12/20/08

The problem with a liquid is that it evaporates.
The problem with solids is that they'll erode away.

I'm Made of Particles

I've been calling in sick since the day that I left you. I lay in bed until 3pm. Its been something like two months, I need to get out of this house. I don't know this place without you here. So I'm taking a trip south to the beach. Its an 8 hours drive, I hope this piece makes it there. I hear its its warm now this time of year. I've been cold (and every other cliche) without you here. I guess I'm trying to say that I miss you, I'm sorry, please come back.

12/4/08

Ugh, Bro, You're Really Harshing My Mellow

Well, yeah, we know you look so great staring down from your high horse, standing on your glowing cloud, etc, etc …etc. You made your point. You really need that label. Yeah. You really need everyone to know. You’re not a drunk, just a loud mouth. You’re not high, just stupid. We all get it. We ALL get it. You’re so pure and you’re so good, yeah, you’re so much better. Well I’m out of here, and you’re just talking to hear yourself now. The only pressure I’ve ever gotten is from your side (probably because you’re so right). I just want you to know that it’s okay just to live your life. No need to sleeve your morals. No need to force your opinions. You’re almost as bad as Christians. Just as much of a hypocrite. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t fuck and be sure to let everyone know you really need that label.

I Consider This Proof That Doctors Are Gay

We made out and I got whatever you’ve got. My throat wakes me up I’ve got that constant cough. Fuck this stuffy nose, I just want Theraflu and cold nights next to you. It’s been two weeks and I’ve just been toughing it out. An apple a day, that’s what they say, but I’m downing cherry syrup and making my life a haze. I painted monsters and some airplanes dropping bombs because I really have no idea what the fuck is going on. You keep me up until 7. I swear I’ll never get better. I’m coughing my lungs up. My nose won’t stop running. It’s fucking pathetic, I can’t help but sweat it because I’ve got this fever and I hope it lasts all year. Bring me cough drops and Chap Stick and soup and some movies. Bring me your legs across mine. Bring me anything as long as you’re here. You keep me up until 7, I swear I’ve never felt better, I’ve got this fever that I hope will last all year.

11/4/08

Lost my grip. Now I’m floating aimless in an ocean of skin that’s faltering. Too rocky an endeavor to not affect my withering bones, the way the ice storm froze your water colder than I could believe. This atlas is old and these islands are mapped incorrectly. I found myself in the uncharted latitudes and longitudes’ meeting place and stranded off the coast of anything that should mean anything to me. I carved this grid into the skin between my teeth so I could come back and drown myself when I get tired of losing sleep.

This IS A Love Song

Fuck this fucking planet, fuck the fucking world. I’m tired of being great, its getting fucking old. Darkness screams my name and begs me to stay asleep. I grip my jaw so fucking tight I crack my fucking teeth. I want to punch a hole through the entire fucking world. I want to fight a speeding bus and end up in fucking hell. I want to blow your fucking head off with a shotgun through my brain. I want to fucking kill myself when I just see your face. FUCK.

9/19/08

Make your millions, flattened city, cover your culture. Stretched your skin too thin, you crushed your beauty under the weight of golden arms. Now this is a worthless ship sailing on the naked tides of an empty ocean. I can see the snakes from up high slithering through your grid work. Congratulations lovely, you’ve killed one thing I adored, but I’ll decorate this city with the names of what you lost.

9/17/08

Crying on my doorstep, filthy with instigation. Weave your web someplace else, little spider. I need some time to grieve. Wishing without hoping because I know your day will come. Sorrow spread so fucking thin that my lips can’t feel it rushing down. Brick-faced indignation, chest-piercing stares. We settled for so little but you cried until you got what was theirs. Make molehills out of thin-air, and mountain-size your world. I’ve got shoulders fit for weighted means, but nothing like your words. Dusty resolutions made clean with little effort became the revolution you yearned to cling to. Forget your own four seasons and make weather all yours. We can live in a sea of regrets as long as the water’s warm.

