terrorists will never win

i work in an air traffic control tower at a small, regional airport. having a job is very nice, but the work is not fulfilling. you all understand how air traffic control works, i'm sure. planes land, planes take off, it   goes on and on. planes can do all this without my help of course, but pilots are a pushy flock and need someone to organize them and set boundaries. can i land now? no, not yet. can i land now? someone else is landing right now, hold on. how about now? yes, now.

there are some planes that would like to disregard my advice. these planes are flown by men who signify their aloofness by owning planes too new, powerful, and big for any possible need they have. planes painted maroon with tan leather pilots seats. when i direct them i am greeted with long, huffy silences. as if i might should apologize for ensuring your safety at the expense of four minutes.

there are other planes though that direct themselves. i tell them what they already know. one plane in particular. it is a small blue and white plane with a single propeller. the pilot does not bring a lot to the table, conversationally, but he is easy to laugh. this plane stands out in particular though, because i am almost certain that the pilot, this jovial man, built it. who builds their own plane!

this is a thought i often have during the times when nobody flies. nobody flies after lunch but before work is over. nobody flies right after breakfast. and sometimes when i am eating a hamburger in the cafeteria i think about the small blue and white plane. it is one thing to build a house, a boat, a car. but a plane? where are we? since when can humans, with their own hands, endow themselves with the power of flight? it is a blessing, it is an abhorrence, I cannot believe god exists.

there are eels in desert

you wake up. your girlfriend says goodbye as she leaves to go to work. you say something, in your moon-logic child mind. yes, she says, the water did spill. and it is saccharine sweet. you think about it when your alarm goes off a fraction of an hour later. and you turn off the alarm. you are tired but awake. awake and alone, rudderless. here you are in your bed. in your place where you belong. in the place where you begin and end every day. always you leave the bed, always you return. it is the best bed you have ever owned. and that means a lot. it means progress. it means you are knowing what you want and knowing how to get it. but does it mean you can support it. do you deserve it. you have had worse beds and worked harder for them. isn't that unfair. it is hard to spend this time in extacy. imagine if you could sleep like you do and every night the night before you had to wake early for a job you hated that seemed like it never would end. but life isn't like that. you are a little cowboy, and you ride through the desert before you ride through the forest. and thats just how the trees got planted.

i am smoking a joint in the queensbridge projects
flying away, all swag
and this finger pattern is me justifying my existence. what does it mean to be more conscious than the next? i am no happier for it. can you take it for granted, consciousness. can you feel undeserving of it. can you be working on appreciating it and finding a way to not be so undeserving.

when i was 31 years old i would wake from my light sleep to the sound a church bell alarm. the same phone i'd had since i was 26, with the alarm clock noises changed every six to eight months, just to keep things interesting. most of the time i would be hung over. all of the time i would be late. all of the time i would put something in my mouth to smoke. sometimes it was a cigarette, sometimes a weed pipe. getting through the day was not a celebration, it was a rehearsal of numbness. i knew somewhere in my heart that this was not best practice. i really had to do it though. sitting in a padded cell, with the sun making its motions across the sky without my oversight was too painful a vision, it had to be done.

a business is built on two things; excellent customer relations and back breaking labor. i am no golden goose, but i understand that equation and in so doing make myself indispensable. so i listen to the single mothers and broken english. i can nod and sympathize, and give my condolences and my false hope. and i can turn back to my computer and work on the spreadsheets and the hoops brackets that make such class stasis possible.

then i woke up on friends couch. coming down off a white drug high, it was raining outside, the apartment was disgusting. i decided to get a colorful tattoo of a hunt, with the hunted animal over my heart. then i decided to move to denmark. fuck it. fuck this job i hate, fuck these drugs, fuck the grind. i'm going to europe to eat pastries and wear scarves.

