Substance

“--and then you're in serious trouble, very serious trouble, and you know it, finally, deadly serious trouble, because this Substance you thought was your one true friend, that you gave up all for, gladly, that for so long gave you relief from the pain of the Losses your love of that relief caused, your mother and lover and god and compadre, has finally removed its smily-face mask to reveal centerless eyes and a ravening maw, and canines down to here, it's the Face In The Floor, the grinning root-white face of your worst nightmares, and the face is your own face in the mirror, now, it's you, the Substance has devoured or replaced and become you, and the puke-, drool- and Substance-crusted T-shirt you've both worn for weeks now gets torn off and you stand there looking and in the root-white chest where your heart (given away to It) should be beating, in its exposed chest's center and centerless eyes is just a lightless hole, more teeth, and a beckoning taloned hand dangling something irresistible, and now you see you've been had, screwed royal, stripped and fucked and tossed to the side like some stuffed toy to lie for all time in the posture you land in. You see now that It's your enemy and your worst personal nightmare and the trouble It's gotten you into is undeniable and you still can't stop. Doing the Substance now is like attending Black Mass but you still can't stop, even though the Substance no longer gets you high. You are, as they say, Finished. You cannot get drunk and you cannot get sober; you cannot get high and you cannot get straight. You are behind bars; you are in a cage and can see only bars in every direction. You are in the kind of a hell of a mess that either ends lives or turns them around.”

― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

From Howl

'With mother finally fucked and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window and the last door closed at 4am and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture; a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary,
nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination..'

From Catcher in the Rye

"..Anyway, I kept walking up Fifth Avenue, without any tie on or anythng. Then, all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening.
Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddamned curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street. I thought I'd just go down, down, down, and nobody'd ever see me again.

Then I started doing something else. Every time I'd get to the end of a block, I'd make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I'd say to him , 'Allie,

don't let me dissapear, Alllie, don't let me dissapear, Allie, don't let me disappear, Allie.."'

smoke

the children make patterns out of desire
their voices rising like smoke through the trees,
their destinies held by angels above the fire