HIGH SOCIETY

HIGH SOCIETY IS FUCKING DEAD.

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:15:26 -0500

That was quick, even for us. But it is what it is and so shall it be.

See you in hell!

This is a pistol shrimp. Enlighten yourself.

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:59:46 -0500

This is a pistol shrimp. Enlighten yourself.

Who ever thought a war, nay, two wars could become so...

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 20:59:00 -0500

Who ever thought a war, nay, two wars could become so distasteful to an entire country so quickly. Even more baffling for a nation with such a long standing hard-on for blood and guts and dominance and, y’know, just generally fucking shit up. I would like to say that a genuine moral outrage came over me as I sat on familiar bleachers, witnessing this paradox in practice. It didn’t. All I could think about was Mr. Clark’s bulging veins as he admonished Mike and I for reading the Satanic Bible, seated, as the Pledge of Allegiance was recited. Or Acea tumbling headlong down the rows just so we could watch the panic of those not in on the joke. And I thought about the lame half-punches Jason and I had thrown at one another, just a few years ago, a few paces from where I now sat amongst his classmates and family. Never best friends, occasional rivals, little league team mates (the kid never could run for shit). Now, here he was in front of me once again, but in full regalia. Supine.

I was roughly 14 when this whole clusterfuck began it’s most recent phase. I remember the eerie silence, watching the tv, our assignment forgotten. I remember partaking in the calls to violence on people we had never known. I remember the facing that ugliness within myself when I the discovery of that most virulent strain of crusty peace punk illuminated something in my adolescent brain. And in the years that followed, I remember the permeating sadness and exhaustion at how stupid and fucked up everything seemed to be as that righteousness corroded, having spent a few years immersed in reality. That sadness, for it’s part, never faded away. And I suppose that’s why I felt no ill will as I watched what was almost my entire hometown sit bathed in their grief and horror, uttering platitudes and going through the bizarre ritual that is a military funeral. What the fuck else could I expect of them? How could I place the blame for something so immense, so monstrous at their feet? That thing, that invisible hand that shuttered the doors at Dura, and every other place you could still find a decent job. How could I do that when I know that I, too, do my part in greasing those gears. This is not to say it isn’t frustrating, if not infuriating to watch people born at the bottom seemingly grind themselves into the dirt. When they vote, or don’t vote. When they smoke and drink and eat garbage and eschew birth control. When they join up… Maybe I was the only one in there who felt nothing at all for god or country. So be it, if that is true. All of my spite was, and is, aimed skyward, at those who will go their entire charmed lives never having to experience fear and anxiety and depression that comes with these choices-that-are-not-choices-at-all. The shit we swim in. What has trickled down to us.

The world can be ugly and brutal no matter what station you get in life. That is a fact. But they sent him, our first baseman, into the same mountains the Red Army broke their teeth upon. To be blown into nothing, for even less. It’s a choice some families can afford not to let their children face. And, honestly, fuck them. Plain and simple. Past politics and class warfare and all those big ideas that never really make it far beyond the cups of coffee they are endlessly discussed over. Fuck them. Who’s church/school/university/job/future in politics have been approved and decided. Who are not at the mercy of curable disease, overzealous law enforcement, poor nutrition and low wages. Fuck them.

I am on the losing team.

the true believers
the kids from nowhere towns
come back as folded flags
chewed up
spit out

I spent a long time convincing myself I was “done”...

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:26:00 -0500

I spent a long time convincing myself I was “done” with hardcore.

That’s nonsense. There’s something about this particular strain of sound and fury that will never loosen it’s grip on my psyche. And so I will remain a hangaround kid forever. Haunting the corners and dodging lame crowd kills, lamenting a long-gone feeling that these intangibles would somehow carry me into the next phase of my life. They didn’t, but lo’, I seem to have made it just fine on my own. And even if that wasn’t exactly the message of all of those tired “four walls” speeches I found it increasingly tough to sit through, it’s still worth something. This is, for better or worse, the soundtrack to my dumb little existence. A uniquely American mess of a subculture, filled to the brim, in equal measure, with creativity and ignorance, cynicism and hope, honesty and deception, and every other emotion so many young hearts might bring with them. Under the flickering lights of some shitty American Legion hall in a country/state/town that just doesn’t matter. They remain stranded, but loud and petulant as all get out. I’m ok with that. I just can’t stand any more of the disappointment that comes with what is essentially begging a cancer to metastasize at a rate, and in a direction that I prefer. It’s selfish and unrealistic, and it hurts like hell, for now.

Hardcore is done with me.

"My will is easy to decide, For there is nothing to divide. My kin don’t need to fuss and..."

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 13:12:00 -0500

“

My will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide.
My kin don’t need to fuss and moan,
“Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”

My body? Oh, if I could choose
I would to ashes it reduce,
And let the merry breezes blow,
My dust to where some flowers grow.

Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my Last and final Will.
Good Luck to All of you,

-Joe Hill

”

- Executed by firing squad on November 19, 1915, after being framed for the murder of a local prominent and his son.

13-year-old Merlin Morrison, the victims’ son and brother, who said “That’s not him at all” upon first seeing Hill, but later identified him as the murderer. The jury took just a few hours to find him guilty of murder

Just prior to his execution, he had written to IWW leader Bill Haywood, saying, “Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organize… Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don’t want to be found dead in Utah.”

