underunderground

1

don’t sit too close to the TV, you’ll burn your brains out. tie your shoelaces, close the door

look both ways before you cross. make sure to chew your beliefs before you swallow. lying in bed at night remember to check your heartbeat.

gasp for air–

feel it filling your lungs. feel the fear and emptiness as the room gets bigger

underunder the covers.

move on to adolescent indulgence, forever self-loathing and other masturbatory behaviors. invent the quote best years of your life. the way it all seemed so innocent like outta some fucking bruce Springsteen song. its all wasted

away in a cloud,

in blurred visions of birthday candles,

in spilled cups that were always half empty.

now when that telephone rings and you hold up to your ear and that voice being transformed into electronic data tells you “you’ve lost it kid.” leave in search of another message or lit neon bar sign. one drink for the childhood nightmares that kept you awake.

for the monsters have all become a reality of evil thoughts.

put another song on the jukebox and try to forgetforget

2

i burn every bridge i cross. i am a sick fuck of nowhere hells vicious cycle of bad luck– another spilled drink, a broken condom, an unemployment check

i’ve never had a whore

before, but now i’m drunk

so i walk by them stoned,

and go home and masturbate to the dirty cunts.

i am the dented bumpers and forgotten hubcaps of the highway. the gambling debts, unemployment lines, painkillers. the great impounded vehicle. i am rape and pillage. i am the mindless jobs, the blood filled black phlegm cough. i am being forced by my own ignorance to steal to lie. i am

to be sold into this life like property and made to be a capitalist slave of democracy and the dollar.

i am being broken down and left with nothing. being ignored, remembering all your falls, all your mistakes. i am continuing to dull the senses, the lack of hope. i am dark rooms, insomnia and withdrawals. i am why you keep your fists clenched and grind down your tobacco stained teeth. why your patience is getting shorter with every carton of cigarettes.

why you wish you could do it all over again

3

keep using balled up newspaper to wipe your ass. leave your mark on the walls you choose to piss on. get canned food from the local churches and drink in front of the sacred television waiting for something else to happen. when you feel the breaking point and your hands wont stop shaking and the walls are closing in and the world seems so heavy–collapsing overover you

there’ll be a knock at the door and you’ll wonder if its death

and you’ll be standing at the window there, and you’ll see that dark blue summer night sky flashing with fireflies. and you’ll answer the door and find the landlord left you an eviction notice. so you finish your bottle of whisky, light that last smoke, and grab your pistol. you’ll remember your father

lying in the hospital bed dying

saying you end up with what you started with

Broken Beer Bottles

where to begin is in the confusion of the mind…it starts when you’re completely alone, the ticking beating breathing (get on with the dying already.) take the bad news as a sign of the times, of crossed lines, of a bar coded existence, of failed dreams and the big lie…our haunted corroded eyes in the mourning sun from defeated bleeding sidewalks of Newark to empty heartland factories of Detroit, hurricane green seas of Mexico to the old world deserts of the Middle East, the genocide of Mother Africa. (it’s all so uplifting.) peril is in the air, taste it in the water, feel it in the ground beneath you, keep an ear out and hope for a new day when the ones screaming or with no voice at all find a new meaning, a new passion, a new dope…our modern illness is mental, the drones following one another with no lord or leader no prophet no mess sigh uhhh just two boards. look to your holy walls and floors, holy lighting fixtures, holy high definition. holy wars…the truth is in the liar like the bite of an apple is to original sin (and the genetic inevitability of tragedy hate greed.) my addiction is tired today, i think i’ll bring my burdens with me and carry them from my hole in the wall out to the city, a city divided by kolor kreed klass…the thoughts of a flooding end to wash away this mess we call the US, comfort in knowing my heavy heart is half-sold and my soul is the only collateral i’ve got and ever had…i stopped counting the minutes long ago (now the days just seem longer.)

Farmingdale

I moved in right quick having found a room that day. Small dormered with a story-book green dresser and a single bed smelling of stale cramped life like the inside of a draw. It was my second time living on a top floor if I include my stay with Grandma, the one I fled that very morning after having been up all night, and when I think of how I might explain why I left I can only say this for now, fright.

