Latent Onychophagia and Those Who Would Have No Such Nonsense

Nail biter:
VARIANT FORMS:
also nail·bit·er
NOUN:
1. One who bites one's fingernails as a nervous habit. 2. A situation marked by tense nervousness or apprehension, especially an athletic contest whose outcome is uncertain near its finish.


By this time, the tip of his first finger, often called - in the vernacular - the pointer finger, was throbbing with the pain that results from chewing nervously on the tip of said digit's nail. Granted, this was nothing new. He had been known to be an avid nail biter since childhood, although his Mother swears that she can recall a time (possibly before his Father left with that whore of a secretary of his) when he did not, in fact, chew his fingernails to the quick. While he had tried, with varying degrees of success, many times throughout his life to cease and desist, he knew that any expended effort in trying to put a stop to this nasty habit would be wasted.
Several of his closer friends had encouraged various courses of action for dealing with said habit including, but not limited to: Acupuncture, aversion therapy, various forms of psychological counseling, and cetera, and cetera.
Of course, due to his continued inaction in regards to the matter, to the outsider, it would appear that he simply refused to put forth any effort to actively tackle his short-comings. In truth, it was the methodologies prescribed that harbored short-comings; none of these supposed cures could possibly root out the dark recesses of the mind where such insidious habits such as nail-biting reside. These dark corners of the mind, at least as far as he was willing to conjecture, would prove impervious to the probing questions of the psychotherapist or the soothing words of the hypnotist.
Perhaps tomorrow he will try........

Pavor Nocturnus

I)

My dear God...

what is that fucking sound?

Is that you....

are you still asleep?

can you even hear me at all?

Two)

As he swung the hammer,

One final strike to drive the nail home,

He heard the unmistakable,

High-pitched sound

....Of a child screaming

From the bedroom window.

Three)

I can't seem to...

Not with this much noise.

It would seem,

To me at least,

Almost impossible to

Get any sleep around this place.

4)

It would seem to me,

Sir...

That the problem

Is not your mattress

At all.

Perhaps some Ambien

Or maybe warm milk...

Five)

Oh Dear,

Are you asleep?

Well not any more...

Oh can you turn the heater on?

I can't sleep with such a chill.....

VI)

By the time I get

My bearings straight

I am sitting bolt-up-right

Upon the comforter that

Keeps us

Both

Warm in the
Winter

Mother Mary and All Her Laughing Children

It was spring, the Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand And Three, and it would have seemed to any objective observer that, the way things were going, any moment, if you held your mouth just right, the sky just might fall in on itself crushing everyone below in a torrent of clouds and airplane parts.

The Kids, as some had come to call our group of travelers, had taken a road not often ventured upon by our contemporaries. A beautiful thing was happening in this the land of the free, the patriots, the self-defender, TEXAS, America, and there was nothing that anyone could say or do to put a stop to it. This wave would have to break upon the coast in all the violence and horror that such happenings happen to have. No one could have predicted that the wave would crest so soon. No one saw it coming....Well, almost no one.

It was a February day, we had set a trajectory for somewhere just to the left of the moon and there was nothing, barring nuclear holocaust, that was going to stop us.

Salvia Divinorum, for those among you who are unaware, is one of the most potent psychedelics known to man. Salvia, in its dried and concentrated form, when smoked from a "bong", as the large glass smoking utensils have come to be known among the drug culture of the united states, causes an alteration of conciousness that can, at times, be frightening in its realism and power. The Masotec Indians, an indigenous tribe of south central Mexico, were known to invoke its power as "The Shepherdess" - purportedly because of this plants ability to both aid in the divination of future events as well as to clarify those of the past.

The plant would soon provide me ( and how many others I do not know) with a taste of horror, a warning of all that was to come.

From the moment I went under, I knew that something was not right: the lighting was all wrong, the music much too loud; everything was simply happening way too fast.

I was out of control.

I had no guide.

My angel was no where to be seen.

The effects were unlike any that I had experienced before, and I was - by this time - quite the intrepid traveller. A seasoned psychonaut if you will. The whole thing began almost instantly. The room was beginning to expand to a size a million times that of its original. This left me standing in the center of a plane, nothing but the neon sky, tinted with hints of pink, red and green as far as I could see.

At the outset of my journey, the soundtrack had been one of calm and peaceful ambience. Darker now. Drums and rage that took flight from the poly-whatnot material that modern stereo speakers tend to be constructed of. Every aspect of my surroundings - terrifying. Every aspect of my self - warped.

Welcome to Hell.

Incarnations of My Greatest Terrors

When I was but a tiny boy
I believed in things unseen
Ghosts and Ghouls and scary things
That lived behind the closet door

They would take me if they could
Carry me into the wood
And make me into soup
Or maybe Pie


Somewhere near the age of 10
When I was strong like Super-man
I realized with some delight
The nature of my fears

Scary tales and make-believe
And simply shadows from the trees
For there were no real Demons
Under my bed/ Behind the closet door

Now that I am young again
21 - not quite a man
I fear them more
Than once before
When I was but a boy

The nature of the ghouls has changed
They only come here when it rains
To sit and share a coffee
or some lunch

Monday Morning So Unlike the Last

As I stepped out into the warmth of that first day, the first one of the year, that really feels like spring, I couldn't help but smile. There were birds at the bird feeder, a regular choir of Robins, gloriously red Cardinals, tiny Nuthatches, Titmice and Sparrows, and the occasional Bluejay or Mockingbird. I laid upon the warm cement slab that is my back porch, shirtless. I closed my eyes, the sunlight passing through the lids with a diffusion of red from the many cappilaries there. I sat and listened to the songs of the birds, occasionally accompanied by a distant windchime singing in the cool spring breeze. I was happy.