9/16/08 #2

Meander somewhere between distance and dissonance. Scar the tissue of the wasted words. Scatter smiles. Place the fault on the shoulders of reason. Make an effort to scour it clean. Waste these letters on burning paper. Write your name on all the ashes. This is the following message. The recorded voice right after the siren. This is worse than living. This is the feeling of waiting in the wings.

9/16/08

This world is folding over. You looked but you leapt anyway. How does it feel falling? How does it feel falling toward yourself? Repetitions of repetitions. Scratch your way out of the mud. You can feel your lungs getting smaller. You can feel yourself giving up. Moving like slow-motion, gears grinding you to dust. You swear you found the answer to everything. You scream that you’re not lost. I watch you splinter. I watch your lips shake. I can see the way the ocean swallows things that it’s never even seen.

8/19/08

My eyes perceive nothing but black skies outside these dusty walls. They crave the sun, but little do they know...its out there waiting. Its out there waiting to attack and bounce off them blinding. Send me away, tell me “Oh, boy, don’t you dare come back.” Well, I won’t. No, but not because you said those words to me. No, I won’t be back, but not because you told me anything. My eyes can’t see anything but black skies past your shining face. They know me. They know how I’m going to change. Yeah, they see me. They see walking away like I won’t come back, but I will be. Little do they know...

8/4/08

I have absolutely no one that I can talk to about everything that is making me feel like I'm being crushed. It all effects anyone I could talk to in some way or the people are having equally as trying times.

As of now I am financially fucked, which is making me emotionally fucked. Work is definitely not helping. I'm in over my head, with my hands tied, and everyone is asking me why I can't swim over and over and over. Its almost to the point where I can't take it. I fight panic attacks all day long and thats wearing on me too. I need to see someone, but seeing as I have no money ever, I'm not sure how.

For the next two months or so I will be living in forced poverty so I can try and get back on my feet, but even then the well can only hold so much water before all of the thirsty people have drained it dry. What then?

Late:
Rent
Gas
Electric
Cell phone
Car insurance
Loans from my mom to take care of previous late rent/gas/electric/cell phone/insurance.

I just don't know what to do at all. I feel like an utter failure.

Manhattan

The air swims around me, thick. Thick like the blood chugging on through my veins. Thick like thieves. Basically the same thing. Time is running out for us. The clock-piece cogs are falling all over Brooklyn while my father tells me all my dreams are drowning, which is ironic, this being a dream and all. A life wasted for the want of some sort of reaction. Nuclear, to be clear here. Platonic always sounded like something that glows green anyway, right? Something cancer-causing. This doesn’t mean a thing. Hospitalize me for the way I think, suffocate me in medicine and bleach white sheets. This isn’t me. Will someone tell everyone this just isn’t me, please? Glass shatters strong when it hits the streets. Silver timepiece broken, stopping everything. Wake me up. I need the secrecy of her smoky bedroom. I need the sweet smell of her skin. I need to shake myself awake to those bright brown eyes and curly blonde hair. Someone pinch me please.