So one week in and already found work bussing tables at this Italian family style restaurant, it smelled too and how particular, fetid, damp and garlicky. Finally I thought here is my life. Having made the prodigal return from Queens back home or at least one town over, I thought, this is great, everything being the same but now here and now now.

I had plans to eaves-drop on my customers, study the living, mabey for a screen-play I'd tell others to impress knowing then what I've always known, that everything is a reward unto itself or none at all, and to know people, to live among them with the ears, with the heart open would always be enough.

I still dreamt big but it was a lie to impress myself, to subvert my egoistic conditioning, an attempt to live in between plans, and when those lie's wore thin I thought it was beer or pot I lived for and again another cover for living, for with all its meager winnings and great upset, not once has it been uninteresting.

Like this yule visit with crack toking friends at the end of the hall, a Christmas eve to remember, the unatural acrid smell, the way each would pick and scrape at there pipes at bits of foil in preparation for the next hit, immediate to the last, like insects with big blood filled human hearts and eyes which sought to drink the whole world with you in it, there was real love there.

When living the low life we find it trembling and jewel like there in cramped rooms, in the parking lots of seven-eleven, we hear it falling up the stairs with a head wound, or with pupils grown big enough to house the waking dreams of not one but two boxes of somanex, we clean up a months worth of it's piss in milk pint cartons, we talk with its failure it's deep sadness, how it scams the grocery store's for five towns over, we listen when it describe's the work of carting it's body around, of how it clinicaly died once and the nothing it had seen there, we let it sleep on our floor when it's man-friend is raging scared all the while, we talk with it sipping german dessert wines smoking nat shermans, its face large as life the eyes all a twinkle, blink, blink it says, it claims to be your soul-mate, it begs for sexual favor at three in the morning when your just trying to have a drink, there it stands in it's whities stumbling before a 19" color set clutching a half gallon of Georgi having just bleed its heart out for its boy, it's deceased father, it's failed marriage, it smokes something nameless and black while the last light fades behind the tree-line out of doors, there through the quarter windows, and it thinks, are we out of beer?

Staying Positive In Modern Times (without medication)

Look on the bright side.

I'm sitting on a bench in the recently reopened and remodeled Washington Square Park. It's finally dirty again after just a few weeks. It was just too clean when the chain link fences came down. It's like the filth of mankind wanted to smother this pristine park.

I started therapy. Sliding scale counseling work at Adelphi's psychology dept down off of Varick. Not sure how much I'll have to actually pay, which is good because I'm only now finding steady enough freelance work to pick myself up after this economy knocked me down. It's more helpful than I thought, this ranting at a young grad student who's bitten off more than she can chew.

We're going to discuss medication next week, but for now, I'm on my own. Well, I have nicotine & caffeine, and maybe some hops & liquor to help me get by. A hearty dose of hormones and chemicals from my daily meals and I'm good to go. Toss in a dash of sunlight and enough exercise to stave of atrophy. Golden.

I find it is the idle mind that is vulnerable to societal sabotage. Something about constant movement fights off the spiraling depression of modern living. Small acomplishments, or at least momentary satisfaction (which works for most), are the markers on your path to mental health. Of course too much walking in circles, dwelling in distraction, floundering in fiction, will only lead to depression.

Upwards and onwards young man! Make sure every step is bigger than the last. Resolve your problems, change your mind, redefine yourself constantly. Be open to the universe, try not to question the personal disasters, accept and see the good in everything around you. Odds are, the things you're upset about are probably just comfortable pains.

There's something utterly defineable of self in regards to our personal problems. We often cling to them, prefferring the familiarity of discomfort over the unknown potential. Complaining is just so satisfying sometimes. Especially when you're competing with the others in your life. Easier to dive deeper than them, rather than try and lift them all up with you.

It leads to isolation which is another depression pitfall. For some reason so many of us can not be alone. At least the television is on, or our pets snuggle up to us, allowing us to feel connected to reality, if not actively engaging it. The idea of silence in a room alone is maddening to some, inconcievable and impossible a task.

