Walking Out of a Toolshed Into Heavy Rain.

 

I used to think the rice inside a chocolate bar was made out of the razor bumps that formed across the legs of a teenage girl after a too-close shave. 

I used to think the northern lights was the world closing its eyes, like when colors swirl beneath the lids when you don’t want to see. 

I used to think those pockmarked garden gnomes were tombstones for the small animals our neighbor’s kid had tortured to death. 

I used to play her the record that not only said everything I wanted, but said it all in the way I wish I could. She scoffed because all she could hear was "yelling", that she would "like hardcore music more" if she could "make out the words". It wasn't even a fucking hardcore album. 

I used to think if I cut my hand and shoved it up a felt puppet it would look as if their throat had been slashed. 

I used to tell her I was "the Bronson of horny jail". She said "who's that?". I said "c'mere, let me show ya." 

I used to think every friend I’ve ever had would rather get a cheap laugh out of fair-weather whores at my expense than put their support behind anything that might make me want to die a little bit less. 

I used to think if I ate my shit, my shit would be double-shit. I used to think if I drank my piss, my piss would be double-piss. 

I used to think that the internet rotted our brains. No no no, Sonny Jim; our brains rotted the internet. The internet died a little over thirteen years ago, and some desperate nerd buried it in the Pet Semetary (y’know, from the Ramones song), and now we got this angry decaying thing… all glib one-liners and murder set pieces… only the barest bone of what it once was remaining visible in traces through its snarling cannibal tantrums. 

I used to readily concede that I devoted perhaps an inordinate chunk of time to bitterly dwelling on the opulent temerity of the coasters that glide into comforts that elude my long over-earning of them, especially when they high-road me with the wound-charged cadences of a ventilation-hemorrhaging trauma dumpster when I’m struck by the rarified audacity to unburden myself of the leadening frustrations over the cards they dealt in the game of doing me wrong.  

I used to do stupid shit when I was young, like imagining I'd score a guest role on a legacy sitcom because my grindcore band broke through. 

I used to think that what they refer to in me as “evil” is no more than accumulated resentments prodded to shock a demonstrably unfair system that continues needling us toward visceral acts of bitter obscene aggression. 

I used to think that obsession had broke apart all I had in me until there was nothing left other than it. 

NCP