Andrew Spiess

Written in wrinkles are senseless obsessions printed like incurable diseases.
And on a need-to-know basis, words become contagious killers, saturating the air like graffiti on a wall.
Our minds are easily infested with laughing pests, speaking of false intelligence and very few would rather rot in the corners of sterilization until it’s safe to move on.
We have been told that our heads are full of sin and viruses and disability.
Give me pills. Quickly fix me. Forgive me.
We are force fed the newest diet plan.
We have been diagnosed with profitability syndrome. They tell us we are sick bugs who need them.
Five-thousand dollar burial box.
Headlines and controversy and commercials fed intravenously into our veins. Catheter full of excitement and concern.
The nurse vigorously licks the bottom of a coffee cup in front of a beeping screen.
Entertainment is the late breaking news on the lives of our most well-known, no-talent alcoholics and cokeheads.
This stylish exploitation is a fashion statement.
What they’re looking for is blood on the pavement.
These filthy, self-proclaimed professors wade in shallow wastewater and don’t bother to wash their feet sensibly.
My body feels like a chunk of raw meat, salted and seasoned for the geniuses to eat.
Even as we migrate, the spread bites us.
Our only solutions come in silent syringes blinding sight and attention.
Focus our wrath and cold apathy and see what’s happening.
Take the vaccine, a suppressor in a subtle shot.
Wipe the insecticide from your eyes!
This is the apocalyptic lecture of social skin spots.

Listen, you need to focus! Stop pacing aimlessly in your kitchen. Stop talking to yourself. You must find your wallet, your cigarettes, and your cell phone. You need to find a lighter. Get money fast. If there isn’t any money in your wallet, use your bank card at the ATM. Don’t worry about overdrawing if your account is low in funds; you can pay it back later when you get hired somewhere after submitting those job applications to the several restaurants around the city like you’ve been meaning to do. There is also a phone number on a strip of paper lying around for a bike messenger job that you ripped off the bulletin board at the Laundromat that you go to. Relax. Maybe the Laundromat is hiring.

Your wallet is probably under all the trash on the coffee table. Check under the magazines, ashtrays, and empty cigarette packs. Your cigarettes are probably mixed in with all the empty packs. Shake them all until you hear something rattling inside other than loose scraps of tobacco; search for something solid. There is a chance that you might find a single forgotten cigarette. Nothing? Nevermind. There’s your cell phone, under the photograph of your mother smiling and drinking iced tea on the patio back in California. Put that in a place where you won’t see it. You will not think about your mother. You will not miss her.

Call that guy Pockets. You should have his number. Did you see him a few days ago, or was that last week? Nevermind because there is his number. He told you he would front you again if you paid him back. He likes you. Don’t ask him for his real name even though you want to because it’s not a good idea to get too personal with people like him and it’s all just business anyway so forget about making friends for now. Just find your wallet.

Search under the couch cushions. Nothing but some pennies and plastic wrappers. Are those your cigarettes? You must feel so relieved. Now, find yourself a lighter. Move the couch and check underneath. Don’t put the cushions back because it’ll add that little bit of weight and you don’t want to strain yourself. You are too tired for that, and you don’t have time either. What do you see under there? Nothing but crumpled plastic bags, fast food trash, and cigarette butts. There’s a lighter! Reach for it and test it out. Is it empty? Shake it up. It must be completely dry. Forget it. Just find your wallet.

Look around on the floor. It’s that simple. This place is a mess. Everything you see belongs in the dumpster. And maybe you eat too much fast food. You should take care of yourself. You should vacuum. Make a note to clean yourself up and organize your belongings later. Is that the number for that bike messenger job? What is that tiny piece of red material behind it? It’s a portion of a pill. There must be at least twenty milligrams left. That’s all you need to balance yourself. Once this is in your system you won’t feel sick anymore. You don’t have enough to get high, which would be ideal, but at least you won’t feel this disease and depression that has been dragging the skin on your face down all night and causing your eyes and nose to leak like a sieve. Your bones won’t feel so hollow and fragile. You’ll even be awake enough to begin submitting job applications, and you should probably call your mother.

