THE BLACK PEN
aphorisms, fragments, etc.
Scott Allen
Published by Scott Allen at Smashwords
Copyright © 2010 by Scott Allen
http://www.scottallen.biz
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Life feels impossible.
I have strawberries.
Her hair is perfect.
Too much death.
I'm trying to figure out the way through.
For those lovely days.
The truth is elongated.
I want my tooth back.
Be happy about now just in case there is no later.
Little memories.
I already exploded.
“There are no dreams,” Keith said.
Life can be slow, like an 18-wheeler.
I already won.
I was
born.
Up.
I'm creating a format.
It wont matter when I'm gone, but until then I have to believe that it does.
Oh damn, look at
this!
The world outside.
He lived on coffee and energy.
Life is coming.
I follow the animals.
It often takes a long time for the words to come to light.
The dream is over.
Now
begins the moment.
I just gaze outside and glance into oblivion.
I saw a young, teenage
girl eating a banana chip.
She has a long way to go.
My cat pointed the way.
I live.
I die.
I
am.
Anger doesn't
help.
Neither does complacency.
Sleep and rise.
Sleep
and rise.
Love—it's just another body with some special features.
You are not
unique.
Everyone is.
My cats and I.
We
don't care.
The denial of death is still death.
It got dark.
"Write it, Scott," she said.
I missed.
Variety is our destination.
I'm still young.
Artists only want to do
what they do.
And this is what they teach us.
To do what we
want.
I closed my eyes the whole way.
I thought all the old man did was spit and cough, but he also smiled.
Life is going to the dentist.
My hair is messed up.
His words were kind of unpoetic at best.
Your name is you.
Even though death
supersedes everything, I still write.
I still happen.
I still
dream.
I still breathe.
Even though.
Writing is organic, semi-organic.
I wish I had today off.
I do this, so I don't die.
I'm going to make a mistake anyways.
You are either here or somewhere else.
Some stay with me.
Some
don't.
Some are just in limbo.
If I die, I might not
do anything again.
I will be totally blank.
I wanted to walk down the street naked and just forget the whole thing.
It's not a mistake, but a glitch.
I have to go down there.
I'm going to scream for
a long time.
Here I go.
Their job is to take
care of me.
My job is to listen.
I'm going to do that one day.
Fight.
Die.
Repent.
A rejection is a compliment.
As I look at a book, my cat looks at me as if he is looking at a book.
I'm simple.
Her watch.
I sang the day I had a wisdom tooth pulled.
I was once deep.
Now I am on the surface of the deep.
We should take our own advice that we would like to give to others.
Things that actually
work we take for granted.
Things that break, we loathe.
Life goes on without
me.
No it doesn't.
Nothing happens.
You get to a certain age and everything reminds you of death.
I'll imagine instead of be.
My cats and I.
We
have a family.
Humanity is a family of sorts.
Everything on
earth and beyond is related in one way or the other.
Let me finish my coffee.
Maybe this is good.
Life hasn't changed since the day I was born.
I am nobody.
So are
you.
We are nameless here.
We'd all be dead if we had to be the way everyone wanted us to be.
Maybe tomorrow things will look better.
We do what we do for posterity.
Fear: I have some of that.
Damn, I jumped the gun.
There is nothing I can do right now.
I'm doing cartwheels, backflips and somersaults here.
The 3 d's of
writing:
dismal,
dreary,
disappointing.
A spiritual life is few and far in between.
I'll sit here all night.
I'm getting invisible.
It doesn't help to be creative, but it is the only thing we have going.
They don't want you to be excited, they just don't want you to be down.
He was too often alone, but didn't notice it til now.
I came to life.
We are lucky to have this moment.
You could be the happiest person on earth and it still wouldn't matter if you died tomorrow.
Everything is a bit unique.
He smoked with
fashion.
And his cat looked at him.
But, nothing happened.
I believe her.
Oh, damn, I don't know how to live.
I'd like to shake this
world til it breaks, so that we might put it back together some other
way.
Or, just put a pin in it so that it pops.
Death's retreat: life.
It inspired me.
Life is peace.
Death is war.
The split.
She is
truth, she is woman.
He is man, like no other.
Together they
are like destiny under watch.
