Anything Helps: Exploits of a dark matter technician, Part ONe

The Book was Better

            My father was not a storyteller, feelings have no form, words are not action and I was barely born. My perception has always built up, always stayed the same. Every breakthrough is hardly a change. The odds of elegance is the grace of eloquence. The cost of consequence simplifies the remainder. Ambiguous discrepancy management eliminated technology, the deficiency of human error. Discipline is ignorant of flavour.

          My brother is very much my father’s son and my sister my mother’s daughter, and yet I am my own, at sheer odds of my own world. I know my own birth as well as my own death, under assumption of its existence.

          I know what books are, they are either what movies were or what they will be. We are grandfathered into this system and like to forget who started it. We are only twice removed but sometimes it seems so difficult just to pick up the phone, just to say hello. It is expensive, the expense to toil over just so we may have the option of perspective, the opportunity of perception.

          I know what you’re doing. I’m not going to let it stand. I’m following your rules so they may forget, so I may remember; I am my own, you have seen to that.

          His hair turned red as soon as I knew he was becoming angry with me. It was obvious that he was shaking because I was. Maybe I should declare my candidacy as a free man. Maybe I’m afraid for no good reason. Maybe I’ve been lying for all the wrong ones.

          An impossible situation, we don’t understand how this can be, me as you and you as me. We confused her with our misleading argument, two trucks fully fueled.

          Does our house like you better than me, can it tell the difference? Do the neighbors understand what they see? Has this really all been happening to me?

          Let’s celebrate our repetition and dance to demonstrate admission, regrets are far and few between, so listen good to see what I mean. It doesn’t matter what people say, we’ll get around fine anyway. I’ve been stoned so long that now, it doesn’t matter anyhow. Retrace the steps so long as they count, no matter how deep the quicksand is we loose the noose and jimmy the lock so we may in time get out.

           

Blink Ink

      

“Angels no longer have wings when they realize there’s nowhere left worth flying to.”

       Upon waking you have been given an ice cream cone. You have never seen one before but you know exactly what it is, and upon this realisation its continual 2-dimensional frame becomes seemingly fake, you forgetting the simple names you thought you knew. Alternating darkness shrouds both the ice cream and its frame, and you have no ideal urge to reach out and grab it. You’re already holding it. The dessert is pink, perfectly formed and unmalting. It doesn’t even seem cold. The medical office where you are inclined doesn’t even seem occupied, and you know it’s late, it’s probably dark outside but the room doesn’t have windows. You take a bite and plummet back into unconsciousness, but it’s okay, you still have a sense of flavour and an overwhelming trust in your rigor mortis like grip, assuring you from dropping it. The substance moves in your mouth, over and around your tongue, and the flute gets louder and louder from over the mountain. Your entire plane of perception goes pink from behind closed lids as the sun slowly rises over the mountain. Birds chime in with morning song, as well as a clarinet and lightly rolling timpany. When you now open your eyes, ice cream doesn’t exist yet.

      

I knew I had lived a lifetime with her, retracing my steps and I don’t want to lose it. She had put the cat in the bag. She developed a crutch and was slowly changing.

the elevator was broken.

I was in socks

I had a drug problem

I knew by her acne that she was younger than me, Asian grace Kelly. She touched me and I touched back, under the dark sun. My friends would disapprove, we were too similar to everything we once cherished and now remember. Her family liked me because I was so out of place, I didn’t make sense and they wanted to understand. But as we left the restaurant I placed their god on the trashcan; I had no other choice, I was in a big hurry. The only other white people were two female sushi chefs who bowed as we left.

Yes They Could

          Cursive is a dying art; I swear the next generation will have no idea what I’m talking about. We don’t need it, not in the age of passwords, those essentially personal beings. It’s not our name, number or combination but a reciprocal, something required to prove it’s us. Otherwise it could be anyone, just as long as they’re here and now.

It doesn’t make sense to argue anymore, to inflict bloodshed or to expect death. The only difference makes all the difference, between you and me, man and woman, immortality and eternal life. The only way to press on is to push the envelope, when we only get tired of keeping it to ourselves.

I am a genius, an expert, a professional. I don’t care what others say or do because they don’t exist, not like we do, nowhere near as well. Very possibly they will have their time or have had it, just as well, in the blink of a weeping eye it’s gone, blurred from memory, never to return. All that remains is the fundamental truth that we’re all in this together, regardless of gender and sex.