6/19/08

Riding the train is so good for getting focused in the morning. I just stare at the city around me, the barbed wire climbing out of the darkness, the fences, the buildings covered in layers of paint to cover up things that they consider ugly. I think its beautiful, but that’s just me, I guess. Someone had something important enough to say that they put it on the side of a building, five feet tall, for everyone to see. The city decides that it is inappropriate. Cover up the art. Disguise the character. Lie to yourselves that this will stop all of the crime. There are no homeless if we cover up these lesions with mismatched paint. Pick up your trash. Litter hurts the environment. That’s what they say while trimming trees and covering the earth in concrete. What will we do when there's no oxygen? You can buy water in a spray can for your face. You can buy compressed air (with a bitterant now because so many kids were just having fun). The downfall of society is reflected in every violent video game, every cuss word on television, every bare breast in a movie. Lift the weight from the shoulders of every parent too busy to take the time out to raise their kids. Bus to school to bus to work to bus to home to the microwave and Saved by the Bell reruns that you set the Tivo to record. Repeat until you think that this is how life is supposed to be. When you were a kid did you dream of growing up to be protected from everything? To be told what’s best for you? To not think or feel for yourself? This is right, this is wrong. Black and white, literally. The world is crumbling and we're caught up with the fact that gay people can or cannot be married. The tomatoes are killing people, or is it the spinach? Gluttony and sloth breed fame and fortune. Do nothing and expect everything. Close your eyes. Go to sleep, and let me do all the thinking for you. I'll change the world. I promise. I'll shape the world from the second train of a light rail car moving at unknown speeds through a city while I fight sleep and make a list of everything I have to do in a day.

Incoherency in the key of E

I spend my days so angry lately.
I guess maybe frustration’s a better word, I just get so grumpy when I’m sleepy.
My eyes are burning as the world moves too fast beneath me.
You and I lay, barely breathing, in the shallow water of the evening,
“I want you to love me”
So I pull you closer to me and I kiss your lips so deeply,
“I’m not going anywhere, sweetie.”
It’s my honesty that always seems to get the best of me.
I’m an open book with transparent pages, everyone seeing through me, it’s so spooky.
I can’t make a move in this town with out feeling a little loopy.
The medication running through me is making the world a little blurry.
Sunlight keeps me blinded as it slowly heats the concrete and I sing:
“Never gain, never again, never again…”,
And I hum a little melody to accompany the broken chorus of my dry-throat.
With my voice cracking I sing:
“…never again.”
A year full of first Christmases and birthdays and Halloween parties I wasn’t dressed for.
I kicked the bucket like a summer storm.
I kicked the bucket like was what I lived for.
I can hear the rain pitter-pat outside and I hope for soaked bones under wet clothes.
Really I just want to be lying next to you, falling asleep in the humidity of the afternoon.
I’m leaving fingerprints on every inch of skin that I can get my hands on and filling my lungs with every scent that will make you linger long after I’ve gone.
I love you like a summer storm.
I love you like it is what I live for.
Waking up the world to the prettiest girl I know.
Her lips like a gulp of water to my own parched, unworthy mouth.
A smile like every sunrise or sunset that I missed when I was too busy trying to catch up on sleep.
She is beauty and I will do my best to love her as such.
She is beauty and I will do my best to love her as such.

Oh, I'm definitely a hypocrite, but at least I admit it.

This is a plagued generation of point and click patriots saving the world with words from the comfort of their homes.

Sign a petition with ones and zeros.

Clothe the homeless with HTML.

Java script food drives.

Whatever you do, don’t go outside.

Join a Facebook group to show you care.

“Save Darfur.”

“No blood for oil.”

“Bring our troops home.”

Don’t let animals die for art, but allow humans to die down the street.

Ignore the issues.

Go to sleep.

It has come to my attention...

Apparently people I don't even know read this. Weird. Introduce yourselves.

Never take your eyes off your opponent, even when you bow.

Between kissed lips and fists clenched we sit.
Drenched in the sweat brought upon us by the weight of the world around us.
The weight of things we know not of but we still hoist heartily like the protest signs of the seventies children.
Back when people stood for something more than themselves.
Back when repeated words spread like a wildfire game of telephone between kindergarten-aged children.
The message is still there, just muddled by the shining lights of the cities.
We can not stand for this.
We can not stand by, ignorant, A small voice echoing between the blankets and dirty sheets of modern politics.

5/6/08

Whisper things to me of how I should be.
Tall tales spun from the shining red lips of priests.
Kiss them to mine.
Take my sin into you, deeply.
You will save me.

You still have my lighter.

I wrote my name on the walls of your apartment
In every dashed hope I could find scattered on your floor.
You just laughed
When I said I liked you.
I laughed when you asked how I knew
Because you’re the one who says I’m always right.