Life is stronger than technology.
I should be at home with the cats now.
If I'm not struggling, I'm not myself.
If you can get to it.
I looked plaintively out the bus window.
Some are good.
Some
are bad.
Some are in between.
It depends on who you are.
And
your state of mind.
Love is made for others.
It seems no matter how well I'm doing, others are always doing better.
You have to be a genius
to get through this life.
Good luck!
It's impossible to be
in the moment.
You are constantly in the past, present and future.
Death is hidden from us.
I have to make the journey.
I better take care of myself, or I'll never see these people again.
The tool is a pen.
The
material is paper.
Writing, sculpting.
How am I?
Fine.
And you?
I came from so far away.
Oh please let me enjoy this moment.
I want to say
something.
What a day it has been.
Balloons everywhere.
Birds.
The first
sign of the day.
Sometimes life is
positive,
sometimes negative,
sometimes in between,
but
mostly ….
Write it down and be done with it.
Stress is our middle name.
I'm going to error on the side of caution today and not say anything.
We forget how random things are.
In circles, into more circles, never leaving the circle of circles.
I can only live this
moment.
Everything else is a burden.
I was once nothing.
I
still am.
I look forward to my next moment.
I thought everything was falling apart.
There are not enough words to say who we are.
He died with a note in his pocket.
It was just him, the music in the diner, and the voices across the room.
Just leave me alone for now.
I wish one of those girls on the train would come my way.
Oh damn, where did that
come from?
The moon.
I've tried so many times.
Maybe they were meant
for each other.
That is how strange life is.
Oh, I want to rest for a minute.
We're a genetic conundrum.
No matter what you do you end up like everyone else.
It was going so good one day.
Death.
It's like
being the only one in the world.
You can't appreciate this moment even though you should.
I write when I get home.
The big half hour.
He took a later bus just to see what was different.
He kept looking at her finger to see if there was a ring on it yet.
I read it twice, three times and so on.
I started my life from the beginning, but now I'm somewhere near the middle, facing the end.
I smoke too much.
Drink
too much.
Sleep too much.
Dream too little.
My head is like a movie that just keeps on rolling.
She takes her clothes off.
It doesn't get better, it just gets different.
It was a day to let go by.
The face flickers.
I'll go on.
I'll go
on.
I've always been the
same.
But who am I though?
Don't change the
world.
Change me.
I keep writing to no avail.
I can not get enough
distance from life to see it for what it really is.
Nothing!
I'm
too involved.
I have three cats and that's all.
I wish I could write all the time, but then I wouldn't write anything.
It's sad, but life is just another day.
Everything is abstract.
I was drunk.
I go back.
I wish I could sleep now.
There is no rhyme or reason, I am an irrational man.
Don't tell anybody!
I got through this day.
Open the book.
Everybody wants what everybody else is having.
Peace goes up and down.
You are not who you
are.
You are what they want you to be.
Love people, not yourself.
I am a filter.
I saw you reading.
I wrote that up there.
I can't keep it together.
Every book is not the same.
I'll be dead by then.
Just close your eyes and keep them closed.
No one has anything to say.
I'll do it later.
Who am I?
Dead.
Life is something we don't even think about.
I need this room to write in.
Pain is a sure thing.
I am my book.
Life
is something else.
If it weren't for the homeless, there would be no homes.
To write is to not write and see your writing as changing.
He had ten cups of coffee.
I do it with a pen.
Language is
fascinating.
Music is more.
Art is less.
Dance is
destructive.
Sculpture is best.
Theatre is evolving.
Movies
are wreckless.
The arts are bliss.
Today is a holiday.
A
day of rest from life.
If you go out on your own, you lose your way and find something else.
I wrote it down.
It's
done.
I don't know where it ends.
They talk about you.
You write something in the moment to last a lifetime or you don't write anything at all.
Everything is so
boring, repetitive.
One must distance oneself from things to get
anything from them.
I can't remember what I say to myself, so I try to write them down here to peruse them again, and, forget them once more.
We should be ecstatic that we're alive, but we're not.
This deadly dream.
The look outside.
You'd never need love if you didn't already fall in love, instead, you could just roam the planet aimlessly.