Is it the whirlpool of despair that sucks at our souls as we either remain oblivious or living in utter denial, escaping into our own fantasies? I've found that creating is what keeps the flames of hell at bay. Every spare moment I'm consumed with the desire to write. I've a multitude of projects going at this point in my life.

Is it all just another overconsumed escapist drug? Possibly, but at the end of it all I'll have something carved out in letters that sears its way into your brains, and hopefully makes a difference. Hopefully it helps.

Don't worry, be happy.

K

Apologies.

Apoligies.

Wednesday was my day on the rota to post something, and I've failed. One simple task, post some fiction on Wednesday, and I didn't do it.

I find that it's easy to let this stuff go. To not post, or not take part in something on-line. It's faceless, usually nameless, and if it has any impact it's not always immediately noticeable.

Oops, forgot to post, I'll do it another day. Next day comes around, still no post. A week, a month; no post. Why get involved if you can't see things through? This is something I'm struggling with currently. I'm trying to see things through. As writers we're only as good as our work is visible.

So, why be a part of Sub*Text? Why write for it? Why read it? Why be involved? It's not really going to be a revolution, right?

Wrong. It will be whatever we want it to be. It will spit out whatever we put into it. If we fill it with ideas, and original thought, perhaps it will make the world turn. Revolution.

Come and be a revolutionary with me.

-T

Get the Fuck Out of my City

My name is Rod Young, yes it's my real name, no I'm not a porn star. At least not anymore. I live in the East Village where I met this guy Kurt who asked me to be a part of this writing thing. So here's my words.

I always said I should write down my memiors and opinions, you know the kind regular folk say to creative types after a few drinks at a grimy bar at 2am. Seems like a great idea half sloshed but in the morning, hangovers and reality come and ruin the party.

But this guy Kurt encouraged me to keep trying and so I'm giving it a shot. I've never really written before, other than the occasional dirty limerick in a Lower East Side bathroom when I had a sharpie on me. Do I have anything to say that you normal folks would give a shit about?

I live in the East Village, not the fucking internet. I don't have Facebook or Myspace, and barely know how to email. I've been down on 7th Street and Ave B for the last few years, bouncing around the neighborhood before that. A lot of couch surfing and crashing on benches occasionally.

I saw this neighborhood change for the worse over and over again. Recently it's become unbearable and I've had to start hitting people in the face. This one fuck in a polo shirt thought that just because his Rugby pals were around that he could talk shit at 7B. I smashed his face into the bricks outside, I think the bloodstain is still there.

I knew we were in trouble when Pinkberry dropped in on St. Marks. Then that shit CBGB store opened up and they filmed some awful rich bitch drama there. That's when I realized what had happened. You post 9/11 fuckfaces had brought LA here.

It trickled in with that Ed Hardy trucker hat bullshit. Then every other girl I had buy me drinks was from Orange County. Pinkberrys start popping up, then Sex in the City the movie starts filming over at the Starbucks near K-Mart in Astor Place. That's when I put it together.

All you little Californian cunts grew up watching that ragged corpse you call Sarah Jessica Parker shamble through the streets of NYC and you knew that life in the OC was so fake and like not cool at all. There was something missing in your life as The Hills took the airwaves and you just knew you'd never be rich or pretty enough to be them.

So you came here, thinking that if you dropped enough on vintage rock band t-shirts that retired before you were even born, but somehow are now making a comeback to sell out one last time, you could reinvent yourself and live like they did in Rent, only with a trust fund safety net.

You're no starving artist, and maybe I'm not either. I'm just a bitter, elitist drunk wandering aimlessly through the streets. But you don't see me going to the West Coast, surfboard and frappachino in hand, complete with bleached blone whore girlfriend in Uggs and a denim skirt.

Go look at Broadway and Houston, marvel at the giant Hollister sign, complete with pier, sunset, and seagull, and then realize that it replaced a giant DKNY (fuck fashion) with NYC skyline, and take another bite of your Green Tea frozen yogurt with fresh raspberries and tell me this city isn't being overrun.

Fuck you California.

Love,
Rod.