I live with a heart so full of hope that I have no other option than to
be let down.

Constant failure due to the constant unreachable goal.

Self-destruct in t-minus...lips to lips to...boom.

--
jude via sidekick

The reason that preconceived notions are fucking horrible

When she said that she used to be a slut
I thought the worse possible thing
That I could find in my selfish little brain:
"Why couldn't I have known you then?"
And then I felt like throwing up.

04/14/08

I'm going to go around town carving "Jude and Clarice forever" into every tree I find.

Why?

Because I can name my imaginary girlfriend whatever I want.

Well, you can tell....

A year ago I asked God

If I could trade all of my talent

For a really good haircut

So people would accept me.

I still didn't have a lot of friends so

Last night I got drunk

And shaved my head.

Now I can see beauty in everything my eyes touch

And people are returning my phone calls.

Pointless.

If I had a time machine
I'd go all the way back to '93.
Then I wouldn't change anything
About the last 15 years for me.

I love me.

“Beautiful” can’t even begin to describe
The way your face looks when the light hits it
Just right.
But “Ugly as hell” can.

4/2/08

Love
Doesn’t work.
And “Just friends” is a sham.
But hate will always burn
And rip through veins.

There should be five days of weekend.

I can’t play guitar,
But I want to start a band
And tour the country,
Fucking up songs
In all fifty states.
Except Ohio...
I’d try my hardest in Ohio.

I'm joining the circus.

If it were up to me
Girls would judge a man’s attractiveness
By how well he could juggle and
I’d be pulling 7’s and 8’s
All day long.

That one definitive moment when it was something new.

They don't appreciate me here.
Thats not the truth,
But it makes me feel less guilty
When I masturbate to your photos
In the private restroom.

Robots

I like to think that
The whole time she was sitting on that couch
She was thinking:
"God, I hope he kisses me."
Ha, not this time,
motherfucker.

1997/98

When I was twelve years old I shot a bird with a BB gun.
I don't know why.
It just lay there, twitching.
I went and got my step-father and he made me step on it to teach me a lesson.
All I learned is that he was an asshole
And I needed a more powerful gun.

I really like a fuzzy distortion.

This is where the sun lived.
It was warm but not hot like the summer.
Things were happy.
But then I found out about girls and how crazy they are.
That’s when the shit hit the fan.

Send all of your kingdom's gold.

You can't see the stars anymore.
They say its because of all the city light.
But I see the kids looking up at night because
They can still see magic.

Do you remember what the music used to mean?

When I was little we’d go to his grave
On the way there I’d ask
“Why are those piles smaller?”
But now I know
That they don’t bury action figures
And my best friends little brother
Had never worn a cape before.

People that need fetishes do it to take emotion away from the relationship.

We were sitting on her roof
And I asked:
“Do you ever wonder what will happen when the world stops spinning?”
She said “no”.
And I felt stupid
Because she already knew
That I loved her.

Gays want to get married.

Every second of my life I wonder
“Am I doing this right?”
I think too much.
That’s what I hear.
But no one asked you,
Mr. President.

Stop texting me

I spend most of my weekends

alone.
I mean,

my friends are there,

but you aren’t.
So I guess what I’m saying is:

"Give me back my t-shirt."

3/18/08

Speak strange. God, I can’t stand to think you’ll forget my face. You know when it feels like everyone you ever love grows up and moves away and you’re just stuck here, waiting on something you can’t seem to make? You have the most irreverent things to say and I feel like that may be why you’ll definitely be the death of me. Let’s get away. All these houses look the same. I can’t wait to watch them fade or burn up in the bright light of whatever I make myself out to be eventually.

She was always

far too beautiful for me anyway.

True.