Kirkland of Kent

I can tell you now, with science on my side, that someday in the distant future everything that I am doing now that feels easy will seem hard. Despite the fact that I am a habitual easy road taker, despite the fact that I have little to no ability to turn down temptation. There will be a day in the future when I look back on this era and marvel at my ability to do regularly what I do daily. I wish I knew what that thing was. Is it waking up and sitting on the toilet immediately? Is it the ability to be endlessly distracted by the internet? The poop jokes? If I knew I could fortify that part of myself to make sure I never lose it. But no, it is some part of myself so deeply ingrained, to which I am so blind, which I take for granted on such a level that I am not aware it exists.
And I notice, to be a hero I do not necessarily need to follow the exact same path as my heroes. It is not necessary for me to sell crack to be like Jay-Z. I do not necessarily need to perform in tattered flannel to be like Kurt Cobain. I can be a faithful boring student boyfriend internet browser, grow up to be a mid level banker and maybe grow pot in my basement and still be my own hero. I don't know why. But this is clearly the healthy kind of thing to tell myself. Like eating a pair, but for my psyche.
This is my writing exercise. It was not inspired. I might get joy from reading it later. An average drunk driver has driven drunk 80 times before their first DUI.

Maybe I Was Meant to do Nothing

When I was a younger man I thought of writing stories of an even younger me, building and sailing the boats I think I might be able to when I am older. I thought of the dories and the kayaks, and the garage at my childhood home. The smell of sawdust and epoxy, enjoyed through the filter of a gas mask. It would be a lot of work. The sanding, cutting, measuring, gluing, resting, sawing, drilling, opening, unscrewing, clamping. There would be a lot of clamping. Out on the lake though, in the reeds, in a boat of my own...It would all be worth it. Because I would be as a boy the man I hope to be. The job search of now wouldn't seem so daunting.
I wouldn't feel quite so hopeless, so without a destiny. I after all, had built boats. Yes boats! Not just one. That would never do. I built one and I liked it, but I saw how it could be better. So in a manner consistent with my morals and ideals, I found a good home for my first boat. I knew the boat would be happy there, and the owners were happy to have it. They offered to pay me market value, but I could not accept. It was enough that she found somewhere good to be. Eventually though I relented and let them pay me at least for the materials used. And I set my sights on a larger project, to be done faster and better, with more expert hands.
My first project was something of a puddle jumper. Something to poke through the reeds with. This next project was a little bit bigger. It would do more that float. It would take me away.
But that was all another time. Something that I missed because I couldn't focus. I couldn't understand that value then, of cutting out the easy things for the things that are hard but worth it.
And now I am a man without a boat, without a story about a boat, and without a passion. I am meant to do nothing. To reflect on the reflection in the water of a boat that I have built in my mind in 9 minutes. The water is still. Flecks spray off the bow as I paddle with a big dumb shit eating grin. In this world all my answers to questions scaled one through ten are smart, well informed, unique and insightful. I know what I want because I have a passion for passion. Employers love that.

On a scale of one through ten how helpful is it to ask questions scaled one through ten?

A million little b-holes shining in the night

there is no time
there is no apartment
it is only me
half drunk
putting dishes in the sink
performing surgery
on birds of prey

i am in quite the writey mood this morning. good for me. good for my brain. you know what i did? i drank some water before i went to bed. yeah, yeah thats the ticket. anyways, i wrote down my dream and then i wrote an email and i chatted online and now here i am writing this writing with my writing writing. i am so smart and amazing. and you know what else? i have to take a shit. a big shiny shit with sprinkles. oh its gonna be a doozy. a boozey doozy you floozy. yup, a nice big turd right in the old slop bucket. a brown gremlin. a dodge dart of a fart. a world apart. thats the poo that i'm gonna take. its probably gonna have some banh mi sandwich in there, some corn bread, some beans and tomatoes, some oranges, maybe some eggs and turkey bacon. look, the list goes on and on. whats important here is that i drank some coffee and it is giving my poo the old high step out the b-hole and into the ocean. thats where poo goes right? good, i thought so. i am writing this down pretty fast. does that mean that i'm going to regret it later? yeah! fuck yeah! i'm gonna regret the shit out of this. take that present. maybe i'll have donuts for my breakfast. or maybe for dinner. haha. silly slut joke from me. donuts are not dinner food, silly slut me. slut slut slut. fun word. real fun. i took out a yogurt to eat about an hour ago. i only kinda wanted to eat it then, but now it is warm and i have to poo. back in the fridge with you, you gay little yogurt cup. yup, someday these words will be famous and everyone will give me money blow jobs. perfect, perfect. ok, im done with this now.

