Scott Thomas Outlar lives a simple life, spending his time reading,
researching, taking meditative walks, and writing prose-fusion dedicated
to the Phoenix Generation. His work has appeared in venues such as
Dissident Voice, Ascent Aspirations, Leaves of Ink, Jellyfish Whispers,
Struggle Magazine, Loose Change Magazine, Common Line Journal, and
Aphelion. Scott can be reached at 17Numa@gmail.com.
Prioritizing the Problems
The heavy headiness of sleep
slams down as a hammer
upon my weary eyelids.
The rain is pounding outside
against the windowpanes.
The neighbor is revving the
engine
on his motorcycle,
trying, I suppose, to sound
real cool
in the crisp 10 p.m. December air;
trying to impress all the
suburbanites
that just go crazy
for the guy that likes to rev
his engine.
Ah, Christ, everything is
just so heavy
sometimes –
the glass of wine seems heavy
as I go to lift it up
and take another sip,
while pizza warms in the oven
as a second course of dinner
to soak up the heavy red wine
that sloshes around in my
liver.
Dead animal flesh and dead
wheat
soon will sit heavy in my
living guts.
Digestion, disintegration,
decimation –
all the damned decadence
that comes with easy
accessibility
to dead meat.
In Genesis, it is the
seed bearing fruits
which are referred to as
meat, but
now, in this post modern,
post
hunter/gatherer, post gender
role,
post identity, post care in
the world
society, it is dead animal
carcass
from a slaughterhouse
that is referred to as meat.
Quite a contrast
in style
that we monkeys
have evolved through.
Shit, just look
at all this amazing progress.
Look at the chicken coops.
Look at the cuckoo nests.
Look at the pigsty.
Look at the arid desert.
Look at the stripped earth.
Look at the toxic sky.
Look at the mutating viruses.
Look at the zombie
apocalypse.
Look at the mass marketed
drugs.
Look at the televised
propaganda.
Look at the theater of war.
Look at the bloody horror
amputees.
Look at the millions of
gravesites.
Look at the rampantly
increasing cancer.
Look at the trendy culture.
Look at the nuclear
contamination.
Look at the lake of spilled
oil.
Look at the burning
wasteland.
Look at the deforestation.
Look at…Ah, Christ,
the pizza is burnt;
what a bummer, what a big
letdown, what a major
disaster,
what a reason to whine,
what a large problem to get
all bent out of shape about.
Shit, just lube it up
with ketchup
and flush it down
with more wine –
always, always, always
more wine.
That’s the solution
to all the world’s problems –
if everyone just sat
around the fire together,
drinking wine, eating pizza,
telling stories, shooting the
shit,
getting all the stress
off their chests,
off their backs,
out of their minds,
it would be paradise,
a veritable
kumbaya all the time.
Just get some of the petty
shit
off our hearts
and out of our consciences
so we can start to deal with
some of the major warts
that have been created
on the face of the Earth.
Put aside all the silly shit
so we can get around
to the things that actually
matter.
They keep piling up, up, up;
at some point
we’ll have to get down to the
business
of some serious heavy
lifting.
Methodology
Sometimes
it is Holy Spirit
and Kingdom of God
and synchronicity
and miraculous happenstance
and higher truth
and deeper meaning
and love, love, love
all the time
Sometimes
it is soil and dirt
and mud and grime
and shit and slime
and filth and flesh
and animal instinct
and preternatural urge
and worms and caskets
and graves and bones
and dust and ash
unto death
Sometimes
it is metaphors
and abstractions
and allusions
and coded meaning
and beating around the bush
and innuendo
and parables
and fairy tales
and ethics and morality
for the mind
Sometimes
it is straight to the heart
of the core
of the truth
with pinpoint precision
and razor sharp focus
and zeroed in energy
to finish the job
Eat, Drink, and Be Merry
We all sat around the fire,
feasting on flesh,
sipping glasses of blood,
watching the red sky fall,
as the world burned
all around us.
It was awesome.
It was brutal.
It was glorious.
It was over in a flash.
~Scott Thomas Outlar
