the lifecycle of the botfly

at the groupon offices
i really mean the pits
today, last day of february 2013
the grunt babysitter calls a meeting
AN EMERGENCY MEETING
it has nothing to do
with the very public firing
of their CEO
who has spun poor first quarter earnings into a tale of love

in the pits
he zips me a message
"this is too real
NO ONE IS SAYING ANYTHING
you'd literally never know"
i'm snorting under my breathe
as i try to sort out over the phone
what the hell is wrong with the copier

if i move to austin, texas
and join a book group
to read kropotkin
this is what i will remember
when i say, you can't kill a thing without a head

to the health of COD: the future of American journalism

rod stewart croons twice at the drop of a dollar
you gotta love a cop bar sporting mob movie posters
lower order yuppies smoking inside (last of its kind)
snow drifts on the industrial corridor, a pitted carpet

she shouts up to the fashionable lofts
WE ARE TRYING
TO HAVE
A CIVILIZATION HERE
--you are not helping
holds up deuces for the honking driver
ice cools the place where the tears have dried

how do the spaniards even poop?

their entire diet is salted meat and bread and cheese and olives

fields of heather and a museum that induces vertigo

but oranges with hard, impressive navels

everybody gets to slow dance with the girl
wrist resting on chests, a light hand hold
once before she goes
the eastern seaboard? the east coast? you wouldn't turn 52 grand down either
gets to have dinner with her
she preaches the same sermon to all of us

the city should have been big enough for all of us
it should have been enough


the third coast becomes a lakeside villa, a neverland
i'm carding her hair, i'm touching her back
i'm proud, you're beautiful, you'll be great, buy yourself so many leather goods with all that money they're throwing at you, come see me, come see me. i know you have to go, yeah you're gonna do real good.

How'd you like Django Unchained?

right, right sure

but the thing, the bit under the bridge right--

with the baseball bat and pretending to knock one out of the park

while he knocks a head in

THAT

that's violence in toto

disguised, okay

the lower order yuppies are wrapped in a tight circle

by quarter to midnight

it's frank sinatra at this point

two old polish dudes staring intently at that patterned skirt

nearer the door, nearer the bell

we're doing the same, but

you know you can cry, right?

and it all bubbles up, right out of the chest

and when e and i walk out of the bar

i'm holding her like we're walking away from a graveyard

there's a flung cigarette butt on clybourn avenue and the ground fairly sparkles at adams and monroe and if you stand on the corner of lincoln and george on a windy night the air howls through the tunnel in the telephone pole and it's the sound you might hear when the city empties out forever, along with taxi cabs still playing WBEZ and i'll expect the trucks again next week in front of my apartment to carry the crew of Chicago Fire and i'll still get on the bus in the wrong direction at Jefferson park

i rewrote the sermon

we loved it each other and it wasn't enough

Measures of Personal Sucess/Personal Measures of Sucess

1. low stakes sexting
2. the rain the wind the snow and my ruddy cheeked genes don't make a good pair, i show up anyway
3. i have something to hide
4. early december, bus ride through indiana, i am scared of the man who talks to himself and mutters, "i been in the penitentiary most of ma life" and the municipal waste treatment plans don't seem beautiful to me and i know it's hilarious that i live in illinois but not in illionois, but at least i'm not claiming america looks like one place, you know?
5. my nail game/the best ass for twerking/my fuck-me face
6. my hand is on the seam-ripper
7. can you dj?
8. my whole body doesn't want me to say, my spine runs into a pin point and my veins push up to the surface of my skin and someone notices my hand shaking and maybe i need a beer before all of this, but i'm still saying it all anyway
9. still not dead yet

fanatic kingdom

who shines for you on the teevee?
o my guh
are you eye-fucking what's on that flat screen????
tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me
o my guh
ME 2
ooo woo woo woo

heyo, danger zone cuties and wet eyed adonises
WARNING
so many somebodies want to plant big wet ones on you
and that's how you end up crushed on the grand ballroom floor
for now the leash stays on
and this can go on being a paycheck for you
but don't you wonder about the hell beasts sometimes?

ca-caw shun airy tail
she looked so nice in that turtleneck and cardi set
but she blew her idols over with not even a sneeze
now she's got like 16 degrees
and clobbering fists
and a stare that makes underwear just drop off
and a gun liscense
and a give 'em hell attitude to boot
from when she snaked their spirits out their mouths with her claws

or else the frenzy goes the way of the failed souffle
and IDK
like "guh/too much/can we just/how are you real/stop that right now"
and they stay in their bedrooms
and always call their moms

America the liminal between life and death; police state.

