obtuse

“You know I would say she’s like on of those new cigarettes… the ones where you squeeze the base and with a click the cigarette transforms from a regular cig into menthol. You know which ones I’m talking about?”

I nod. I don’t look at him. I completely miss his expression. My attention is focused on the job at hand, sawing at the rock-hard slab of steak placed before me. “Yeah I don’t get that. Why would you spend MORE money on a box of those things when you wind up paying LESS either buying a pack of regular cigarettes or a pack of menthols? If you ask me, it’s a gimmick.” I wave my fork at him. “A fucking gimmick.”

He pauses. “I don’t think you get it man, that’s not the point here. This girl… I can’t figure her out. One minute she’s totally cool and we get along and the next, she’s this total bitch.”

I shove a glob of mashed potato specked with pieces of corn into my mouth. I hold up a finger indicating for him to wait as I chew my food. He drums the table with his fingers anxiously peering out the window. I wash my bite down with some cold milk; wipe my mouth with my napkin.

“So what are your thoughts?”

I smirk. “I think the food here is horrible.”

“No dumbass, on this chick?”

“Well what you’re saying here, I think what your implying is that a regular cigarette is somehow better then a menthol… like a regular cig is something amazing and great and menthol is horrible, or vice versa, and you know what? I really don’t mind either to be quite honest with you.” I poke at the steak again. “Hey could you pass the salt?”

with a pocket full of posies

We fly, you and I, on opposing ends of the lightning storm. We ride the winds, you and I, lost together in the perpetual round and round locked in eternal, inescapable torment; forever cursed to chase one another thru this elusive, hazy nothingness. I gaze across the mass of dark clouds, writhing flesh, and sizzling lights and there I see you looking right back at me.

You are a flickering shadow - a black and white grainy photograph. A ghost. And your eyes are gray… and they are sad, so heartbreakingly sad.

I long to escape, I grow so tired. I long to break these invisible shackles and fly away like a sparrow-hawk who freely rides the world’s wind alongside the crashing sea, yet I cannot. The dark heart of the storm, the unblinking eye, pulls us, you and I, binding us with invisible chains.

We suffer because we foolishly chose to succumb to the crimes of the flesh a long time ago in life. Our love story was a simple one. It was purely defined by the thrill of touch and the absolution of orgasm. We shared a chemical love affair, you and I, a methamphetamine-laced, beautifully sublime, tragic, black-magic romance.

And I am told there is a place reserved for me deeper within... in the seventh ring, where the harpies hungrily circle and lick their gluttonous lips in anticipation for the meal to come. But I am bound to you here. You and I. Together. Yet I am so fucking alone as I pirouette and spin in the endless winds like a discarded trash bag tossed about a dark, barren alley.

So you see, in an odd sense not only are you my greatest curse, but you are also my salvation.

necrocalypse

Look at the stars; they no longer shine for you. They no longer twinkle instead replaced by the dead stillness one would find in the blank eyes of a rotting dog left on the roadside. And in a way the stars have taken on a new beauty - a wondrous new shape which twists and contort in a convoluted dance for all eternity. The stars have changed or rather, perhaps I am the one who has drastically changed and it is my eyes, not the stars, which have taken on the wordless aspect of a dead animal. My eyes became reptilian slits a long time ago, cold and unblinking, which mistrustfully stare out at a desolate world.

It is strange to be completely alone once again and not to have the company of a spoon or bottle. I stay clean and sober because I must, although if I needed to lose myself in the madness it would be now. Time grinds her heavy thighs across a barren wasteland, every day is a blur punctuated by cigarette breaks, jerking off, and sleep. I am alone because I must be. This is my glorious clean slate for which I hope to re-create the Sistine chapel. However, I never understood how cities can be built upon cities upon cities. I’ve always been under the impression you must utterly destroy what previously existed before you can rebuild as I have so often destroyed everything I ever came to love. And the city I strain to re-make pales in comparison to the city which stood before which in turn paled in comparison to the city which stood in its place before that.

malignancy

Sadistic depression settles down uninvited into my softest plush chair and refuses to leave. He sits there and hovers like a dank fog resting over pitch black water. Hushed whispers feeding into my ears like insidious, parasitic larvae which twist and wrap itself around my lower brainstem up through my medulla oblongata - a nightmarish creature out of a sci-fi film which leaves me, the host, “receptive to persuasion.” He refuses to leave despite my pathetic pleading and piteous threats.

The shaman urges me to down a vial of snake juice, a caustic combination of ipecac and peyote, urging me to drink so I may kill the demon which resides inside me. She waves her rat-bone rattler above my abdomen and in slurred, indistinguishable speech speaks to the demon as I writhe and twist covered in beads of acidic sweat. My eyes blur and the smoke above me coils and dances to the distant drums, drums which lull out the cumbersome beast-king which lurks beyond the safe light of the campfire, deep in the belly of the forest.

It shrieks and fights and refuses to leave. This demon, this depression, this desperation, it clings to me like a half-eaten monkey clings to a junkie’s back, razor talons embedded into muscle grinding upon bone. Biblical boils spewing rivers of pus and honey. It gorges and grows perpetually feasting upon it’s tail shitting out it’s offspring which erupt into this world through my malicious words and crystal puddles of spilled semen.

and the leaves turn...

The expansive sea stretches before me into endless eternity. Summer has come and passed and in its wake remains a thin, scaly sheen of oily murk. Death, rebirth, and then death again. Round and round we go and where we emerge again nobody knows.

The blind man turns to me and stares into my soul through merciless cataracts and with cracked, rat-teeth he implores, “ There must be some kind of way out of here…”

I buy him another drink. I buy myself two.

21st century Ponce de Leon

High energy, dirty electro floods my clicking-clacking skull and with guns blazing I hit the treadmill, free weights, and lap pool. Last night I turned my clock back, and tomorrow I will turn my clock back, and the next day I will turn my clock back. Winter Ruva escapades and someone told me once how nice it is to frig yourself to orgasm in a tanning bed. Your body simply melts and you drift away in a sea of indifference, like a hit of heroin and a menthol cigarette. Stolen moments alone to counterbalance my hectic vida. Ephedrine and diet Rockstar fuel this time capsule propelling forward, and at the helm a heroic space monkey shitting bricks thru a clenched sphincter. H____ told me once, in a disgusted tone, that my heart has probably aged to that of a fifty year old. I told her she has absolutely no idea. In fact last week I smoked Crystal Meth with a girl at work just for the fuck of it. And it was fun, no it really was, but I probably shouldn't taste those hot lips again, I'm not the young buck I once was.

Friends re-emerge like it's Spring. I think it might be a blast if the Illuminati get together for a reunion. The class of 2005. Complete with a punch bowl, white frosted cookies, and little smokies. I can brag about the man I once was and we can all re-tell our beautiful stories. In fact the green fairy and I had a discussion earlier about youth, creativity, and celebrity. Is it possible to re-capture lightning in a bottle lost so long ago? I go back and read my earlier epic (mis)adventures and it's as though I am reading someone else's words, someone else's work - reliving someone else's life. Was I a better writer back then? Smarter? Faster? Stronger? I'm sure my ex can confidently attest that I was, in fact, a better lover.