Proverbial bullshit

A man can learn a lot, in the pond staring down the drain as the water pours from above. After he has learned much from this he can begin to learn by looking up at where the water comes from and only after he has learned much by this, he looks at the space between. Where the water hits he inspects the flesh as though it were a flower. Upon reflection he finds himself in nature, upon action he finds himself to be a force of nature. He then becomes so strong that he may change the course of nature. This is not evil, the will can never be more then it is possible to overcome. By all that he does man sets the course for him to be greater then his greatest transgression, but he must do this with his own bullshit smeared all over his face. He must know that he creates what he finds and then becomes so frightened by his ability that he insists that it created him. Man no longer wants to be a man, let that man go and you may find freedom. Man.

-Rafael V.

Crashing Always

Every morning for 13 days I have known, I see it coming, I see the last time I saw it coming, I see the last time I saw it happen to someone else. I make choices with this sight in mind, I don't let a girl ride on the back, I scramble clumsily for a better helmet, I attempt to extend my vision. My actions yesterday in demise of all my foresight only changed slightly, slight is all that a chance has ever needed to shift into a reality. As I approached the green light, for some reason I let off the gas a little, my motorcycle seemed to be floating weightless then on a small silent cloud, and in that moment I have to wonder if it was to give him time to hit me.

       He told me afterwards that his brakes had gone completely out. I seemed to ride the pores of his cheeks and the hazy red of his whites as he smashed me with his front bumper down Madison Ave. In those moments I had time to think, my thoughts stretched out before me like a roadmap of questions, only my fate seemed certain. I would be ok, perfectly fine, but once again I was messing with the fabric of the universe clumsily. Knowing only that it would be dangerous, the only element I craved in my adventure. The only prerequisite for an adventure at all. 

         How can one tell the difference between a precognitive thought and a thought that for some reason has become so strong it subconsciously effects ones behavior as to manifest itself in reality?

I don't know the difference between my intuition, premonitions, or subconscious behavior anymore. I cant quite tell what it is I am trying to tell myself. I appear only to be on the brink of coming over a cliff to discover I am far away, and even then each step further is only another step closer to the only truth that is big enough to hide. The truth that is so big we cannot see it as a whole, we see its molecules and assume they are planets, we see its thoughts and assume they are clouds, we see ourselves and assume that we are humans. Never willing to look we must always interpret the world this way. There is no such thing as a motorcycle accident. For me to think I was in one is a falsification of all the evidence my spirit knows to be otherwise, and that my dear makes me a bad detective. 

            I can see the expressions on my friends faces in the near future, each one different and particular to them, I see it every night. I must now go back and do my homework, so that I do not just crash down the side of the road with my thoughts laid out before me like questions when the event takes place. I wish we had just a few more answers, fortunately we are blessed that there are clues everywhere. 

           I realize now that I crash always, that I always crash in all my interactions. Sometimes I might be like a wave and sometimes like a wreck, sometimes like a wind that whips and sometimes like the way a snail may run into a mud puddle. Maybe this is the nature of my person so far. Thank you for still letting me crash into you my love, how ever sparse, how ever often.

Rafael V. 

       

The Fear

Sitting under the cold lamplight I can hear it whispering, a droning building howl, and though I know I will never understand the words, I will always know what they mean. They are a curse. The fear wraps around us, engulfing us with wind and flames, a storm we can feel long before we can see it. A headache running thru every bone, mauling as it moves. Barking at us rabid, letting us know that someday when we are almost happy it will tear apart everything that we love and make us watch. A black fog rolling over us, capturing all we hold dear, with a monstrous crackling momentum, spitting and groping. We cannot outrun it, for if we go any faster we will collapse, our hearts exploding in a small dull thud, our life trickling out into the cold, the vastness. We cannot stop, for it will strangle us, choking and crushing, with every breath we will breathe in its poisonous hand, fingers in thru the nose and knuckles out thru the mouth. We can only move towards it, with it, no matter the pace or direction. The fear loathes us and we deserve it. We know we have done wrong and that we can never go back. The fear baits us, laying traps in all we desire. The fear knows us, using us against ourselves. The fear is coming, almost here now, I can hear it whispering beneath the cold cold lamplight. The haunting is here. The fear has come again, each time getting closer to what it wants, each time leaving less of us behind. Taking with it our hearts and hard work, leaving only stranded flesh and eyes to see the pieces. Never not present. We can go no further without it, we can live no longer with it. We have become it. Becoming it, we begin to give it. A tired venomous gift. A cancer. I am you fear. We are finally, eternally together. Always. 

