The Dive Bar Verses

Click

2011-05-07T13:14:00.000-07:00

It is raining as I write this. I listen to the incessant drum of the water as it beats against the roof and upon the unused patio furniture. The soft clink of a coffee can I left outside collects rain as well as cigarette butts, an acerbic soup. The house is empty and all is quiet save for the soft hum of the refrigerator - which, by the way, is empty.

And I’d thought I had forgotten about you. About us. About that pivotal moment frozen in time you and I shared whose magnitude rivals even the birth of my own child.

You know I caught myself singing our song today, “your song.” And I realized I broke promises I made to you and we have both suffered for it. I know you are lost, out there wandering about the wasteland completely unaware of what you are, or what it is you should be, only knowing what it is you once had... and I am right there with you. We are so exceptionally similar in this regard and the stark truth of this frightens me. We are both empty vessels searching desperately for that which will complete us, and we both know that this crucial element is unobtainable… yet, so drastically close. It is so within grasp as we only have to extend our hand and it would be there as if plucking an apple from a tree.

However we tried… many times… and each time either myself, and then later on you, weren’t ready. And perhaps we will never be ready. Or perhaps it will take several lifetimes to finally be ready. To embrace that which “needs to be.” Or the other option is death.

I don’t know anymore.

I remember that night last December, several weeks before Christmas, I spent at your house. I remember your touch and how it felt so distantly familiar, your taste.. your smell. Yet, at the same time, so utterly alien and reptilian. Beyond that of even a stranger.

cancer

2010-11-08T10:46:00.000-08:00

The uncaring wind blows in large billowing clouds of frigid snow determined to hide the world in a white blanket of merriment and Christmas carols. To hide away the pain, as I have chosen to, under a dense shroud with a smile painstakingly painted onto the surface. I wear this shroud over my face as my body lies dormant and inert encased in glass, a reliquary of pain to remind travelling pilgrims to stray clear of this path I have chosen for nothing beautiful or joyous can result in this.

I blankly stare at the flashing neon sign by the door; an untouched beer sits in front of me bleeding into the grimy table. Surrounded by flesh I no longer have the desire to seek out. And it’s a curse. We’ve inherited this curse, I’ve determined, my sister and I, to forever remain incomplete. Love is an elusive shadow I oftentimes think I see standing beside me in my peripheral vision only to disappear when I turn my head. And now, more than ever, I am a hollow vessel. I once mistakenly carried optimism as a mule humps its burden, a foolish, stubborn belief in karma and true love and soul-mates and sugar and spice and everything nice. I truly thought in the end, I would be reunited with her, and together we’d hurtle toward Xibalba or possibly be reborn as cats.

I know better now.

It was a foolish paradigm I conjured out of hope and air to grasp to as a Titanic survivor holds on to a paddle or life vest listening for the shrill whistle which may or may not come – for salvation. But the loveliness is that I have finally learned to accept this curse. She and I dance this lovely dance, spinning and circling into the sky like cigarette smoke. I’ve been burned again and again, or some would argue, burned others again and again leaving in my wake a sticky, dense oily slick in which birds perish.

I’ve decided to do the world a favor and remain forever alone.

I’ve given up. I no longer wish to search or even entertain the notion I may find “her” because I know she doesn’t exist - she is a myth. And here I hide in plain site. Either at the strip club with my cousin or the blank walls of my empty, spartan apartment my sanctuary.

Interesting that word, apartment.

illusory

2010-09-08T10:16:00.001-07:00

“Look out at the city Tuzik. Do you know why the lights twinkle the way they do?” I turn to her and smile tenderly. She looks at me with dark, almond eyes and then turns back to the distant city. She smiles as we both soak in the soft sighing of the wind and the hum of the power lines.

“You told me this once.” She laughs. “But I don't remember.”

A familiar song and it feels good to hear it. It feels good to sing it – and after eight years, I can still remember the words.

“Well...” I softly chuckle. “ ...what makes the lights twinkle is the fact there are so many of them. Countless lights out there, you could venture to say one light for every person.” R___ quietly listens. “What causes the lights to twinkle the way they do, is people turning their lights on or off.” I pause, carefully gauging her reaction.

She hesitates, looking at me with beautiful unsureness. She starts to say something and then stops herself. She looks at the throbbing city again. “Really baby? If you say that's what it is then that’s what it is.”

I pull her closer; she fits perfectly underneath my arm.

“Now, look up. At the stars.”

R___ smirks, excited to play a new game. She looks to the stars.

“Do you realize we are looking at the same sky people that lived ten thousand years ago looked at? The same stars the Pharaohs and even early man, huddling in caves, looked at… and it’s-it's all a lie.”

“What do you mean?”

“Many of those stars up there have already died, yet to us, they continue to shine. Other stars we cannot see yet because they have been born but their light hasn't reached us. The distance is unimaginable and it takes thousands of years for that light to reach us”

“So what are you saying babe?”

“What I'm saying is we study and believe only that which we can see. And in the case of the sky, what we see is not necessarily what exists.”

She nods. Perhaps she understands or perhaps she doesn't or perhaps she doesn't even attempt to try, however she nods.

I look away and tap the packet of smokes I bought earlier in the palm of my hand. There is a long silence and then she asks:

“I see you sitting next to me, again, after eight years of thinking of you as a dream - as a memory. However, I can't help but ask myself if your love for me still exists.”

I look at her and my words fail me.

Santiago

2010-09-01T14:51:00.000-07:00

I look at the old man as the sea birds screech around us. The cold breeze carries the smell of the ocean - it envelops us. Storm clouds gather overhead. I study him for a moment, watching his eyes as he watches the sea. I finally muster the courage to ask him: “So when did you finally give up on it?”

He pulls another tug from his tobacco pipe, scratches the bristly whiskers on his face as he gazes out at the ocean as if in contemplation. “Gave up on what?”

“Love... true love. Fate. Destiny. All of that stuff.” I re-consider my words, “When did you turn your back on the fairy tale?”

He chuckles as he tugs at the line, gently tapping the pole, wise eyes examining the surface of the waves searching for a darting flash of silver or copper. “I haven’t given up, really.” He turns and looks at me. There is a shaky conviction in his aged voice, it is strong but scratched. Listening to him speak reminds me of listening to my grandfather’s Caruso records so long ago when I was a kid. “I’ve lived a good life... a good life. I have beautiful children. They’re all grown up now and gone. I got grandchildren too. They’re so beautiful.” He pauses. “I can’t say I ever loved someone. But I’m still waitin’... “ He re-lights his pipe and draws a deep breath and holds it for a moment. He exhales. “I’m still waitin’.”

I nod and look out at the ocean. In the distance a fishing vessel shrouded in fog slowly makes its way back to the harbor.

at last

2010-08-06T23:06:00.001-07:00

Let me tell you a story about redemption.

It’s been eight years. Eight years of “what if,” “what now,” “will I ever,” and “I will never.” Eight years of questions, emptiness, desolation, and desperation. Eight years I have tread water barely staying afloat, through an ocean of coke, X, booze, whores, flings, fights.

Eight years of regret.

“I close my eyes and I see you. Here in front of me, I love your smile. Your eyes.

I am there

Heh, you always have been. I’d close my eyes and visit you... for eight years I have visited you.

What did we do in those visits?

I’d reach out and touch your lips. I’d run my fingers down your face. I’d say something silly and make you laugh. We’d love. We’d be.

I want you to touch me all over for many many days.

I want to crawl inside you and never leave. ”

I sabotaged everything. I insured I would have the ability to pursue you, should you have chosen to return to me. I broke someone's heart. I have lived alone, in desolation, a monastic life. I have dealt with the backlash of humiliation and my pride has weathered crushing blow after crushing blow. But you know what R____? It was all worth it.

We are on the verge of realizing what we could only dream about. Yes, when you told me you couldn't move on, echoing my same inability, my soul sang. And then, you confessed to me that I am your soul mate. And that you want to grow old with me. And that you want to give me a baby. And that you want to fall asleep with me inside of you and then wake up with me still inside you. You told me you miss my smell and ironing my work shirts, and therein you could find happiness.

And most importantly, you told me you forgive me.

No I am not in love with your memory R____, nor am I in love with what I used to be, or what we used to be, I am one hundred percent certain that I am completely in love with you. With YOU... with your soul.

And above all R____, I am grateful I do not have to wait to see you again as a cat.

You tell me you keep expecting to wake up, as you so often had to in the past, only to find we are apart. I feel precisely the same. But this isn’t a dream. And there’s no place like home tuzik.

Hope.

2010-07-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

We stay in touch. every few weeks an almost frantic text-message exchange followed immediately by silence. Always instigated with a simple “hello, are you married yet lol?” My typical reply is “no, hardly.” I proceed to explain to R___ why I see no future between M___ and I. I try to articulate, in 120 characters or less, why I love my girlfriend and maintain this “thing” although I know in my heart, and with utmost certainty, that it's fleeting - that it lacks permanence and is doomed to die and ultimately be left by the roadside like every other dead relationship I’ve walked away from. I tell her I believe it will end soon, and that I give it a month. Of course I’ve been telling her this for the past six months and yet somehow M____ and I continue on. It’s at this point I attempt to turn the tables and inquire about HER “man.” She dismisses it as a deep platonic friendship and nothing more - a platonic friend she just happens to live with and fuck. My cousin tells me “she’s not going to sit around and wait for you, but she’s sitting around waiting for you.” He advises me to pursue whatever path I wish but let it be known that our circle of friends (the Guido’s and Guidette’s) all believe I should be with R___ in the end, and that we should have children, and live happily ever after.

I tell R__ that I really want to have more children. And she constantly reminds me how beautiful our kids could look. And I tell her in our next life we’ll have lots of children. And she laughs and asks me what we’ll be resurrected as, and I tell her we’ll be cats. And so on and so on we continue this back and forth... this tango. She’ll advance and I’ll retreat, I’ll advance and she’ll retreat. Like the time I told her I still love her when I was in Vegas rolling on E and seeing angels. And then she asked me if I was also texting my girlfriend? I replied yes and then silence. She continues to haunt me both in thought and form. I see her face everyday on my computer, I read her words, and my emotions are convoluted much like this post.

And I believe I really do love M____, and I know in my heart it’s possible to love more than one person at the same time. I also know I love H_____, and A_____, and that Persian girl I met in Vegas when I was twenty-one with whom I had a four day love affair and possibly impregnated - wouldn’t that be nice? And I think about this often too. I think about what it would be like if I were to get a phone call or a friends request on Facebook from her, to tell me I have a beautiful daughter with almond shaped eyes green as emeralds.

Unfortunately she will never find me cause I told her my name was Arturo Bandini.

the last man

2009-12-17T20:33:00.001-08:00

If you are not aware of what to look for you will invariably miss it. It happens in an instant. Like the dilation of a pupil upon stepping into the sunlight. Like a housefly strumming it's hind legs together in neuron-quick anticipation before digging into a hot meal of fresh shit. It will happen and unless you are lucent, unless you are coherent... unless you are sober... you may miss it. A fragment of time, frozen. And sometimes you will find that you have the ability to watch. You will have the ability to walk around this paused, flickering image of you, and her - and underneath it, and in-between it - and you will be able to analyze the actions and thoughts and emotions unfolding around you. Analyze and control.

And sometimes you will let it pass you by. Brainwaves junk sluggish and eyes brimming with whiskey and red with the hint of long-dried tears. You are fast asleep, locked between ebony thighs, wrapped in whore scent as soft adulations and false promises caress you like a sleeping babe. Manicured nails run through your scalp offering salvation and scratching away what seems like years of worry - and the vessel which carries you to Xibalba races thru the cosmos. The world you once knew disappears at your feet slipping into lapping darkness.

I stand under the canopy watching the snow fall. I inhale my cigarette and then close my thoughts only listening to the soft "shhhh" of the wind and swirling flakes which indiscernibly speak an old language known only to ancient man and white owls. I realize it is over between us R___. I have made my decision. And I am impotent to act.

The Collector

2009-12-07T17:23:00.000-08:00

Years of memories, a sea of chiseled faces and gaudy, more fantastic then life, colors and images all carefully preserved, each one individually sealed and stored away in plastic and cardboard.

I've asked him too many times why he continues to collect. I tell him that we're no longer kids, and the market has proven that these comic books hold no re-sale value.I ask him why he continues to collect, why he continues to buy, why he continues to hoard... a litany of redundant questions... and we both know he would never intend to ever part ways with his books, even if he could turn a profit, as they are all, each and every single issue, his babies.

He's amassed a small fortune of "funny" books. Gary and I started this endeavor together, once upon a time, as an innocent hobby when we were children. Reading and absorbing the week to week, month to month struggles of larger then life heroes served as a fleeting, necessary escape for two awkward, angst-ridden kids. But somehow, somewhere along the way, it turned into something bigger… something disturbing.

An appropriate word could be "villainous."

A comic book "long box" houses approximately 350 comic books. It's crafted of sturdy cardboard which is untreated by chemicals as to avoid any fatal "bleeding" into the paper which would thereby prematurely yellow and age the pages. Each individual comic is in turn housed in a mylar bag along with an untreated cardstock "backboard" or "back" which will insure the book remain compact and upright. This will prevent the spine from bending. He insists I wash my hands before reading any of his books. He tells me the oils in our hands in time can become acidic and accelerate the degradation of the glossy covers. He has an entire room devoted to his long boxes. An entire wall of boxes stacked four high and ten long. If one were to do the math this would calculate out to 40 boxes or 14,000 comic books. He has been collecting since we were fourteen, he is now thirty. In sixteen years, at approximately $2.50 per issue give or take, he has spent thirty-five thousand dollars. This doesn't include the price of supplies: bags costing around fifteen cents per and backboards about a dime. And each and every issue is in mint condition.

Each book is as perfect and flawless as the day he bought it.

But each of these books, in Gary's mind, hold a higher value then the original cover price he paid for them... far more value. Each comic is a distinct time capsule which I would surmise reveal more then the story drawn out in-between it's pages. For instance, a certain book may represent a micro-drama which played out during his breakup with the woman he was supposed to "marry" over a decade ago. It could represent the long span back in 2002-2004 when he was broke and he had to limit his buying to a select few books. Certain characters or story-archs could very well remind him of his most recent bout with depression, painkillers, and alcoholism. Sixteen years of storylines, sixteen years of triumph, loss, elation, and depression. Yet the heroes never change, whereas Gary and I have. Superman will always don his red, yellow, and blue and embody justice and selflessness.

Superman will always wear a cape.

And in many ways I am a lot like Gary.

However, I stopped collecting comic books many years ago. My attention turned to other compulsions. While he continued to invest his money and time into abstract dreams and myths I prospected faces. I collected matchbooks and bar-napkins with hastily written names and barely legible phone numbers. I amassed a collection of one night stands, flings, and intoxicated groping sessions in dingy, dimly-lit booths in the back of dive-bars. A sea of faces, scents, tastes carefully wrapped in plastic, alphabetically sorted, and lovingly packed away into the long boxes of my own mind. And sixteen years later, unlike him, I have nothing to show for it. I have nothing to pass on to my offspring should I ever decide to have children. I have nothing material or absolute… nothing concrete, to show for sixteen years of wasted life.

All I really have to cling to is years of memories, a sea of chiseled faces and gaudy, more fantastic then life, colors and images all carefully preserved, each one individually sealed and stored away. Each and every memory, through the tireless embalming process of the mind, stands flawlessly preserved.

chestnuts roasting..

2009-12-03T19:21:00.001-08:00

I've noticed when it snows, the world's suddenly smaller. Pick any street any night, if it's snowing, you feel as though you're walking through a miniature town in a tiny snow globe.

I look over at him through the cold stillness. He's babbling. His eyes are elsewhere - he seems distant. In fact our entire conversation feels alien and distant. I stomp my feet and blow into my hands. "Max, what time did you say this dude is going to meet us here? I'm freezing."

Max snaps back at me. "He'll get here when he gets here. You want the high or what?"

"Yeah I do but fuck bro I seen three cops drive by already." I look around. We're standing next to a leaking dumpster in a dingy alley. Just an alley, any alley, in a disgusting city which time has forgotten altogether. I used to call this city 'Gotham.'

"The Popo are making me nervous Max, call this motherfucker and find out where he's at."

He whips out his cell. Of course Max has his dealer on speed dial. "Yeah. We're here where you at?" Max laughs one of those fake laughs a person typically gives to their boss at a business luncheon or in this case, to their hook. "Yeah, that's right. Three, no make it four. Okay. Okay. Yeah... see you soon." He clicks his phone shut and coughs. The alley carries the echo up into the sky, caught in the wind spinning and spinning up into heaven. Faraway I hear a dog barking.

"So where is he?"

"Dude chill out you're buggin me. Smoke another cig, Jesus."

I shove my hands in my pocket and walk a few paces to get the blood flowing in my legs. I look over at Max. He's staring out into the blackness. His lips are moving. He's talking to someone... and no one. The monkey's on Max's back in a big way, worse than me. Way worse. I could quit the junk anytime. I tell people I could sooner quit using then smoking. I tell people it's recreational. I choose to keep using, I'm not forced... just through the Holidays you know? Then I'll probably quit. But Max he's got it bad.

"Hey man you got the cash? A hundred."

I turn around to find Max standing right behind me. "We buying more?"

"Naw for all four rocks. Their big though. You'll like."

"I'm buying two, I got fifty on me."

Max's eyes widen. His voice raises. "Naw man you told me you were buying all four rocks. And then I'm buying one off you! That was the agreement right!?"

Another police car slowly crunches by at the end of the alley. I lean up against the wall and pop the collar up on my peacoat. "Max shut the fuck up, lower your voice. You're acting like a fucking nut."

Max quizzically looks at me, his voice lowers into a shrill whisper. His speech is animated. His arms flail about. "Fucking Nut? I suppose it's fucking nutty to keep hooking you up with this shit, right? Would that make me a fucking nut? Exactly how..."

I look around nervously. A cough from an open upstairs window. Another car creeps by, a white car. A ghost car maybe? "Okay fine. Fine. Shut the fuck up please Max, Christ! I got it okay. And where the fuck is this guy anyway, Max call him, call your guy."

I tell people I could quit anytime. It's not that I would if I could, it's more like I could if I would. I know a lot of people probably find it hard to believe, but whatever, fuck them. The situation is under control. Just through the Holidays you know?

cosmic

2009-11-24T16:58:00.000-08:00

It is now you choose to speak.

I have waited patiently for half a decade. I have seen you in my dreams. You have consumed my living thoughts. I have envisioned countless realities where you and I "made it." Countless parallel dimensions where you and I were married, and bore a child, and shared a life. Years I have pined. Years I have cried. For years I have mourned, alone, with only the company of whores, and bottles, and needles, and a dusty collection of memories I have so meticulously archived, to allay me - to pull me thru. I have documented my dreams of you both here and elsewhere. I have recorded the journey.

And it is now you choose to speak.

I've finally met someone R___, I can finally say I have the ability to love again. I met someone remarkable, and beautiful, and brilliant. And in an ironic twist of bitter fate, with utmost, perfect comedic timing, you come back to me. As though you can see life play out around me, after all, you are a gypsy. I can see you watching me thru your crystal ball. Reading my thoughts in the bottom of your coffee cup. Watching the stars twinkle in the winter sky. The timing is too im/perfect.

My God why now?

I now stand before a crossroads. Two paths divert before me. And I feel as helpless and lost as I was when I was young.

a beginning to a new ending

2009-09-29T22:23:00.000-07:00

R_____, you know we drift increasingly closer, you and I. We are two great ships, ancient ships manned by sightless ghosts, lost in the fog on a collision course. Every morning when I open my eyes I hear your song resonating thru my head. I see your dark eyes and I swear I smell your lingering scent left behind on my pillow. You are out there waiting, watching, pressing your somber, beautiful gravity into my own. The next name on your dance card just so happens to be mine and I think the next name on my card is yours. P.S I still remember how to dance, believe it or not. Do you?

Somehow you've found me, after all of these years, I think you may have finally found me again. Or rather I allowed myself to be found. Long ago, the conditions were less then ideal. Times have changed. I like to believe our time-line has folded and re-folded into an intricate paper bird ready to take flight. Our paths have re-aligned and I pray I do not have to wait until I die to see you once again, as I thought I would, if even for but a glimpse.

