4am

it's 4am and i am tired but not really and sad but not really and wish i had a cat to talk to but not really and feel like slow dancing and walking by the beach and going to get 13 cheeseburgers drive-through and have really quirky messages on facebook that i could respond to with equally quirky messages and meet new people at bustops and live simultaneously in NY, Adelaide, LA, Shanghai, Paris, and somewhere i've never been to yet but that will actually feel like home the way Haifa felt like home even though we all knew it wasn't except we all also knew our soul decides what's home and souls don't care soo much about hilly cities that are built on mountains so that your quadriceps hurt just to get to work in the morning they know better than anything how to pick a comfortable couch for a nest and i want a new suit and a new cardigan and i want a new job and a new name and i want to walk into something for the first time (again) and i want to not worry about: my grades, the sores in my mouth from drinking too much too hot tea, my lost (again) libido, that i have to put fuel in the car (again) tomorrow, this form i need to fill in and send back but i can't can't can't make myself do it because it's just too annoying to be done, feeling like a failure, like a phatso, like my glasses are dirty even when they're not so maybe my glass eyes are, about loneliness and whether i am (since i can't decide) and whether i will be (since i can't decide) and whether i should be and if not then what's the alternative i don't really know what the alternative is called or what it looks like and most importantly how not to be scared of that too because what's the point right?, i'm too broke to afford being scared of anything and i almost to be perfectly truthfully honest with you don't actually care enough about anything to be scared this way or that but it's just that you get into a habit and mine's just readreadread you keep doing it don't know what else to do anyway once upon a life ago i'd sit at 3beans coffee at 3 in the morning and read Precedent and the Law and Midnight's Children and the girl who worked the late shift would sit with me and smoke her cigarettes and we'd talk about how to pick up girls and about nighttime and about youth and where it comes from and where it goes and lots of the time nothing at all, she'd just sit at my table and smoke and watch me read and i'd know she was watching but didn't really care either way seemed harmless enough it in fact was harmless enough to find myself now in this room at 4:21am dear jeebus no i won't go outside have too much to do and work gets done better when you're in your PJs like cuddling and kissing and watching movies which all get done better in PJs maybe it's my body's way of suggesting something to me since my eyes won't suggest sleep and my heart beats soo fast on account of the last hit of amphetamines which got me through 11pm - 2am if only the world would keep up with it then we'd all already be 30 or 40 or 50 and we'd be wrinkly enough not to care about things like that anymore with our saggy boobies and our love-(well)handled abdomens and we'd sit on someone's porch and think how ridiculously we dressed and how silly it was all that worry we did about things that never eventuated and how naive we were to miss the tragedies that did and we all call each other Hamlet and Antigone and after sunset we sip tea and drift to a softer sleep we know now on account of having to slam our bodies into a wall of darkness every night goddamit just let me in over and over against mattresses and sheets and throwing pillows around and masturbating out of boredom or hoping the orgasm will calm our senses you win some you lose most it's 5am and the birds are out by the time i'm calm enough to know what was troubling me in the first place but when i wake up, sweaty from dreams i never can remember i forget what the troubling me in the first place thing actually was so tonight i get to play it all over again i want to sip my tea but it'll sting my mouth i put it off and the green pen lays across a piece of paper and wants to underline something dear jeebus give a stone a break.

poemette

vessel - time by anna☆morosini


falling asleep midafternoon he awoke to almost-nightness

___and now dreams out of sync, so he hopes what the old man hopes and

forgets to want what the young man wants,

___perhaps he is hungry, or at very least his skin is hungry

and skin eats only hugs and sex

___his neck contorted on his couch he opens one eye and calls his lover Polyphemus to his side

you forget you are in an empty room. you spend soo much time in empty rooms. you forget.

___how do you know when you love someone? she asks, and he shakes his head i never knew.

and this sickness is a question for tomorrow. tomorrow i will take less pills and jog and sit out in the sun so that i am not pale.

___(and stare at the long brown legs of young girls and their painted toe-nails and the white tan mark around their neck from where their swimsuit fastens and

youth is a miracle you carry only soo long

___i am concerned with being male. with being a new age i do not understand yet.

about being places i cannot describe and being a man i do not know in those places.

___and when he wakes his stomach is hungry, perhaps, it is a feeling he cannot describe, only

that he hates the lamp that beams on him and warms his cheek.

___i used to write you know. once upon a history. i would write and genuinely thought one day

someone might actually care to read it. i thought it was a part of my life.

___she wants to know if i'm sadder than i used to be.

maybe. maybe it's like when coldness gets down to your bones so you're always cold, so cold even sitting in front of a fire you're cold. soo cold you forget you are cold because it is just who you are now.

___maybe who i am.

soo much time in empty rooms you forget. you wake to one you sleep to one.

___(and he waits for Polyphemus, the one-eyed cyclops to come and whisper him his story

and tomorrow is too late.