I fight it.
I beg and plead for it to
Leave me alone.
I don’t need or want you here.
Stay out of my house.
I’ve done fine without you
For this long.
You’ve had chances and they’ve ended in:

A) Empty beds
B) Late nights
C) hospital visits
D) All of the above

No more chances.
I’m comfortable here.
I know what to do here.
But,
At the end of the day,
I just want to be in love.

Tape 1

Woke up to
The bright flash
From a dead heart wanting
To make something
From
Nothing.
She used to be beautiful
In the same way I used to be
In
Control
Of
My
Emotions.
The sunlight through
A grayscale sky
Or
Vice
Versa.
How do I explain
Where I left all of the bodies
To the police when
They find
Me?
Its inevitable.
They will
Find
Me
Faster than I
Ever could.
Probably because I want to
Be
Caught.
Right?

Mother and Son

You never say sorry on the weekend when you get too drunk with all your best friends. You missed my phone call, I know that, you told me, but I’m tired of sleeping alone in this bed. So, I’m leaving, and don’t say goodbye because I know that you’re full of shit.

All those bottles of wine, I don’t think you realize how disheartening it is to love you. I spend every waking moment worried about who may be kissing you back because I know it’s not me, thinking back. So, I’m leaving, and don’t you dare cry because I know that you’re full of shit.

Your face stays the same so I can never tell when you’re lying through your teeth. We play this game so constantly that I should know that I can’t be sure of anything and you’re stumbling now, over constantans and vowels and all the pronouns you throw around…I’m leaving, so tell “him” and “he” I say “hi”. I always knew that you were full of shit.

White

Sickly, the way the cold wind kisses your face, but it’s the only thing that shows that it loves you these days. Blankets, no thanks, it’s too hot inside when it’s cold outside and you really just need your space. You’ve got your TV and all those books you mean to read, but honestly, can we be honest here? You don’t mean to do anything. A constant accident. A constant toe to the doorframe. Its stings but you can’t get mad at anything. Lonely, but not really, you’ve got all those video games and you’re so fucking high all the time recently that you don’t even have the energy. Distance is a constant curse, but not in the way it used to be. Kiss like summer and sleep like fall. Kiss like a brick. Fuck, you just wish someone would kiss you at all.

Comfort

I was so much more comfortable there with that blanket over my eyes.
It was so much warmer. But now I feel the cold and I can see the world for miles,
and comfort is just convenience and the putting-off of things I know to be true.
So we could have lain in that bed I built and made mountains from the sheets,
but I watched your chest raise and lower to let in ships, I watched mine sit in piece.
I know something about finding out. Its the curse of the thirst for knowledge.
I’ve seen clouds on fire and buildings fall. I’ve had planes crash in my mind.
I made it for the better even though it should have been for the worst.
I sat in those white rooms and I filled myself with words.
Words don’t move buildings, not mine anyway,
but they could inspire giants to lay this town to waste.
I was so much more comfortable there, in between those sheets,
but comfort is an illusion and now I can finally see.

To the bones.

She’s like a sunrise or sunset in the way that she’s as beautiful as she is fleeting. Her penchant for orange really just helps this analogy. She kissed like the rain, which is fine at most times, but when you’re saying goodbye you kind of hope for the ocean. “Kiss me like the Pacific”, but the closest she can get is the cold shoulder off the Atlantic coast. I walked away wondering exactly what just happened and how I could, for all intents and purposes, feel nothing but a sense of relief. I loved her but not like you do when you’re in love, or the closest you’ve come in your young life. It was more like a good movie. No matter how much you love it you can only watch it so many times in a row before you see it for what it really is. Fake. But you can’t be upset because at least the movie presents itself as such. If communication is key then you’re just fumbling with locks all day. I’m a windstorm and you’re flickering like a flame. This is a case of words presented as action. (“Your honor, the state would like to call Indifference to the stand.”) I need something tangible. It’s never the ocean.

