Rolling sober means bowling over adolescent hangovers.
Rolling sober means feeling your breath.
Rolling sober means embracing death.
Rolling sober means believing in love.
Rolling sober means seeing the real above.
Rolling sober happens to be what I’m doing right now.
It’s what everyone wants to do, but no one really knows how.
I don’t want to make you sad!
I had to get that off my chest, first off.
Secondly,
I’m coming for you, babe.
If you see me fading into a song, cowering
into myself or a drink, uhhh,
slap me across the face! (Duh)
Confident Ian will know what you mean.
And if I don’t kiss you right then, then… just..
Wait…
Just wait. I’m getting there.
Ok, listen,
let’s start out with family, don’t let me
get too restless before we open up the family love.
Because no matter what we do, how we develop
our love, the family love is filled with FACTS,
and at first we’re only going to have opinions.
Gloriously romantic opinions, of course, darling.
I’m just saying… You…
ARE SOMEBODY.
That’s a fact, and I’m going to want to really
understand that fact as best I can.
OK, next,
when I say, “Well, I’m just not sure
we should really open the pandora’s box
of my desire,” you should
uuuhhhhhh,
slap me across the face.
Confident Ian will know what you mean.
Hmm… What else, what
else?
I love you! I know I know,
it’s kind of soon, but uhh, what I mean is,
there’s this sort of person I smile at and dance with
when I’m alone, like this potential future girlfriend
sort of person, and those smiles and those dances
are my best, most relaxed
smiles and dances.
Also,
I know this is a piss poor excuse
for a poem. Trust me, this
is not my best work.
In fact just don’t read my shit.
This isn’t really for you or me, it’s
for the bored people who are
still lonely.
Oh, and lastly,
and I can only say this
because I just told you not to read my shit,
ummm…
I’m counting on you to transform me
into a person who takes care
of what I need to take care of
and who just generally is
pretty good at life.
PS if you don’t love my siblings arguably
more than you love me
I’ll find you suspicious.
OK I’m done.
Saying “I love you” is just something to do.
Meaning “I love you” is like two equals two.
Except it’s a fact that no one ever knew.
It makes sense though, it fits perfectly
into your conception of the universe,
like Einstein and the theory of relativity.
Meaning “I love you” is pretty easy, relatively speaking…
You just do it or you don’t,
like being born, not like you will or you won’t.
Respecting another’s “I love you,” now that’s a feat.
If you can do it once, pray it’s something you can repeat.
The extent to which you realize you are loved
directly correlates to the extent to which you realize
how much of an asshole you have been.
This is why the Christian God is appealing
for a functioning civilization,
why a revival can really save a soul.
Unfortunately, that kind of absolving forgiveness
is so tremendously powerful that most,
if not all, human souls
literally cannot sustain it.
We need our love a bit more relatable -
person to person. That way, we can argue
and fuck and talk and
hold onto our deep complexes
that keep us sane.
Society’s evil.
I just want a kiss that’s real.
Everything is real,
so I’m already free.
Civilization’s ideal,
so I’m already dead.
It’s all true.
(So you should just go with it when I get confident).
Because, OK,
I have tripped my BALLS OFF
in the heart of Appalachian country, my home,
and that was my reality, I mean, everything
suspended from form, the semblance of sky
revealing spirits that made their home
in the clouds, and I could just see them
with my innervision?
I’m really not sure what was happening.
And I have had thousands of orgasms.
And I could have thousands more, or
I could die tomorrow, but they always just feel
like lightening a little of my load. A tingle,
then relaxation, as though I’m settling down
into time and space like moondust after
an asteroid makes impact.
I mean: How do YOU connect
to this world? This life?
Because I have seen thousands of movies
and I have lived through countless seasons
of my favorite television shows, and I imagine
before I die I’ll have shoveled tons of snow.
But I don’t look down on the Nazis
or Dick Cheney, I’m just glad that’s not
how I connect to this world.
I mean… Jesus.
The pity about bullies is
what sense of beauty do they really have?
Sure, they may know its denotation…
But still I’ll concede – the feeling of glory is
inextricably intertwined with
narcissism. Shit.
That’s why I’m writing this.
Because this is how I’m connecting
to this world right now.
I’m not working out or eating
or teaching kids some facts,
but I do all those things
from time to time.
Do you have the sense, the Seventh sense,
of the NARRATIVITY of everything?
Like all the ways that every living thing
connect to this universe somehow creates
a complete picture,
like E equals M see squared, I mean,
that there’s a total E at all
amazes me. And all the masses multiplied
by the speed of light reflecting
off of Christ’s crucifix at mass into
a child’s glinting eyes multiplied
by itself, and then he blinks,
and now he’s supposed to
do something with his life?
