how long will your tallest buildings survive?

We stood atop a building, overlooking a sea of lights. I looked up to a moon that hovered not too far up above. In peculiar motion glimmered - somewhere, somewhere up - two window-shaped xenon lights, then disappeared. I stood motionless, fascinated, awaiting something special to come. The planets aligned themselves: the stars, the lights, not too far from my eyes, and glimmered in unison the same instantaneous bright blue. Something was in the works. Down below, a young girl met an older man. She carried on with butterflies she couldn't wait to keep from the world.

Yea, something special was about to come. There must have been a spaceship. Next I saw laser beams in swift motion tear down all the tall buildings around us. In the flat below, some girl was getting it from a guy who wanted to walk away at the right time. One by one I saw skyscrapers fall. Fire, panic, and mayhem ensued. Something special was in the works against which we had no insurance. Government became an abstraction that quickly dissolved, and the military was no where to be found. These entities could not calm the people, because it was the Earth They were after. All the tall buildings in the world collapsed. That thief, he didn't get very far.

We ran with fear but ignored the feeling. Something told us this was just the first phase. Panic loomed but the prospect of absolute extinction sank deeper, deeper, and deeper. Something we could not percieve, would finally nullify our hopes, dreams, and desires. We were running and -

Tracy

Tracy was my buddy, my short little buddy.  For a time, she was my friend.   Blonde and blue eyes, her childlike smile - this is where the tears would be if I could cry. But I can't; botched facelift. I loved it when she would giggle. She would make me giggle. She liked my pop culture references and I felt that's all that I had because I had't read a book in years.  In school, she probably wasn't a good student but already knew all the vocabulary words.

She wasn't so little. Strong hips, breasts like a cluster of grapes. She was a bit older than me and great artists steal.

I told her about my Kurt Cobain obsession years and how silly I feel now when I wouldn't shower for days and have my mom wash my new clothes multiple times before I would wear them to middle school. She told me she cried the day Bradley Knowles died. I felt so phony.  We would share my iPhone iPod earpiece and laugh about the physical awkwardness and whether we should bop our heads in unison our something. I told her I was never good at concerts; I never knew what to do with myself.

We were friends for 30 days, more or less. We would make collages together out of magazine clippings and talk about how we would go shopping together after we got out of here.

We parted ways. I left with the insurance and she was busted for using in her room. We had swapped numbers like sincere friends do, but we were still primal and looked to fulfill our common purpose...so we headed to Santa Ana.

I guess we can drop the childlike smile. Seated next to each other on the couch of an old man and teenage girl, her eyes were gone and words were blurred. She may die but she would probably just sleep, and then I left.

the corner

We go to the arcade to get our fill. Random images of simulated passion, brain candy for morbid self-attention. Nothin doin tonight. Everybody's got a price but no supply. He sells dreams for a dollar, he'll let you use his pipe. She sells scenes... you can feel what you can't touch.

At the pawn shop, where everyday we sell our dreams but pledge... We congregate, seeking shelter. We give up food and water and in place trade favors. We're not looking to be saved, but possessed. We hide our souls; we follow our nose to the source of our obsession. We never question anymore, but find the answer in that mushroom cloud of smoke. It's odorless, but we stink.

In My Secret Life

-

I thought I would quickly slip out and score, if not come back without the guilt and soldier on to another wholesome day.

Another day. I would drink myself into oblivion to reach it. Fuck that. I was on my way.

We must have drove around for hours, in circles chasing it, him with the freedom and adventure of the uncouth night. And I, fueled by desperate hope, paranoia at the edges. I was more primitive than I knew. I was nervous - fidgety and shady, and I tried to assure him that this was how I dealt with that sweet sweet prospect. Something about Hollywood, the moment I enter it - it makes me sick, it entices me. I can feel the depravity and freedom of the streets, and feel my stomach turn.

Each stop brought frustration amid the gnawing ache of misery. Ten minutes was never ten minutes. Each prospect gave noncommittal assurances for minutes or hours, when what I needed was now. I was running out of cuticles, in spasms sputtering. Each minute couldn't come soon enough. The waiting was the worst. I had invested my faith into those I wouldn't think twice about in a state of normalcy: Family, will, a wholesome burden strongly borne, and a contributing member of society. But I had strayed. I was one of the people on the street, an extra in a scene that someone else wrote. The storytellers create the scenes and paint the streets. I was apart of it inasmuch as to disappear without any relevance to the larger story. No one knows me here.

I was at its mercy. Wherever it would beckon, I would follow the trail and wait. When I couldn't take it any longer, I would wait some more. Patience had nothing to do with it. Virtue was a word that sounded good and worked in pamphlets, or assumed relevance in desperate self-reflection. That could wait till later.

My nerves were shot. My insides were, to say the least, bubbling. Feverish and tearing away at my nails, I would puke after each cigarette. This was - or somehow assumed through physiological rewiring - to be my calling. To others the stage, recognition, and the resulting self-realization was what compelled them to regurgitate.

I'd give up food and water. I'd sell my soul to keep from walking away empty handed. Each passing thought, each delayed moment, would turn my corrupted hunger into a whimper. The childish howl and thin despair - one who doesn't know, but wants. He can't understand but yearns for what he needs.

