ghosted

So listless, so dead, so gone.
And coffee like hot black love
won't do it anymore.
Sex like summertime,
words like candy-kisses
won't stun us anymore.

So just lick the lid, wet the edge
cuz this biting appetite is dry.
so dry.
Emotion, fixation, creation
all of them, all kinds -- dry.

Empty vessles sailing on empty streets
of a ghosted-down Jerusalem,
of a widowed-out Galilee.

Now don't get me wrong-
this isn't dead religion,
isn't dead icons and idols and sacrilege
To be sure.

This is dead spirit, dead space, dead soul.
This is the Kalahari in a sandstorm.
This is the rain forests all chopped down.

Global warming and green house incubation
of a hundred million molten infant ants
that still look like little children.
Nuclear wars with ourselves
because we don't feel it,
can't breathe yet,
don't know it,
can't see it.

So do you see?
This is the sort of piled-up,
backed-up bullshit that comes out of me;
comes out of all of us
when we try to inspire,
when we try to create.
This is the sort of fucked-up rubbish
that dead limbs come up with
when we try to get up,
when we still try to danse

...at least on occasion...
oh god save me, God save me, god save me


Or, if she won't, I'll just lie here
until the wind blows all my dust away from her.

-RLL (c)2005

Just because [we] are

Write songs for me.
Please.
Just scrawl them out on left over bits of napkin in a junkfood joint.
Then you can sing one slow and quiet, so no one else has to hear.
You could even whisper it in my ear, like a secret no one ever tells.
Could make me life out of your secrets --

Then I could say I know you.
I love you.
I need you.

But first, kiss me.
Please.
Just craft it out of rosepetals and perfume till it's soft enough to tell.
Then you can warm it over your breath until no chill's left.
You could even slip your tongue into my mouth and speak for me,
Could plant silken words straight into my soul --

Then I would say I know you.
I love you.
I want you.

Just don't leave me.
Please.
Just sleep in my bed and stay near until the night is done.
Then you can die under blankets and rest your thoughts in pillows.
You could even twine yourself with scents still lingering there.
Could even pretend that I'm balled up next to you --

Then you could say you know me.
You love me.
You have me.

Or,we could say we know it.
We love it.
We want it.
We're desperate,
starving,
stark raving mad for it.

-RLL (c)2005

24-hours

There are establishments in this world that are complete and utter crap. The food is terrible, greasy, and often bordering on flavorless. Their servers are soulless shells of what were once people. Their doors make haunting little noises that question why you opened them everytime someone does. Their menus are utterly devoid of nutritious options -- even their fruit manages to be unhealthy, however that is. The prices aren't exorbant, but for what you recieve, they make you wonder why you ever bothered.

How do such establishments thrive in America???
They are open 24-hours.

Places like Denny's and Norms. Places where the workers take five to go outside and smoke, then come back to hand you the check. Places where it's allowed to sit in a corner booth for hours and debate what composes a person - because you can. Places where it's either too late to notice or too early to care.

Places where the second you walk through the whining doors, you lose your sense. Everything is hysterical for at least the first 15 minutes -- and after that, you stare dispassionately at the menu full of useless variations on the same bad ingredients, until you finally point arbitrarily at one of the lesser options and mutter something along the lines of, "meh ehlltekoneuhthose." to a server who scribbles something you wonder isn't hit song lyrics on a ratty looking pad of paper. Then they scamper off toward the kitchen to smoke another cigarette, and laughter inevitably resumes.

It's easy to be eccentric, ridiculous, and immaturely hysterical in such places. It's practically a must. If you don't agree, go driving through your town at 3 am -- find a 24-hour diner (because you're bound to), go in and grab one of the booths. Ask to sit in the big round one if you feel audacious enough. Scan the menu and order something obviously extravagent for this time of night.

And you tell me you don't feel utterly crazy.
Because that would certainly be a feat.

Oh, and no writing elegies on napkins either -- that doesn't count. Clearly.

-RK

Thankful.

They'll ask us. They always do.

We'll sit around one of those tables that's really three shoved together.
There'll be so much food, the table can hardly contain it. And there'd be champaigne if we were in one of those champaigne-houses. Instead, there'll be a dead bird cooked to taste, golden brown, and steaming with the nostalgia of generations and generations before us.

Stuffing and eggs and rolls, which you shouldn't eat unless your desperate - because bread fills your stomach so full that nothing else can. Of course, you'll have a double helping of the deviled eggs; who wouldn't? And you'll pour gravy over the potatoes and corn and bits of turkey slices that layer your play three-inches deep, at the very least.

And you'll mix everything together in each bite, getting the perfect combination. The one that brings you back to when you were just five years old, sitting at the "kiddy table" in the other room, listening to the adults's voices hum and bustle in a cloud above you. The one that takes you back to the last year and the year before that and the year before that, when the only thing you had to be thankful for was that you were still alive.

