Kenning JP GarcÍa
DUSK
“... to be cleansed of question. / But not of seeking...” (Ed Roberson)
Comfort is an empty church. Skin on skin never felt the way it was supposed to. The way it was described from the classics to the contemporaries. Some sorts of things are not good at creating good impressions, first nor otherwise.
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Tonight will always feel longer than any yesterday.
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“The world is impossible... Let it go... Blessed is laziness... too lazy to get up, or fall back asleep... Progress is laziness.” (Laziness - Andrei Voznesensky)
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Intuition tells on itself. Sells itself out for lowest bidders. Just wants to speak up. Be heard. But beware, once a vision is seen, it’s compromised.
Thought about how plots took a moment to plan. Fucked with an outline for a night. Flirted with sketches. But it’s always only a fling. Nothing lasts. Not even the shit that started it all. The world is warmer than was heard or maybe travel is just another short term solution.
What that nigga say in that one Goines’ joint? “A new day is necessary.” Yeah, one that starts in the black. Can’t take no more of this red. Been fucked up. Been fed up. But can remember before being drunk. Before being pissed about how much longer the night was made by hunger. Couldn’t wait to be uppity but downfall always got in the way. It’s a world held tight by a core never giving up surfaces.
Waves rise up then curl, fold over, fall. But break? Daybreak snaps the night and breakfast ends the fasting that sleep has created but break? Where are the words that feel closer to what the world feels as actions take place? As actions take places? Become outlines more so than details?
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This shouldn’t be real. It’s hopeful that it’s not. Nothing is good. Even less is fair. Reality does its best at middling. The centricity of zeroes zero in on here. This is here. That is there. There is this. Here is that. Absolute values will be shown absolutely by distance achieved. By proximity approved.
It’s always before the after. It’s always after the before. A morning after. There has to be one at the end of the day.
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Brightest.
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Take a minute. Indulge. Divest. Look around. Exit the smells that don’t excuse the sounds. That don’t complement the touch of an aroma that stays in touch. Calls and recalls. Was that meat on a grill? It might not have been. Faint is a problem full of pressures pressing down in faded attempts at recognition. Or the sense itself betrays itself.
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There’s a letter to right. To the letter. Letter of the law. An uncorrected proof is circulating. Old yet serviceable. Still works. Gets something done. Puts the ish in finish. Is close enough. Is good enough when fair enough has gone on holiday.
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But when it comes time to keep it real, where is real for the keeping? Out the window. Ain’t out on the street at this time unless it’s looking for a lesson. Fear comes fast. Anxiety is a catcall. Dread a catchall. The wind wolf whistles worries into actualities.
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Can’t find the hips to fit the jeans of this mood.
Dusk
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Two dead parents and a dead end job. Two options - angry or sad. The dialectic doesn't offer up enjoyment anymore. Or, maybe that's bullshit too. A new con the ghetto forgot to teach its youth. Or, perhaps sympathy ain't nothing but some sort of white folks' Wile E Coyote type of scheming. Don't worry, it'll all come together someday but not someday soon. It's been a jigsaw life. It'll be a crosswords future.
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Plant-based guilt puts down roots. Never planned to end up here, this way, such as this here thinking about all the ways to lessen suffering in a world that doesn't care about anybody's suffering. The world isn't cruel, just apathetic. The world itself. The land, sea, and air can't accommodate everybody. The world as far as people go, well there's always more betrayal to come. That's not indifferent. That's very specific so maybe there were some lies in what has been said here even if it wasn't heard. Honesty isn't as readily available as it should be. Its absence is a cause of suffering. It's a seed, this lacking, that expands, grows, and eventually bears fruit of more emptiness. A loss too untempting to taste but with a feeling that is unavoidable.
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Maybe one day all consciousness will just fade away. Die and be sought after by grief or faith or whomever enjoys the afterlife less. Whoever goes to the other side has to come back with a new consciousness reborn by what was seen among the shadows.
Headline: Beyond vegan burgers: next-generation protein could come from air, methane, volcanic springs.
So, is reading or thinking more helpful right now?
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Where's the initiative? Been back and forth on getting going. Want it all. Want all the go and all the stay. Need a moment for a new mood to get uncomfortable. Let a mood get too big for the room so that there's no choice but to leave. That's one way to get going. That's what the wrong side of the bed is for.
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Just the other day Curiosity took pictures of its "prison" on Mars.
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"The broken blade is the Negro." (Virginia Woolf - the Waves) How broken? A clean break or a jagged edge left as a reminder of the snap and separation.
