(hone in kerosene)

My brain is a cloying scheme, well-prepared (i hope and hope and hope this time) to turn a curious dream of rock and roll mercenaries, drug-addled politics, shotgun shells and trick sex with the dead into a rolling story of erstwhile proportions.

It's time for me to shut the fuck up about the mistakes in running with the press under the auspices that things would work out with my autonomy on top and skin slips on the shelves of every drunk and lonely american.

It's time for me to realize that writer's write and cliches don't die as hard as we'd like to think.

It's time for me to turn the sober clangings of my unconscious into miner's gold that may not get me much of anything noteworthy but will goddamn well put on a glittering show.

It's time for another goddamn book.

Flushed out here, for no one's sake. plotted and broken like the serials of old where kids would save up nickels and dimes just to see the fate of their fucking hero as he took on the world and always came a little bit closer to the top of the heap.

So here goes another nothing, denoted by a lack of parentheticals in the title (as future reference to the annals of posterity).

Rock it, babeez.

(watered wings)

My brain is a tijuana switchblade snuck across the border by a loving father in a manner he hasn't mentioned even three years later now just to earn the smallest bit of respect from the jaded new york son who contended himself long ago that his sophomoric notions of oedipal hatred were completely unfounded (least of all by the somewhat stunningly obvious fact that he never once held the desire to fuck his mother [whether by pussy or mouth - assholes being completely out of the question for the good old heterosexual slant on the standard grecco complex...not that he ever held a lusty yen for her asshole either]) and he could live a life simply accepting that the two of them would never hold much of anything in common and that was fine.

All well and fine.

Besides, he was never much one for the paternal. least, not inasmuchas he could remember. he always loved his father for the most part. loved him as much as he could with a little quiet removal by at least 3000 miles (and closing now that dad's started migrating further into the country away from the state said boy always imagined would crumble off and sink deep into the sea thereby ridding him of certain questionable memories once and for all).

Sure there were times he was unflinchingly close to his pops. but as our boy grew he realized there was much that he couldn't share with dad. his love life. his habits. his mother's affection (she living too even further from his father in principle much more than practice).

He's sure there will even be times ahead when he's glad to have the old man's hand on his shoulder. happy to know that he is loved by a figure wrapped in strong arms and calloused fingers.

For now though, he let's the switchblade sit at the bottom of a lost trunk under a hundred other missing dreams and he goes about his routine of living wondering where the fuck it is he can fit in the world.

Answering the phone from time to time, but never talking very long...

(on returning)

My brain is a whiplash smile full of dreams of forgotten weekends, blurred and obscured by another week of borderline responsibility but by no means lost to the annals of age.

The raft, capturing the flag. billy idol at the top of my lungs with friends and strangers staring with the geese as my head does it's full rotation over a quiet town in pennsylvania. apples. wenches. the love between two pairs of seventeen year old breasts at a tuxedo affaire (of which, we were granted open voyeuristic access so curse you and your legal ramifications). booze. booze. booze. and ten dollar cartons of shit cigars that stain the very quality of the soul (for the better perhaps, though my partner in crime will - no doubt - assume the worst).

But now i don my tweed. i huff one more american spirit (curse you hippies with your expansive mud sticks). listen to the thermals and anticipate another tuesday no different from the rest. work. perhaps sex (but with visitors in town the chance of your skrap getting some good old fashioned loving in appears to be dwindling exponentially).

Maybe a few cocktails to abate the sense that we're all nowhere faster than we could have imagined.

Though i do love the jacket and i suppose that's well worth something.

(blend in ash)

My brain is fucking freebird high as hell on the solo that couldn't save ronnie but might bring back rock and roll from the brink of ironic extinction if we only canned the calling out every time a lull falls over the crowd and we, the jackass, feel the empowering need to be something like timeless or witty.

Or just fucking heard.

Personally, i don't much need it anymore. though my heart craves the benevolent attention of the world i've always wanted to save, i just don't really give two shit if there's a single soul out there in this pixelated land listening to me. turning my way. at least, not if i have to throw myself down a well to get a prick at their ears.

Shit, i can howl louder than the best of them. i can scream and shout until my throat closes up and my mind starts to die slow and lonely from the lack of oxygen and the veins pulsing in my neck as the once human sound i was making reduces itself into a promethean cry of overwhelming despair worth it's weight on my struggle for all the good it might do if it finds the right person at the right time and they know just why it is i'm still standing here.

And they give a fuck.

If they can.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not copping along the ranks of the misunderstood. i know well the capacity for human understanding and long ago gave up the pipe bomb dream of being enigmatic. fuck it. i'm just a man. a pasty, sleepless man with all the right inentions (or enough to get me by with some part of my karma in tact) and all the wrong distractions.

All i'm trying to do is find an appropriate action.

Maybe one day i will and i'll shake the core of heaven. maybe i'll die a failure attached to nothing but regret.

Either way i'll keep on yelling. i'll keep on tapping. i'll keep on banging my head and smoking my cigarettes in the hope that one day i finally do fucking get it and can muster the balls to burn this whole big motherfucker down.

It's worth a shot anyway.

I mean really, what the fuck did you do today?

(asiding)

My brain is an ass knife...

(to the phoenix)

My brain is a cup of black coffee, cold and waiting in the sun for the flies to arrive or the half-naked boy shaking off his hangover with anything and everything available to his limited power as a man (usually reserved to the staples of porn, cigarettes and some hair of the dog that bit the shit out of his swollen ass the night before and somehow managed to hold on through the morning).