But you need a dollar bill and something to grind the pill with. First, rub the red casing off with some spit and a tissue. If you can’t find a grinder, find the closest Wal-Mart in your immediate proximity and buy some hose clamps. It works as a miniature grate to grind a pill into a pile of fine white dust. In order to buy these, you need to find your wallet. Buy several hose clamps for when you lose one, because you will lose one. You will lose them all eventually.

Remember: there might be a dollar bill in your wallet. Just relax. All you need to do right now is smoke a cigarette, but your eyelids are falling. Maybe you should make some coffee. You shouldn’t sleep even when you’re tired, when you’re too exhausted to function properly.

Ivy climbs up
the resilient trunk
of an oak tree,
choking, but
there is no struggle.
Light can barely touch
the cracked bark
as the ivy wraps
around gnarled arms.
There will be no blossoming
of leaves in the spring
but the leaves of the vines
will always shine
and cover and thrive.

Lemon scented fumes
Make the skeptics believe in lemons.

Spray more of it,
Manipulate the air.

The screen and I share a stark adamant gaze
Eyes of salt water
Eyes made of white grain

Grinding red lines around
Cavernous blackness: staring

Into sharp cerulean high pitch
Switch to color blocks

Or the chieftain’s serious profile mugshot:
It’s not funny.

Chief displays the hunger of someone
And I am weeping as I should be.
I need to blink now
According to schedule.

Watch the air cook
On the bricks of a wall and simmer
In the sunlit spaces outside
For hours
Until it changes into a thick black.

There is a natural grease
Coating my eyes as well as the world,
Helping me easily slip
Into soft sleep,
Plummet into a solid dream.

Gather 200 people
To push the earth so it mills
On its axis with madness
Until everyone has lost
A year of life.

Do not shake machine. Shake hands.
Grazing the walls with my palms,
I tend to leak between cracks and fingers.
How big is the gap between two sets of eyes?
Nothing means everything anymore.

Spend a night coughing
Behind a stranger.
Do not speak or make eye contact.
Do this often with different people
And develop a glaring affection.

It hurts to be here, to stand by the window,
to see the clock, watch the hour drip,
and wait until it’s already late.
A television stutters with small talk.
The blackness of the windows from the inside
makes me think there isn’t enough to observe
and sometimes my eyes burn at night
When I stare at the single dim glimmer.
The black air presents a streetlamp,
a grin with a gold tooth, the darkest mouth
and an aggressive gesture that bends a tree.
Black air doesn’t speak but pretends it will
and I just want it to stop.
The sound close to ink.
The hour leaks, bleeds if I hit it hard enough.
Never shouting enough.

I can feel something punching against the inside of my ribcage
like it’s trying to break out, trying to escape.
Often it stalks behind my eyelids
and scrapes against the inside of my skull.
I always feel it moving inside.
Its face is like a gripping fist
or a flickering light bulb with four-fingered hands
and dress shoes at the ends of wire-thin legs.
Sometimes it makes my eyes water.
Sometimes it drags the skin on my face down
and I can’t help but spit and cough dust.
I talk to it every night, let it know it’s nothing
but a personal thing and I swallow it down again
and smoke cigarettes until it sleeps.

1
On an off-white bathroom wall, a clock ticks. Analog face. A clock that attracts eyes. Begs for a short moment of attention, delivers guilt when guilt is deserved. A ticking that hammers nails into studs of concentration. A ticking that plucks nerves. There is a snap of a whip that can be felt on the backs of those who sleep at the wrong hours. Disobedience. Lashing in equal intervals. Straight hands are never wrong.

The hand strikes
Every notch fixed
With a balance of space

2
Riding my bike down streets and sidewalks, I saw a young boy walking along the narrow top of a short stonewall holding his father’s hand. And while holding his father’s hand, he fell down and hit his head on the sidewalk. Further along the path a little old man with a long white beard jumped to one side, shrieking, as I passed by, but I would have avoided him. I wonder who should feel secure.

father and son
smiling, hands tightly locked
behind a demolished wall.