PERFECT TEETH

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 12:57:00 -0500

Bathed in adoration
Perfect teeth, impossible hair
High on ancestral elevation
Too taken care of to care

Our little world doesn’t turn like that
Good people die
Rats get fat
Spoon in your mouth or the world on your back
Good men die
Rats get fat

When one of you falls
It’s as if the world doesn’t turn at all
We fools feel your pain as our own
And our pain pays for your summer homes

Drowning in frustration
Giving away the years
Eyes stinging with sweat
Our blood greasing the gears

When one of us falls
It’s as if we never were here at all

And the true believers
kids from nowhere towns
Come back as folded flags
Chewed up/Spit out

May their ghosts tear the skin from your back

SQUARE

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 12:23:00 -0500

Everything I hear is bad
Every thing that I see is worse
Flying a tattered flag
Never realize it’s a fucking curse

I wished to burn
White hot at both ends
Drown me in
A sea of angry awkward kids
But we’re left with this
More squares than a Mondrian
Idle minds unchained
Aggressively uninteresting

You sit, you stare, you ask permission to take a step
You act, as if, you think that anyone’s fucking listening
Is it a lack of insight?
Or a lack of respect?
What more could you expect…

BAD.
Bad art for boring people.
Bad x4
Bad art for boring people.

INVISIBLE HAND

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 23:28:00 -0500

Some devil came to me
In my sleep last night
It had a million eyes
And cast an awful light
Reminding the worlds favor is fleeting
Mouths overflowed with rumor not worth repeating
There’s a way we go about things here
Gorged on consistency
Guided by fear
No shades of gray
You’re with them or you’re with us
I awoke and thought to myself
I never was

Lovers & fighters
Paupers & kings
All cast a shadow
One day you’ll come to find:
HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE

ALBATROSS

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 23:23:00 -0500

And so I find myself
Here with everyone one else
Tumbling down from my youth
Into these inconvenient
And brutal absolutes
The ground grows harder
Beneath my aching knees
But above my head
Hangs everything that I
Will. Not. Be.
The thing about your heart,your body & your mind
They fade away with time
The thing about your heart, your body & your mind
They bend
Bend until they break

But that money stays the same
Fucking worthless
As the day you were named
For all of your wishes
You can take it with you
You can’t win
You know this game is rigged

STAY MOVING

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 23:09:00 -0500

Choreographed destruction
Well lit murder scenes
Perfectly landscaped scars on the earth
I wish I could unsee
I’ve got a mind to make my escape
They nip at my heels
Once in a lifetime offers
Catastrophic deals
We don’t have any ideas of our own
Just all these things
Our sleeping heads
Are filled with other peoples dreams

The dollar has no brain
The dollar has no heart
The dollar can’t see the space between
Pornography and art
The hand keeps playing catch up
Buying every rat in the race
Selling us limitations
Shove it back in the ugly face

Shove it back
In their fuckin face
Taking back
What was ours in the first place
We live, we love, we fail and we create
And they take and they take and they take

Gonna bury you with style and grace

A REMINDER

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 23:04:00 -0500

I don’t wanna wake up
On my death bed
With nothing to show but
A shelf full of artifacts and
A withered frame filled with regret
A mind loosening it’s grip
Breathe in and out
Drown in doubt
Ask yourself what the fuck you did with

All those big ideas
Those plans put on a shelf
No one to blame but myself

Stepping back from the old ways
Is hard when every day looks like the last
Fearing the uncertainties of change
More than familiar pains of the past
Scratch at the monotony
Mind threatening to self destruct
Take a step towards the unknown
I’ll try my luck…

Those excuses
Those lies I told myself
If I listen to them
I’ll have no one to blame but myself

No one’s gonna do it for you
Master your fate
Move or his world will push you
Right out the fucking way

Everyone knows the old cliches
Living in the moment, seizing the day
the best advice is worth so much less
Than your smallest step
Find your own way!
FIND YOUR OWN WAY OUT

APEX

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 22:55:00 -0500

Just another scared, stupid animal
Who wriggled up out of the muck
And now it’s eat/sleep/fuck/repeat
Don’t freeze at night or dry up in the sun

Skip ahead a couple of million
Trips around the sun
Trade legitimate fear for religion
Trade in your teeth for guns
It’s still winter/spring/summer/fall
Not much has changed at all

Not content to live with the animals
Big brains and opposable thumbs
Praying and pretending
That our end’s never gonna come
But it’s just crawl/walk/stagger/fall
NOTHING WILL CHANGE AT ALL

Straight ahead
Clamber up the bodies of the dead
Spoils of your abuse
All monuments and mythos at the end
We’ve grown just smart enough
To convince ourselves there’s more to life than love and lust
Our only hope in a world we broke
Is that we’ll get another chance not to fuck it up

I understand it & I want to believe it too
We don’t deserve to emerge unscathed
If we live this way
You should get what’s coming to you

So it pains me to say
There’ll be no gnashing of teeth at the end
Not even for this ape
With so many devils in it’s head

You’ll lose it all in the end
All the time and money that you couldn’t spend
So here’s your living god
Here’s your übermensch:

Just another scared stupid animal
Trapped between it’s brain and its thumbs
Thoughts eating at it’s insides
Waiting for the end to come

STATE SECRETS

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 22:33:00 -0500

I was a fool to believe
That state secrets controlled my fate
No conspiracy
The siren song of the same old thing
My little cage
Is the home my father built for me
I am the broken limb
On my family tree
Already gone
Forget me

I am on the losing team
World won’t cease to turn without me
I’ll pace my cage & rattle my chains
And it’ll get me nothing…
But I’ve made my peace
At 15 I found my release
So many more live with so much less
So I’ll do my fuckin best
Here in the belly of the beast

Could have been worse
Could have been me
Got a nice warm bed
In the belly of the beast
But you did what you knew
And you did right by me
My debt remains unpaid
May you rest in peace

I am the broken limb
On my family tree
I am the burning page
In our family history