When it's all said and done, you'll lay miserable on the couch or the floor or the La-Z-Boy chair. You'll groan in pain and you'll promise yourself that you won't eat so much next year, won't eat for the rest of your life, never want to see another turkery or bit of stuffing or sourdough roll or hard boiled egg in your life.

But this time next year, when it all rolls around again, you'll pile your dish high with corn and sweet potatoes and cream peas, and you'll fill your glass full of shimmering liquid. And you'll sit and feast until you promise yourself for the last time that you'll never eat again.

And this time in a week? You'll have had so much stuffing variations and so many cold turkey sandwiches that you'll pray to God they don't kill turkery or produce stuffing anywhere in the world ever again.

But that too you'll renounce when the time comes.

And in the midst of it all, you'll be thankful. Thankful you're still alive after the past. Thankful you still breathe air. Thankful for the ones who love you. Thankful for the blessings in your life.

Thankful for life.
Because that's why we stuff ourselves and goard ourselves and indulge ourselves in this once-a-year gluttony. So we can remember to be thankful.

Funny, that.

-RK

in your room

I'll sit here, in my room,
sipping vinegar like it's wine,
aerating the bitter, sour flavour
until all the burn is gone -
letting the brown, dispassioned liquid
steal on down my throat.

No, but I'll wait here in this room,
swallowing poison like it's fine,
pretending the deteriorating sting
doesn't catch me so off guard -
imagining that when it's hits my stomach,
it'll settle something there.

I'll be here, in your room,
smelling helium like flowers' scent,
filling as far as I can my insides
that wait for oxygen to take effect -
forcing down the insubstancial substance
further into my aching lungs.

No, but I'll stay there in that room,
breathing gasoline like it's wind,
letting the effects of deadly toxins
corrode away the blood in my veins -
awaiting the moment it all takes root in my brain
and lays me dead too.

lying lifeless next to you,-

-RLL (c)2005

Be sure to note:

Within 72 hours (3 days hence), the url of this site is changing to:

http://ralikat.blogspot.com

Note this down if you want to stop by after that.

[It was going to be cfr.blogspot.com, but some other pitiable blog has taken it just recently and its author have no contact information or even comments enabled for me to disuade them against the use of it. lamentable.]

-RK

Scholar-minded

They shouldn't expect so much from them. They shouldn't decree students must balance, when they give them no means to; no means to have a life with any homeostasis in it; no means to develope into real human adults without someone holding their hand halfway through the workday.

So, the idea of the university is to alter the mind. To create in one the sense of curiosity sincerely neglected, nowadays, in secondary education. But, mind you, this is not purely the fault of the student. Teachers are uninformed, uninspiriing, untrained for the subjects they propose to "teach". The classroom is a dull whiteboard and a conglomeration of cheap-ass desks shoddily drawn up into seating charts, so no one can express themselves. Whispering is decreed against. Note-passing is equivalent to drug-dealing. Questions are posed systematicall, signalled by raised hands the teacher hopefully acknowledges.

The average high school student is overloaded with busy-work, while exceptional thinkers are pumelled into the ground out of sheer boredum. The atmosphere is thick, the air heavy, the room overcrowded with useless paper-bound projects so that the mind cannot expand, cannot think, cannot grow.

Then, comes the university; what too often is thought of as the "vocational forum". The student then does what? Chooses a major. Reads some books. Writes a crital essay on them. Is taught to "sell" himself to a market that is always searching for something better than what he and his new degree have to offer.

Students with no real life experience are shuffled off into stockmarket exchanges where calls of "PhD" and "Full time work experience" and "Health benefits" are shouted out from around-about a thousand different auctioneers. Employers tug at one another's hair for the youngest, the brightest, the flashiest. And this is the world we're meant to survive in.

What could be more frustrating than even that?
The crippling, handicapping, dishabilitating of the world's best from the get-go.

There's an assumption, when I enter a university classroom, that I ought to be a "scholar. Yet, I don't even have to be a living, breathing, thinking human being to survive there. I don't have to read the assignments to complete them. I don't have to pay attention to lecutres to pass the tests. I don't have to reason or theorize or do any mental work of my own to get the grades, and with that - the GPA. I must synthesis no tie-ins with any of my own philosophies, make no connections with any of my day-to-day discussions, or even try to bring anything of any value to the classroom or my personal work. I only have to sit in a chair and take up oxygen, only have to heat the room with my body. I only have to be "present" to receieve credit. I only have to show up to pass.

This highly disguised rat-race no longer stimulates my mind.

The most brilliant connections I make now are with outside debates, extra-curricular material that has no real place in any "classroom". Every moment new lines are drawn between a philosphy and a movie, or a central character and a question on life a friend of mine had the other day. Each moment I pass in the monotony of the "classroom" those same connections are being severed between myself and the real world. Only outside of this stifling environment can I forumate any useful ideas. Only outside of this machine can I think for myself.

