I am one of the many
having danced the Supreme Ultimate
    (Though I had to force myself.)
Carving out infinite space
residing in a nutshell
and hoping not to scratch it.

How can one assign damnation
    when there is no Hell?
Why slay the giant monsters
    when they're just hungry like you and me?
Why be The Law
    if you already know that The Law's going to win?
What man would not
    envy the Pride and fall in with the ranks of the half-baked, detrimental, drug-sucking nomenklatura of the mighty proud lock-step jack-booted flag-waving card-carrying book-burning Flame-throwing Revolutionary Stalingrad Partygoers?
        (Given that they'll show you a good time like no one else?)

Sally forth, you slimy abomination! EAT ME!

Why why why why why?

"Boy, you sound like a real whiner. Cease this interrogation at once and read your Pravda. And unhand that pencil. It makes you look Counterrevolutionary."

Back then, friends and neighbors, I did largely as I was told. I set down the pencil, though I kept my glasses on. What I don't usually mention is that most of the time-- during which I sat watching the clock as I shuffled around Red-stained papers in a way that was meant to be perceived as productive-- I wanted to vomit. I'm sure that doing so would've made me feel better, yet it never happened in that particular epoch. I couldn't go on, and yet I did. I failed spectacularly, but I went on. I knew that one day, pravda would become my ally. (My peers frequently warned me: "Never get caught alone in a dark ally." Unlike Pravda, they found pravda very dark and foreboding.)


I fell long ago
where the sun met the horizon
    (though I never thought I'd see the day)
and my back was broken.
Not by thieves, mind you.

much later on
I painted with light and shadow
it wasn't easy, because I had to use my own materials
and you know that gets costly.
Prohibitively so.

after cleaning windows one day
I washed my glasses with the wash
and began to see something new,
though all the while I had been thinking:

Why
    would you kill when you can't take it back?
Why
    would you destroy when you could create and make new and better?
Why
    would you push someone away when affection is such a cheap offering?
and Why
    am I drawn to this thing called "blood"?

tell me
why I should...
just convince me and I'll do it

, lewdly


Back in those days, they had these little mechanical devices similar to the Curta calculator, only they'd tell you the future. I awaited one with a childish sort of apprehension, but I knew they were only distributed to Party officials, and that because they never got used in that demographic. Interestingly, the Party officials seemed to be, comparatively, in the best of means and spirits-- except when they bore enmity (which was always). Then they yelled the loudest of all, not really accomplishing or even discussing anything but nonetheless producing an impressive horrorshow. They got so loose with their speech sometimes that my glasses would catch their saliva. I took off my glasses and cleaned them, then put them back on. That's when I saw... her.