Friday, November 16, 2007

For My Kids

I drink coffee from a cup I found in the dumpster behind my apartment. It’s black and reads, “Chicago” in messy block lettering. I look at the skyline etched in gold below its brim. I look at it and think, “that is where I live.”

I found this zip file on the internet. I got it from a website that gets off on thinking it’s important. That it creates 90% of the humor transmitted wirelessly to pixilated screens and HTML pages. It is trash and thrives on the immediate attention given to people who place coded images immediately on the web. But, still I found this file, and still I downloaded it.

I drink coffee from a cup I found in the dumpster behind my apartment. I sip, tongue the hot liquid, sigh and grin. I whisper to myself, “this is where I live.”

Fifteen hundred pictures, taken by tattooed and pierce laden women. In front of bed and bathroom mirrors, they’ve hidden themselves discretely in a folder titled, “Scene Girls 15.” But I didn’t name them. Some kid on the interweb did.

And I looked at all of them. Fifteen hundred self-modeled poses. They made me feel sick. So I looked at them again and watched as fifteen hundred women looked through me and drooled at their own sordid reflections.

I drink coffee from a cup I found in the dumpster behind the building where I live. I get too hot. I move outside and sip and lose myself in an airplane circling the cities grid. Eventually it lands, and I imagine it a ship. I’m on it, sailing across Lake Michigan

Earlier today I tried to masturbate. Twice in bed, I dreamt of old girlfriends. Then three times in front of a computer screen. But the internet offered nothing and left me feeling empty and now I think about the fifteen hundred women oblivious to the fact that I know their bodies. That I’ve thought only of them as human between gasps and heavy breathing.

I drink coffee from a cup I found in a dumpster behind my apartment. After I exhale into the steam that rises from its moist, obsidian brim, I try not to think about the world in which I live.