___no point to it now.

no point at all.

a new post by apennyfortheoldguy

this is a picture by hollis thornton brown. he's awesome. if anyone knows him in reality land, please tell him a pennyfortheoldguy loves him and wants to give him money one day when he himself has money. kthanksbye.









monsters by hollis thornton brown


yes, thankyou, i know i know, it's great to be back and i wanna thank each and every one of you for braving the weather and the traffic and taking your ADD meds and making it out here so we could be together to celebrate this momentous event in typical internets style.

of course, you can understand i'm a little bit rusty. silence takes it outta you you know. so. just to stretch my literary legs let's start with a list. i think that's the right way to go about things. back up ladies and gentlemen it's about to get seriously up in diss...


RANDOM THINGS I FIND EMINENTLY INTERESTING AND READ ABOUT THEM ALL THE TIME ON WIKIPEDIA FOR NO REASON AT ALL, A LIST:

- chess grandmasters
- the Justices of the High Court of Australia
- spiders (freaking creepy)
- Bertrand Russel
- child geniuses, people who get perfect 1600s on the SATs, that kinda thing


PLAYLIST OVER LAST 90 DAYS (GENERAL), A LIST:

- Everyday Balloons, A Weather
- Klavierworke EP, James Blake
- I'm in a polaroid - where are you?, CALLmeKAT (thanks ashtree!!)
- oOoOO EP, oOoOO
- Songs from Before, Max Richter


*___*___*

it's ok for it to be today because today i'm not doing anything because i'm enjoying a massive dexamphetamine comedown which means i'm supplementing my newfound long stubble-->beard with two cans of redbull (enough umph) to give me the energy to go to the shops and buy muffins and grilled salmon (already grilled, as in fish&chips grilled) and yogurt and come back home (dear god that was exhausting) before collapsing on the couch to nomnom my foodfood and listen to Everyday Balloons by A Weather (a band which i lovelovelove) and think about all the tomorrows that might be as good as today while i hear the children next door yelping and screaming as they jump in their pool and i can hear the sunshine smiling and i can hear old men and women who still love each other smiling with pride at the fact that they do and giving each other old people smoochies and thinking hee hee hee, my bitch is fiiiiine to one another <-- want one. later my geek friends are coming over for geek-fest-2010, also known as: law nerds playing taboo which is really annoying because we all have vastly different fields of knowledge so no one ever gets anything and it ends up just shouting CLAUDE FREAKING DEBUSSY HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT? EFF YOU DICKWAD YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE MAURITANIA IS! EXCUSE ME YOU DON'T KNOW WHO THE CURRENT CABINET MINISTER FOR TRANSPORT IS GO DIE. if that doesn't sound fun to you we're not BFFs. sorry. we can still be like random facebook friends or whatever.


*___*___*

i don't necessarily love this song but this filmclip is heaven in a tub of icecream. i'm seriously. it's more creative than you think you are i promise (click here for a vanilla flavoured surprise)


*___*___*

i'm looking at pictures of the biggest douchebags on earth on facebook and thinking how lucky i am to have severed all ties with those people about three semesters ago. i feel like i made some awesome sell on the social-share-market. sellsellsell these people are gonna suck in about 2 academic quarters!! sell dammit!

yah. i tots used to be friends with them. but now i hang with professors HLA Hart and Goodhart and Julius Stone who spent soo much time bagging the high court they eventually had to start citing him in their judgements. ps if anyone can get me into Yale hit me back ok? i want a tshirt and i wanna live somewhere quiet for a while. i think new haven will work out nicely. if it matters, i do actually wear bow ties all the time, so that should satisfy the admissions board. not sure if they look at anything else, but the bow tie component is definitely taken care of.


*___*___*

dear GF thanks for editing my tax-law paper. it was super helpful hints. i didn't realize i abused the comma soo much. but i decided to keep "a carbon tax is far simpler. it doesn't come with surround sound". i want her to read that be all like ghasp! well i ne-ever. i'm actually tempted to draw a little :) on the page next to that so she knows i'm going in for the kill.


*___*___*

is this too much apennyfortheoldguy all at once of a sudden? ok ok ok. fine. i'll go enjoy my come-down elsewhere if you think you're too kool for me.

peace out.

q

nocturnes / mikrokosmos / notapoems

i feel it is late.
not in terms of tonight, or morning
(which is a few limbs away still)
i feel it is late:
if life itself were time.


*___*___*

the things we learn and know,
do you ever stop to realize how
pointless it will be to you one day to
remember differentiating 'internal' from 'international'
genus's of armed conflict?


*___*___*

hi. i'm a
small, pale, shy
quiet story.
___(probably just need a tune


*___*___*

she sleeps before me.
always. __usually.
she purrs and turns.
i look up from my page.
she has the blanket between
her legs and a dream
between her eyes.
(celesta nocturne,
astrological carousel)
enough i say to the book,
who turns his cheek from me
and looks away.
and her sleep brushes aside
the blanket and lets me into
a new night, less dark,
less silent, less late
than mine.


*___*___*

a sleep with no dreams.
a sleep with no dreams.
a sleep with no dreams.
what are you writing? she asks
i say a sleep with no dreams.
she asks why?
sounds nice i say.


