I Was Mining My Own Arm

for content, is how bad it was, in ‘99
they said how it was coming. Well,

I ain’t saying nothing or nothing
but the pulse may be quickening.

I Was Whip-Sawing

all over the fucking place, so to speak. My girl was gone.
I don’t come close, it appears. Everything turns out bad.

I don’t care. Nobody ever loved me the way she did.
That was important. For this life.

KIDS OF THE BLACK HOLE -- Chapter 4

[Fiends: Here's where our great and mostly unknown scribe begins to hit his stride. Ah love! If you wrote this, please contact me!]


CHAPTER FOUR. Ghosts


Everything seemed so much easier to me when I was a teenager. There weren't so many painful memories to drag me down all the time. Memories of ex-girlfriends, lovers, and old friends long gone. Back then there was not so much to regret. Somewhere along the line I went through a long string of tragic and heartbreaking relationships that really tore down my spirit, and gradually dismantled my faith. I guess I have had shitty luck with love. Or maybe I should say I have had incredible luck with love. I guess I’ve had my share of both.

The first time you get your heart broken must be the hardest. It takes the longest time to get over it, and you never really understand what happened until years later. It hurts so bad at first that you can’t even stand to think. It gets easier after you go through it again and again. You start to get used to it. You expect it. It makes you stronger. The ghosts of old lovers are quickly chased away by a fresh romance with a bright, shiny, new girl.

But then there are those that you can never truly forget. The ones that leave a mark on your soul and an emptiness in your heart when they are gone, and there is never any doubt that your world is a worse place without the light that they bring. They are few and far between but the endless memories are always a source of pain to me and an everlasting reminder of my failures.

Jen was my first girlfriend, I guess. I’d had sex with a couple girls before her but she was my first real girlfriend. The first girl I was ever in love with. At least I thought I was in love with her. Perhaps it was just a crush but she seemed to feel the same way and we quickly became companions.

Jen was sixteen when I met her and was very sweet and innocent. She had had sex once before but I guess it wasn’t really a good experience. We dated for about four months before we finally did it. We slept in the same bed together numerous times during those months and she always slept in her clothes, blue jeans and all. Occasionally she would let me take off her shirt and play with her breasts, but that was it. It was unbearably agonizing, but in an irresistible way.

When I finally convinced her to part with her precious jeans the triumph was sweet. Her skin felt amazingly cool and soft against mine. She protested as I removed her panties but before long I was inside her and she was writhing in my arms. Her body radiated intense warmth that came from beneath her smooth, cool skin and the smell of her hair was intoxicating. I could feel her eyes looking into mine but it was too dark to really see them. I wanted to turn the lights on so I could see her beautiful face and lovely figure but she would not allow it.

I remember watching her sleep as the sun finally crept into the sky. Her pale skin shined in the morning light and her face wore a joyful expression, even in slumber. Her breasts heaved as she breathed and occasionally she let out a little sigh and curled herself around me. I think that was the first really good sex that I had ever had, and I think it was for her too.

The attraction was not all sexual though. Jen’s whole character impressed me from the very start. She had me charmed the first time I ever heard her speak. She seemed very wholesome and innocent and yet she possessed this deadly wit that forged her every thought into an incisive, potentially volatile, comment. Her sense of humor was brutal and uncompromising but somehow everything she said ended up sounding cute. It was hard not to love her. All of my friends seemed charmed by her as well, which ended up being a small problem.

Jeffrey and Rod both developed crushes on her and, when it became known that we were a couple, they banned her from the “Punker Palace,” where they lived and we all hung out. It sucked for awhile and she felt hurt because she considered them both to be friends. Eventually they missed us so much that they decided to lift the Jennifer ban. It was all just foolish games really, but I didn’t care and neither did she. We were both just thrilled to be together.

When I think about her now it seems funny to think how in love with her I was. I had no idea what love was but I felt as though I would die without her. In a way she prepared me for what was to come in my life. She taught me that love was both beautiful and tragic, and that the world was both wonderful and cruel.

CITIGROUP AND ME

Of all the bad debt I've allowed unscrupulous confederations to usurp from my soul, the very quality of my minutes, of which my life, like yours, is made--of all the high faluting bottom-feeders that lacking sufficient prey to satisfy a paticular unmitigated gluttony could turn a nevertheless quite neglectful eye on me, and . . . and why, why neglectful? Why, indeed, if pure profit were its wont? Think on it; from where comes the bully. It is troublesome to struggle, well we know, and Citigroup, yes, grown fat on the unrelentingly feral appetites of its minions, fed through greed, nothing but, grows lazy and imprecise in its titantic inertia towards crushing, because it's easiest, the weak and dispossessed--yes, of all the greasy capitalist, scum-bag units to conglomerate in this piss-forsaken age, Citigroup is the absolute tits! (that's for gauche, folks, in this case)

So to come home from my 2-hr. commute, to enter the reality of my failure to succeed on no terms near my own, to come home to the place where there is no getting away from, to enter that space facing taped to one's door a not uncertain summons to report before the court to be sued, was not welcome.