I lay in bed next to a whore. I pretend to sleep and I can hear the wind outside rap against the window and the rain nervously drum the tin siding. I can hear the expectant song of the approaching winter storm and my heart races as though it's on tweak. I slip out of bed, out of her apartment, to walk the street. The cold water falls and falls. The steam rises from the pavement and I look at the flickering night lights of the city below which are muted by the rain yet which still struggle to flicker. R___ I remember once I told you what causes the lights to flicker is countless people turning their lights on or off. Do you remember that night? I look at the lights, tuzik, and then I look closer into the dark spots in between the lights. I know somewhere out in that still darkness you are thinking of me. I know you are staring back. I inhale my cigarette and smile - a wet, shaky smile.

We are so in tune to each the other's entire.

Service Tech

2009-07-24T19:03:00.000-07:00

Gnashing teeth gargoyle-smile he looks at me thru sun-bleached eyes. He gazes past my demeanor penetrating and digging, probing for a possible fix. I pull a drag from my cigarette and gently smile, nodding as he chirps on about the intricate zen of forklift engines, barbecuing, and his "bitch" wife. Pulsating goblin tweaker eyes and a hollow grin. No teeth just bloody peeling gums painted over with tobacco lacquer. Burn-scarred skin stretch over tense arms coiled like springs capped with clenched fists pinching a cigarette like a lobster claw and just as red. Skin splayed and wrapped over decaying bone like burlap or worn leather torn off the seat of a junked out Cadillac. A broken shell gutted-out cockroach carapace whom I would bet has seen real devils and demons walk the earth... and now he slowly metamorphoses into oblivion. Tweaker demon.

dead sun

2009-03-18T16:37:00.001-07:00

He grits his teeth as he strains to lift the wooden box from the frigid ground. His grimy shirt glistens with sweat and steam rises off of his back in the chill December air. It’s quiet here and his ears and cheeks are numb with cold. The only sound is the whistle of the cruel wind and the clink of his pick and shovel against the hard earth. The birds have all but left, even the crows.

With a final heave he lifts the box out and quickly drops it on a patch of snow next to the empty hole. He collapses onto his knees, breathing hard to catch his breath. He looks up at the nuclear sky, up at the impenetrable curtain of reddish-gray clouds. He thinks to himself that somewhere behind those clouds must be the sun which impotently weeps, silent and forgotten.

Somewhere it must exist, the sun cannot die.

He leans back, steadying himself with his outstretched hands. His eyes scan the skeletal, ancient skyscrapers around him which protrude from the icy earth like the ribcage of a fallen titan. He closes his eyes and carefully listens to the shrill whistle of the wind as it blows through shattered windows, cascading down empty halls, and billowing into empty rooms. Father told him once about a great civilization that used to live here, long ago before the demons came. Father said if you listen to the wind hard enough, you can hear their voices, faintly wailing and crying. He listens, God he listens, searching for a sign. And then he hears her. She whispers to him, faintly, like the crackle of a candle in a hushed room.

I thought this thing between you and I was long over. You were dead… You ARE dead.. Buried.

here we come a wandering

2008-12-22T10:36:00.000-08:00

I tell her the world looks like Siberia, the snow falls and falls. Silence accompanied by crackling static on the other end, she mumbles some things and I barely hear or understand what is being said - perhaps because I’m drunk. A pleasant conversation, it seems, I might have had with myself - or nobody at all; imaginary friends in imaginary places.

And the snow falls.

A friend of mine told me this weekend he wants to kill himself.

Happy Holidays.

obtuse

2008-11-25T15:13:00.001-08:00

“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

2008-11-24T12:41:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-18T10:37:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-10T14:51:00.001-08:00

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...

2008-11-06T12:15:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-03T19:31:00.000-08:00

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.

Solace

2008-08-06T13:32:00.000-07:00

I have no words. I have no words and sometimes when we have nothing to say we simply sit in silence and watch. We watch the world change and evolve and we are impotent to act. We watch the people closest to us grow tired of us, or bored, and go away and sometimes we choose to intercede… but only sometimes.

And what I love about you is your beautiful, golden, sullen silence.

You and I are alone because we have chosen to withdraw into our own misery and hide away… to merely watch. Maybe we are both scared. I like to think you and I are on a “retreat.” Sounds like something pleasurable although it really isn’t. I wile away hours upon hours playing my “game” and you have your crossword puzzles and you tell me we are the way we are because we are both “water” signs and the stars and planets have chosen this path for us. I know the real reason we are the way we are is because at some point in our lives we were utterly broken and destroyed.

What I love about you is your quiet, prideful elegance.

The time I spend with you I cherish because you never ask me any questions. You are content to simply “be” around me. We sit on your patio sipping cocktails and smoking cigarettes watching the world pass us by. The “freakshow” as you call it. We sit together frozen in time like insects encased in amber. We are faded memories on a yellowed, blurred photograph.

And maybe this is what we both needed to heal… this solitude.

Yes, I think we both need each other, God knows I needed you, and somehow somewhere along the way I grew to love you. I love your sarcasm and pessimism and I think I love it because it mirrors mine. I love your obsession with old Hollywood Glamour, 80’s music, and interior design. You make me laugh. Most of all I love the fact you do not expect much of me save respect and adoration and I give you these things without asking any questions in return. I don't give you much else but please remember what I do give you is far more then what I have given anyone in the past 4 years of my life save my son.

So I raise my glass of wine and propose a toast… here’s to our continued retreat, may our beautiful sabbatical continue.

emergence(y)

2008-05-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

Perfect princess I think you are made of stars so shining and bright. Worlds separate us right now, you are so far away... or perhaps you are right here in plain sight and I am the one who is so far away. However I am closing the distance. I am chasing doom every step I take, every twist, every turn... I am getting closer. My lungs are out of air and I have begun the long ascent back to the surface. If I plan this right not only will I break the surface but I might even fly. The quiet, murky solitude of the deeper then deep held me like a womb thru the cold winter but the sun is out and I must come back as all things do. As the flowers. As the birds. As does the rain. As do certain stars.

It’s a fine day
People open windows
They leave their houses
Just want a short walk
It’s a fine day

the road to awe

2008-03-14T15:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I died. Tomorrow I will die. Vacuous lapses of time in between dreams, sleep, and sadistic sex. Stolen idols, broken libido, a divine cockroach stare – darting eyes and skeleton smiles. Things fall apart and the center cannot hold... and I so long to hold the rotting remains of you so tenderly in my arms and hum you that Russian lullaby you softly sang to me one snowy day long ago when I almost died.

It seems as though every night I dream of Xibalba. I vaguely remember excited voices around a crackling fire casting shadows into the howling jungle all around. The canopy above echoing with the shrill shriek of demons and above these demons a jealous moon carved of ebony and tears. Blood-red rivers and lakes of pus, and a forest of writhing bodies impaled on sheared bamboo and….

My god what became of us?

You and I were a fairy tale - a beautiful fable. Except fairy tales are supposed to end differently then we did. The princess did find her prince and the prince turned out be a cancerous fucking coward.

I miss you. I do.

There is nothing left of you now except the part of you that resides inside the solitary tree which grows in the recesses of my distant memory. And my eyes turn upwards to the sky, to an approaching star which is dying by the millenia, a sparkling nova cast in shades of yellow and brown - the Mayans named this place Xibalba.

When I reach my destination I promise you I will find you so we may be reborn as cats….

Patchwork

2008-03-06T14:22:00.001-08:00

Sometimes the sound of goodbye is louder then the waves which crash on black rocks on a forbidden coast somewhere in the expansive archipelago of distant memory. And out past the rocks, beyond the coastline, the waves undulate in constant rhythm expanding and contracting like the chest of a sleeping titan. The monster rests, indeed, he rests… this kraken deep, deep below the red waters buried in sand and covered in coral. But as my world approaches conflict, as the drums of war hasten their beat growing louder and more oppressive, he stirs.

I know she has returned. Wherever it is she went she has returned and I don’t know how I feel about this. There have been sightings, although brief. There have been rumors, although unfounded - fragments of information. Someone's brother's roommate saw her at the mall. Insubstantial gossip perhaps but rumors nonetheless. And every lead I get brings me closer to the choice I will inevitably have to make. I am so lost. So… torn. I know I need to let go and in fact I thought I had – years ago. But what one thinks or one intends and what one actually does, in action, differ as day does from night. I still need her yet at the same time I need to continue to be alone.

It has been said the Roman poet Catullus wrote over twelve thousand poems all devoted to one single woman. and yes after all this time I still need my tuzik.

Life is a blur. I lose track of time and stumble through my daily routine as a small child wanders through a store oblivious of others around him. The sun shines more nowadays and the chrysalis is beginning to crack. My cousin is excited for the summer as this will be the first summer in a long time we will have motorcycles again and I will be free to join him in renewed adventures. I tell him it won’t be the same and he smiles and tells me with a twinkle in his eye, “ but it can be.”

heavy is the head...

2008-02-13T14:06:00.000-08:00

Snow falls outside and it seems as though it will never stop, and on this side of the glass, in my world, there remains only black.

Black - as in the absence of color... as in the absence of all light and warmth.

I grow so bored. Bored of life and it's complexity. How I long to escape outside and find a quiet corner, perhaps underneath a tree or some cardboard, so I may sit alone and listen to the breeze and the hushed whispering of the incessant snow. I wish to listen, merely listen, and try to decipher their words. There must be a meaning to those words and in this meaning perhaps a solution… a cure to this illness which I cannot seem to lose.

I wish I could escape far away perhaps up into the mountains, desolation peak, and find a spot where I may simply sit and stare far off into space enjoying the sublime silence. And yes I would wear a crown of gold and a robe of crushed velvet.

Nirvanic

2008-01-23T14:25:00.001-08:00

Dearest Leon,

My journeys have now led me east, to the mythical land of dragons and demons. I have found refuge among the ascetics here in a remote monastery nestled in the frigid, snowcapped mountains.

I realize it has been such a long time since you heard from me last, I can only assume you surmised me dead. And this assumption wouldn’t have been too far off my dear friend. But by God’s graciousness, I have unshackled the stubborn locks the opium and absinthe held on my thoughts and my body. I am clean now. It was a terrifying journey, a horrible dream rife with suffering. I still suffer. They still haunt me. Sometimes at night I swear I can hear their hushed whispers outside my window. Sometimes at dusk I will see their fleeting shadows on the hillside and I must resist the urge to follow. Sometimes I will see the silhouette of a man in my peripheral vision… only to turn and find myself standing alone..

It has now been several years since I defected from the battalion but for the first time since childhood my thoughts are lucid. I commune with God daily Leon. I see him in every gesture, every fleeting glance outside - I commune with God even as I complete the mundane tasks assigned to me, when I clean or cook or mend the thatched roofs, he speaks to me. We hold such lively conversations. Perhaps I shall tell you of these conversations, in fact I hope to my friend, over tea and hot cakes… one day.

If I can offer any advice, and I feel so foolish offering advice to you or to anyone, but I will write down these words so I may thereby also remind myself: If you are alive then be truly alive. Just open up your eyes and pay attention to the signs. Pay attention to the color of the sky and of the endless night. This life you hold so near and dear will fade in time.

So just let go.

You shall hear from me again Leon. I anticipate my stay here shall continue for exactly a year and then…well, we’ll see which way the winds decide to blow.

fitting in

2008-01-18T12:32:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning in Paris. Light streamed into my tiny room as I lay in my tiny bed staring at the cherubs zipping about above me. I reached out my hand oh so gently to catch one and startled them out of their playful revelry. The tiniest one, I believe his name was Max, smacked away my hand with a snarl. I shrug and swing my legs to my right-hand side, always my right hand side, and dismount the rickety bed in a fanciful flourish. Nothing is going to bring me down today for tonight I will be meeting my friends at the burlesque show for dinner, drinks, and various other forms of forbidden debauchery.

I pad my away across the cold floor softly humming Giussepe Verdi. I fling open the rococo white and gold armoire door with a loud “Ah-Ha!” No monster, he is taking the day off it appears. I shrug and pick out a crisp red turtleneck, black pants, and a black blazer. The perfect ensemble for which to haunt le musée du Louvre.

“ Papa where are you going today?”

I dab some mousse into my palm, rub my hands together like Mr. Miyagi, and press my mess of black, but graying, hair back into a neat arrangement. “Little man I am going to the museum and then I am meeting a friend at the corner café for a cup of chai tea. And then tomorrow this time, well, you and I will be spitting logeys at tourists off the Eiffel tower."

“ But we are tourists.”

I slowly turn around and look deep into his eyes… into my eyes. I hold a finger up to my mouth and shake my head. “Shhhhhhhhhh, no we live here now.”

repeat

2008-01-09T09:27:00.000-08:00

It was 2001 and we didn’t give a fuck. Latin American kings intent on a dream. We were poor as shit, nothing to claim but the jizz in our dicks, the clothes on our back, and our motorcycles and road packs. We moved in a shadowy world of women, clubs, and filthy hotel rooms - we were like Iggy and David but minus the needles and spoons. Sometimes I tell people we should be dead, but instead you see me now here so fucked up in the head. Eyes made of lead with a heavy heart, falling apart, irony and bitterness a la carte. Life was simpler then, short days and long nights that seemed to never end and the scratchy record plays my memories again and again in my head as I stare into the elusive nothingness which I so used to dread. Nowadays I seem so dead.

I seem so dead.

I play the game and it's the same shit. I grow so bored and I'm too tired for it all. It is now 2008 and I'm no longer twenty-two and I'm also a dad. I sarge and I go out and I can still hang but given a choice I'd much rather sit alone in an empty room in a quiet house. I now find other ways to pass the time, no more games no more drugs no more playing the field. I am so incapable of love right now and I have erected walls and there's a moat with sharks equipped with lazer beams and trust me no-one is getting in.

No-one is getting in.

choices

2007-12-31T11:35:00.000-08:00

Just a snapshot taken at a club of her and me. It is an impromptu “just fucking around” photograph taken on a whim… or so it would seem.

My cousin calls it “the picture that launched a thousand ships.”

She’s married, happily unmarried, but married. He cheats. She’s cheated. He’s an abuser. She loves to toy with his mind. A very miserable relationship. And I have been told by her sister that she wants me so bad she can taste the desire in her mouth like pennies. Tonight was the first time I have ever met her or spoken to her. She is pretty. She is Bosnian but she has stark white skin, blonde hair, and cold eyes… she looks Russian. An ice-princess. Although we’ve never met apparently she knew who I was and has lusted after me for some time now. In her mind it would be so perfect, my cousin and his girl, who is her sister, and she and I. We’d be one large, dysfunctional, fucked-up family. In her mind she “deserves” better… she deserves a man like me, and she obviously doesn’t know the real me, or else she wouldn’t mistakenly think she needs me.

But she is stuck in a dead-end marriage with a stupid dumb-fuck whom doesn’t appreciate her.

We all hit the club as a group to have some drinks, laughs, and unwind. Her husband distrusts me and is slightly intimidated by my cousin and I. He sees me as a threat and perhaps he should. I would never fool around with a married woman as I was married once and I would not want to be on the receiving end of infidelity. It’s just not right. But I will however flirt. I will have a good time. I feel-out my boundaries and then walk that imaginary line. As I did tonight. A light brush on her arm. When no one was looking a lingering look in her eyes. An innocuous hug. A smile. Several smiles. My cousin asks me to pose in a picture with her. We grin and look at the camera. We look so happy. We are total strangers but we are so dangerously on the verge of sharing each others bed. The air crackles with electricity. We both know what could “be.” We “could” blow each others mind if the stars would only align right. Or if we should happen to be at the right place at the right time, just her and I. There are so many factors, so many scenarios, and we both know this and we also know it might behoove us to avoid these scenarios like the fucking plague.

I walk the line.

She tells her sister that she wants me. Several times throughout the night. She tells her she hates her husband, as tears well up in her glassy blue eyes, she says she wishes he’d fucking die. That she could see herself with me. That she should be there , at the club, with me, not with him. That this is a mistake.

Her and her husband leave early. The situation reached a boiling point and none of us even noticed. He swears he caught me flirting with her yet he quietly slips out without saying a word to me. He was too afraid to have a conversation with me. She runs back in the club, tears now flowing down her ivory cheeks, and tells her sister they are leaving.

The next day I find out she moved out and they are getting divorced. I know it is not my fault, I was simply a catalyst. There are deeper issues that have nothing to do with me.

When I hear this I get a slightly sick feeling in my stomach. Butterflies. I have always gotten this feeling in that moment of certainty when I KNOW I am about to sleep with somebody. The cold shiver in on my neck when I pull down her panties, when I have overcome those final resistances. When I am about to become one with another person. It is a prophetic feeling and it has always foretold events that will in fact come to pass. It is always right.

But is this the right choice?

bleak

2007-12-21T10:24:00.000-08:00

The distance between loneliness and loved is so minute, so uncertain, and indefinable. It is a line we waiver between numerous times every single day. It is the immeasurable distance between sanity and madness. The slow-plodding eternity in-between cigarettes. The awkward silence on the telephone. The nauseous feeling of disgust after sex. The irritable sense of discomfort when the coke wears off. It is the suicidal nuances we run through our brains as we sit alone in our cars commuting to work on a cold snowy Monday. It is the heart sickness we feel after the buzz and empowerment wears off and uncontrollable dizziness and puking sets in. The sine curve wave we all ride, eyes locked on a white sandy beach, never arriving to our destination.

Loneliness is pain and we all find ways to numb this pain.

I wander. When the higher then high wears off and I crash back down to earth in a heap of feathers - I wander. I turn off the phone and refuse to take calls. I shut down my heart. I become fearful of the world in these moments so I seek refuge in my dive-bar panic room. I close my eyes and refuse to let anything in except the dull bass drone of the jukebox which belts out sad songs over and over. A perpetual motion machine it is one of the things that shall always remain static in my life, the jukebox, my son, and the bottle. I close my eyes and try to make out the neon tracings in the back of my head and I miss my kid. Slamming shot after shot of the hard shit I hope I can find my way home. I hope I may be able to find the path, crumbling and overgrown with brush, that leads to Elysium.

That leads to you.

It is said the world may end in the year 2012. The Mayan calendar stops in 2012. It is understood something catastrophic will happen be it a heavenly body colliding with the Earth or the swift progression of a horrible virus or perhaps all-out nuclear war. The world will undeniably end. I hope I may shake this loneliness and learn to live in this world again and make the most of the precious little time we have left… I certainly try. But there are those moments of weakness where I must escape and hide. Life is the time I am with him. The time in between I am fucking dead – a zombie.

In the end of days I pray I am with him so I may comfort him and be his strength.

And after that when we all turn to dust I will be quietly waiting for you.

dive pick-up

2007-12-13T12:51:00.000-08:00

“ So why do you paint your nails black and wear mascara?” She’s testing me. Gauging me. Seeing how secure, or how insecure, I am.

I smile at her with big, brown, wet bedroom eyes, take a sip of my Corona and respond. “ Why do you do your hair that way? Hey why do you scrunch your nose when you smile? You look like a mouse…it’s cute though.”

She flinches and predictably laughs and pulls her hand up to her face to hide her nose. “ A mouse? That’s mean!”

I turn and point at her not-so-cute, overweight friend, whom is scowling at me like she wants to tear my balls off. “ Yeah I think YOU could take some lessons from your friend here, she has style. You need some work. Fuck, MY nails are better manicured then yours.”

I accomplish my goal and the friend’s face softens. Her eyes light up and her demeanor changes by approximately 180 degrees. She has been pulled into the conversation and her social value has been raised by a tiny amount, but it is enough.

“ Do you guys know each other from somewhere?” Her friend leans in and asks.

The cute one opens her mouth to answer and I quickly cut her off…. “ Yeah we know each other unfortunately….” I glare at my target… “ She’s my ex-girlfriend and she’s a bitch… And she still has like 6 of my cd’s and my Poison t-shirt.”

They both look at each other and break out in laughter

She plays along. “ Yeah and you’re not getting your cd’s back… but maybe I’ll give you your smelly t-shirt though.”

I smile and put my arm around her… “ I have an idea.. maybe…. maybe we should sleep together again, for old times sake. What do you think?” I wink. “ You realize I still have those naughty pics of you on my computer right?”

She pulls back, her face reddening and her smile widening. “ Ya right dick! I don’t think so.” But her hand lingers on mine.

Yeah, this girl is mine.

together we are beautiful

2007-12-12T09:08:00.001-08:00

It’s strange but I think I’ve met you all over again. A very young you - a twenty-year old version of you to be exact. She is untouched and undefiled by time, drugs, heartbreak, pain. She has the same crooked smile as you and the same stubbornness. She lovingly gazes at me with large serene black eyes filled with curiosity. I look at her in the setting half-light as we lie alone in her room – I examine every inch of her, my Lolita… my Delores Haze - and all I see is you reclining with one arm raised looking back at me. She is the surviving embodiment of you. She is a living, breathing ghost.