You can't see what they are feeling.
We wouldn't have to cheer for love if there was any.
Let him have his moment.
All these words fade in the dark.
I had a dream someone helped me.
I change colors.
People do often understand, even though they don't show it.
It's a bad design.
There is nothing I can
do about it.
(life)
Life is a loss of life.
I want to smoke.
It's for my imagination.
Go get me a beer.
I
want a beer.
The difference between a writer and one who does not write: the words.
A few words can change the world.
I need to feel good about myself too.
The truth is not true.
The beauty of life is that you don't know.
It's getting late.
Truth is the lack of truth.
I can't say anything.
I
never could.
I'm not doing the circle anymore.
I draw the line somewhere.
I missed the boat, fell through the cracks, and died on the vine.
Music threads life.
I have to think for myself from now on.
The biggest lie is us.
She taught me how to be alone forever.
I want to go by myself.
Don't be so negative, you might learn something.
To die is to be forever in the past.
Nothing is tenable.
All you do when you write is relax and record some thoughts.
Being smart is an impediment to understanding.
Food is secondary, life is primary.
This is when we were.
I'm going to die anyway.
I keep stopping.
Life is
indoors.
Everything else is outside.
The mind has thoughts of its own.
Nothing matters at this hour.
Someone is in his room.
I got through it.
I like it.
Now I
have to live with it.
He walked around like a homeless man.
I'd hate to go to work now.
We die alone, anonymous and invisible.
I'm just trying to keep my life going.
It's artistic, if
nothing else.
(life?)
I'm going out the door.
He wasn't listening to music, but to the future, which was so far away he couldn't believe it.
A friend.
If life is but a dream,
what of it?
Perhaps it is not a dream, but something else
entirely.
Maybe a simple sensation.
A remark, a gesture?
Don't
say it!
But I have to.
Wish.
Dare.
Misfortune.
A
fever, simple.
And on and on?
And on!
All is inadvertent and so am I.
It's not a failure, but an experiment.
You accept it but you
never do.
Death, life, and a lot of other things.
He goes back to his spot.
Nothing went on.
I have to get some new
clothes.
I hope I have enough time.
One cat hardly looks at me, one looks at me all the time, and one is starting to look at me.
I go on today as if it is just another day, but it really is quite different.
I was in the middle of
something.
My life.
Just then.
Nothing pertains to me.
I need something simple now.
He wouldn't speak.
I'll write again.
I've read enough to die a little more.
Truth is for liars.
I want something else.
Bypass the critics.
Ah, damn, I dropped the pen.
We will never be that happy.
Now I can do what I want.
It was in vain.
I'm your life.
You have to die some time.
I'll do it later.
Life is to continually forget about life.
To write is to not write and see your writing as changing.
He went to oblivion.
I can't afford it.
He put it on the ledge.
I might die.
To my cats, I'm
normal.
To others, subversive.
I can't say anything.
I
never could.
Life seems the same, but it's really different.
They don't know who I am.
It's not even a dream, but nothing at all.
This death is bothering me.
This coffee is good.
Life.
It wasn't that
bad.
I'm here and it is dark.
The whole place is upside down.
She led me on this path.
I was waiting to hear from you.
I found a solution.
I need ten minutes.
This scares me.
I was tired from the beginning.
Perhaps not eternity, but maybe indefinitely.
I'm trying to finish this book.
I'll wake up tomorrow and this will all be gone.
It takes a little spice from the reader to read the writer.
You just read them and forget them, and maybe one will come back to you somewhere.
I don't look like an employee.
It goes down my arm, into my fingers, and on to the pen, before hitting the page and making a splash there, for someone to see.
I found the black guitar.
I am writing.
Patience.
To belong, be.
Down, defeat.
I want to say something no one can hear.
He put the pen back down.
Each repetition repeats something else.
We'll have a fire.
Desire exceeds love.
Too much to remember to forget.
Fear, words.
Everything comes first.
A book is a
recording.
It plays back each time you look at it.
He wanted to go back to
his past and visit a few places he came from, grew up in, but thought
better of it and stayed put, here, in between the past and the
future, a world no one would believe, yet the world everybody was in,
for better or worse.
He took a trip forward, not back.