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Tea Time

I’m left to open up another blank document. I’ve scribbled starts to three-hundred stories, a hundred songs, outlines for a million inventions, maps for the thousand different directions I’m trying to take my life. Written on my legs in the holes of my jeans are notes to remind myself that I am hip-hop. Single words scratched onto napkins with the shitty pens of waitresses rub like gravel in the bottom of my pockets. Words catering to things the eyes have seen but know they will soon forget are tattooed in obscure places on my arms, between all the fluff and imagery.  Even here we can find names of the friends I’ve known. As if I could forget, and yet still I can’t remember, anything.

Not even to be still. 

Who were these three cowboys, us three? High on mushrooms from the airport and soft-white from the cell phone waiting lot, now at the strip-club peaking under the light blueberry lap-dance of another failed pharaoh. Making it rain lottery tickets, keeping the wind north. Who was this man with his head down working 16-hour days for SXSW, getting drunk off Antartica dreams and whiskey neats while scolding international rap acts for smoking to many cigarettes. Where did all the money go. I can ride this tandem bicycle all by myself, from the backseat. Preference settings, set to go. Reality is I’m slowing down.

Glassblowing, flame working, staring into the eyes of dogs.

Bartending, waiting, writing to live but not survive.

Texas, maintaining, lone star, record outlines.

Porch life, sunshine, swimming.

BBQ from picnic table to picnic table like high-fives.

At The Drive In, love life, dabs, surprises.

Shirt off, bus stops, uncle.

New house, bike, poker tables, mine.

Court house, piss, Mercury  52'

Boat money, tattoos, that Huck Finn boat money tattoo.

You. 

Have Penitentiary Will Travel

After I got rid of everything I owned, I sent a single small box home to my mother. Inside of it was everything I thought important enough to keep and in a way remember. Love letters from Chuck Palahniuk and women who had grown to know me. Photos of us kissing, strife, my life working in the motorcycle industry, the three years I spent on Warped Tour. Manuscripts I had written, original catalogues from my clothing company, masters of the four albums I released, notes, lyrics, and more notes. A sheriff’s badge, a Freemason belt buckle, my missing teeth, and a birth certificate I assumed to be mine.

In this box there was some room and I put more things from my trip thru the world. Sunglasses from a wedding in LasVegas, a bracelet from a girl I almost married in Peru. A small can of salted nuts from a childhood friends reception in Tucson. A slingshot engraved with a detailed account of my psychedelic trip on ayahuasca in the Amazon. I put the socks I was wearing when I almost died trying to cross the Antarctic and last I laid a photo of Ben and I at the top of the high Andes. I wished my brother well and did the holy trinity the way I had learned it in Colombia but perfected its kiss in Portland.

What I had originally gone in the box for I did not find. I was looking for a mailing address so I could send a letter I had already written. 1 of 5 letters actually. The address wasn’t a pretty one. I knew it read Nebraska State Penitentiary, marked with the inmate number of one of my oldest friends, who was doing a 40 year bid for things it wasn’t up to me to forgive him for. So I did not judge instead I sent him books before I left Portland on astral projection. I imagined that is what I might want if I were locked up in a cage fighting for scraps from the drain.

I battled with my letters trying to decide how much I should tell him in them. What would seem like boasting, what was boasting, what would let him live vicariously, and what was vital to the vicariousness. In the end I decided to tell him nothing I had said before to anyone. All the stories that had been kept just for me to know, to give him an account of all my secret strengths, to tell him the things that I had saved because they would only get watered down in the repeating of them. I knew he had no choice but to keep them safe, so I selfishly gushed.

As I dug for the address that I could not find, I found something else that I had forgotten. I found that I had accomplished much that I did not give myself credit for, that I had put in more work than I had remembered. That this small box was a time capsule of hundreds of memories, heartaches, and hard won triumphs. That beautiful women had loved me and beasts had become my kin. By the time I got to the bottom drawing only dust under my fingernails I knew that the mailing address was no longer important. It had never been in this box, it had always been with me. It was the part of me who was exactly the kind of man to pick up and head to Nebraska, deliver these last letters myself. Post office for a pair of legs, tears for gasoline stamps, hands balled in fists, envelopes.