Piece Written and Read at Beat Night 6-19-14: Post Hibernation April Bikeride

 The first featured reader read something 

mentioning "Rocky". 

That was all I needed to hear. 

This is the result.
There have been very minor edits.

Post Hibernation April Bikeride

Winter &

            Excuses

Have left me

at my drinking weight

& aching

But I ride anyway;

Advised to

go easy

by the well-meaning,

it’s not a whole lie

to say I’ll Try;

But I ride

            &

            Things ache

& now there’s

a big

            damned

                        hill

&halfway up

            my lost condition

pounds my pulse in my

            temples

&as I wobble

            &sweat

a 75 year old man

            passes me

                        unwinded

with “On Your Left”;

My internal dialogue

            takes the form of some medieval fantasy drama

            Like I’m on an epic

                        quest;

My mind releases the Phantom Advisor,

            the on-board critic

                        and maker of logical excuses;

He says

            “There’s no shame in surrender”

            I reply

            “There’s no

glory

in it, either!”

The hilltop

is hundreds

of

yards

            ahead

& I set my eyes on it

banning from my head

the idea of rest

until I’m past the

            crest;

My pulse

            cold sweat

            & ragged breath

Weave into the rhythm of

burning legs

            (the bad one going

                        numb)

& a song congeals,

a music to inspire.

            heard clearly in my

                        head:

The Theme From Rocky;

But I can’t just

cheer myself on;

Some part of my psyche

            rewrites the words:

Gonna Die Now,

Gonna Die Now;

& The beat is PERFECT

& the crest is nearer

& had I the breath I’d sing along out loud;

& my heart is exerts enough

            force

to make a vein in my

            lower lip

                        JUMP,

an upside down

            Bugsy Siegel tic;

And the Phantom Advisor,

whose advise is always
“You can’t”

Says

“You ARE

            gonna die

                        now!

Your brain flooded and wiped away

            by the firehouse PSI

                        of an aneurysm,

or your heart

            popped

            or crushed

                        or just

stopped.

And you’ll be found

            here

                        at the side of the road,

Fat,

            Pathetic,

                        And Dead.

And the EMTs are all gonna laugh at you!”

& I tell that hateful voice

“If I’m dead I won’t care!

And if this little hill

            kills me

Then I deserve

            to die!”

And I crest the hill.

            The brass in the Rocky Theme

            blare its last note.

I let myself coast

            gravity my engine for a while;

My heart eases,

and breath slows,

And though I’ve nothing extra for a victory cry

I revel in the cavernous silence in my mind,

as a certain voice

says not

a fucking thing.

Chris Walters

June 19, 2014

An Unsent Letter To Michigan DOT date 9/6/2006

I lived in an awful place, and an awful state of mind. The only good thing about the mindset that produced this was moment of clarity that stopped me sending it.

To: Michigan Department of Transportation, Head of Road Planning, Metro Region

From: Everyone who has driven on civilized, well planned roads outside of your jurisdiction. (Civilized, well planned roads includes Boston.)

Dear Asstard,

What in the name of the Almighty Murphy’s Hairy Balls possesses you? You and anyone working for you obviously do not drive on the roads you so ineptly plan. How the Holy Fuck can you sign off on this shit and be pleased with yourselves? Is this one of those mafia “no-show” jobs gone white-collar?

Why, in order to get onto an interstate in this state, does someone usually have to turn across traffic, that having driven on your substandard artillery-paved surfaces for their whole lives, is too fucking angry to slow down for someone else?

Why is it that 90% of speed limit signs are obstructed, causing most overly cautious drivers to drive at 30 MPH everywhere? Was this done on purpose to artificially inflate the safe driving statistics?

Why do you not allow left turns onto most major surface streets? Why do you necessitate the “Michigan Left” which in every other state, county, and parish of this country is called a U-Turn? Why do you allow well meaning fucktards to plant view-obstructing shrubbery anywhere one of these turns is made?

Are you all drunk? I mean like Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas stupid-ass-hammered. It would be understandable living in the Metro Region. However, there are very successful programs for that. Please enter one.

If substance abuse is not the problem then can I assume that budget cuts have forced the hiring of angry lower primates, such as baboons? If that is the case please teach the creatures to drive, so they have a more accurate idea of how to do their jobs.

If not drunk, and not plagued with carnivorous monkeys, then really guys, what the fuck? These roads suck. They are dangerous, poorly planned, and falling apart.

There is one final possibility; perhaps you have given up, realizing that nothing you will ever do will make a difference, and that if shit keeps decaying the Feds will eventually step in and fix it. I hear the Feds can afford to hire chimpanzees that have completed courses in basic logic. This would definitely be a step up.

