Richard Boggs

We’re all picking it up as we go along…

The day the war ended and the atheist died I turned 27.

In one year, the world will end.

And I can’t wait.

Fast forward to the sterling bliss that is the sleep - my eternal rest in the face of chaos. It is not my choice, not yours, and it sure as hell isn’t HIS.

It will be the sea’s decision to rise and drown the open mouths screaming for them to cease. As disinterested the Earth is, in its quiet continued movement, will never listen. Not one note of concentrated human suffering could prevent the fire from consuming; the radiation from spreading. Prayers for forgiveness pierce like rifle blasts as our coffin lowers; the ground quaking with each trigger pull.

In 2012, chaos reigns.

The year we nothing. We walk down the road and not across the street. We slip our last; fuck our final; blow the bucket.

I can see it all live; I can see it all now. Tsunamis will awash the poor in malaria milk, frothing over their histories in the time it takes for the rich to text a five-dollar donation. My lips quiet to my fingers fucking doom. Release valves will shutter and burst like acne across America’s face, bubbling blood and poison to the upper crust.  I will canoe through the reddish-yellow blend erupting like the river Styx on my way home. Wade through my own filth to rob the neighbor’s groceries. My family’s hungry too, ya know. Survival and hunger are simply the beast’s best weapons.

I tip-toe past reason to pick up the gun. I got no kids, just a cat and whole pile of shit.

With my gun, I’m as animal as I am god. But it can’t save me. The dark watery waves will nonetheless wash my body down the deep water horizon delta, where others rest and wait.

The dead zone.

My childhood.

The innocence replays refreshing its taste. That golden gift of not knowing is as powerful as the gift of forever. My ignorance as I ran. Collected frogs. Walked home. Danced to the radio. Sung in my car. Masturbated to boys. Took pictures of pictures. Pet my pet. Believed in god. Believed in science. Believed in Rock. Ate too many cookies. Had too much to drink. Had to little to spend. My face smiling and screaming through the day and night.

Leaping through time till now.

Till the end.

Forever.

Amen.  

Dear Ms. Ingiborg von Sittsowity,

Life as we know it comes to an end, not through death, I must inform. Instead it lies in seeing everything at once; life’s grand peaks and valleys in one giant crescendo. From this perspective, I can witness all the webbed connections vying for dominance only to mix and blend wildly beyond expectation. I see my birth. My love. My children. From space, Ms. Von Sittsowity, I can see it all.

It is grand, I assure.

In one sense, this death is the end of my old self. A time of personal blindness, once encompassing, now entirely exorcized like the ignorance it was. This perspective of mine changes men’s minds. And yours too, I’m afraid!

I can already see it, and death is all that there is. Ever ending and eating upon the fools dumb enough to perceive it, it pushes us into the future – if we can even call it that anymore.

The future.

Spread it over ourselves like peanut butter on rye. I miss that the most, please send some back.

Sincerely yours in time,

Higgiu lo Hiaui

P.S. TEAR DOWN THIS WALL

xoxxo

Beating myself up with a pen and some truth.

Doin’ laundry on the Friday.

Two West Indian girls start a fight.

Shouldn’t have slept with that dude, I guess.

Pack it in, Pack it in. Ignore the screams.

“Now that you’re dead, what will you do with your life?”

Chuck Palahniuk “Damned” Tour speaking event at the Great Hall in Cooper Union (NOV 1, 2011)

Season’s Greetings.

“my advice is to just say no and walk away.”

The day my dad picked me from daycare, I knew something was different.  

Mainly it was because my mom had forbid him to do so. Never again would he drive with me in the passenger seat of the Nissan diesel, the one missing a floorboard; the pavement racing just inches from my dangling delighted toes. Not after the accident; not after the replacement windshield.

                 And most definitely not after my head injury.

                “Get in,” he said nonetheless and I did with no protest. We road silently inside the truck - me not speaking; him relishing the precision of the manual shift. In and out of green-lit tunnels hollowed through brown hills of the California mid-lands. All landscapes dinged with a suffocating coat of dusty earth so thick it seemed to choke any chance of life.  This is year-round Contra Costa we’re talking.

                We reached a road-side park among the many jagged hills that scar the county. Even from the entrance, I could sense activity just over the dash. It looked like some sort of fair or carnival with cars lined up tight against the railing. And some were double and triple parked. We only double parked.

