Nearly

"Nearly" only counts in horseshoes, handgrenades, and h-bombs. Let's leave such dickery alone. Too much consideration of your penile endowment shrinks your constitution. Constitution is what keeps the old raft afloat. Tethers and twigs, bamboo and faith. You can't drown as long as you make preparation for what could happen and then leave it to god and nature. Nanu and I were laying on a sofa once, young and fresh with our legs tangled together in a rope of dark skinned affection. We were laughing hysterically that we couldn't die. We were young, after all, and the young don't die. My life was never easy, even when I took it lightly, and I remember telling her that there was a chance that we -could- die, but then "so what?" I told her that dead isn't so bad in so many words. The beautiful girl that she was once rode me on an electric fan. Weird and witchly ways they were. Like nature's orchestra allowing the resonance, the harmonic, the mathematical perfection indulge in itself. When I heard that she died nearly instantly my eye sparkled. Not out of joy, but with an amorous reverence to divinity and her ways.

A man told me, "Pride isn't poisonous. It won't kill you to swallow it." He also told me, "Who is worse off: the fool or the one arguing with a fool." Wise words from that old cadger. I'm presently breaking up with my girlfriend, Ramona. In many ways she's perfect for me. Somehow I'm unsatisfied. She's a lawyer and sees the world through lenses with arbitrary lines and codes and judgements. I am a creator, a levitator, an actor and a lover. She mocks me and has sabotaged my therapy by calling my "magical thinking" childlike and sick. To me, the world is sick enough and my reaction and ways are absolutely natural. Sid once told me that everything we know is natural, or it wouldn't be. He had his sinister snicker rolling around and his tongue nearly stretched out and handed that one to me. It flipped my world like those glasses that you get used to after a few hours or days. Then when you take them off, right side up is upside down.

Relativity is real. Contrast is real. High thread count sheets are my shangri-la. I don't know a lot, but I can hide in libraries and books, between legs and sheets. The dreams a dreamer dreams. The music that mates my nights and days. The shame that doesn't come off in the shower no matter if I sing, "It ain't no sin to take off my skin and dance around in my bones." Those albatross are ridden with pain and I'll have no more of them, thanks. They told me when I was just a boy that I was special. They didn't tell me I was a god, demigod, psychopomp or prophet. They just told me I was special. When I compete, I pray for the beauty of my adversaries. In many ways I'm a good Christian boy. A manchild of American penance. Don't ask me to whip myself though, I'll likely spit in your face or steal the silver from your kitchen. A man must prove his primate heritage or he might lose his way through the divine cosmos.

Do you encounter much those who want to correct you, that want to show you how to become them? I've had it with all that. I know how to live believe it or not. I've done it by hook or by crook for 30 years and I'm not giving up my ghost just yet. I've been struck down, spat upon, shat upon and slapped. I've been villainised, despised, adored, and deplored. One must remember those fine lines between madness and genius, love and hate, and sea and sky. Recently I had to make myself promise that I wouldn't stare at the sun. Then I was left for days with only night. It feels very much like god is trying desperately to tell me to do what my heart says. My heart doesn't lie. My head lies like a flying carpet. Al bisat al tayer.

The voices of angels and demons speak through the sick mens' tongues. Listen up and you may hear a thing or two. Old man Mario knew, and those before him. I'm no psychiatrist but I can tell you that those who go mad actually see a few things that aren't imagination or delusion. Sometimes the concrete and glass, the rubber and gas will drive a monkeyman mad. Then they want to shut his barbed and venemous speech down, cut him out of the picture, and at best medicate the magic out of him. What's left? Not much more than a monkey.

Priests and boxers know that a man can grow very strange and powerful if he doesn't relieve his sexual appetite. I've done my bids. There's something in women that make a man calm. Then they drive him insane. I'd swear if I've learned anything it's that the women I've known are the ones who would pluck the wings off a dragonfly and nurse him back to health. You've got to be careful when you engage in that ancient ritual, the battle and the sanctuary. Keep your head up, hold your tongue and your pen and don't touch yourself too much and you may find you know what I'm talking about. Manamanah.

I love you, old boy. Never underestimate life. Just when you think you've learned a thing or two you might find you've only got what you need. The rest is nearly masturbation.