I have to keep reading this.
Don't argue with beauty.
Language doesn't do
what it's supposed to.
Make grand truths that last and last.
I looked at her feet.
We think we are not going to die.
Love.
I know it is good.
But
I'm here all alone anyways.
Nothing to do here, but write.
He wrote his own religion.
I'm not alone yet.
In the end, it's just you.
Don't tell me what I am.
Life.
You try it.
He's a writer.
He
doesn't talk to us.
She had a face people wanted to talk to.
I have to be here.
Just because you are solitary does not mean you are alone.
We make music together.
There is nobody there.
I don't even have a pen.
He put on his shirt.
Nothing to live for but life.
Definition of society: do what everybody else is doing.
It ain't easy.
Death creeps in.
Life: to go through the imagination.
His cat said, “I'm crazy.”
Age: the untold secret that tells us who we are.
“I hate that man that is not there,” she said.
I'm still at the bus stop.
I drank all the coffee.
He wrote his own way.
It is raining here.
I
was thinking of you.
We think of solitude as being in a room alone, but it is really everywhere you go.
I didn't like what he said about my book, but I am glad he said it.
I need love.
No, a
pen.
I will go out into the world with this song.
I feel fragile.
I'll never be 32 again.
I smelled the cookies.
There are others out there.
I found something.
I'm on a whirlwind.
Brevity is a sign of levity.
All I want to do is write.
I went to buy some licorice.
No such thing as a lie.
I'm changing but nothing else is.
Death is great, vast.
The only thing love does is make songs.
I had a beer.
I don't write anything unless it came to me.
Everything has already been written, more or less, in one way or the other.
My cat makes me cry.
I'm not done yet.
Death decides everything.
The secret war.
It's so simple, it's complicated.
She criticized me.
I
like that.
There is no one to
route for.
Everyone is by themselves.
I can't think of everything.
I love to rub my feet against the sofa.
He didn't get
better.
He just wrote other things.
I wrote again.
Maybe something good will come out of it.
I can write again!
I'm here.
I owe
nothing to no one.
It was said:
Trust
the art, not the artist.
So, trust the music, not the
musician.
And, trust the writing, not the writer.
Finally,
trust the sculpture, not the sculptor.
Similarly, trust the dance,
not the dancer.
Oh, and lastly, trust humanity, not the humans.
I like her.
I like
that she calls me, “Mr. Allen.”
Makes me feel like a human
being.
We aren't meant for love, earth, anything, but keep believing otherwise just to stay awake.
If no one is going to read me anyways, I might as well write what I want.
I turned everything
off, the tv, radio, etc., just so I could hear what the cats
hear.
Us, nothing.
I realized it's all just noise.
We sat
together for a half an hour in the silence.
“Death is a part of life,” they say.
It wasn't about truth, but just some entertainment.
I bought some new
books.
Pessoa, Cioran. Porshia.
What delightful books, human
beings, you could say.
She makes me what I
am.
Nobody.
I didn't write, but instead wrote again and again.
Christmas is coming.
He said, “What a doll,” and then he died.
Oh we try so hard to no avail.
Death is universal, it takes us along.
We're always in some sort of context, silhouette.
We want to be perfect because we are not.
Life.
That's it?
Where are we?
You fill yourself up with things and then spew them out in a different fashion.
I am alone and away.
Death is different from what we are used to.
I try to write like I have never written before.
He remembers the words he wrote that day.
Impossible again.
Life got in the way, so he didn't write.
I have nothing in my life.
I'm the only one that sees it.
Even the most recluse
man is a part of the same world.
It does not dictate your fate.
Love is an affection, feeling, you'll never find it otherwise.
I smoke like Pessoa.
They put a hex on me.
Parents are the prescription for death.
In a space where I write these words, I come up empty, fulfilled.
We always try to present ourselves as authentic, but somehow end up vain, void.
In my head lives the moment I am.
I came back for another cigarette.
I turn the tv on, so that I might turn myself off.
I don't live here, I just never left.
I'll write later.
The role of the writer,
artist.
I can't say.
I just know I wouldn't be here if it
wasn't for them, and others as well.
Where I sit is where I am, in this living room, not anywhere else.
I can't do anything, but write.
