There’s a man and he’s determined to pull out all of his hair because he’s never felt love. He’s taken up all of his hours proving he should be loved. He did this one thing and the other. He studied and perceived how others had gotten love. He asked people he thought were loved what they liked to do so that he could be more like them. Now, he’s just yanking at his hair. He’s 30 years old and the urge is strong. The man grabs on to two big patches on the front of his head, makes sure his grip is sturdy, and begins to pull back. First a few hairs come undone, then, a more layered peeling of the hairline. The skin bumps off the head with the menace of what may happen. It might take a more powerful man to fully uncap our poor fellow. But no, he’s not quitting. I guess it makes sense. 30 years old. The math is there. He’s thinking about that one tournament where he didn’t get that hug from dad. He’s thinking about that first girl that fucked his worst enemy. He’s thinking about how his friends joked he was too fat. He’s thinking about how animals didn’t sit in his lap. Now some blood presents itself. More than you would think…at first. Then you realize how much stuff goes on in our heads. Makes sense it streams out. A hole is starting to open up on the right side of the cranium that peeks at about a half inch of shiny flesh. Quickly the hole is filled with the familiar bold redness of blood. Huh, would ya look at that? What a sight. He really wants it. On average it takes this sort of man 4, even 5 attempts to get to the point our man here is at. Most don’t ever live long enough to have enough hair to truly do it. They just push back at their temples, but that’s a tough technique from what I hear. The man is giving it his all, nevertheless. His upper back and triceps are marked with those lines that show that true straining is occurring. He’s thinking about how it was all unfair to him. That if he ever enacted some sort of revenge it was unequivocally justified. It was that fifth girlfriends fault he did what he did on that trip to Europe. It was that one friends piece of shit way of being that made him tell those lies. It was his family always criticizing him that made him miss out on all those dinners. Now the whole front of his hairline is peeled back beginning to reveal the whiteness of the skull. Blood pouring out over his brow and cheekbones. It only gets easier from here. The man shouts that there is no God, no good, and no love. He’s weeping while rocking forward. Using the momentum of his body to continue the peeling. He will ultimately tear off his whole head piece and bleed out before the night is over. They’ll find him 13 days after it happens. And, of course, there will be a funeral. They’ll talk about the 1 small thing the man ever mustered to give back to society at that one foundation 8 years ago. People will cry, don’t doubt it. This man’s passing will not go unrecognized. It’s how we are as a species. There will be humans in those seats. All thinking, all wondering…where did he get the strength to pull so hard.
She’s rich, grew up knowing that she could do whatever she wants, and still feels as if she’s been hard done by life. Her mother recently passed away after a hasty battle with one of those aggressive types of cancer. There wasn’t enough money or holistic treatments to keep her alive. It all happened so suddenly that it left the young woman with this feeling of existential whiplash. One of the few roots still grounding her was plucked in a matter of months. For the first time in her material life, this young woman had to cling on to something else. The soul had to find refuge in the wind. Old letters, pictures, stories from family members, a VCR tape of a trip to Turks and Caicos. It all felt like gusts of wind that helped cool the soul from the scorching of mortality. This went on for weeks. The young woman fluctuated from feeling at peace and serene to violently turbulent. She would spill her tears over the memory boxes that outlined a life lived. Then, she would go out and party until the night clubs closed at 6am. Finding shelter in the numbness of uppers and downers. Feeling herself go up and down in the arms of men of the night. Coercing the senses into some sort of pharmaceutical nirvana. Body, soul, and mind can only take so much of this until we’re physically drawn to corners and dark spaces. A true static silence that marks the proverbial breaking of the camel's back. The young woman sleeps and dozes off into plum colored oblivion. Today, to her own surprise, she’s woken up and felt she has enough strength to go visit her mothers greenhouse out back. It will be a quick little stroll just to get her legs moving outside of the four corners of her room. The young woman flashes past the petunias and the orchids and the sunflowers. Her mother had once explained to her that as much as she loved the symmetry, color, and enchantment around traditionally beautiful flowers and plants, she preferred the rarer, less appealing subsets of flora. These were found towards the back of the green house. Venus fly traps, stinking corpse lilies, Zulu