3
Waiting through hours. In New Orleans by 2:11pm on the Wednesday before the New Year. We’re all tired after crawling through long hours on the road. We’re all excited to be here. I’ve already seen skeletons of abandoned houses in the wrecked neighborhoods left after the hurricane. Our room is high up in a skyscraper and looking out of the window down at the city is like looking into a video screen or watching a simulation of reality. I’m tired but I won’t be able to sleep until I witness this solid, city, its hard concrete walls, streets and sidewalks, and its fragility.

Crude messages
scrawled on walls and sidewalks
in reckless spray paint.

4
I crashed my bike into a bush by a sidewalk. Cars drove on at the intersection where I paused on my knees. The concrete scraped some of the skin on my left palm off and the wound stung. There was blood. I stood up, fixed the chain on my bike, and rode off as the adrenaline ran through my veins in torrents.

A hot trail,
The sun leaks from a wound
At the eastern horizon.

5
At the restaurant, I reach into my pocket and drop a handful of dusted rolled-up dollar bills on the counter. The cashier and I stare at each other for a stretched moment and much like a wide-eyed dull gorilla, much like nothing, he clears his throat and hands me my receipt.

Listen buddy,
Just give me
My tacos.

6
The wind was rushing with the force of an endless train. I climbed up a loose ladder to reach the Pagliai’s Pizza sign: “PANCAKE BREAKFAST AT THE VFW 10-2”. I removed most of the letters, while holding on to the sign to resist the hazard, and set them on the narrow platform where I stood. The same way that kids run off laughing, the letters blew away, scattering and cracking in the parking lot, and there was nothing I could do. I only needed to spell out “VEGETABLE SOUP”.

Running pests –
I chase the letters
Of the alphabet

Alone on a dark pastel neighborhood. I drop and stand tall on a friend’s porch while casual, caustic cop cars watch and pass by. They have nothing on me. I am simply a standard presentation of Young Eccentric Humanity. The mad eyes in my mad head glow with specks of black and grey like a static TV. I feel enlightened and can’t stop laughing. My only plan is to smoke a pack of cigarettes and maybe try to sleep, though I know I’ve just sacrificed the ability; I smashed my machine with a single tab, disconnected for only a momentary holiday. Squads of thought invade me like an imaginary charge. It’s almost too much to handle, but I can’t stop laughing. Music leaks from an open window with warmth and happiness swells inside my stomach. As I perch myself on a ledge like an alert cat, I only begin to notice the significance of light from streetlamps smeared on shiny parked cars. I begin to notice significance. I lose sense of time and deconstruct myself while I try to confide in burning tobacco. My vision becomes profoundly stylized and smoke always dances with the liveliest temper and the shadows drape under trees and everything feels great from up here and I can’t stop laughing.

I have heard some striking stories on the effects of LSD on a person’s rationality and logic from people that I know. These are people whose minds have been slightly warped due to a thriving market and culture. Consumers crippled by the products they demand so fervently. It is fairly well known today that marijuana smoke is extensively more harmful than tobacco smoke, yet I frequently come across flyers around campus suggesting an organized effort to legalize marijuana. The conflict seems to be amusement vs. health. But civilization has been infused with passion and excitement with the rise of intoxicants. Risky impulses have been fulfilled with the rise of intoxicants. Every day life isn’t such a droning, bitter and bland routine when we disintegrate and disorganize. We hold infinite perspective in the palms of our hands. Recreational drug use is a way of life among the curious youth that cannot be willingly resigned. How can we give it up?

The perceptions of the effects of drugs on people today are radically different than they were in the 1960s. Back then, the psychedelic van strolled down the American road full of loving animals. Psychedelia first became a lifestyle and a major component for the intellectual type. Drugs were the right way to increase creativity and mental power. They were imbued with a spiritual nature and were not illicit. Drugs were innocent. An entire culture of people tightened its affectionate bear hug around mind alteration and kissed the pipe. Hippies weren’t even the first counterculture to compete with mainstream structure; the Beat Generation embraced marijuana and mescaline, among other drugs, as a means of perspective as well.