This is the beginning again, vague and pointless yet the story remains poignant or becomes so. Before is near to after. The distance between the two is negligible. And it's becoming harder to remember. Recollection has a feel, a texture, and a heft. Firm but malleable. Volume switches. Width is aleatory and up for grabs to the highest bidder. What does not bid on before to get at after? After is so desperate. After owns a precise loneliness and action or inactivity. Next shifts and interrupts the perfection that has already left and been away too long now.
The phrase stays the same in the presence of all-consuming quotation marks but finds refuge in cage of parentheses and the clause assembled in the face of sensation. Sensing loses its center in the name of love. The places see the line growing and slowing. Before must be torn asunder while after is without a cornerstone. No foundation. Slippery slope upon which to build a new church.
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This is the ending again. Watch out for circumstances swimming upstream to spawn.
Dusk
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“If this is all, this is worthless... Where then is the break in this continuity?” (Virginia Woolf - the Waves)
There are memes to an end. There's a rhythm to this repetition. A tempo to the killing of time, one picture at a time, familiar and new. An ephemeral cliché - changing slightly for sake of a laugh. Are these worth it while ignoring the tasks still up late at this hour of all hours at the end of the day, darkest before the after? The seasons resurrect some classics. The winter is a genre in and itself. Back to work. Why can't the sticker just remain where it lay? What a waste of art. It was art wasn't it? The stuff of labels are art, right? Upstairs, downstairs. Instairs, outstairs. Where is Buckminster for an answer? Fuller is dead again before these questions.
Inquiries ripple at the edge of the inscapes where outside and inside meet where boats set sail and dock. Where nobody forgets about the pirates mentioned earlier in the night.
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Better off dead than asleep. No good to anybody in bed or anywhere caught up in the solace of a nap. Death at least is something to rally the troops. Martyrs are motivation and can be made from captains and scallywags alike.
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Replenished!?! Not even sleep can replenish dreams. Rest is not worth the work it takes to get to sleep but to stay in bed all day is a fantasy fulfilled.
Or quite the opposite. The protagonist has been removed from the story. One pity does not lead to another. Pity is not a bronco to bust. What value does a buckaroo have on this prairie? On this ranch or on this cattle drive? It's a rodeo of emotions. This is no place for a greenhorn.
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A picture is not a fact. There are portfolios full of lies. Movies are yarns spun out. Moving falsities that have helped form this and here as reality reflects the art of the sequential and visual con arts. The only truth is the staging. The rest is a beautiful betrayal. Facts are hard to trust when there are so many feelings to contest. Conjecture and debate arise to ask what works? Whatever works is held onto forever. Ghosts, gods, aliens. Sorrow, anger, and joy until one enters the after or returns to the before. One is a time traveler as time traveling is needed. One needs a relief from when as well as where.
One is an accountant and actuary of the selves and the otherness of those selves.
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This life is only commandeered. The ghetto is full of privateers but not thugs. That chaos isn't there as the original definition spoke to. The chaos is the wind and waves while the rest is orderly under a special set of rules. The weather may be rough or calm, the money flowing, vessels pass by, pass through, everybody gotta keep it moving. Can't stall for the unexpected. Adapt and get while the getting is good. Get an attitude to fit the environment. The local conditions aren't competition. It's all setting. The actor acts. The speech acts also.
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Death rattles. Death grips. Makes a spectacle of itself and its undying loyalty. Unconditional love. The end and the conclusion are indifferent to one another and the coda is all artificial ingredients. Selves die everyday. Others exist. Continue to exist. Then don't. Before there were others. Afterwards there will be one. The singularity believes in itself and requires no agreement. The horizon has no sense of empathy. One day the event will occur. What happens next will be new or it will be as before.
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This is all a distraction. Thinking back. Thinking forward. Thinking. Thoughts are sandcastles as the tide looks to rise. As the shore readies itself for the hit.
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Is this all crazy talk? Crazy thoughts? How is one supposed to occur in world made of science and fantasy? The hood and the classics forced upon a younger person's understanding of reading?
The blade is broken. The wild horses are not.
Read too many comic books to not consider the multiversity. The before could be a Western or a swashbuckling tale. The after could be first contact or a result of artificial intelligence. The now might be a shift behind a broom. The broom before the T500e scrubs the tiles. Two floors. Instairs and outstairs needing to be cleaned.
Dusk
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This is a love story and a ghost letter. The blade broke to trying to separate the two.
Is the fire burning for warmth or for light?
Well, cowpoke, what kind of cows are these? Leather, beef, dairy? So much suffering on the ranch. On the range. Home, home on the range.