Though it shouldn't be.

I've been told coffee's one of the worst things i can do for my body these days (though i'm sure the drinking really doesn't help all that much) but it's hard for me to give a damn about that when the air is bright and the day lies huge and possible ahead of me.

Because, damnit, i need it.

Need it like i need against me. jingle jangle screaming emphatics about new sensations well-passed rock and roll. sinking floridas and revolution in three-chords, the truth and a fractured voice i've been longing for longer than i even knew.

Not like those ad bands. fuck them (save the smush. smush? tika, etc. who brough the legitimacy back to a night of shticks, cheap costumes and tired ironies as disused jokes told at the party too late to sound like punchlines anymore). fuck their projected future. fuck their glass awards. fuck their afterparties. fuck their words and fuck their trade.

I just don't have time for it.

Not when rocktober's just around the corner and i can goddamn assure you all the sweat will be flying from the backs of bands that mean every note more each time it comes strangled out of burning amplifiers. hot snakes. crooked fingers. mclusky. blood brothers. against me (of course). etc.

Men on the verge of shimmering collapse. trying to make that perfect sound. that sonic whirl of faith in the power of a chord. a sound. a break in the doldrums that bind our pop culture to the slow end of western civilization, the great expansion that made us whole.

Men who bring it. men who break it. men who burn only to rise again every night on a dim stage before the screams of the few who finally fucking get it.

I can't wait to be there, eyes tight and fist pumping mad in the air.

(stifled stomp)

My brain is a fucking ramone.

Dead, convoluted and desperate for some clue to help me forget that soon enough on this saturday morning i'll be up and claiming allegiance to whatever group the organizers tell me to.

This is scavenger weekend after all. the nexus around which the whole social calendar rotates. it is the end all, be all of fucking reckless debauchery wherein all rules are off, all game is on and the winner is crowned with nothing but responsibility and a trophy.

I'm ready.

Six string hung up. eyes glazed over. too many beers down and too many smokes up and soon i'll be there alongside my partner in crime and all the miscreans searching out the chance to establish themselves into the rhetoric.

But i've made a promise this night.

This morning, i've vowed to represent the hapless anarchy that so marred our friendships right from the beginning. this morning i put my life and limb on the line for a goddamn thing i wasn't meant to be involved in but now am glad to be too far along to mistake.

Wish me well, babeez.

Wish me well...

(shuffle simpleton)

My brain is a canadian amatuer, welcoming in the wet, grey New York City morning with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. half-naked save for the penguin shorts i should've abandoned long ago but i can't help but hold on to because it's nice to have an attachment to the past that's innocent (even if it is an undergarment, it's not so hard to remember a time when underwear wasn't just a portal between me and making sexy sexy times with a lady friend).

The partner in crime doesn't seem to mind though. she has attachments of her own. not that the penguins have ever come between us. i'd like to think i have a little more tact than that (though not much, friends. not much at all) and would opt for something marginally more grown-up (indication enough) if my aim in life is to woo and seduce or even get lucky with that cheshire grin i still remember waking up to when i was seventeen on my grandparents' couch, a high school sweetheart upstairs and the implausible realization that i was, in fact, no longer of the virginal world.

I hope that naivete never changes, otherwise this sex thing gets fucked and i'm far too attached to let that happen.

I think.

Yep.

I am.

Heh. heh. heh.

(flame on)

My brain is a firestorm too late in the evening.

(o, flayed)

Better yet, my brain is a fucking lithmus test soaked too long in the alkali and the last few days i've been wrapped up in some nonsense submission kick wherein i've resolved to be something damn near like a nice person and, as a result, my petty cloys have turned inward and slowly begun to eat what little wit i had rattling around my cranium into the fucking oatmeal i know eat on a regular basis just so i can maintain some consistency in my shits.

Good god.

This isn't right. this isn't right at all.

It's close to 1am on a thursday which means the weekend is essentially here. my girlfriend's out enjoying cocktails on the heels of new york city which is right the fuck where i ought to be, but instead...instead i've holed myself up in the southeast corner of my little cove, going blind with hour after hour in front of this idiot box for the sole purpose of trying to create something. anything.

A fucking blog.

A fucking blog?

It's better than nothing, i will ruefully admit but there's no way this damn thing will sustain itself (even if it doesn't manage to land a place on anyone's fucking favorites) if it's pursued under the auspices of me finally turning into a fully-fledged benevolent human being.

Not that i'm that wretched a shit. far from it, actually. but i do have the tendency to be a bit of a caustic bastard and i was struck with the notion on monday that i'd be best served to just turn around and change that. relish kind words over profanity. lend a hand instead of a finger. accept the flaws of my fellow apes as intrinsic niches in the armor that would go best unaddressed in favor of their shinier bits.

Fuck that.

Truth is i'm an angry young man. i have been since i was thirteen. not all the time, mind you. i enjoy orchids and poetry as often as i can. i'm in love. i've loved before. love. love. love. i fucking love everything. but it's in my nature to grow inordinately pissed off. to grind my teeth and chain smoke while tearing the quick right the hell out of my fingertips just to keep from letting contempt get the best of me.

Sometimes it works. i suppose that's why i've got this fucking mountain of habits. but you know what? i don't give a damn. my habits are mine and so is my rage and this little forum here seems like the perfect goddamn epicenter for me to espouse them all.

Among other things, i imagine.

Shit, you can't be angry all the time.

You'd just be a bitch then and that's not sexy. no my friends, that isn't sexy at all.

(filet-o!)

My brain is a fish.