Rhetoric Has No Place Here (635 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 1.83 on 15 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by TaK (View user info) at 2008-07-31 19:19:19 EDT
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Let me tell you about a dream I had.
Noone ever cares about the dreams people like to talk about, and so I can think of no better way to begin. I had a dream that a great crack rent the earth apart, and from it's open maw hordes of things spewed. Things men talk about and write about. At the last moment of encounter with each of us, as their foamy mouths drew back over rotting teeth, and their burning eyes seared into ours, they did not kill us, they did not harm us, they only drew back into the gaping hole in the earth, and the hole itself reversed, and the smoke cleared.
We all stood around gaping at one another. What was it they came for?
We all went back to churning the soup in the pot that rested on the ground where the hole had been.
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My name is Michael Anthony Pate, of that I am sure. Well, at least I think I am. That's what they told me. Beyond that, I can only guess and assume. I guess and it's mostly wrong, I assume and it's always not right. So I'm back to a blank page. Aren't we all? And what do you do with that blank page? Tear it up? Spit on it? Draw on it? Worship it? Deny it. Curse it, run from it, embrace it, hide in it. Burrow to the deeper levels beyond the page. Make the page full not empty. None of us like empty.
Go around. Walk around, I assure you. You'll meet several of the same people. They'll look a little different, move a little different, but the same. They'll have different names and different colored skin, but beneath, the same. As if God ran out of templates and had to improvise, which he's not very good at. It is not a matter of chance or ratio, only space and time. Give enough of both and you will meet the same man again and again. The same woman will speak to you from different lips, the same child will run to you in different sneakers. Scary, but not. Comforting.
You cut open the wound, wait no, you cut and the wound is opened. Right. It will bleed, but doesn't it feel cleansing? As if you could run it all out through that one gash. All of it, the great mess, the horrid question, the desperate seeking, all run out from an informal slit in the skin. Skin is meant to be whole, and when rent like the earth, it may spew forth more than shy demons.
We run and run and run, and the stars are still there. They don't change. I can't outrun them. You run too slow, and if I left you behind they would chase me the same. They haunt from death, long gone and still burning like my desire. Stupid stars. Won't leave me be. Ever a roof above my wild head. Always the same, telling the same story, in the same dumb words, inescapable.
I say that it hurts and they say you don't know hurt like I do. I say it's too dark and they say darkness is something they've lived with forever. One experience dulls before the other, and we fight, we come to fisticuffs, we skirmish and bang, we reel at each others throats to achieve a higher level of suffering. To prove that our vessel is the very vessel of deprivation and solitude and pain beyond any other. I am one and you are two. If I were two you would be four. And so we only butt heads instead of adding our experiences up. What good is experience if you only truly share it with yourself? What can I tell me that I haven't already screamed? What good am I alone? What good am I?
There are round things and square things and they go in my mouth. I spit them out and they look like piles of dogshit dried on the asphalt. You crunch them between your toes and you go on reading. Hoping that it will make sense, that eventually I will arrive at a point, that I will facilitate you with some sort of experience that I would like to share through words else why would I use them and so you read.
Omit needless words.
I speak because I want to hear talking that makes sense. I write because I don't know what else to do. I hug myself for comfort and I sing to a cold wind for it carries my tune better than any warm uprising. I paint with colors that noone has seen but they don't care to look at anything new, and when they do it looks like red.
What is it that I could sing to you that would make you feel better? Make you feel like a child again, my child you are still child enough for two. Only...not.
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My name is Miguel Antoine Pate'. Of that I am assure. List the names and I'll call vow to each. Shout it and I will shout back, run and I will chase I am but a dog on the lamb, a rabbit in the hair. Cooked eggs.
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Did you come here looking for some solace? I pity you and your useless search. You've come to a no-man's land, and you knew it. You've run to an oasis you watched shimmer into nothing, and still you've run. There is no solace from the night. There are no hedges high enough to hold back what waits for us. And in me you have laid the seed for that very return. Change running down the chute to your pocket, you've paid and now you will take yours. I've taken mine, and every time it was less than what you'd done, who you've been, and now you stand with the receipt in your hand wishing to argue your fortune. I pity you and your useless search. I'd pity myself only I hate me too much to care. I'd rather smash it all to bits and watch you pretend like you never saw it coming watch you writhe in your false agony like a funeral shroud you bury your face in to hide the tears you cry not for the dead but for you who are left here without the departed and the frowns you make at the whore slutting the way you do in your mind and the traffic accident you pretend to wail for. I'd rather be the train that cause the brains to be removed from the body and placed in new arrangements God didn't think of. The plane in the buildings side and the baby left in the dumpster. I am the dumpster, and the man who empties it. I am the reason and the fact and the appeal. I am nothing but the thing you'd cast your eyes on and the canvas you'd smatter with your art. I am Mikal and Michael and Migal. I am what you wish I was and see even though it isn't there the chameleon and the changeling the mist and the form. I am what you wanted me to be, what you watch on the tv, and what you listen to the news for. I am the crash you crane neck for and the tire that blew freeway side. I am the crashing shore and the passing sure, the promised and the taken. I have been the underestimated undertaken far-from come outta nowhere left-field quack from a horses mouth. The serpent spewed forth and spat me from his anus, I festered and waited, waited and festered, and now have popped the surface in a wave of pus and agony. A wave you expected from the blackhead.
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But perhaps a different voice comes out from all of that and very reasonably says: "What do you mean to say?"
Well, what I mean to say is: (of course)
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"I have loved and I have lost, as have we all. And though it is true that I do not regret, regret is not an emotion I am unfamiliar with. If this confuses you you should cease to listen right now."
And the crowd shuffles.
"If you cannot understand that two opposite means can exist within one purpose, I am not for you. If you cannot accept that two purposes should have one means, then find another board to move your pieces on. I have love and I have loss, and I regret not ever regretting either. I wonder and I wander, I lose and I win. I would not be if not were it so."
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Reason has no place here.
User Reviews
Submitted by TaK (user info) at 2008-08-01 21:43:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Thanks Anansie, I'm glad to see you here. I've looked for awhile at the front page...no Anansie.
Peace be to you.
Submitted by Anansie (user info) at 2008-08-01 18:42:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I hardly ever rate anything anymore, but of course I have to rate this. This is very good and I'm glad you are still thinking and writing.
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2008-08-01 14:14:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
post and poster
Submitted by BobSandwich (user info) at 2008-08-01 13:40:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
we come to fisticuffs
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-08-01 11:39:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2008-08-01 11:35:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
They make meds for that, you know?
Of course, you shouldn't take them.
Submitted by adamleathertramp (user info) at 2008-08-01 10:14:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
very good read
Submitted by TaK (user info) at 2008-08-01 08:06:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Thanks everybody. Nice to have such a positive reaction since I haven't posted in a long while.
Certainly not about Ubersite, and yes, I adore T.S. Elliot.
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2008-08-01 04:11:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Take the world nice and easy, and the world will take you the same.
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2008-08-01 02:41:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I sing to a cold wind for it carries my tune better than any warm uprising.
Submitted by Ducky (user info) at 2008-08-01 02:05:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Do you read T.S. Elliot?
Submitted by pandora (user info) at 2008-08-01 01:07:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 not about ubersite
Submitted by pandora (user info) at 2008-08-01 01:06:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-07-31 23:12:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2008-07-31 20:05:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Strange enough to make you go "Hmmmm...", but not quite strange enough to make you go "Hmmmm..." a week from now.