a small exerpt from the book of life

by jay dee - Cancer



  i remember sitting on the porch on 13th, reading
  dante's inferno, not because i thought it was good, but 
  because i thought i should read it, so when i name-
  dropped it to make myself sound smarter, more cultured,
  i would be able to inject sincerity into my ruse. 
  and actually, i wasn't sitting, i was laying, in a 
  hammock, the same hammock i was laying in the
  night i came enlightened irene with a piece of wisdom 
  inspired by said hammock: 
  never start shit in a hammock.
  but the day i speak of remembering does not 
  include irene in a direct, physical manner.
  it includes nothing more than myself, the porch, the 
  hammock, the book (signet classic paperback), and 
  a pipe, the first pipe i ever owned, bought in an
  oddities shop in clifton, ohio, on the university
  if cincinnatti's campus, some 45 minutes before a 
  Fugazi show, circa 1993. 
  it was pearl white with a wooden bowl. it held a shitload
  of weed. for some time, we believed it housed elves. 
  it broke one day. like almost everything
  else between birth and death. 
  on this day it was alive and well, full of sticky
  green goodness, and the sun was shining through the 
  leaves of our front trees. it was a tuesday or
  one of those days, when students were being students and
  workers were being workers and i was being neither,
  chosing instead be reading a book that was kinda blah 
  and retaining none of it due to 
  the interference of thoughts concerning guinness and 
  pool and a juke box with AENIMA on it and 
  enough Sabbath and Motorhead to drunken up a mormon. 
  and the cocaine upstairs, and maybe a few shots of 
  jager... but what i'm trying to convey is
  that it wasn't the inferno i was concentrating on. 
  i remembered all this today because it is getting
  harder and harder to remember the freedom associated  
  with surrender. the power of knowing your victory has 
  been accomplished by nothing more than allowing
  yourself to be defeated.
  
  i sincerly wish that people would put more effort into
  understanding the page they just finished reading
  before they barreled headstrong into the next.
Birth sign: Cancer
Date created: 2004-11-09 09:56:04
Last updated: 2021-04-14 17:18:16
Poem ID: 70418

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