mushroom soup

Drinks, demensia and self deprication-
delusions that lead me to this medication
that I had to start taking 
cuz my spirit kept breaking
leaving the doctor with no hesitation
In prescribing me xanax
after my momma gave me the boot, 
describing the antics
which I’d say be proof,
that she is crazy it’s true, 
like the thoughts in my mind
after drinking mushroom soup.
I remember yesterday I was depressed on my couch,
so I put a spliff to my lips and assessed all my doubts.
What the fuck could my anxiety and stress be about?
I guess I’ll mind fuck myself till my brain lets me out.
Until then,
you can’t blame me for being crazy,
cuz thats just how my mom raised me
nuerotic anxious and hasty,
and I haven’t slept in a week, so excuse me 
if I seem a bit spacy.

My rap

Lady Suburban Summer settled in Santa Barbara
after she left home.
Greeting autumn she forgot him once she found
herself all alone.
A free spirit I can hear it I know,
from the ocean when I’m smokin potent weed on my boat.
And when sumer dissolves into fall this will all
be forgotten I hope.
Back home I got a closet full of socks that don’t match,
coats, blunt wraps and hats,
and skeletons climbing out of trunks that won’t latch.
My freshman year dissapeard amidst trees and beer
but somehow things ain’t neva seemed this clear.
It’s like clarity came to me when she left here;
flick the light and hit the pipe 
theres no reason to be depressed here.

Believe me green leaves keep me
in tune but who knew
I could be this deep?
See these green leaves keep me
in tune and well groomed 
the beezys all want D

So in a great state of mind
I sit back take my time,
play sublime,
make a rhyme, 
cuz itd be a crime if I didn’t pursue this passion
till the end of the line.
But when I find my prime 
I’mma grab the finest dime
skeet in her cheeks then sip the finest wine.
So lady suburban summer enjoy your early twenties
I’ll be in the desert come september
with girls swallowin semen from me

Believe me green leaves keep me
in tune I took two
green tabs of E.
See these green leaves keep me
in tune and well groomed
now lets get keyed.

Baseball

 I dried what was to be the last tear I would shed on the sleeve of my disheveled, black uniform. From the back of the vacant Grey Hound I found myself lacking the strength to do anything but stare into the cold, hard carpet beneath the cuspidate blades of my spikes. The grim fluorescent lights cast a shadow below me, and the afternoon sun– the bleeding, radiant afternoon sun, dried blood and sweat to my numb hands. I raised my eyes. Under the putrid bill of my baseball cap and through the tinted windows I watched my teammates embrace their parents in defeat. Through the tinted windows I envisioned an afternoon that hadn’t ended in defeat, and through the tinted windows I watched a dream take its last ragged, desperate breath in defeat. I brought my eyes back down to the carpet.

