the end of it I felt as though I had gotten to know these people quite intimately. It seemed a very honest depiction of healthy marital sex. Well-written, or rather, a good documentary.

What is thought-provoking, or beautiful, or fine, anyways? The well-organized mind can provoke thoughts out of anything, find beauty in any moment…

Which isn’t to say that I don’t espouse the virtues of selfless altruism. The more we spread ourselves throughout the One Mind the more of a chance our species has of surviving. Or at least the richer life we’ll lead. I’m just saying.

Subsistence is kind of over. Just look at the infinitum of the media. Entertainment. We get turned on and off all the time, though more on than off. Even my wonderful, post-movie-watching experiences that feel so extra fine, what are those but electrical turn-ons? Discovering the sun within again.

I mean… if Everything is God, then… W T F is conscience?

What does freedom look like? How do I simulate it with words? Is it the will to Heaven manifested in every moment? Isn’t that what catharsis presupposes anyway – a strange adjustment from what’s inside to reality? And on that note, does freedom have to be an emotional sensation?

Jeez questions questions! Boxes within thoughts within boxes made of dots. Solar eclipses are better for my spine than trips to the chiropractor. On the tundra I can see Jupiter – the brightest looking star by far. Orion, Perseus, Taurus, Ares, Andromeda, Cassiopeia – ancient stories swirling around the King of Gods. It’s just another night with a cigarette and an iPad – feelings fluctuating between alive and sad.

That’s me, mostly cosmic.

My cells have will power; they’re pushing a part, all reaching for the sun, or maybe just another vessel to leap onto; maybe that’s why I’m driven towards sex. My cells are like galaxies, my mind is like a black hole.

My heart’s just like, wtf man?

What ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

Oh shut up you know I love you – spinning words just means I’m passing the time – ah, look, a rhyme! Writing is like exploring the dense forest in home’s backyard. You don’t really know where you’re going, and you’re pretty sure you’ll find your way home. And why do we do it?

Why are you reading the next word – word after absurd gurgling burst of murderous word?

Curiosity.

This is what purpose feels like. I’m trapped in the current of humanity’s suicidal sentiments, asking Poseidon to help me temper it. It’s dark and cold, and the pressure’s like – well I can’t really hear anything, because I think my ears exploded a long time ago (probably at a music festival), so you see – every thought’s a digestive success, every word leads to the next best alternative to real rest. Every poem is a prayer transmitting my deepest-most care not to the reader, no, not just to you.

But to everything.

[I wrote this in early August of last year just for fun. I don't consider myself a very powerful philosopher but the act of writing philosophy does occasionally have a cathartic effect for me. It feels as though I'm validating something deep within me. I remember when I finished writing this I walked out of the Drexel library, listening to "Age of Consent" by New Order. I felt like my eyes were open for the first time; the sunlight glistened beautifully on all the cars and people and concrete and asphalt. It was a very empowering and beautiful sensation. I recommend to any reluctant philosophers to smash the wave of your intellect against the hard cold stone of reality. The worst that can happen would be to discover discrepancies between your understanding and reality, and how bad is that?! At least then you are more aware of both your mind and reality!]

(more…)

I haven’t fallen in love with two

people

with the same

name.

Maybe that’s just

be c a u s e

I ‘ m

young.

Maybe it’s

because   of  somet h i n g

m    o    r    e

sin

is

te

r

.

..

M

a

ybe

I’m bisexual.

Mom’s dad got rid of his b  o  a  t  .

His body’s deteriorating, getting older everyday.

Boat’s too much work. Too

much gas, costs, not

enough support,

or people who

love

the l  a  k  e .

I got swimming lessons at the YMCA in my small hometown, an hour from the lake. Grandpa still made me wear a life support jacket on the boat. He’d take us out in the summertime to a beach that no car could

reach. On the Fourth of July we’d sit on the boat,

docked,

and watch the fireworks. One time our black lab,

Libby, was

with us. She was a

real lover, full

of infinite kisses, and the explosions absolutely

fucking

terrified her.

She’s dead now. Died two years ago on the other side of the country during the year of the dead dogs,

but that’s another poem for

another time.

I was around at the

end of last summer. Grandpa was thinking

of taking the boat out

one last time. I said,

“I would love that. I’ll help if need be, whatever you need.

I’ve got hands.”

But I don’t have the experience, and Uncle Jack is a busy man.

