Found Poetry

The ideas, the thoughts.
To him, they are more real than everything else.
To write is to embrace them
To send what we intended out into exile
And collect the letters written, into something true.
And whatever comes out of the basement of our minds
From that collection of random thoughts
Will lead us to something else entirely
And out of that family of letters
He writes his own story

Extra Five: an excerpt from a story I wrote.

The beast shuffled forward. leaning down to sniff the body of the fallen beast. Suddenly, his head jerked upward, and he let out a sharp hiss. Then he suddenly jolted forward, faster than anything the beasts had done before. Crow sidestepped, barely avoiding an outreaching claw, then swung his sword, lopping off an arm before swiftly spinning around to decapitate the thing. It’s body fell, and there was silence from the group. 

Behind him, Crow could still hear the sounds of the battle between the steel man and the people-beasts. Then, the crowd of beasts all rushed forward, hissing and clawing and mashing their teeth. 

For a split second, Crow hesitated. He couldn’t back up further, or he would get dangerously close to the group behind him. The only thing to do was push forward. So forward he pushed, furiously beginning to hack at the beasts around him. 

He faltered at first, quailing at so much bloodshed. But then something inside him took over. The same thing that had told him his name, or the name of his sword. He moved with deftness and grace, hacking away at the crowd of slavering monsters before him, trying to cut himself a path through and escape. He could feel the power of whatever lay inside him, letting him guide his blade strokes easily through the sea of bleeding, writhing limbs, sometimes cutting off the heads of multiple beasts at a time. 

But, whatever power he held was unrefined, for he soon began to take injuries. First a slash on his arm, which he ignored, then a stab in the shoulder, which made him falter. He slashed off the tail of one beast, then planted a foot on it’s back and shoved it forward, making a path through the crowd. He sprinted through, taking more cuts and slashing at everything that moved. With one final shove, he burst forth from the mass, only to stumble on the twitching corpse of a beast he had just downed. He landed heavily, then turned over, slashing with his blade to fend the writhing creatures off. 

Desperation filled him, as one of them slashed his left leg, and he cried out, knowing now that escape was unlikely. Just as he was about to give up, just as he realized that this was the end, he heard another sound. A sound that cut through the air, that pierced the hissing and screeching of the creatures. A voice. A human voice.

It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. 

...Anyways.

I find it hard to think today. My feet are too large, and my socks not enough. The headphones, usually so efficient in piping in raw inspiration, are clasped too tightly to my ears.

But anyways. 

My fingers continue to tap uselessly at the keyboard, attempting in their dull scratching to carve away the useless, pulpy excess of thought that surrounds me.

My thoughts are like gelatin, they fill up the space I float through.

And I slowly, slowly drown.

Lungs choking on excess aether, I crawl onward.

Like some small, withered creature in some deep, lightless undersea cave, whose very breath is the only form of propulsion he has. He has never known color, never known sound. The only light he knows is the luminescence of the predators hell-bent on swallowing him whole.

But anyways.

I was told to choose one word for this assignment. Choose one word, just one. 

"Well, then what?" says I.

"Well, then you write about it", says Nelson.

Writing? About words? Seriously. 

Look at it this way. Ask an artist, a painter, to paint about a color, and see how quickly he turns his chosen instrument of self expression upon you in a dazzling display of violence.

Ahem.

But anyways.

Perhaps I'm over thinking this. Words are simply words, after all. No one has ever done anything especially important or empowering with them.  No one has ever changed lives with words. They're nothing special. In fact, the simple actuality that the only possible way I could communicate the idea that words are nothing special to you is through words is proof that they are inconsequential. 

Oh wait. 

No, that pretty much makes them a big fucking deal. 

But, anyways. Nelson, this is impossible. How could I possibly take a single word, and the soul, the sole meaning behind a word, and incorporate it into an overarching theme of a single body of text of any varying length? Gods above, it's just not a task humans are able to accomplish.

But anyways.

Rock Out

You have just been given a direct order.
You know the drill.

Rock out like like your limbs are failing.. Like you got your friends, four controllers, and eighteen levels of nothin' but headshots.

 Like the colors you see are all that you want and need

Rock out like your mind has just been blown, and you have neither the time nor the patience to pick all the pieces off the wall behind you, so you fill that gaping void with as much soul as you can muster.

Rock out like you're in the middle of nowhere, and you've got enough decibel-powered ordnance to signal the coming apocalypse, but you don't care because God made the universe just so you could get through this next solo.
Rock out like Odin himself just came down from Valhalla, handed you a shield and a sword and told you to go kill some mutha ****in' frost giants.

Rock out like everyone else said rock was dead, but you know that legends never die, so rock out like Rock is just really, really hung over from last night's gig.
Rock out like you invented it, like Death himself is standing next you, tapping his watch. Rock out  like you're Jimmy, both Page and Hendrix, and you can't breathe unless you got a guitar in your twitching fingers.

Rock out like you see that girl. Then you see her boyfriend next to her. Like they're arguing. Like you see him lose his dumbass temper, and shove her to the ground. And, in that single, incandescent moment, as all the devils in your hands rub their newly awakened eyes, and every Rage Against the Machine song you've ever heard starts playing in your head, you lash out in glorious, blinding fury, and the avenging angel whistles in admiration.

Rock out like that ink under your skin means something.
Like you got a girl, a car,  a thousand dollars, and the weight of the world to push off your shoulders.
Like you don't have a girl, or a car, but dammit you still got the thousand, and twenty four hours to find either, or both.

Rock out like the love of your life has an hour, twelve minutes and thirty-five seconds to live, and nothing you do in your life after that time will mean as much.

