cutting great neck

we're so lucky to be here.

the sun on this side of the ocean is red and it sizzles on every green leafy tree that it binds to. the way the city is black and the smoke as thick and old and suffocating as the ocean and yet it is forevermore beautiful.



sometimes

i wonder how life came to be.

i don't believe in the idea of soul. how each one of us has a "wavering flame" that burns inside that pulsating, copper-crusted organ that tries to rip through our chest's pulmonary muscle like moses through the red sea. the existence of death contradicts the "soul."

soul:

scientific ember of life, residue from the eruption of god.

our soul is nothing but cells multiplying inside. neurons transmitting an action potential that jolts us into being--breathes "life" into us--and blows up, spews little green spinach sparks all over the place and with this electricity gives us the ability to

be

alive.

when flecks of the universe collided in the black nowhere where nothing was and nobody existed, something ruptured like a split vein and somewhere life spilled out.



burnt marshmallows that spray their pale pulp into the world like a mother giving birth. in spanish: dar a luz--bring, give to the light.

i'm scared. i'm frightened. there's nothing in me that burns and life is like a balloon that never stops swelling.

maybe i'll just burst one day.




it's like the universe that never stops expanding.
our universe.

have you ever thought where it could go?

where would all that empty space come from?

maybe,
we're just getting smaller

and smaller
and

freeing up some black space for the universe to edge into.

once i wanted to be the greatest.

i woke up one morning and set out into a new life. this is the moment when the main character: springs out into the world like a freed fetus brought to life, with the inky blue sky pulsating like a great big heart that fills out the world and the sun streaming like rain down it.

i was trembling with the fearlessness of wanting to be the greatest. it wasn’t courage but rather a naive un-knowing, a greenness that opens up like a flower in your veins, squirting out venom.



there i was: not knowing who i wanted to become, but knowing much, much more.

i had no vision of the future, only a vision of the present. i was the greatest, and still am to some degree; the only person whom i truly feel comfortable being, the only person whom i confide in incessantly, the only person whom i can totally, unapologetically relate to and rely on.

and the new life i set out into? it slowly weaved into the other lives i’ve led, and they had all become great.

great in the sense: complexity, so complex that they become simple.

and that’s life. that’s all life, yours and mine.



greatest i did not become, i am not. there are many more great people out there—so many more that i have let my innermost pompous dreams corrode like a rock against an ocean of superiority.




but now i am here, the rain pumping furiously against the black outside, through it, a rough fusty coat pouring around me and with hair matted by cool shower water, the yellow light like a playful insect leaping around corners in my room, and i feel... great.