Next time I was around I found out

it was sold to a couple; they kept the name, ”The Celtic

C’s”, Grandma told me in

the basement around the

b  a  r .

“That’s really cool,” I said. ”Yeah,”

she said, “It’s nice.”

And she took another sip of her wine,

because whatever the state of her body may be,

she’s going to die  t  i  psy .

My life is novel research / consciousness knee jerks / collected in free words

Our relationship is, always has been, and will forever be completely absurd.

I believe in the moment, I have faith that it’s precious. This faith comes from the times that I have felt sublimely connected to time and space and my memories and my ambitions, and this connection (in feeling and in memory) produces in me a sensitivity to others’ relationship to the potential for an infinite expanse of feeling in the moment.

I like to hug goodbye and sometimes on the phone I say “I love you”. Really I just want to fuck everybody.

And be understood.

But I will never be understood. Language and communication and society are all established on one singular, terrible lie: meaning is finite.

I am love and love is infinite; love spawns preciousness. But I will die someday. Someday relatively soon. The sea of meaning I swim in is infinite, but my life is not.

This is the cosmic drama.

W O L F L   A    M     I      N         G             O

All criticism assumes an ideal. Oh, that sucked; I hated that part; that was totally unbelievable; you shouldn’t do that; you fucked up; etcetera. Each of these statements, whether they be directed at an artwork or a person or whatever, suggests that something actual (as in – an actual film or actual human behaviors) failed somehow, but how? and why? According to some ideal, presumably, but whose? The critic’s or the the subject under criticism?

Depends on the nature of the criticism. Some people criticize so as to protect themselves from obscenities, as defined by their own ideals. Though much of this criticism comes from the flagrantly dogmatic sects (you know, very religious people), the dogmatic inclination to preserve our own innocence exists in each of us. We each of us possess thresholds in our perceptions. Doubt it? Imagine seeing someone you love get shot in the head, or two close family members fucking freely in your presence. Luckily, rare is the artwork that explicitly documents the sexual habits of your parents. I’m just saying, dogma is inescapable, and rightfully so. There’s nothing wrong with believing in purity or preciousness. Indeed, I believe that it is that innate inclination of belief which guides everything we do: all criticism and all things which can be critiqued.

Some people criticize according to the ideals of the subjects which they are critiquing. Hence the classic ‘artist’s intention’ trap. We see a film, and we say that such and such part was unbelievable, which really sucked, because the artists behind the movie strived for realism and believability. This seems safe enough and is probably correct, more or less. But in reality, artist’s intention can not speak for an artwork. A director may say he wanted his film to be realistic, and I may think that it wasn’t. Does that mean that it wasn’t? Ultimately, we’re just two people: I want to believe it, and he wants it to be believable. I have my reasons why it doesn’t work, and he has his reasons why he did everything he did (mise en scene, and all that). Is art criticism then just a document of connection or disconnection? Time appreciated and meaning made versus time spent bored and feeling empty?

What, then, of human behavior criticism? If I criticize someone on the former basis of my own dogmatic ideals and rules, essentially I want the person to be like me. I should ask myself hence: do I want the person to be like me because it will help the person or because it will make me feel good? Does it matter if my ideals are ‘right’ if they don’t help the person? Would all my ideals help everyone all the time if everyone adopted them all the time? This is the dilemma of the ten commandments and all the other universal truth ideals: How can a finite set of rules guide us through the infinite permutations of life’s circumstances?

That’s assuming that I even have ideals or know what they are exactly. On the flipside, should I criticize someone on the latter basis of their own ideals, then I am putting a great deal of trust in the person – that they have ideals and know what they are exactly. Cripes, how can I know that they even know what they truly want. More often than not, I don’t know what I truly want. The person may tell me what he or she wants, but who understands themselves so completely?

Still, if we didn’t believe in our abilities to know what we want clearly and to pursue it, life would feel meaningless and empty. Boredom would conquer us, and we’d be left just existing, searching for escape in vice or pining for death. So, then, I must have faith and believe you when you tell me what you want.