I'm writing differently now, at this point, I'm writing new things, things I've never said before.
I'm not here now, I've never really been here, I've been somewhere else.
My cat: she said, “Where the hell am I?”
I've got to put that book together.
Only I know what it is.
The only reason you are what you are is because everyone is what they are.
He never wrote what he was feeling for the sake of more feeling, color.
Everyone does their own thing, which is why everything gets done.
There was nothing to do, but look.
Everything he said was a “lie.”
I don't know what I mean.
Silence is the only way.
A delicate time, the process of deciding.
The conversation took a turn in everybody's direction.
Look away, find.
To read is to want to
be a writer.
To listen to music is to want to be a musician.
To
eat is to want to cook.
To love is to want to be loved.
To ….
I only want to be
alone.
I only want to be here.
I'm not sure of anything.
I am nothing but what just came before me.
“I know who I
am.”
“Do you?”
“... maybe not.”
Night, day … night.
I didn't copy, I once listened, later heard, then wrote.
The words are always new.
We're doing this now because we'll never do it again.
They were anonymous.
It is so quiet.
I
didn't want to make any noise.
Some things he said he
would never say again.
Others, he would keep respecting.
And
some others, just never say.
And some, he wouldn't know.
When it comes to love, there is no language.
It is so peaceful without the world.
I'm back to where I was.
To be sold something that is not there.
Without writing, writing.
You without being you.
I was in the middle of something.
It's a game when you
win; when I win, it is a loss.
Human behavior.
This is what I'm doing as much as I don't want to—force.
They changed the world without anyone knowing.
You are the only one.
The grand prison, prism.
I want to go on.
We drift for the same so no one sees us.
Life, unfinished, done.
They lived for those “moments.”
As if now, now, now, now, “now.”
The wind dictates its course.
It was like this all the time.
Go on, keep living, no one will know.
In a strange way, all are equal.
I don't know who people think you are.
There was a whole part of the world they didn't get.
To keep going as if going somewhere.
There is a time to read and time to do something else.
Being there is “like” being there.
There was nothing in the room but me.
There was no break.
I tried for hours, though no one saw, if understood, the motionlessness.
“Where are you
going?”
“The same place, yet ….”
In the river, the bottom is the same as the top.
There are things you write that no one will notice.
He was proud of the blank pages.
A book, a frame.
A
paper.
I haven't had a thought
in a long time.
I didn't speak either.
I put the pen down.
I
found a contrast.
More.
Life, meeting and not meeting.
I'm sitting out here alone, in the cold, for a reason.
The words didn't last, but the pages did.
I don't want to say
anything.
I want to tell a story.
I want to speak with
rhythm.
Line a cloud.
It is strange to do nothing.
I laugh.
I will lose this
perspective.
Time will take over.
It will close me.
Mystery,
strangeness.
I suppose.
Yes, that
is so.
I didn't write.
To be is to be controversial.
Everything is
trivial.
It all seems real.
Our times are words that tell us who we are.
They do not invade, but come near.
Each time you get less than one chance.
Nothing is chief.
They go by mistake.
If you write too much, you end up not saying anything.
Not quite a light.
We learn from who they think we are.
You have to learn otherwise no one will believe you.
Everyone has to say how it is.
On the one hand, ecstasy; on the other, disturbance.
I am responsible for what I am not responsible for.
Imagine finding this on the street.
Those things I'll never be I am.
The junk in me.
There is a person there.
Wind, shields and goes past.
… is keeping you from you.
It ended where it ended before.
Being is writing
without writing anything.
Being is being alive.
No, being in
love.
Doing something.
Nothing.
I wanted to say
something, but I didn't know how.
So I stopped.
The world kept
going.
I didn't say anything.
Frustration, his own violence … sacrifice … deciding, being.
Of course there is not enough power, that is its essence.
The dark: what
frustrates me is because of me.
The light: what enlightens me is
because of me.
I'm almost there.
You've experienced
everything.
Everything else is you experiencing it again.
Anyone can write who
has a pen.
I started out thinking it was a special activity.
I
still can't put anything into words.
You are the new ground.
Your face: you seeing yourself, not seeing yourself.
I wish I could go further.
