Written In My Twenties

How could I float into lucid being? when a missing passion weighs me down.

How can a man dream? when reality stares him in the face.

How can a man flirt with devils? when he has caressed an angel’s skin.

When every each passing hour has shown him sadness.

How can he not wait to see what the next hour will bring?

Less than one year ago, I was sitting in an East Lansing hotel room with a friend, preparing to DJ my first gig. We’d talked about the previous week, spent camping and walking through the forest with Gatorade bottles, refilled with box-wine. I talked about how swimming with a stomach full of Somas did not make me nearly drown, however it did nearly make me “take a nap on the lake bed.” That distinction, I felt, was necessary to make.

It was at at this time — when I reached into a drawer to find the obligatory hotel-room Bible and write “666” on it — that I found a burnt disc labeled “BEATZ BEATZ.” We laughed and asked rhetorical questions about the possible content and reason for the name, “BEATZ BEATZ.” I could not decide if it would be more correct to use the word “trite” or the word “banal,” so I said nothing else and played the disc.

The bass had dropped or something. The voice of an enthused African-American women sang what sounded like “… cake.” Laptop speakers rumbled and I realized that I, as a DJ, was in some way guilty by association of this sound and culture. Despite my dissociation from that particular genre, I was aware that I’m unavoidably a “cool guy” DJ and it sickened me.

Today, when I explain beat-matching, people talk to me about scratching. When I say that I produce dance-music, people talk to me about “hot jamz.” When I use the word “techno,” people think I mean dubstep.

I don’t ever want to hear “wiki-wiki.” I don’t ever want to hear “BEATZ BEATZ.”

I’m following people I hate on twitter just to laugh at the banality of their lives/thoughts/aspirations/routines/ambitions/etc.

I might have hit rock bottom.

Maybe this is a sign that I’m boring and living a bleak life. This could be a sign that I’m doing something wrong or maybe I’m only managing my circumstances in a better way — by finding humor in what would otherwise depress me.

Maybe I can avoid “making peace” with the absurdity of life by laughing at it. Instead of making the next step to justify my existence, I can simply live it through satirical, social commentary.

Of course, it would be very easy to dismiss this as “trying to feel better than everyone else.” Maybe that’s really my goal. Maybe I’m really naive enough to think that I can transcend the hopelessness of the world by making fun of it. It’s probably not a good thing that I perceive things as caricatures of themselves, laughing at them like I laugh at bad rap videos, made of trite lyrics, gratuitous sex as a means of life affirmation and the typical TR-808 hand-clap that we hear more than we even attempt to think or care about.

Whoa! Look at Icarus go!
Poised with such grace, ready to fly.
Free from his maze.
Ready to soar ahead of the sunrise.

Behind him the labyrinth,
A lifetime of torment, winding paths, and perilous corridors.
Obstacles he’s overcome.
Ahead, a brightening future.

He feels the warm sun at his back,
Knowing it’s erasing the darkness.
It’s peaches and cream from here isn’t it, Icarus?
Now follow your father and don’t look back.

-Craig H. Richards

This pier, I have walked near a million times.

Every dent, every carved name, every pebble

Is imbedded in my mind.

I have it all memorized.

All 2,770 feet to the lighthouse.

Never once have I had you, by my side.

But always, you’ve been in the forefront of my mind.

I imagine us, as I walk.

You and I, casually dressed and deep in conversation.

I in a striped sweater and you in a sun-dress.

You and I, together walking

All 2,770 feet to the lighthouse.

I walk and I think.

I ponder you, the thing I hold dear.

I wonder what you’re up to, and how you feel.

I think of you in the middle of a song,

Playing your ukulele to your dog.

I wonder what it’d be like to hear you sing.

All 2,770 feet to the lighthouse.

I sit at the end of the pier,

With the lighthouse looming behind.

And I realize that I’ve spent too much time thinking of you.

Every walk, you’re there.

In the spotlight of my thoughts.

On a stage like an actor.

 And in my mind we’ve acted it out,

You and I, hand in hand, walking down the break-wall.

Laughing, planning, and making a shopping list.

Played in my mind, so many times,

That I’d swear it was a real memory.

Though you’ve never been there,

And we’ve never walked hand in hand

All 2,770 feet to the lighthouse.

-Craig H. Richards

With kicks and snares, your halls will fill.

Shake with bass, your fixtures will.

From the rafters,  dust will fall.

And I will be one with all.

 -Craig H. Richards

She’s lost from me.
Adrift
In a sea of crimson
And thick, ominous fog.
Where is safety?
Where is her future?
She’s yelling in all directions.
Sending messages
In bottles.
Everything she does
A carrier wave.
A signal sent out
To find the way.
I hear her screams.
I find her bottles.
I read her messages.
I hear her broadcast.
But I can’t find her,
In the fog.

-Craig H. Richards

A wave of light falls
From the sky.
It hits
And reflects.
It targets my face
Specifically my eye.
It seeps into my pupils,
The small window in my iris.
Its aperture adjusted
For proper view.
Through my lens it travels.
Reverse projected ,
Over my visual axis,
Onto my retinas.
There the fragments
Of projected images
Are broken up
And sent to my brain.
Leaving the optic nerve,
My brain assembles
The pieces,
The fragments,
Fills in the blanks,
Then creates the image.
And that’s how I learned
That you were beautiful.

-Craig H. Richards

It is a reoccurring happening to

swim through the stew of society’s standards

serving social norms with

no vent and

no withdrawal still

I cannot consent to

being contorted in

to what’s common for

you can pretend I

am only a puppet but

I am too peculiar to be just that. 

(Source: mymonad)

Feeling jittery.
Anxiety or something.
Think I’ll medicate.

I’m insane again.
Waking in the same white room.
Think I’ll medicate.

Pills coat my feelings.
Feelings coated with my pills.
I’m medicated.

In my mind there lurks
Absolutely nothingness.
I’m medicated!

-Craig H. Richards