Something Bordering on Esoteric

Get these kicks just right
we need a subjugation high light
reel in another junkie
I want to breathe in this Pac Man atmosphere.

Spinning like a top
trying to catch my lover
with a butterfly knife
and a conscious knowledge
of how deep the cuts run.

I’ve never been too good at coddling
never too good at reprimands
never too good, but decent at searing
glnces
and meat.

Glaze over my second chance
requiems,
those words
I never said and I just need
a
forum
to rattle out these words on another blank
canvas.

Sorry this is a little too late
a little too little
but in a few hours I will
forget how else to write this.
I will close another grip
around some nooses
and drunk drivers
just to remember how I got here.

Between the shakes and quakes
I emptied my Yahtzee cup
onto more parquet than I’d like to admit,
this time
it was sniper scooped on a singular momentum.

We spelled out your name in dreams,
I don’t remember how to do that without
those echoes
etching your remembrance
into my subconscious.

Lighting the end of another ash stick
just to try and contemplate in solidarity.
No reason to do so today,
but
someday
I can figure this puzzle out
its constructs got me stressed
enough to no longer see the silver lining
you forged
atop my temple’s fire.

Coalesce into another esoteric minimalist
attempt at resurrection of a past tense eulogy
for a still-heart-beating, limitless institution.
One day.
Just one day.


.

Another Deadened Regime

Don't eye me sideways
I'm going to sit here
Indian style
light this match
and do my best
impression of a torch.

She cannot save me this time,
a murmur in sound waves
spitting florescent beams
into splitting headaches
I cried your name
into a tornado and watched
it twist into a million
broken swords.
I swallowed each shard whole
let it occupy my precepts
and quiz my Desires
on what their intentions are.

I want to see my body made of ash
a mache of cryptic solitude,
glue me together dear,
you've always had the best fingers
they have flames dancing
on their tips.
You never did tell me how
they never burn your nails,
is it from the ash you borrowed
from my temple?
Is that your repelent?
Is that your secret?

Please just fight fair!
fightfair!

Sometimes
the drum kicks never
drown out your name enough
it sounds too god
to be uttered by laymen.
I will quiet your lament
and resist convergence
on another ocean portrait.

I am praying
salient
wake me up marionette strings!
I want to be cognisant today!
I want to see her
today...

My fingers
they burn
black
no ash can save them
no refrain
can quiet their screams.
Those flames waltz
across my nails,
they are cracking
like smiles,
at least today
that's what they look like.
At least today
I hope you smiled at least once
at least today
I didn't open my crisis
onto a bed of broken swords.

I have an itch in my stomach.
So I swallowed a mouse to fix it,
now I have an itch and a mouse
scurrying around,
so I swallowed my fears;
now I have an itch
and a rotting rat,
so I swallowed my doubts;
now I have an itch
and a rotting rat
and something rancid brewing.
Two fingers down an esophagus
ripping through
vocal cords
until I removed this bile.
Now
now here I stand -
spine straightened,
no longer under the weight
of another broken promise;
jaw clentched,
I have too many words
to utter to you
I want to have my strength then;
fists clentched,
ready to punch through
any wall that might pose
this
an obstacle;
feet firm,
I need better ground to stand on
so I gathered up my dreams
and mediation rants;
eyes shut,
rest now
so tomorrow I can fully see you
clearly.

Here
stands before you a once
broken child
smashing door frames
like tinderbox music,
i have grown since those miscues
those manic mistakes
and you want to test my gold?
Good,
I have a barrell of quaters
at your behest
and a shotgun chest
to climb out of
before that time
can commence,
but when I do
I will be
waiting
and ready
for you...

A Crying Shame

On this day
I saw you listless
and eyeless.
Cry me a simile
and I'll never see you smile.

Never before can I remember
how hollow you looked
the first time I saw you.
You stand
stocked and cocked
bullets bursting forth
I want to eat their lead
spit out their metallic
on another grand piano.

Swallow this moment
like a few shots
and let it warm your body
as a bullet warms its
exit wound.
Cry me a river
and I'll never give a damn
until we hold
a psalm
til it cracks
into a million smiles
and disintegrates
like the miasma
that was so beautiful
yesterday.