giants. A baffling mixture of foul smelling and carnivorous verdure spanning 15 square yards of space. That’s where the young woman is heading straight to. Despite the insufferable odor and ghastly structural formations, the young woman takes her time appreciating it all through her mother’s eyes. She contemplates her mothers philosophy around these plants. She comes up with reasons as to why her mother had this close fondness to this type of greenery. Perhaps it was the strangeness of it all or the duality of nature itself. It makes her feel proud to think about her mother as someone who thought about life with this sort of depth. As she’s putting an end to her sojourn in the greenhouse, the young woman spots a plant tucked away in the corner of the greenhouse she has not seen in the past. It has a thick baby blue stem that sweats black droplets, pink petals that look like the skin on a human's hands which hold inside pomegranate-like seeds that smell like fried chicken. The young woman looks around to find some sort of description on the plant and there is nothing to be found. Nothing except the shells of the pomegranate-like seeds in a small mound behind the plant. The young woman ponders for a moment and realizes that maybe her mother was eating these seeds to combat the cancer. It would make sense that she flew in some sort of exotic plant. As stated earlier, all resources were sought after to stop the spread of the disease. The young woman then thinks to herself, “why not pay homage to the resilience and ingenuity of my mother by eating one of these seeds?” It feels right in a way to indulge in this little snack that once held the faint promise of health for her mother. She puts her hand inside the pink flesh petals which slowly close over her hand and draws out one of the wine red seeds. She looked up at the sky, closed her eyes, peeled the layers to uncover the yellow seed, and pops it onto the tip of her tongue…[TO BE CONTINUED].
There’s not much of anything for me
I still can’t partake in the jigg
And I’m far worse off because of it
It will kill us all in the end
Time might make something real out of me
But nothing that can stop the big charade
We all need that comfort so, so, so badly, right
And I shouldn’t just off myself they tell me
Even when everything I live is a lie
Because they’ll kill to avoid any responsibility
“We’re all just having fun living our lives
You don’t have to justify yourself to anyone
Everybody will judge so just do what you want
Nobody will understand so who cares
It’s your life so just live it how you want.”
I wrote that out way too easily
Well they spew it out smoother
Depression might super glue me to my bed
But there’s nothing lazier than that
Never a real moment with any of this
Red noses with no software update
Failed courses on self-actualization
The screens and the strong-men
Motivation enough to trample, my love
Just sitting
What else
Whose grinning
Poor health
It’s lonely
In the sky I feel
Scores on me
Go and run the reel
Thinking realness
The game is always run
It’s all business
Honey give it up
Is there death from this
In a hole I’m stuck
On a hit list
Always want some fun
Was there some emotion
Or piss fest on promotion
Never even there
Drive it all away through flair
Pushed it to some limit
And now my powers I extinguish
I’m uglier than hell
Almost excused myself today
Pathetic hour glasses
It’s the first dance of parades
Hobbled on a gig
Bead of sweat that always trickles
Made it to some ships
Put some muck on something fickle
A brick laid down
Rest and nauseous
A brick laid down
Save the arrogance feel cautious
A brick laid down
Wake up it’s that cold evening
A brick laid down
Real hunger whose kidding
They’re bored. That’s what makes them most pathetic. Kinda harsh, but, no, they are. Don’t feel too much pity, but yeah, they’re bored. They have stopped even living all together besides their dinners and mental brainstorms. Wasting money, opportunities, and experiences left and right. They even made jokes to each other about being wasted. Life now seemed like it was in the second half for these two. They found the act of going through a day hard to cope with. Everything was boring. Snooze fest. If that wasn’t the case, the general feeling from the two while being in the outside world was critical. Trying to be understanding, not finding the understanding, finding the understanding but still feeling like it wasn’t beautiful. They were critical. That happens to some people. Existing in apathy and lack of amusement through the modern daily schedule. With these dinners, well, these dinners were now the bare minimum social engagement the two could bare. The dinners were used as a mechanism for the two to appreciate the act of having company, the two of them together. The guests had come and gone. Guests from all different walks of life. Crash dummies. Eat here, talk a little, some substance usage and games, see you later. Dinner dinner. Tonight they invited Josh over to give it a go, again. Give it yet another go at getting through one of these dinners without feeling that terrible urge to…[TO BE CONTINUED].