Arbitrarily So

Home

arbitrarilyso — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 10:24:18 +0000

Each step is noticed and forgotten as the scenery so slowly becomes home and home and home until my living room is a puddle and my mind an empty breath

arbitrarilyso — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 10:06:09 +0000

Eventually I’ll stop having violent dreams
This is the perpetual prayer
My self-manufactured infinite rosary
Piling onto the floor, the hallway, through the door
Tomorrow to be recited yesterday to have been recited
Dictum aeternum

Still it can only provide so much hope
Here is one facet of reality so quietly sleeping
making soft noises and breathing slowly, unconsciously

Here, another, the door is kicked in and everyone is lined up against a wall and given a live grenade for each hand,
one of them is shot in the stomach, most likely a woman
Someone’s wife, no doubt
the door barred the windows boarded guards posted at a safe distance
Even in dreams what could anyone have done

The dreams will slowly drift along as they do
I’m sure of this
Perhaps I’ll sleep calmly dreaming of more acceptable absurdism
To wake refreshed and calm

while walking the dog

arbitrarilyso — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 21:51:44 +0000

He’s taking the dog for a walk but he should be back any minute.
See. There he goes. He’ll be back when the dog is finished walking.
He’s taking all of this medicine.
Look at it, it’s unbelievable.
There are so many colors.
Wife? Something like that. You should ask him when he gets back.
Shouldn’t be long now.
No, I couldn’t say.
Maybe you should just come by later get it straight from the horse’s mouth.
Anyway, he’d say that.

A sense of securiry

arbitrarilyso — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 08:28:43 +0000

Sleeping alone in a chair you spoke to me from another time and space
You spoke of paintings which had not yet been completed, as science had not yet progressed to provide the requisite technology
Electrons, you said, travel in orbit around the nucleus of an atom and they sometimes gain energy or lose it and they jump to another orbital path.
That’s comforting, I said
You’re impossible, you said
When I woke up and found myself quite alone I pondered our communion and the cyclical world attempting to unlock the potential of subatomic orbit to become proximal, contemporary.

The anti-philosophy

arbitrarilyso — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 06:18:27 +0000

To be awake and listening with your eyes and the electric tips of your fingers at dawn while the world shifts from repose to reactivity
To be fasten by blood-weight to the bench overlooking the valley by dusk light while cells are automatically in mitosis

There are entire millennia of sediments eroded away to leave naked thousand-ton boulders squirming in the sun.
So are you, In a sense, like the boulder, or maybe the erosion, come to think of it.
To be consciously aware of immorality, to be immoral, to know you are not free from the weight of knowing and finally, to continue

You, my dear, are infinite and I am the pebble in the frog of a horses hoof.
Perhaps horses are infinite and therefore hooves and by some miracle of complete arbitration, so am I.
I was a monolith.
You must be the wind, the frost, the heat and water
All we have is time time time.

arbitrarilyso — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:14:15 +0000

I can’t write anymore. I’m incapable.

a snake having itself by the tail

arbitrarilyso — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:13:51 +0000

Not too uncommon an image
Though misleading in that no self-respecting
gopher snake would mistake his own tail
for that of a tasty Crotalus
Though every time we start to look
the evidence is clear that, yes
it is a recurring infection
Chronic and implicit
I place my tail in my mouth and begin to chew
the history spilling down my chin with every bite

to be blinded by light

arbitrarilyso — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 06:51:36 +0000

No one speaks King James Bible English
It’s unspoken believe me
I asked around
no one knew what I was talking about

Someone started talking about syntactical analysis
I think they had something for a moment
but then the conversation fizzled
like a fly in a glass of water
when he answered that, in fact, no,
he hadn’t read it

All these dead languages
with no where to put them
Not to rest
no they will just be exhumed
and that is an uncomfortable slumber
ask the egyptians
they’re authorities on the matter
with one jackal crested jar holding
some organ in one wing of the after-life
and another with the head of a hawk the distance
from Chicago, Illinois to Oxford, England
in comparative distance as relatable to after-life space
utterly inconvenient

how lonely it must be, or rather, how emotionally
exhausting it must be
to be arguably the most read
communicative device on the planet
and to have never defined the pattern of diction
beyond the quoted phrase
as if to be doomed like the
constantly misquoted words
of a famous Bruce Springsteen song
made unintelligible by underuse

this one is untitled

arbitrarilyso — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 06:34:44 +0000

There are manila envelopes everywhere. None of them have little sticky notes in them, like the professor implied he would like, with thoughts incomplete scribbled hastily and stuck as if to free up mental space for more conjuring. The envelopes are filled, one way or another, with thoughts. Some of them worth keeping around others filled with embarrassing cliches which the students who write nothing but cliche will say are cliche. At no point is it acceptable in this house for the inverse hypocrisy of the blind teaching the visually elite, both aesthetically and functionally, how to write. Bastards should be accountants, the good it will do them. Look. There they are all over the floor, under the rug, under the leg of the coffee table, under the lamp with the discarded shade, under the refrigerator, in the refrigerator, between the seat and lid of the toilet. It’s a mad house. All full of the intricacies of daily life which are so often overlooked. It’s devastating how beautiful it all is. The dog is whining because she is in trouble. To the mud room with her. Bad and Behavior copulated to birth the slimy frame of abject discipline. This is for your own good. She has an envelope in her mouth with sheaves of paper, sheaves, sliding all over the floor. She’s buried in biting, life-changing, truly relevant, contemporary work. That’ll teach her. She whines so loudly. No sleeping in this house. Only work and dreams and silly incidentals like sexuality, careers, disease, gasoline, matches, frozen pizza, designer duvets, affordable swiss furniture and memory. Addendum. Memory must be stricken from the list as incidentals are employed via memory and can therefore not be incidental as that would cause a logical meltdown at which point we would be forced to grow our own food and long hand every bit of mathematics. There is no room for all the abaci with these godforsaken envelopes covering every square inch of usable space for the love of God.

untitled

arbitrarilyso — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:58:24 +0000

“Hey! Calloway! Wait up man. You walk too damn fast. I’m glad I saw you though. I was wondering if you could give me the number of that guy you know who is selling a bike, you know, pedal bike. I’m all out of breath, whew, shit. I saw you walk past through the window of the cafe over on Lancaster. I had to pay my ticket before I could run after you. Where the hell you going so fast anyway? Are you late for something? No shit? I thought you were through with the material implications of employment. Anyway, did I tell you Ashley showed up at my house last night. Believe me that was a shit show. She literally punched a hole into the wall. OK, not literally. But she was pissed. Though that was nothing compared to when she walked into the room and saw Kristy’s underwear on the floor. Then she did actually punch a hole in the wall. I had to take her to the fucking hospital to get her hand sewn up. Can you believe that? Ten stitches. The apartment looked like a crime scene. Blood all over the floor. She didn’t realize her hand was even cut until she saw a drop of blood on my face. ‘Are you bleeding,’ she says. Yeah, she flung it on my face while she was flailing around. I just started laughing. Can you believe that shit man? I can. She was a psycho. No, you’re right, she was incredible. I’m such a fuck-up. It’s unbelievable. So yeah just text me that number when you get a second. I’m sick as hell of walking everywhere. Good to see you Calloway, I’ll see you on thursday. Yeah, you too. Take it easy.”