Dinner
I’m hungry
But I hate eating alone
I’ve got text on a screen
Representing a companion
But I don’t ask
Because I am horrid
At dinner table conversation
Somewhere in my childhood
I befouled my parent’s sacred table
Repeatedly and without shame
And now I am socially crippled.
Dinner 2
I think I’m hungry
I’m having an internalized
Debate on whether to take the fall
And go out for dinner
But then, I ask myself, who with?
Tables are awkwardly built
For two these days.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
7.9.07
Kind of sprouted at random
Old
Even as I tell
An old friend
About how great
You and I were
Together—
The good times are replaced
By memories of how
I fucked you
Metaphorically
Speaking
The colour fades
From an arm chair
As I do from
My own life
Effervescently
Playing itself
In a fashion
Of a record that
Slowly sounds incredibly
Old.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
Even as I tell
An old friend
About how great
You and I were
Together—
The good times are replaced
By memories of how
I fucked you
Metaphorically
Speaking
The colour fades
From an arm chair
As I do from
My own life
Effervescently
Playing itself
In a fashion
Of a record that
Slowly sounds incredibly
Old.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
5.9.07
New Poem
See You (Scrambled Eggs)
I dropped her
Like a cigarette
Into an ash tray
Spent, but still
Alive. Somewhat.
I grabbed at air
Like bottles
Filled with freedom.
Now,
I’m riding
A snail to victory:
To a finish line.
See you.
See you there.
There.
I load
Pills in my mouth
Like bullets in a clip
Bam!
Scrambled eggs
All over the place.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
Sauce
Its funny how I tell my friends
I don’t miss you
Yet
I do and I don’t.
I miss not having
Nightmares:
Scrambled eggs
Running from
That hole in my mind.
But you? No.
More, myself
Before me
And the blender
Crossed paths
And I got sauced
Constantly.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
I dropped her
Like a cigarette
Into an ash tray
Spent, but still
Alive. Somewhat.
I grabbed at air
Like bottles
Filled with freedom.
Now,
I’m riding
A snail to victory:
To a finish line.
See you.
See you there.
There.
I load
Pills in my mouth
Like bullets in a clip
Bam!
Scrambled eggs
All over the place.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
Sauce
Its funny how I tell my friends
I don’t miss you
Yet
I do and I don’t.
I miss not having
Nightmares:
Scrambled eggs
Running from
That hole in my mind.
But you? No.
More, myself
Before me
And the blender
Crossed paths
And I got sauced
Constantly.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
2.9.07
Surprise
Surprise
The clouds are rolling up my stairs
A semi-formulated thunderstorm
Swirls at the door to my room
I am sitting on the other side
I could feel it coming, not surprised.
The door explodes in a mixture of
Blue electricity and fire.
I am thrown back against the wall
I could feel it coming, not surprised.
The tail end of the storm is at the stairs
As the head begins moving its way to my ceiling
More and more it grows with great fever.
There is nothing now, just this storm
Consuming my room from ceiling to floor.
I could feel it coming, not surprised.
Crawling slowly from my reclined position
I locate the eye of the storm and stand.
The storm swirls about me, I reach out my hands
I hung my head—
Time stopped instantly.
Then from opposite sides of the storm
Two arms of light appeared
Moving towards my arms
I could feel their heat:
The pure electricity.
I completed the circuit
The mass energy gathering inside
My body exploded in a mixture of
Blue electricity and charred body parts.
But, my consciousness carries on inside
A euthanasia needle, a bullet
Streaming from a gun to someone’s head,
A noose dangling in a small hotel room,
A plastic bag being pulled down over a face,
A razor blade across someone’s wrists,
A bottle of alcohol beside pills on a nightstand;
I didn’t see it coming, I was so surprised.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
The clouds are rolling up my stairs
A semi-formulated thunderstorm
Swirls at the door to my room
I am sitting on the other side
I could feel it coming, not surprised.
The door explodes in a mixture of
Blue electricity and fire.
I am thrown back against the wall
I could feel it coming, not surprised.
The tail end of the storm is at the stairs
As the head begins moving its way to my ceiling
More and more it grows with great fever.
There is nothing now, just this storm
Consuming my room from ceiling to floor.
I could feel it coming, not surprised.
Crawling slowly from my reclined position
I locate the eye of the storm and stand.
