I’m an unrepentant failure heavily insistent on my competence in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Stolid opener, can’t be arsed. Most blokes would writhe in their flesh if they were anything like me – all serpentine and crooked up, steeped in fragile nonchalance. I told a broad, not too long ago, that freewill is what ultimately lifts us up from the animal realm, that being able to consciously tuck into something against better wishes for your welfare is the hallmark feature of consciousness and, thus, reality. What I neglected to inform her throughout the duration of this exercise in crackpot philosophy was my own inability to choose something, someone, somewhere. Ask me to show you a bum and I’ll half-heartedly yank out a 6×6 of my own mug with a 6-line preface so bitterly sardonic and smug you’d wind me one smack on the mouth.

Crack. Bleed. Smirk through the torrent. Not a fuck in the world to offer to anyone for any reason, thorough devotion to the Self, that whole ruse.

I got out of school when I was 17 and the world was brighter then. You develop an addiction to linearity as a young’un, cause and effect and such, where A has occurred B must follow. Biggest fucking racket of all, this life thing, ‘specially when you’re computing on that level. Burroughs reckons that magic is the will to power, that happenstance is folly for the mind addled on enlightenment rationale. To attach myself to the idea that everything that has happened has happened on purpose, even with all of my pseudo-nihilistic proclivities, is far too dark and sinister to buy into. Which necromancer hath my bones on his table then? Can I wander outside of time to glass a pint with God and beg for scraps of mercy? Do I plumb the depths of hell with my vice-stricken heart and ask for Satan’s audience? Wherefore art thou, malevolent forces with whom I have no acquaintance? Dost thou exist beyond the projection of human fantasy? Is thou art not a mere spectre?

No clue. Point is I got out when I was 17 and I’ve been drifting since. Ask me what I want, and my answer gets real simple: agency. And when you’re accustomed to that great disease, linearity, constant deviation feels like literal death. I thought if you played by the rules you don’t get fucked, that’s it – pay attention to the strictures, never confront the edge and Bob’s your uncle, brother and friend. Lo! I beat my chest at the cusp of my own personal ruin, rip my garments in grief and realise that Bob, Jesus, Allah, or Buddha can’t really save you from despond all that much – and agency’s a cult not worth getting into.

I don’t know what to want and feel the taunt of a heaven I will never reach far too often. Consciousness is a sordid portion I could do without. I want no attachment to anything. I don’t want anyone. I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m happily content with being left alone, entirely, to kill my darlings and blade potential onlookers.

I don’t want precious stones
I never cared about
Anything you’ve ever owned
I want flatlands
I want simplicity
I need your arms
Wrapped around me

And on the flatland of corporeal want and existence in the ephemeral sense, I recognise the futility of want. Longing is revered among poets, desire an ancient virtue of the wordsmith. In that regard I will take the perverted route and crave pure oblivion instead. Complete annihilation of the Self, that sacred ruse. The darkness shan’t scare a soul as weary as mine. I scoff at the insistence of fear as a formidable adversary! This is all that I hath learned in the tailwinds; that at the very summit of suffering is want! Go there, wherever it may be, and want no more.

 

 

 

 

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