THE BLACK RIDER M.I.A.

A nondescript room somewhere in New York, a lone and dusty 60 watt light bulb shines. The Inquisitor walks around the room in a menacing pace perplexed and vexed at the insolence and bravado of his subject. The Black Rider.

The Black Rider sits in a wood chair at a long steel desk looking up at the menacing man known only as The Inquisitor and wonders what question he will ask him. The Inquisitor is dapperly dressed in a white shirt, business tie and khaki pants with brown loafers and dress socks. The Black Rider wears his everyday costume, black pinstriped pants, black Italian cut blazer, white collared shirt, long black camel skin coat topped off with a black pin-striped hat, shiny black patent leather shoes and black silk socks. The Inquisitor walks around the room circling the light bulb looking at The Black Rider angrily staring, growling his mouth as he prepares his first question. The Black Rider sits at the long steel desk nonchalantly waiting for this all to be over.

"Show me your books" The Inquisitor demands. "Show me them now".

"What book?" replies The Black Rider. "You know what I'm talking about" replies The Inquisitor, "The letters you have the entire world going ga ga over. The condemned and illegal prose you have been dealing to the doe eyed masses."

The Black Rider smiles to himself. "You presume too much."

"For days" The Inquisitor goes on "You have had this entire city, the State of New York and people from all over the world reading this filth you call literature. I'm going to put a stop to it Mister Rider. I'm going to put a stop to all of this nonsense, and I'm going to put a stop to you. Until you give me some answers, I'm not letting you out of this room. You won't be able to spew your vile in here my friend. I'm going to find the author of these perverse quote on quote artworks, and if you are indeed the culprit, there will no publishing from these four walls."

"On what charge am I imprisoned for?" The Black Rider asked, "You can't just lock me up for days on end with no charge. Is this the Patriot Act at work? Am I a terrorist or something, last time I checked, New York was still an American State. This Is America is it not?"

"Oh no" replied The Inquisitor in a slow and taunting tone. "This is not America anymore. This is not the liberal filth land known as New York. This...is BLOGVILLE!"

The Triumphant

Driving to work this morning listening to 96.3 FM, The New York Times classical music station, I am feeling very inspired. They are playing an Epic composition but I will not recall the name of the composer, I will remember the title of the piece includes the word 'epic'.

My old 1993 Volvo never feels so triumphant. As the music soars, I turn the volume on maximum, I can feel the air moving through the vehicle. Visions and images start to spur from my mind, a triumphant army marching over tumbling enemies. My spirit feels so motivated, like it is a brand new day, and about half way in my journey I realize I have forgotten my lunch, my two bottles of Poland Spring water and my Cingular cellular phone. Not to be deterred since I scarcely have money or the gas wherewith to leave my job at lunch time and spend more money on a lunch I did not make, since I had spent the early hours of Monday morning preparing my lunch, five turkey sandwiches, one for each day of the week, I decide to turn the car around and collect my lunch as well as my water and cellular phone.

I drive the distance back home, pick up my lunch, and return to my car, my motive is now entirely different. Sure, I now have my most prized accessory, my phone, my lunch and my two bottles of water, but my forgetfulness is docking me fifteen minutes of pay. The music is also entirely different this time. They are now playing a drowsy, maundering composition which title and composer I am not at all interested in learning or knowing of. The music has become too fitting to the moment for my taste. And to top it off, everyone seems to be driving drunk or drunk on madness at eight 'o' clock in the morning.

School buses appear out of thin air all of a sudden and their slow and menacing pace is deliberately aggravating me. The other drivers have forgotten how to drive all together, randomly reversing into intersections and shifting lanes with no regard or concern for anyone else. Delivery trucks stall the traffic and this seems all too serendipitous.

My cars begins to shut off. First at a major intersection as soon as the red light turns green. I turn on my hazards and proceed to try and restart the car for ten seconds. I now become the aggravation. Cars drive around my stalled vehicle with contempt. The ignition kicks in. I drive and the car shuts of again at the next light. And again at another light a quarter of a mile away. I continue to turn my hazards on and cars continue to circle and I continue to aggravate the drunk drivers and those who are drunk on madness. I turn my radio off because no sonic artwork can calm my rampant screams of obscenities and blasphemous use of the name of the Christian Lord.

I make it to work. Safely. I am fifteen minutes late, thank God it's only that due to the many hiccups of my car. And I still have my lunch, cellular phone and two bottles of water. I am triumphant.

Dreams

Keep looking. Keep fighting. Do not die. Do not fall. Keep striving. Keep working. Keep earning. Keep dreaming. An old woman told me life is long. Very long. She should know. I am knowing. With each new day, each hour subtracted, I see my dreams manifest and my nightmares retracted.

I have deciphered it to be true, that death becomes me, so the inverse is true. Life becomes you.

Phenomena

She becomes your existence

A boon for your bane

She becomes your passion

You become beautifully insane

How fast is the slide from man to child

When a man becomes captured by a woman's smile

She becomes your mission

Succeed or fail

She is your passion

The wind in your sail

And for whatever reason should she choose another man

She becomes the test

To which you grade your stand

There is something phenomenal about the guise of a woman

Her skin

Her scent

Her mind

Her soul

There is something phenomenal about the guise of a lady

Her touch

Her love

Her sacrifice

Her whole

1146

Goodnight Blogville. It's a Saturday and a very busy weekend for The Black Rider. So I'm going into my archives for today's post.