In closing I humbly extend this invitation to Blow Me.

Fuck You Very Much,

CSW

Walters’ Rules Of Wrist 6-03-2014

If someone requires you to accept being treated as an inferior, they are not your friend.

If the price for your friendship is to accept being treated as inferior, the price is too high.

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Liars think everyone lies about everything.

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If you tell someone it isn’t okay to be upset about something, especially when they’re already upset, you’re a cunt. You are not enlightened and sharing your wisdom, you are not helping, you are just a goddamned twatheaded fuck.

If you are the reason someone is upset, and you tell them it isn’t okay to be upset, you are nothing but a twunt. But you should be a twunt with a fat lip.

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Unwanted advice is unwanted. Unwanted advice that disregards part of the problem so the advisor can maintain feelings of superiority is twuntish. This may upset someone. See previous.

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Compensating for fear, depression, or feelings of inadequacy by talking down to people is twuntish, and may upset someone. See previously previous.

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If you act superior to everyone else, yet you live a life no one would choose, you are being laughed at.

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If you think life is a competition wherein you have to be the superlative (Best _____, Worst _____, Most _____, _____-est) in every conversation in order to win, you have already lost.

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Trying to live up to your own reputation ceases to be living when it keeps you from growing, or worse, causes regression. It eventually turns you into a cartoon version of yourself. And you will be laughed at.

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If they think you might be spouting bullshit, and, instead of offering proof you just yell and act intimidating, they do become certain. That you're spouting bullshit.

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If you think, by your romantic experience, that women are crazy, then I’ve got news for you: it’s not them; it’s you.

"Women Are Crazy"

This is a thing that enrages me to hear. However, I hear it regularly from men who should know better, or be made to turn in their testicles.

My mother claimed to be a feminist. She was not one. She hated men, because she blamed them for her own bad decisions. Calling herself a feminist put a positive spin on irrationally writing off half the human species, shielding her from her own failings.

I don’t accept it when I hear a woman say “Men are evil”, or anything like it. Nor do I accept the flipside:

“Women are crazy.”

I hear this, or a variation of it, from a number of otherwise intelligent testiculated humans. It has always rankled when I hear it, because it has always sounded like bullshit, even when I had little knowledge (or self-confidence) with which to refute it. It’s a sweeping generalization, with no allowance for deviation. I hate those.

The first reason I hate this statement is the plain arrogance of it, as though the speaker has knowledge of an entire gender. It is self-congratulatory, or self-pitying foolishness. It doesn’t allow for the possibility that the speaker is missing something, that their method of observation is flawed. It also disregards the very idea of mathematical odds, which would tend to say that 3+ billion human beings could not all be crazy.

The second reason for my ire is that this thought disregards the possibility that speaker has some part in creating what they observe. Let me be plain in this: If you believe All Women Are Crazy then

A)    you attract only crazy women,

or

B)    you do something to make them crazy. Either way it’s more to do with you than them.

The third and most important of my reasons is this: those who make such statements never describe insanity when they describe female behavior. What they describe are the behaviors of people who’ve been manipulated and fucked with for too long and now doubt their own value, instincts and reasoning; they describe the desperation of people who have such little self-worth they will offer to do things that they really don’t want to, but feel they must in order to keep a someone near them.

Once in a while the male who makes such utterances is under the delusion that failure to give him all that he wants is insanity. This attitude is the one that makes me most nauseous. It’s the childish bullshit of a clinical narcissist, the belief that only he is important and women are tools for his use. In this context, when these males say “insane” they mean “malfunctioning”,  which is their synonym for “disobedient”.

Why does this make me so angry? Quite simply, because I have seen real female insanity. My mother, for as long as I can remember, was prone to periods of utter madness, of becoming someone radically different, of believing things not just untrue, but impossible. More than once I experienced absolute terror at the possibility of what she might do in any given situation, whether it be publicly embarrassing, violent or otherwise dangerous. As a child, many times, I experienced the fear that she had been possessed by a demon, or replaced by an alien, that the life-force motivating her body was no longer the woman who had birthed me.

I know from insane. If you say that “Women Are Crazy” but don’t have any stories like mine, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You attract women who you (wrongly) think are crazy, cause them to act so, or have standards based on a personality disorder. And you sound like an idiot to me. The more vehemently you make this statement to me the less pleasant I will be. Or, the less present; I have no patience for people who believe destructive things that are not true, ignore the evidence against, yet aggressively evangelize said beliefs.

Such males are not men, but boys. They will not grow up until they can see their own part in the dysfunction they complain about. Since they will probably never be man enough to admit their own part in things, they should just turn in their testicles.

I have spoken.