History

 Splinters from the handle of the pick I held above my shoulder bore their way into my callus laden palms. My teeth rattled as the cold iron collided with the unforgiving, broken asphalt surrounding what was left of the Barrikady gun factory. The distant, red gloom of death and destruction on the horizon reflected off the black sky to illuminate the our division. We had arrived at the ruins of the gun factory earlier that night to find isolated, rusted railroad tracks scattered amongst a barren asphalt yard — pock marked with bomb craters and wrecked goods wagons that had been destroyed by enemy shells. With each ragged breath I took through pursed, chapped lips my chest trembled as if rattled by a Nazi Mortar shell. My nostrils stung with the stench of smoke, human excretion and body odor. My legs, my weak, worn legs, felt flacid in my boots and wobbled under the weight of our responsibility — hold our position at the Barrikady factory on the west bank of the Volga River or allow Russia to fall. Yet when I felt too drained to dig this ditch amidst the rubble, I took a deep breath; when I felt sick at the thought of cutting another embrasier in the walls of the factory, I took a deep breath; and when I wondered how my wife would learn of my death I lifted my head from the beaten ground, looked to my fellow soldiers of the Siberian 308th Rifle Division and took a deep breath, swallowing my angst. The unrelenting breeze from the Volga behind us stabbed my skin through the quilted, Telogreika combat jacket on my back, and through the leather exterior of my boots I could feel my toes rotting underneath a blanket of bacteria. Above our heads black smoke billowed in the sky and settled amidst the fog like the ceiling of a nightmare. This smoke had lingered in the sky since we had arrived at the plant on the night of September 10th, 1942. I only knew of the date because Colonel Lieontiy Gurtiev, whom had led us on our march from Kumulga to Stalingrad, had engrained it in my mind. He had stood before us with overbearing stoicism in his dirty brown, M-43 officer’s tunic and said, ” Remember this date, and the dates that follow, as any of them can and will be the day you die.” He knew he need not remind us that retreat and surrender had both been outlawed by Joseph Stalin, or that both were punishable by exile or death. For against our backs was the fate of Russia, struggling to stay afloat amidst the current of the icy Volga River, and before us was our irrefutable demise. Retreat was hopeless and surrender was suicide. In grim silence and with the aid of the red horizon I gazed upon our division, composed of hard working Siberian men who had proven tough and sturdy, reticent and gruff, unfazed to cold and privation and fond of discipline. Men who did not regret their position or responsibility and felt no fear. I settled my pick on the rubble before me for as I turned to watch my fellow soldiers dig into the stony earth, fashioning dugouts and building communication barriers amidst piles of fallen steel girders and heaps of coal and concrete. I watched the men with whom I had chosen to die turn a ruined gun factory into a fortress, a fortress from which we would face that death. I took a deep breath. Each man’s face was weary and crusted with raw, black stubble. I turned back around to grab my pick but closed my eyes instead. From underneath my cumbersom helmet I listened to the flap of the icy Volga and the continuous cry of sirens from what remained of Stalingrad behind us. I knew that once the Luftwaffe commenced with bombing the city I would be able to hear nothing. I would be deaf until the guns fell silent, the planes dropped back to refuel and the bombs lost inspiration. And by then the Nazi infantry, accompanied by hundreds of tanks and high artillery weapons, would eclipse the horizon in reinforcement to reaffirm this relentless nightmare. Suddenly, without the monotony of marching to occupy my mind, I realized that my duty, in protecting my country, was to delay death and bestow it upon every enemy soldier I could until my dog tag, engrained with the name, Commissar A. M. Svirin, fell to the mud. So, clenching the handle of my pick, I grit what was left of my teeth, accepted my duty as my fellow soldiers already had and took a deep breath of acquiescence.

The Adventures of Ben Yost

    Early morning anxiety attacks and persistent phases of 3 AM paranoia inspire my inhibitions, bask my bleak existence in something new and render my eyes useless. I only see black as I weightlessly descend deeper into the nothing I use to take pills to avoid. This comfortable, powerful nothing. I want it. 

    She carried no designer handbag and wore no lipstick. Freckles trickled from her collar bone to her cleavage, soft and young below the shadow cast from a light above the door frame she stood under. Her blue eyes gazed into mine as if she were hesitant, or even angry at herself for asking me to walk her back to her dorm room. She bit her lower lip, not to be seductive, but because the slight pain made her chest tingle and her resistance weak. She drew two fingers to the strands of long brown hair that caressed the top of her breasts above the crest of her light blue tank top and breathed in deep.

     My bloodshot eyes glared into hers from the bed, against the far left wall and below an open window letting in the 3.AM desert breeze. I was leaning against the side of the mattress; to my left was her night stand with an unplugged lamp resting on the white wood, and to my right were her closed closet doors. There was twenty feet of dorm room carpet between us, yet I could feel the warmth from the inside of her thighs. 

    Pulse.

    We both knew the game we were playing.

    Her lips parted slightly.

    ” We-”

    ” Come here,” I said sharply. She stared back and inhaled raggedly. 

    High off tequila shots, guilt and coke. I still can’t see, but now the dark is replaced with smoke.