Walk away.
Run (back)
into your mother's womb.

Shame was muddled along with memories of days when I was decent. As long as I had a choice, the prospect of attaining what I had intended, I would resign myself to powerlessness. Everything else could go to hell.

And then the wait. I called for it in my head, I cried aloud as for a solitary number on roulette. Though I was still in control of my fate. A concentrated wave of energy directed at the target which held my dreams. Ambitions and goals lingering like the memory of a love you once knew... And he walks out the door with it, coolly. I couldn't bring him over to me fast enough. The foul stench of success that I've come to know - ratlike, I couldn't wait to get it home. I practically shit myself the ride back.

I had given away bits and pieces of myself for it...but now I have it in my hand!
The world could explode and I'd still find a little hole.

You easily lose yourself in it, not like a beautiful tragedy, but gradually and without pomp and glory - bits and pieces stripping away at your soul, till there's nothing left to sell.

i got the joy, joy, joy, that's down in my heart...where? down in my heart

I remember when they killed her. I saw it on the news. Her body lay on the grass where she would have her lunch, with a boy who they said was a friend, but I suspect a teenage crush. Someone would wait for her everyday. Someone would dream of seeing her the next day. Her body lay, on the grass where she had her lunch, as her classmates run past for fear of their lives.

I didn't know her. I just saw her picture later and thought she was cute. People placed flowers on her car in the parking lot. It collected a lot of dust.

I mourned her death in my secret way; I collected newspaper clippings and magazine articles, kept it stashed away for years. I went on AOL and tried to get close to those who had known her. I dreamed of visiting her grave in another state but I couldn't figure out why. She became an object for my affection; I didn't know any of her flaws.

I thought of being religious like her, but I was angry and I suspect hate filled up in me. I hated everyone around me, with their petty bullshit. I fooled around with pipe bombs and CO2 canisters, I tried to live the disgruntled life of those who had killed her. I was playing a role I had heard about on the news...but no one seemed to want to bully me.

Over ten years passed, my teenage angst became so hollow. I rarely thought about her, but still kept the newspaper clippings stashed away. I didn't like to talk about it, as it felt like some weird fetish. It was like your family finding your porn collection or speed.

One drunken night in a sweet dream - I hadn't thought about her for years, and I guess this is why I'm writing this - I saw her walking to school from the parking lot with her friends. A guy had his arm around her and she was nonchalant and almost reluctant. She walked ahead, then turned back and put her head on his shoulder like a whiny teenage bitch, and it was so lovely. And that was all there was to it.

I don't know what to say about her. I almost loved her in my morbid but innocent way. It was easy; she was dead. And in my dreams, such adolescent times. Maybe she even smoked cigarettes on the sly with her friends.

Unnatural Sleep

I don't know if I slept. I don't know if I can take credit for the little vignettes my mind created. He was sitting there in the front seat, talking trash, and I in the back. Oddly, I thought I was driving. I didn't like the remarks he made about my shoes, because his were brown mountain hiking shoes and he said that's the way to go. His culture and mine, we think completely unlike. He wouldn't spend that much money on clothes and on cars- that is to say, on the brands that determine those prices. But he has a cozy home, probably invests in stocks, will teach his children the value of independence and earning your own dollar. He has visited the Grand Canyon and the Nation's Capital and Hearst Castel..and Virginia. I thought I would slyly steal the money from his wallet, I don't know how, but I could distinctly feel that the money would somehow be in my hand. I could take it and when I woke up he couldn't hold it against me. I opened my eyes, and I thought the same, that I need to do it, I'm going to do it. That's when I realized - my eyes were open and it hit me, that I was on my couch, the room was dark except for some buzz. My own buzz was basically useless and transitory. This time I knew it would be impossible; the only way was to sneak into his home maybe another day, like an ordinary robber. The impulse left me; even if I had succeeded in getting the cash, as much as I squeezed my eyes, the money would not materialize. So I closed my eyes again and I was into another vignette. I would be in the exact same state after my buzz as before, with only my sensations allowing me to stray from the normal state of things.

afterwards, it didn't make sense, what happened to my bike?

I was waiting in my car for the girls to come out. I went to the back window where I could see into a room that was dark except for a light from the hall. I slid the window open because it was unlocked, and went in. I opened the drawer where the girls kept their underwear, and grabbed a handful of bra and panty. Pink ones with padding, I didn't like the padding, but the panties were soft and touched her skin. I stuffed the loot in my pants and ran out. I saw one of the girls walk out into the park, I guess to meet someone, and at that moment I drove away. I hoped they would not remember me waiting there in the evening.

School was getting out and we all walked across the street to the park. I was walking near a skinny black woman with frail gray hair and cheekbones, and I said, "Hey, mamma, you wanna to buy some underwear?" She smiled and said, "maybe, if they're cheap, like three dollars." I said I'd give her two for six dollars. She agreed and I took out the pink underwear from my pants. I was on my bike and she was sitting on the wooden bench. She took out from her purse a twenty and a single dollar. Before she could say anything, I said to give me the twenty and I could give her back change. She gave me the bill and I started to run away. I looked back to see what her face looked like and what she was saying, but everything was slow and I was afraid of her reaching me.