Selective Ramblings of an Eccentric

My head? Your head?

Groggily, I rise from the table

and stagger into a kitchen lit by the green digits

on our microwave; switch it off. Now it is dark but

at least I’m saving the world and I return

to the table because I forgot

what I wanted from the kitchen - maybe

a sandwich so yummy it would make me skinny

like shampoo advertisement recruits

shining out from in-between bus stop graffiti.

I’m obsessed with graffiti ; maybe because it’s everywhere

or maybe I see it everywhere because I’m obsessed.

It makes me reflect on mortality

due to the marked desperation that screams

from the scratchings and scrawlings

of dirty plastic propaganda. I wander

back to the table and bark at the saliva

that crept from my groggy mouth

while embossed coasters and f*g ash pressed themselves

against my cheek, determined not to be wiped clean,

which brings me back to graffiti. Of course.

Angry young men are ten

a penny if you believe all that you see on TV. You’re surprised, I suppose,

that I have a TV, after all I’m supposed to be saving the world

and that monstrosity should be the first thing to go,

yet amending each vice requires immense sacrifice,

 which is why there’s f*g ash on the table, sandwich ingredients in my fridge and angry young men on a moronic device representing a revised portrait of reality,

consisting of rage and celebrity,

in an age of anti-intellectual comedy that I once found funny

but now realise is killing me. Where were we? Ah, graffiti,

for I have not explained properly

the nature of the beast called conformity, disguised as rebellion.  

Everything can be condensed down

to the time – yes, Time is condensation;

little droplets race

down window panes

and if you count them, you are taking Time – when even loin cloths

were considered prudish, except that our capacity for consideration

was constrained by the limits on language and of our brains,

and because of this we were savages praying to the sky

instead of to a giant man who up there resides.

How silly. Where were we? Ah yes, graffiti, and surrendering to the boundaries

of poverty, which translates as conformity. Ignorance is bliss

[what we don’t know can’t hurt us]

so all little children know that if your friend jumps off a cliff

you should follow him

otherwise you’ll be left alone peering into an abyss of fractured bones.

This is called survival instinct; we’ve all seen what happens to antelopes

or wildebeest who stand out from the crowd: they’re knocked to the ground

or drowned by crocodiles and other creeps

who go around seeking weaknesses, which is also linked to the survival instinct, since

hungry young men can become angry young men,

and angry young men can become graffiti artists

working shifts in supermarkets...

terrorists...statistics.

Trust me, I’ve seen it on my TV.

 

Author's Note

Suggestions for a better layout would be appreciated (points-a-go-go lol). Thanks.
Also, let me know what you think of it.
Oh, and yeah, Amber - Ginsberg hooked me first read.

Reviews

[MrJodie]

It's like Ginsberg only with modern appliances, YouTube and that magic glowing box that sucks and sucks until every last drop of independent thought is drained dry as the Las Vegas desert. Good luck getting the f*g ash out of the table.

This rocks. This piece deserves publication in Tangent... and, oh, so much more. Congratulations and well deserved.

[TL Boehm]

um....were you channeling ginsberg? this is a STELLAR mind dump - random thought - stream of consciousness poetic piece. I truly loved it. I think lke this...but somewhere between my brain and my fingers the internal editor looms with virtual white out...and I never get this on paper.

[Bubo]

You have woven a web.........no doubt, of so many thoughts that tumble one after the other.......
a piece that certainly needs reading a few times!
The flow was fantastic although I felt it might have been better laid out in shorter lines........but thats me so take no notice.
But it's the thoughts that capture...........while having a TV close by............

ungry young men become angry young men, and angry young men end up

becoming graffiti artists...terrorists...statistics.

Trust me, I've seen it on my TV.


Fab piece.........and of course if you have seen it on TV it must be true!!
Loved it.........and the flow worked for me just fine!

[Nik'aule]

It makes sense to me... Does that make me crazy? It sounds like something that one of my friends would say late at night when grogginess magically transforms you into a philosopher. lol. I love the rhythm and the way everything ties together which what keeps the eccentric ramblings making sense.

[Anthony Morningstar]

Well I like the piece and the rythym for me gets kind of weird or loses it a little in the end. The thought and the abiltity to tie so many things together I think is what really makes this piece. Even though it keeps going back the T.V. The lack of thinking seems to be the conitueing downfall of our soicity. Here in the states on Sunday you can watch people in church services. It must get good ratings or something like that but theres a part of me that thinks that it's a bit of a brainwashing. But that could be said for most of the stuff on T.V. Something like church that was supposed to evoke some sort of spirital experiecnce is on T.V. The ability to watch animal plantet and survior man. All of this is good but it makes it so you don't really want to go those places there's no real use to go outside and use the hands use the brain. It's all right in front and it's only gotten better with HD. I'm going to right a piece latter about how fucked things are here in the states. Maybe tonight about only in America. Because this nationlism is what helps confine us and makes us strong in our ignorance. There's no reason to see what's going on over there there's no reason not to know what's going on out my front door. I've got the T.V. And if it's not that then there's this happy place the internet. And though it's not all bad it still can be. More people in general from what I get from this piece just need to get off their asses and do something go someplace expierince. I also like the ryhmeing in different spots.

[Kaij aka the Crit B***h]

Merry Meet.

One thing I'll say against this is putting it all in the center and having it so bunched up together. It makes it harder to read (for me, at least) because I keep hitting the same line that I just read in attempts to go to the next line.

Secondly, I found it all intriguing. And it does make sense, talking of the real world s**t that goes down. Just like Emily Burns said, it's like someone's drank too much coffee and is now racing through thoughts. I liked how he kept getting distracted from the main point before going back to speaking about graffiti.

Mm, not sure about the rhythm though. I noticed that you don't keep up with the commas in places. If you use a certain punctuation mark, you should keep at it, or else it will look like some pieces are normal sentences like they should be, and then others are huge run-ons. It's kind of a turn-off for me.

But overall, it was well written. Thanks for sharing.

[Emily B]

The rhythm is excellent. I like the words, they just jump right out at you. So many ideas and questions and thoughts. Like when your mind runs away when you've had too much coffee or too little sleep. You come around full circle, words all true, kind of like a modern day "Excelsior": pointing us in the direction we should go, ever higher, but clinging to our modern indulgences like television. Does that make sense?

I enjoyed it very much!