I showed her picture to several friends of mine and they all agree it is you. Albeit a younger version of you… age twenty to be exact. My newest sweetheart. The likeness is striking – olive skin, black hair, big black eyes, an exotic nose. I told my friend J_____ that I saved a brush filled with your hair and I had you cloned like the Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. So that would, in essence, make her a living fossil from my distant past… that I have barely met. And I’m sure that makes no sense. But in my warped world it makes perfect sense.

I’m not sure if this can work as I have erected walls and I refuse to let anyone in… but she’s certainly making a bid. And she’s helping me rid myself of the remaining demons that reside here in my head. I don’t know if it’s worth mentioning but last week she saw a picture of my small son and I and she fell instantly in love. However I know if I were to run into you you’d embrace my son as yours too. I know if you were to look at him you would see the child we were always meant to have. And I know your eyes would fill up with tears, and then inevitably so would mine.

But we didn’t make it did we R_____?

Maybe in the next life we may start all over again as I am starting all over again now.

Game

2007-12-04T15:57:00.000-08:00

The dance floor Mecca spreads it’s wings and welcomes me back into it’s loving embrace. Bathed in waves of sound – drum and bass, melodic vocal trance, house, psychedelic trance – I love it all as I love old friends or better yet, old flames. There was a time I lived for this and this alone. The high, the camaraderie, the love, the roll.

Although it was not easy getting here. It was not easy finding my way back.

God it’s so familiar and yet… at the same time… so wrong. I described this feeling to a friend of mine as “visiting my parent’s house.” What once was home is no longer mine. I am so different now. Finally clean and no going back to those dark days long left behind . Armed to the teeth with looks, renewed vigor, but more-so armed with experience… and this experience is what gives me a greater edge then I could have ever had when I was young.

I see beautiful faces, none of them familiar, dart in and out of the shadows and I greet each one with a smile and disingenuous dancing eyes. I tell them what they want to hear. The pretty ones I playfully tease, the average ones I build up with heartfelt compliments. And I walk away from each interaction being “the life of the party” and with a new number in my phone or sometimes, when I get lucky, a new companion to share my bed with.

I am a predator again but with teeth sharper then before, honed to a razor edge. And I hunt now for sport not for food.

“ Why do you hate women?” My cousin Angel sets the shot glass down and bites into the lime.

I raise an amused eyebrow, “ Hate? I love women. Everything about them. Every single fucking nuance.”

“ So why do you fuck with them the way you do?”

“ That’s a bullshit statement and you know it. I tell each and every woman I meet they are not my type and that I am incapable of love. It’s up to them whether they decide to throw me into the briar patch.”

He gives me a puzzled look. " Well either way cabron, it's good to have you back. We all missed you."

Black Box

2007-09-07T15:09:00.000-07:00

There are things you should know
The distance between us seems to grow
But you're holding on strong
And oh, how hard it is to let go
Oh, so hard to let go

I am losing control. My resolve is cracking like a block of ice left under the noonday sun in slow creaks and groans. The pain is becoming insufferable. Old habits return in battalions and I cannot keep up.

I have picked up smoking again.

The other night I burned through a bag of blow with a girl-friend of mine in an all night lose-yourself-in-someone-else drug/sex binge. And I did not enjoy it one bit but I needed it to soothe the pain just a little bit.

I think about you daily although I swore to myself I wouldn’t. I am still angry at you although I am falling into the same patterns you did. I would take you back in an instant although I shouldn’t.

I’m losing my faith in you.
But you don’t want it to be true.
But there’s nothing you can do.
There’s nothing you can do.
Yes, I’ve lost my faith in you.

I swore I would remain strong. I would be the strong one for our son. I would be the responsible one. But it turns out I'm not.

I visit you in rehab and encourage you every time and we celebrate each month of your sobriety and I wear a false smile. I am continuously sick to my stomach though because here on the other side, out here in the real world, I am fucking losing it. So many lies. So many lies.

You mistakenly think we will be getting back together when you leave, for some strange reason, and I haven’t had the balls to tell you it’s too late. I have fucked. I am getting high now. I have done horrible things out of anger and spite and because I was lost.

But then again, we were no longer together... and you were in jail. And you threw away our life.

Funny, I thought about the needle last night.

I want to let go of the wheel now and have someone else drive because I am tired and regretfully, because I am weak. I am desperately trying to figure out a way to shake this but my resolve deteriorates and falls to my feet chunk by chunk like discarded armor. Perhaps this is a phase and this shit will pass, perhaps not. Regardless, it is starting to frighten me.

Right here in this heart.
I know it’s too late for us.

Ascend

2007-08-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

The forest throbs with unseen movement: darting shadows disappearing in the canopy above, the light rustling of leaves as the wind gently kisses the trees, the absence of light as the moon struggles to touch the underbrush… or perhaps all of this is a figment of his heightened senses. His veins burn as the drug works its way up his arm into his heart... into his brain, jumpstarting the dead ganglions and dormant nerve clusters, coaxing the visions and memories to the surface, and then systematically erasing them, sponging away a lost world of regret and loss.

He is reawakened. He is the night.

I am the night

At last at last we are one. As we reach out to each other, bathed in sweat, struggling to catch our breath. We are lost in the moment, so surreal and new… as though we have been reborn.

He quietly shakes his head, a pang of regret and disbelief, as he contemplates the parting words the shaman spoke through from behind a thick veil of smoke in a black, thatched hut as the rain drummed and thumped outside. Words cutting through the dry stillness like venom in blood. Ancient words spoken in a lost tongue last heard in Eden – or perhaps in the whisperings of King Nimrod as he dreamed of a colossal tower spiraling into heaven. Incomprehensible words, but at the same time lucent and crystal clear as a mountain spring.

He arrived to this jungle seeking redemption - either sanctification in death or the purgatory of rebirth - the burden and curse of eternal life. He came prepared. This biblical tree he sought without fear fully vested to open this long-forgotten Pandora ’s Box and unleash hope upon a spiteful world. He knew the tale as he knew each wrinkle on his face or gray hair in his head. A blur of memories, an eternity of preparation - before he ascended the broken trail up into the misty highlands, he would sit around the crackling fire with rapt attention listening to the natives each give their own version, their own generational testimonial, of “the myth” with twinkling eyes and well rehearsed gestures. He would quietly listen, thoughtfully nod, and quickly jot precise notes into his old leather-bound book.

He came prepared…. An eternity of preparation.

As I am now prepared.

Prepared to finally face a future without “her.” I am reborn and you were the catalyst. And you are the drug that systematically erases my world of pain and loss.

Cyclic

2007-08-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

Despite our brief history of ups and downs, trials and tribulations, we continue to come back to one another. We were both betrayed by someone close, we have both dealt with loss, subjugated to death, resigned to a life of solitude and distrust. We have so much in common it is truly frightening. Yes, we continue to come back to one another and we always manage to pull away, a perpetual sad song which harkens me to a night long ago listening to black waves crash on a desolate beach.

I have now met your mother and your father and your brother and your sisters. I am the only man you have ever brought around your son… and you are the only woman who has been around mine. One dreamy surreal night we professed our love for one another. We confessed we have always wanted to be with one another, even when we were both trapped in our doomed relationships, we would find ourselves thinking about the other and what they were doing at that moment. There was always that glimmer of hope. There was always that fleeting fantasy we would both obsessively toy with in our heads over and over like an unsolvable rubik’s cube while we went about our daily lives – the elusive “what if?”

And now we are both free. Yet there is hesitation. We are free to let go and lose ourselves in one another and escape this horrible fucking place and we cannot, we are frozen with fear, emasculated by mistrust. We have both erected walls. Impenetrable barriers. Yet little do we know these barriers could crumble away like a heap of dry leaves would we allow them to.

We are unable to just. Let. Go.

And here I am, a bottle of whiskey in hand, dousing these flames and dumbing this pain. And you have told me you drink alone as well after you put your little one to bed.

We want each other so badly we can both taste it in our mouths like rotten pennies. We have both imagined the possibilities. We are each other’s saviors. We are each other’s Messiahs. And perhaps… just maybe… we are each other’s soul mates.

But we will never know will we?

So I pull another drink from this bottle and listen to the ringing nothingness I have chosen to shroud myself in.

her

2007-08-15T12:27:00.001-07:00

I inhale a sharp puff of the cigarette, hold it in as I feel it softly tickle the inside of my lungs with delicate feathery fingers, then I exhale through my nose two long dragon streams of white smoke. We both stare across the parking lot at some construction. We watch the workers idle about – the slow, limitless progress of ants. It’s hot. The sun causes steam to sweat out of the cracked concrete. The day is long and arduous and I am thirsty and I can imagine drinking in this mirage as I was told to do when I was little, when we’d spend long days in Brooklyn by the river.

“So I had that dream again.” I tap my cigarette with a soft snap. An inch of ash tumbles off the end, gets caught in the breeze, and is carried away.

“The girl again.” You take a drag. “Yeah, who is this girl you keep dreaming about?”

I start to speak but I’m cut off by the rumble of an approaching dump truck. I wait to respond, using this distraction to pull a deep drag off my cigarette. I exhale.

“ I don’t know who she is at all but all I know is it is ‘she.’ She… has always been there for me and she always shall be. Together we will live together and after we die we will meet each other under the branches of Yaxche and together we will slowly ascend into Xibalba, a nebulous star on the fringe of destruction or creation or … nothing….”

You are silent, patiently waiting to see if I continue. You are motionless, except a nod of quiet agreement. You choose your words, mindful not to hurt me.

“ Your story continues and it continues to break my heart. I wish there was something I could do to kill this pain… I wish there was something you’d be willing to take. You carry this burden - and you continue to choose such a difficult path and it…..”

I cut you off mid-sentence, the slightest hint of urgency and defiance in my voice.

"If I take another path then we will never find each other! Do you understand that? And – and I cannot allow that to happen by any costs or I will die.... I will fucking die.”

You hand me the soft pack. “We have time, let’s smoke another.”

beginning of an end

2007-08-02T11:06:00.000-07:00

She looks up at me with blue eyes, so brilliantly striking, and with unflinching certainty in her voice tells me she can trust me. She tells me she can be “herself” around me and that I bring out the best things in her as the sun gently coerces the flowers from the ground or a butterfly from a cocoon. She is beautiful, and clever, and in another world… and I have always said this about her… we would be soul-mates.

I kiss her lips and close my eyes and my thoughts inevitably wander to another bed to another place in someone else’s embrace but this bittersweet memory is corrupted - tarnished by plodding, merciless time. Crackling static and shadowy flashes projected on a crumbling wall which rests at the edge of the world and….

I no longer hear the whispers.

It is silent in my world. I am numb..

I told her recently that “I am incapable of love” and it is the truth. The past, which I once wore like rusty armor… the past, which brought me solace, which I wrapped around quivering shoulders like an old blanket… is now, and perhaps indefinitely…. the past. I am gebbeth. I wander the world with a lovely smile and dead eyes.

I kiss her lips and feel nothing but dry uncomfortable friction - like rock rubbing metal. Although outwardly we look so happy and perfect together – so beautiful and perfect. And they see my smile. Perhaps a glint in my eye. I am an illusionist pulling off a magnificent trick, playing to their hopes and dreams, and what people do not see is the aged, ghastly painting I keep stored away – a painting of me dying day by day – and every breath I take I add a stroke of black, red or gray.

Tears and rain as I look to the sky and I have reached a point in my life where all I can do is simply…. laugh.

The works

2007-07-24T22:40:00.000-07:00

" So where have you been? You haven't called or nothing. What's going on?"

" Nothing... or, er... everything... or I don't know. It's been weird."

" Weird how? Did you and her get back together?"

" It's funny, I swore we would. Either we would or I would drink myself to death. Neither happened. I have moved on. I have let go."

" Good or bad thing?"

" A good thing. Very good. I met someone you know. Well, actually, I've met two someone's and I can't decide whom I want to spend my time with. They are both amazing and smart and ... together... In fact that's where I was tonight, with K____."

" That is one of the girls?"

" Yes, she is one of the girls. And we're going out again on Thursday. Brilliant, beautiful girl. Maybe too brilliant and too beautiful for someone like me."

" Maybe she's thinking the exact same thing as you are."

" Maybe."

" So what's the game plan."

" I'm not forcing this. I'm letting the chips fall where they may."

" The chips fall where they may huh....? Well, if you walk away with greasy hands, don't wipe them on your new pants."

Elysium

2007-06-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

The other night at the bar I ran into a friend of a friend, someone I haven’t seen for a very long time, a forgotten face from a distant past which races closer and closer each day - and I approach this past with determination, hands locked tightly on the steering wheel, eyes forward, unable or unwilling to move.

We spoke of life, it’s ups and downs. Small talk. Then she brought up you.

I haven’t seen you in over 5 years. I sternly thought I would never see you again, or speak of you even, until perhaps the day we die - when we are reunited…. and there she was telling me you never moved on. You waited. You ask about me often, evidently, with a great sadness, and a dash of hope, in your voice.

I spoke to this friend about you.

The booze coaxed words out of me I normally only reserve for the anonymous written page. I told her things, not much, but “just enough.” How I miss you. How I hope you are doing well and that you are happy. Just enough but not as much as I certainly could have. We exchanged numbers, another strategic move on my part, and I was sure to give her a ring several days later… “just calling to say hi.”

I close my eyes and I see you. When I run, and the runner’s high creeps over me in a cold shiver I see your face. I smell your hair. I long for your smile. I feel your breath on my neck. I have clothes I swear I can still smell you in.

I do not know if things could be the same between us... or if I am setting myself up for failure or disappointment. Reunited or perhaps ruination, whatever this may be, it steadily approaches.

In front of me I see a barren land. In the far-off distance stands a crumbling, ancient wall. And the whispers I hear, that I have always heard, grow louder.

Dawn

2007-06-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

My head is finally starting to straighten out. Driving home yesterday I had an epiphany, a quiet personal victory, a moment where I didn’t think about the present but instead, looked forward to the future. The pain was gone. I was fully numb. I have moved on and there is no more “us.” I am no longer responsible for you, nor do I care what you do or where you go. I am Atlas and I have set down this preposterous burden I have bourn for countless years.

And I am smiling.

I was unsure if this “high” would last but it has. I woke up this morning with a clear head.

Yesterday, when you were over at your moms, out on bail and a day before you checked in for rehab, I had the opportunity to finally speak to you, your mom asked me if I wanted to, and it was very easy for me to tell her “no, I'm not really interested.” I do not need to speak to you or hear your "explanation." Because, and this is the truth, I really don’t care anymore about the details of what transpired.

The fact is these things happened - and it’s my “get out of jail” card.

I knew it would take something drastic for us both to finally have the guts to do what was right, and that is to go our separate ways. Our marriage sucked. We were together for him and only him. Let me rephrase that, I was there for him, you were there because I enabled you to do what it is you did. I was one of many "enablers."

We were together because it was convenient and I was just too damn lazy to break things off sooner. In addition, when all this finally went down I was devastated not because I had lost you, but because I wasn’t able to end things on my terms and it is this stubborn, macho pride that I think affected me the most.

Now a new world lies ahead of me. Unlike break-ups of the past, I do not dwell on you. I do not obsess over you because our relationship was always more of a friendship then a romance or a love affair. You were not my soul mate. And I think you have a pretty clear idea who was... and I probably wasn’t yours either.

You know, one thing that keeps things in perspective for me is this: while I was moving out, boxing my things, I came across our wedding photos down in Vegas. I looked at my face in the pictures and remembered the doubt, fear…. no not fear, but sheer terror, I was experiencing that week. I always thought I'd be with someone different. I always knew in my heart marrying you was the wrong move. It was the expected move because Presley was on his way. And it was my “duty” to marry you so I could oversee Presley's birth and his rearing.

So, I have moved on. The grieving is over. The sense of betrayal and anger has been replaced with a numb hope you may eventually get through your rehab and shake your demons, as I have, and one day become a good mom to our son, because he really does adore you. He will come and see you provided this visitation is supervised and you are continuing to be tested daily. I realize you will always be a part of his life and I will try to make the best of it. I hope he is your motivation to shake this disease you have.

But I will forever be cautious and untrusting of you.

When we speak it will be polite, to-the-point conversation about him and his well being and nothing more. I do not want to hear excuses, or apologies, or anything else from you because I don’t care anymore.

I truly do not give a flying fuck.

You go do your own thing, I already am.

Away

2007-06-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

We push on. Even though the skies are a gray, drab curtain of menacing storm-clouds barreling closer to us... closer to the earth, we push on. For we must.

Quiet, except for the shrill whistle of the wind weaving through dead, dry branches of dead, dry trees and long ago the birds went away from this place leaving only a barren ash field stretching as far as the eye can see... perhaps forever.

I look at you, a slightly older you, and you point up at the sky and in a hoarse little voice say "Daddy I felt rain." I quietly nod, and pull the tarp over us, and we walk on. We cannot get caught out here when hell breaks loose, we must find cover and rest or we too shall die as this land has.

And you whisper in my ear "Daddy I'm scared." I kiss your cheek and assure you we will make it through. "And where is Mommy?" You ask and all I can tell you is "She is away." I turn my head and avert my eyes so you do not see my tears, I do not want to upset you. Although I know you will be all right as long as we are together.

You are the strong one.

Waste

2007-06-15T09:55:00.000-07:00

We have moved on, Presley and I, and you now rot in jail.

I told you that this is not the path you should choose... I told you life is different for us both now... and you didn't heed a fucking word I said. Your vicious game you continued to play, queen of lies, and then you got caught you selfish pig.

Such delicious irony. YOU got caught.

Now it's YOUR house of cards that has come crashing down, whore, because we have moved on and you continue to rot in a barren cell, I hope this forced detox is extremely painful. I can't imagine the pain and hurt and emptiness you are feeling right now....

actually I can...

Because I have been there.

And the past 8 months have been pain, hurt, and emptiness as I watched you slip away. And every day I grew more and more numb. Unlike you, unlike myself once upon a time, I chose not to self-medicate. I took it like a man. Yes, I am angry and hurt, but not for myself, but for our son. It pains me he was not your first priority as he is mine. You are and always were a pitiful mother.

Now, I am all he has. We are "each the other's world entire." And you are no longer a part of the equation. You will never be. I will not allow you near him.

Unlike you, I would never smoke Heroin in the same car I pick him up in, or in the house right next to the spot he likes to play. Unlike you I am here to protect him.

I am thankful this happened. I wanted an out but my sense of "duty" kept me in. I felt obligated to play house with you and wear a happy face and pretend the world is peachy so he would be happier. I do not regret meeting you, however. You served your purpose, I have what I always wanted, I have my immortality. The center of my universe, my beautiful, beautiful boy. You are/were a mere egg donor.

You were my greatest drug buddy, the thrill of the flesh bonded us, fused us together, but then he came, unexpectedly... I changed, but you couldn't.

I don't really give a fuck where you go from here. You are now a felon, you can never be a professional or lead a normal life. You are a hopeless addict, you will relapse again and again and again, I know you will, I know you are exceptionally weak. Perhaps you will strip or suck or fuck to get what you need... I couldn't care less really as long as you stay the fuck away from him.

Perhaps you will get busted again and spend countless years locked away and forgotten, yes forgotten, because no one will come see you. You have alienated your family. You fucked them over. Presley and I will definitely not come see you. These so-called "friends" of yours whom convinced you to use, your drug buddies, will not come and see you. You will become a memory. When people speak of you they will shake their heads and say: " Such a waste. Such a waste."

Or.... Perhaps you will go to sleep and never wake up again. Oh my god, I'm crossing my fingers you do. I know you will relapse with a fucking vengeance. Try shooting your smack. Try a line of coke with that Heroin, fuck how about some meth? lol, I promise you'll like the way you feel bitch... I promise-- and I promise I will never speak ill of you to Presley, I will tell him the good things you did, which are few. But your memory will be honored. Not for your sake, but his.

Be'trayael

2007-06-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

And so it ends. My house of cards comes tumbling down around me. I've lost yet another person I love to drug addiction, this time someone close, and I cannot find it in my heart to forgive such selfishness.

Or my own hypocrisy for doing so. Such irony.

And deep within the Kraken stirs, he has awaken from a deep slumber.

Us

2007-04-12T15:11:00.002-07:00

It's not a silly little moment
It's not the storm before the calm
This is the deep and dyin breath of
this love that we've been workin on.

