after mistaking a hooded deck for an antler tree;

As a daily patron of the arts i see myself viscerally disposed as an open filter to the mad flailings of the outer sphere of emotional tumult and direction. I am similar to an ad: people see a vacuous and empty smile, hear an open and vague and slightly intriguing question and decide that i am a shell. I make money and am a shell. I gain money to contain it. I eat food to contain it. I am drinking milk to contain it. I am avoiding the bar to contain it less. I do not wish to repeat earlier patterns. I'll be gone for half an hour. I'll be gone for two hours. I'll be gone for people more important. I'll be gone for the faces i've missed. I'll be gone to see faces other than yours. I'll be gone to drop you alone and sad while hoping things will be fine and of course they aren't. The childish wish that they could is empty, vacuous, an open and vague and slightly intriguing possibility and it is decided that i am a shell. I am cheese on sauce on bread on hope on skidding barely by on promises. It is not contested that those promises are important to have been made: must have had to have been made. Must have had. The loss of their performance, the collapse of the proposed arrangement is incidental and the collapse is entirely unaccompanied by response or a "heads-up." Heads, then, when returning home, remain down. Stay down. Put mine down. Books that have been read on. Feelings that have been anticipated. The stoking puts them away, but they return as if strengthened by a sort of fueling wind. It is alright and not alright; it is said not to be alright. It may easily not. It may not be easy: fueling wind. It may not be wind, but the thoughtless defense expunged loudly by a drunk and stupid desire. A shell that contains, drunk, desire. Alone, alone. Those two who so wish not to be alone, made alone, by each other. Perhaps by the shouting and unapologetic one. Perhaps it is the root of evil or perhaps the childish misunderstanding of the vacuous shell thinks it is deserved. Is this why men have invented Satan? A name to the shell-filler, the desire? The so simple desire, not to perform uninterrupted action, but to account for it, to make it seem as if desired. To make that desire universal. To impose the subjective on those who can only see the emptiness, not the hollow hallucinagen; the filling; the empty; the creme; the tart. The tart of tomorrow. I'm a big boy so i have to have more. I do more so i have to fill more. I'm leaking and constantly becoming more empty. I am three pages and following this expulsion will become three pages more empty. Where did the three pages come from? Who will have me a cigarette? Who will have me a beer? Who will decide that it is not OK; perhaps i know the one. The impish, impulsive I NEED I NEED I NEED is so quiet a voice yet so persistant as to reminisce of the dark one i love to forget and remember of. Perhaps i lost lessons learning her ways. Perhaps i learned desperately necessary facts and that is why i continue to pour myself, unrivaled, into others hearts empty yet forever wishing to pour, to pour what? To pour what is undoubtedly a wrecked self, a mishap created by the misshapen pours of a thousand reckless and amateur artisans attempting to create a wax sclupture. When it dried the peices are unarranged like fake letters pressed together into non-words, represented as reality and challenged constantly. Yet heated by an inside furnace which runs simply on the knowledge of its own disfigurement. I heat it up to rearrange, to pour it out and become empty, into others so that they may, in turn, re pour it angrily into my heart which, fit to shapes, re-uglies them. Perhaps the continuous pouring and recieving changes slightly the walls of those ugly shapes as the exchange is repeated. Perhaps over time, through the measured performance and repetition of pours, those walls will soften and allow simplicity, so cautious and contagious in the conscious realm of the rest of my life, to enter the way in which i know love. The way in which i share my very self. Perhaps.