I watched The Shawshank Redemption tonight. Not the first time I’ve seen it - and I had read the short story before the movie came out. Both are fine works. In the movie, Morgan Freeman’s character, ‘Red’, gives this little speech about how one of the other characters has been in so long, he’s become institutionalized. In essence, it’s what happens to a person who has been in prison so long, they stop knowing how to be valuable outside of the prison setting.

The speech is about what happens to a man in prison - I’m coming to beleive that it may be equally applicable to the typical worker-bee in corporate america. A person works so long for a company, doing pretty much the same thing for 50 years. Retirement is like a parole from a life sentence. What do you do at that point, what do you know? In the words of Red:

Man’s been here fifty years. This place is all he knows. In here, he’s an important man, an educated man. A librarian. Out there, he’s nothing but a used-up old con with arthritis in both hands. Couldn’t even get a library card if he applied. You see what I’m saying?

These walls are funny. First you hate ‘em, then you get used to ‘em. After long enough, you get so you depend on ‘em. That’s “institutionalized.”

Try spending 50 years doing the same thing - that’s “institutionalized”. Your value, your very definition, is no longer controlled internally. Rather, your self-worth becomes tied to an external yard-stick. You are defined by the institution in which you have become embeded.

ouch…

General | No Comments »

I can’t remember where I heard this, but recently, I heard something that may seem obvious to most, but had totally escaped me. The reason we’re afraid of ghosts is that they’re lost souls, they’re all crazy because they’re trapped here - someplace they shouldn’t be. And we instinctively know that - that since they are trapped, caught and bound to a place that is in opposition of what they have become, they are driven insane.

What a disturbing thought. When I die, if things go wrong, I may spend the rest of eternity being crazy. My existence could become the embodiement of a paradox, driving sanity from my mind and soul (body is gone at that point).

The story I’m working on right now plays on this idea, that ghosts are crazy. The most dangerous of these, to me, would be the ones who don’t even know they are dead.

Afterthoughts | No Comments »

I built my self an Abbey of delusion content
with angles, sharp and thick; a discharge of underground ink.

I came upon a downcast flood of commercial recipes,
dawning thanks to the fool who juggles an excess meal.

We see the tender perspective of her ways,
As the March hare, feeling thus:
To rain unknown…
To murder the threshold bricks…
To subjective patient breaks of thick deep…
To label (in murmurs) the deep…

They angle fetch the last,
otherwise heaving simplex ingress.
They angle fetch
an otherwise deposit to decisiveness.

Woman leader,
owing white to description…
owing black to the objective slab…
They eat the headpiece
(so nice to bloom for sure afar)
forcing us to narcotic up or
hail thick the joy whistle.

Thick and fading hail, his fade bare pursuit.
Light afar the further thought vein,
fleetingly inject one dictatorial flatter…

Poetry | No Comments »

After having the worst day of his life, an unscrupulous New Yorker has a difficult time making his way home. He is repeatedly lost and abused, and is haunted throughout the night by a single, reappearing cabbie that frightens him.

Story Lines | No Comments »

Apollo’s fissured time,
muted and screened by circumstance.

This silky night of tears
eclipses the eye in shuttered laughter.

Delicious tragedy,
life’s movement a conflict
of fractured author and masqued audience.

Poetry | No Comments »

This one is actually my wife’s idea.

This couple has this baby.  The baby is very in tune to his/her parents, and it can pick up on what they wish for.  It begins granter their wishes.  Sounds a little wierd, but I remember reading once that one of the Native American tribes believes (or believed) that we are born with knowledge of the language of the gods, and that we forget it as we grow up, forgetting completely by age 4.  Interesting….

Story Lines | No Comments »

inhaling a starless breath

we limp under a hanging world
whose pressured shadow
tastes hot like silky desire

existence kissed by imaging

Poetry | No Comments »

Put out the eyes of foresight,
which underneath taught torrential calm
despite the thrilling clear acumen.
Take ease in the transparent
steady slumber which it allies like
privileged unmasked liquid,
binding sanity to impulse,
a manifold chord.

Demonic rum,
harmless to the churchman’s skeleton,
that rabbit of relief and sovereign egotist,
loops prejudice and indexes possibilities
preying on resident thoughts
which tingle with ill passing.
Enter the transfusion of flashing
standstills germane to grasping,
leaving us to stare at appealing refractions.

I am the chaplain of more fabulous
paper, armed to a depth
improper of my horn.

Eat now the radiant fable
that plagues appreciative solitude,
growling and guessing
at the unscrupulous gateway.
Feast on the conventional desert;
a sharp, breakable universe
suspended in abandonment.

Wear proud the handsome,
crescent number inscribed on your courage;
that figure which sometimes distributes
terms of a malignant image,
tied southwest to northeast;
a frenzied, faithless host.

Dream assured, inventor
of my outer octagonal tear,
in the havoc of shines
devoted to that balancing stage,
longing command
parallel to criminal cosmic budgets.

Mark now the forehead
byway of tearing westward
a red diversion,
swift and half sure crop rags.

Join the experimental homecoming union,
grinding cllutchless sympathy.
Bleed of the surroundings
that loop and bind our feet.
Battle the occasional barbarian
dream in curious structure.

Critical routes
pass disgusting guardians
and common horror lust.
Puncture blind unreality,
pages of prayer upon daily prayer,
a harmless price.

The firm, pale reef-joint boasts
crisp, mean contempt,
guarded of my winning current.
Addled of that attempted habitually
withdrawn structure,
ladies growl diamond clusters.

Today darts alert,
waking the past with vapor
flash sacrifice cries.
Crawl inside the hypnotic ash
which den
ies collapse in plain appreciation.
Bone rough and wounded glare
wilderness cunning.

Temperament counters a
leaky social class.
Hearing good never grew
almighty author of wounds.
Slow that irony which grants
a fire beacon army,
rendered well to anguish
away the high human nerve slab
whose plight dates back to
assent exhaustion.

Aerial compass of low damp glory,
a humble scientist cock
full of suggestion, rooted and flying.

Shiver the roar of gray
floating assemblage glee.
Welcome is the contrary
necessity of trousers,
a healthy accord of westward agreement.
Attract large thunder comprehension
that neglects schooling character,
a stupidity shock to confuse us.

Poetry | No Comments »

An animal rescue group is clearing out a house where a woman and her elderly mother live in extremely unhealthy conditions, along with about 100 cats. What they find deep beneath the 50 years worth of accumulated junk and mounds of cat excrement is much more than any of them expected.

Story Lines | No Comments »

A helpless yellow disciple of anger,
precariously fluttering against the concrete earth.

Preachers and brethren,
hung by the umbilical stalk of faith,
shake and chortle.

The wavering spine of desire,
snapped and severed
by the coarse sparks of flesh.

Red tenderness is found
by flames of will.

Poetry | No Comments »