You know I was struck the other day by the thought we’ve seen our best days, and here we are, in our last days, fighting so hard to delay what will inevitably come. I hear you in the other room, the soft clink of a plate or the dull drone of the TV, another world, as I sit here in mine. We pass each other by like ships in the night in the fog and all I can see is the dull, dead light in your eyes as we try and try and fail and fail to put on the happy face we should for our little one. And he knows something’s wrong, he definitely knows, in his godly wisdom, he so fucking knows and it breaks my heart.

I still care, I do. You are my best friend. You are the greatest lover I’ve ever had. But the domestic stillness is destroying us fast. And maybe it’s me, I have my problems, God knows, I have my problems, and you have yours and maybe we need to fix ourselves before we can fix our love. But we do not have a lot of time, every day he learns a bunch of new words and he’s growing up so fast and if we don’t get our shit together he will continue to fade completely away into his own little world of dogs and trains.

He flinched the other day when I went to hug him.

If we were friends, if that is possible, friends like when we first met… then maybe Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t yell at each other anymore.

Kid

2007-04-10T09:58:00.000-07:00

What if it all should end and come tumbling down like the walls of Jericho? What will happen when the inevitable day comes where I find myself inexpressibly left with nothing?

They say when you lose everything are you able to truly do anything.

Freedom to fly away, with no reservations, away with the wind. Freedom to self-destruct. Freedom to die.

I knew an old man once, he seemed so wise. We’d spend hours together, I remember, and it always rained… always raining. He’d tell me stories about his days in the war. Amazing tales, larger then life, more life in those tales then I could every possibly imaging living… even now. To this day.

If I lost you I’d have nothing left, little man. Because of you I get out of bed, and eat, and try to dream. I have to dream, for us. For you and me. And sometimes I hate myself for being so selfish. I know it’s not about me anymore, but I cling to the past like toilet paper to a shoe.

I continue to live because of you and even then it’s hard to do so, but I promise you I’ll try.

Fragment

2007-03-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

“ Have you ever reached that point in your life when you’d swear you’re dying?”

He pauses - crackling silence on the other end, like an old black and white movie. “Dying?”

“ I mean these dreams I keep having. Every one of them… it’s the same thing… I’ve died and I am a ghost…. Or I die and I wake up resurrected and it’s a younger me from 6 years ago… and it’s so sad and so heartbreaking because I haven't even met my wife and my son hasn't been born, and probably never will be... I'm so sad because it's as though they've both died... erased from existence. And I know I could never recreate the life I had led… it could never be the same. I have this dream, it’s a recurring dream, and every time I wake up racked with chills and convulsive sobs.”

“ So you think you’re dying because of this?”

“ My health is fading fast. I get dizzy all the time. My mind won't stay focused on one thing. I just… I know I’m dying. And it keeps raining, it's always raining. Why won't it stop?”

" I don't know what to say. I can only advise you try and stay strong."

Memories crumble and fade and drift away into the night sky like a trillion fireflies. Deep rumbling breakdown of rolling storm clouds outside and the world is so wet and gray. Burning arm bathed in gangrene sepia tones and the crackling creak of countless roach feet scuttling in between the walls and inside numb toes. Can't differentiate between this happy life I made and the one I barely escaped.

Time after time

2007-03-27T15:59:00.000-07:00

Flashback to moments left behind. Rewind to a happier time, sunshine down on carefree days of carefree play. A careful daze in tearful waves I recall the walk, the bittersweet road leading to a dead end cluster-fuck traffic jam of un-kept promises and deceit and of course if you’re lost and you look you won’t find me.

Chickenshit coward I’ve lost myself, hope and joy turned to gray, time after time you fell and in my hubris I looked the other way and pretended nothing happened. So you left, and went so far away, and all you left behind I stuffed in a pipe and burned as my eyes roll back fighting fears and fighting tears - I catch myself from falling down.

Death claimed you when you were so very young and I never had the chance to tell you that… I cared. I really do give a fuck and I fight the urge to drink and drink and drink, I fight it and I lose, because I do… I really do… don’t know what to do without you. This pain is nothing new since you left so far... so far...

Proud Titania

2007-02-13T16:57:00.000-08:00

He takes a long drag and all I see are embers and red eyes. Hold, then exhales, two streams of magic dragon-breath through his nostrils as he lifts the cold can of Pabst to dry lips in one fluid motion. The growing dusk blankets us like fog but we keep chilling, unwilling to take the party indoors.

My mind races and reels, torrents of flickering distortions fed into my skull. I’m thinkin’ maybe I shouldn’t have taken two tabs of acid. Perhaps I’m thinkin’ I may be too old for hallucinogenic mind fucks… after all I’ve always said acid is a young man’s drug, but I dropped anyway against my better judgment. Cool breeze, a midsummer night’s dream. Old Door’s tape in the boom box filling the night air and I can see the music swirl about, drifting higher and higher into the sky, and I reach out my hand to try and hold the organ and the guitar and the thick purple crayon bass lines, but the elusive ripples dissipate to my touch.

I remember seeing you there sitting by the fire, dark eyes gazing out to the ocean. I remember asking you what you were thinking about, hypnotized by your black hair… watching your skin breathe, careful not to fall into a pore. “ Tuzik, why are you so sad?” And I remember you turned to me and smiled, “Not sad sweetie, just thinking about home.” And I answered: “but I’m right here.”

“I wish it were that easy,” you sigh… and I feel a great melancholy fill my heart, which is now sealed in glass and tossed about haplessly in the waves. Like some Dutch boy popped his finger out of the dyke with a defiant snarl and now I’m drowning, the waves smother me as I claw at the surface unable to breathe for I know the future holds absolutely nothing for us except tragedy.

I turn and stumble, reaching out my hands to catch myself, and walk back to my circle of friends who toss about the footbag, the “sipa,” transfixed by the tracers following the intricate flight patterns… I smile and hum Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee.

High relief in stained glass

2007-02-12T14:26:00.000-08:00

I can’t help but wonder how a cow feels as it stands in line waiting for its turn to be slaughtered. I heard somewhere once that unlike the slaughterhouses of old, where helpless cows would be mercilessly clubbed to death in some filthy Sinclairian hell, today’s slaughterhouses employ more humane techniques. The procedure is quite efficient. The livestock is led single file thru a series of winding tunnels, they have no notion of what lies ahead, they can only focus on the rear quarters of the animal directly in front. Upon reaching their destination they are rendered unconscious by a high- powered metal bolt. Their limp body is then suspended upside down by one of their hind-legs, of course this breaks the leg and connecting hip immediately. The cow’s throat is quickly slit and the unconscious animal bleeds to death, never awakening. It's a very efficient process, it really is. Very efficient. And that’s how I sit in this throbbing, ungodly morning traffic – confused eyes locked on the car in front of me, willing it to go faster, as I patiently wait for what could be MY turn in the slaughtering pen. My thoughts wander to happier times, old yellowing memories. My glazed eyes glance to the side of the road and for a moment I am taken back to the ocean. Languid days shore-fishing with Grandpa. The million shards of crunchy glass, a collection of countless fender-benders, countless fragments of windshields, small snippets of death and trauma and white blankets swathed over an inert husband or father or lover or son who won't be coming home tonight… some accident gone horribly awry, black ties and long faces, and a million shards of crunchy glass take me back to the sea and it’s shiny shells and brilliant black rocks. Far, far away from the slaughterhouse but not far enough from the dull ache in my arm and the biting fire in my veins.

Ponderations

2006-10-11T19:52:00.000-07:00

Corner booth, all alone feeling kind of blue, as the earbuds stream Portishead into a groggy skull. Slowly sipping warm chai as the day flies by, nurturing pain, as chill rain drums against the windowsill and the world outside grows dark dark darker… tired eyes reflected in glass starin' back. collecting thoughts like I used to collect slugger cards when I was young. Lookin back I remember how I'd scatter them about on the floor in a tangled heap then "order" and re-order and re-order them by position, year, team... then once I got bored, which I eventually did, I'd abruptly shove them back into an old cigar box for another month to rot and grow dust.

It's the same thing now cept I'm older and wiser and I organize thoughts instead of cards, and I tend to think with newfound wisdom comes newfound problems… a whole meticulous host of 'em. Sorting and re-sorting. Ordering and Re-ordering. And my disorder now has a name, it seems, OCD. The damned spot just won't rub out. And I'm tired. Every night. Every day. As time flies by I find I grow more disenchanted, more disgusted, more distant, disheartened, demanding.....and the D-list goes on and on. Same song with the same hooks I sang all last year but in a slightly different key, a different set of notes.

Oh and I'm still broke.

And I think the more I think - the more I unthink. Unraveling like a kite spool into a chaotic spill of gossip, turmoil, and knots.

Realizations

2006-09-30T12:50:00.000-07:00

" He's returned. He's back in town."

The stone crawls across the water, the light reflects off the smooth surface causing it to shimmer like a fairy skittering through the dusk air. You turn and look up at me, another flat stone in your little hand and ask, " So where did he go?"

" Oh don't you know? He takes every summer off. He just... sort of... disappears. Vanishes. Like a virgin on prom-night," in a confident matter-of-fact tone as I sidearm another one across the still pond. " Hey, six skips, not bad eh?"

" Do you know where he goes?"

" Yeah, I do. Or at least I think I do." My eyes scan the ground looking for the perfect skipper. " God damn, where are all of the rocks?"

You ignore my question by asking another question. " Where does he go?"

I turn and face you locking my eyes on yours. " You ever hear the tale of the monkey who climbed the tree and then deemed himself tall?"

Pause. Some silent thought. Then you bluntly reply: " No."

I snicker, " Ok I guess it wouldn't hurt to tell you...." My eyes narrow, " You see, every summer he drives long haul."

" What's that?"

" A trucker. Says it's the only time when he gets a chance to really think. Or to create... When he's by himself on a long, lonely stretch of desolate road. He calls it his "idea time." I know this because I used to do it with him many years ago. It was my idea originally, in fact, a quick cash scheme... anyhow, he continued our tradition whereas I gave up on it."

" Why did you stop?"

" Because this monkey realized he wasn't tall. Rather, he came to the realization that perhaps he's stuck up in a tree and it is time to climb down."

Message from the Author

2006-09-23T11:49:00.000-07:00

Haven't been around all that much. Been camping-out along the muddy banks of Lake Champlain for the past few weeks, camera in hand, hoping to catch a glimpse of Champ.

So far no luck.

I've been chasing fleeting shadows. Reflections on the water.

Ignis Fatuus.

However, I know he's out there. The lake can be extremely deep at certain points. There are countless submerged caves where he probably feeds and sleeps...

I know my persistence and patience will eventually pay off.

where everybody knows your name...

2006-08-29T20:23:00.000-07:00

He slams back a shot of whiskey. And then another. And then another. And then another. In quick succession, in the wink of a hummingbirds eye, he burns through forty dollars worth of booze. He wipes his sleeve with a mischievous grin, looks up at me, "another."

I set down the bottle of Kentucky's finest and ask " And why shouldn't I cut you off? In a civilized world, you'd have been cut off a long time ago."

Without saying a word he whips out a wad of cash - I can only surmise a roll of hundreds - he carefully peals one off and gingerly sets it on the bar next to the half empty bottle and the row of empty shot glasses. He looks me square in the eye and replies: " Because the gravy train has rolled in... and I'm the conductor."

I match his gaze for a split second, feigning thought... feigning internal struggle... but it's for just but a second and it's just for show. I deftly snatch the bill off the counter like a coked-out stripper grabbing a five spot. " O.K, have it your way chief." I pour another shot.

I continue, " So what's your story? You've been sitting at my bar for several hours now pounding drink after drink with no end in sight. Let me guess... assisted suicide?"

He slams the shot of whiskey, pauses, then suddenly coughs... the dry, raspy cough of an unrepentant chain smoker. " Suicide? No." In a hoarse voice. " I died a long time ago. I'm a ghost. A whisper. An afterthought. I'm the cool breeze on the back of your neck. I'm the fading dream you hope to forget."

" Ooh, I love dramatics." I toss my dish-towel under the bar and lean forward, my chin thoughtfully propped up on my fist. " You have a name?"

" Do you have a name?"

I point at my chest. " Says so right here on my tag."

" Marvin? You don't look like no Marvin."

" And you don't look like no ghost."

I pour another shot. His pale eyes widen. " Uh-uh, this one's for me my friend."

Encapsulated

2006-08-21T12:36:00.000-07:00

There was a time my emotions were turned inside out, when I’d selfishly air my dirty laundry, with an impetuous shake, for the entire world to read with just a few strokes - a litany of triumphs, a host of low notes, and cleverly disguised key players frozen in time, mid-pose, like characters in a Rembrandt. Never me, never mind, but leaving just enough clues hinting at what could be.

Wandering, machete in hand, through the capacious undergrowth of sticky vine - a jungle of unsorted, unfiltered, undiluted memories. Memories. Sweet yet at the same time bitter like a twist of lime and a dash of salt. Salvation comes in many forms. Such as shot after shot of cheap whiskey lined up in a neat little row, or the small mountain of Pabst cans chilling in a rusted tin washtub sweating in the noonday sun, or a syringe full of lethal, blissful, bittersweet junk. Salvation waiting but never appearing, eyeing the horizon, waiting and waning as wave after wave of tumultuous memories slap me across the face... and only turmoil remains. Failure to act. Failure to "see things through" as my daddy used to always say. A handsome young man, impetuous and brash, never realizing what he had until the day he awoke from life.

A dream. As phantasms… no not phantasms but headless voices, wander in and out through a revolving door. Characters in a play appearing as if on cue and then exeunt with a bright flurry or conversely, without speaking a word. I used to interact with these characters speaking in tongues like a Delphic oracle round and round together through the motions. But now I dumbly sit and cradle my arms, my emotions have now shifted outside in. And lately, only numb. Zoloft , Prozac, and Paxil cloud my thoughts like a gray curtain of dense fog.

tiny shard of kryptonite

2006-08-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

Helpless. You are the one who haunts my waking dreams with racking visions of loss and death and regret. I arise in the night and peek over your bars and watch you sleep. I listen to the hypnotic beat of your breathing thump, thump, thump of your new heart. I'll rub your back and cradle your feet and pray you dream of play and fun and everything in between as you jump from star to star in the company of angels from afar. Quiet stolen moments in tranquil stillness just you and me and everyday I'm grateful your mine til the end of time. You and me and boy do I have big plans for us. I love you kid, so much, even when you fuss with kicking feet, pinches, and mouse bites.

" Have you talked to your cousin?"

" No, I haven't."

" Why not? You two were so close?"

" He's changed. Well, naw, not really - I guess I have. You see, once upon a time everything I ever did was for me. Now... well, everything I do is for someone else. Work. Traffic. Life's perpetual bullshit. It's all for someone else. Everything my cousin does is not."

" That's too bad."

" Not really."

Scared. My mind is flooded with "what if's." What if something happened how would I cope? Could I cope? It's a gray morning and I play "Tears in Heaven" over and over and I'm wondering why. I'm really fucking scared something might happen to you and this is really no way to live life continuously dreading what may pass or regretting what has already passed and completely ignoring or failing to pause and relish the "now." Every day you're growing up. I flip though photos really fast like a flip book and watch months pass in a matter of seconds and isn't that what it really is... seconds? The mind, memory, is a master illusionist. Time is a sneaky fucker. And again, more what if's? What if it was all a dream and one day I'll wake up in my bed and you never existed? How would I cope? Could I cope?

My life can be summed up in seconds. Twenty eight years of memories neatly packaged in a can complete with a label. Your life, reads volumes, and I love you for that. Your infinite, quiet, shy wisdom and a dreamy glint in your eye suggesting so much fucking more than this. You are my immortality. You are my totality.

You are my morality.

this girl I know...

2006-07-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

She loves to cook, often experimenting with exotic dishes. She paints her apartment bi-yearly in bright shades of tan and red and re-arranges her furniture every month on the dot. She loves court TV and documentaries about Tsunami’s. In fact, she’s convinced a killer wave will take her life some day, or even more far-fetched, one took it previously… thus the utter fascination I would think. She loves all animals except roaches and spiders, which she claims are evil. Sometimes she’ll wake up at night screaming like a banshee, swearing a gigantic arachnid is clinging to the ceiling. She owns a spoiled, black cat with yellow eyes, his name is Dorian Gray. He looks like the cat from the Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen painting. She says they’re probably related. She’s addicted to cigarettes, gossip mags, and ‘Sex in the City.’ She loves cocktails, salsa dancing, and drama. She never drives at night, insisting she suffers from ‘night blindness.’ Or it’s probably the two previous DUI’s and she’s being really cautious… or possibly it’s the fuzzy navels tucked away in her pocket. She’s quick-witted, creative, and well-read. Her comedic timing is impeccable, always dead on, and she’s caustically blunt. She always says the right things at the wrong time and truly doesn’t give a fuck. She has a gay best friend named Nathan and they constantly bicker about fashion. And I always tell her she needs to stop stealing my oversized Willy Wonka sunglasses. She’s the most brilliant writer I’ve ever red, yet she’s unable to add basic fractions in her head or follow simple driving directions. She’s always late, her bed is never made, and at night she sits on the sink and picks at her face. She claims she suffers from ADD, OCD as well as a multitude of other abnormalities, if you ask me she’s a classic hypochondriac. She’s a tiny girl with beautiful features. She has the most amazing, fitness-model body but somehow puts away more meals than I do. She throws hysterical fits if I slurp my food. She claims she hates all "mouth noises" great and small. She’s a ditz, drives like shit, and nitpicks the way I do dishes. She gets really annoyed at my two-hour bowel movements.

However… despite our differences, similarities, bickering, and infighting... despite our mutual adulation, adoration, and her host of bizarre eccentricities... we both could not, nor would not, picture life without the other. We go together like ‘peas and carrots,' 'Peanut butter and jelly,' 'Batman and Robin,' or 'Tom and Jerry.'

raison une

2006-07-13T07:17:00.000-07:00

“ All right, let’s do this again. So… why do you write?”

“ I don’t. I haven’t, no, not for awhile now.”

“ Why not?”

“ Well… how can I explain this… uh, well, o.k you know that television commercial where the guy is sitting at his computer? He’s sitting there surfing along and all of a sudden he gets an error message saying he’s reached the end of the internet? Well that’s me. I’ve reached the end of my memories. The end of imagination…”

“ That’s absurd.”

“ Is it? Is it too difficult to believe there’s nothing left?"

" Yes."

" Or, let’s put it this way: there’s been a hostile takeover in my head, and the right side of my brain has assumed control. I've completely lost all of my creativity.”

“ What about all of this bullshit you used to spout about blogging being the ‘new new?’ About how you loved to interact with other writers and anonymously and instantly exchange ideas/compliments/mutual dick sucking? What happened to all of that?”

“ It’s got old. Fuck, I don’t know. I’ve got so much other shit to worry about these days."

" Yeah, I check your website everyday for updates and everyday I find nothing."

" Let me ask you something... what happens when you overtap a maple tree? It fucking dies. Thats what happens. I don't want to force it.”

" Bullshit. According to you, when you actually do write anything nowadays, you're already dead. Give me a better reason."

" Boredom? Laziness? Lack of time? There's three. Who was it that said, 'it is what it is?' Well... it is what it is. There you have it."

“ Yeah... whatever. Hey, congrats on your new promotion by the way… You're playing in the big leagues now kid.”

“ Thanks. It's my time.”

" It is what it is."

Still life

2006-06-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

" What do you see when you close your eyes?" She asks through creeping tears behind a veil of swirling smoke. I hold my breath, momentarily ignoring her. I exhale two white plumes through my nostrils as my entire body tenses. I remain erect with my back straightened and my eyes closed inhaling and exhaling with rising and falling shoulders fighting back waves of nausea. As the feeling to wretch subsides it’s replaced by growing numbness. It spreads through my body prompting my muscles to completely slacken. I rub my tongue against the roof of my mouth savoring the complete lack of feeling. My eyelids grow heavy. It feels as though weights are attached to my long lashes. I manage to hurriedly pass her the straw and the small square of foil moments before I collapse into my chair. I sit staring at the opposite wall, my hands firmly rested on the armrests with my slack mouth hung agape.

She repeats, " Baby, what do you see?"

I look over at her with squinted eyes, lick my dry lips, and reply: " Nothing. Gray matter lined with silver. Sparkling strobe-flashes of marvelous light - sparkly sand. Nothing…." I click my tongue as my head drops, my chin jockeying for position on my chest. I mutter, " Nothing, just feeling really good. Kinda’ tired, and good…."