Rock out like Heaven's dead, so you're gonna stand on it's grave and dance to it's favorite song.

Rock out like you are a steam powered, ironclad machine, constructed from the broken pieces of every dream you ever had, and you've got only open skies and falling ash to fly through.

Rock out like everyone you know is with you, and everyone else is dead set against.
But YOU DON'T CARE.

Because you've got headphones, pounding with the voices of those who came before, and you've got a heart, pouring out hope for those who will come after.
You know you're not a god.
But rock out like you are.

Life, and/or death.

Death is an ending.

Whether you believe in an afterlife or not, there's no getting past it. You die. Your life ends. All of the things that you accomplish in your life will cease to  matter to you. You decompose, rot away, and eventually, as your subsequent generations also eventually die out, the tenuous influence you still held on the universe will crumble and fade away. No matter how famous you eventually became, the human race will eventually move on, and forget entirely about you.

So. If this is the case, why does anything matter?

It's a tough question to ask. The truth is, in a cosmic sense, nothing matters. Everything will end, all sentient thought will eventually cease. All signs that any of us were ever here will disappear. And humans, as a species, when we inevitably kill ourselves off, will not be missed. Not by the planet we abused and overused, not by the species' we hunted to the brink of extinction. Not by anyone.

Like I said. It's a tough question to ask. It's an even harder answer to hear.

So, what's the point of living, if we will eventually die? 

Well, the key to understanding this is to not worry about the cosmic sense of things. 

That's it.  Simply not care. Yes, you will die. Yes, it will probably hurt. No, no one will miss you. So.

Now that that's out of the way, go live your life. You are free, completely and totally. Free in the knowledge that, no matter what you do while you live, you will be eventually freed of the burdens of care, of memory, of guilt and hate. Now, that being said, don't live solely for today. People who live only for today  always end up quickly shortening the amount of 'todays' that they will have. 

Rather, live for your life. Live to have the memories, to have the experiences. Live to live, fully and completely, with no fear of what people think. Live enough that, should you be lucky enough to have time to contemplate on your life before you die, that you feel full. You think to yourself "It was a good life. Not the fullest. Not the most important or complete, by any means. But it was my life. And that's enough."

My dreams, they turn against me.

I walk alone. In constant fear. The dust from the road bites into my eyes, and i cast a nervous glance over my shoulder. Still nothing. Just like the last ten miles. I continue walking, clutching tighter to my heavy, rusted .45 pistol. Dilapidated buildings line this broken, wasted road. Skyscrapers, from every city in the world I wanted to live in and never did. Once, their broken, twisted faces may have haunted me. But I have lived in this hell for far too long. Now, I simply see their hollow, staring eyes as threats, places my dreams might pick for an ambush.

There is no night, no day here. I reach into one of my pockets for the rusty watch I have been using to keep time, and the ruined suit I'm wearing pulls against the wound on my shoulder, causing me to hiss out loud. I quickly clap a hand over my mouth. My involuntary noise of pain broke the still wasteland air, and someone or something may have heard it. 

Quickly, I rush to the side of the road, taking cover behind a collapsed cement pillar. I listen and wait, not breathing, not moving. I hear something, faintly, in the distance. It sounds like... an engine? In this place?

I peek my head out from cover. I wait for my eyes to focus through the windblown dust. And then a slow, paralyzing fear spreads through my limbs. It is one of my oldest dreams, finally here to repay my betrayal. Art. The most powerful of my dreams. With me since childhood, a dear friend to me, with whom I could have shaped the world. I sold him out for money, just to get by, to make rent. Look what it's come to.

He is driving toward me in a beat up, broke down '73 Mustang convertible. It might once have been cherry red, but it's color, like everything else here, is faded. All thoughts about the color of the car evaporate when I see Art himself. He is dressed, head to toe, in rusted pieces of scrap metal, fashioned into makeshift armor. He is driving quickly, heedless of the missing door on the driver's side of the car. 

Suddenly he slams on the brakes, and I duck down, wishing that I had not stared so long.

Now he has seen me.

I pull the magazine out of my pistol: four shots left. I curse silently, wishing Music had had more ammunition on him when he and I fought. I cross my fingers in the mad hope that Art won't have found anything more than a rusty pipe or a piece of a stop sign to fight me with. With both that car and the armor he's wearing, I doubt it. 

The unmistakeable CHAK-CHAK of a shotgun confirms my fears.

This is my life now. Trapped in this purgatory, no hope for rescue or escape. My only option is to keep fighting, and keep walking, hoping that someday my dreams will let go of their bitter hurt and forgive me, and we can start anew. 

I am doubtful that this will ever happen. I don't forgive myself, why should they?

The only escape is death. And death is no escape. I've tried that, believe me. I only end up back at the start, to face all my dreams again, to walk down this endless road once more.

Will it ever end?

I'm thinking about you. I'm thinking about you like guitars think about the ghosts of the last notes they played. Like books think about words, and words think about letters, and letters think about postage stamps. I'm thinking about you like narcissists think about themselves, like people with multiple personality disorder think about themselves, and themselves, and themselves. Like boys think about girls, and girls think about shoes.

I'm thinking about you like blind people think about color. 

Like planets think about suns.

I'm thinking about you like doctors think about cancer, and smokers think about anything but.

Like soldiers think about death, and soon-to-be mothers think about life. Like violinists think about strings, and toddlers think about swings, and fiances think about rings. 

Like philosophers think about why we're here, 

Like travelers think about why we're not out there.

For the observant ones:

I changed the blog title. If you know what it's from, well... you don't win anything. I'm broke as a joke, and all I can afford to give you are words. But you're the coolest person I know. 

If you don't know what it's from, google it.