I live now with this beautiful little lion of a cat named acu, he has taken me in. Quite the precious thing with the most fluffy downy undercarriage I have ever touched! He is definitely one of my more serious friends here.
I also live with Erik and that is going strangely and well unwell mostly. He is a very hurt person, as well as beautiful, kind, and mysterious. We are both standing on the precipice of each other, just sitting there feeling the pull to go down but some things hold us back. He is still in love with his old boyfriend and says I threaten his memory, Erik doesn't want to forget him. He says when he touches me he feels deep pain. 
I am not myself in all of this, a very good thing maybe. I mean I am here but am in a sort of state of grace. The possibility of love perhaps does that. New York perhaps does that. I am not trapped in my old stories, I feel the boundaries of my self have shifted, are shifting rapidly. 
I am broke as can be, never poorer. Yet I am unworried. I was arrested yesterday for hopping the subway. I spent all day trying to avoid the rain and finally decided to go out to this dumpster i know of. I was going to bike but did not want to be wet and cold having only pair of pants. So i decided i would dip into a little luxury and take the subway. On my way down the stairs i decided 5$ there and back was too much to pay. So i hopped.
I was held for some hours in a holding cell in Brooklyn. I sat there as one must. my hands slung through the bars. I thought what does this say about my life right now, where am I in this? Does this reveal something or is it just an arbitrary scene. I still don't know. Being arrested having my body held, my wallet emptied, phone and iPod gone through, photographed, fingerprinted all have contributed to this state of grace. Where I am in this? I lean towards saying nowhere. This has almost nothing to do with me. Moralizing assholes with no background in sociological analysis would pipe up here and say it is my fault.
I listened to the stories of three black men who were in the cell with me. They mentioned Martin luther king and slavery. Yes they are still talking about it, ever present on their souls and minds. I really cannot imagine. To even imagine what they feel is a small education in itself. The world is as bad as we say and believe (and as beautiful). We talked about when the american people are finally going to challenge the state. The cops: I got to witness their bodies in detail, their mannerisms, relationships with one another, thumping fists on chests guffawing, circle jerks; their brutal arrogance and ignorance. I cannot think of more disgusting creatures than the police, they truly are fucking pigs. If you stand too long in their presence they will eat you alive.
I had no idea when i would be getting out and i had no idea what they were digging up on me by looking through my phone and ipod, some who know me right now can perhaps imagine. I was in a cell where the only thing that moved was the locked door. It moved a millimeter back and forth inside the latch. In even a small world of a few hours this tiniest of movements became a source of hope. It was the only thing that moved in the whole cell besides our bodies. To push the door back and forth was to feel the possibility of leaving. It made the tiniest noise, the tiniest friction, but if I were serious enough it could make a lot of noise and I wondered if I could break out if I tried hard. Being contained is maddening beyond anything. So maddening that I had to become silent and extremely calm. 
What happened to me is dramatic but comparatively not so. A brush with the beast. Still I feel the presence of the forces around us. A million invisible strings we are constantly moving through, tripping up on, dragging, setting off. The forces are very real and I have been given another warning, be careful! "we will take you". We are not free, ha, and definitely not in the cities. Ask and you shall receive? Is this what we ask for? We are not free.
I have a court date for hopping the subway. Give us all a break. I am working on getting a job ASAP just in case I have to pay a fine. For now I will walk with my head down and not look at the police. Silence, my mother inadvertently taught me, is still strength. I will walk acting like a subdued person. I do not want to deal with them ever again. I'll do anything to avoid them touching me. When they touch me I feel the injustice of their very existence. When they touch us I feel stunned, how can this be?
We are not free. My mother who was carted off to jail repitedly. They took her and made her disappear. The child screamed at and beaten for not moving within the confines of the box called boy is still me. I was arrested when i was twelve for fooling around with neighborhood boys. I was scapegoated because everyone knew I was a fag. They took my body away from the prison that was home to another prison: juvenile jail. They would scream so loud at us that my ear would bleed at night. I am very deaf in one ear now. We are not free unless freedom lies within the confines of the game we play. We have small freedoms we can create and hideaway with, but they cannot all be displayed. How much more of our lives do we spend courting the ruling class? How long do we eat the crumbs they give and continue calling it a feast?