Delusions of Grandeur

2006-06-14T09:22:00.001-07:00

Corner booth ordering bottle after bottle of hot sake in a black suit and tie like some fucking big-shot as the rain pours down in cascading sheets pitter-patter timpani. Summer-cold nagging ear-ache throbs like a swollen red toe in a Looney Tunes cartoon or like a claymation Rudolph’s nose... what have you. Depressing day and I need to get fucked up nice and good.

A friend of mine described it as "sweet sake drunk." However, drinking shot after shot like a thirsty impetuous wino "sweet sake slow suicide" might be a more fitting metaphor… or would that be a simile?

Rushed thoughts flit from one topic to the next, from one person to the next, from one emotion to the next, in rapid spitfire succession. Unable to press pause or rewind consequently I’m unable to closely study or articulate one or the other instead I assimilate them all as one frenetic fucked up liquid cacophony. The interesting mix of Actifed, ephedrine, and alcohol result in delirious loopy paranoia. I’m reminded of my crack smoking days and all the fun shit that comes with: carpet diving, lying, and stealing out of grandma’s purse.

I remember once I hid from a cop under a hoopty car dripping hot oil on my bare back in the middle of winter. Pig prick shining his mag light in the trees and in dark corners ready to cuff me because I looked "suspicious." So I stashed my bag of rock deep in the frame, rolled out from underneath, and ran like Carl Lewis pumping my fists as my thighs burned with unholy pain. A block away cop’s partner tackles me, frisks me, and finds nothing except pocket lint and some pennies. I was ticketed for "criminal mischief."

As I sit in the corner slamming sake shots and Kirin I think back to this moment frozen in time. A half smile slight shadow flashes across my face for the briefest, imperceptible instant replaced by the usual scowl.

Got Karaoke?

2006-05-30T11:54:00.001-07:00

Saturday night karaoke fever. Hole in the wall joint on the east side of town. I’m feeling good… feeling loose. I bought three methadones off of a junkie I know at three dollars per pill. Cool and clean buzz keeps me light on my feet like Fred Astaire. I’m flitting from table to table with a disingenious smile dispensing fake compliments like the condom machine in the shit-stained bathroom at a quarter a pop. Corona, painkillers, and prime-time cigars: the holy feel-good trifecta.

I’m here with my buddy, Bruce. He’s big in the karaoke scene, or so I hear. He’s wearing a 70’s style ringer tee and the front of it asks in small unassuming script: “got Karaoke?” The back, in very large, in-your-face, oriental-style font proclaims: “Karaoke Bruce!” He had it custom made at the t-shirt shop for twenty dollars. He has numerous versions of it and he asked me once if I wanted to buy one. I graciously declined. We’re sitting at a table with another karaoke fixture… “Rocker Joe.” He’s a throwback to the hair bands of yore - a living fossil. As far as Rocker Joe is concerned, it’s always 1985 and the beer is always cold and the chicks are bitchin’ and the bands are kickin'. Rocker Joe’s wearing a t-shirt that reads “I’m here about the blowjob.” I told him I really liked his shirt and I asked him where he got it, he refused to tell me. Instead he offered to hook me up with one if I gave him some cash, fucking wino. I declined and said I'd order one off the "internets." Also at our table sits Joe’s on-again off-again girlfriend/booty-call, Jill. She keeps giggling at my stupid jokes and inconspicuously placing her hand on my thigh.

The place is crawling with various sorts of white trash: cowboys, bikers, rockers, wiggers, strippers, and, of course, the Karaoke royals. Bruce keeps asking me what he should sing and I keep telling him to sing whatever he wants, just as long as it’s not Bon Jovi. I think that’s why he keeps asking me is because he WANTS to sing Bon Jovi and he’s hoping I’ll change my mind. I told him I honestly don’t give a fuck, it makes no difference to me. Bruce asks me if I’m going to sing.

“ Yeah, I think I am.”

“ Whoa. Really?!? What song?” He leans in closer, very intrigued, ready to base my entire existence off of my song selection.

“ Jill and I are going to sing a duet, isn't that right Jill?”

Jill absently nods, unable to hear a single word I just said over the loud music.

“ Oh, ‘Summer Loving'... Grease?" Bruce persists. " 'Photograph' by Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock?"

“ No... 'Me so Horny’ by 2 Live Crew.”

Brothel

2006-05-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

I remember how red your scarf was that evening many years ago in Berlin. Each thread a dense implosion of fiery pigment gleaming in the candle-lit, jazzy, smooth snare-drum mood. Me and you alone in a booth as I scoot my ass inch by inch closer so I can get a whiff of your fragrant black hair teased back into place by a mess of bobby pins, loose strands and all. You smile and tell me to relax as you pour us a couple of glasses of cheap champagne. I straighten my shoulders and loosen my cravat three notches, if that's possible, acting cool like I know what the fuck. Low-tempo slow-mo slow-down every second ticks by like a still life vibrant Cezanne and your tan skin looks so exotic. Jimmy asked me how many fingers I'd give you and I replied my entire hand. He said he'd give you two fingers... he'd cut off two fingers to bang you for a week... well - never mind that, just macho posturing guy-talk. Growing nausea like cancer starts low in my stomach and works it's way up my throat as I raise the flute to my parched lips and drink in your striking eyes with one unsure gulp.

Wing and a prayer

2006-05-11T19:09:00.000-07:00

If you could take the remaining half of what's left of me, and leave me there empty... Would I finally, somehow be complete?

It is rumored the Roman poet Catullus wrote over twelve thousand poems all devoted to one single woman. I think you've stolen twelve thousand thoughts. Twelve thousand hours. Twelve thousand regrets. Twelve thousand grams.

Regrets that finally fade away like invisible ink.

Thoughts. Come and go through a revolving door at a cruising altitude of 32,000 feet. Flying at night. What did you describe it as, with that sly half-smile? "Spurts of civilization?" I gaze out the porticullis searching down down and then up. Searching for stars. .. a star... a single one. One free wish and yet I see none. And what of heaven? I feel close but never close enough but never closer than I do now.

Spurts of civilization. Clusters of twinkling lights spread out among the rocky wilderness. Settlements. Small town Americana. And there's always one flashing light. Could this be a starry-eyed child? My son or maybe me... once upon a time... Beaming a flashlight toward heaven. Toward me.

Toward God.

Sending out an S.O.S

Is emptiness better than fullness? It's symptomatic of loss, yes that's true, but it can also signify hope. An empty vessel, patiently waiting to be filled again. The simple beginning of a marvelous journey... as I gaze toward heaven, or a lack thereof, at 32,000 feet shrink-wrapped in an ice-cold steel chrysalis. And the homefires burn. And a new life begins anew. Wow, what a trip it's been.

Arrivals and Departures

2006-04-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

Two hours until take-off. My traveling companion keeps to himself, which is a good thing. In fact, he seems to want absolutely nothing to do with me. Great. As long as I'm insured usage of the rental car in the evening and he asks no questions.

I remember how I used to come to the airport when I was younger and simply "hang out." I'd sit by myself and watch everyone coming and going, coming and going, coming and going. I'd often wonder where they were off to and whom they were planning on seeing. My friend Mark told me once about how he met an older woman at the airport, she was married, while waiting to pick up a friend of his and they fucked. I've heard many similar stories. Perhaps this was my motivation back then. Today, I'm hoping I may somehow score a bag of blow.

I also wish my traveling companion wasn't such a square.

Layover... OR things to do in Denver when you're dead...

Feeling numb. In lieu of an actual lunch I opted to buy two Corona's. $4.50 per bottle at Denver International airport, what a fucking rip-off. Desperation causes us to do stupid things though like spend money we really don't have. The firm doesn't reimburse alcohol so I should have bought a Taco or something. But instead, I slammed the two bottles back to back and now all I have left ahead of me is a 2 hour wait and a cool buzz shrouded around ringing ears like a blanket. On recommend of Ruksak, I'm reading "Hunger" by Knut Hamsen. I'm about 30 pages in. It's about a starving writer living in Oslo at the turn of the twentieth century. This poor fuck owns nothing, he's pawned all of his worldly possessions so he can eat and make rent. He's starving and flat broke and on the verge of complete insanity.

I can relate. Somehow.

"Hunger." It goes kind of like this ---------> Empty belly dull throbbing ache comes and goes in pulsating waves. Keeps me alert and distrustful. Luckily, I ditched my traveling companion, Josh. He has to take a different flight than I do. I earn a brief respite from his beady eyes unblinking reptile gaze so full of judgment - that dumbfuck. Next to me a fat man inhales juicy bacon-burger goodness smothered in dripping cheese. My knees knock and shake like I have to piss really bad. Tap dancing like Sammy Davis Jr as I stare at his burger like a hungry dog licking it's chops with wet, intrusive slurps.

God, I'd love a couple of Lortabs.

I brought my ipod but I haven't listened to it. I have yet to figure out the soundtrack for this trip. See, there's always a soundtrack - a specific tune or an album. I'll remain patient. We'll see how things go in Dallas. I sure hope there are some interesting people in my training class. I'd like to hit some local bars or clubs during my downtime. Meanwhile, I'll continue to take advantage of the hotel's shitty work-out facilities, high-speed wireless internet, free continental breakfast, and complimentary coffee.

The Quick and the Dead

2006-04-17T10:55:00.000-07:00

When the weather is this beautiful, even the rats and roaches dare to venture out.

A Spring afternoon and I find myself at the grocery store buying some lunch. I'm standing in line reading a gossip mag as my basket rests on the floor at my feet. I'm behind a tired looking Mexican woman with two screaming kids. I'm tuning them out though, rocking the ipod with some “Buena Vista Social Club.” In my basket I have a banana, an apple, some sliced turkey, a couple of rolls, and a 40 ounce Miller High Life... we used to call these over-sized bottles “cauguama's.” I'm not really reading the magazine, I keep thinking about that day in 2003 when my cousin and I drove around all day looking for opium.

“ Why do you want opium so bad?”

“ Why not Cabron?”

“ But why opium? Why don't we pick up some blow and a couple of beers? Opium?! It's not like we we live in the fuckin' orient.”

“ Orient... What's that? What are you talking about?”

“ Fuck it, nothing.”

We drove around all day. My cousin had me on the horn calling everyone I know and making them, in turn, call everyone they know. For some strange reason, tracking down some opium that day in 2003 was like finding the lost Ark of the Covenant. We finally decided to bag it and instead wound up scoring some snow and then getting tossed out of the strip club, battered and bloody, because I decided to light up one of the bouncers

As I'm walking out of the store I'm shaking my head and silently chuckling to myself when a bum approaches me. I can't stop staring at the billions of tiny beads of sweat, like a micro-universe, on his forehead and all over his greasy neck.

“ Excuse me sir, do you have any spare change?”

I peer at him from underneath my over-sized Willy Wonka shades. I always get so fucking annoyed when the homeless pester me for money.

“ Maybe. What do you plan on buying?”

He opens his mouth, ready to give me his usual rehearsed, bullshit story. I interrupt him mid-sentence.

“ Be real with me. If you plan on buying some booze, or dope, or whatever just tell me. Don't lie to me or I'm not giving you shit. However if you tell me the truth, if you're real with me, I'll give you five bucks.” I set down my bags and pop the white buds out of my ears.

Next to us some seagulls squawk, fighting over a bag of discarded French fries.

“ Well...” He speaks very slowly now, carefully choosing his words. “ I need bus fare. My mother lives across town and I promised her I'd come and see her.”

I lower my shades and study his features, gazing at him through squinted eyes like a poker master who carefully reads his opponent. I'm not convinced. I bend over and pick up my bags. “ Nope, wrong answer bucko. You're lying to me.”

As I begin to walk away he holds out his hands and quickly closes the distance between us. He starts stuttering, stumbling over his words now. “ Hey, wait, wait, wait. Where are you going man? I told you the truth, I swear to God! I – I r-r-really need to see my mom, I do need bus fair. I need some help h-here man. I... “

“ All right shut the fuck up!" Pause. " I'm giving you one more chance. You can't con a con you ever hear that saying? So this time, you tell me the truth if you want to make an easy five bucks. Oh, and maybe you should put that shirt back on, your track marks are showing.”

He looks down at his arms then quickly shoves them into his pockets, the insides of his forearms are pressed tightly against his sides. His face turns beet red. He doesn't answer.

I turn away. “ Good luck.”

“ All right! O.K, O.K ... I-I needed to buy some smack. You happy now? I need to buy some more junk... a-and fast.”

I smile... a victorious, contemptible smile. I whip my wallet out of my back pocket and tear out a five dollar bill. I reach out my hand, the fiver folded in half sticking out from between my index and bird finger. He quickly snatches it out of my hand like Oliver Twist grabbing a roll from the workhouse headmaster.

“ Thanks man! Seriously, I really appreciate this. God bless!”

His gaze drifts to a bald, fat man climbing out of an SUV so I peel out a ten dollar bill and lazily wave it around in a circle in front of his face to hold his attention. His mouth slackens and plops open with a wet smack. His eyes widen, pupils dilating like dissipating blood in a syringe needle. He doesn't say anything at all. He just dumbly stares at me in disbelief and I coolly stare back. Our eyes carry on an unspoken conversation.

We're really starting to communicate now.

The sun beats down on both of us as the salty breeze lazily blows asphodel blossoms about creating a swirling snowstorm. We face each other in silence like two gunfighters settling a score on an abandoned, dusty street. Beads of sweat begin to creep onto my own brow now like a crackling blanket of army ants slowly invading a sleeping newborns' crib.

The shrill scream of a dying spider then a thump, followed immediately by the slow shuffling of a million spiny legs covered in tight wire-hair approaching Bethlehem - to be reborn again and again. My head's pounding. I can hear the distant drums luring out the beast who lurks in the jungle just beyond the reassuring torchlight... a sequential, slow coaxing.

“ He dead you know. Oh yes, oh yes, yes, yes...” The old Indian turns and repeatedly mutters through rotten teeth as he hides behind a swirling smoke curtain. Mexican desert wigwam peyote nightmare, the old man's head is spinning really really fast now and all around me stuffed dogs nip at my tattered clothes. Tired, so tired. “ Ha! That bastard thought he knew... that son of a bitch thought he had it figgered out. That God-damned maggot... Maggot!”

Somewhere in a quiet operating room a reticulated, squirming mass is held aloft like a human sacrifice as a c-sectioned mother wails to heaven in desperate horror...

The day started out so nice. Today was one of those days when the weather was so beautiful, the weather was so friendly, so accomodating, even the rats and roaches dared to venture out.

Junkie and I, we face each other and my jaw clenches and unclenches matching the beat of the drums. I stutter, now in marionette trance-mode:

“ I - I'll give you this ten and possibly more later if... and only if... you find me a bag as well.”

Appearances

2006-04-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

I’ve started carrying around a “messenger” bag. A handsome black number I picked up at one of the superstores. It travels with me everywhere I go, slung around my neck with the black strap resting just above my right collarbone. I don’t particularly have any important documents to tote so I’ll typically toss in a sandwich, my camera, and an empty notepad. Everyone I know keeps asking me: “ So, what’s with the man-purse?” And I smile, more like a half-smile really, and patiently reply: “ It’s called a messenger bag.” The other day my little sister followed this statement with another question: “ Well what’s your message?”

I was at a loss for words. The answer is I truthfully don’t know.

Perhaps this thusly explains why my notepad still sits untouched neatly packed away in my bag on the floor next to my feet. However, some might argue, the absence of writing could be a message unto itself.

a kite tale

2006-04-12T11:35:00.000-07:00

Amir brings the jalopy to a slow stop and we sit in silence staring at the dilapidated house. We do not speak. The only sound is the soft tink-tink of the engine cooling under the sweltering Afghani sky. We are both lost in our respective thoughts as our eyes carefully study the old house flitting from window to window, from room to room. It’s like seeing a fallen Titan, a once mighty deity, a grandiose figment of our memory that fell from heaven and crashed into the dry earth engulfed in flames, and now… just a stinking rotting corpse. The house we once knew in youth destroyed by Taliban gunfire. The house Baba proudly built brick by brick, from a conceptual rough draft scribbled on a blueprint to later become the glorious envy of the neighborhood, now a ruinous heap covered in indiscernible graffiti. Shattered glass and splintered wood. The gardens we meticulously tended long ago overrun with dry yellowed weeds and dirt and strewn garbage.

I hear the creak of leather. Out of the corner of my eye I vaguely see Amir’s silhouette restlessly shift in the approaching gathering dusk. His voice sounds cracked and distant.

" Hassan, they say those who drink from the same breast are united as brothers. They say… there exists a kinship that not even time can break… ”

My eyes remain fixed forward. I cannot muster the appropriate words so I allow my silence to speak for me. Amir coughs and continues.

“ Hassan-jan, I need to tell you this… I must. I… I’m so sorry… for everything. I truly am. It is as though I’ve awakened from a dream - nay a torturous nightmare, and I now realize you have taught me everything I will need to ever know. You have taught me how to live. Through your eyes, in your heart, I have discovered blessed salvation.”

I swallow hard. I remain silent.

“ I…I don’t know what to say. Usually words come so very easily to me. All I’m asking is that you forgive me. I ask for your bakhshesh. Please, for fucks sake, forgive me Hassan-jan! I am sorry and I grieve and I hurt and I….”

Amir hunches over the steering wheel, his body racked with convulsive sobs. He punches the dashboard in frustration and angry guilt.

I see Amir's pain, it glows like a dull blue aura. I understand why he hurts. I have always understood Amir and I always will. I gently lay my hand on his shoulder. I feel his muscles slacken.

“ Amir-sahib. I could never remain angry with you. I forgive you Amir and things may one day be the same as they were but it will take some time. We will have to wait but it will be worth it in the end. I pause and Amir looks up at me with tears in his eyes. I meekly smile. “Remember, Amir-sahib… sour apples.”

“ So you forgive me?”

“ For you… a thousand times over.”

Escherian

2006-04-07T11:37:00.000-07:00

A year ago today...

It's pretty scary being completely broke.

The other day I got a post-dated check loan at a place cleverly named, "Check City" which is smack dab on the boulevard of broken dreams, criss-crossing wino alley. I always swore to myself I'd never take out one of these ridiculous loans, yet here I am, slapping down my car title for an extra 200 bucks so I can eat.

Upon completing my business I quickly leave. As I'm getting into my car a homeless man approaches me and asks for money. He can tell by the pissed off look on my face that I'm put out. So he quickly follows his initial query with "I mean no disrespect, but if you have even a quarter you'd spare so I can buy a burger or something I'd really appreciate it." Coincidentally, in my center console I had 2 quarters, some pennies, and a pocketful of lint which I was saving specifically to use at the car wash. I hand him the quarters and say:

"It looks like you could use this more than me."

Nothing has changed.

I'm still poor. I'm still hungry.

Here's to another year on the moebius strip super-highway.

like riding a bike.

2006-04-03T14:42:00.000-07:00

I’m immersed in Reggaetón bass lines. I stand in the shadows watching sweaty bodies grind and twist to the primitive beat. I think I’m falling in love with this music… with this scene… once again.

Faces, people I knew back in the day appear out of the darkness to shake my hand and buy me a drink. They all invariably ask the same two questions: “ Hey, where have you been? You lose weight?” I politely smile and give the same simple answer as to avoid any unnecessary confusion, overlapped stories, or lengthy explanations. “ I’ve been traveling.” The reaction is universal. A quiet nod and three words: “ You look good.”

For most of the evening I hide near the back of the club leaning against the bar chatting it up with one of the cocktail waitresses, S____, a stunning Bosnian girl I used to date. She asks me why I’m not dancing and I ignore the question. She persists. “ Have you noticed that all of these girls keep looking over here? Why don’t you get out there and dance?”

I sharply inhale ready to give another rehearsed answer. S___ reads my eyes and continues.

“ …and I know you know how to dance, don’t deny it.”

I pause and lower my Red-Bull/jaeger in mock defeat. I lean in closer. Her eyes playfully smile at me under the low lights of the club. There’s no cocaine in my blood, yet my heart beats rapidly against my chest and my senses are heightened. I'm fully aware of my surroundings. Her sweet perfume swirls in my head along with the smoke of my clove. For the first time in what seems like decades I feel alive. The rusted gears and cogs have begun to rumble to life.

I narrow my eyes and grin at her from beneath the brim of my vintage fedora. “Because I’m too old.”

She leans in close, playing the game expertly. “You can never be too old to dance.”

“Yeah, who told you that?”

“ Someone I used to know... somebody wise.”

a moment

2006-03-31T10:32:00.000-08:00

I’ve been clean now for five days. No booze, no rock, no coke, nothing at all except bottled water and sleep… lots of sleep. I’m exhausted. Thursday I called in sick and spent the day sleeping. Friday I worked half a day and drank ten cups of coffee and I still snoozed like a preemie in an incubator.

