TCAHR - Better Living Through Memetics

Issue 21
The Champlain Verses                                03/07/01
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Champlain isn't the kind of city you keep a travel journal
of.  It's a small college town full of people who wouldn't
know a real good time if it sat on their collective faces
and wiggled.  Does that mean I have no stories to tell from
my latest vacation?

I have them alright.  The Jet had his heart rubbed raw for
those three whole weeks.  It is no one's fault but my own.
Just when you think you've killed off the love instinct--
WHAMO!  Heartbreak.  Depression.  Stupidity.

The funny thing about unrequited love is how it opens the
doors to all those other painful memories running around in
your head.

So let's set the scene to the cafe in your head.  Picture a
man-child in black pea coat and beret, beard a-wagging,
rubbing at the pain in his chest, and getting ready to throw
down a few beatniky beats.  Dim the lamps and light a
cigarette and read on.  By the end, you can make your own
conclusions on if the winner was love or the Jaguar.
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BRUTALITY OF MEN

The greeting card and words unwritten are left undelivered;
Enshrined in emotion and enslaved within useless endevours;
While mistaken words delivered in jealousy and haste;
Has separated my love in measures of distance and time.
The years continue to disappoint as I find other faces
   bland and other minds weak;
And a sweetness which once filled me has gone dry;
Faith and ideals cast down by an insecure and heavy hand;
Are now ground dust by the feet of her receding image.

My love is gone and has left a brute behind.
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THE LOVE OF GHOSTS

In the absence of form imagination flows unchecked;
Memories are strange and unreliable but not without
   pleasurable afterglows;
This body which refrains from touch and lives on dreams;
Would rather keep desire checked and subside on lies;
He has always felt safer in the mistrust of strong emotion;
And would rather kiss lips of ether than those of flesh.
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JUAN RAMOS DIAZ

I awoke this morning full of hatred for you and myself;
And wishing I could kill your code out of me;
I can never forgive you for leaving me nothing but
   inferiority as my inheritance;
A body which envies and burns with humiliation in the
   presence of the strength and handsomeness of my
   half-brothers;
I've spent my youth raised by a mad-woman and uncaring men
   as you drank your death in dirty cold basements;
With no father to teach me how to be a man and do
   man-things I now walk aimlessly while suffering the
   indignities of being more boy than adult;
Your few chances of being a teacher were spent dragging a
   sleepy scared child through the slums begging;
Lately I find myself wondering whether I chose a life of
   celibacy or whether I never had a choice at all;
It is for the potential of love that I could never have a
   child that would be half of me and a fourth of you;
So you left me nothing but a life alone where I fantasize
   about an impossible after-life;
I look forward to smacking your face in Hell.
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RESIGNED, I LOSE

During late night hands of poker I realize that I have been
   dealt a bad hand every night for the past three years;
Playing games and never suceeding except in making minimal
   gains for your heart;
Other arms are capable of holding on to you while the bodies
   connected fall easily into your bed;
Those who have known you for only a short time receive the
   embraces I have longed for since I told you of my love;
With great regrets and a pile of emotions expended and laid
   out on the table I fold;
And I leave without so much as a kiss to find another game;
Perhaps there are easier and less rewarding prizes to win.
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SCHRODINGER'S BITCH

To say that I have chosen among a wave of infinite
   possiblities would be a lie;
As the meme-gene mix that is me has been environmentally
   narrowed into predictable paths and each vibrates at the
   speed of hopelessness;
Choices?  The choices have been made before during and after
   me by the collapse of chance and probability;
I merely ebb and flow in their wake--a particle of
   uselessness moved by the observance and interference of
   others;
Choices?  I choose to despair at chaos and pretend to be a
   mountain of stability;
Don't care whether I'm alive or dead within this human skin
   box;
I'm just waiting for quantum-come.
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AFTERSHOCKS OF THE LAST PEDESTAL

At last the last pedestal has been kicked over and not a
   muscle twitched as the final goddess of glass clashed
   into the floor;
And this icon which I cared for will be dusted and offered
   flowers no more;
With my return to my city I gather the strength which had
   failed me in closing the doors to this mental chamber;
And I will leave the shards of devotion and love unswept and
   unremembered;
I won't need them where I'm going;
I am intrigued by an experiment upon myself where man
   becomes beast again in the immersion of reality untainted
   by fantasy;
I am intrigued by the idea of a predator of desire chewing
   on the blinded ones;
I am intrigued--so I close the doors and walk outside of my
   mind and into my city;
The skyline has never looked so delicious.
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tcahr@hotmail.com                             Copyright 2001