four AM

Four'o'clock appears to be a recurring time in the sorts of things I read. Poe has the narrator of "A Tell Tale Heart" muse about how it's still as dark as midnight at that time, Wally Lamb's Dolores of She's Come Undone can only deal with life at college at a time like four in the morning, and Tao Lin has a poem called "4:30 a.m." which consists of the line "I am fucked existentially" repeated for at least 90% of the poem, I'd say. So here we are, it's just past four, and I'm playing catch up. The titles in this batch are all quotes if you care to look them up.

(73)
I used sleep on your couch
some nights
when I was too drunk to drive home
at least until your kid brother grew up
just like his father
and became another alcoholic.

It feels
at times
like we didn't exactly fall apart
but were torn asunder
by something more than us
something stronger than we would ever be.

And now I lie awake at nights sometimes
and consider possibly picking up the phone
and dialling any number
of phone numbers
just to here someone say "Andy"
aloud.

It isn't hard
to get trapped in this body
--in fact it is much harder to escape.
Several hours passing
without hearing my own voice,
some days I feel like I'll never be able to speak again.

And now what I want to ask you
is what your definition of love is
and how that's supposed to change
when we've moved on
and will never see each other again.
Since I'm just a shit poet

and I've always known you for a person who could deliver a much more beautiful and brilliant turn of phrase, although you would not notice it, and would instead move some hair behind your ear and smile at me sheepishly.


"When you have to shoot, shoot; don't talk. "
In the heat of the moment,
it makes sense.
And handling a gun,
fighting a war,
are horrible conditions to be under.

But really
just because you are angry
over some stupid thing I said
doesn't allow you to run your mouth
and say things you don't mean.

Language is unnatural
and everything we say
is contemplated and mulled over in our mind
so I do believe it is right for me
to define people on what they say.


(75)
Stage fright
is what I call writing
anymore
because I think to myself,
if this is a useless
narcissistic exercise
if no one reads it
or no one enjoys doing so,
then I guess it has to be pretty good,
and the only judging that I have of that
is if it feels good
and that's a rare thing indeed.

However,
it seems
in the end
a cop out,
I guess,
to simply externalize the ideas
--dehumanize the writer--
and call it a muse.
So I take full credit
for what I create
for better
or as is likely more often
for worse.


"All I ever meet is witty bastards."
Roger is going to be big one day,
he's going to be a star,
cowriting a movie with Jack Hobby
who's got good birth on his side.

Word on the street is
that besides Roland being strapped,
DB is going to meet this young upstart
and call him the future of Hollywood.

Such schmucks,
Lennon would've called them
"fucking peasants"
and he'd've been right.


(77)
You ran through the forest
when you were a little kid
and learned how to start a fire
with all that you could find.

So I'm sure you don't call it
"monkey hair"
but you gather your tinder in much the same way
as the best scouts I have known have done.

And for everything I've learned
this was the one thing I could never pick up on.
So pitiful--
the primitivist poet cannot see himself in the wild

an independent man.


"At bidding of vast formless things"
Perhaps my favorite poem
is "The Conqueror Worm"
and possibly that says something about me.

You have to wonder
sometimes
if you really believed in psychoanalysis
in someone probing into your mind through questions
if you would want to know the answers
that would tell you what kind of person you are.

Is faith not a beautiful thing?
And as far as mathematics goes,
I would rather not take it to bed,
so I must say that there are other things
to be found in this world
that elicit the odd sort of stirring
somewhere in my brain
an uncertain feeling because of its irregularity
or its omnipresence.

I don't want to
know everything.
I see no
reason for that.
No benefit.
Nor do I see it
as possible.
In fact I call
"know" a pompous verb.
For you still can't answer Edgar, with any seriousness when he writes
"Today I wear theses chains, and I am here.
Tomorrow I shall be fetterless!-but where?"


(79)
When the
biggest black hole
in the whole freaking universe
blinks,
and millions of people
catch it doing so
on their camera phones,
you'll still be stuck in your two bit
McJob,
won't you?

I hate to say this because I know I'm not bound to end things,
but we have like
absolutely no future
for either of us,
do we?

Much less together.


"In my story...but I don't have a story."
He's simply
an only child
who lives a boring life
and is compelled
to write
for some sort of escapism

or so he assumes
but it very rarely
shows itself in some sort of catharsis
something leaving forever
an idea studied for much too long
let go to fly away

no
rather he is simply gone
elsewhere
for the moments when he speaks in his head
and writes down
what he's saying to himself.

It's craziness
and he is clearly
not always a stable individual
and contributes little to society,
but then again, (hopefully)
he isn't really hurting anyone with his delusions.

If the world were run
simply based on Bentham
and not so directly tied
to this Platonic form of truth,
then I would say that solitary delusions
are helpful things

perhaps even something to be studied,
like personal cultures
in a way,
and we're getting there,
because Culture is dying
and "subculture" is simply a misnomer.