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//IT'S JUST ME, MID-MADNESS
By Keith Niles The fact that I’m a suddenly middle aged man with lava lamps in the living room of his one bedroom apartment, up all night compiling cds and slapping cheese tacos onto the dingy burners of his stove, traipsing blindly through young girl minefields, breaking down and beating off and thrashing back wildly against the brutal viccisitudes of luck, fuck, this fact, these facts are not lost upon me, but it feels true, what can I say, what can I do? The fact that I slack back and take whacks at the pot pipe at this point in my life then dash out into the night to rage through drunken storms along rank strangers staggering home later to again engage the notebook page is not strange to me if not altogether sage, believe me, I know, trust me, I see…. I have earned all my newfound freedom, have surfaced from years of suspended claymation, seen the truth, I’ve grown out of personas of shyness and competence and failure, personas that never quite fit me, domesticity and work and normalcy, I’ve sprouted again, grown a soul, and donned the wingtips of youth. So if you spot me through the blind late Thursday night bathed in blue light, high, lava roiling, bobblehead triangulated between oversized speakers, leafing through lyrics and dreaming of fruition, wet Modello in off hand, right leg humping the couch as the groove insists itself upon the vicinity, if you see me filling notebooks black with shallow adolescent lacks of this and lacks of that, girls and drunk-ons and friendless sads, fighting back against the forces real or imagined that are charring me black, if you see me trying too hard to star in this whatever play in which I’ve weaseled a bit part, know this, know that, know that I’ve worked hard to be free, that I’ve earned every last bit of innocence you might see and everything else is just me--it’s just me! keith niles is a hermit whose natural habitat is a dank 1 bedroom in los feliz, california. he subsists on sunflower seeds, modellos with limes, and an odd unending optimism. |
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© 2003 Underground Voices |
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