The storm swirls about me, I reach out my hands
I hung my head—
Time stopped instantly.
Then from opposite sides of the storm
Two arms of light appeared
Moving towards my arms
I could feel their heat:
The pure electricity.
I completed the circuit
The mass energy gathering inside
My body exploded in a mixture of
Blue electricity and charred body parts.
But, my consciousness carries on inside
A euthanasia needle, a bullet
Streaming from a gun to someone’s head,
A noose dangling in a small hotel room,
A plastic bag being pulled down over a face,
A razor blade across someone’s wrists,
A bottle of alcohol beside pills on a nightstand;
I didn’t see it coming, I was so surprised.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
30.8.07
Land of the Living
Land of the Living
One day you notice a bleak, blue corpse numbness has slowly slithered down your spine. As you sit there in an uncomfortable office chair you think to yourself; in the moment where the phone lines are vacant of calls, that you should be surprised. But your not; that’s the rub of being numb: there is nothing to disturb you. You will eventually find yourself at this plateau of your own organizational success. Generally speaking, you arrive here when you follow a set routine everyday; you coast on autopilot through a few days at first. Then you find yourself coasting through whole weeks without even noticing them passing. Before you know it a year has passed without any exhilarating events. By now you are just living on a perpetual loop; your movements, your expressions. You walk the exact same path each day without much alteration. Even you conversations repeat a infinitum. Your once impeccable fashion sense seems to repeat from day to day; Monday’s it’s the brown shirt with the black slacks and brown shoes with black socks; Tuesday’s is the white shirt with black slacks and white shoes with white socks; and so on in an endlessly repetitive manner. Then one day as you are standing next to the parking spot which is not actually dedicated to you but in which you always park; you realize everyone knows you as a dinosaur of stead fast loyalty to a routine. Pausing briefly, you glance down at your shoes; you note that it is a Wednesday – solely on your tan hushpuppies with grey socks, that’s when you know its been so long since [. . .] Your train of thought loses its track off a cliff in your mind because after a while you have developed blinders and certain thought processes are not traveled on in your routine and thus you are unable to travel upon them ever again. At first you find this mildly frustrating until your footsteps glide back into the quintillion footsteps of yesterdays that have slowly ticked past without your knowledge. And that is it: your set now. The rest of your life is etched in concrete like the names of children from the 1980’s. And it will never change until the day your heart slowly stops, or perhaps you fall asleep behind the wheel, or even your shot in some sort of robbery mix up. Then you will be dead and the small sphere of the world that you affected will morn. Many will take on religions and faiths; others will promise themselves they will live each day to its fullest. A few others will commit suicide when they understand their future parallels yours exactly. Then those still living shall slide down hill into their old patterns until they too perish; whether expectedly or unexpectedly one by one all will disappear. Once the sphere in which you existed has all but passed to the afterlife it will be like you never existed. There will be no great stories told of you. In photographs that are found by distant acquaintances of acquaintances; you are an unrecognizable face. That is what we all we amount too.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
One day you notice a bleak, blue corpse numbness has slowly slithered down your spine. As you sit there in an uncomfortable office chair you think to yourself; in the moment where the phone lines are vacant of calls, that you should be surprised. But your not; that’s the rub of being numb: there is nothing to disturb you. You will eventually find yourself at this plateau of your own organizational success. Generally speaking, you arrive here when you follow a set routine everyday; you coast on autopilot through a few days at first. Then you find yourself coasting through whole weeks without even noticing them passing. Before you know it a year has passed without any exhilarating events. By now you are just living on a perpetual loop; your movements, your expressions. You walk the exact same path each day without much alteration. Even you conversations repeat a infinitum. Your once impeccable fashion sense seems to repeat from day to day; Monday’s it’s the brown shirt with the black slacks and brown shoes with black socks; Tuesday’s is the white shirt with black slacks and white shoes with white socks; and so on in an endlessly repetitive manner. Then one day as you are standing next to the parking spot which is not actually dedicated to you but in which you always park; you realize everyone knows you as a dinosaur of stead fast loyalty to a routine. Pausing briefly, you glance down at your shoes; you note that it is a Wednesday – solely on your tan hushpuppies with grey socks, that’s when you know its been so long since [. . .] Your train of thought loses its track off a cliff in your mind because after a while you have developed blinders and certain thought