You may be worried about me

Phew!  Did you hear that?  That massive exhalation?

Did you feel it?  The collective tension - the hands, gripping arm rests - slowly released?

Breathe, my friends.  It doesn't get worse than what we've just been through.

I'll be honest.  There have been moments since I started typing 1984 when I thought I'd better stop.  You got the point a long time ago - prisons, pain, and the monsters that lurk inside.  I don't know why I kept on.  I wanted to laugh, and put up a big, garish emoticon that said, "JUST KIDDING!"  I wanted to tell you it was all fiction, and I was just trying to pass the time when I wrote all that.

But I don't want to shortchange you of the journey.  I have to let myself speak for myself.  I want you to discover, as I discovered over time, the way out of the monster's clutches.

You may be worried about me.  As I think of the person I was and the words I wrote, my thoughts fall on the anarchy shirts, the trenchcoats and the graphic depictions in my poems of suicide and boredom and emotional violence.  I can't help thinking of Columbine.  I can see how you might, too.  But if you're making that connection, you're missing the point.  

I was never a nihilist.  Even through all of this, believe me when I say I hoped for the best.  Not just for me, but for the people I loved, for my community, and for all humanity.  The world was surely going to shit, but my reaction was never, never, NEVER to trash the joint because we were all going to die anyway.  I just wanted to know who was going to pick us up?  Who was going to STEP UP and make a change?

I can tell you that none of the "punks" that I ever encountered were violent people.  The skinheads came later, and we all hated them.  We were screaming at the top of our lungs for people to wake up and fix the fucking mess.  We were trying to force a paradigm shift - a violent paradigm shift, maybe, that wasn't ultimately effective.  But the underlying point was that we DIDN'T want to die.  It was the cold war, for chrissakes.  We were swarmed with statistics of nuclear warheads pointed at our home towns, and the calculated chance that even if no one meant it, MISTAKES COULD BE MADE.  We didn't want to die.  We didn't want to kill.  And we sure as hell did not want anyone - ANYONE - to be killed in our names.

I may have looked like the one to look out for, back then.  The one your mother warned you about.  I may have written things that will now be interpreted as an affirmation of someone's suicidal/genocidal ambitions.  And I just want to say, you got it wrong.  You're aiming at the wrong targets.  You're fetishizing armageddon now, and that was never the fucking point.  All I ever wanted was to live.  Live free.  Live not having to fear the other and fear the end.  The answer to your fear is not a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The answer is to break free.  Painfully, maybe.  Unpopularly.  Alone, even.  But to emerge alive, and as a reflection of your genuine, unique, unmarketable spirit.

Wake up and thrive.

Wake up and thrive in spite of pain.  

Wake up and invent your own way out to a better day.

THAT is what I meant.

Punk vs. Offspring

you're no better than us

with your neo-fashion neo-life

you came from here

and you condemn

but it just wasn't paying the bills,

was it?

we said life sucked

but we had targets - real targets

we wanted them to know

we wanted them to think

but you got sick of our "complaints"

you wanted to be happy

you told us to be happy

you sang about being happy

well, what do we do when we're not fucking happy?

you told us to get off our asses

and make life a better place

how?

by ignoring the bombs and the wars 

and the shitheads in office

"do your own thing"

"be happy"

well we're not fucking happy

and we're not "the latest thing"

we just want to tell you that

the world's full of shit

so are we

and so are you

and if you don't know that,

then you're the biggest lie that ever lived

we never told people what to do

we just wanted them to know

what was shit

then you came along

and you didn't want to "impose"

(so you told us what to do)

and you didn't want a "message"

so that we can think our own thoughts

and you didn't give us shit

you were so fucking concerned with your "art"

and you didn't give us a way to live,

which we needed so damn badly

how many little shits out there

were trying to decide about life?

and all you said was "do your own thing"

when we didn't know what the fuck 

our own thing was

and you didn't love life enough

to be strong and tell us what was wrong

and what was right

you called us "nihilistic",

but we wanted to survive

but how could we be happy

when the whole fucking world

isn't happy?

