-King Ink-
Our cigarette smoke gathering above our heads
on this shitty mattress I've been sleeping on
all these years gone by
springs stabbing me in the back

Your head on my shoulder
(but through memory
you seem impossibly bigger
always my six feet feeling ssmall)
your shampoo lavender scent
mixed with our(your)

smoke
&
sadness

you said

'don't let me fall in love with you'

so,

I didn't.

Now an age gone by
and names listed
gone with faces
I can't remember
and yours is sometimes
one of them
but I can't forget
your embossed skin
the texture of your ink,
the scars on your stomach

'don't let me fall in love with you'

and tonight my wrists are covered
fresh ink
blood on the rag
scars swelling
healing
slow.

Fresh ink always looks best,
baby,

and it only gets worse
once the scars heal
and the blood stops flowing

but you know all about that,
don't you,
my dear?

-King Ink-
Our cigarette smoke gathering above our heads
on this shitty mattress I've been sleeping on
all these years gone by
springs stabbing me in the back

Your head on my shoulder
(but through memory
you seem impossibly bigger
always my six feet feeling ssmall)
your shampoo lavender scent
mixed with our(your)

smoke
&
sadness

you said

'don't let me fall in love with you'

so,

I didn't.

Now an age gone by
and names listed
gone with faces
I can't remember
and yours is sometimes
one of them
but I can't forget
your embossed skin
the texture of your ink,
the scars on your stomach

'don't let me fall in love with you'

and tonight my wrists are covered
fresh ink
blood on the rag
scars swelling
healing
slow.

Fresh ink always looks best,
baby,

and it only gets worse
once the scars heal
and the blood stops flowing

but you know all about that,
don't you,
my dear?

Tonight I'm thinking about violence. In the American sense. Let's be clear here, violence is an American Tradition. And not, I'd argue, an entirely bad one. We can argue points of history, and I can advocate for the Devil as well as anyone, but at some point you have to recognize that without violence we wouldn't have much of an America to argue the traditions thereof. Now if you think we're an evil imperalistic Galatic Empire style goverenment, this might seem like a good idea to you. Fuckin' ignorant bastard that you are. I disagree, obviously. I'm a long view kind of guy, though, as the man said, 'I walk a higher path'. To wit, I believe in America. I believe in this country. I believe without Washington(no, the other one) fuckin' up the Brits as Valley Forge, you don't have Amendments One through Four)Known otherwise as the Good Ones). I believe without the massacare at Gettysburgs you don't have civil rights for people(in a general sense, you know, not just whitey) I think without the lives lost at Normandy you don't get rid of the Nazis. I'll go one better, without putting boots on the ground and bullets into turbans, we're never going to get rid of terrorists. That might sound harsh, unseemly, perhaps even crass. But the bottom line is there are, in fact, fuckers in this world that will not do the right thing unless prompted to do so at the end of a fully automatic assault rifle. Likewise, on the smaller scale of our day to day lives, sometimes there's no better way to communicate your displeasure to someone you know personally without resorting to hand singals in the form of fists to the face. Occasionally, these things happen. Nothing says 'we have issues we should be working through' quite like an empty pint glass to the back of a man's head.

Ahh, violence. My first true love. Followed quickly by whisky, cheap sex, smack, coke, cheaper sex & bourbon.

Recently the toughest motherfucker I happen to know mentioned to me that he's getting sick and tired of violence. To the point where pondering it is starting to make him ill. This is a bit of a natural reaction, I suppose to watching a guy who came to buy weed off you at work get locked in, beaten by two guys and threatened at gunpoint for even considering to call the po-po. Or maybe it's a natrual reaction to living in bad neighborhoods for a while and pulling a needle drop with a butterfly knife upon hearing loud noises behind you, turning and seeing that you've pulled an illegal leathal weapon on an elderly Chinese lady who's running donw the street late at night for no apparent reason. Breath easy, old son, My own hand's been on a blade handle in enough rotten situations to know it leaves an awful taste in one's mouth.

And, like my tough friend, I'm a bit sick of it myself.

Tonight I was confronted(tho' not threatened with) two hundred fifty pounds of enraged, red faced, threatening bouncer persona. Screaming at the top of his lungs into a payphone at four o'clock in the morning)to the point where my cab, parked fifty feet away, heard every word he said clear as day) as though his friend(hopefully not girlfriend) would not come and pick him up from the train station. This was after watching four on three face off on the train platform, not wanting to fight, but not wanting to back down, be willing to admit fault, weakness or any other such human qualties.