1/21/08

I’m a broken radio or television or something else. I guess I’m saying that, sometimes, I just can’t connect. I feel like my seams are showing, I’ve got such obvious threading. Cut here to make me unravel. I’m like a time bomb in that you never know which wire. (Correction: I never know). I go back and forth between blues and greens while I sweat and sweat and hear nothing but the beeps and beats. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and I’m gone. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and I just go on and on. I don’t know how to stop. You’re magic like a movie and I’m just indifferent like indie rock. Let’s take over this city. I’ll write my name on every ticking clock. Cut here to dismantle these bones. Cut here and I’ll give up everything I believe in but hope.

Emailing these fucks up the formatting, I'm not having a good day.

One time I had this dream last night where I was in my apartment, but not my apartment because it was a giant penthouse with giant windows. I looked around and that guy was there with the silver mask that's sometimes scary but he was just hanging out but it still made me nervous. So I went outside and it was all green and wet like it maybe just rained but it wasn't humid at all outside but then I was back at my place. Okay, again, its not my place but it looks like the place of that cool teacher that rides the motorcycle on Boy Meets World but it had red walls and orange shag carpeting. I looked over at my friend Alf (the alien that eats everything, you know?) and he was talking about physics like in 11th grade when I drew that comic book about cartoon science but that's not the point. I looked up and Alf was gone and you were there and naked. I got that funny stomach feeling staring at you talking to me, you just looked so Beautiful and I was intent on the way your mouth moved but then all we did was fuck.

--
jude via sidekick

But then sometimes

You just have to give up.

Sometimes.

I don't really know why I even bother.

I'm just not cut out for things like this and I guess it may be
obvious.

It must be obvious.

--
jude via sidekick

I Wrote This Because I Hate It When You're Sad, It Really Bums Me Out, And I Hate Being Bummed, Asshole.

Just because you hate yourself doesn’t mean you have to hate the world so maybe you should kill yourself like you say or just be fucking happy. It’s really not that difficult, I promise you, because I’ve been through stuff like you’ve been through and, yeah, I spent some time in the hospital, what a lot of good that did me. They just pump you full of medicine to help you clear your head but then your head’s so clear you can see straight through and you’re so fucking boring. So take some time and just be sad and realize life isn’t as bad as you always seem to make it or make it out to be and that you have friends and people love you and that the reason you only have negative things is because you breed so much negativity. I guess what I’m saying is to cut your hair how you want and love the girls that love you back and keep your head up when you’re losing sleep and take up something productive like biogenetic engineering because then you could make a bunch of you and maybe one would get life right and you’d also be really good at science.

The cast, in order of appearance...

You wake up too early. It morning, you’re freezing. Some toothpaste and a shower. A polo-shirt and your dirty jeans. Then out the door, making good time, so you stop for coffee. You live life in paper. Your desk is crumbling. A rhino and penguin, highlighters and paperclips. A broken fan and last year’s calendar next to long list of numbers. You’re almost as white as the walls, you’re definitely as empty. But maybe, just maybe, she can save you. That’s what you’re thinking. “Tonight, she’ll save me.” You write thoughts down on stolen post-it notes. You glance around to make sure you don’t get caught. “They mean something to me.”

2008

Happy New Year. Its a cold night with cold streets and the coldest feet you've ever seen...or felt, I guess. She had the reddest lips. The whitest dress. And you couldn't say a thing. She was so...A) Beautiful B) Unique C) Stunning D) All of the above? I think we all know the answer here. And you...you were so scared. "How?" That's what you ask yourself. "How could I be so scared with all of this weed/alcohol/caffeine in my system. I am so invincible/funny/perfect." You can't say a word. And there she is. Smiling at you. Looking. She's still looking. You smile back. She looks away at her friend who looks at you and smiles to her. And you can't say a thing. Happy New Year in 3...2...1...its cold tonight. Her lips were so red. Your face was so...there. That's it. You exist without existing in 3...2...1...the whitest dress. And you couldn't say a thing. But you felt it. You recognized it. Happy New Year.

--
jude via sidekick