The Neon Zee

The Book of What Remains

by Benjamin Saenz

*

 

Every night, the dream.

Every dawn, the waking

                                To that profound

State of sadness and solitude.

                                Always you rushed out

Into the yard and wept

At the sight of the honeysuckles in bloom

And the blueness of the sky.

 

                                Imagine

A world without the sweetness of jasmine

And honeysuckles? Imagine a world

Without the perfect breeze,

Without the perfect blue

                That only a sky in June can give?

 

*

 

Sometimes, you wake in the night.

You are afraid. You are afraid

That your heart will become

                A desert again. Uninhabitable.

 

*

 

As Mexicans would have it:

 

Cada cabeza es un mundo

 

Every single mind

Constitutes a world—

 

An ecosystem.

 

Each life

A city

                With streets, avenues,

                Libraries, histories,

                Museums, homes

                Gardens, alleys filled

                Garbage, kitchens

                Aromas, secrets,

                And novels that contain

 

                Voices that must not

 

                Become extinct.

Wishlist

A chinless man is a winless man in the lady department

A man with a good chin

And tall

And good with his hands

And has a dark side

And enjoys muppet movies

And can draw cats perfectly

 

Also I would like a pony.

 

Thanks Santa.

 

(remember to put holes in the box because a dead man is only useful to me in that people will offer food to console me in my time of grief- which, come to think of it, would be kinda nice.)

The Difference Between Jumping and Falling

The difference between jumping and falling

1.

If the edge had a view of itself

Instead of from itself,

Would it flee its own jutting,

Cuttingness by

                                Jumping?

 

I did.

I jumped into the chasm of it:

Black as a gaping mouth,

I fell into the spiraled throat.

 

The vagabond beauty

Became unbound from

The bondage of the ground

And,

In free fall,

The swirl of

Night and cliff

Jutted and un-jut

As it flew past my gaping

grape eyes, bulbous,

And stung by wind,

My gaping grape eyes.

 

Dried tear ducks

Prickled with granules of sleepy seeds

Where dreams had never fully waxed

And crusted.

 

2.

We were pushed from the edge,

And together, we fell

from its crest

Into the crush, the beauty

Of vaga bound nowhere

In free fall,

We held hands

 

And realized we were always on the edge of something:

Each other.

 

Our feet were always planted there,

Beautifully springing into ourselves

From the grounding of “we”

and the world had always fallen so,

rushing past  us,

 

our stillness,

as we levitated together.

 

All along

the edges of our bodies

 we fell from and into,

It was all love.

pontificating

Im so fucking tired. and im reading the blogs. RREEEADDDING THE BLOGS. cus thats what i do when im tired and don't want to move. I like to think that an education in pop culture and fashion will somehow key me into whats going on so i can predict whats going next and then create a writing structure to frame that. 

 

and then become the voice of our generation.

or something. 

 

but no. what i meant to say this morning is....im so fucking annoyed by people my age who reject themselves. reject whats going on now. pretend like they're not young now, they were young before they were born and.... SCREW THIS APOCALYPTIC POP CULTURE ENVIRONMENTAL MELTING FUCKTASTROPHE HAITI HOSPITAL TOXIC WASTE AIDS...i shall catapult myself into the yesteryear of innocence, perfection and beautiful romantic problems like....minesweeper...thou art confusing. 

 

for gods sake. i intended to be a history major before i came to college...so im all about understanding and appreciating the past...

WHICH IS WHY im fascinated by constructing a right now...and appreciating it for all its gloom and doom and globalization and gaga-ness. 

 

YES its flashy and trashy and shit sucks and  blah blah blah...but come on! INTELLIGENT PEOPLE OF MY GENERATION, stop rejecting yourselves. its not getting you anywhere, TAVI.

 

ok in other news, heres a fashion rundown:

queen michelle, patron saint of winkle pickers (this is for you hannah!)

my mom has something like this...except they're all eighties like...so they fit like hell. but they ARE deep perriwinkle and they are leather. trying them on is so sad...because i want them to be perfect. but sadly they fit like jodpurs.

beautiful...

i like this gumby reinterpretation of the spike headband...i also like the beehive hairstreak streak fur jacket thing. 

LOVE THIS SHIRT...love the jellyfish clown-y sheer entrapments of it!

ORANGE AND RED LEGS! awoo! also, the color combination is amazing. i hate purses but I LOVE this green one. 

Farewell  is a crappy word for this century

Placing emphasis on the speaker who most likely

talks really really slow for This Day and Age.

 

I’d like to talk like an old man.

Like an old man,

I’d like to hide my face in a beard that necessitates my infinite wisdom.

 

Farewell my dear!

Farewell to arms!

Farewell wishnut minichunks chipmonk monkey fucking a football,

 

Farewell 21^st century!

I am leaving you for the savagely noble war

Upon which I meditate sadly

 

And   with       Honor! of course.