I'm sick of living in a fuckin' city where everyone but me seems to own a goddamn handgun and carry permit. I'm tired of working with guys who pack everything from knuckle dusters to forty caliber Glocks, switches, buck knives and body armor. The first time you hang out and get drunk with a room full of people who have their loaded handguns sitting next to them is an experience. I'm lucky in one sense. The club I work in doesn't allow anyone to carry while working. Of course, that doesn't mean I don't need a slim blade in my back pocket just to walk to the busstop with my tips in my pocket. That doesn't mean one of our managers doesn't have his loaded semi-automatic AR-15 in the trunk of his car all night long. That doesn't mean I haven't seen people get choked, glassed, beaten, worked over, thrown out face first into the street or bounced off of cars. It means I know I'm not likely to get shot at work. It does not mean I don't freak out when my little brother and I are sharing a smoke on the front porch and he's jumping around just inside my perphial vision. That was fun to explain.

'No, I need you to move inside my perphial vision.'
'You what?'
'I need you to take two steps forward.'
'Why?'
'Because otherwise I assume you're about to hurl a bottle at me.'
'...'

And, for the record, I don't even work fuckin' security.

The point is, oddly enough, incoherent. I recognize that violence can accomplish things. Sometimes, oft times, it is the only way to communicate with some people. Whether in Von Clausen's sense of 'poltics by other means' or by slamming shit out of some guy who otherwise will not get the motherfuckin' point. I further recognize that sometimes violence may not be very communicatve but may be the only solution to a particular problem. To wit, if someone attempts to rob me, I'ma stab the motherfucker. Yeah, it sucks, but there it is. I recnognize these things. I am, to some extent, a grown adult with a unique world view that encompasses many greys. I'm also listening to Stevie Wonder. That has no bearing on anything.

However,

I am sick and fuckin' tired of violence. Worse, pointless violence. Violence for the sake of violence. I'm sick of watching people lay into each other over spilled drinks, misheard insults, differing musical tastes, politics... women. A few months back one of our regulars got shot twice in a failed robbery. Why did the robbery fail? Becasue the regular- the victim- had NO FUCKING MONEY. That's sort of a standard, right, you can't rob someone who has no money. So, they shot him twice instead. Brilliant. He's since recovered enough to resume drinking at his former break-neck pace. However this has possibly left as indeible mark on my pysche as it has on his abdomen.

Bottom line, I'm sick of it.

And the worst part is there is nothing I can argue against. I can't, not for a second, forget or pretend I haven't committed acts of violence against people. Often people undeserving. Occasionally people I love. I can't ignore the merits of violence, or the realities of it. The nessiticties of it. I can't wish it will go away.

There are, arguably, things I could do. Change jobs, change cities, possibly change friends. Change attitude, change outlooks. But none of that changes the ultimate fact that, in many ways, I'm still a violent person. Worse: none of it changes the fact that after five goddamn millenium we have no managed to evolve to the point where a guy stepping on your Air Ones might not lead to a gunfight. How the fuck does that happen?

Conclusion,

once again, humanity,

it's all your motherfucking fault that I am miserable.

I hope you all die.

Violently.

No,

wait...

...
..
.

God give me something. Not quite strength. Unless one requires strength to defeat piss-blood-level-boredom.

I think I seriously need to fuckin' move far, far away from this place. Possibly change my name. Cut my hair. Forget where all those bodies are buried. Collect everything I ever wrote in a big ol' stack and burn it. Get drunk and shoot at the moon. Move just east of East St. Louis and accquire an apporiatly seedy drug habit that will compliment and accunate my new surroundings.

Boredom, unchecked, can be terminal.

Who said that?

Pedro Juan, probably, but it just as easily could've been Bukowski, or Fleming. It could've been me. Or possibly that rat Eggers. Fuckin' proper cunt that he is.

I am literally more afraid of my boredom than my constant one-hundred-and-two-degree tempature, or the various dense clumps of neon green shit I've been coughing up all day. More afraid of boredom than jail(I may have failed to mention, the state of NJ would like me to serve an unspecificed amount of jailtime for disagreeing with their opinion that I require substance abuse consueling). More afraid of boredom than of Bush!

My god.

So here's the deal.

Someone on my friend's list has to show my somethng utterly fascinating and brilliant and inspirational that they've found somewhere.

