Sums up life

The ugliest, dirtiest, daisy

With crumpled petals covered in dirt,

The golden center, disintegrated into hundreds of golden dots.

This ugly duckling, stroked by beautiful hands,

Is disgrace in the hands of beauty

Is the epitome of an oxymoron

Beautiful, ugly, Daisy.

A new restaurant opened on my block two weeks ago. It is an exotic place with paper lanterns hanging outside and fake food in the windowsill. Weird stuff they have in that place.  I heard a rumor that they serve spiders, snakes, and even scorpions. It’s Japanese or something like that, it must be. I walk by it everyday, before it opens, passing by so that I can get my cinnamon roll and cup of coffee. Dingy place, must be filled with all sorts of filth. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that rats run around on the cutting boards at night. In fact, I can vividly picture the head chef ordering his staff to poison a customer every so often. No, not poison, drug the customer! Yes they must, who would willingly return to such a restaurant. Restaurant! No, it is not. I will address it as a laboratory. A place where they experiment, examine, and test. A lab where social experiments are held. Observing how much filth a man will eat in order to try to impress his date. Beasts! Scum!

October 23rd, 1957

My boss needs to find a hole, or better yet dig a hole. A deep one, somewhere far away in the middle of nowhere. He then needs to jump in and die. My office has been meeting every deadline so as a “reward” we will be holding our Halloween party in The Lab. Apparently, eating in The Lab is expensive so our boss is treating us to dinner. What a reward; death in an oriental “restaurant”. The worst part about this situation is that I am required to attend. Working my way up the corporate ladder for the past fifteen years has brought me to my death. I would have been better off never attending college, and living my life as a janitor. At least he can choose whether to attend or not. I might as well visit my grave before I come upon the end of my existence.

October 25th, 1957
After work today I skipped my usual stop at the burger joint and go straight to The Lab. They have a menu in their window. How have I not noticed it before? I was completely right: soft shell crab, sea urchin, raw tuna, and oysters? My boss is a mass murderer. That must be it! He wants us all dead. I can see it now. My coworkers sitting around a filthy long rectangular table. No tablecloths, no water, a fork and a plate, and that’s if you’re lucky. The food arrives. Brown clumps of soggy mystery meat, bowls or transparent soup filled with bones and skin, glasses of murky water, death on a tray.
Might as well start writing my will now, not that I have anyone to leave my possessions for. My house is owned by the scum of the earth, the rats of the sewers, in other words I’m living in a house owned by my government. I don’t have a car, and the meager savings I have will be seized either by the IRS or some corporate bank. I will die in that God-forsaken lab, with no legacy, no story. I have left no mark on this world, and my murderous boss is going to kill me. The only things I’m leaving behind for people to remember me by are this stupid diary and a toilet which hasn’t been cleaned in years. This is all because some stupid good for nothing lowlife decided to take advantage of the American dream and open a restaurant down the block. This sucks! My life sucks! And the only thing I can talk to is this damn book!

Oct 30th, 1957
I cannot face eating my way into my own grave. I have been traveling for the last five days. Walking and hitchhiking as far away from that god-forsaken restaurant as possible. I have arrived at the Pacific Ocean, my life nearly two hundred miles behind me and nothing in front of me but opportunity. I will not be killed; I will not die on Halloween. I will stop writing in this stupid diary, and take the final step. I have lived my life and achieved nothing. All I do is conform to society, but no longer will the newspapers write about other people. Tomorrows headline will say in big black letters: “Man ends own life in Pacific Ocean”. For one day, I will be the center of attention, for if I can’t live during my life, I will live after.

We don’t laugh,
When we’re on the floor, inside the walls,
Everybody laughing their asses off.
Laughing, they push us down, and never see us cry.
We just sit; throw beers, throwing empty whiskey bottles, spill vodka.
Just boys, trying something new.
New drugs, taking us down new roads,
Roads not taken by old men.
Roads paved with the music of Bob Marley,
Roads paved with the words of Malcolm X,
Roads paved by rebellious visionaries fighting for peace.
Roads created by students claiming what was once just out of reach.

We are not old men, warriors, Indians, or European Boys with money.
We spin in circles, crash,
Dancing, naked
We come too close
To empty fields
Filled with cigarettes, drinks, new drugs, and confusion.
Nothing but ash, wasted nights, wasted lives, lives built on memories.
Lives supported by smashed skulls and ratty old dreams.

Our lives fly around us, and we change.
Lungs heal,
Muscles stretch, expand.
Once children, killed, shake the earth.
We tremble; the earth thinks too much and fades.
But we know nothing.
Dark, Infected, Sick, Chasing ash.
Chasing time, trying to trap it in a wooden box and never let go.

My eyes, are blinded,
They have not yet seen a mirror,
And my eyes, have not yet looked at me,
I see birds, flying away,
Dreams, staying behind
Trying to catch up to me.
I see a man, going back home.
And I have yet to see myself.
To find my cowboy hat, my Dodgers cap, my dirty blue robe.
I have yet to find myself.
I merely agree,
My only choice is to agree.
Agree to getting knocked out of my bed
Agree to being tossed into a prison,
A prison of darkness, cold, and empty loneliness.
Prisons of blue jeans, white shirts, new hats.
Prisons of isolation and lives based on stories.

Lives without meaning
Not a life, but a story
A story, in the first person,
A story of a warrior on a horse,
A story of a boy, trying to escape a lonely prison,
By finding the princess, trying to become the warrior.
Disappointed once I, once we, once all of us become
Become the old man, farting and belching all the way down the road.
Working the graveyard shift in the 7-11.

We know enough.
Boycotts, drugs, fights, death, disappointment, blood, dust, sap, sun.
We know what has been decided.
And we know that we die before we can start to open our mouths,
We die before we reach the top of the tree,
We die before we can float to the ground,
We die before we reach the end,
And we die before we arrive at the start.