This morning I find myself at my favorite coffee shop slowly savoring a vanilla latte. In between sips I surf and try to write as I unsteadily click on a friend’s laptop cause this joint’s equipped with blue-tooth wireless. My eyelids feel as though they have ten-pound weights attached to them. Most of my concentration is going toward keeping myself from nodding off. I feel like a narcoleptic and my body aches. I popped a couple of ibuprofin 800's to stave off this biting migraine.

My ipod holds 10,000 songs yet I have only one continuously on repeat. It’s one of those tunes you just can’t get out of your head once it finds a place there to stretch its legs, curl up, and kick back like a lazy cat.

Strangely, despite my overwhelming fatigue, my mind feels at ease and the desire to light or shoot up seems miles and miles away. I truly hope I can remain strong. Today is Monday and my agenda tonight is to go out with some old friends, have a couple of cocktails, some laughs, and nothing more than that.

Beautiful dawn - You're just blowing my mind again. Thought I was born to endless night, until you shine.

soup kitchen blues

2006-03-30T09:28:00.000-08:00

Saturday afternoon and I’m serving up bowls of hot soup at the homeless shelter with a buddy of mine… Heath. He asked me to help him out cause he’s got a deal going on with the guy who runs the kitchen that any hours his friend's wind up working will be added to his community service log. Heath got popped with two back-to-back dui’s and he’s damned lucky he didn’t have to serve jail time. Instead, he got strapped with hefty fines, ‘alcoholics anonymous’ classes, a revoked license, random drug testing, and a shit-load of community service hours. So Heath struck up a deal with me that for every hour I work with him he would pay me ten bucks cash so he can knock out the community service hours as quickly as possible. I’m pretty hard up for funds right now so I agreed. I figure: ten bucks per hour untaxed, three hot meals, and the chance to meet some interesting characters… hell, why not? Plus, I don’t have much else to do on Saturday besides get high and lay around my shit-hole apartment thinking about how hungry I am. So here I am resplendent in a hair net, gray dickies, and a mechanic's shirt I bought at the thrift store with a name patch that ironically reads: “ Jesus.”

Heath’s been working the soup kitchen now for several weeks and he’s in good with the transients, bums, and junkie regulars. I met a few of them while on break standing around the front entrance smoking Pall Malls. I’m pretty bad with names and the ones I actually can recall all have zany nicknames. For instance there’s the crazy tweaker named “Arkansas Dave.” He has a 3 ft long scraggly ZZ Top beard. He seems normal enough in conversation, as normal as a tweaked-out meth addict will be, but when he’s alone the guy will completely fly off the handle shouting at the top of his lungs at the imaginary demons of his past. There’s “Jim Crow,” a 300 lb former member of the Aryan Brotherhood. Very scary dude at first but once you get to know him he’s a really down to earth guy - a stand-up guy who’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. There’s “Betty Boop,” a former stripper heroin addict who has most of her upper front teeth rotted away and a lazy eye. There was a time she’d get by on looks alone, bouncing from man to man, from sugar-daddy to sugar-daddy. Time ran out for Betty Boop. Her looks faded. She became a junkie. Her kids were confiscated by the state. And the rest, as they say, is history. She still spreads her legs, bounces from man to man from cot to cot, but now it’s because she’s sickeningly lonely or needs to get a fix. In fact, she even tried to come on to me by the back storage room and I graciously declined her offer.

There were a few more but these were the ones that stuck out in my mind. I promised Heath I’d do a couple more Saturday’s with him so I hope to sit down with some of these guys and collect some stories to share.

paved with best intentions

2006-03-27T08:33:00.000-08:00

Tonight I find myself at another dive outside city limits named the “Batters Up” club. Old school, hip-hop, and rap is spinning on the tables and beers are two dollars a draft. The place is crawling with cholo’s, jaina’s, and even whitey’s who think they’re down with la raza. There is an uneasy tension in the air. I see it. I can read the signs… huddled conversations held in dark corners, menacing backward glances, and brazen macho posturing. Every guy has a shaved head, sports a moustache or a goatee, and wears an oversized football or basketball jersey. Every girl in the place is dressed like a fucking hooker in too tight, too revealing, disposable clothing.

Everyone is overweight.

I’m an outsider here. A couple of guys I know at work invited me down for a couple of drinks. Tonight I am a guest in their world. But it’s obvious I’m out of my element. The choice of drink I ordered, the way I sit in my stool, the nervous glint in my eye… these are all dead giveaways. I wouldn’t dare venture in here alone. I’d surely get jumped, robbed, and left out in an alley to hopefully bleed to death and die. I’ve never understood the banger lifestyle. I was never truly a part of this scene. I had way too much book smarts and not enough street smarts. I always had too much to lose.

Up until a year ago I always told people I met, with confidence and flirtatious charm, that I was a student at the university. That I had a future. I always told people I had only 36 credits left to graduate.

Every year since the age of eighteen I’ve had only 36 credits left to graduate.

Every evening spent passed out on some strangers couch, or asleep in an alley, or catatonic on a park bench… I’ve had only 36 credits left to graduate.

Every failed relationship, every fuck up, every time I walk the line I have only 36 credits left to graduate.

Every wasted day I spend at my brainless, degrading job taking orders from inept, stupid-fuck managers I’m 36 credits away from graduating. Every second spent blankly staring at a computer monitor… working just hard enough to remain employed… a clock puncher… an order taker… a yes man… flying below the radar and slightly just above it… snorting coke in the company bathroom… a loser… a failure… a tweaker… a drunk… I am and always will be 36 credits away from graduating.

I could have graduated from college. I had half of my credits completed upon graduating high school. I could have finished college but I couldn’t get up in the morning or go to bed at night… I was too damned lazy. If I had I would have gone on to graduate school and you wouldn’t be reading these words right now because I’d be out driving around in my BMW changing the world one lawsuit, one surgery, one bestseller at a time. And my life would have had more worth… or not. I’m thinking I would have wound up doing the exact same thing I’m doing now but worse. Wealth would guarantee easier access to drugs and women.

I’d have fallen farther and harder.

So I find myself here at the “Batters Up” or “McPhie’s” or “Jim’s Tiki Lounge” or “Dee Jay’s” or “the Barbary Coast.” So I find myself hiding in these dive bars among the cast-off’s and riff raff and I don't have a clue from what. I’m another face among the drunks, the tweakers, the dreamers, the bikers, the winos, the bangers, the lost and the hopeless. And without doubt everywhere I go, to everyone I meet, I am forever considered an outsider...

... does this mean there might still be a place waiting for me in the “real” world?

Ballad of Father William

2006-03-23T07:52:00.000-08:00

It's three a.m. I should be sleeping.

Tonight I smoked some blubonic chronic. A perfect, purple bud lined with yellow hair that would probably shine like Kryptonite if I held it under a black light. I methodically picked it apart and spread it out, nice and neat, on a worn, torn, year-old issue of Rolling Stone. I packed the bowl tight. Ninety-nine cent gas station Bic click-click-clicked sputtering to life. Radioactive stupid-smoke filled my lungs as I tried hard not to cough. Held it in making sure thirsty capillary bags absorbed the sorcerers' THC magic. Closed my eyes as the high gently lapped over my brain like a rising tide.

Lost track of time. I can't decide whether it passed me by or I'm thinking too fast for it to keep up. A thousand thoughts, all of them profound, in the span of one commercial break. I zone out for a moment listening to the white noise, television snow as my dumb ears are now perfectly in tune to the nether-frequency where the dead speak...

Earlier Conan O’Brien made me laugh and I think he's gifted. Fucking brilliant and quick witted - and I know he's performing just for me. I watched him verbally fence with guests and I'm wearing paranoid liars' goggles.

I see fake people.

There are moments in this alien advanced state, this barren waste, I question my life - a life less than ordinary and hardly extraordinary. I'm alone drifting along in self-induced seclusion. I'm lazy and un-ambitious, exquisitely reckless and unabashedly unapologetic. God knows I've fucked myself up beyond recognition and I'll probably continue to do so again and again and again and again.

It begins to rain outside and I hear sirens.

I flip the channel to Springer and immerse myself in other people's drama and problems as mine shrink away to the size of Mike Teevee subatomic micro-particles. The numb sensation slowly returns and again I don't give a fuck what may come... as long as I have my remote control and a tasty bowl of “Honey Bunches of Oats."

Ridin' the Rails

2006-03-20T10:35:00.000-08:00

St. Patrick’s day is a lot like Thanksgiving except instead of eating, you drink. Instead of making the rounds, traveling house to house seeing family and friends, you buy some rounds and hop from bar to bar. St. Patty’s day is a drinker’s holiday. Of course, a drinker doesn’t need an excuse, such as St. Patty’s day, to drink. But it sure is nice having everyone out with you getting belligerent fucked up.

Friday night was a blur.

Somehow found myself at a gay club meeting up with some friends and we wound up staying. A total dive, bottom-rung bar. An old warehouse half-assedly converted into a dance floor and a tiny stage for the occasional drag show. I’m fucked up beyond comprehension. Shot after shot, line after line, and three breathy hits of rock make my heart race and twitch with rapid-fire palpitations. Nervous twitching, and I don’t give a fuck where I am, just enjoying the taste of Red-Bull and licorice. Around me tanned shirtless fags in baggy pants gyrate to house and progressive beats with a Madonna track or two thrown in for good measure.

There’s only one bathroom in the joint. I’m waiting in line to take a piss. All the stalls are occupied with dude’s fucking and sucking or giggling fag-hags snorting coke, and I really do have to pee bad. I’m dancing, but not to the music. An old Navajo standing next to me who’s wearing too much base and a suit of faded denim, matching jacket and jeans, keeps smiling at me. He smells like soap and flowers and his face is riddled with pot marks. He asks me if I’m here with anyone. I tell him “yeah, with some friends.” He asks me if I have a boyfriend so I ask him if he’s got any go. He says no so I say yes and that’s that and I turn away. I finally get sick of waiting. I go outside to pee. I stand alone in a dark corner, a long trail of steaming piss trickling out of my dick. My eyes roll back in my head, it feels so damn good. A group of Mexican queens walk by and strain their necks to stare at my junk. I flash one of them a toothy grin and they all snicker. " Aye Papi!" I stay outside puffing a Primetime sitting on the curb alone with my thoughts enjoying my high, the steady bass line shaping and molding my frenetic emotions.

I show the door guy my stamp and stride back in on wobbly legs. The nice thing about this place is the bartenders don’t cut you off. I order another Jaegerbomb, light up another cigarillo, and lean back on the bar by myself to people watch. A super-hot, little blonde fag-hag asks me for a match. I oblige and open my Las Vegas playing-card zippo with a clink and light her up like a film-noir tough-guy. Her arm’s tatted so I ask her about her work with glazed, dilated eyes. We awkwardly converse for a while with raised voices until I lose interest and saunter off without a goodbye looking for my gay friend, Nathen. He’s on the dance floor with some trailer-park fag bumping and grinding to 50 cent's "Candyshop." He has the glass vial of blow in his pocket and I’m fiending so I work my way out to the center of the floor twisting and writhing around sweaty bodies. I feel a hand grab my crotch. I jump back with a start but no one steps forward and I’m not about to make a scene. I finally reach Nathen and he hands off the blow with a sly handshake just like a mob boss tipping a valet.

I wait in the restroom line for another twenty minutes or so quietly listening to soft groans and the occasional lip smack. Once a stall opens up I aggressively claim it as mine and deftly kick the door shut and lock it with a sneakered toe. It’s fucking disgusting. The toilet has overflowed and my feet suction to the sticky, shit-smeared floor with every step I take like a midget in a David Lynch film. I spread the powder on the toilet paper dispenser, cut up two rails with my Visa check card, and roll up my crisp fiver and enjoy. I stand back for a sec counting ceiling tiles. “I say GOD-DAMN!” Head rush giddiness followed by a wave of cocky calm as the drip works it’s way down my throat - acrid fairy-dust drip, my favorite part. I think about it all the time even when I sleep, or work, or fuck, or dream.

I walk out of the bathroom and again I see the same old Navajo waiting in line. I wink at him as I walk past as though I’ve known him my whole life.

Lacking

2006-03-14T13:27:00.000-08:00

Writers block. Forcing these words is like forcing a turd riddled with clumps of corn. I squat before my computer screen red in the face, eyes squinty, palms sweaty. Writing should be fun. It should be pleasurous and it should therapute and it should cathart. (Note the made up words because real words escape me and are ill fitted to my purpose) So I throw up a prayer and turn on a tune. I type out a paragraph of perfectly pure, tru-blue bullshit. And then predictably delete the whole horrendous heap with a couple of resonant clicks. Yes, words escape me. Other writers intimidate me, better writers, including myself. I reread old pieces of mine and shake my head in disbelief at how slick I might have once been. Sparing use of simile and metaphor. Subtle techniques meant to engage the reader, cause God knows the typical blog surfer has the attention span of a hyperactive field mouse on crack. Hell I even expertly used words I presently don’t know the meanings of.

My record is 75 comments. It happened sometime in July and I was at my flirtatious best pounding out pseudo- romantic, pseudo-edgy, pseudo-intellectual tripe. I still am, though with a lot less romance and a tad more morosity, monstrosity, and abject moronity. Pretentious as always, don't worry. Where have all the comments gone? I stepped out of the game. I left the mutual back scratching, dick sucking, and disingenuous complimenting by the roadside holding a sign reading: “will write for praise.” Thinned links and trimmed fat tossed behind my back for hungry dogs to fight over with yip-yelping teeth gnashing. It’s a Darwinistic struggle for survival, for the highest spot in the blogospheric ecological system, or ultimately, that fairy-tale book deal.

I heard someone describe it as the whispering of ghosts... these friendships... these crushes. These love affairs based on words written on a page that could or couldn’t be real. Am I real? No. Yes. Maybe. Or I might be a machine randomly stringing together phrases stolen from other people’s writings - a thief of the mind. A kleptomanic pocketing the abstract stealing away in the night with a duffel bag full of non-things. A satchel full of non-ideas I’ve come to peddle like a central park drug dealer with a mouth full of shrink-wrapped crack-rock.

The Art of War or General Tso's Chicken

2006-03-13T07:11:00.000-08:00

Saturday night. I'm sitting down to dinner with a buddy of mine, Jimmy. We're at this hole-in-the-wall Chinese joint I know. A great little place: nice ambiance, reasonable prices, and fantastic food. It's a family-owned Ma and Pop establishment. It's one of those places you really can't, nor shouldn't, tell anyone about because it's your little secret. Your own private Idaho.

Jimmy's filling me in on some shit that happened earlier.

“ So this guy is tailgating me the entire way. We're talking seven or eight blocks. I'm starting to get annoyed at this point...”

“ Uh-huh.” I casually poke at my kung-pao shrimp. As usual, it’s absolutely perfect - spicy as hell, plenty of peanuts, hardly any celery. I believe Chinese restaurants that overload their entrees with celery are cheap. Jimmy ordered the Almond Chicken. I notice that he keeps adding soy sauce to his dish.

“ So what did you do dude?"

“ This fat fuck keeps riding my ass right? I tap my brakes a couple times. His bumper is still literally inches behind mine. This fucking creep knows I'm pissed and he intentionally starts getting closer. I'm going ape-shit.”

“ No shiiiiit. What a fucker.” Outside our window we hear a junkie shouting at a Ferrari. I blow on a steaming spoonful of egg-drop soup.

“ Yeah. So check this out. At the next stoplight this piece of shit is sitting there shouting at me and flipping ME off... like I'M the one who fucked up you know?”

“ What did you do?” I take a long pull from my beer. I look up at Jimmy and again I notice he's dumping soy sauce onto his plate. I hear a woman two booths behind me giggling uncontrollably.

By this point Jimmy's pretty animated - he's waving his arms around as he tells his story, wildly striking and jabbing at the air. “ So I grab my gun out of the glove box and throw open my car door. As I approach him this dip-shit is halfway out of his ride so I kick his door in as hard as I can. He's squeezed in there like he's caught in a god damned vice!”

“ Whoa, nice.” Jimmy's grinning like a Cheshire cat. He pauses for a moment intently looking outside. I then see him reach for the soy sauce.

“Jimmy, hey would you mind?!”

“ What?”

“ You keep dumping soy sauce onto your food.”

“ So what?”

“ It's annoying. Why the hell did you even order the almond chicken? You could have just ordered a plate of steamed rice and ate that with soy sauce.”

“What's your problem? Calm dow...”

“ Do YOU think the chef intended for you to completely ruin his creation the way you have? Jesus Christ, you have no fucking class. No sense of culture at all! How about asking the waitress for a bottle of ranch next time?!”

“ Are you kidding me? This is a joke right?”

Two minute dead silence as we stare at each other across the table. The entire restaurant seems to freeze up... turning red as it holds it's breath. And I'm a race car in the red. I exhale a loud sigh and take another swallow of my beer. I turn back to Jimmy and hold up the bottle.

“ Yes... I am kidding. Just breaking your balls.... Salut....”

“ I hope so motherfucker. You insult me in a dream you'd better wake up and apologize... Salut.”

I grin and finish my Kirin.

I toss my napkin onto my empty plate. As I rise I slide the black plastic tray holding the bill over to Jimmy's side of the table. “O.K Charley Bronson, you're buying... let's go get us some of that Saturday night fever.”

Good Times

2006-03-09T09:02:00.000-08:00

Jukebox belts out tired, tried, and true tunes: Seger, ZZ Top, some Skynyrd. Low light dive bar I know outside of town where all of the bikers go. Classic joint just like the one in “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” right down to the long line of dusty Harley’s, a humming neon sign that irregularly blinks on and off, and the occasional tumbleweed slowly sauntering by.

White v-neck tight t-shirt and classic 501’s complete with a dangling chain. I look like a greaser. I even got the pompadour mutton chop sideburn and Errol Flynn Robin Hood style goattee combo going on. Full wanna-be poseur regalia but I’m still blending in. I’ve earned my wings. I’ve ridden, fucked, and fought alongside a lot of these guys.

I’m here with my buddy Dave.

Took the day off work today so I could have him help me fix up my bike at his shop. Burned daylight drinking Bud, snorting blow, and shooting the shit with Dave and his motley assortment of dirtball customers. I also managed to crack open the gunked-up carburetor case, de-rust the gas tank, and swap out the chain, sparkplugs, and battery. I’m determined to ride this year. No chance in Hell I’m going to waste another summer on the sidelines stroking my dick watching the world pass me by. Dave’s always cool to help me out when he’s got the time. The only repayment he asks for is that I buy the beer and clean up the shop. This includes sweeping up the joint, dumping out the oil into a huge drum in the back, and putting shit away – tools and parts. In return he helps me wrench but more importantly teaches me how to repair my ride. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance and all that shit. It’s a nice arrangement.

The place is poppin.

There’s electricity in the air, the good and the bad kind. You see the beautiful thing about this spot is you never know what’s going to happen next. One second everyone’s slamming shots and toasting the good life and the next all hell breaks loose: guys talkin shit, fists flying, and chairs breaking. The funny part is after everything settles down, when the dust clears, the barkeep pours fresh steins and everyone is cool again hugging and back-slapping. That is… until the next drunken altercation.

We rode in Dave’s pick up. He’s not drinking because he’s got to be up early tomorrow to see his kids so I have carte blanche to get royally fucked up tonight. I’m up to my eyeballs in Red-Bull jaegers, Lucky Strikes, and hard-bodies. I’m yakking it up with a super-hot brunette named Cami. I know her from way back. We used to party quite extensively in the day and she’s got the night off from the pole. The only reason she’s even in this greasy joint is because I promised her I’d be here. So she made the drive out to the desert with a couple of her friends. She’s classy like that. And she’ll most likely be stumbling out with Dave and I after last call. The usual routine: we’ll fuck, she’ll puke, and then we’ll sleep off our buzzes on Dave’s pull out. And then tomorrow we'll say awkward good bye's and go our seperate ways and that'll be that.

But for now, as we hide behind grinning masks and like stage actors half-assedly run through our lines... but for now, between playful body shots, stolen kisses, and earnest glances... but for now, as we clumsily grope each other in the dark...

we are assuredly in love.