Independence

Happy Birthday America! I sit in the new Washington Square Park amid tourists from across the world all anxiously awaiting the fireworks that are going off from the Hudson rather than the East River this year. Seems they're moving with me to the West Side.

I'm wearing my American Flag, I mean Mickey Mouse, t-shirt, vintage 70's style ringer, legit piece of fabric, recalling my days of youth living the dream with my teenage parents as they brought my sister and I to the Magic Kingdom, a pilgrimage my mother still makes yearly.

I drink my large (I refuse to say Venti) iced coffee and eat my chocolate old fashioned doughnut from Starbucks. I got a freelance check yesterday so I am permitted to engage in consumerism today. A pack of Marlboros and I'm off to the park to relax, people watch, and write about my independence.

I never felt okay alone. I always needed someone around, maybe to tell me who I am, a reflective personality mirroring theirs, digging out the chunks that were actually me. Paranoia kicks in as I walk the streets of NYC alone, feeling like a kid wandering off on his lonesome, waiting for his Mommy to have security track him down, bring him home.

As a kid I was always alone. Trapped in my head, happily constructing complex secret agent/private dick/superhero scenerios, friends often found me and dragged me along when I would have been happier sitting at home filming my GI Joes with my PXL2000. When they found girls I wanted to go play Super Nintendo.

Eventually I found a gang of guys, a wolfpack of dorks, nerds, and dweebs. Metal, role-playing, and sci-fi. Anime, comics, and fantasy. There was no girls about, and a varied bunch of guys to bounce off of and find out who I was. After a few years I knew, but I put myself there right away.

I was the clown. The sin-eater of the tribe, enact your anger upon me and let it be purged, for I felt nothing, although I showed you I felt everything. I laughed and made you laugh, quiet but rambunctuous when it would make for a good gag. I had no deeper thoughts, and felt completely at peace in this masochistic persona.

I felt so you didn't need to, poking the wounded animal, watching it twitch. Little did everyone know I was playing possum, building up the resentment and bitterness, pushing down the guilt, overloading it with mistreatment. One day I would feel justified in my righteous anger.

Only that day never came. I let out pulses of strength, pushing me away from situations without letting them overwhelm me completely. I flowed from person to person, relationship to relationship, flipping my personality about, trying new psyches on like the new Fall Fashion. Being an amorphorus personality is the new secure identity.

Now, I'm happy for the first time. Everything is actually proceeding along where I am the one in control. I'm making things happen. I am engaged and now living with my fiancee. She is the female version of me. Yet, with her job I am forced to be alone a lot of weekends and nights.

I freaked out at first. For weeks I would have panic attacks, alone in her apartment, no money to go out, no friends to go out with. A new neighborhood I always thought I hated, my old identity as an East Village King, my only realy NYC persona, now gone, I had to find my way.

So I hit a few bars and found myself suddenly friendly and able to talk casual conversation. I was out at a bar alone one night reflecting on how just 6 years ago I wouldn't have been able to do it comfortably. Not that I was totally confident now but it was miles from where I had been back on Long Island.

I'd try and go out with the few friends I had left but mostly in big social situations, I'd still be struggling. Lost and alone in awkward moments with casual aquaintances, feeling sweaty and underdressed, stumbling through, thinking everyone was scrutinizing me. It's hard not to hate everyone else for that, even though it's only in my mind.

I turn down a few offers to go out and do things for July 4th, knowing that in a sense, I now want to be alone. I stayed in last night and opened a cafepress store to sell t-shirts, edited my novel a bit, and organized my new literary adventure, Sub*Text. I felt good getting things done rather than blowing food money on booze.

I might go and watch the fireworks from the West Side Highway. I'll be alone and looking around at the couples, groups of friends, families that will no doubt be swarming the entire place, and I don't think I'll feel that same sadness that I would normally feel. I think I'll look at myself, there doing whatever I want to, on my own terms, and I think I'll be happy.

I don't really need anyone else.

But if you wanna stop by Botonica in Soho and grab a drink, I'll probably be there, whiskey in hand, typing away.

Happy Independence Day.

K