This, I believe, is called love. And the best criticisms, I believe, like the best artworks, and the best behaviors, are expressions of love.

we are the pure of heart americans, by which i mean, if yr reading this and you want to be a pure of heart american or if you just want to come along for the ride, then that is what we are; us raised by baby boomers, by the children of the sixties and seventies, by moms and men; us communists and libertarians, old words for new parties, but in our time the parties won’t be separate, i feel them as one inside of me – swirling, pushing against one another, crafting contradictory behaviors, which are my life – the grandparents call us “moderates”, but this is misleading, we are not the in-betweeners, we are intense and passionate (i don’t know why you are, but in my case it’s because my mom and my sister probably loved me too much, and the world is unfair); we don’t compromise our contradictions into one lame platform, we indulge in them, because we are the emotionals, the stubbornly alive, the ever-adolescents.

do we need to learn how to take things for granted? we spend hours watching the best shows, listening to the best music, quick, look at that tree before we walk past it, quick, look at the moon before the cloud covers it, quick, quick, QUICK, download some more!

i’m kidding you! of course we don’t, we take so much for granted we can’t even understand it, i mean, could you imagine not taking the color blue for granted, the sky, yr aunts, uncles, mom, dad, every single fucking sound you hear, every single fucking thing you see, all the flavors, we’d go insane! so committed are we to the god of appreciation that we can’t admit it when we are spent of appreciative energy, i’ll just write another bad poem, convincing the world, convincing myself: i am as i have been since age twelve. alive with spirit.

now look at us fading into responsibility, look at us not crying anymore, look at us organizing our feeble minds, trying not to fall in love with everyone we meet, honestly i can’t tell you if i’m bisexual or just hyper-appreciative, honestly i don’t know if i’m a lover or an egocentric individual.

my friends and my visions compete for my attention all the time, and i tend to side with my visions, because they don’t hurt me, but i’m never going to be anything like a good artist if i don’t give this up, if i don’t learn to share, if i don’t play the game.

get a job, finish school, find a new piece of ass, live for yourself, be a man, be a man, be a man, what the hell else can i be, dad? brother?

i could keep writing forever, because i’m not killing myself anymore, i could keep living forever, because i’m not afraid anymore, this is not a poem or a novel or a journal or anyone’s favorite anything, it’s aimless will, because we’re alive, and we’re going nowhere.

II. The Pocket-Stone ~ Birds ~ On Fire

When I wake up I think of my dream. I swing my head to the left and open and close my eyes. I turn my right shoulder over and nestle my face back into my warm, white pillow. What just happened? I try to go back to the dream like a ghost to its host body. The palm of your hand is stuck, frozen on the ice. Your oar is tossed to the left, making an outline in a thin layer of snow-granules. You sense clouds above you. You are completely alone, and the bitter air makes you feel desperate.

Was the hand stuck, or was I just paralyzed?

Back in bed, my body feels limp and heavy, and my muscles feel dead but not sore, like I could never get up again and that’d be OK by them. I’m afraid of what I might return to, though, so I don’t want to go back to sleep. There was something about the vastness of the dream-horizon that felt somehow sinister and cruel, as though, by birthright, I should have been able to see three hundred sixty degrees around me instead of the usual one hundred eighty. What good is half an infinity? Sounds weird, but that’s dream-logic for you. For now under my eyelids all I see is a wall of black, but soon blues and purples descend, and I feel myself becoming entranced.

(more…)

i go downstairs and put my ipod on the monolithic, black ipod dock, select a playlist called “run”, click the shuffle icon, and start stretching – pull on my feet, make elastic my calves, my hamstrings, feel it get tight – then put my feet together like a cross-legged sit that’s been unfolded and push my knees all the way to the ground, this we call ‘the butterfly’, from elementary gym class – and all these i find lame, but i know they’re important – then i do a minute plank and twenty bicep curls and start jogging, ’cause sure i’d like all my muscles to be stronger, vaingloriously, magically, like ‘wouldn’t it be nice?’, but really i just want to run, run, run, and it starts boring, cause i’m still in my vegetable, sedentary state, just easy fast walking, no burn yet, no high, but now – focus on the depth that was never there, eliminate what you can’t repair – murmuring along to the words of ‘nothing ever happened’ like nothing will ever happen, like down here in this dark, cold cave beneath the roommate-lovers there is a passion to be mined that i deserve, and all i need in order to claim it is some time and some will, and i have got time.

i have got will.

(more…)

what if when i die my soul stays with my body?
burn me up to fall to ashes let my spirit rise with smoke
because shit luck says i’ll stay in the ground forever

that darkness before birth was so dark we don’t remember
but we imagine once our thought begins it will never end
like a stuck up bunch of snobs we try to exist forever
whether through art or glory or getting to go to heaven
because we can’t imagine not being conscious anymore

do we become ephemeral existences do we get
to walk through walls?
what about ghosts made of bed-sheets do they
take themselves to the laundromat?
what happens to the dogs that we love like sons?
what happens to us sons that act like dogs?
what happens to the suns that burn bright and explode
to become black-holes? i want to go where those souls go.