Groundhog Day

2006-02-27T07:19:00.000-08:00

The weather is getting warmer - downtown park and I find sleeping junkies underneath groggy trees as cool breezes rustle soggy leaf puddles. It's t-shirt season and I’m in torn 501’s, Chuck’s, and a black zippered hoodie. A green military cap pulls back greasy uncombed hair falling in frizzy curls around my neck hiding the white buds feeding Cat Stevens into thirsty ears. Wearing over-sized Willy Wonka shades that pitch the world in tones of gray I sit on a park bench chewing gum.

I remember when I was small my mom would tell me to chew gum as the plane took off rocketing us into space. She said it'd “pop my ears,” she'd say this, and I didn't have the faintest idea what it meant but I'd chew and chew. I'd chew and stare out the portcullis hole watching the world grow smaller and smaller to miniature proportions like a tiny electric train-set landscape. I used to think the roads and highways far, far below were the state borders as you'd see on an atlas or Rand McNally map. Naive thoughts of youth. I remember I also used to think the world was black and white back in the day and that's why Mr. Bogart, Mr. Gable, Abbott and Costello, and the l'il Rascals were always cast in high contrast shades of crackling gray. I asked my Grandpa this and I remember he laughed and laughed... and then he played along so I thought the world was black and white for another year.

And maybe it was... sure, maybe it was... except in Oz.

Gum chewing, neck jerking... nervous habits like biting my nails or always locking car doors. Headache coming on like a rider on the storm and I'm sitting on this filthy park bench waiting for some guy I met through a guy who's now an hour late with my eighth. Wad of cash burning a hole in my pocket and I'm starting to get nervous. Starting to trip hard as bums approach like zombies... a slow relentless advance. Tweaker jaw tweaking and eyes flicking about like a lizard tongue zipping 20 feet to swallow a stink-beetle. Cops lazily circle round and round staring hard through smoked glass, mustaches, and mirrored aviators.

And a tsunami quietly advances on a white beach somewhere.

listen carefully...

2006-02-18T10:06:00.000-08:00

The old man was true to his word. He promised to bring me back a bottle, which he did. As he also promised we’d drink together again. I read his face. Expressionless. Hardened. A swirling sea of swirling lines - a mess of memories. I met him a year ago in the usual spot at the usual time as I told the usual tales to nobody in particular.

Shimmering subconscious shadows flickering across the silver screen of falling snow. A surreal scene, so synthetic, like a Japanese anime. Frozen water floats by suspended in mid-air slow-mo magical calm. Yellow smiles rotten teeth and bloodshot eyes as my companion and I sit in stillness in the dark on a park bench shivering cold passing the brown bag back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. As we spoke in tears of fifteen years of wasted life.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
Dreams of loneliness...
Like a heartbeat...drives you mad...
In the stillness of remembering what you had...
And what you lost.

Numb.

Numb.

Junk dreams. Set scene: twitching arm, torn couch, rotten bowl of Cheerios and the shivering sound of a twisting coil of maggot. Alcohol burn meth-rage replaced with numb. Need to sleep. Needle full of junk. Need to sleep. Crushed Thorazine fairy dust dripping down my throat and it tastes like shit. Need to sleep. Stupid eyes as Bugs Bunny and friends flicker across dead retina. Rods and cones refuse to fire… only white noise across miles of rusted wire. Deeper and deeper in space and a million miles below… so damned cold. Listening to the steady beat of leathery wings.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I’m hunting rabbit.

Reunion

2006-02-13T08:16:00.000-08:00

Hipster coffee-shop downtown. I sit in a shadowy corner booth sipping chai tea nursing a stubborn winter cold that won’t go away. Bundled up like a beatnik Eskimo in my bespoke shearling lambskin coat, fingerless gloves, and colorful scarf an ex girlfriend knitted. Hair’s grown out now to nappy mod-60’s-shag proportions complete with complementary 70’s-style sideburns and every third Friday of the month is open mic poetry night so the place is jump-and-jiving with pretentious artsy types so I blend in well.

I’m chilling with an old high school buddy who’s in town for a few days. He’s all grown up now, a professor. He teaches literature in upstate New York and every time we meet it’s bittersweet. He embodies what I could have been and I embody, to him, the quintessential Nietzschian figure. Tragically fallen from grace. He believes I chose the wrong path and threw away the “gift.”

Which I most likely did.

“ You really should be in Manhattan taking pictures. You know, it’s not too late. It really isn't. You're still young...” He tells me with patient optimism, in between sips of espresso, as though he’s a father addressing a volatile child.

I pause and sullenly gaze at him from beneath my oversized Tyler Durden gas-station aviators. And again I remind him that I'm broke and that I pawned my camera off a long time ago so I could pay hospital bills after I crashed my bike. Of course what he doesn’t know is that I actually drank that money away. Of course what he doesn’t know is that I've given up. That I'm disenchanted. That I'm not the same eccentric, bright-eyed, funny kid he knew in High School once upon a time. Perhaps he doesn't realize I simply don't care anymore.

Or perhaps he does know and he’s too polite to call me on it.

Aeternitas

2006-02-08T15:21:00.000-08:00

I am a vampire. I am ancient. I thirst. I hurt. No words today or perhaps ever. I seek inspiration. I need reason. I need a life-giving infusion, a spark, that deep inhalation of acrid white smoke filling my lungs and super-charging my brain. For I am hollow. Dry. Brittle. I am undead re-animated flesh.

Nine-inch spikes tear skin and sinewy tendon, bore through bone. Thoughts of salvation. Redemption. Regret. Damnation. And I turn to you and through clenched teeth with raspy breath ask you:

“ remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom.”

I think of her.

Images click through my mind in split-second succession: her eyes, her hair, her skin, her hate, her pain, her death. She is incorruptible. I see her swathed in white satin looking angelic a hundred years from now, a thousand years from now, entombed beneath glass. Breathless. Cold. Untouched by the hellish wrath of decomposition. A saint. Wearing red lipstick one might expect to find on the base of a penis. My sweet. O’ may I lay down with you and join you in your sweet sleep. My Ligeia. As suffering and time and worms march across our still eyelids. Statues locked in a stiff embrace never to be re-awakened for all eternity… or until Christmas… or whatever comes soonest.

Now.

Reeking of dried shit, piss and clammy sweat. The needle zeros in with deadly precision, like a gps guided missile, finding a spot along the vein void of gangrene or bloat or dried blood. The magic spot. The big G. A garish red “X” painted on in marker. The pirate booty. Buried therein a time capsule housing millions of cells housing millions of years of evolution and survival, marked by this one moment of de-evolution, of self-mutilation, of self-destruction. And the Darwin award goes to…

Yes, I confess… I lie. More to myself than to you, yet I lie nonetheless. For I have sinned. Again and again and again. I’m a liar and a cheat and a junkie.

“ And I’ll tell you things that you already know so you can say:
'I really identify with you, so much.'
And all the time that you’re needing me is just the time
That I’m bleeding you, don’t you get it yet?”

That’s why you hate me. That’s why they love me. They? I am the pied piper of Hamelin and we are legion. The disenchanted. The lost. The drunks. The fiends.

Legend

2006-02-06T12:22:00.000-08:00

Drunk, horny old dude leaning next to the bar with a lecherous smile tells every girl who walks by: “ Damn. You’re hot.” Same line over and over like an LP belting out Beatles tunes on crackling repeat. Black and white visions of John and Paul, with nappy mop-top haircuts, running through a sea of sobbing girls and flash-bulbs.

But that was yesterday.

The chorus of screams has died down. The hysteria of youth now replaced with a dull, barely-audible buzzing sound as his ticker struggles to pump blood through expired veins and clogged arteries. He’s an old tin can in a ratty bag full of tin cans collected next to a busy freeway overpass. Obsolete. Yesterday’s model sitting on a dusty thrift store shelf marked ten cents. No man’s treasure, every man’s trash. Whiskey-dreams and faded memories fuel his courage. Nothing to lose at this point, everything to gain. His pride sleeps in the bottom of a dumpster in a sticky puddle of garbage-juice. A pride long ago abandoned by it’s owner.

Yet in quieter moments, when he's alone in the bathroom taking a whiz on wobbly legs, when he's introspectively gazing in the mirror at his grizzled reflection, he swears he's still the same high school football hero who fucked the homecoming queen.

He's even told me, with misdirected trust and beaming pride , that he looks like Johnny Lawrence.

The Artist

2006-01-27T07:53:00.000-08:00

“ So kid what is this website you're maintaining? This... blog?”

“ You seen it?”

“ Yeah I read it every now and again.”

“ Well, it's a collection of paintings.”

“ Paintings? They're just a bunch of stories.”

“ No, they're paintings. Every word, every sentence, every paragraph is a brush stroke.. a burst of color. Interplay between light and dark – chiaroscuro. And the page itself is a blank wall where all of these paintings, all of these canvasses, hang for the entire world to see. To enjoy or to hate or to ignore or to piss on or what have you.”

“ Paintings of what?”

“ My life.”

“ Are they real?”

“ Yes... No.”

“ Which is it? They're either real or they aren't.”

“ None of it's true yet at the same time all of it is.”

“ OK Edward Nigma, what does that mean?”

“ It's physics.”

“ Physics?”

“ Conservation of energy. Those stories didn't just spontaneously generate. They came from somewhere. They came from my life... from my experiences. Converted from one form of energy into another. A cathartic metamorphisis of raw emotion, be it pain or joy, into an abstract collection of words that tell the tale of said experience... or any similair moment experienced by anyone under similair circumstances.”

“ I don't get it.”

“ Maybe I'm not explaining myself very well. I'm hungry.”

“ And you publish these stories for complete strangers to read?”

“ Who better? These strangers have no idea who the fuck I am. There are no preconceived notions except those I place on the page. No stereotypes except those I allow them to formulate in their heads. No boundaries except those I create for myself to adhere to.”

" Playing God?"

" No. I stay within the realms of the true. I cannot write fiction. I never could. Yet some of the settings are fictitious. The characters are real yet names are changed. None of it is chronological. Yet it all happened. What tale I tell depends wholly on my mindset... or what's playing on my radio."

“ Sounds fun.”

“ It is. You should start a blog.”

“ Nah.”

“ Why not?”

“ I ain't got time for that shit.”

Beautifully Broke

2006-01-27T07:36:00.000-08:00

Matters of money, as with matters of love or getting fucked, will invariably ebb and flow. “ Feast or famine,” says my buddy Kenny with surety and conviction in his voice. In the meantime I count my crowns and pesos piled up in neat little rows like Bob Cratchett in the cold counting house through fingerless gloves in dumbfounded disbelief like some fucking dumb-ass idiot glancing at his pitiful excuse of a paycheck. I lay in bed watching MTV and VH1 as celebrity spender’s and trust-fund bitches jetset to exotic locales, snort coke, and wash down pills with chilled Cristal and my fridge is bare. I’m getting skinny now you know. Perhaps it’s the hours of blank jogging on my treadmill as my downstairs crack-head neighbor who looks like Grace Jones tippety-taps the ceiling with a broom. My cheekbones protrude and my veins stick out as if I’ve been reborn at sixteen years old. Too bad heroin-chic went out a decade ago. God, I hate being hungry. All I can afford at this point is my gym pass and a bottle of Ancient Aged I shoot alone as my landlord quietly listens by the door checking to see if I’m home cause I’m 2 months late on rent.

some thoughts jotted on a napkin

2006-01-21T10:26:00.000-08:00

The bass line drowns out my depression and all else as I sit and gently stir my Red Bull/Vodka under the neon black-light hullabaloo circus. She dances seductively-trashy maintaining eye contact hoping my gaze will flit down to her glowing French-manicured fingers as they outline her mound which “aches for me so.” Licking of lips, witty pick up one-liners, and a quick wink. Hoping. Tempting. Wanting. Waiting for the green shit to be thrown up on the counter, mindful of the no-touching rule, one… two… three… four… fueling men’s dreams…give or take a five-spot or a rail of white shit or a shot of Patron or some Oxycontin. Dealing in pleasure and false hopes and one-night-stand hot threesomes with her and her girlfriend trippin’ on Ex as the trance/techno ticks the time away. Double up rubber armor donned in awkward haste racing to beat the premature ejaculation thinkin’ about Mother Theresa and rotten road-kill dead-dogs whom were once loved but now gone, lost, and forgotten. My cousin sits awestruck hypnotized by round ass and tan lines jiggling like Jell-O fruit salad which he swears he’ll toss. He’s a filthy motherfucker, my cousin, that’s why I love him. My wingman. My dog.

The Snowman

2006-01-18T13:19:00.000-08:00

The snowfall is as thick as a supernatural fog. In the swirling clouds I see shadows. Faces appear to me, jump out at me, like fun-house phantasms and then dissolve as quickly as they came. Perhaps they recede back into the cavernous emptiness of my memories.

Silence. The only sound is the cruel whistling of the wind and the occasional flip-flap of my hood. The world is dead as my soul is dead. I stand alone. Like Rip Van Winkle I’ve awoken from a hundred year ethereal sleep only to find desolation. Only to find deserted streets. Vacant eyes framed in brick peer down as I gaze up at the breathing, zig-zagging sky. My legs tremble beneath me like I’m tweaking. Lucid lithium dreaming. I feel dizzy. The strength and vigor I once knew as a youth has escaped me. I think it runs through the trees with the whispering dryad ghosts.

As I walk on I can hear the soft crunch of the snow beneath my feet. Can the dead who rest in the ground below hear my footfalls? In their shadowy slumber through lidless sockets, they see pitch black - even blacker than black my glimmering shadow floats by as a distant train billows smoke into the nuclear sky. And the dead forever grin through lipless smiles.

Cognizance City

2006-01-13T11:09:00.000-08:00

Dying mumblings of an old man send me west. Four hundred ticks beyond the desolate Necropolis, the city of dead words, lies the bustling port-city of ideas. This is the meeting point- the crux. It is the final edge, or rather the beginning, or rather the still-beating pulse of this land: where reality gives way to the fantastic... or vice versa. The silk roads converge here. It is here where the world's mysticism is reinterpreted, repackaged, and then carted east by sharp toothed merchants to the dry outlying wilderness. It is here, in this sprawling city, lie scattered large halls where scribes exhaustively record and transcribe all thoughts, fantasies, passing notions, and ideas into infinite volumes. Materialization of pulses, these ideas, that float and hover around us unseen... into words. These texts are sent north, to the great royal libraries in Seraphim, to merely gather dust and be forgotten and then to ultimately die.

Or so I was told as a child... Or so I was sung as the flickering candlelight made the shadows dance and play.

I arrive into the city at dusk. All around me are the sounds of commerce. Shrewd exchanging of hands. This is a mercantile city, an ancient city, where might is measured not by the sword or by gold, but by thought. I arrive penniless and defenseless and my mind is still ill at ease. The journey was arduous and my caravan is exhausted. Yet I push on. I progress deeper into the metro-bowels and my bewilderment increases. Blank faces. Everywhere I turn I find emptiness, completely void of conviction or direction. No purpose. Something has alarmingly changed. Distrusting eyes weave in and out of the shadows. The occasional glint of firelight off a gold tooth or an ornate buckle draws my attention away from the task at hand. Strange men with even stranger smiles beckon me into dark alleys promising fame, fortune, and earthly pleasures. " A girl for you? We have young ones too, cheap, one great idea and she's yours for the night. Or do you like boys?" I ignore them and turn away pretending not to hear.

I seek something but I know not why. Or how. Something rare and coveted... inspiration. Before he passed the old man said I might find her here. “ In the heart, by the great hall, where only the wealthiest men - the thinkers, languidly sip wine and play chess.” These were his final directions, cryptic instructions. And here I am in the center of the city and I find only inanition. A deserted hall. Deserted streets. Empty minds. What once existed now doesn't. Or perhaps never did. Or perhaps the tales of old lie. Deceitful fables intended to mislead and fuel dreams and spawn hope. In fact, this entire city is a lie.

Or perhaps, just maybe, I am in the wrong place.

Fellatio

2006-01-11T17:18:00.000-08:00

“ We call them nodders. You know what I'm talking about. You’ll almost always find them standing in the front row during team meetings.”

“ Nodders? What, as in “nodding” off to sleep?”

“ Hardly. As in nodding in complete agreement. They hang-on to every word... every fucking syllable... uttered by the boss. Ass-kissers.”

“ Example?”

“ O.K, I witnessed this just yesterday in department meeting. So J____ says: ‘ Hey guys, we’re down 20 basis points. Unacceptable. You hear me? This is totally unacceptable. This has to change immediately... ’ And P____’s sitting there in the front row nodding away like a fucking baboon with Lou Gherig’s disease.”

“ No shit.”

" Then J___ goes on to say: ' For the next two weeks we'll all be working mandatory overtime. Until the job is done.' Again, more nodding. Fuck! P___ - what a cocksucker!"

" Fucking lame man."

“ Tell me about it. Then J___ finishes this bullshit diatribe with: ‘ ...and all of you are a bunch of dickless shit-head faggots. I should do us all a favor and fire your sorry asses.’ And there’s P___ nodding his head yet again fucking agreeing with him!”

“ What the fuck?!? Really?”

“ I swear to God!”

“ *chuckle* I call bullshit dude.”

“ Well, um... yeah... all right, the last part is. But it COULD have happened."

Nowhere Man

2006-01-06T09:33:00.000-08:00

Another chilly day as we huddle outside on smoke break in a tight circle shooting the daily shit. And there you stand outside of our circle with an oxymoronic expression of rapt attention and feigned disinterest. Like a dog craving the affections of its master you crave to “belong” to our group. To any group. You cautiously wait for the ideal moment to jump into our conversation: to throw in your worthless two cents. Of course, the moment never presents itself. Perhaps the conversation doesn’t suit your tastes. Or perhaps, you simply don’t have the courage. You’ve realized you have absolutely nothing of interest or value to say. You’ve accepted your role, and it’s a dismal one.

Or maybe, WE’RE the uninteresting ones. After all… it’s your world.

I watch you sometimes. You’ll often sit alone dreaming of bygone days when you used to get by with your now faded good looks and repertoire of witty one-liners. We rarely talk. But when we do I’ve noticed the course of our dialog is always carefully steered back to the same tired topic(s) again and again. You. Yes, I am well aware of how much you may have bench-pressed in high school. Yes, I am aware of the fact you used to drive a Lexus. That you hold two degrees. I realize you fuck a lot of women. That you are a fixture in the club circuit. That you have connections all over town, including with the mob. And that you can easily hook me up with any drug of choice. “One call, that’s all.” I’ve heard all of your two-bit stories.

And I don’t believe you.

You tell me things you think I’d want to hear. Like a skillful salesman you establish common ground. You align your interests with mine. On the fly you tweak and modify your personality. And just as quickly change your story when you speak to the next guy. You’re a disingenuous fraud and a fake. A half-baked fabricator of senseless ridiculousness. You are a hollow man. A sham. Smoke and mirrors, lipstick, and glam. A picture-perfect specimen of an aging fucking loser. A nowhere man. You belong in the Smithsonian behind glass right next to wax sculptures of club-wielding Neanderthals, Australopithecines, and various other genetic dead-ends.

I honestly think it’s time you get a fucking clue.

Glimmering below

2006-01-04T11:31:00.000-08:00

Machete in hand I hack away at the never-ending onslaught of prickly vines and leaves. The steaming jungle buzzes with life. Although I can’t see any animals I know they’re out there. I catch movement. Dark figures dart and bound about in the shadowy canopy above. The shrill call of hundreds of birds and giant cicada’s drown out my thoughts. Perspiration bleeds down my face into my eyes blurring my vision. My feet sting with an unholy pain. Dirty water, sweat, and a ponderous army of flesh eating bacteria slowly march into my raw exposed blisters that have turned into cuts that have turned into lacerations. Soldiers call this “jungle rot.” I shudder to think how my feet will look when I remove my boots. I quickly force these thoughts into the back of my mind as I numbly tread on.

The hours endlessly drag. I stop to rest mindful not to drink the microbe-infested water. My shirt is soaked through with stench and grime. I remove it and toss it into the river. I watch it drift away caught up in the current. I can’t help but wonder if gigantic crocodiles resting far below in the river’s murky depths silently watch me with their cold, un-gazing, reptilian eyes. I splash cool water onto my face and onto my chest and shoulders. I subconsciously welcome one of these prehistoric killers to suddenly jump out of the water with a loud splash, snatch me up in it’s gaping, powerful jaws, pull me under, and death roll me. My wish is never granted. Under my breath I curse God as I continue onward.