Then how many of my thoughts go unsaid because they don't "feed" the class discussion? How much wisdom is withheld, passed by, viewed only at an insurmountable distance because of the setting from which I sit? How much knowledge do I fail to obtain because of my studies?

These are the most disheartening questions to have to ask. Yet the answer still stands like a monument before us. If I were not in these classes - I would study more. A self-driven passion would enter into the discussion, and my hope for knowledge would increase tri-fold. For every moment that I pass in university moduels, the stimulation of desire for knowledge fades - slowly at first, then exponentially more rapid, like a virus in my mind. I become lackadaisical, unimpressed, thoughtless while the professor drones on and on about things I might have otherwise had a million counterpoints for. But instead, I sit still in my chair with a pad of paper, and I scawl down notes I'll probably never look at again.

And all the while on my shelf sits piles of books, mounds of knowledge, topics innumerable that I would delve into with a firey passion for understanding, for depth, for truth -- were I not in "class".

This is what has become of the university mind. This is the mass-produced education we're feeding to our future generations, spoonful after spoonful. And this is the future of our society.
God help us.

-RK

attributed to someone I don't actually know

Wow.
-------
We are standing on a hill, our shadows behind us and therefore invisible. Except that our sight created this scene, we have nothing to do with the action below. Things unfold before us and we can only watch, being powerless to touch or to influence.

Closest to us is a man tilling a field, his horse and plough creating concentric furrows in this piece of land overhanging the sea. This sloping staircase of grooves stretches to the left and out of sight, disappearing into the shadows of the trees, now only regaining their leafy glory.

And just below the farmer is a shepherd, his dog beside him, his sheep (two of them are black) grazing around, precariously close to the land’s edge. The shepherd is gazing upwards, not at us, not seeing us.

We follow our gaze down to the water. There is a castle-like structure jutting out of the water, and further behind it are hazy golds and browns of another town, set against the grey of the clouds and the mountains in the furthest reach of our eyes.

There are boats and ships on the water. One is so close to us that we can see the ropes that hold the sails in place. From our distance, its bulk appears almost lugubrious as it begins its journey, but the billowing sails alleviate that sobriety, inject the heavy structure with levity and flight.

There is a fisherman stretching his right arm out into the water. He perches on some rocks at the water’s edge, careful not to get his white tunic wet.

And in the bottom right corner of our sight is a pair of legs, thrashing in the water. A few white feathers are almost lost amidst the froth those legs kick up.

This is Icarus drowning.

-brilliantly posted by run like the wind
-------
Because I couldn't have said it any better. thank you.

-RK

promise me?

Tonight sits like a maimed carcass on wet, bloody haunches in the dark, in the still, in the counterfeit consciousness that passes over the dead air above our heads. And there isn't an echo of the bliss written about before, far far far away from here.

Only a million words hang in that empty air - some said, some left, some yet within reach. And each as hurtful as the last. You know that we could bleed out all the abadonment, the faithlessness, the pain that's smeared this little messy room with irrevocable darkness tonight. Could spill it in heavy stains over the pages, pouring like a river of black blood from our pens. Like crimson ink from our fingertips. Then, all the signs and smybols and metaphorical references would paint a picture here as hideous and ugly as death, when it steals through the veins - turns all the arms and legs and pieces of faces of little ones death-black. Rot that eats away the flesh in bright, gaping sores - oozing and spilling with all the frothy, corrupted sentences that are left to be unsaid.

Soon, someone would read them. He might even feel something for them. But he wouldn't break the placid reverie, wouldn't dare to break the serene silence long enough to say so.

Don't expect... she calls. Don't hope, don't dream, don't plead.

Once before, we called her the voice of doubt, the hum of hate, the sigh of pain. But what does it matter now? Here in the quiet, where it's all been left, she's holding us now. Here, in the stillness that last vibrations of some unfamiliar voice left, she's caressing our hand and our heart and our mind. For now, she owns us. Because she loves us.

Because she wants us. Because she makes us believe she needs us.

To everyone else, she declares, we're refuse. We're useless, disgusting waste. We're superflous matter that's only good at spilling emotional tableaus on bathroom stall doors. Just one of a million tragic tales that don't end up making the audience cry. Just one of a million failed attempts to be beautiful. To be faithful.

She may be lying. This may be death. But, for now, she's the only one who's still with us. Still near us. Still holding us. After the shadow of the storm has fallen. After the words have finished their echoing for five complete years. After the terrors confirmed and the curtains drawn, and the deadpan expression of fate and the growling laughter of the rest of humanity is all laid in its place. She's here - whispering her deceit, spinning her poisonous silk into fresh veins that'll hear her words.

She's here, teaching you to danse. She's here, teaching me to twirl and laugh and forget about the past. She's here, heeding all the warning signs - and telling us that tomorrow'll be alright. Telling me that I'll awake, telling you that you'll feel better.

Telling us that our promises mean shit to everyone - but her.

-RK