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Night terrors and the pursuit of nothingness. Happiness is a dream that only brings more sleep paralysis. Been on the road more than once, tried to catch some shut eye, met with nightmares instead. Couldn't get out. Couldn't get away. Lucidity failed and had to ride it out hoping other passengers weren't subjected to screams from this body. Sensations never sleep. Feelings haunt. Memory is a lover that won't leave when the leaving is good. Recollection is always worse for the wear. Remembrance is worn out. The search is lost but is ready for any emergencies.
Out in the woods stumbling. To trip is human but to fall is angelic.
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On time and on schedule. In correspondence with the clock. By comparison, or in proportion to a lack of desire. Don't want to be here. Tired of thriving on misery as Tupac once sang out. And furthermore the hour is ringing in 60 minute increments against all odds who would ask for another 5 minute smoke break.
But rounds are 3 minutes and leave a minute between one another for listening and catching breath. Holding onto a moment of reprieve that the world never willingly wanted to give up but as time is money, entertainment is really big money.
And, there still ain't no war on poverty. Some things will never change.
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Who is up now? Who wants to talk? Never mind. This is the moment of mourning. No sense in trying to connect.
Checked the email, read about some motherfucker not worth reading about. Not happy for nobody. Set transcendence back by another lifetime. 100 miles and running except the realest nigga was left behind. Never have dinner with the president.
Go to bed, these hours ain't for everybody. Work or play. Pleasure is out of the question.
Everywhere except here. Trying to consider better days but where? Can't laugh. Don't play. Even playfights got real way too soon.
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"Hello. The motherfuckin world is a ghetto." (Ice Cube)
Wanted to switch up attitudes. Gave a lot of other options some opportunities but at the end, in the end, what came before will always exist. The after doesn't get any thanks it will one day get. The before occurred without appreciation and so here now continues in its own moment owning itself for its own sake. Ain't no reason to give shout outs to other moments. Nostalgia moved out as soon as it could. Found a better neighborhood, got tired of sentimentality always taking the nigga route to keep it real.
Nostalgia and sentimentality came up on the streets together. Was family, cousins, but never was synonyms. Never meant the same thing. Never stood for the same shit.
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"Nostalgia: a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time." (Dictionary.com)
Nostalgia needed sentimentality, the sentimental, the sentiment. Sentimentality never asked for any help. Was always about itself. For itself. Except when sentimentality gives in to its own understanding of its own mentality becomes a way of thinking, being, existing. The only way to proceed. To proceed is the after of to occur. It's how the before considers the end of the day. How the darkest is always before.
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A new day is necessary. No time for like, share, comment. Time to skip the social and the media. Every word gets the scrutiny it deserves as it touches the air aimed at ears, at eyes, avoids touch, taste, smell receives the sixth sense treatment it gets. Vocabulary and semantics willed to be taxed as syntax sees fit.
Not trying to pun through these ideas. Not trying to play words' games. Not one for playing. No time for games. Lost too many pieces to the set to keep on playing. Only thing left is the board. The game is broken. This nigga is broke. Every day is work. Every sound is miserable, struggling, suffering to be set free. Free to fight.
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"Always kept it real from the very start (very start)
Niggas ain't thorough...
Damn, the game left...heavy heart (heavy heart)
The streets left...heavy heart (heart)... gave this hustle everything" (Meek Mill)
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Rechercher. To search. To look again. Relook. To search is an act of repetition. To search is to to research. Linearity be damned. Enter co-occurence. Re-enter co-occurence. Pre-enter co-occurence.
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Next logical step landed on the landing where passion would descend. Go instairs away from heaven but back into the earth. Find its roots in the core. Leave behind the souls and spirits ascending. Reasonably vacate the streets. Deathless but beyond living as living is so seen.
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"Deathless... Left for dead in the streets / Whatever happens, whatever happened" (Ibeyi)
"a nigga gotta pay the fucking rent" (Tupac)
"what makes symmetry nonsense" (Virginia Woolf - the Waves)
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Remote. By remoteness, controlled. Phantoms lead the way (present and past tense). something sticks. Gets wrapped around a thought. This is suspicion.
Aliens and astronauts have eyes that are not to be believed. Tuesday came before Monday. As Tuesday once again will come after Monday but with less distance put between the two yet meanwhile, some pupils would feel free to float away. Some irises would travel above rainbows then come down containing different mysteries. These eyes now hard as hell fancy new fancies. Or hard as hail rain, pour out something else of a different composure. A different purpose. Containing a fancy another for identity. An active attraction streaming into the darkest of matters.
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Ghosts are not invisible but differently sensed.
Kenning JP García is the author of OF (What Place Meant). Xe is a diarist and that’s about it. What else is there really to say about anybody? Xe exists for now. Maybe.