I need it.

Worse than drugs.

Go now and report back soon.

If I have to read one more shitty journal entry about getting fired, hating your job/girlfriend/boyfriend/roommates/parents/etc, about getting drunk at the bar with your friends(it was fun, but I'm so hungover), problems dealing with large corporations or troubles at the old school I will personally shit in your breakfast cereal. Stop being fucking boring. Start being fucking amazine. Otherwise I will let this goddamn illness carry me off to the grave out of pure fuckin' spite/

This week at least I have a good excuse for being antisocial and irresponsible. My throat seems to be attempting to strangle me to death. Waking up every few hours drenched in cold sweat, sick fever dreams. Every time I swallow it burns the shit out of the side of my throat. Breathing isn't much a picnic, either.

So forgive my rudeness, I'll just have to catch up wtih y'all when it no longer feels like there's a collection of golf balls lodged in my goddamn throat.

So no one said a life of restless, reckless, almost religious hedonism would be unfufilling... right?

Right?

Okay.

So maybe I need to settle down, just a bit. The realization coming, surprisingly, not while I pounded on C------'s Brooklyn apartment door at four AM, my hand covered in my own blood and my other swelling ferciously from that altercation with the subway walls, jabbering about rip-off cab drivers and foreigners with evil agendas. A Russian wanted to put me and A----- into a movie. At first we thought he was thinking gay porn, which is flattering but not very appealling(to me, at least), and it would've certainly explained the shots he was buying for us. I excused myself to the lavatory, hoping he would either disappear or die just by my willing it. But he didn't. And when I returned he was talking about umbrellas and people wanting to kill him.

Perhaps I should start from the beginning.

But I've no idea where it is.

Clear memory of being fourteen and dumping a water glass full of Parent's vodka out a window. Saying- actually aloud, mind- Fuck this shit, I don't need it.

Then wishing I hadn't gone and done that.

Flash forward eleven years and maybe a half a hundred miles. Sweating it out on C------'s couch that isn't quite a couch. Two days later people were still telling me I reeked of alcohol.

Ol' Chris Sick lied to you the other day, children. Alcohol posioning is never fun. Melladoree had it right, after all.

Some days it makes sense, and well, some days it doesn't. Like Leo McGarry said 'how could you want something that feels this good to stop?' Be it booze or pills or powders and potions, faceless sex or angry fists at anyamous victims. How could you ever want it to end?

Yeah, well, fuck all that noise.

I do.

I'm not about to hitch my wagon to AA or anything like that, start preaching about the good life of being clean and sober. Not quite that far gone. But jesus, you've taught me nothing. Buddha. I know there has to be some balance here for christsakes. A man can't write a good line drenched in his own blood and sauced to the gills. God knows I've tried.

And the Good Line is the most important thing.

The Good Line is the only important thing.

Recent clear-as-day memory. Examining the state of things on return home from Brooklyn. Hands still shaking while lighting cigarette. Beard gone week untended. Rubble everywhere. Of everything. The state wants to jail me for a five-year-old mistake I never quite managed to take care of. WReckage. And thinking, Fuck this shit, I don't need this. Any of it. And I don't want it.

I don't know exactly what I'm planning on doing, but I've had four people urge me to move to two different cities this week, alone. And there's always the institutes of higher learning that might have something to offer me. But christsakes, something has to be done.

Fear not, yon mortals.

I'll still be available for whisky drinking.

Still cop the occasional bag.

Still shoot the shit, and a badly played game of pool.

But I just remembered a great opener for a story I've been chewing on for a couple of weeks.

And I want to be able to do that, too.

I've been noticably(at least to Dankrubis, who has no life anyway) absent from these passageways lately. Okay, I'll work on it. I've missed at least three or four birthdays, straining to remember whose and too tired to check. So let me just do all of you at once. To one degree or another, I think of you all as some sort of friends. I may not say it, but I hold all of you in high regard. And like any friendship(even intangiable pixalted ones), I should be more available, more considerate of all of you. Recently, my best friend reminded me that a lot of people count on me. And I shouldn't let them down. So I have no intention of doing so. And I intend to be back around here, and try and show a little interest. I'm still chewing the website idea and how best to launch that litlte war. But for the time being, honestly, I just want to write. I want to remember what it felt like when I used to write my goddamn heart out. So the agenda is writing, quiet drinks with friends, ease off on the many colored powders and pills, writing and depp thoughts. And a bunch of shallow ones. I hope all of you are doing well. I'm fine, for those of you(cough, ampersand, cough) that expressed concern.