  

    Her blue jeans, her unforgiving blue jeans, creased at her navel as she took two slow steps toward me. Then another, all the while keeping those eyes steady and those gentle hands at her side. Her chest and upper stomach slightly trembled with each breath she took. 

    I grabbed the shot glass on the nightstand and threw the tepid tequila into the back of my throat. It burnt as it seeped down and collided like a train wreck with my heart; my pounding, solicitous heart, lodged in the alcohol’s way, violently beating. Desperately. I too took a deep breath.

    ” We can’t do this,” she whispered from three steps away from me. There were goosebumps on her arms as they hung by her side. I could feel the warmth so intensely now. It radiated into my fingertips and settled in my pockets. I stood up and took a step towards her until warm became hot- until I could just feel her against me. She was three inches shorter than I, and as we stood she stared into chest above the brim of my white beater. She inhaled through her nose, closed her eyes and leaned her forehead toward my chest. I brought a hand to her hip and pulled her against me.  

    Beat. 

    We both knew the game we were playing.

    I can faintly feel a voice whispering words of wisdom into my numb ear drums. You’re 19. You’re crazy. Enjoy it, and exist inside this until your twentieth year comes.

    I brought my forefinger to her chin and caught her eyes once more. Her chest rose and fell quickly, and her lips parted. Her hip trembled slightly in my hand as she leaned against my grey sweatpants. Her heat against me as she gazed into my eyes. Pleading. Writhing.

    Breath.

    ” Tell me you don’t want it then,” I whispered. She looked down and brought her finger tips to my lower back and slipped them underneath my white beater. They were light and warm. 

I moved my finger to the strand of hair on her chest, gently directed it behind her neck and kissed a freckle above her collarbone. Her hand clutched my back as my lips moved to the strap of her tank top. Her other hand found the front of my beater as she pulled back from me. Staring into her, I pulled off the cotton, and put my arms around her hips as she jumped and twisted her legs around mine. As one we turned and landed on the bed. And we found the places we weren’t supposed to be.

    Pulse. Beat. Breath. Heat.

    We both knew the game we were playing.

    5 hours later however I’m still awake. A heart thumps in my chest like the beat of a native drum chant. And two eyes, bloodshot and beat, have not blinked since the sun rose over the windowsill. For a moment I was out of the hole, able to watch the sky intimately transcend from purple to a shade of blue as radiant as the eyes of the naked girl beside me- the horizon as soft and pink. 

    How, if the nights pass by as slowly as this one has, can the years fly by so fast? Because sixteen seems like yesterday, but yesterday seems like it’s taken sixteen years to become today.