They talk with their clothes, cars and bodies.
When it's you, it's not you, it seems like you, but it's not.
Everything is unhappy.
He lifted is head.
There is no new way of seeing, just you.
A common stranger because there is no such thing.
In this place where we never know what anybody is thinking.
Sometimes there is
language, sometimes music.
Sometimes.
Writer: a tiny spectacle.
You see me.
I saw
you later, the next day.
There is not enough distance to say that at this moment I have nothing to say.
I talk out loud, out of turn and in circles.
“I'm here now. Are
you?”
“I'm not here.”
Television is
repetitive.
Life is the same.
Books are boring.
Music is
meaningless.
Art is irrelevant.
Man is violent.
I am alone:
the radio is playing.
Nothing.
All I have to do is go on.
But
I do.
I have a pocket-full of wisdom.
More than nothing is not something, but more nothing.
Each time I write it
changes.
So, I write something else.
They were a silent film.
A writer is not perfect.
The only thing they could do is learn who they were.
We are indistinguishable: myself and others.
The day is last on my mind.
… the most I can do … nothing else … empty.
Always doing something without knowing what you are going to do.
I kept creating until I didn't create anything at all.
Language is a
game.
Life is a game without words.
All we want is a better life.
The trick to writing is
to write.
It is not a trick at all.
A trick!
Expression of death
…
House, the expression of work.
Work, the expression of
self.
Self, the expression of death.
Death, the expression of
pain.
Pain, the expression of wound.
Wound, the expression of
others.
Others, the expression of life.
Life, expression of
….
And so on.
Until … your words, as a writer, are the words of others.
To write: to say what has not been said to make it sound like it has not been said.
It was his first look at the outside.
To be as honest as you can and still say something about yourself, your world, your life, etc.
He pet and hugged his
cat.
The wind switched around.
The day blew forward.
I
didn't see anything.
Like a pillbug, withdraw, withdraw into a little ball.
What can you see with
your eyes?
Disruption.
It was pleasant for a Monday.
I had a dream I blew out a candle.
I want my guitar.
I'm
scared.
Throughout the city, down the streets, over buildings, in the air, I am an acrobat.
I looked to the
sky.
And saw a billboard.
You'd do the same thing if you were me.
I'm glad I'm not the one in love with her.
Life is a movie no one sees.
“I live by
candlelight.”
“How romantic,” she said.
Death colors everything.
I need some elixir.
Light up the sky.
You
do it.
Everyday I write the
book.
Everyday I ride the bus.
Death. How can I be
sick for thinking about something that is going to happen to me which
will never happen? Once you experience it, you are already
dead.
That's what he took a hundred years to say.
They will teach you something.
Life is dramatic.
So
is art.
Good!
I'm around.
Such simple words.
Such
lost times.
Walk with me.
Impossible, I am.
It
is.
Maybe that's my name.
A quiet thanks.
This is a job, but with peculiar benefits.
She sheds new light on me.
I just want a little party.
There is no failure, only trial and error.
A couple of old men walked by.
I could give some advice, but I wont.
You patiently wait for it because you know its coming: death.
I'm making some
progress.
I hate that word progress.
I don't know what I'm
doing.
To write, escape.
To
read, go.
Oh, I'm going to die.
“Why don't you write
a real book?”
“This is a real book.”
“Yeah, but nobody
wants it.”
“That makes it even more real.”
“I'm afraid
you are at a dead end.”
“I know.”
This is a day to just let go by.
A book is everywhere.
Hopefully, you will
have faith.
And, hopefully, you will have confidence.
And,
hopefully, you will … live on.
Love is a trick, come on.
Just the night wind and some chimes is all it takes sometimes.
My job is to sit here and let stuff pass me by.
Death, final, gone, thin air.
Passive, alone.
Power.
I'm dead, lifeless.
No
will, no energy, no drive, no power, empty, unable, with no prospect
of change or adventure.
I don't know who I
am.
I don't.
I do.
I don't.
I do now.
Yeah, we know what life is like; you don't have to tell us.
Hope,
fire,
relief.
The only power, music.
Was it too soon?
Almost.
Almost? Not yet.
Not yet? No.
There was an energy, but now it's gone, coming back chaotic.