Pushed?
Pull until they fall with you.
Shushed?
Make a silence so deafening it drives them insane.
If evil strikes your right cheek,
slip that right hand so fast he falls on his face.

Be aggressively passive.
Because fire plus fire just burns down the house.
Be the negative space
Invisible to everyone
but those who are
looking.

And if that maddening silence makes them scream,
(which it very well may)
reply calmly,
but give no ground.
not even an
inch.
and you will do more than win;
you will baffle them.

Because all the
pushers
know to do
is push.


They’ve never seen someone like you.
someone so
avoidantly
direct.
so deafeningly
quiet.
so precise in chaos.

You’re like negative space.
and you baffle me
because when I push
you pull
until I fall over myself.
When I roar a lion’s roar
you are a mouse

Yes, you are a puller
and I am a pusher
and I am so
astonishingly
fascinated
by you.

Breathe, breathe on.
let's sit across from each other
so we can
breathe
each other in.

I can smell the pheromones
in your hair
from the next room over
I'm listening to
you
pack the last of your
things
and I'm asking myself if you're really
trying
to make that much noise
or if you're just
******.
and you shout that I'm being an *******
and start to leave
and I wonder if you can smell
the *****
on my breath
when I say
"bye."

and I wonder if you really misheard me when I slurred it
or if you just wanted to hear me say
something
else.

And I wish there were something else I could say
to make everything better
and put you on the other side of that closed door
so we could sit
and breathe
each other in
and get high
on the tension
on the pheromones
on the *** stained on my breath.

But you're not.
You're outside
and I'm inside
and I can't hear you breathe
or sing
or cry
or say our names
separated by a miles-long ampersand
or whatever it is you're saying to whoever you're saying it to.

and instead I'm just getting high on cheap cigarettes and cheap ***
thinking about
everywhere
that's not the bed I have to sleep alone in tonight
thinking about
everywhere
you could be riding that bicycle.
thinking about
anything
I could have invented to say to you
but it has all been said.

So breathe on,
and I'll try to do the same
between the long drags
and drams of cheap *****.
and in time, maybe
there will be
something
to be said.

A chasm stretches itself before me.
And I will cross it
But it is not so simple as that even
I will make it so that no-one will have to cross it ever again.
Casting a chain from my side, I find a hold on the other
I swing to it
Then I begin to dig
Digging deep into the earth I pull the chain behind me
Together, we emerge from the side of the cliff I just clambered across
I pull at the knots I have tied for handholds
I pull with all the force I can bear
The ground shakes and I have slack
I toss the remainder of what I have to the top of the opposing cliff
And shimmy across it.
Reaching the fallen end, I begin digging anew
I emerge after tunneling once again
And
Heave
With everything I was born with
With all of the matter that comprises my feeble,
Fragile
Human
Frame;
Nay, with
All
That I am.
The opposing side of the chasm shakes
It groans in the protest of a thousand-year sleep
It presses even against me
But I pull it all the same
Inches
Closer
And with it a length of chain
Which I use to throw to the opposing side
Which I use to climb
Which I use to pull
Which I use to throw
Which I use to climb
Which I use to pull
Which I use to stitch this colossal divide back together
With all that I am I am pulling these two opposing forces
And there is
NOTHING
That will stop me
From burrowing into the ground
And pulling these earthen demons
This great sleeping wound
Together
I will mend this
Or I will
die
trying.

I stared into a void, deep, wide, and truly awesome
and felt as though I were a single grain of sand in the belly of the ocean
infinitesimally small
and the void stared too,
back into me
and I wondered how I must look to it
a blinding light?
a void of equal size?
perhaps it perceived me as I perceived it
More likely, I was virtually invisible
something to be ignored
for what is being in a sea of non-being?
and I grew tired of this, this void
this great and mighty nothingness
and I began to fill the space with being
faster and faster
I grew and it changed
from nothing to
something
and something filled in all the cracks where nothing had been
and twisted and contorted to form shapes
and waves of somethingness across a background of nothing
and this sea, this
great and mighty somethingness
surged high and drowned out the nothing
until there was only something
and there was no nothing
and everything was exactly the same.
but I realized this was the same as when
there was only nothingness
and without negative space
there was no difference
between what I am
and what was
before.