Love,

2 of 2

a very old man died last saturday
surrounded by family in his bed
the moon shone on waves of grain
and the corn grew another leaf

 that old man was my dads dad, my grandfather. long for this earth he was. older than 90. three times as old as i am. 3.46 times as old as i am. maybe even more times older than i am. the last time i saw him we were at a hotel in new york. he bought me lunch. he was with his new wife of 30 years. we made small talk. his hearing was bad. gotta go back to work now. i love you, i'll see you later. well, that was a lie. the impending became the happening. we all die. we are all going to die. it will be specific when it happens to us. but the idea is so vague and far away. it is a horse on a hill and life is the yapping dog at our feet. dont kick the dog. dont ride the horse. go down to the river and go for a swim. let the sun burn your skin. you are in the desert. you are growing apples. this is your orchard. you are king of the bees. the bumps on your back are not an allergic reaction. thats just your body telling you you are narcissistic. some people want to feed that. some people will take your money and tell you your five greatest strengths. and then you sit at your computer and type away the time because you have good music on and you dont want to watch stupid television. its all so bad.

this is the moment you have been waiting for. all cold outside in the summer. all rain and gloom. all light and tomato plants. all potential. all dunks. well, someday you will break another bone. someday the problems of now will be the problems of then. you'll stop needing therapy and be old. you will accept things. you will peak. and then you will be on the glorious back slope. sliding down with your heels in the dirt. what can you do really to win the game? outlive the opponent. not in tennis. not in basketball. but in the real competition. in life. in the system of chaos. capitalism. marxism. buttholism. alcoholism. this is step two hundered and six oh four. i took four shits today. i wrote some letters and some emails. i told some lies. i smiled meekly. i accepted it. i woke up. i rode my bike. i woke my muscles up. a homeless man told me 'peace out man' and i looked him in the eye and smiled. peace out man. i dreamed i was in prison last night. then i got in my shitty car and drove away. my boots were too small.

these are very specific images in my mind. these are memories that shape my ideas about a part of the world and a part of my family. a part of my own father and a part of my life. a part of my childhood that is a mystery. i still dont know what that smell was. or why i pissed in the bath tub and thought he wouldnt notice.

last night before i called my sister and found out my grandfather had passed away i was riding my bike home in the dark after class. i thought about my own father, my grandfathers son. i thought about the day when he will pass away. and i thought i might play a tennis tournament for old men and win it in his honor. the thought was so beautiful and impossible that it made me cry. not pedaling, just letting gravity pull me down the hill to my home.

bowflex

shit on a tit with a zit on it. then the tit zit pops and the shit gets in the sore. the zit ooze is rushing out while the poo goo is rushing in. its a violent cross tidal cesspool of white blood cells and brown poo juice. the infection becomes infected. it grows and grows until...third tit. tit on tit next to tit. infection tit. i put my head in the haircut machine today. they've really worked out the kinks on those kinky little devils. my head is as clean and aerodynamic as an egg with wings. also that egg went through the dishwasher earlier, so it is clean and a little bit hardboiled and definitely not ever going to turn into a chicken. now my hats will fit more loosely and i will look like a true professional. stats it horrible, i guess you probably could have guessed. there is something about teachers with strong asian accents that schools find irresistible when searching for statistics teachers. its probably because probability being pronounced 'probabirity' is so goddamn funny. anyways, i will work hard and get an A. then i will shit on the teacher behind her back. no, i will start with shitting on the teacher behind her back and then get an A. to all things order must be assigned. be not jealous jew for i am creator of all things, yay. trying to loose all the chunk on my belly so as to reveal the stomach muscles. then i will be happy. oh the happy i will be. beans expand! shit son you dont even know. 6 cups makes a full bowl of beans. well this player knows what to pack when the apocalypse is nigh. some rice on the side. yum yum dum dum. lebron looks like am ubermensch. stronger, faster, smarter, meaner, funnier. if only i could have one more commercial shoved down my throat i'm sure i would be able to make a decision regarding the sandwich i should eat. is it subway? i have no way of knowing. my back cracks. i dunk. i take a dump. i bike. i eat. i clean. i cook. i am important. thank you nature. that sunshine does the trick. pimp.