I am fucking pissed
I tremble with unshed tears
threatening to drown me

To be queer is truly a gift
as well as a black eye and a bloody lip.
it is everything

this country is a terrible joke,
I can't stand now
I gotta sit.

a lil bit of something else

so to avoid the onslaught of the wheezing robots, i changed the blog to "readable by authors/invited readers only." hope that's okay with you. if you want to open a fellowsquid-squirrel-fox's mind to something adventurous,
- click "customize" at the top of this page (or navigate to the "dashboard")
- click the "settings" tab
- click "permissions" (the last tab)
- scroll to the bottom and add your buddy's email address to the waiting-wanting "invited readers" box
they'll get an email with the address and so long as they are not a robot, are welcome here.
[update: after talking to some squids, i switched this back so you 1) don't have to sign in and 2) anyone can read the blog. as a little sidenote to myself&all, since this is an open page and we sometimes direct our friends here, use yr Sense and don't post any super private info--address, phone #, full name, etc. and since the robots are here, email addresses are rife for spam so keep em to yrself.]

in other news,
capitalism is so boring.

for instance,

this weekend i went to madison with z, the isthmus of bikes-goodfood-tall leaning trees-lakes-co-ops-“ethnic”food-bourgeoisdelight and for the rest of us it’s a prime site for liberatory politics and homes that heal after a long day of the same-the same-the same, this time in wisconsin. the capitol building is better when the farmer’s market rings around it and after we make the rounds (cheese curds, kale, wallawallawallawontcha onions, conversation, little leaf samples, toothpicks for free, hot pickles, endless preserves) we go at it again with coffee-as-handwarmer just to see if there’s something we missed. for instance, a pastry. for instance, strawberry rhubarb something. for instance,

we toured some co-ops, not quite tourists more like “membershipper&waywardperson,” dwelling in the in-between between living and desiring, asking and choosing. reading house journals, asking about conflict, in this gap between rhetoric and reality finding cleavages of spirit and quietude. for instance, how much is dirt a part of your house practice? do you do the dishes because you have to or because you love to? when you say something objectionably real, do others agree? and are you friends? were you friends first? for instance, who shows up? who lives here? for instance, in this huge space, yard-public-rooms-niches-shed-kitchen, where in here do you live? for instance,

cigarettes on a porch, punching kimchi until it sweats, introducing legs to hills and mounds to muscles, homebuilt saunas full of steam and newly-met naked bodies, greywater toilets, filling up space with talk, local beef and indian honey, filing cabinets rocking back and forth with the weight of zines that could change the world if they landed in the right hands,

for instance, our hands found each other.

for instance, getting this funny feeling between my hand, heart, stomach, junk, bellybutton that maybe what i want (permaculture, farming, living, learning, thriving, flourishing, creating, loving) might not be as far away as the west coast, that there are places where life is easier to live well, a funny feeling of jealousy and impatience and through stories and reconstructions and resonance,

coming to love my now/here/present all the more, as ephemeral as it may sometimes seem.

something like,

dear madison,

you are one hot isthmus. thanks for the sunset. i think i’ll be back to go bikeriding with you soon. meet you by the ramps at the farmer’s market?

with communal warmth, cool breezes, and flying hair&pages,
eliot