Purple

#@!#!

“Do you curse Josh?”

“Only when I’m cooking.”

Dontcha know they call me Sir Burnsalot?

You don’t come here to read about current events. There’s enough places for that.

“Why won’t you play a song with bad words?” they ask me sometimes when I DJ. “There’s enough places for that” I tell the little kids.

The little kids.

The poor little kids.

A whole island that never existed.

So I don’t know what to do. I’m not cooking, but given what I want to say, we’d feed an army.

I wrote a whole poem about lies and millstones and oceans for the kids but put it away, still smoking. Maybe I’ll publish it somewhere, buy every billboard in Times Square and burn it into the night, sleepless.

Here’s a excerpt from the poem, the bit without razorblades:

I stopped in the yard

The sun beat down, but I didn’t notice, because all I saw was the butterfly bush so I smelled it,

Purple

when I was small

It grew in the side yard, it’s own jungle, a mystery, and even then when I smelled it I didn’t understand, and still don’t, but somehow is important. There’s something there.

Then I went and bought groceries and thought about Purple and tried to convince myself that a cheese sandwich and whatever is behind that scent will save the world.

Once I freaked out a librarian. That’s a lie. Happens all the time. But the radio had said “stop by and engage your local librarian. They’d love to talk to you.” So I did, asking for Crime and Punishment, waxing enthusiastic about how it was time for a re-read, given the question that Raskolnikov decides to see if murder is moral relativism, and his aversion to it simply weakness of character. It’s not, and he’s not the same after he kills the hated pawnbroker, and he knows the truth, and…

She gave me the wide-eyed slow nod.

(Can’t take me anywhere.)

Here’s a quote from that book.

The most offensive is not their lying - one can always forgive lying - lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth - what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Dostoevsky. What a mind. I’m trying to think more.

–Josh