                He quickly exited with one thing in his possession; the one thing which never left his side: a pair of military issue binoculars, glossy black and giant in my hands. I saw families complete with children and wives. Picnics littered the area as we marched toward a fenced ledge lookout where most amassed in a large crowd. They were pointing and talking silently, making less sound then the amount of people would suggest.

                They pointed across the valley to another hill.

                Something was there. After looking in silent excitement, my dad broke concentration and handed me the binoculars. Looking through the glasses, I felt a bemused wonder that mutated into an alien dread. I was looking at the only giant condor my eyes would ever see.  As cartoonish as my memory makes it seem, the creature flinching and awkward, the reality never escaped me that it was dying, and we were its witnesses. I knew it then, as I remember it now. “Son, this is something you’re never gonna forget.” After that day, there were 15 left in the wild, and now I only assume they’re all extinct.

                Now I see different creatures with similar fates. Now I see a man, pale and collapsed on Broadway x 13^th street outside FORBIDDEN PLANET. A crowd of fifteen mill about as I pass, slowly weighing the reality of action versus comfort. There is even a young man in nurse’s scrubs. But no action, not one.

                “Is he breathing?” I ask, though he certainly looks not be.

                “We called 911 already,” some girls on cells assure.

                “Shouldn’t we roll him over in case he vomits?” Their eyes widen behind glasses.

                “Don’t touch him. You don’t want trouble.”

She is more than correct. Still, he looks dead, splayed out on the bubble gum black sidewalk. He is not gasping, heaving, or twitching. I decide against a cell pic, a decision in good taste. I can keep my humanity card one more day. All the people in the world, and not one will touch or check for pulse.  You just gotta pay for that sort of attention in this town. All my wonder sapped and gone for the human challenge on the ground.

                I’m on my lunch after all.

West Indian Day Parade happened this year outside my window @ 4am. The whole thing is so loud it’s impossible to sleep during it.

So I wandered.

This is just the begging hours. Eventually, over 38 people were shot in 48 hours, in what is known as the most violent holiday in city. This was considered a calm year.

You don’t know a goddamn thing.

Not one, not two, not a whole bag, not-a-thing. Nothing.

What you know, what I know, what we all know: food in mouth; shit out ass. Simple and beautiful. Until one day, you put food in, but no shit comes out. “Maybe some more food will budge it out,” you might whisper. One more chip. Two more cookies. But no shit.

Where, you panic, is the shit?

All at once the essential logic of your biology breaks down somewhere, somewhere deep. Maybe the hole is vomiting up some bloody babble fecal juice that makes santorum look like the finest euro-cheese no-work dollars can buy. But def no shit.

You don’t know why. Don’t even try to act like you do. You’re no fucking doctor. But if you are, fuck these bills. I’m still broke. So whip that smile off your face, ‘cause it ain’t gonna help ya shit one bit.

How Long has it been again? More importantly how many days before you even noticed? Were you immediately panicked or did you trust Newton a little too much. I think we can all agree there; bless our hearts.

Go to Walgreens — yeah, right as they open. No one you ever knew will see you buying the pills, the ones that promise shit. Just never look the cashier in the eye. They’ll only look past your pupils and see shit.

“This person is full of shit,” they think.

Swallow some Dulocalax prayers, hoping they make good on the deal. You can push all you fucking want. Push harder; push longer, and push longer and harder. “I put so much food in here, there has got to be something! A pellet! A bloody fucking chip! Anything!”

You’re only turning inside out to demonstrate one fact: you don’t know a goddamned thing and you have an empty toilet to prove it.

It’s moments like this that you look toward your fellow man, all with fully functioning bowls and the shit to prove it, and wonder, this can’t be what Mrs Lansing from fourth grade meant when she called me special.

But it totally is what Mrs. Lansing meant.

You are special until your normal, but you don’t wanna be.

You are normal until your special and you seriously really don’t wanna be.

You shit until one day you don’t.

You love until one day you can’t.

You know until one day you don’t.

You live until one day your dead.

Trust me; none of this should be a surprise. So do yourself one big last fucking favor and get off the fucking pot.

‘Cause you just don’t know shit.

because death looms across the gate.