yellow handlebars

homeward.

once in may

once in november

once in may

once in november

once in may

once in november

this is the third november that i’ll be going back to new jersey to see my family for thanksgiving.  we don’t do christmas.  we don’t do hannukkah.  we do “okay your dad got his christmas bonus do you want something or what?”  i prefer this to trees, tinsel, garlands, menorahs, candles, etc.  i do thanksgiving, and i break vegetarian every year on thanksgiving.  i do this to avoid a conversation about the holocaust.  my grandparents were in poland at the wrongest fucking time you can be in poland, and for that, i eat turkey once a year so that i don’t have to get into a “ball of string” conversation with my grandmother or my mother.

a “ball of string” conversation is when i spend hours being guilted about what i do and don’t do because in the concentration camp all they had was a ball of string.

this may seem callous, insensitive, harsh, and even mean, but let me finish, please.

i love my grandmother.  i have crossed the state of florida in various rental cars various times to see her if i’m even close to the southernmost state in our union.  the last time i was there, she told me the entire story of the war, start to finish, and we both cried our eyes out and shared an incredibly special few hours.  she gave me my grandfather’s watch which i wear every single day even though it is too big and doesn’t go with anything at all i wear.  nothing is more important to me than the sacrifice my grandparents made to bring me here.  nothing.

however, there’s a difference between understanding that and having to relive it every time i see my family.  hitler was a huge dick, the nazis were all fucktards, and the holocaust may be the single worst event in human history.  i get all that.  but me not wanting to eat meat in no way, shape, or form is a slight against the sacrifice my grandparents made.  at all.  i feel safe putting this on here, because the last time i was in florda, nana thought this was a computer:

it’s a microfiche.  “in case anyone wants to see the world wide web”

i love my grandmother.  i just don’t feel like having a philosophical argument about factory farms and animal rights with a woman who made the clocks for the nazi bombs.  if this makes me a shitty vegetarian, i apologize.

it makes me a good grandson, and that to me is more important than being a good vegetarian.

see, it’s like this:  i eat meat.  i don’t have to remind my grandmother of the awfulness of the thing she went through.  she doesn’t think i’m a self righteous twerp.  and we get to enjoy each others’ company without fighting about something that i do for myself and no one else anyway.

family is wonderful.

alchemy

note: this is about 4 years old at this point.  i believe it is the best thing i’ve ever written, i hope you enjoy it.

deep within the lion’s den i stopped and called your name out
skidded down the mountain’s face, repelled and fell the same route
climbing flat irons dying black lungs
finding conditions for the attraction
and your little bones and sticks and stones
alchemist inventor
have me running to the station and the ticket vendor
i woke up in a pool of sick, thick from last night’s bender
and didn’t have the guts to scrape the rust off of my fender
and i know how that gets you
aesthetic beauty vandal goddess
who drew a line in the sand, so modest, yet so honest
phonics dripping from your lips like sacrificial lamb’s blood
the pictures that you manufacture send me into tantrums
your anthem echoes off the sky Connecticut to Colorado
follow hollow words, swallow bottled bravado
and the things you do with letters, like you found the rosetta stone
i’m just praying one day i’ll be crowned on the professor’s throne
injection molds, spraypaint, wheatpaste, calligraphy
i compare my life to tiny rings inside a little tree
clock the hours passing by with soiled paper scraps
laugh at Dustin Hoffman on the broken betamax
i ran through fields of rye inside my mind til it collapsed
and came home from the coastal mountains just to make the catch
my consciousness was breaking into tiny little pieces thinking.
“all of the best people have frightening chest and bone diseases”
it’s a lot like heaven here, but there aren’t any Christians
but it may be more like Africa, minus all the missions
i crawled through space and time and all the universe’s sectors
“there’s something quite exciting about bodies laid on stretchers”
but when the ambulance was late my eyes filled up with water
i called you up in aching pain to talk about the martyr
the starter failed in the tunnel in between the hailstorms
we watched the foam pile up, planned where i could get the bail from
A MAELSTROM!  manna heaven clouds opened to the thunder
and save the beauty of this night i couldn’t help but wonder
if i was just another broken shattered windup toy
or as you said “if i could make my scattered mind up, boy”
but you know just as well as i these things are not so simple
i thread the needle fully, prick my thumb from lack of thimble
and kindle twigs and drier brush to start the kettle warming
i drank the blood i had cooked up and slept til feral morning
instead of snoring soundly i was smothered in my sleep
and suffocated silently underneath a sheep
the meek shall one day rule the earth, says the ancient text
but used for evil these true words become complacent threats
i fainted next and when i woke the continents had shifted
statistics scared me citing who the bomb threats had enlisted
and aside from paranoia of the ending of the world
i find it odd how small the chance that you are what unfurled
from evolution’s cloth we sprang up clamored out the sea
and now we contemplate the mystery of what it is to be
and think therefore we are but then what happens at the end?
what happens at the end, is that we all happen to end.