Tell me how you're doing.

...
..
.

Listening: The Exploding Hearts- Guitar Romantic, The Sugar Skulls, Self-Titled, & DJ Dangermouse- The Gray Album.
Reading: Beckett: The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989 & The Balcony By Jean Genet
THoughts of the Day: Semoitic Terrorism, Viral Marketing & Meme Warfare.

Okay. I have a lot to say and twenty minutes before I have to leave for work. These days run away like wild horses. I haven't been getting much done. Someone should mail me large quanities of methampethimines. Why? Because if I never slept I'd get more accomplished and because buying drugs from people who are horrifically paranoid, have no teeth and smell fucking terrible is a drag. It's painful in a deep spiritual sense. And my spirit is brusied enough.
There have been many strange occurances and odd happenings of late. I've learned a valuable life lessons about not making out with close personal friends who happen to be my best friend's x. It's enough floating, disassociated guilt to make a man go to church. And I may be joining the staff of another magazine, adding a second name to the short list of female editors I have who I wouldn't mind sleeping with. Fuck there are errant thoughts and then errant thoughts that need never be allowed out. But I have to go to work soon and I've things to say.
Black Heart Magazine has their third issue out at the end of the month. This is signifigant because it features my stunning literary talents. So go, and buy it. Give ValCapone all your money. You had plenty of reasons to before, and now I'm one more. I might also be writing for another upcoming magazine, but I'll give you more info on that as it comes together, which probably won't be before July at the earliest.
And I'm thinking about putting the army back together for the website. I have the need to build something artful and massive and terrible. And then aim like a gun at things I don't like until they explode. Or at least, leave the room.
More on that when I have more time. Sorry I haven't been very active around here, been busy being a bastard. I'm off to work now, leave donations of drugs and money by the door.

Peace.

(facts)
Reading: Fear of Dreaming: The Collected Poems by Jim Carroll.
Listening: American Death Ray, 'Smash Radio Hits'
Rocking: Blue aviators and beat up black all star hi-tops.
Pondering: Culture War & Spime World.

Have a nice day.

Jesus. It's been ages, it seems. Decades. I've been bad, I admit it. I've neglected you, my many and great fitlhy children. I've been a bit adrift lately, to be honest. Somewhat withdrawn, perhaps even moody. Also I've been partying like a fuckin' madman, either competly stone drunk, high as fuck, or some potentially lethal combination of both. Ah, it's a hard life, and about to get harder since I now realize I seem to have spent a bit beyond my means and can barely afford to buy more drugs and another bottle of bourbon. Terrible, really, terrible. But that is how it goes. It never ceases to amaze me how I can make a week's worth of wages at any of my previous jobs in two days at this one and then totally and utterly spend it by the next day. Sheer genius.
The NYC trip was a fine example of this logic in action. I have saved a few hundred bucks set aside to go spend, nearly half of which was gone two days into my arrival. Oh and Alexi kept getting into various kickboxing and bare-knuckle grudge matches with various motorcycles throughout the city. An excahnge.

AX: And after the barfight we knocked over another motorcylce.
CS: I don't remember that. That doesn't sound like us.
AX: After the second bar we got thrown out of. You pointed to a motorcycle and told me to 'go get it'. I knocked it over and we ran down the street giggling.
CS: Oh. Okay, that sounds exactly like us.

