Sample Reading #6

1. We must socialize, yes we must. During the day and only during the day. There’s much to be left unsaid, much to be ignored. It is for the best. I am engaged in an uphill battle for my soul against the Great Books. Words, stretched unto infinity. Shelves, with volumes and volumes of them. How much is too much? I have gained nothing from reading Chekhov or listening to Michelle Meagher. I have only cried myself to sleep for their lack of imagination. A recurring element of my life is desire. I sate my desires through theft. It adds to my base misery. Can words affix themselves? Fix themselves? Are words too complicated? Words, such as “lacerate”, “contumacious”. I am a thief and thusly, I abhor rigor. I cannot sit with a thing and allow for mutual consumption. Not even a thing as grand as love. But I must steal, I must!

2. When are we going to abandon our childhoods altogether — to leave what must remain in the past, in the past? When are we going to realize that our legs will never be as spindly as when we were eight years old? When skimp was most appropriate? We will not, because we are thieves and we steal and we steal. But (and more importantly) we withhold. Has anyone the courage to relinquish their booty? The plundered luxuries of their younger, naïve self. Aloof to the contrivance of the soul (as we are virtually free of it in our infancy). We put suction valves to the hands that struck our dark cheeks. We go back to the aftermath of any such violence. Where we sat, underneath the kitchen table, and convulsed with tears. Oh, such sublime beauty! Such trauma! Hands, bodies, open sores. Exertion after exertion after exertion.

3. I have stolen, again. I blame no one but myself.

4. Style, form and inertia. No, not inertia — excitement. They all vanish too easily. They are unreliable. But they are sweet, like musty testicles. For example:

The sun creeps out from underneath… or, I watched as he raised the curtains and the sun revealed itself (to be bright and yellow, that is).

5. Do not revisit the scene of a crime.