But,
there was one space.
a space
infinitesimally
small
which was blank
a point of something in a
sea
of nothing
I watched it for a long time
and I am
sure
it too, was watching me.

I’ve been going to this boxing gym and training every week.
And everyone there is fighting something
You can see in their
Eyes
They’re punching their dad
Or they’re punching
Whoever their wife is sleeping with
Or they're punching
Their kids who ignore them
Or they’re punching
Themselves.
Their boss
Their job
Their alcohol problem
Their poverty
And every week we get to fight our problems together
And we’re exploding inside.
What?
You can’t fight your problems?
It’s not only that I can.
I will.
And do.
Because crying alone isn’t good enough
Because all that fire you build up inside you has to go somewhere
Or it’ll burn you alive.
So you throw it into the heavy bag
Or into the guy you’re sparring
Or into the ground you run on.


We’re all fighting something
So what about you?
What are you fighting that’s so ******* important?
No, don’t tell me.
Tell that heavy bag.
He listens.
He listens when your wife doesn’t give a ****
He listens when it doesn’t even matter
Tell these padded mitts.
That one-two punch says more than a twenty-four volume encyclopedia
And speaks more concisely than Churchill or Hemmingway or Ghandi ever did.
Don’t tell me how it feels.
Don’t even try.
Let that punching bag know.
Because you know he’s listening.
And he doesn’t have anything else more important to do.

Every morning I must slay a mighty rusted dragon. His jaws gape as he waits for me. I climb his belly slowly, but persistently. When I reach his mouth I throw myself in. I burst from his stomach and slide down his back and he lies with his wounds and waits for tomorrow. I will slay him again today. These dragons are everywhere, waiting to be destroyed every morning by commuters and diabetics and dialysis patients. We must grit our teeth as the needle pierces the skin or as the engine starts again. We take that bitter pill and emerge victorious. But to what end? The dragon will be waiting the following morning as he always has, as he always will. It is the curse of the modern man. Each day we will slay this dragon until one of us is too weak to fight.

But I know, too, that this dragon is necessary. He is the grain of salt in my morning that seasons the bike ride down his back. I have learned to enjoy riding through the rusted iron bridge that is his throat, and yes, even the climb I must endure to reach it. Each day I must slay this dragon. I must. It is for me that he exists, not the other way around. And I will slay him each day until I am struck by an automobile or die of a blood disease.

So when I rise tomorrow, I will look him in the eye and he will wink. And I’ll know that he is not just a hill capped with a rusted iron bridge. He is the plight of modern men. He is the eternal struggle that must be, else life would be tedium. and we need each other, him and I.

When I wake, I will rise and slay him again.

And again.

And again.

I don’t feel very good
She says and she looks at me with those big doleful eyes and
I say
Oh yeah? What are your symptoms?
And she says I feel far away from you even when you’re next to me
And I say me too
And I’m listening to the staticky scratch of the needle at the end of the record thinking about how far from me I’ve been
And how could I have possibly been close to her when I was so distant
From the present tense
I’m tense in the present tense
And I’m sleepy because in the conditional tense I can do what I want
I want to sleep
And dream about anywhere but the present tense and my single bed with its yellow-tan sheets
And that record’s still skipping and has yet to be flipped and I’m
flipping
but externally I’m ice water
crackling on my wobbly coffee table singing me to sleep so I can dream about something else again
something like meaningless ***
because meaningless *** feels good
in the present tense
and I’m present tense
I’m present tense and future tense and conditionally tense and
I just can’t bring myself to flip that record
Because I lost the tracklist
And I don’t know the lyrics
And what if it’s worse than the first side
So maybe I’ll just listen to it skip
Until the skipping

Puts me



To sleep





Again