The barfight referenced was truely wonderful. Apparently, for all my tough guy mouthing off, I have no idea how to throw a punch in the heat of the moment. That's the bad news. The good news is that I can take punches due to my incredibly thick skull and, futhermore, I do know how to choke the living shit out of someone in the heat of the moment. It's just a difference in techniqure, really. Remember, filthy children, if you're going to start a barfight at four AM while ripped-to-the-tits-drunk, make sure you're outnumbered two-to-one, then make sure you win. Then make sure the people you beat up get arressted rather than you. It apparently helps if the men in quesiton are Spanish, or at least, vaugely Europeon.
Oh. And MOMA fuckin' hates my freedom for some reason. Everytime I try to go to MOMA it's closed for some reason or another. So we went to The American Folk Art Museum next door and saw this, instead. People frighten me.
Then two days spent all fucked up in Brooklyn, scared of the weather(incidentally it was fuckin' freezing in the NYC for my trip, now, back in Philly it's about seventy-two degrees out. MOMA & The Weather Channel hate my freedom). Then an endless run of trains, busses and various other convayances to take me all over Manhatten before returning to Philly I was just there for the culture, but all the tall buildings kept getting in the way. And people keep telling me I should move to the NYC. Which is great, but unless you're going to pay the six-dollar-per-pack difference on my smokes, fuck off. I hate it here, and sure, I'd love it there, but me and my $9.65 life savings aren't going anywhere that doesn't have a dollar value menu for at least the weekend.
Apparently, the girl I'm seeing was quite impressed with me before, now she's seen the writing I leave lying around on MySpace. Now she's really impressed. So there comes a time in a man's life when he has to say 'honey, you're real sweet, but you have kind of a big ass and everything you say bores me to tears, no matter how tight your vaginal wall is.' I'm at that time, I think. Or at least the time to stop answering the phone. Weird. I used to throw myself headfirst into relationships, get involved easily, be totally honest, have no walls, no barriers. Now I just don't want people to tocuh me. They frightem me honestly. None of the adults I know have ever taught me the difference between good touching and bad touching, so I've been left to formulate my own opions, apparently. I've decided that being woken up by a blowjob constitues good touching. Having to hold hands on the street constitues bad touching.
Ah, Warren Ellis swears that being a bastard works. I'm still waiting to see proof.
While on the subject of women, I hate all of you. But no, seriously. Depending on your scale and your definations I"m juggling at a bare minimum two girls, and at absoluete maximum six. Why is it the one that's easiest to get together with is the one with the big ass? And when did I get so shallow? Nevermind, scratch that last one. I more or less always have been.
Other errant thoughts:

This-e-here:


is possibly the best record I own. Fuck you, Mick Collins will eat your soul and I will kill your body for NOT FUCKING LISTENING TO ME WHEN I TELL YOU TO BUY EVERYTHING MICK COLLINS RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

Thank you.

The Babyshambles import on the other hand, eh...

not so much.

Apparently it's now down to me and some coke-addled halfwit Queen fan writing for the NME that doesn't believe Pete Doherty is walking junkie waste that needs a serious overdose to set him straight. I still have faith in the boy, but damn. Babyshambles just ain't quite what Babyshambles ought to have been.

Also I've been thinking about things again lately. THINGS. Shut up. Anyway. I notice that I've sort of amassed among my friends(both in the for-real for-real and the internets) a strange small army of talented, clearly pyschotic individuals. A quick inventory of people I'm on good terms with includes artists, writers, musicans, combinations of all three, vigilantly mathmaticians, models, tattoo artists, computer programmers, firearms experts, bartenders and drug dealers. This, I feel, is on the whole a good thing. It's nice to have friends, nicer still to know that it would be fairly easy for me to score crack and an unregistered handgun with no serial numbers upon a few quick phone calls. But seriously, I'm wrapping my brain around the website, again, or something like it. I was thinking the other night about clothes and how I really wish my friend Yon Dustin would design some fucking clothes, because a)he'd be fantastic at it and b)I'm sick of fags in A/X shirts and all the crap on Revolt clothing dotcom is labeld some sort of slim-fit bullshit that just WILL NOT accomadate my fuckin' beer gut. Besides, if some jackass can charge a hundred bucks for a tee shirt, wouldn't you rather it be a friend of yours? Then I was thinking about VIce and how- at least at one point- they had a magazine, a website, a chain of retail stores, a record label, a film studio and a printing divison. And I started thinking about how you just make something so big you can dictate terms to everyone. Control the content, bring up the names you want, make the records you want, the movies, even the fuckin' clothes. And, oddly enough, you can possibly even make a living at it. So who wants to give me ten grand to set up a non-profit website which would serve as the initial push to a massive and vile media empire?

Anyone?

Someone in the back perhaps?

Okay, failing the ten g's, you motherfuckers catch me up, what have I missed in your lives, filthy children?

SitRep:
Currenty reading-
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
&
The Vice Guide to Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll

Currently listening-
The American Death Ray- 'Welcome to the Incredibly Strange and Erotic World of The American Death Ray'
&
Blacktop- 'I've Got a Baaad Feeling About This, The Complete Recordings'

Currently rocking-
The wool blazer with the cowboy boots and the aviators.

-update-
It's great that the only two SG's I'd really want to put on my favorite list are both at the very top of the massively-long list. It really is. The alphabet rocks.[