Fiction: "here i am now!" by Jeremy Void

here i am now!

By Jeremy Void

what am i but a dreamer! i want to be something more, perhaps seen as a mythical deity here to bring light to a sweltering delusion, to a world on the brink of darkness. a derelict soldier, a knight in rusted armor. i’m a boy a man a mystified, leering cretin on the beat of a street awash in flames and sheering madness. it’s halloween night! tonight is halloween. i was sitting alone in my studio reading sexus by henry miller; now i’m sitting outside listening to the now! and watching as costumed freaks creeps & weak invaders storm countless wasted miles rousing a bleak energy brimming with a nothingness so shallow that it bores me and devours the night. i hate them. i hate all of em. they mean nothing to me. i am above them. they don’t notice me here. their voices are grating. me, i’m lovely. i wanna be a savior. i’m the light; the darkness flares brightly. it’s like a corrupted delusion. i let my mind wander down loose alleys. yes, a dreamer i am: fused with hope and hopelessness. my solution is to confuse and yet i find i’m broken and defused. i wonder why the lot of them are so bemused with everything in sight. smash their wanton illusions, an elusive amusement i assume stems from all the many lights & colors & sounds and safety that arouses us daily. we’re surrounded by it….

i have surrendered my soul to a wanting nihilistic fever of surreptitious dissatisfactions i am dissatisfied by all the vain interactions that have transpired in this drunken jungle of lost college kids///a lousy student body constantly fucking intoxicated belligerent like bobblehead dolls dancing to another grateful dead cover band another beatles tribute another crappy artist trying to come across as avant-garde and thoughtful but really coming across to me as thoughtlessly ordinary …

or perhaps, and at last, and with another gastral hemorrhage of dull interactions the entire wasted student body of burlington proper will stumble past me in a saddened crawl of slack-jawed, drunken folly leaving me the laughing stock of a maddened, howling flock of college birds flapping maniacally but not lifting off but not touching down but not going anywhere but around&around prancing manic ground-bound circles searching for fertility amid a leaden sea of futile sterility. but anyway i digress….

the point i’m trying to make is: i was arrested by a lost, lone suggestion that keeps me flaccid and untouchable///a peeking eagle reaching epic, looming heights but mostly keeping to itself in this ever-isolated sky of fallen dreams. but then i remind myself that this world is shit. why go on living when everything is shit, people are shit, i am shit. me, i’m the biggest piece of shit in this entire intoxicated town too small to be called a city, in this entire inebriated city too big to be called a town, in our own little slice of limbo encumbered with complacency and artistic constipation i’m completely wasted now on the festering mindless fog of hindered thoughtfulness and impending, booze-soaked nights of nothing- -of NOTHING- -of NoThInG///what a great fuckin day&age to quit drinking & drugging, don’t you think!—oops, did i just say that out loud? either way though i’m sold///sold on whatever euphoric, un¬natural remedies that they got…. so i might as well just sit on the ground now and join the crowd—better to medicate my heavenly woes than to sound the alarms and let the people of this miserable playground in on the fact that shit lives among us run for cover!!!

see, my apathy stems from a place of complacency. friends they’ll always come and go throughout the years but still i sit here waiting for that one friend to stay but when he does i always run for cover—if history has taught me anything—and leap lunge & splash into that hysterical lake of derailed solutions. right now i’m sitting outside listening to the now! and watching, avid and perceptive, as the many lights & colors & sounds and safety bloom, for once allowing myself the idle comfort that comes with embrac¬ing such a soothing delusion. now, i’m bemused. the now! thunders in my ears….