Journal and Wise Words From Wise Men

I woke up yesterday morning and said, ” Fuck, it’s April 3rd.” I found my self tracing back the days on my calender to make sure none of em had snuck by without me noticing. Sure enough: On Monday I went to class, got high at the pool, took a nap and got drunk playing NBA 2k9; Tuesday I went to class, worked then played beer pong and smoked out of a gas mask at Robbie’s; Wednesday I went to work then got drunk at the Sun’s game, and yesterday I got drunk at the frat, ate a brownie and went to see Adventureland. And all I had to show for it were bruises and an empty wallet. I’ve never understood how to make time stand still, so subsequentially I’ve been suspiscious of those who claim that they will. For those are people who pose like pictures of something they think they should look like. Who alter their styles to emulate the sluts on t.v. When I turned from my calender I began to wonder if the reason my time doesn’t stick (I’ve had previous problems with this, see Young Amnesia) is that I spend all of it questioning and critisizing the way other’s spend theirs. Granted, I’m drunk a lot, but not a majority of the time. Not by like, a handful of hours a week, at least. So what is it? Is it just the nature of things? I suppose it’s easier to understand when you look at the bigger picture; when you think about how insignificantly fractional our existence is, like a drop of rain in spring time Seattle. When you think about how many of us are all heading in the same direction, racing towards the same destination. We’re all taking different means to get to the same end. And by the way, I find that those who refute this follow an ideaology contrived before we, as a species, knew that the world was round and that fucking with people who weren’t white was wrong. But shit, if they are right, hell is going to have a long line to get in. I spent the rest of the day depressed until I talked with someone we’ll call (to protect his identity), DadJuan. Thank Ala, Abraham and Buddha for that man, Jesus Tapdancin’ Christ. ” This lack of supreme mission in our seemingly insignificant existence gives us an excuse to live for something better. Like the pursuit of love, happiness and the truth. To live and strive to be the best fuckin’ person you can. If the purpose of all of this was just to get into heaven then the beauty would be forced and fake.” The way to make your time stick, he told me, is to accomplish the aforementioned and then revisit the time you spent doin’ it as much as you can. Then I got an email from the bobJuan, ” oh my little brother on the path… As you know, i know about funk/anxiety/paranoia and clinical depression. These are all good things, reminders of what we need to remember about life! I know each time I would be “there” it would seem permanent and pointless, and at times, breathless, frozen still. It took many times for me to recognize that is not the case, at least the permanent part. The pointless part is important. We need to remember the pointlessness of everything! It’s not much more complicated than that, though we seem to like things complicated, I know I do.” ” You’re at the cusp of a new life. Go find all the women you can. Play and work and love and play and don’t give a shit about not remembering it. You’re 19 fuckin’ years old, quit talking like your 45. Take it easy.” I got back to my dorm room with a renewed appreciation for life, as if I had been struck by something. An epiphany wouldn’t be the right thing to call it, as I decided to get drunk with my roommates that night. But there was something. Although I felt guilty tossing back that first brew, I had a great god damn time doing it. And the next morning I woke up with the best fuckin’ hang over I’d ever had. Another bobJuan quote: You tell yourself. You tell yourself into it and you tell yourself out of it. Once you see that you can tell it, that you are telling it, you can’t wait to start telling it well.

High school baseball

    My dream was dead. Under the bask of the bleak, May sunset I sat staring at my unlaced spikes from the first row of the cold, steel bleachers positioned before the shadowy baseball field, the field where I had spent the last four years of my life. The rays from the snarling sunset pierced the back of my matted neck and sweaty forearms like jagged, orange shards of glass and dried a poignant tear to the eye black on my cheek. I struggled to control my solicitous hands, having to clasp my cut, dirty palms together in between my blood-stained baseball pants to keep them from trembling. Behind me, the bus that had taken my team and I back from the Northern California Division II championship game in Oakland sat idle in the parking lot; my team, my coach, my parents and much of the student body surrounding it.

    Alone, on that frigid bench, entombed in numbness and shock, I played back visions of standing isolated on the mound, holding the heavy, rough baseball in my right hand and bearing the weight of 2,000 fans from our team’s suburban bubble on my shoulders. I pulled my black cap low over my eyes. The moist, putrid bill smelled of sweat and vinegar. Against the underside of my eyelids I watched myself stride, release then turn to watch the white blur fly over the head of my center fielder. I watched the enthusiasm of the crowd deflate like a punctured balloon as the winning run crossed home plate for the opposing team. I watched myself take part in the nightmare I had seen unfold many times in my dreams.

   The air was nearly silent under the dying afternoon. Only a faint murmur of depressed chatter reached my ears from the bus. A breeze froze muddled sweat to my arms and warm snot to the wet skin below my nose. I sniffed violently yet could smell nothing but the freshly clipped grass of Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. When I lifted my cap I was still blinded by my nightmare, my horrifying, paralyzing nightmare. I swallowed the lump in my throat and tasted nothing but bitter slime seeping down the back of my mouth toward the deep pit of guilt in my stomach. 

     My coach; my coach who had given me the role of captain, who had served as a second father to me, watched me fail. My family; my family whom I had convinced to put their trust in me, bore witness to my unkempt promise. I shivered as the sun struggled to shine over the crest of the Berkley hills guarding Oakland to the west. 