 

Farewell 21^st century

And your blogosphere and your dopery

And your steeziness

And your pop culture

And your rich hippies

And fashion fuckery!

 

I am leaving you now

For the folksy flowerness

And protest song perfection of yesteryear!

For arlo guthrey and long haired freaky people!

 

Farewell freakshow interweb photobooth pornsite!

 

Farewell eminent apocalypses

I am leaving you for better apocalypses

 

I am leaving you for Keats’ decadent fairy kingdom,

For sensitivity and sweetness before it was corrupted by aspartame!

 

Farewell twentysomething yuppie somethings,

And cosmopolitan sipping swizzle idiot sticks!

I am leaving you for a time

before my lips were corrupted

By swear words and dicks and winemouth stain!

 

Farewell is a Fairly-Noble goodbye,

A notable Lie

Of well wishing, implying only the nobility of the speaker

And so this is the end of my poem about farewell.

Peace.

 

an argument for nailpolish

Generally speaking, I hate nail polish. this is mostly because my hands are really ugly....but whatever. 

I've recently discovered two reasons for nailpolish:

1. paint your nails the color of your feelings and then paint your pinkies the color you wished you were feeling (the same color if you're feeling the way you want) (sarah and sasha taught me this trick when we all just wanted to fall off the face of the earth about 3 weeks ago) (the nail polish painting communal misery lasted about 4 days...and I'd been so ok with feeling like shit...because I felt like shit WITH them...it was honestly a really cool experience besides all the misery and crying and general self loathing....but we got through it all TOGETHER. I usually crawl off like a sick dog and hide when im miserable so that no one can see me.) (i also write blog posts...though i've been refraining from posting really personal stuff lately.)

2. the other reason:

THE PICTURE POSTED ABOVE!!!!!!!!!  

livin without livin without livin withoutyou

1. baby

It is hot raw tuna in here,

Thick with milky glue

And me

I am what are these meaty stubs at all the ends

They are and they are and they are and they are my flesh

And I seem to inhabit it all comes into me through silky snaking pulses

And these gelatinous receptions are all dark and thick pink and fog

And I feel

And I fill with the sound

Of bethum bdm bethum bdm bethum bdm

Bouncing and something soft sounds

Rhythm of two separate beats,

Mine and the one cradling me with its undulating goo

Stillness is not so easy

Bobbing here like an apple…waiting

Waiting

 

1. Corpse

It is cool dark chocolate dung roast in here,

Thick with rainbows of manure

And me,

Flesh fell in sticky clumps from my bones

And stuck to the earth instead.

My nose grew a hole.

And I fill with the sound

Of shhhhhhh and pomp pomp pomp pomp

Foot falls and dried leaves in the wind

And the changing seasons

Throb like a heart beat

Season bthm season bdm season bthm

The heat tore my body from me,

The cool cemented it’s mummified skin,

The drip of snow-water sunk and froze and cracked and disintegrated

The remaining sludge that was once body.

And there is a daisy seed

In my nose hole

And its roots fill my mouth cavity

Like a delicate spittle.

 

3.Mother

I waited for you for months

It was like they say about boiling water,

It never boils until you stop watching.

I am popping right now. I got so ripe

I was like a big globe swilling thousands of tsunamis,

You, my baby, disaster’s best creation,

What should I name you?

 

4.Grave

They dug me eight by eight

And I was a hole

For you to fill

 

Within me, cradled,

I suck the puss

Of your living

And the chemical grass fertilizer

Seeps into the place

Where your heart sinks into infinite rot

 

 

 

my roommate Cam...

 

SICK

sick and reading reddit I just found out that licking somebody's eyeball is called OCULOLINCTUS

ALSO: My post graduation plan has EVOOOLVED....im applying for the bachelor. 

seriously. 

 

put THAT shit on my resume!!!!

 

P.S.

usually im some mix of vampy romantic sensual princess slut....

but I can go for some creative architectural moments as well a la NEW FAVORITE London based designers:

Mary Katranzou

holly fulton

holly fulton

holly fulton

and david koma

fruity fashion industry man comments on snooty NY fashion week

How much is that frock on the runway? Imagine spending a day looking at real estate or sports cars without having any price information whatsoever. Inconceivable, right? Not in the world of fashion. All manner of random information is provided to we show attendees (and wee show attendees like petit moi) on the line sheets that adorn each seat: hairdresser credits, models' names, arcane sources of inspiration, everything except the only tidbit which really matters: THE PRICE! Let's face it, if that party frock retails for $650 it's pretty groovy. At $4,678 it should be horribly ashamed of itself and screech its way back down the runway. Naughty frock!

Paging Helen Keller. The deafening, dismal, atonal music at fashion shows—it's so loud it makes my floral shirt-cuffs vibrate on my butch little wrists—would force normal people to cower under their seats and cover their ears. Terrified of appearing uncool, the fashion flock wordlessly endures this torture, while the last vestiges of its hearing are destroyed.

