blatant clothing lust

I want you, I need you, oh baby, oh baby

time for a european vacation this summer

"Clothes and manners do not make the man, but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance." - henry ward beecher

just

how we can believe that we are the co-star or at least

the mysterious antihero in someone's life story,

when in fact we are simply an extra

and always have been and always will be,

it's beautiful the way our egos can deflate.

Arcade Fire gets it:

(Cars and Telephones)

I read the pages about me

In her autobiography

They were brief and to the point

A flash, while you are getting dressed

A memory that needs to be repressed

I'll just wait until it's over

Since you've gone away

I never know just what to say

Since you've gone away

I never know just what to say

Cause I like cars more than telephones

Your voice in my ear makes me feel so alone

Tonight I'm gonna drive

The silver moon is shining bright

Over the interstate

God saying hurry don't be late

Soon the sun will rise

That's when the romance dies

And I'm just tired of running around

I walked

To get the mail today

I guess

Your letter never came

I'll just

Check again tomorrow

A flash while you are getting dressed

A Memory that needs to be repressed

I'll just wait without saying a word

Since you've gone away

I never know just what to say

Since you've gone away

I never know just what to say

Cause I like cars more than telephones

Your voice in my head makes me feel so alone

Tonight I'm gonna drive

The silver moon is shining bright

Over the interstate

God saying hurry don't be late

Soon the sun will rise

That's when the romance dies

And I'm just tired of running around

But fuck it I love you even if

I'm gonna feel like shit

By the time I get to you

Now the sky is turning blue

The stars they disappear

One by one as the daylights nears

And yes you're in my head

But that doesn't make you here

And I've lost all my friends

But you're the one I miss the most

And now I'm almost there

Yeah I'm almost to the coast

And if I had any notion

Of how I'm gonna drive my car across

the Atlantic Ocean,

I'd be fucking set.

I can never sleep anymore and I've watched all the stupid comedies I can think of and reread every book on my shelf too often to even contemplate another try, so there's not much else to do but lie in bed, adjust the covers and try to race my thoughts to sleep. I usually fail.

apart from wishing i could dream of these always,

here is something new and not very exciting

(truth be told, it's quite derivative, but i'm trying not

to fall too much in love with postmodernism)

profound and Latinate the words are coming

life:

the word is empty, trite, passé.

a portrait of a portrait,

the details lost in the faded paints.

a biological construct:

heartwaves, brainbeat -

reduced to the most basic functions,

it soldiers on in trenches and on sidewalks.

maybe old dictionaries

that smell like rusty water

hold the meaning to the words that fill our heads

and library books

with magnetized spines and scoliosis

open to the pages hasty fingers plucked at,

the passages adolescent dreamers underlined

eight- nine- ten-word sentences

of sympathy and regret

as defined in language, life is simply

another four-letter word (two consonants, two vowels)

as defined in living, life is all

but some nights driving blind down the denim freeway,

overpasses humming,

clinging to the sky,

shading the cement bandages

that stripe earth,

burned and blurry with the vestiges

of wisdom,

well,

the moonlight on the water:

maybe that's it.

time doesn't exist. clocks do.

New year's resolutions?

but there is a crossroads

and i know which road i'm taking:

and it's okay if i, as i tend to do,

attach more importance to something

than it's really worth - i just have to say

but if i do, that's ok too,

and obviously fated.

if something hurts,

because

when fatuous and impossible things

are scripted in glowing text...

maybe they're not so impossible.

and

when life looks beautiful

(and even when it doesn't)

again with the cliches,

(I saved Latin!)

always, always always:

and make it count.

every moment.

because

of course:

and it won't,

because right now

life is like the view from the fiftieth story

of sunlight cascading over rooftops

in a golden European town

to a Beirut song about possibility

and i know

it's all about perspective.

(stop writing poems about the moments i lost,

start living poems about the moments i keep)

forget regrets.

make playlists for rainy days

and blazing glorious nights

and stay awake til dawn

the way we do.

and finally,

remind myself

with insistence,

patience

and blazing certainty

the end.

or, why i need to go to amoeba relatively soon

Code red cola war conformity crisis

Perfunctory idols rewriting their bibles

With magic markers running out of their ink

Lives in white out-

Turn the lights out-

Fax machine anthems get your damn hands up!

- Beck, "Hell Yes"

(necessary vinyls)

- neon bible arcade fire

- girls girls

- yankee hotel foxtrot wilco

- summerteeth wilco

- mixed up the cure

- the hazards of love the decemberists

- visiter the dodos

- up from below edward sharpe & the magnetic zeroes

- censored colors portugal. the man

- random spirit lover sunset rubdown

- sky blue sky wilco

- a brief history of love the big pink

- baby darling doll face honey band of skulls

- third portishead

holidazed

used to being controlled by consumerism (and not entirely averse to this fact) i find myself at a peculiar loss to desire things this christmas and realize, for once, maybe i am perfectly content.

it's bizarre and totally counterintuitive, but i'm not complaining.

(Oh, but these would be nice to unwrap

come bright and shiny Christmas morning.)

faded from the winter

"What makes the voice pathetic

is that it doesn't know

what kind of people it's reaching.

Us.

No one hears it, except us.

This Age wanted heroes.

It got us instead:

carefully constructed, but

immobile.

Subtle but,

unfit

to take up

the burden of the times.

It happens.

A whole generation of washouts.

History says stand up,

and we totter and collapse,

weeping, moved, but not

sufficient."

- Tony Kushner, A Bright Room Called Day

"A whole generation of washouts."

I mean, maybe.

But the hope outweighs the tragedy;

It has to, or we perish.