Drugs have now become, for the most part, a venture of escapism much like our beloved television, video game console, and fantasy novel. Maybe it has always been that way. I cannot say that this is either good or bad. Most classrooms are too dull, most jobs are too repetitive, most lines are too straight, and most people are too bored. This is a matter of simple pleasure. It is the cold numb space that I drift in when I’m high. The self-inflicted glitch in my machine. It paints the walls with intense technicolor, adds action to my stable life. I close my eyes and watch strands of radiance swirling like a screensaver. And as it wears off, I get dragged down to the solid world. Indole alkaloids, such as acid and psychedelic mushrooms, have more than once left me as a sickly sewer rat in the dull grasp of The Ordinary by the end of the day. My throat dries up. The nutrients in my body get depleted. Everything that could be considered good about it is entirely fleeting. We soon regain strength, replenish. Wait a few weeks and you figure out that the feeling is so utterly temporary and all you want to do is buy more products. Maybe the impermanence doesn’t even cross your mind, but either way you still want more. Sometimes I don’t know if I need it more than I want it, or vice versa, but it feels good and that’s what really matters. The key word is hedonism.

Aside from abusing drugs for the sake of amusement, we self-medicate with them to muddle through cruel emotional troubles. Alcohol is one, if not the only socially acceptable means of self-medication. Drugs are a coping mechanism. Those prone to fear tend to lift off in illicit shuttles. Depression rises from our fiery bodies for the street merchants to extinguish. Sometimes we feel guilty when in a stressful state, as if depression and rage are simply the wrong emotions to feel. We could blame this societal approach on a frustrating dependency upon demanding institutions, vague and deceptive advertising, public relations scams, fake primetime comedies, etc. Commercials for fresh medication tell us how to function and offer their pricy comforting solutions. In a consumerist society, we as average citizens are given a small number of options in life and are persuaded to buy supplies for bliss. If we are not fully aware of what we’re hearing and why we’re hearing it, we end up convincing ourselves of how we should think and feel based on what snake-tongued profiteers say. Thus, we resort to self-medication in order to obey and fit like puzzle pieces within typical human organization. Many drugs are stress relievers, but the fact is that some are legal and some are not.

But there is more than one type of salesman: the above mentioned Street Merchant. I’ve heard the argument that drugs are first and foremost a financial institution. Cocaine is powdered cash and marijuana is as green as the dollar bills that may or may not be in your wallet or bank account. Criminal organizations all over the world are fueled by feel-good toxins. Street gangs in dirty urban areas frequently release blood over drugs. It is a thriving, violent market. A dealer once told me he is a businessman before a junkie. I’m almost surprised that marijuana is still illegal when considering our capitalistic society and all the pill commercials on TV and all the stocked medicine cabinets across the nation.

Many components of popular culture have and will always embrace marijuana as the safest jail breaker. In the 60s, a kid could tune in to any radio station and hear lyrics of drug romance: the Grateful Dead, The Doors, etc. Weed still emanates from the words of hip hop and reggae, and there is a following in the genre of stoner metal. In any case, censorship has taken these references off of the airwaves. High Times is a strong proponent for recreational drug use, though it can be difficult to take this magazine seriously. Hollywood targets smokers with the outwardly delightful stoner movie, such as Half Baked and Friday. Reefer Madness, a film from the 1930s, is an anti-drug film yet it is regularly grouped in with stoner movies as ridiculous entertainment. In this sense, popular culture and the media can be subtly expressive and indirect of what is acceptable in the world when regarding recreational drugs.

Still, society is torn on how to handle drug abuse. Vast amounts of research have been conducted on all types of drugs since the late 60s. Physical addiction is the cold essence that our blood envelopes. Therefore, cocaine and heroine will never detach from a hard stigma. Our entire population is fully aware of the harmful possibilities of recreational drug use.  Information like this can be accessed all over the media. There are anti-drug websites with archives full of personal drug narratives. One could simply open a magazine or turn on his or her television and see an anti-marijuana public service announcement. These PSAs are also on posters and billboards across the country as well as all over the Internet. Media claims like these spit in the bloodshot eyes of drug inspired entertainment. Everyday we are subject to so many mixed messages on the topic of drugs through popular culture and popular news media by separate organizations with separate agendas. The key word is contradiction.

