I can feel the boundaries and constrictions that keep me in this place. Not entirely sure what they all are, but I recognize some of them as bindings to things, pieces of materialism that anchor me like the chains of Jacob Marley, the famous Rastafarian ghost of Chuck Dickens who was famous for the phrase "Duck! Chickens!" which he uttered at the Great Chicken Catapult Contest of 1844, rocketing him into stardom and fame and landing him the nickname of "Boz".

The box is something of a creative one. Labels of intensity and style smack me around like riding a white pony on a cocktail of heroin and cocaine injected directly into its cerebral cortex. I am neither hack nor whore, though I have slept with both in the metaphorical sense and generated enough prose from the association to fill a small mailbox.

I'm old enough now to realize that I'm never gonna be cool enough to hang out backstage with the Sneaker Pimps snorting coke off of the ass of an unconscious hooker, and realistic enough to understand the waking up the next morning wondering where my pants were and why the back of my throat tasted like bitter ass probably wasn't the way that I wanted to spend half of my life. There is an amount of mourning that comes with that, the cessation of youth.

I write. It is absurdly the primary means of the release of the juices of creativity, the fond equivalent of masturbation without the need for handi-wipes and tetracyclene. The words are throwaway, pissed into time and random electrons, verbiage that dies on the vine without making the sweet nectar of champagne. If I were a drink, I'd probably be the red house wine, come from a box in the basement two weeks past its expiration date, mixed with a little bit of embalming fluid for that hallucinogenic kick. There is no adrenaline rush of words, or mortifying insult to the intelligence that comes from high literature. It's more like empty calorie snack food, something with hydrogenated vegetable oil and corn syrup that leaves that weird sweet plastic taste on the roof of your mouth and a craving for Fritos and cigarettes mixed with off-brand scotch.

My pony used to be able to do more tricks. It wasn't all that long ago, but somehow there was an absorption into this dullard existence of mundane doings that feels like beige apartment carpet. Everyone knows what it looks like, everyone knows because they've seen it countless times from days in their past or visitations of friends or family that live in big brick buildings with nameless, faceless neighbors piled into each others space. "It lacks character," they say, or "it's functional". I use much the same words to describe my ass, and I have about as much desire to live there as I do in one of the brick hives.

What do I want from you? I want joy. I want laughter. I want disgust. I want completion, and adoration, the occasional groupie, and good pie. I want love and recognition. I want to breathe, and wallow, and fondle your ass without being slapped.

I don't get that in a box.