I had become weary of the grey skies over-top of grayer clouds over-top of streets grayer still. I had grown tired of that chilled to the bone, numb to the base of the skull feeling that sinks in after it has been 40 degrees Fahrenheit and raining three days a week for three months straight. I was beginning to come unwound. Cabin fever, that sort of thing. My mind was operating on a near-reptilian level, all non-food-clothes-medicine related function was confined to an area of the brain about the size and consistency of a pile of cotton balls left on the moist counter next to the bathroom sink for too long.

I think, however, that somewhere within the last few sentences my train of though flew horribly off its track, the pointof this was not the hellish winter, but rather the glorious emergence of a new spring. In stating this, I think I may have reached the true heart of what I was trying to say: Without the hellish winter, today would not have been the first glorious disctinctly spring day of the year, today would have simply been Monday.

Stranger Days Ahead (or Thoughts of Suicide on An Empty Stomach)

As I sit in a seedy bar
Down by the airport, I'm
Chain-smoking cigarettes
Pondering, wondering...
Making love unconditional
Unconditionally lovingly true.
While somewhere above us
Lies a sad stranger
On her way down to Tucson,
Or maybe back home again,
Somewhere on top of this
World that keeps spinning
Underneath stars
Uncaringly watching us all from above.
Oh sweet stranger...
How does your garden grow?
Slowly, fantastically.
Thinking of something I said,
To a dream long ago,
About sad songs and liberty
And how one day our enemies
Will hear them on old radios.
Oh sweet stranger...
Where do you lay your head?
On soft feather pillow beds
Maybe on sidewalks
Or somewhere right next this place.
Someday I'll know the truth
Lonely and destitute
While happier men walk on by.
I'm hungry and thirstier
Now than I've ever been.
I order a drink and then...
Just walk right on out the door.
Oh sweet stranger...
Oh sweet stranger.
Oh sad stranger...
Stranger than anything,
Anyone, Everyone,

Things that I never could know.

Winter Morning Grey

Lonely winter rain outside my window
Playing ever softly, tiny drums
Keeping rhythm to the sound of no one
Keeping time for all I have become.
Winter rain clouds washing out the morning,
Winter nights still linger in my mind.
Singing songs of lonely winter daydreams,
Somber birds upon the empty branch,
Singing songs of winters lost to memory:
Winters frozen lake and sleeping land.

Several Verses: Disjointed Musings on The Nature of Solitude

1)
And I tried to hold onto the moment
While your voice still lingered in the air
Carressing softly my cheek
Pulling me under, under, silent
Into the warm embrace of night and rest

2)
I walk along the path
Near the pond where I once fished
That day, when the sun still shone
Upon the fields
To grow the grass much taller than before

3)
The branches reach high into the blue void
Beyond the world of consequence and meaning.
Somewhere over the horizon
An wise man sits and wonders, same as yesterday, before.

4)
Seven ducks sit and watch
The passers by break bread
In that uninterested manner
...That ducks have.

5)
Someone left the window open
"You'll let out all the air"
Thought the space captain
Aloud to himself

6)
Just beyond the water gardens
Where the student stops to contemplate his life
The wind blows softly through the trees and grass
Whispers as it always has...
The birds take flight at the slightest noise
Ceasing to sing their lullaby
To all the sleeping children of the world
So far away...
When do they land?
To where the songs of yesterday, before?

7)
Several drunkards stumble from the doorway
Singing several drinking songs
From fathers lands and times
Wonder where the children went
Wonder where the mind...

Living in the freight-train republic
It's easy to forget the starry night
In so many ways as I remember
Anything at all

Walking alone

Through neon hallways

Bathed in glow of red and blue

Deep in the heart

Of Mega-merica Land

Smiling at the wind-up-clockwork-monkey-wrench-mechanical birds

And Trees

And things that go bump

In that good night

While Poohbear holds the torch up high

To light the way

Along this winding road

Down past dead mans curve

And into the western sunset

Sinking b'neath the cresting waves

And laughing at the lemmings

2 Of 'Em

Falling

Faster now than ever

Before these days

And times like

Raindrops/Tears

and Aeroplanes

- and the other one -

The many people passing

By the front door: Laughing

Is it better to be looking in

Or wrapped within their porcelain trappings

With ceramic smiles and photographs

and Leather / Polyester hides

Common Name: Human Being

Genus Species: Undecided

Lieberry

Quiet!
This is a library.
Only silence, whispers, meditative contemplation please.



Today I was sitting at the desk, minding my own damned business, when some jerk had the nerve to come strolling up to me and ask, " Hey do you know where I could find the periodicals?"
"Fuck!" I says to myself, possibly a little too loud to seem professional/courteious. "What do I look like a map?", I say to the guy.
"Jesus H. Christ", replies the man,"you really need to lay off the coffee. For Pete's sake man, you're shaking like a parkinson's patient."
I look up from my internet comics long enough for the man to understand that I would accept no more insolence from him and said in my nicest librarian tone, "Hello sir. How are you today? Is there anything that I can assist you with? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT FROM ME!!!???"
Needless to say, that man didn't give me a problem for the rest of the night. On a side note, I have a meeting with my boss tomorrow. I have a hunch that I'm getting a raise.

Shut it!!!
Before I shut it for you
Oh my, it seems as if I've crossed some kind of line.

Casual Greetings 2005

As the two men pass
I attempt a smile
Something tells me
it didn't go well......

The woman passes
I attempt a hello
It must have been
A little something I said......

The Chinaman passes
I give him a nod
It must have been
The look in my eye.....

As the children pass
They smile freely
I start to scream
in terror horror.....