Finally
I became something I wasn't so proud
of. Then I became myself again. Let me put it another way. I am a teen now--and
I've been giving up for a long time
LIFE is all about finding out that what
you want it to be isn't EVER going to be what it is. And boring...the zits and
what all. What a waste of my time etc Your adult time and your adult ways of
going about your business Ignoring the teen in the basement with his head wired
for sound ...Well sirs I have a few problems with the ways you've been going
about your business. Much of it to the
exclusion of my music.
Each
thing has its history and history is music. Or suppose this is where we live. A
WORLD WITHOUT THE MUSIC OF TEENS
And
this is where we live! There's a white circle in the street, there's children,
and where we live demands us to think that it is where we are not. Bodiless.
What is bodiless but the child the teen in me steaming BODILESS TEEN SERPENT IN
THE SKY. No I am not your average teen thrust into his body by mere biology. We
cannot distinguish what tempts us from what? What is bodiless? That counted
thing that can be one way to begin Falling upward into a worse sort of
knowledge That is broken in on by daylight It is always finding you They say
sniggering So much sniggering So then this moment's light is suspicious light.
You're constantly being told to expect something of yourself. And we expect
nothing to happen. There is another blank
Fixed
on a spot nearest us This doesn't require modification. The teenage is without
relief. Modification, the moon, the stem and scaffolding of branches fitted together
HANG ME you write on your locker HANG ME you sulk home from school...
Though
there was a time before us, and we acknowledge it It seems the less important
the MORE THOSE WHO WERE ALIVE THEN mention its being golden Well I was alive
then and it was no more golden than the way things seem to be right now But
because everyone is in such a goddamn yank to talk to you about what they've
figured out ABOUT THEMSELVES you have to listen to their experiences As if this
were history... this relentlessness case by case advising PROGRESS NOT
PERFECTION Like I'm going to turn out the same Hacking into a handkerchief
In a broader constellation
of events and people Circling one another as though hopeless satellites Hacking and
coughing We all just sit in a big white room like this While every now and then
one of us sniffles and sighs and the Doctors give us medicine in little paper
cups Then we finally shut up and Take to bed and you sleep because you really
are very tired were it not so much about being awake as ALERT to the nature
outside of your window exquisite bluntly edged into its pattern Every now and
then aware of the sound of someone blinking their eyes or crying into their
pillow or humming or licking their teeth Everyone sitting in this room so lost
in their thoughts IT SEEMS LIKE THEY WILL NEVER COME BACK
So
then the evening would fall apart sooner The sooner I fall apart on the way to
work FUCK IT and no sooner time contributes as much to a mainly “disconsolate
mind” and where we live
With
disconsolate cities and highways left for it Tracing the matter rolling Red
Balls in Your Veins These manners beside mansions, yet expressed in acts that
are fixed on us
Not
their equivalent but their lonely
Extensions,
our bodies, wriggling into other bodies, ADULT BODIES
to
explain any kind of self we have to get to be like them Well I was like them
and I got no reward for being like them SO I CHOSE TO GO BACK which no one will
notice anyway, Because they didn't notice before.
Being
a teen is more than the juice pumping of your pituitary gland and the hair
under your arms and the intensity of the blood flow to your prick. I'm a teen
precisely because of the PEOPLE AROUND ME. I
get the impression they don't even know there's a dead kid in the room with them
I get the impression they don't care While they are served coffee by children
or read the paper and look at the world and Think There's More to Know And the
days pass for Days though they are Slight and Soundless
For
Instance One Night I was out walking
around well in tears because no one was paying attention to me And was really
damn close to killing myself because I was at work ON IT and then this guy came
out of his house and asked me what I was doing standing in his yard I had no
idea I was standing in your yard I
told the old man to go to hell and he stepped a little further out of his house
and said WHAT DID YOU SAY and I said I said what was in my right to say OLD MAN
I said You can shove your property up your butt Well that did it He came
roaring out of his house and with his big old fists beat me In the end I was
ashamed YOU UNDERSTAND I was beaten so badly I could hardly move for a month
and took to my bed Dreaming Anxious DREAMS So then the feeling is where one
must begin BEING A TEEN That resistance to being beaten into states of ANXIOUS
DREAMING
But it is not always like this and my
mother--though she's very nearly one hundred--She'll tell you the truth I AM
THE SWEETEST BOY But it's true My life is a little bombastic. But it's not
without its secret charms. I tell you. It's much more than these scuffles
The
point now is I am working in a little store stocking the shelves canned goods
and I wear an apron and am always carrying a pricing gun. The aisles shimmer I
am alone here I FEEL Religious Awe LIKE I AM IN A CATHEDRAL And then I go home to
my mother and her breathing tubes You should see me after working eighteen
hours straight Has a teen ever worked so
hard? The teen is subject to the laws of recognition, this includes the
inevitable FREAKING OUT when under the microscope The teen is SUBJECT ONLY TO
ITSELF and has great facility with its own inner-microscope I train it now And
"work" works in this manner THE MARKET Each day has its own sound
I've written on pink stickies I've stuck to my bedroom wall It's tessellated
with pink stickies Generally it's a variation of the incessant sound of traffic
passing under a low bridge on the highway. Or the sound of a wonky grocery-cart
wheel squeaking over waxed linoleum. It's all here in my notes.
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