*___*___*

in ten years , or months , or something
will i have lost you to facebook?,
a name reminding me of Munich or
Chaucer or 2005 :: hollow ghosts
and precious feathers ; when it reminds
me it's your birthday i'll wear a grey suit
and spill wine on myself and ransack my
room hoping to find secret notes you left.


*___*___*

today i had a banana.
coffee. two half-pieces of gum.
three energy drinks.
my brain runs on solar energy.
my eyes on rain.
one night i'll get the urge to
climb into the garden.
drink evening's syrup.
wake a clown-shaped flower.
and dream only
_s _l _o _w


*___*___*

i spent 2 hours reading about chess grandmasters.
when i'm sad i listen to the Antlers.
refuse to sleep out of spite.
keep a tally of kisses you owe me.

one day i'll know how to say the rest.


*___*___*

a slowly disappearing font,
growing weaker with time,
distance, disappointment,
so that when it's most necessary
to speak your mind


____how strange empty rooms sound)
___
____________________________.

these words are not what i mean /\ i do not mean these words

untitled, heimdalsgate


these words never had any purpose , words in books and articles and published in the Paris Review stand proud , pretentious nose-uppity words those words have a place to go home to at night , rest in a comfortable bed and consort with their wives and with the eyes of soo many mistress's eyes , these words are vagabonds. a jumble rattle-bag of flotsam and jetsam leftover on the coffee-shop table train seat bus stop and soo left no one bothers to pick it up , these words are homeless with their hands in their pockets ideas in search of heads to live in and paper to live on and these words are miscast in the sentences they star in and the paragraphs are no better than our divorced and divorcing parents .

////////////
/ / / / / / / /____<-- this is to represent that it's raining right now
////// // / / //

if you were here i might kiss you . if for no other reason that to keep you from talking to me.

_*__ *__
/\___\\____ __<-- this is to represent two people leaning towards each other to kiss

i speak to a girl in a black dress who plays with her hair. i walk away, shout across a courtyard, when i turn i see my teacher who asks how i like assignments in equity, and i tell him about a competition, i unsuccessfully argued restitutio in integrum (he tells me i was right ,
____but now i'm jogging in the rain , my sweater is heavy , i feel gravity is flirting with me
___and what good is being right when you are old,
__(old and olding)
_before that i read.
before that i woke up sweaty from dreams i couldn't remember.

then it is evening.
but then, it is always evening.

what are you having for breakfast? he asks.
relief.
relief, when i rejoin air.
a banana. sometimes cereal.
highly caffeinated energy drinks and amphetamines.
either my hands shake, either that, or they can't be moved.

my essay has a name, all it needs now is a soul.
'Whose Invisible Hand Is it?: Ethical Taxation and the Price of Carbon'.
if i die before i wake,
carve it into my tombstone. _put QED under it. _if they cry remind them i was an asshole.

then it is evening.
i consider pills , decide instead on tuna. substance over form as they say. each day grows from the last. there are thursday's vines in my friday. wednesday's light is trapped under your eyelid. ssshhh, hear that? the thin buzzing is from tuesday. if you stand on one foot in the kitchen wearing a green shirt you can hear it really loudly.

these are the words i have that have no name. and which describe things that have no name. and which are about things that aren't ready to be confined to thoughts yet. passings and goings. throughing and throughings.

::::::::::::::::::
::____ _ _::
::____ _ _::_______<-- this is to represent the things we do not know.
::____ _ _::__________________(it is not to scale)
::::::::::::::::::


i don't know when things end anymore.
i'm concerned. my concern is that things never end.

1+2+3+ ... + ∞______<-- this is not to represent its true mathematical meaning, but rather: tick tock

the reason why this concerns me is in the box (see above)
i have knocked, but it has not granted me audience ,

when i look up it is the sort of 11pm that feels like 4am [or is that a metaphor for youth?]


but what do you write about? i am presently concerned with the conclusion of youth.
and what does that mean for you? (see above, box)

she plays with her hair, a thick bunch of it. twirls it. kinda rough.
i commend her for wearing a dress.
courtyard.
equitable assignments.
something or another about tax.
woke up sweaty , pills for breakfast , pills for lunch , insomnia for dinner
jogged in rain
but what do you write about? __[the end of things that do not


then it is evening.
but then, it is always evening.

GF MISSING!!

IF FOUND, PLEASE RETURN TO:
APENNYFORTHEOLDGUY






andrewkonichiwa

penny sparkle by Blonde Redhead

the tracks are out of order
so i listen from last to first
and consequently feel upside down,
walking backwards up a hill,

i read a few reviews, they
tell me the band's ruined,
all promises are spent .
couple pennies maybe left
for a jukebox tune, but who we were
mumbles the lead singer as she
walks home to type out a resume (
carrying a guitar case with her)

someone asks her if she's scared
she smiles, at 2am cowboy -
or if she feels like she failed
staring at her boots she says finally
you still listening to me?

i have a soft-spot for the unappreciated.
in other words you see ghosts? she asks, standing:
she stares at me over her shoulder making tea,

doing nothing much at 3 in the morning,
i drink the last sip, and wait for some something

she's singing, nothing in particular.

i take a few moments to acquaint myself with
this moment, doesn't see to be going anywhere.