christmas

& in the golden wilderness of winter at sunset i crouched on the porch with my
armor in drink and staggered against the cold without moving a flinch or
diverting my gaze from the great unbeknown & realized again that my favorite
friend comes only to maim when there's dormantlike pain (...) "don't hold me
back/ this is my own hell" proclaims the voice from the voxbox with an echoed
rash tearing of vocal chords & i am alone even though far inside there are
people good people all chanting out lies and around this great tree they
surrender their lives with these clues and desires and fabricant lies.  do you
understand?  it was the day, then, the end of the day and there i was bourbon
grasping my hand like a firm highat handshake squirming below i found myself &
then turning at a female hand to back into the warmth & the room all aglow. 
children slid like worms over tearing crystalline wrapping paper & strings of
lights hung like dead men from the room's sharp corners & i sat there and mused
as if i had anythoughts worth keeping from the noisy air.  they handed me a box
i smiled and said okay and ripping paper slowly trembling hands i tore into the
package and unleashed the gift which was nestled in paper through which i must
sift again like the memories of some dying mind and there in the womb-box i
knew i would find a gift that gives sparsely, a bottle standing soldierlike
proud against the comfortable, safe packing paper.  absolut, my champion, i
roared with delight & spoke pleasant murmurs and put aside papers and ribbons i
strew.  some eyes in darkness visited, withdrew.

christmas is the holiday without a reason for me & for most everyone else,
which complaining about is stupid because it was never designed as a religious
holiday, but as a celebration.  more of life than an actual god, although the
god-icon factors predominantly.  i gave a lecture to this effect once but noone
believed.

the first day falls like a dying eagle, coming up in the morning like a
malignant sun over my shaking hands.  hands shake, people shake, vision shakes,
and everything sensitized much like the area of impact under the eye of a
nurse with needle.  sweat inundates my hands, my brow, and under my eyes.  my
throat is swollen, my voice deep, shaking out of the gloom of my face
like the rant of a dying king.  the outside is so incredibly bright, so alive,
and yet so resoundlingly, despondently dead.  my corpse wiggles and stutters
and slips through cracks in crowds and buildings and trees, unable to really
keep a straight line.  concentration isn't; i can't hold a conversation,
and if i do, the context is"i want a beer, nay, i think i need
one."  i can't write -- the series of serpents that shake from my quivering
pen are nothing like the characters i want to form.  the words that
sluggishly roll out of my mouth like dying silkworms resemble negatively what I
wish to say.  my nerves are charged rods of crystal, ready to
shatter but vibrating with the most imminent news of my life, the most exciting
yet mundane details, sped up, slowed down, alive and then dead.  my mind aches
above sad warriors my eyes, surrounded by sickness and fixed like the dead. 
the dominant emotion can only be fear.

it's a countdown, the fundamental need of the human spirit to unleash itself. 
it is the "i need a vacation" mantra of the amerikan worker converted to the
extreme, the basic need of humanity to have outlets at times.  think about the
holiday:  we persist in the ludicrous supposition of santa claus for our
children and make him an icon, plaster him everywhere.  we put up trees and
spend inordinate amounts of money decorating and venerating our idols for a
supposedly idol-free religion.  we use it as the icon of good cheer, of the
good time, of giving and freedom yet we are so easily manipulated into giving
up our hard-earned money for frivolous trinkets of the holiday.  what's the
point, here?

the second day arrives like an indecisive storm to a valley.  the physical
symptoms mostly abate, except for paranoia and extremely brittle nerves, which
make me feel like a glass snake, ready to shatter at any minute and spring into
thousands of disparate, desperate individuals.  i still can't say
anything valuable, and disappoint friends that i now can talk to with my
boring clutterspeech.  emotions are today's crisis.  moodiness inflected
with stimulus ravages my mind & sends me into asocial binges or intense
desires for human contact.  i talk, i become afraid, i leave. 
incredible restlessness, driving me to each end of the campus, to each darkened
door or open room, and then to just walk, feeling the good bite of my boots
into the damp ground and feeling the crowded emotions of memories and intruding
people lapse from my mind.  some physical pain on occasion, and many hours of
weary eyes.  there is no consistent emotion, there is no consensus, no
decision.

there is a fundamental sense of alienation endemic to humans in the twentieth
century.  they live their days as functionaries, not feeling even very
functional as their jobs either underutilize them or treat them like machines,
and then attempt to fill the remaining time with something fulfilling, only to
find that much of whatever "meaning" they could sense died with notions
outdated by technology.  these people voyage onward in confusion and often
stumble over their own efforts, appearing foolish while in fact being
self-destructive, as in the void of alienation there is no reason to continue,
but no acceptance of this in the over personality, preferentially relegating it
to the subconscious where it can act without causing recognition.  some turn to
drug abuse.

the third day is dawning around me, or at least it is rising, and i can feel
only an immense tiredness.  it is not physical.  it is the tired of the mind,
the fatigue of too much life not unlike what happens after a life-value crisis. 
the onset of this was shortly after the break of scientific day when my eyes
rolled into my head and my limbs collapsed, tense but tired, wired and shaky. 
i slept then, and slept for many hours, but still could not shed the profound
sense of fatigue.  my heavy head slags and falls routinely, and my strength is
that of a child.  maybe i am a child, only having childish thoughts.  here
there is no color, only ache and tired.  it must be hypothermia.

the christmas tree fell, somewhere in a blur.  children crying, there is broken
glass on my hand & there is blood on the tablecloth.  and amy, who before we
married was the beautiful woman leaning on my arm and holding me and making the
air so light and springish and renewed, the woman i met and explored and fell
in love with and kept up with, is crying and asking what she has done and the
children are crying the sighing death song and the candles are burning bright
with the pain there is blood everywhere i have done it again and so i turn in
sorrow despair and the buzz and the bottle unbroken hits floor with a thud and
through all our crying my arms circle her hands meeting in blood union and my
lips speaking the tears that are scouring my cheeks with hope love and fears
and saying i'll try it i'll try to be straight and amy is crying as children
are ushered from the sarcophagus room by uncles & mothers and there in
desolation i know she has gone and i stare at the fire waiting for morning
to come