In my teens and early twenties (which is like last week, I'm still 25 for another 8 days) I considered myself to be a rebellious and enlightened poet. I wrote hundreds if not thousands of poems and and a few short stories. This is poem # 1146.

Comfort

I've cried enough/

So I have a relationship/

With my tears/

They seldom touch my tongue/

But my eyes always taste them/

My tears taste like/

Rest/

The juice of my stress/

They are very warm/

Like the blood flushed hands/

Of an anxious lover/

On a smiling face/

Faith

You can lose faith in the world, you can lose faith in your friends, you can lose faith in God, you can lose faith in yourself. It is dangerous to lose such a thing as faith, because faith is all we have.

faith: 1. complete trust or confidence. 2. strong belief in a religion. 3. a system of religious belief. origin Latin fides. [Oxford Dictionary of Current English, paperback, 2001]

There you have it. A dictionary definition of faith. And in that definition lies the fault and the faculty of that word.

'Complete trust or confidence' meaning that your dedication to the subject is unbroken, unyielding, a perfect circle, and in there being, an impossibility, and an improbability. An ideal that exist in theory but not in practice.

Have faith that things will work some of the time and not all of the time and you will be adjusted to the workings of this world.

There will be irregularities in everything there is, so that it can fit in this puzzle of life. Any idea that states absolutes as whole and complete truths are not only obnoxious, but ignorant and inconsiderate.

Have faith that things will work some of the time and when they do not, have faith that you will be strong enough to bear the loss and have the reserve within you to recover from it.

Then you will be whole, complete and well adjusted.

On Your Mark, Get Set, Get Money

So I've read "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie, and I've read "The 48 laws of Power" by Robert Greene, and I've also read "The Art of Seduction" also from Robert Greene.

Those books work. I have friends, influence over people, power, and if the stars are right I can be very seductive. But I do not have money. I did my budget forecast for the next 2 weeks and I'm banking a whopping total of 30 dollars and 5o cents. After my Internet bills and my gas and credit card and cell phone payments and the rent and what not, I have 30 dollars and 50 cents.

Now what good is having friends if you cannot adequately entertain them or influence over people if you cannot embellish it with a little gratitude or Power if you cannot dress the part or even seductive qualities if you can't indulge in luxuries.

My friends, money is necessary. I need to read a book about money. That's the skill I lack right now. Once I learn how to create that, my circle will be complete. I need to get to the point where after I work out my budget, my bank will be something I can be flexible and productive with.

$30.50 is hardly that.

Monsters and Transgression

I am a monster. A sadistic melancholy manic. It seems to me that this should be tragic, but it could also be beneficial.

I can be a monster in bed. A monster at winning. I would rather have a monster guard my house than a poodle.

Life is tragic and filled with failures. If one is handed lemons one is to make lemonade, if one is handed tragedy one is to write stories and songs. If one is dealt and or creates monstrosities, one is to become a monster.

The world is not built for the week and or feeble. You must be swift, merciless, decisive in all that you do. Then you will have success and annihilate puny fools who stand in your way to greatness and obliterate foes who dare to stand against you.

In my book, it is better to be great and revered, for whatever cause, than to be forgotten and a loser.

Death Becomes Us

You are involved

Eloise and Abelard

I could forget. I could forget it ever existed. Trade one mania for another. I could create an amnesia. Dismiss the very existence of my sorrows.

In Buddhism, they teach you that one way to dispel suffering is to dispel desire. Well, what of dispelling the memory of it.

If I can recall, I can desire and or detest that which I have recalled. I do not want the element of destruction in my life or in my mind, however natural or unnatural it may be, and I do not want to desire something that I cannot, should not, or am not allowed to have.

It would be so much easier if I could just forget it. But I can't. I wear it everyday. I see it everywhere I go. And I hear of it on every radio station and TV show.

I was much happier when I was clean. When I never knew of unrelenting desires. When I was a child and the world and the things in it were the concerns of other and not of mine.

There is a Poem called Eloise and Abelard, from the English Poet Alexander Pope. It is about a forty year old French teacher 'Abelard' and an eighteen year old student 'Eloise' who he falls in love with in the eighteenth century.

As the story goes, and it is a true one, Abelard gets Eloise pregnant. They marry in secret against the wishes of her her family and her family in turn contracts a gang of thugs to castrate Abelard as he sleeps.

Abelard being a teacher and philosopher takes this in stride and adopts the life of a Eunuch, first joining a monastery and then living the life of a hermit.

Eloise does not take it so easily. She is still in love with him. She still want to make love to him and dreams about it even though it is physically impossible.

They exchange a series of four letters which become the subject of folklore and history and the subject of Mr. Pope's poem which takes the point of view of Eloise who lusts for the love of Abelard but is unable to be quenched of it.

Instead she begs to forget. She says only God can take the place of her dear Abelard and wants to forget that he ever became.

Such is my pain. Such is my dementia.

I cannot dispel desire when it arises and I will not create destruction so I can detest something. My own personal morality is my folly.

I want what is not possible. I have experienced a fantasy and believed it to be real. Yoda said to Anakin, you must learn to let go the things that you fear to lose. Wise words.

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;"
Eloise and Abelard,
Alexander Pope