Is it my major malfunction
that the inane strikes me as beautiful and not
the other way around? I mean…
How do you connect to this world?
There’s this soft hole in the ground.
It’s covered in moss, and it’s where I want to die.
It follows me around wherever I go. All I need to do is jump in, and it’ll swallow up all the light around me.
And I’ll go.
I love to stare at the weather reflected from it, as it fills up with rain, snow, sunshine, or skyscrapers, concrete.
It’s beautiful, that moss-covered hole of mine.
Sometimes I catch it winking at me
as I think my thoughts and make coffee and dance and sweat about the fact that evil still exists.
As though it’s saying,
Oh, Ian. Oh, evil…
and laughing a guttural laugh from deep within the earth.
…like the young idealists who believe in
world peace, happiness as something we all
share in, like how I used to be.
An abstract lover.
Well I still believe in the One
Mind, connected consciousnesses,
and this poem isn’t me expressing
my genius ideas, the brilliant fireworks
of Ian, it’s just a flow of a stream
of energy channelled in between
all my friends and
everyone, really, meaning,
God.
But love isn’t abstract, it
just isn’t.
It just isn’t.
It’s real, like repentance
for how I was or
how you may have been
to an ex when you were busy
loving abstractly, or like
not kissing,
not seducing,
not touching
when you could,
because there’s something there
you respect, something real
and also a lack of something real
that you shouldn’t disturb.
And if you don’t know what I mean,
then what part of the One Mind
are you so right on about
right now?
When it means something
it feels like you could change.
When it really means something
it’s not just time and space.
When it means something
you’ve died a little inside.
When it truly means something
suddenly you have nothing to hide.
When it means something
you’re filled with belief in growth.
When it humbly means something
you can’t help but make a little oath.
When it means something
your exes love you again.
When it sweetly means something
your exes’ love never really went.
When it means something
it means everything all at once.
When it god damn means something
it means fuck tyrannical cunts.
Art is the friction
between good diction
and conviction.
Art is always
the piece of your soul
you’ve been missing.
Art is nothing
compared to the one
I should be kissing.
Knowledge is a five year old boy
telling me I’m wrong
when I’m right.
Knowledge is a tingly field
of fearless soldiers’ bodies
wearing stiffly creased grins.
Knowledge makes my head spin.
Knowledge doesn’t know when
enough’s enough.
Knowledge always seems to be
calling my bluff.
Knowledge goes to college
just to get tough.
Knowledge is a whore
for scientists and politicians
and moms and dads.
Knowledge doesn’t know
what it means to be sad.
Knowledge is the best lover
I never really had.
It’s the way that he
sings
that play with my
feelings.
Feelings
like feelers for ceilings
that contain what he
sings.
It’s the way that he sings
that he never brings
to the bedroom.
Heaven’s rising again
like the welling up of tears.
The emotional expulsion,
how could this be real?
It’s real. It’s real…
Heaven’s rising again
like the spelling out of fears.
The photographic emulsion
I’m seeing what’s real.
It’s real. It’s real.
Heaven’s rising again
like a belly full of beers.
The body’s self-propulsion.
Your flesh is real.
It’s real. It’s real.
Heaven’s rising again
like the melting of gears.
The societal revulsion.
My spirit’s still real.
It’s real. It’s real.
Heaven’s rising again
like the telling to our dears
beside the tide of the ocean,
Everything is real.
It’s real. It’s real!
Jesus was a miracle man
and my friends are pretty good people.
I believe in miracles, man.
I believe my friends are just going to become better and better people.
Even if they’re not my friends
right now (know what I mean?)
I believe the universe is expanding.
I believe the word “squared” in Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is the scientific home for God.
Think about it.
I believe in stories. Artworks. Colors. Music.
There’s this part of my brain that turns on when I believe things.
And I love turning it on…
more than anything.
God is a Spider, or Something
like that.
It made a Web, and that’s
Consciousness (all of it),
and then it had
Thousands of Babies
(by Itself – THAT’S THE THING!),
and all those Thousands
had their own Thousands,
and it goes on like that
forever,
and all the Googols of
us Descendants make
our own webs and we model them
on the webs that came before us,
which were of course originally modeled
after God’s web,
which is consciousness, remember.
And that’s our home in our short lives.
I’m making my own web now
(growing up, becoming a Man, you know),
and this right here is a part of it, this very poem
stretching out to some firm unmovable structure,
secure,
like a damn fine, I mean impeccably perfect
metaphor, yeah.
And you, reader,
you know your fate.
I’m going to EAT YOU!