processes are not traveled on in your routine and thus you are unable to travel upon them ever again. At first you find this mildly frustrating until your footsteps glide back into the quintillion footsteps of yesterdays that have slowly ticked past without your knowledge. And that is it: your set now. The rest of your life is etched in concrete like the names of children from the 1980’s. And it will never change until the day your heart slowly stops, or perhaps you fall asleep behind the wheel, or even your shot in some sort of robbery mix up. Then you will be dead and the small sphere of the world that you affected will morn. Many will take on religions and faiths; others will promise themselves they will live each day to its fullest. A few others will commit suicide when they understand their future parallels yours exactly. Then those still living shall slide down hill into their old patterns until they too perish; whether expectedly or unexpectedly one by one all will disappear. Once the sphere in which you existed has all but passed to the afterlife it will be like you never existed. There will be no great stories told of you. In photographs that are found by distant acquaintances of acquaintances; you are an unrecognizable face. That is what we all we amount too.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
29.8.07
The Long Way Home
The Long Way Home
I took the long way home from work that night; something about the freeway seemed just too easy and quick. So, I drove the stop-and-go city streets all the way home. And I drove slow because I was in no means eager to get to my home: angry parents and that damned thing I call a room. Thus, I switched on some minimal from Norway to romance me across those long drawn out streets that intersect the way we did, once. But now I have grown unsure of this all much like a man becomes unsure of his religion, just every once in a while. Driving easily I note how streetlights seem to streak past like shooting stars; I make a wish one as I breeze through another green light. The minimal moves syncronus with the street in the corner of my eye so pleasantly I feel as if it were a dream. Raised trucks and lowered home-made racecars shoot past me; both of them are driven by men trying to prove just that; that they are indeed men. It’s a sad show of overloaded testosterone that I gave up on years ago when I realized no matter how greasy I got with my father beneath his broken muscle car I would never be as machismo as he; thus I gave up.
I hit a red light. At this pause I breathe a heavy prolonged sigh. The streetlights, buildings, parked cars, every spec reflecting light, and, even the heavenly bodies themselves, were perfectly align. Everything was finally in it’s right place. And then green. I drove on down the road that easily morphed into another via a sleek right turn where the arrow is always green. The minimal at that moment seemed as though it could glide into jazz led by Miles Davis as easy as—diddly_diddly_boom boom boom_dooowop--that.
An hour later I arrived at my street. I parked and sat a moment. A refreshing breeze came through my car window; brushed across my face and ruffled my hair slightly as a lover may. That was it; I was home again.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
I took the long way home from work that night; something about the freeway seemed just too easy and quick. So, I drove the stop-and-go city streets all the way home. And I drove slow because I was in no means eager to get to my home: angry parents and that damned thing I call a room. Thus, I switched on some minimal from Norway to romance me across those long drawn out streets that intersect the way we did, once. But now I have grown unsure of this all much like a man becomes unsure of his religion, just every once in a while. Driving easily I note how streetlights seem to streak past like shooting stars; I make a wish one as I breeze through another green light. The minimal moves syncronus with the street in the corner of my eye so pleasantly I feel as if it were a dream. Raised trucks and lowered home-made racecars shoot past me; both of them are driven by men trying to prove just that; that they are indeed men. It’s a sad show of overloaded testosterone that I gave up on years ago when I realized no matter how greasy I got with my father beneath his broken muscle car I would never be as machismo as he; thus I gave up.
I hit a red light. At this pause I breathe a heavy prolonged sigh. The streetlights, buildings, parked cars, every spec reflecting light, and, even the heavenly bodies themselves, were perfectly align. Everything was finally in it’s right place. And then green. I drove on down the road that easily morphed into another via a sleek right turn where the arrow is always green. The minimal at that moment seemed as though it could glide into jazz led by Miles Davis as easy as—diddly_diddly_boom boom boom_dooowop--that.
An hour later I arrived at my street. I parked and sat a moment. A refreshing breeze came through my car window; brushed across my face and ruffled my hair slightly as a lover may. That was it; I was home again.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
10.8.07
Sand and Directors Cut
Sand
I’ve accepted that I am sand
On the beach of eternity.
[Fuck that! Be a rock.]
Why?
After ten thousand years
Rocks become sand
[Exactly]
So, I’m already at the base
The waves do not degrade me
I merely soak in their power.
