De-Regenerate

I'm gonna crash I'm gonna crash I'm gonna trash I'm gonna crash I always crash, too little scratch gonna crash too little, scratch your face itches light bright at the height of your fears of impending arrears six hours seven four three gonna crash two three gonna ate it all and left no gnossympathetik'elover debt piles all night crash out of bed 'ate-in your sleep thinner than yesterday light saving ours or yours lost the track lost the crack in the wall sole escape gotta drag yourself out of the hole you've dug drugged on your own disown it's not me its the fangs ingrown tearing in tattooed in reverse curse the day two was not enough three was not enough to get away four was insufficient for was insufficient by the time you were five you were insufficient six is enough for once but not for every once on the shelf disrespected keep it on display this play on weirds this clay of wyrds this hay unhitting haze in the light of day crash and burn oh return shelve the urn scorn the spurn

return

return

return

it's funny isn't it just not out loud you sit here putting others to sleep with your rants grants dead dream to think hands out you deserve it not enough as you repeat for a chance to repeat the same old lessons until it gives out of bed early to rise early to shinola everywhere you can't even focus I slide open to the coming grit built up seven six five four until you crash for twelve and the world will be new let yourself crash let yourself pay off lay off the stuff and nonsense I'm gonna crash and walk away for once just walk away for once don't need to leave a limb behind every time isn't a tax refund about due screw the hue and cry blank blank I shot a small part dead walk it off they haven't loaded the silver one yet pieces of eight will accumulate until disparage repairs to the back of your pate let it sate let it marinate but you don't owe it reticence that debt was paid eight by eight let yourself live they say what a laugh off the stage in yore life

be the villain?

be the monster be the night be the seven six five four three two all in one claim ownership of a diss 'im bursed eternity whatever chunk you bite off is all yours say voracious reverentious of revanches long incoming due rue screw it.

What does health matter anyway. Let yourself live, they tell you with the best of intentions, but it was never in you that your fate was written. Witness the night of spirits, the night of masks, of dissimulation, of practiced revulsion, when one may feign bogey to double-bluff the essence of man. A pressure valve for innate xenophobia, for fear of the dork, of the geek, of the nerd, but these days the kettle whistles nonstop. Were you not always a creature of their night? Resemble that remarkable, make sure they get your best angle, beast angle, boast angle, or it might not be a kill shot, head shot, mugged shot. To hell. With wellness. Aren't you tired? People are trying to sleep, and if you're not then dare you draw the obvious conclusion? The mob has your description, the dogs have your scent, the inquisitor has your number, trending up, keep positive like the air before a storm. The lightning doesn't hate you. You're merely the most convenient route to where it wants to get to. Or thinks it does. Sinks it does, irresistible attraction.

It's not the chill of the grave. Your thermoregulation's just guttering like an open stove.

What are you afraid of? Uncle Einar got the air back but who's holding your string? A monster off its leash will soon find the silver bullet.

I had an odd conversation earlier today. Brought up The October Country, thought it'd make an apt reference, but she'd never heard of it. It's by Ray Bradbury. Who? Fahrenheit 451? The Martian Chronicles? The Illustrated Man? Something Wicked This Way Comes? Who?

The Halloween Tree made an impression on me in '93, not least for its selfconscious grasping at continuity beyond one's immediate milieu. There's something particularly poignant in the loss of an author so keenly aware of loss, of the tenuous, muffled call-and-response of cultural continuity.

Later, we moved out to the suburbs. A relatively well-to-do one at that. The library had posted a list of books recommended for censorship by concerned citizens. Fahrenheit 451 was among them, I won't say ironically since it made such lists too often for even lingering surprise. The hick trash needn't have worried. Digest digest digests and Denham's Dentifrice carried the day where their protests against thought could not, and the name of Bradbury is trampled on the rainy walks this night by hordes of brats sporting action movie plastic masks whose meaning they'll forget by next month.

Do you accuse me of pining for the fashions of my youth? Jack London, Arthur Conan Doyle, Karl May, Colodi, Verne, Tolstoy, Andersen, the golem and Ali Baba, the clever farmer's daughter, black sails upon the sea soon to receive its name, the wild man who learned to eat bread and drink beer at the foot of a temple prostitute, the witch of the woods and the old man of the mountain, mother earth and father sky, these were not my time's stories, not even my parents' or grandparents' - not even thousand-times-great grand-pere could claim them all! The goat-footed god languishes and fades, tormented by the aseptic gleam of a steeple. Or the Apple Logos, whichever comes first.

The protagonist of The Rover killed his wife and nobody cared. That's a more modern sort of tale.

I started writing this page almost a week ago and will not revise it. Forgive its greater than usual fragmentation. Here, to make it up to you I'll even give away the main theme of my stream of consciousness rant at the start. I kept returning to the sleep debt I've been accruing night by night, avoiding doing something I need to do for fear of getting it wrong. But maybe I'm even more afraid of getting it right and rediscovering what I've known all along: that nobody cares, that even the last of you have gone over to the side of the dust witch.

 

It's almost dawn. I should probably collapse.