We will not, may not move forward unless and until we agree. It is our job to convince each other, to ring a bell and call it a key, to break the bread we were told to so long ago and far from here.

A ticking alarm clock fades in and explodes. . .

          They call them duezies here because if you’re wielding one it’s practically impossible not to end up in a duel, and someone thought they should have a cute nickname. Harvey shot me twice in the gut and I lay there feeling myself bleed out as I thought about him running down the corridor, up the stairs, then confidently striding across the lobby and back to where he was sitting, picking up his newspaper where he left off and lighting another cigarette. Or maybe Truman had been following him. Maybe he had to casually walk out that door, hail a cab and lose him in afternoon traffic. Or maybe my hunch was right all this time, maybe it’s all in my mind and I just shot myself twice in the gut. Anyway, it’s not going to bring April back, I know that much.

          Now that I think about it, I haven’t been shot. I’m lying down because I was tired, I’m not bleeding out. My eyes aren’t even open. I’m sleeping in the hotel basement because I’m hiding, hiding from someone who does not exist. Jesus Christ, how was I supposed to know I’m just a character in a story, one I came up with and wrote down? It only keeps happening over and over because I keep reading it, a little different every time because of where I am and how I feel. I only really didn’t care about her when she told me she didn’t care about me anymore, as if she ever did, but that’s still not gonna bring her back.

          Now where was I? Where have I been? Oh yeah, a ticking alarm clock explodes, an insignificant action. This world was invented when the slave decided to be its own master and not the other way around.

          I don’t know what her question means to me anymore, I don’t even remember how she put it, what she looks like. Who is April May? She could be anybody, any slight subtlety that possesses me to a second glance. Because it only has to happen twice.

          The average lifespan of a human is nine months, which is completely relative, the formative consumption is due to the light that hits it. We’re all in this together, this Hell, with airtight talents and a proclivity to jealousy, for power, for the other half, for vice. Take care of yourself, she said, but not because she wants to see me again. No, just the opposite. She doesn’t want to care anymore, not for me. I told her not to worry, that means it’s over for us. A lot of good we’ve done each other; I’m broke and she’s poor. It doesn’t matter. In a world of hurt it doesn’t matter.

          The low hum caught my attention and then I noticed the shadows moving, no longer standing still, a creature of wrath, a choking sentinel for enduring residue. My friend, I know who I am and what I have become, the terror of my own heart, my father, the true calling of justice.

         

King Richard of Potatoe

          I am a dark matter technician amid harbingers of desultory circumlocution, I used to think we were the same until I realize our clashing epistemologies, our antagony, that we don’t really get along. What we have is not love, not for each other, and we are too far from each other learning to get it right.

       I’m the guy that cares for everything you take for granted, you don’t need examples because that’s my job and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of the same thing over and over. It’s time for a change.

       As long as I write I only become more right, only become more of a writer. I forget how easy it is to fix things because everywhere I look is a solution that I don’t really want. They are only there to fix the mistakes of others.

       I’ve been getting nausea quite frequently too, a very physical reminder that I can’t do this forever even if I wanted to. I’m not living here like I have to even though I do. To make a choice is to choose and it doesn’t really matter anyway.

       It will get colder soon only after it remains warm, the moment of forever is closing in you’re doing a good job keeping up.

Toxic Markers

         

I found myself in her room again, a master of self control. My underwear were crumpled on the floor in the daylight and I was going through her jeans looking for ones that might fit. She was in the other closet watching a small television inside hanging clothes. “You gotta see this one,” she said.

        I had just been all the way downstairs, at church, where I had been midwriting my band’s name on an elaborately geometrical glow in the dark surface when an uncontrollable filth obviously took over and I had to get out of there. It was dark but I found the switch for the overhead fluorescence. My mind was racing as I thought where I could go to get cleaned up, but I was only still drawn to the room.

        Perpetual daylight, they’ve thought of everything. Why have I been living in a cave when it’s been so gorgeous lately? Have I done something wrong? Of course, if I can’t remember, I must’ve lost my place whilst dramatically avoiding cliche. It naturally hurts to be wanted only when you know they hate you back, that it will be over soon and it won’t make a fucking lick of sense. I’m indifferent to her charm, her sensible ways, because well, I don’t want to hurt her feelings but I just don’t find her attractive. She’s got a winning smile that I don’t believe, that I find misleading and it’s only a matter of time before she hates me back. That’s why she won’t help me. She’s sick of the sight of me. Can’t stand to be around.