our "message" came out strong

and clear

the people either liked it or hated it

but at least they knew

we made a point that lasted

you just faded away into your "art"

but you came from us

and you hate to be reminded

and you feel no obligations

all we did to you was change your life

you say we can't change the world,

you say we're a dying race,

and you say that we're killing ourselves

but at least we know who we are

at least we're not so fucking nebulus

at least we're not living some fairy tale

where everyone is happy

because the world is not fucking happy

we wanted people to squirm in their seats

to be uncomfortable

to worry about their security

and where their kids go at night

to see ugliness

because people have made something

very ugly out of the world, today

we left you to do the healing

but never like this

you closed your eyes

and you denied us

but we're still surviving

we'll find our way back

we still want you to worry

and beware of dark corners

we'll teach you to see life

as it is

it's full of shit and full of ugliness

so don't say it again,

I don't want to be happy

this isn't a happy world.

- May 27, 1984, A.D.

Hemingway

I went to sleep with "The Old Man and the Sea"

I woke up with "The Old Man and the Sea"

and nothing had happened while I was gone

this is what I think of Hemingway

- May 8, 1984, A.D.

Bedroom from a dream

Dream 2

The vision:

there is a purple-blue sky with pale stars

and in the distance,

a huge eye begins to open

from beneath the eyelid comes

not an eye

but a planet where the eye should be

a pale greenish-yellow-white planet

that's watching me

Although it's warm outside,

the trees speak late Autumn or Winter

There are little half-consciousness who,

as the rays of this planet hit them,

run off like animated goblins,

looking for a dark place to hide

which leaves only me

I remember from a film about the Holocaust

the phrase, "War nods, but has one eye open"

Is this that eye?

it bears a striking resemblance to Earth

If that is Earth,

where am I?

on my own planet, far, far away

my own world

the Earth sheds a light on me

is this the eye of war, as spoken?

is this what I should fear?

it captivates me

but I feel as though I should 

run away with the others

like the moon, coming out of an eclipse,

it watches

but dark corners are still dark corners

and my world remains intact.

- May 7, 1984, A.D.

The Boy and the Girl Who Let it Be

A river of tears spilled out of his desk. the others turned and gazed. There was no way to cover up his embarrassment. He tried to stop it, but at last, let it go. Girls and boys alike picked up their feet and let the river run by. Only one girl kept both feet on the floor and let the water wash over them. The other children climbed over desks and chairs to reach the door or the windows. The boy looked over at the girl, who in turn opened her desk and let loose her own river. Their tears flowed into one and filled the room, and ran out the door. The connection had been made.

The two children then ran through the room, opening desks of the ones long gone, filled with nameless tears. The girl walked back to her desk and dipped her hands in. She offered the boy a drink. He drank slowly and sparingly, and when finished, he went over to his desk and came back, hands cupped, with his own share of tears. The girl savored each tender drop, and they fell to the floor and immersed themselves in the river.

The tears dried, and the girl began to speak. The words fell out of her mouth to form meadows and forests and babbling brooks; and flowers of the brightest hues of yellow, orange, and purple. In response, the boy uttered mountains, valleys, rain forests, apple orchards that blossomed in spring and maple trees that turned the colors of fire in Autumn.

All at once, the classroom became overgrown. The walls disintegrated, and sunshine crept in. The desks became trees, and the chalkboards, boulders. The two children laughed as they looked around at what they had created, and they ran into the woods, leaving old memories of walled rooms and lives to fade away into distant rays of sun that bounced back and forth between the trees and touched every dark corner of the forest. At last, freedom was theirs, as they joined together and united with the sun.

- May 7, 1984, A.D.

Dream

The vision:

a dream of isolation

without fear

ice

the rider dies of cold

but the horse continues on

I am the horse

I walk

and there are ice formations

in the snow

I meet a friend

and flowers -

the most beautiful, colorful flowers-

rise up before our eyes

into the house

they grow

outside the front window

no children play

all are gone

humanity left with no forwarding address

but just a dream

the flowers fade

check in the refrigerator

the light's on

and there's tuna fish in

the burner works

and children ride bikes down the street.

- May 7, 1984, A.D.