Giggling Through Another Stupid, American Life

Sometimes, you get the idea that you are living a special life. You think you are on to something.
You are convinced that your existence on the rock is somehow a little bit better than the lives of the rest of the monkeys. You witness the beauty of a sunset or a car crash or perform, perfectly, a straight-set badminton victory. Perhaps you feel a little bit better about your status on the planet because you sat in on a jury that put away a guy who molested his step-daughter through her entire childhood or you performed a double mastectomy on a jive-ass transvestite. Sometimes, all it takes to feel like you are doing things right is to enjoy a sandwich. You bite into a concoction that makes your saliva perform like godcum on the first Sunday and you feel lucky. You can sit back sipping your Sanka and remember how you slammed it home after the give-and-go and Karen slipped your socks off.

Sometimes, you are an idiot. Sometimes, you get the wind knocked out of you by a 25-mile-per-hour, 295-pound psychopath because you forgot to raise your hand for the fair catch as you set to recieve the punt...and you realize you forgot to wear your cup. Most of the time, it is the little disappointments that will drive you nearer to the idea of practicing a series of little suicides or one big one.
Read the man: Bukowski.
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The Shoelace

a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard…
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse…
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left …
The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver’s license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,
the president doesn’t care and the governor’s
crazy.
light switch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill’s up and the market’s
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they’re
your friends;
there’s always that and worse;
leaky faucet, christ and christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm’s on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady’s purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and china and russia and america, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.

---------------------------

You find yourself crying at work one day and realize you are nothing like you thought you were and it all seems hopeless. Every second is another dagger set between your ribs. You want to go back to your youthful days of self-destruction and have visions of your grave or you dying, alone.

...and then, you don't know exactly what it is...somebody pisses you off or the world tilts slightly under a full moon...the waitress spills hot coffee on her tits and smiles instead of screaming.

Something cracks and you are able to see a way to go on.

...and this has nothing to do with anything, except it made me laugh.