Hello. I love you. Oh! Hello again! At every show, attendees screech and air kiss even though they just saw each other half an hour before at a previous show. The fashion world convenes and reconvenes and re-reconvenes at runway shows in a way that can only guarantee the spread of malicious gossip and horrible germs.

Look! There's Gary Coleman's neighbor! What constitutes a celeb at a fashion show is so elastic as to be deranged. At some shows I am blinded by flashbulbs and deafened by shouts of "Simon! Simon!" whilst at others I am trampled by paparazzi as they try to get a shot of some chippy who has even less wattage than me and has yet to make it onto Gloria Allred's rolodex.

 

Post Eden Eves:  we talk circles on the evenings when you just want a drink

 

Abba, abba, blah, blah, blah. Funny

bone, how astute you are within these lines

of mine:  Starting with Eden, my moneys

on that horrible snake filled mine

 

field the bible calls a golden garden.

Pardon me, Adam, I’m a bit naked.

and that thing between your legs has hardened,

Why, god damn! I’ve been oh so forsaken,

 

advantage has been taken of a rib

to make me! And I want to name a few

things, like, THAT’S a monkey. Now don’t be glib

with me, fucknut, god, I can’t be shooed!

 

I’m not a stray dog, im a naked thing

praying at the crossed Christ you created!

 

Twelve Years Old and Afraid

 

Twelve Years Old and Afraid

apple seeds once flew like stardust

in the heavy august. 

and they too,

fell splat upon the mud!

just like me,

splat upon the mud!

/

--indenting a me-shaped-blob

onto the soft earth. 

we're living on an earth that has "grown soft." 

you're growing soft earth! what gives? 

give it up, tell us! 

/

usually "growing soft" is not a good thing.

it happens after you have kids, or play with kids.

Papa says sometimes

i am sometimes not a good little thing. and like a secret,

I crave the bad softness,

the rot that cushions splat. 

but I find none under the layers of mud. 

/

the earth is a rock beneath the ground. 

I want to suffocate in its mud,

but the mud layer is too thin for drowning

in, and so,

I turn over:

all but my naked grape eyes, camouflaged

by an encasement of wormy hashbrown mud.

belly skyward,

/

I stare

/

at the plumage of the young apple tree. 

its single apple, beetlejuice bright, with an aura of dusk:

the burning ruby at the 

core of a kiss. 

a whisper escaping prayer. 

/

and a blackbird lit red in the ruddy purple dusk seems stuck

in spindly frequencies of tree silhouette.

from my stuck spot 

in the soft squelch,

the bird is caught. 

/

In fear, I close my eyes

and the view from heaven lays bare its darker secrets: 

flying through star bursts of blindness,

I spread my armwings and white february zooms by and march slings through the night and april drops like a stone and may says hello as she floats into the purple moon 

and when I wake from the not sleeping-dreaming,

standing up, 

ankle deep

in the cool mud

/

the me-blob has sprouted angel wings!

perfect angles indented

contours into the fine marrow of rocks.

the secret marrow seems

as delicate as the tree fingers 

that cling to it, embracing

its feverous grasping growing 

with knowing arms as wide as a blue planet,

width, exaggerated by its aura of sapphire empty brilliance,

the haunted void that is not soft,

cannot rot for lack of rock.  

/

I am so tiny 

surrounded by cities of my drip castles

/

I am so tiny 

standing at the foot

of angel-shaped void where earthmarrow

peaks through 

/

smiling a delicately faceless gift of smiling

the earth's face is a hyperbole of myth

though my babytooth mouth and little petal tongue prays its comfortable story

a  millennium where i stand at the beginning 

beneath the black silhouette of a tree

at dusk

 

you know... theres a lady gaga quote that I can't get out of my mind...its about how she sometimes hates to sleep with people because she feels like they're stealing her creativity. or something.

at first...it sounds stupid. but the quote just wont leave my head. and I've come around. its for the same reason that I refuse to let somebody who i personally do not believe is (more or) equally as intelligent as I am ...even touch me. and when it gets right down to it, in the past when i've been with people who aren't...i feel like they're stealing something from me. like im giving them something they can't give back to me equally. like the loss of respect for myself is a result of a sexual measurement that fell short intellectually. 

so, lady gaga, despite all those caricature cartoons that depict musical notes coming out of your vagina...

 

i feel you on that one. 

 

creativity is like osmosis. it doesn't belong to anyone. its an interchange. a flow. and if its denser in one area...it flows to the area of less density.

don't fuck stupid people. (and by stupid, I mean people who think within the repetitive patterns thrust upon them, people who are satisfied with mediocrity, who accept the unbeautiful and don't know the difference.)

they'll gladly take the more liveable world you create for them but they will only give hard ugly realism in return.