I stood before the seer, with his canvas bag of tricks and Birkenstocks that spoke empty dissention. The prophet began:
¶
"This was. Broken, atrophied, sitting on the sidewalk with a copy of Chomsky in my backpack and a degree’s worth of knowledge in my head. My grad gown draped across a chair in my room four blocks away. This is. Continuity, fluid movements between then and when. Sound dilation. Saturday masquerades as Wednesday and I fight over who’s birthday it is. We light a cigarette to toss. I think I have cancer. Too much caffeine. Too much nicotine. I vomited once after I had a pot of coffee. I had absorbed a 750 of popov a few hours before. Then I blacked out. Maybe it wasn’t the coffee.
¶
"Word is the barrier between realities and reality. John told me once that in order to rid language from my life, I had to decimate my internal monologues. He also called me a failure. He was right. I don’t know why. I’m too lazy to try to analyze it. Maybe this is why I failed out of philosophy. Either that, or I was on too much speed and pot to concentrate on Nietchze. It’s okay. He says God don’t care.
¶
"My Blank has no pattern. Terse phrases and incomplete thoughts. Mediocre delusional. Or just human. It’s an affect of the Orange Curtain. P.K. Dick was right. I refuse to capitalize. e.e. cummings used to be my hero. Now I know why. I wish I could have first drafts of my thoughts. There shouldn’t be a backspace key. All thoughts should be final. Perhaps it’s not the idea of capitalization, but punctuation. I should have no periods or commas, because the last thought is only a continuation of the first. Speech has no punctuations, just hesitations. 'Mi mou tous kiklous taratte.' Archimedes' final words. Translated: 'Do not disturb my circles.' He had a point.
¶
"He told me that if I didn’t catch any of the references, I’m too young to matter and if I did catch them, I’m too old to care. I’m not who I wanted to be. Dissolving in a Marxist romance, because I fell in love with the proletariat. I fall asleep masturbating. Existing as a result of emotional compound fractures. Speaking in forced similes of free verse and wondering if the Encyclopedia Britannica has an entrance on itself. I need to lay off everything. Everything. This is all for a grade. Revision of first line: A shrug and a smile. I’m stuck on thoughts now. That’s a sign. It signifies the beginning of something great. It’s gravy."
¶
He stepped down and bummed a smoke.
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