At times I am lifted off
One part of the beach to another
Where I can get in people’s shoes
Food, hair, skin, eyes,
Vaginas, assholes, foreskins,
In between their toes,
In their cars, in their socks,
Mysteriously appear
In their beds late at night.
Everyone sees a rock
Stationary and note it exists
They step over it
They ignore it.
If a rock were to fly—
Everyone would see it coming.
Sand?
You never see sand coming
But then it gets everywhere.
Directors Cut
I created you because even I get lonely at times. You see it was just me forever in every direction. So I reached out beyond myself and made you. I thought that we would all walk together everyday in beautiful harmony – that the night would not terrify you all needing your eyes to be perpetually closed. And for a while we did; everything was beautiful and just how it was meant. But there were those with me who wanted more. They wanted the control and so rallied against me. They tricked you; it was easy. I did not want you to be like them – I wanted you to be my comrades, and even family. We’re equal. So when they came to you with treaties and promises – you took the bait. That was the last time we saw eye-to-eye or reclined in harmony. Since then it’s been decay. You’ve slowly drifted farther and farther off many of you fighting through the miasma back towards me standing alone. You see? The emptiness that keeps you awake and searching is me. I’m always waiting here but I can never come to you – you would tear me apart until the universe unravels; proving me right. So, I send the few faithful souls I have left to reach you, but you and those that now rule you; although you never know it, stop them – hurt them. Send them back to me bleeding and dismayed. Dismayed that they had to fight and kill those who once were their equals: those who once were so close. I watch as the orchestra looses tempo and key; the conductor purposely tries to spite me. The whole scene and story has gotten battered. You see; you all read the past thinking it’s going to reveal something of the future, but let me tell you the future: I have to be with you. I will be with you. In the end we shall see eye-to-eye after we all have destroyed your creations. There will be no balance, nor chaos; there will just be us: immortal in harmony. I will hold you and you will hold me; and we will cover the devastation with our tears and leave it. We will go somewhere new: a place where we can be together. There will be no secrets, no night; just perfection.
I’ve accepted that I am sand
On the beach of eternity.
[Fuck that! Be a rock.]
Why?
After ten thousand years
Rocks become sand
[Exactly]
So, I’m already at the base
The waves do not degrade me
I merely soak in their power.
At times I am lifted off
One part of the beach to another
Where I can get in people’s shoes
Food, hair, skin, eyes,
Vaginas, assholes, foreskins,
In between their toes,
In their cars, in their socks,
Mysteriously appear
In their beds late at night.
Everyone sees a rock
Stationary and note it exists
They step over it
They ignore it.
If a rock were to fly—
Everyone would see it coming.
Sand?
You never see sand coming
But then it gets everywhere.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
Directors Cut
I created you because even I get lonely at times. You see it was just me forever in every direction. So I reached out beyond myself and made you. I thought that we would all walk together everyday in beautiful harmony – that the night would not terrify you all needing your eyes to be perpetually closed. And for a while we did; everything was beautiful and just how it was meant. But there were those with me who wanted more. They wanted the control and so rallied against me. They tricked you; it was easy. I did not want you to be like them – I wanted you to be my comrades, and even family. We’re equal. So when they came to you with treaties and promises – you took the bait. That was the last time we saw eye-to-eye or reclined in harmony. Since then it’s been decay. You’ve slowly drifted farther and farther off many of you fighting through the miasma back towards me standing alone. You see? The emptiness that keeps you awake and searching is me. I’m always waiting here but I can never come to you – you would tear me apart until the universe unravels; proving me right. So, I send the few faithful souls I have left to reach you, but you and those that now rule you; although you never know it, stop them – hurt them. Send them back to me bleeding and dismayed. Dismayed that they had to fight and kill those who once were their equals: those who once were so close. I watch as the orchestra looses tempo and key; the conductor purposely tries to spite me. The whole scene and story has gotten battered. You see; you all read the past thinking it’s going to reveal something of the future, but let me tell you the future: I have to be with you. I will be with you. In the end we shall see eye-to-eye after we all have destroyed your creations. There will be no balance, nor chaos; there will just be us: immortal in harmony. I will hold you and you will hold me; and we will cover the devastation with our tears and leave it. We will go somewhere new: a place where we can be together. There will be no secrets, no night; just perfection.
© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.
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