Song of the Sad Slide Guitar by Soma

I.

Cute, thick women
Sitting under trees
Walking on paths.
To Where?

Black Francis is breathing
Hard into my ears.
Surrealism and Dreams
        FOREVER!
Long live dreams!
Let them get us
Through all the days.

II.

        The organization of people
        Leads directly to Fascism
(That uppercase “F” gives it…
        CREDIBILITY)

Sunlight will get me through the
        day.
What will get me through the
        night?

III.

Booze, drugs, and literature
Are getting me through.
My Regiment.
“When I smoke, I’m walking
around IN the book. The
words, sentences, paragraphs.”
“Xanax is my deodorant.”


-A. Ferlinghetti

Staley's by Soma

        He was sitting in a booth by himself. He realized the man in the red, woolen jacket was right. He wasn’t in the circle. How did he get cast out? What did he do?
        Staring over the rim of his bottle of beer, he saw two women dancing. One of the women was slim, and the other was portly and homely. She gleamed beet-red. The other had the same beet-red color. She was another plane-Jane, but even he could see the red wine’s tannins.
        The small window still presents the storm outside. Outside. It looks so cold. This is not due to the temperature. It is the four dead leaves dangling off dead branches—dormant for the season.
        Patsy Cline is twanging in the background. The chattering of drunks fills the background. He is not an exception.
        Red. The color is everywhere.
        The words are red.
        The two dancers are sitting at the end of the bar now. Their heads are swaying back-and-forth to the music in unison.
        The leaves through the window (that tiny-ass window) swing in unison. Back-and-forth.
        Try to live with the burden of real, actual humanity. Listening, seeing, feeling the flaws of your brothers and sisters. Finite life is what brings joy to Being.
        Empathy for one’s fellow (hu)man is important; necessary; compulsive. Why does he care? Why should he care? Always remember, fair reader, that you are involved in this too.
        It is a like a drug addiction. It’s like love. One day the empathy for fellow brothers and sisters fill a person with joy and excitement; on another day empathy leaves a person empty; dull; isolated.

The Fuck Buddies

She would call him; he would answer the phone.

He would call her; she would answer the phone.

He'd make arrangements, and she'd make time. They extended each other the same courtesy --time and time again.

He would know how to rub her clit; she would know how to fondle his balls, and when the nights ended they would kiss each other on the lips and say goodbye.

She would sleep on his lap. And he would stroke her hair. And he would call orgasms "crises" like in an old book he read. She would laugh. And they would have sex until their seratonin levels were so high it was as if they were travelling through time.

They got into a fight and then they made up and then they got into a fight about making up and now feelings came.

She would call him and he would not answer the phone and so she met a guy named Stan from Accounting. Stan from Accounting was very thoughtful and even knew her top 10 movies by heart. He would call and Stan was in her voice message machine. He would go out to try to pick up girls in public recreational parks and instead he would whittle tree branches into aliens.

She would break up with Stan from Accounting after he fucked her over. He would answer the phone and he would soon find out the life story of Stan from Accounting and eventually he would come and she would come and come and vice-versa and over and over and over again.

He would look at the ants circling the drain in his shower and it felt like a momentous occasion though if you asked him he wouldn't know why.

They moved to Ashland, Oregon and he was the lead in Death of A Salesman and won the respect of his peers but respect from your peers could not be converted to pay the rent. She was working at a laundromat. She would sleep with some other guy and when he found out he didn't give a fuck what his name was or what department he was from. And she said "you didn't return my calls, remember?  That's how I met Stan (from Accounting)" and it made no sense to him but so much sense to her.

A funny thing happened that night. He was able to describe why those ants meant so much to him at that time when he was looking at them (like a school of insect fish going into the great unknown).

And so he woke up and she was already awake, complaining about Ashland, Oregon. She tried to make him feel guilty for her own infidelity and he sat indian style and told her "I am walking forward with my eyes open until nothing can stop me and that is when I will stop."

And when he walked past her she looked at him and he understood that it was like walking past every summer of every important year of his life and that it was so easy to stop. It would be a natural instinctual reaction to stop. And vice versa for her and over and over and over again. So he forced his legs, no matter paralyzed he was, he forced his legs.

to cook in the kitchen is to breathe life into a home by North W. South E.

to cook in the kitchen is to breathe life into a home
herbs plucked from window sill will heighten flavor of steamy bowl.
the sunken, the sound of transformation from raw to ready to eat
unbottled water fills pots will soon turn to stock simmered on stove for hours
recipes written from scraps wasted, now made super popular
mounds of the once rooted underground for garnish of green 
onions and cilantro, basil and sprouts, southern style

New Astrological Signs? New Horoscopes!

Capricorn: Jan. 20-Feb. 16: Granted, no one is denying that you are better at your job than your boss but let's be realistic here: there is no way you give better handjobs.


Aquarius: Feb. 16-March 11: Barring apocalypse, in the distant future your niece/nephew/kid/stepkid will watch a movie based on the 90s and buy its soundtrack. You wil feel a tinge of nostalgia you never thought you had over "Mambo No. 5"


Pisces: March 11-April 18: It's high time you stop planning on tossing those boxers/panties with the hole in em and just fucking throw it away.


Aries: April 18-May 13: You are still dying alone but so did Karl Marx and he is remembered for a socio-political ideology that has been bastardized and never truly implemented. It gets better, I promise


Taurus: May 13-June 21: It might be 1am and you might be drunk as hell but I promise you that the Taco Bell drive-thru is only good in theory


Gemini: June 21-July 20: If you finish that novel you've been thinking about working on, no one will have to hear about how you're "working on it".


Cancer: July 20-Aug. 10: If you really want that cupcake stop being a Cathy Guisewite and just take it or leave it.


Leo: Aug. 10-Sept. 16: No one can save you.


Virgo: Sept. 16-Oct. 30: It's probably time to retire that joke you make everytime that one subject comes up.


Libra: Oct. 30-Nov. 23: Your anecdote about meeting Scott Baio was interesting the first time. 


Scorpio: Nov. 23-29: If you finish cleaning your room, it will be one less thing to think about when you masturbate in it.


Ophiuchus: Nov. 29-Dec. 17: Stop Facebook-stalking your ex.


Sagittarius: Dec. 17-Jan. 20: The fact your clock is 15 minutes faster than the real time has not ONCE made you early for anything, ever.

Bundyism

"So you think I'm a loser? Just because I have a stinkin' job that I hate? A family that doesn't respect me? A whole city that curses the day I was born? Well, that may mean "loser" to you, but let me tell you something. Every morning when I wake up I know it's not going to be any better until I go back to sleep again. So I get up, have my watered down Tang and still-frozen pop tart, get in my car with no upholstery, no gas and six more payments, to fight traffic just for the privilege of putting cheap shoes on the cloven hooves of people like you. I'll never play football like I thought I would. I'll never know the touch of a beautiful woman. And I'll never again know the joy of driving without a bag on my head. But I'm not a loser. 'Cause despite it all, me and every other guy who will never be what he wanted to be, are still out there being what we don't wanna be, forty hours a week for life. And the fact that I haven't put a gun in my mouth, you pudding of a woman, makes me a winner!"

the only way i can seemingly come to grips with life being awesome is accepting the fact that life sucks dick.