     But it was when I felt most alone that I realized I wasn’t. For from the shadows behind me I heard the sound of metal marching against cement. In confusion I turned to see my teammates, proud and united, tramping toward me with their heads high. Twenty young men, who had come together with my help and had been behind me the whole year, were so again in bloody, black uniforms.  

    I stood with what strength I had left in my insecure legs and gazed towards them as they came near then encircled me, taking spots amongst the bleachers. My eye black was streaked and my pride diminished. Yet standing amongst my brothers, I saw theirs was not. My catcher spoke first.

    ” We wouldn’t have gotten here with out you, D-Moore,” he said slowly. I nodded and looked at each of their faces. Their eyes were all red as well.

    ” I’m so-” I started before they all abruptly stood and embraced me. Each one of them hugged me, told me they loved me and reminded me that they were still my family.

    We sat together for a long minute after that, waiting for the night to settle, taking in the baseball field upon which we had become a team one last time, together. And when the numbness wore off and the tears dried we left the bleachers as brothers. I left them proudly, having discovered that my dream had not died, but had been realized in the family I’d made. The family which had turned my anguish to honor– my failure into resiliency. And amidst the cacophony of baseball spikes churning against the concrete, my catcher spoke once more.

 ” Well, I still got like twenty bottles of champagne at my house.”

   And the sun finally set.

This Crazy Shit

     This age is plagued with sluts enslaved by what the t.v promises and engrossed with what it portrays. However above it’s influence there’s another layer to life that can only be found in the places the sluts and junkies rarely go. In the spaces which are hard to reach. In between the thoughts you can’t find words to describe. On the bus, at the end of the line. 

    This is an odd time, in the world and in my head; where currently I’m deciding whether I should try and work with as unique of a state of mind as mine or change to fit another mold. See, my thoughts meander and bend through the more pressing times and tides of the moment. They willow like the soul of a cigarette; dancing, floating then disappearing again.

   The night was alive when it all came to me. When Dylan told me of his night on the bus. When I realized that I was in control of how long I could stay suspended inside of my mind, simply bearing witness to all the crazy shit in it.

    Dylan told me this story: He sat mesmerized by the fat man. The fat man with a few folds of dark brown face layered below each other from around his smile. The fat man, with glazed eyes somberly settled in sockets slowly slipping down his skin, as if the weight of his chins were pulling them towards his collar bone, sat across from Dylan on the bus. They both sat near the back, leaving the first two thirds of the seats, set under a grey, dead ceiling, to home the dancing shadows cast from the 1.AM streetlights.

    ” Lovely night, huh?” the fat man gargled. Dylan could do nothing but rub his thumbs together in his lap, his thoughts making like the soul of my cigarette and his purpose lost in the man’s dark, loose skin.

    ” Yes,” he muttered, his sharp green eyes hazed and far away. 

    ” Where you goin’?” the fat man then asked quickly, leaning forward so his face drooped even more so, making the bright pink undertone of his brown face visible below his eyes. Dylan rubbed his tongue along the sandpaper lining the roof and walls of his mouth. 

    ” I don’t know,” Dylan replied. He could feel how intense and red his eyes were. 

    ” You?”

    The fat man leaned back so his mahogany neck creased and consumed itself. He smiled.

    ” The other side,” 

    Dylan crossed his eyebrows suspiciously.

    ” Why?” The fat man was quick.

    ” I don’t know, but I ain’t in no hurry. Right now I’m on the bus. And it’s taken me my whole life to get here.”

    Dylan was about to denounce him as crazy and fall back into the high nothingness in which he had spent his night thus far before he heard what sounded like a struggling, Spanish accent wheezing from inside the fat man.

    Suddenly a mouse scurried out from under one of the fat man’s chins, as if it had been struggling to do so for a long time, and fell to the ground on his back with a thud.        

    He had a thin, brown mustache underneath his whiskers, and as his small, white body lay gasping for air he spoke in between deep, raspy breaths.

    ” Hey meeester, want some advice? Stop trying. If you keep trying then what you finally get won’t be real, you feeeel me? If you have to try, then it’s not natural. If you’re trying too hard to separate yourself from everything, you’ll end up lost in there.”