Hold me
I want to feel warmth again
a body of trouble
'neath
a waterfall of doubt
until I rip its ribs asunder
rendered useless and stagnant.
A rock
against another tide
of seamless oceans,
laugh me to sleep
before this endears me
to everything you can't stand
so that I
may
also
be reminiscent of their beings.

One day
I will see you standing at my door frame
and I will not flinch at your silhouette
at least
not this time.

From Whence It Came

When I was younger I cooked out of interest, out of a compelling sense that this was something fun, they were bonding moments between mother and I on the stove or my father and I on the grill (not to be too clichéd). Those were moments of love – unbridled, unequivocal, unequaled love. At the age of three I cooked my first dish in my memory (mac’n’cheese) and it was phenomenal. It was the beginning of a lifelong love, obsession really, that has permeated everything I do to this day. I travel with food at the apex of my thoughts – “where should I eat,” “what’s unique in this city,” “whose opinion can I depend on for my food queries.”
It, all of it, is built on a basis of love. Love for my parents, the love I see on my family’s and friend’s faces when they are truly happy with something I put before them; no one can mimic being able to parlay happiness with a well-cooked piece of meat glistening on a plate, with a sauce that took hours of constant temperament circumambulating the centerpiece; a few pieces of accoutrement just to set off additional notes of sour, sweet, starch, astringency or bite necessary to complete that singular dish. Executed, all of it, with the utmost care and devotion one would reserve for gems.
It is love and the catharsis therein that keeps me doing this, keeps me going. No one wants to open up in a kitchen – one filled with as much machismo as a high school locker room, or enough internal walls to start paying rent on. But, still, that is not a necessity of love is there. And if there is no love you, as a diner, can tell.
The difference between a good meal and a meal remembered for its depravity and off-taste is the emotional state of the person who cooks the meal. I must admit that I am a fan of music that does not necessarily condone happiness and sound thought while I cook, but still, even with that said, there is surprising differences in how effective I am depending on mood. You are the last table, the large one being boisterous and loud in the dining room, loud enough so I can hear you, as the minute hand ticks ever so close to marking midnight my ability to stay fervent in my love will wane. I know there are those out there who like to push those bounds: “I’m paying good money for you to feed me”; I get that, in fact I am probably more livid towards the matre d’ who sat you at 10pm in the first place. Still, it is hard for me to stay happy and love the food I put out at that hour. Those are the tables where I remember why I started smoking, and why I miss it so much now.

In my quest to become a better cook, to learn from those who have ‘made it,’ a loving kitchen and environment has become a must. Learning comes from two places: a place of vinegar or honey. The very old school logic is to belittle, to demean until your point sticks, or the way of the new school logic where a worker is not a slave – they are a logical cog in a greater machine that cannot run without their input.
That is what I want to instill. When one loves the food, their employees, their co-workers, and their front of house the food jump by leaps and bounds in quality. Everyone works better, every wants to improve, the impetus to grow is not out of fear, it is out of a sense of community: if you mess up you are not letting yourself down, you’re letting down your community, your family.
I currently work in a restaurant where I am an intern, yet I can give my input to our menu whenever I might be able to help out. That is the restaurant I want to work in the rest of my life, that is the restaurant I want to create. So often a restaurant is a place for the disheveled, the disgruntled, and the burnt out; this fosters an environment of pain and suffering, where respect is earned by home much torture you can take. This is not, by any means, an exaggeration.
As the times progress more and more restaurants will become ingrained in fostering an environment that is conducive to learning without extreme repercussions for a mistake. Belittlement does nothing other than make someone timid and afraid that they do not even want to take a risk and left to never learn, one never learns from mistakes rather they are accustomed to a set standard of experience that will never condone creativity or expansion of self.


With the ideology of love seeping into every facet of the cooking industry we are closing in on the pinnacle of what we, as cooks, want to do. Imagine a world where cooks and chefs and bakers have two days off a week, where monetary gain is usurped by quality and a constant eye on the relative happiness of their workers, and it is a world that can finally break free of the shackles of drug, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine abuse and the rampant increase in suicide rates. Stress is literally a killer.
I got into this industry for my love of food, love of the comradeship, love of the pace, and yet here I am a veteran of loveless kitchens, knowing that I will never go back into that segment of my industry. This too will change, this too will end.