I’ll leave you with one last thought: consider the groups of people who flock together and assert themselves as “straight edge”. This basically means they take no part in substance abuse of any kind. They represent a conflicting subculture, coinciding with the punk music scene, to that of drug junkies. Thus, sobriety has become more of a definition, a lifestyle rather than something natural. It seems that society sleeps in constricting cabinets as we begin to dichotomize the natural aspects of our lives. This may signify how permanent drug culture has become and how it will continue to solidify over time.

An ellipsis and I hear the clock tick like whiplash.
Eyes wander towards the edges
of the yellow pages, I pay attention
to the ringtone of neon augmentation:
concrete fingers reaching up to
the wild sky growling over
a dense metropolis. A heavy gauntlet
cups the limitless muzzle.

Stirred into the platinum mass
I spend my curiosity pacing
Through revolving doors made of intangible glass,
scuffed boots smudging the smooth floor.
People shift in endless cycles like moths
beating against each other by the streetlamps,
like black and gray flecks on the television.

I haven’t slept all night and I’m not going to
Bear with me as I feel this town
Feels like a stuck pig
A rat actually
You are domesticated matter of some kind on a garnished platter
and I can’t relate.

Get laid immediately or get sedated or cut these open
But it only ever feels good for a moment.

Some don’t understand how much filth and rain there is
They are not convinced
They don’t think
It is past six
It is not early, it is late
and don’t you forget that.

This is important
I can’t stress that enough
and there isn’t enough space
there is structure.

I took a walk and saw two birds fighting
This kid I know, he is a fight
He doesn’t wake for simple pleasure
Those accepted conventions and cute sitcoms are placebos
Don’t you forget that.

Poor little city mops wear a lot of greasy t-shirts
and almost nod off by the stalling clock
and miss their mothers
and only want the feathers to expand as they flutter

I can’t sleep because of all the colors
Swimming in the thickness of values
Trying to dodge lapses of thought
I keep my red-hot confidence locked in a jar
and set my stomach on fire
and seethe while the authorities spit warped judgment

I don’t want to speak with them
I want to talk to you
on the telephone.
and as I blink my pink eyes, I become a god and evaporate
Consume this and fuck mediocrity.
and what is that medicine smell?
Get it away from me
I’m going to go take a piss and be disgusted.

The front. Thick green sweat. Condescending wet chops. Hot grease. All I need is cream all I got is foam. In the mouth of a hound. Brash motherfucker with a set of bone metal knuckles. Tense dog blending in with smoke and bricks. Harmless. Soft all the way through the inside. Sharp mask and erratic collar. War paint. Watching everyone get muzzled. Panicking over passing light-up cars. Crooked unremorseful uniform. Small Town is the name of a signpost shoved in a dry shallow hole. Disgusted underground kids. Manic youth confined in clinics. Big gap no exit. Blank off-white wall. Elaborate mural of boredom. Ok open up your skull. And as I stumble by an innocuous mutt on a leash I think damn he got fucked.

animal mind
all I ever want to do is
fuck and fight
we will not speak
we will grunt and howl
bare our teeth and breath heavily
all I ever need to do is
release
release your blood and instinct
salivate in front of a plasma TV
that would be nice

1
Condensed Measures.
Easy to swallow.
Painless activation.
No longer will you burn in meditation.
Have the dimensions of each day deflated?
Do your vital organs lack incentive?
Is every new second tightly
Wrapped in dry latex?
Now you can indulge in immediacy
Like those of the Excited!
Resurrect your mental children!
Fresh from our fever labs,
Liveliness of the mind and spirit
can be reformed once more.
Even tomorrow will stand on its feet
like a new born war horse.
Unleash your inner ravenous cartoons!
Animate your dying future!
For the exhausted populace
suffering from idle time and leisure,
our counteragents offer
a chorus of ambulances
to your auditory walls.
One dose will fill
your veins with sirens!

2
Premium reception has never been easier.
No compromises. No limitations. No conventions.
At last, we have siphoned the effort from making memories,
removed the clutter of passionate rat kings.
We have replaced the frenzy with empty space.
We have sealed stars with an innovative lid to lock in the astonishment.
For a low expense, the clearest dark can be delivered
to your choice of cavity free of danger and chance,
free of venture.