    The mouse pointed with a shaking claw towards the smiling fat man.

    ” And trust me, ese, that’s not a place you want to be.”

    Suddenly the mouse jumped from his back and ran with all the fury his four feet could muster towards the front of the bus and jumped to the shoulder of the bus driver. The bus driver continued to look straight out the windshield.

    ” Hey meeester,” he yelped in his ear, ” if you don’t let me out right here, I will keeel you.”

    The bus came to an abrupt, screeching halt. Dylan leaned his head to watch the mouse hop towards the open door. Before he made it there, however, he turned back to face Dylan once more.

    ” It’s really not all that bad my friend. All of this. You’re making it all much harder than it has to be.”

    The door whooshed close behind the Mexican mouse and the bus lurched into motion once more.

    Dylan told me that after he heard this he could find no words nor expressions nor gestures to express his curiosity in the fat man and in the mouse whom had escaped his depths. He had no answers for why he was even on the bus that night. He was simply there, across the way from the smiling fat man, responsible for only that instant in time. So for the rest of the ride Dylan stayed silent until the bus reached the end of the line and he fell asleep.

    He also told me, however, that when he got off the bus it was a little easier to focus. A little easier to determine how long he had been riding the bus for. Upon what he was focusing on, I have no clue. 

    This crazy shit is much better than T.V.

    

Bobjuan told me this:

You tell yourself.

You tell yourself into it and

you tell yourself out of it.

Once you see that you can tell it,

that you are telling it,

you can’t wait to start telling it well.

    

 

Patches #1

Hello, Patches.
Through my eyes and under your influence I’ve seen the world shift and mutate around me for the past 3 days. Days which have left me dry and worn; worn by the weight of my mistakes, dry from the realization that I’ve used all the resources and fall back plans I set aside in case of emergencies 6 months ago. I’ve abandoned the adamantly laid track I set for my self when I thought I knew something about all of this. How will I find my way back? Patches, my green, cuddly companion, tell me.
Stay lost, as what your in the midst of is it. All of it; right now. Right now is the best time of your life, don’t try and go back in search of anything else, and don’t rush the future.
Capture this, Dylan. Paint it. Bring it all to life for those who come across these words years from now.
(Pause to exhale)
I’m too far gone. In your weltering whisper you told me I’ve left nothing behind for people to remember me by. You’ve told me over and over again that when I die my memory will be ashamed, my words and thoughts disregarded as those of an overly ambitious college freshman yearning for meaning.
I’ve detailed to you how I wished you were not inanimate; how I wish I could convey to you such foreboding warnings of failure before your grace as you do mine. Warnings which would send shivers up your spine in the same way the smoke quickly clears the chamber. I wish that instead of reminding me of what I have to do you’d tell me how to do it. How to get my heart and mind on paper to perfectly represent this particular time. How to convey the love I’ve known and seen to those I could one day influence. Tell me how to capture this time so it never slips away as the others have. Fuck, Patches, the places you take me.
Even at 19 I feel wise. Is this foolish? Immature, maybe? If so then I’ll find my wisdom in the naps I take in class and the nights I spend high off what I’m lost in. I’ll find my wisdom through my music or my books or the immature yet intensely passionate love I’ve known. Either way I’d bet I could drink more beer than those who place me under the aforementioned behavioral categories.
Now I take my frustration to the couch, along with Patches, some inspiration from bobJuan, a pen, some water to wash Patches down, Pringles for when Patches kicks in and my music.
They all let me know.
See, when I was seventeen I started writing because I was afraid that if I didn’t I would leave no trail behind for my loved ones to find me. No story for anyone to remember me by. I’m nineteen now and the fear still lingers, and in fact rears its ruffled face when ever I’m on the couch with Patches. It’s why I’m where I’m at now. 
Under my dorm room ceiling I can’t help but wonder if all my life will be spent in this angst; this seeping, seething, sucking sickness I succumb to when I feel weak. 
I think it’s cuz I’m in it now. All of it, as Patches instructed me to be. There’s no better place to be than here (bobJuan), this place I’d like to justice in painting. The smell and the sun and the girls and the love. I think it’s all why I tell Patches that I simply can’t do what he asks of me now. I can’t capture this, there’s too much.
I think I could capture the bad times with more confidence. I’ve done that many times. I’m just not sure if I want to do it again. If I’m dead no one will care for my particular view on the darker side of the damn thing. Lots of people have done that lots of times. 
Life’s ripe baby. The world’s ready for us. Let’s fuck it for all the mind bending orgasms it can muster. Until it can’t take it any more. Then we’ll give it a break and buy it some coffee. Maybe some fresh fruit.
Take a few plays off, Patches.
I’m off the couch.
Goodbye, Patches.