-MW

*Admin Note: Mike Webster’s first post on this site. He’s a civic warrior-poet out in the political-urban chaos in Cleveland, OH. Much love from Philly, Mike.

i rush to the crush, cheeks flush, do you like mad men much?

oh you’ve never seen it, that’s fine, it’s really great, but nevermind,

i can find some other time to share with you these tastes of mine. ian ian remember:

you’re here for a good time! surrender to the moment,

like when you suck into a lime, this dancing is an omen,

i think we’ll be alright. let us let it last all night.

quick, before shit goes awry let’s talk about your life!

let’s talk about how you wouldn’t mind it as my wife,

no no no, i mean let’s talk about all the strife that you’ve had in your life’s time,

no no no, i mean, i mean let’s just unwind,

aahhhhh, please just don’t fuck some other guy, not tonight, i’m not saying what’s right,

just something that i’d like, what a waste.

i guess i can’t not talk about taste, not even for a while, do you think it’s ’cause i’m white?

okaaayyyy, retry,

this is how we chill from Eighty-Nine ’til Twenty-Eleven ’til we get to heaven, still

we should probably never get fulfilled, cause then what the hell we gonna do with all our will?

nooo, we should probably wait until we’ve had a few babies and made a couple mil,

then with our power we can  kill evil bitches: osama bin laden, dick cheney,

cruella deville, hermann melville, like bartleby i’ve had my fill

of copying everybody else’s skill, standing still at the sill, staring out the window,

damn, ‘ye, i didn’t know, is that why my wins low? too much daydream work

not enough teamwork for me to expect to continue to see you, let alone be who

you need to make you a meal when you feel blue. it’s true.

what is this thing, the facebook sensation?

oh you like that girl, she’s cute, she’s asian,

she sees your world, she’s new, let her phase in

to you, loyal citizen of the validation nation.

why do we think some stranger could be such a fan

of this, twenty, thirty, forty- something year old man,

when she could have some sexy teen with a golden tan?

you make money, that’s great, honey,

i make poetry, which means

i comb stoic philosophic trees for fruit that breeds

life-thieving nutrients inside of me.

so your money is poetic, and your life is hectic,

’cause some lover came through and wrecked it,

that’s messed up, i’ll confess it, but i digress,

is this a test? i don’t give a shit! i don’t care about your life,

but i’ll rap your story and fuck your ex-wife.

just sayin’.

i’ve got this pit that has a presence at night,

but when i put it into words, it seems shitty and trite.

and i know that feelings can’t be wrong or right,

but i only love a pussy when it’s tight,

and i won’t live unless shit excites, unless i’m in a fight,

which means an existential crisis when you’re six foot high and white.

social dread is a luxury, like science and philosophy,

a real savory treat, i find it so sexy

when the internet thrusts at me

everybody’s insecurities and likes and lusts to see,

i must be feeling randy for some candy,

watchin’ beautiful people fuck in the mirror, hey, could you hand me

sandy, that bitch is cute, and i’m ready for a landing.

the smile on your face is fuckin’ dandy. man.. i should win a grammy.

give me some statue so you can watch me standing in ya’ll’s fandom, in tandem

to grown men gettin’ blown up by hand-guns and whatever else in life that’s random.

i write my rhymes, that’s right, because i like to think about it!

i fight my times for light, so i don’t ask a head-shrinker ’bout it,

and when it’s all too much, at night, alone and curled up and out of sight,

why, i have a little drink about it. i wish that we could sing about it,

converse nervously and think about it, but you don’t know a thing about it.

at least you didn’t used to. it’s okay, i’m used to it,

that’s why i’m profuse with this, why this shit hits.

i’m just waitin’ for a stupid, mothafuckin’ comment that says:

i dig what’s happening, i love your rapping, my name’s daphne,

do you think you could come over to my place and tap me?

yeah, sure, where’s your address, exactly?

yeah, sure, where’s your address, exactly?

hey. you like toys?

girls? boys? i’m androgynous.

you like to laugh? i’ll bring some movies. i’ll bring some candy too.

hey. hey. hey, you there?

ah, shit, whatever,

i’ve got real collegiate work to do.