I want to be fair to my alleged creditor, Citigroup. It is alleged that I profited, at their expense, to the sum of twelve thousand and change. So say their agents. Citigroup has chosen long before not to be here with you in this courtroom today. Nor with me. Long ago, years we're talking, they sold my debt to commission-sharks of lower tier than themselves; these to do the actual work of hounding their less legally fortunate brethren for their long-gone last dime. It's all so tidy this way. Let the hungry eat the starving.

Actually, those they sold it to were also too special to actually do any work. These second-tier bottom-feeders sold my actually-now growing bad debt to even lower-rent smaller sharks, piranhas perhaps.

I know not what sort of cetaecean, what agent, stalks me this day. But I know surely by the passage of long, hard years that they must lie low along the food chain. But they are, thereby--think on it--worthy of so much more respect than Citigroup, the mere persistence of greed matched to inbreed. Fucking queens.

Anyway, my sympathies lie strongly with the firm lined here opposite the bar from me this day. We slog it out here where life lives. Meanwhile, Citigroup, Country-Wide, Bear Stearns, Merrill, have gone hustling for more easy free money. Talentless pigs! They produce nothing! At least my adversaries here have skin in the game. You see them before you. They are here today, at this moment, as are we. And what happens here today is our life, together. And at least we stood toe-to-toe.

I have nothing but contempt for Citigroup. Fat and lazy, never lean, yet always mean. A Jabba the Hutt sort of outfit. We will show here today that we are all victims, clear victims, of Citigroup--of the depradations in general of a privileged few cut from the backs of the hopeful compliant, us, folks, in a word, compliant at least till they beat down the door. Citigroup calling. Your umbrella protection. Secure in an uncertain world. A division of WorldCashandCounting.

Million-Dollar Love

youth, it’s too late, it can’t be restored. O fucking well;
seriously, wasting bandwidth is a disappearing indulgence,
all hail the people’s army!

Spring Is Sprung

Norman’s brother’s bones smeared through the sumac,
my gristled heart, barely pumping, not mostly for you,
filling with muddy, boots wet since March.

Who Could Ask For More

was my middle name despite my distinguished surname.
Anyway, the refinement of the gross by refinement
takes a while.

I Was A’Cross Paddington Square

the things they name gals these days. Anytime, I can let this go.
O well, it wasn’t Parm Lament, or even bloody congress, still,
memorable, one wants to say, and that you deserve someone
more selfless. Which unfortunate fuckers are all over the place, so
as they say in the UK (I’m told) . . .
O never mind.

Don’t Ask Me

existential questions. I don’t share that shit.
Your move, always. Not mine. I crawled to daylight
and lifting to the breeze headed in again,
which was where you found me, lamenting
nothing and none.

I Shouldn’t Lose Sight Of The Prize

making it to the box, in time to go out high.
A man needs a goal in this world. That’s mine.
It’s dismaying actually, how long it lasts, how
much breaks down, so slowly. Where were you
when I was pulling down a yard an hour?
Wearing thin, that’s where.

I Should Do Something For Art

it’s hard to get motivated. My former girlfriend thinks
I need to get serious about examining my issues, as if
they weren’t facing front. Neither got no claim on

my ass.

My Sovereign

my pillow
my darkness

your touch fades where
new skin is thinking to come in

but doesn’t trust me
and who could

blame me

I Could Be A Hero

or a sap. It took some thinking but
in time I caught myself before
anyone knew. I’d slipped and fallen a ways
but my fingers reaching for what
they knew now was there
barely grazed and I was
pushing back toward the light.

I Wasn’t One To

drag my dick in it. I wasn’t greedy, having spent
mine and all my friends many times over,
having died all those times for true. Still, what to do
was what was breaking across everyone’s coffee and
would they ask? Apparently not. I mean Bill Clinton,
give me a break. It’s a good thing I’m hiding my light.

I might still run if my supporters want to make it happen.

Gray Days On The Mountain

all was sway. Quiet like. He creeped (you couldn’t nail it tighter)
past his earlier errors as they whipsawed for him, like always, but
like a hero in a comic book he side-stepped their metal coils
without breaking syllable.

Go ahead on. Sheesh. Maaaan! You is not the most! Sire, daddy tell me
true, motherfuck, good by the gun, is you the keen one I heard
was coming? I was. I could hardly keep myself in my seat, so to speak.
O well, say nothing.