My Other Home

For the past 5 weeks I’ve been back home, on winter vacation from Arizona State University. Now, in 5 days I’ll be going back there. And I’ve recently had to say goodbye to a girl whom I learned to love here, at home. Or, I suppose, my other home. Anyway, it was five minutes ago, actually, that I was sitting in her car, unable to find the right words to make either of us feel any better. I told her this, then kissed her and walked into my house. My heart’s still pounding and there’s still a lump in my throat. A shame; it was like cutting a budding flower from a fresh stem in the beginning of spring.

And now when I look at what awaits me again in less than a week I find myself excited but weary as well. Don’t get me wrong, college is the shit, but facing the reality of how the world is outside of my suburban bubble, away from a girl who kept my mind off of such reality, is a little daunting.

For instance, while I’ve been at school I’ve been assaulted several times by random people trying to sell me a product, force me to accept an idea or push me to follow one in some fashion. These instances seem to be the first of many ugly facets of life I have yet to discover since leaving home. Such as the harsh truth that many humans are so animalistic in their human nature that they resemble wolves or vultures or weasels more than they do a human being. Ironically enough, I’ve observed, it is usually the people who claim to have been created rather than to have evolved who share the most in common with the animals they adamantly deny affiliation with. People who ruthlessly scowl their world looking to please urges they can’t explain or describe. They prey on the weak and pursue solely selfish ends by instinct.

And I fear that I will continue to uncover these unattractive segments of human behavior when I branch further away from home than just a college campus.

The first time I was assaulted was by the leader of a Christian young life group, who was assembling fresh faced young boys with sponge-like minds to brain wash into submitting their individuality and purpose in life to the will of a mythical being in the sky, apparently necessary to lead ‘fulfilled lives’. This was how he presented it to me, or at least how I heard it. Baffled, I told him I wasn’t interested and politely made my way past him as he yelped at the back of my head to reconsider.

The second time was by the same young man, with whom I have since learned I share the same name, and I was not so polite.

I told him that I’d jack off to a picture of the virgin Mary with the Bible belt fastened around my neck on the steps of the Vatican before ceding my integrity and intelligence to an ideology that works for you but is not mine.

I then took a breath, then politely asked him not to ask me to join his group again.

Daniel stared into my eyes, beady marbles fixed on the seemingly two pound cross suspended from his neck, as my voice faded. After a few seconds of standing before him silently I turned to leave, and once again I felt his voice reach for the back of my neck as I walked away.

‘ See, I don’t think you’re looking at this the right way,’ he projected through a raspy throat.

Maybe so Daniel, maybe so.

I didn’t respond, and as I kept walking away his voice sounded like a disgruntled wolf howling at me and his anxious, quick footsteps patted the ground like a disgruntled weasel trudging along fallen leaves.

So, in 5 days I’ll be back at Arizona State, my other home, away from her, maybe for good. I hope not, but maybe. I’ll be with real human existence once more, meaning more people like Daniel. But also, as I’ve learned and failed to mention here, more people like me.

— After thought- This girl has been the reason my blogging has been spastic, and once I’m back at school I hope I’ll have more thoughts that don’t fall into the realm of complete insanity, as my thoughts have been doing with her invading most of them.Sympathize with me!