I arrive into a clearing. Scattered about I see crumbling statues. Below my feet is the ancient foundation of a once glorious temple erected by a once glorious civilization. I inspect the sculptures around me. I can vaguely discern ornate patterns and tales of love and hero’s and loss long ago chiseled into the stone faces. I see your eyes, or rather a fading memory in the nondescript, weather worn rock . Decrepit monuments that once represented your beauty, now corroded to dust and tangled up in spider webs, moss, bird droppings, and animal piss. Another structure, an old pillar, represents your heart. Another sculpture, of a woman, represents your dreams. Another, of a shield, represents our solidarity. I pause and look up into the sky. Heavy, dark clouds begin to gather. I hear the muffled boom of thunder break somewhere far, far away. I turn around and the statues have vanished. I see only jungle. I wonder if you even existed.

I wonder if I even care anymore.

I gather my breath, blankly shrug, and limp away. The bowels of the jungle enfold me. The ganglions, nerve-clusters, and gray matter envelop me and deeper into the darkness of my mind I wander.

Creeping

2006-01-01T15:07:00.000-08:00

Everyday when I return home after a hard day's work I typically find an empty house. Just the way I like it... as I am a loner. Everything is exactly the same as when I left earlier that morning. Just the way I like it... very messy... as I am a slob. For instance, the coffee maker is still turned on, and has been for days. The dishes are piled up in the sink. The T.V is tuned to CNN and the toilet remains unflushed. A solitary stinking log abjectly floats there with thoughts unto it's own. Every single object has been left undisturbed and untouched. The pizza continues to slowly rot in my fridge. The thermostat is set to 72. Just the way I like it... as I prefer the air cool.

Yet I know you were here during my absence.

Subtle clues only an anal retentive, overly-observant asshole such as myself or possibly a crime scene investigator would pick up on. Fresh tracks in the backyard. Greasy fingerprints on the countertop. Some of the books on my bookshelf have been misplaced. The bedroom door is cracked whereas I always leave it completely closed. A pen is missing from the coffee mug on my desk. I count 9 whereas I always leave 10 in there. The bottle of whiskey I keep in the freezer has been placed on the second shelf. I always keep it in the door. Someone has been sleeping in my bed. It smells funky.

I know you were here you fucking piece of shit. I know you've been rummaging through my things. Prying into my life.

Perhaps it's my fault for leaving the back sliding door unlocked. Perhaps it's my fault for graciously allowing you to stay at my place at one point or another. Now, like a stubborn case of herpes or genital warts, you just won't go away. You keep coming back. And you're sneaky about it too. Cautious. You try to cover your tracks. You try to leave no clues. But I know you were here - your work is sloppy.

You've stayed your welcome. And unless I take decisive action I know you'll keep coming back. You see... to you, it's now an expectation. You EXPECT my door to always be open to you, and your loser friends, and you no longer even bother to leave a couple of bucks on the counter or a “thank you” note before you leave the way you used to. You think you can just show up at my place anytime and simply "hang out" free of fucking charge? Well guess what asshole, you can't. You're no longer a part of MY inner circle of trust. You're no longer a friend. In fact, at this point I deem you an enemy. I think perhaps it's time I start dead-bolting my house and once again assure the sanctity of MY domain. Perhaps it's time I board up the fucking windows so your prying, beady RAT eyes may no longer keep tabs on me, or what I'm up to, or who I'm with.

Maybe it's time I move to a different neighborhood.

OR maybe... just maybe, I think it's time for YOU to go the fuck away and never come back.

This ain't no peep show.

Fuck You.

Embers

2005-12-20T22:06:00.000-08:00

I gaze at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Behind layers of ancient caked-on grease and soot I see someone who used to resemble me once.

I can hear the beat. The drums in my head. The tribal, rhythmic, incessant pounding of the drums. I sit on the toilet and cradle my face in my hands. The sound is too intense. Too primitive. Crippling. Quieter still I hear the song of the sirens. Somewhere across the sea on a desolate shore of black sand they sing to me. They beckon me back into their world. Into the savage land. They know that I know the ship is moored at dock, quietly creaking and swaying. A solitary lantern is hung upon the watchtower. The light breeze perpetually smacking it against the wood with a dull clang. Inside the abandoned captains quarters you would find a loaded gun and a snuff box containing all sorts of wondrous delectables.

I know I'm stronger than this.

Beautiful

2005-12-16T11:15:00.000-08:00

I sit in my room, sad song on repeat, thinking to myself the irony of it all. Life truly does imitate art, doesn’t it?

There was a place you used to go. Your special place where you’d sit and drink and think and attempt to sift through your shit with a broken plate like a melancholy prospector, so tired, on the fringes of hope. A broken relic. Esoteric. Hollow.

At least that’s my take. I still don’t get it though.

It was a quiet lake up the canyon a ways. There was a ledge with a view where you’d gaze, in the early morning light, at an entire world 300 feet down below, a world free of pain. Soft ripples only hint at the bubbling bliss and simplicity of hungry fish and the day-to-day void of strictly human flaws such as betrayal, heartache, depression… and resignation. Soft lapping waves -

I can only imagine you’d hold cautiously still and feel yourself die moment by moment. With the whispering wind you walk the astral plane, your soul so far far away, thousands of miles away, with your son as he plays. In your mind’s eye you see him pause, and thoughtfully look up to the sky, as you smile down the only way you know how.

Carefully you remove your shirt, shoes and socks. Place your car keys and wallet beside your things in a meticulous line. You approach the ledge, eyes affixed on the distant horizon…

“There must be an angel with a smile on her face,
When she thought up that I should be with you.
But it's time to face the truth,
I will never be with you. “

Ignis fatuus

2005-12-12T23:37:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve, 2004.

“ So why are you here... of all places?”

I take a hard swig from the bottle. Tastes damned good. Especially when it's this cold - near freezing. The room is dark. Surreal. A self-contained, melancholy world. The only window to the outside is a tiny 2' x 2' plate-glass deal above the door. Just beyond the smoked glass I see the wind whip the snow around and around in the night air. A white Christmas it seems... to the delight of children and dreamers everywhere. The snow, as reflected underneath the street lights, is hauntingly beautiful and hypnotic. Tiny tornado mini-gusts, spinning and spinning, as though they waltz. Locked together in a naive, never-ending dance.

“ Well I'm here 'cause I don't have anywhere else to go. I'm not from around here. And well... I fucked up. To make a long story short I'd rather be here.”

He holds up his beer, “ Well merry Christmas then." He takes a long pull and sets his bottle down with a hollow thump. " So what did you do?” His fierce eyes ominously glint at me in the neon half light along with his gold tooth.

I look away. My attention's drawn to the corner of the room. I sullenly eye an old man sitting at the end of the bar next to the ancient Juke Box which whirs and grinds out old rock ballads from the 80's. A guitar solo fills the tiny establishment. The high-pitched scream permeates throughout the atmosphere in a congested cloud along with the thick smoke of the Marlboro Reds I'm chain-smoking. The combination of the music, smoke, and a shaky old ceiling fan which precariously dangles directly above my head create an odd effect: the walls seem to breathe. The whole room is crackling and alive. A stunning contrast to the stillness of the old man as he sits stiff as a statue. He's eerily silent without even a word - or a drink. It's as though this catotonic state can be attributed to the vacancy of his soul as he stares back at me through muffled pits. Beneath rotted lids.

“ Yo. You still here?” A finger snap in front of my face.

“ Yeah. Sorry. What were you saying?” My attention fixes back to the man seated in the stool next to mine.

“ What happened with you and your woman?”

I squint at him beneath my Willy Wonka sunglasses and wipe my nose with my shirt sleeve. I shift in my seat as I take a deep puff from my cigarette.

“ No offense but I'd rather not talk about it.”

I exhale two streams of smoke from my nostrils like a cartoon dragon. I turn away and wave at the bartender. “ Hey another beer over here, Bud light, if you could.”

My gaze returns to the old man in the corner. He seems to be gazing intently at his drink... or perhaps at me, I can't tell. I can't make out his features, even when I peer at him from beneath my glasses. His body is pitched in darkness. The only light upon his face is an unnatural neon blue. A perverted “Rembrandt shadow” that illuminates only half of his face. The other side is almost completely dark except for a small triangle below his eye. His eyes, or the sockets where they should be, are blackened. His grizzled chin is pressed tight against his western-style button-up and his back is hunched. It's an awkward way to sit. I'm reminded of old cowboy flicks and the way corpses of executed criminals are laid out in pine boxes with quarters placed upon their eyes.

As if on queue, as if reading my thoughts word for word, image for image, the man next to me states in a hoarse tone of voice, in a soft, sharp whisper:

“ Death is merciful, for there is no return therefrom but with him who has come back out of the nethermost chambers of the night.”

It takes a second for the quote to register. My rusted brain slowly chugs and spurts to life like an old truck left out in a field, forgotten, for many many years. Realization is quickly followed by a sense of apprehension and then a creeping fear. I catiously turn, fully expecting to find the man standing next to me, or behind me, breathing his foul demon breath into my neck, skull-fucking me with his eyes.

Instead, I find an empty stool. My eyes flit to the shadowy corner. I see an empty glass.

And outside the wind and snow eternally waltz.

Panegyric

2005-12-06T21:46:00.000-08:00

Relic

“ Red,” you say, “ the sun that evening in Berlin. A brilliant, striking, unforgettable shade of Red.”

In this memory for some reason it's always raining.

There we are, you and I, alone in your garage. Your “den” you'd often refer to it as. I remember the shelves of old knick knacks. War medals. Trophies. Fishing gear. Photographs. Everything that truly ever mattered to you proudly on display for all to see. An intricate story behind each item free of charge for anyone willing to listen. Unfortunately, back in those days, there were very few who would listen - who hadn't heard each and every tale told and retold countless times. Unfortunately, family didn't really come around that much anymore. Unfortunately, you were more of a burden than a familial treasure.

And there I'd sit, a wide eyed little neighbor kid, ears pricked not daring to move a muscle or breathe a breath in fear I'd miss even a word. And there you were, an 80-year-old kid, excitedly ducking and weaving behind your torn recliners and rusty filing cabinets firing imaginary guns at imaginary ghosts of imaginary Nazi's who lived on in your memory... and now mine.

Demons

“ Red,” you say, “ the dog in the corner, over there... it's fucking red.”

Leather straps drawn taut across your chest and wrists groan and creak. You struggle to stay conscious and more importantly keep yourself from vomiting as the methadone drip slowly works it's way through the vinyl tubing to the I.V sloppily buried into your track-addled forearm. You start to hyperventilate as your eyes roll into the back of your jerking head.

I stay calm. I keep my voice even. “ There's no dog. It's just you and me here. Okay? Everything is fine man... just try and relax... Hey. Everything is cool, I'm here.”

“ F-Fuck you! It's there, oh god! Help me please, fucking get it away from me!!”

With a patient sigh I stand up and walk over to the door. I turn the lights up to their brightest setting. I come back over to your bed and sit down. I dab sweat from your forehead with a cold wash rag and hold your hand in mine as I softly hum one of our favorite tunes we used to sing as children.

We sit for awhile. The room is silent except for my humming, the smacking of your lips, and an occasional whimper.

“ See? Nothing there bro'.”

Your vice-grip loosens and you breathe just a little bit deeper. I place my fingers on your neck and count. It's much slower now. With half-closed eyes you look up at me awaiting more words... more reassurance.

I smile and say, “ Hey let's order a pizza. The food here fucking stinks.”

Absolute

“ O.K what's a three letter word that could also mean 'coward?'"

“Red,” you say, without looking up from the paper.

“ Pop... red? Are you sure?”

“ Yeah, you never heard that phrase? A red-bellied chickenshit?”

“ Nah. Are you sure you're not thinking 'yellow?'”

You peer up at me. Tiny eyes underneath your glasses. “ That's what I said... 'yellow.'”

an exercise in futility

2005-12-05T23:52:00.000-08:00

A drunk, tweaked-out bum spits at me through gapped teeth pissed off I'm lying in his spot. No sound except cursing, hissing, mumbling and the shrill whistling wind and a flapping issue of Time propped between two rocks. How I wound up in the middle of the park at 3 am on a bench is an utter mystery to me. All I know is I have a very hostile meth-head all over me like stink on shit. My mind races. What to do? What to do? What I always do when faced with a sticky situation: a hostile, quick burst of serrated violence and testosterone fueled posturing. If I get lucky he'll back down as in nature when animals settle quarrels through unspoken macho pose-downs and chest thumping. If he doesn't back the fuck up I have to take him out quick before he pulls out a blade and cuts me. These territorial wino fucks always carry knives. They'll protect their precious pissing grounds tooth and nail without fail.

Lightning fast I jump up full height, stare this jag-off in the eye, and ask him what the problem is. He continues to approach quickly closing the distance between us with every passing second. The wind continues to blow and the flip-flapping of that annoying magazine serves as a tympanic accompaniment to the incoherent, rhythmic shouting and guffawing of this grizzled, foul smelling hobo. My eyes shift from his face to his shoulders. I watch his arms, his hands, and to my dismay I find them straying to the pockets of his tattered trench-coat. I gotta make this quick. This fucker's mind is injected with PCP, no reason or common sense, and nothing's gonna stop him unless I knock his ass out cold.

I dash forward and close the distance between us in the blink of an eye. He expects me to swing at his face so I shoot out my right foot and slam my old school sneak into his knee. Between the wind and the rustling mag and the chattering trees there's a hollow pop. For a microsecond I think about New Years, champagne bottles, and loneliness. His situation complicates exponentially. An agonizing 180 degree inversion. His knee cap is now hiding behind his leg just where his hamstring meets his calf. Drugs and adrenaline do wondrous things. He doesn't feel it, holy shit. I follow this career-ending highlight-reel kung-fu quick kick with a fist between the eyes on the topmost bridge of his nose. I need to blind this mother fucker so I can get behind him and lock him up and lay him down. Works like a charm. I wrap an arm around his throat and using his body the same way a stripper uses a pole I swing around behind him. Like in those old episodes of “Dukes of Hazard” where those red-neck good ol' boys slide across the hood of the General Lee. All in one motion I bring up my other arm, press down on his head with my hand, and apply pressure. Both sides of his windpipe are constricted by my forearm and bicep. His hands shoot up to his face trying to jab out my eyes or grab my hair. I bury my face into the back of his head and drop to the ground onto my back. I wrap my legs around his waist as I continue to clamp off his air supply. This is what's knows as a “spider lock.” I'm surprisingly relaxed, rational, and a little bit sad. As his flailing and grunting begin to subside I think to myself this... all of this... could have been so easily avoided.

Ad Infinitum

2005-12-03T23:09:00.000-08:00

Friday Night

Not any ordinary Friday night, but a Friday the way they used to be. So this was the main selling point. My cousin Angel and I decide to meet at "Ice,” an upscale club, for some drinks, laughs, and to reminisce about old times. Two hours prior on the phone he told me “you're in a rut Cabron, we need to get you out of those shithole bars for a change. You need to live.” So I grudgingly shave, style my hair, don my black suit which I haven't worn for ages it seems, shine up my Zelli shoes, splash on some cologne, take a deep breath, and head out the door. I still can't figure out why I agreed to this though.

As I pull up to the valet I find Angel standing by the entrance with our boys. They're all dressed impeccably. They all look so good... so young. Or perhaps I'm the old one. Ancient like a Sequoia.

“Dude, I feel like I'm seeing a ghost. Why you decide to come out?”

I smile as Diego and I embrace. I tell him in his ear, “I needed material.”

As I pull away he looks at me with a puzzled expression.

We walk into the club. It feels so natural yet at the same time so unfamiliar. Angel and the boys are all in step, in sync, to them it's all a part of the fucking routine. I'm the unwitting outsider now. Angel senses my hesitation. He turns to me and above the beat of the techno shouts: “Same fucking shit man except now we're older. Some wealthier. Some of us are still crazy. But there are always the ladies. A fresh batch of ladies.” I nod and inhale the aroma of cigarettes and perfume.

On the main dance floor I find myself surrounded by an undulating sea of unfamiliar faces. The scene has changed, dramatically. Everyone is so beautiful, tan, toned, perfect. The music drowns out Angel's words. The din of the beat is all I hear and all I see is movement. Flitting images. Dirty Vegas' "Without you." Bleached teeth. Blue drinks. It's all too fast. I'm forced to stop for a second to catch my breath and undo the knots in my stomach. There was a time “this” was what we lived for. This was our domain. This was... living. Yet here I am nervous and afraid.

There is a phrase we used to use, and we'd toss it around so casually: “You can take the dog out of the ghetto, but you can never take the ghetto out of the dog.”

What happens when the dog returns to the ghetto and doesn't want to leave again?

Isotopic

2005-12-01T10:02:00.000-08:00

I ask questions. Like a paleontologist whom cautiously, and methodically, chips and brushes and files away layer upon layer of sandstone, plunging further back into time, thousands of years with every passing inch. Examining bones. Piecing together a coherent story based on riddles, half-truths, and cryptic clues. I prod and poke and smile. I keep the drinks coming so long as he keeps talking.

The topmost layer I find cockiness. Arrogance. Brash assurity. A carefully erected blockade or defense mechanism designed to keep the right people out and let the wrong people in. Bulletproof armor designed to prevent a messy stabbing or a shooting, but imperfect at the same time. This armor may prevent death but it won’t prevent pain. You’ll invariably find yourself knocked on your ass, gasping for breath like a slimy fluke flopping around on the deck of a fishing boat. In fact it’s this “I don’t give a shit” attitude that first drew me to him. I had to invite this guy out for a drink or three. I had to study and dissect him, and then tell the story as it should be told. It’s been awhile but finally someone with a set of balls - solid brass ones, who truly didn’t give a flying fuck what other people thought. They say in life perception defines a person. If people believe you’re a fucking drunk and a loser and a con then you are. It’s a democratic system, the majority always wins. It’s unfair but it’s life. It’s destroyed many. And it leaves permanent scars. Perceptions are near impossible to undo. Was it Obi Wan Kenobi, the Jedi knight, who said “Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view?” Needless to say, my new friend, let’s call him “Sam” has been crucified on many an occasion. He’s played the pariah. And he loves it…

Or so he would have you think.

He’d also be the first to tell you he is, in no uncertain terms, a fucking “wino.” He wears his scarlet “A” with beaming pride. He’s let go. He’s embraced it. Why? There was a time it was so much worse. There was a time he was consumed by it, unable to stop, completely intent on drinking himself into oblivion. A filthy apartment void of furniture, in lieu of a sofa or a coffee table or a 32” television there are rows upon rows of stacked empty bottles. He calls it “the wailing wall.” I nod and I tell him I understand, I truly do, of course, he insists I don’t. “ No one can. I saw, with my own eyes, demons and devils.” It was severe. Family and friends tried to help. The intervention only intensified the problem. It fueled it like dry tinder crackling on a campfire. Finally, the ambulance, along with the cops, came to take him away from his purgatory, his wailing wall, because he posed a threat to himself. In a court of law he would have been indicted for involuntary manslaughter, or as he phrased it “voluntary stupidity.”

This is the tale of the tape. This is the story the top layer - carefully catalogued, carbon dated, and labeled – tells. The first mask of many.

Finding the Philosopher's Stone

2005-11-21T21:45:00.000-08:00

Words trickle down my arms into my fingertips and somehow make the inter-dimensional trip to the white screen. Like that scene in “Chariots of Fire” where the English chaps run along the beach. Except these words, with glimmering hope in their eyes, destination in sight, rush headlong toward death. A shiny obsidian cliff with an infinite drop. So here I am, playing God.

Without scruple I sentence these halting, insubstantial words. I shackle their feet and bind their hands and away they are whisked single file to the awaiting trains. These old lumbering trains whose wretched smoke fill the skies pitching the earth in shadow... perpetual shadow. Helios died a long time ago, or perhaps he hides, or perhaps he kneels before the golden calf of capitalism. Men no longer worship the sun, or his sister the moon, or the Gods of old who died before the arrival of Jesus. Fuck, they don't even worship the God Elohim, Jehovah, Jahveh, Yaweh, or Shem Hammephorash (if you like). Men worship idols made of gold, silicon, platinum, and celluloid. Men worship the quantity theory. Back-room alchemists laboriously study fluctuations and trends and through some magic known only unto them amass riches.

” Money, clothes, and ho's.” The new Hammurabi Code.

Words written in stone, bronze, parchment, paper, magnetic strips, compact discs, and now words written nowhere. Non-words. Words floating about, riding the fiber optic wave, from one isolated beach to another to another to another. There was a time to be literate, to understand the manipulation of words, to have the ability to create words, to create worlds – to translate them, to transmute them, to alchemize or alchemate or alchemulate words; to spin words out of air as the millers daughter spun straw into gold, was to understand power.

Foot will slide in due time

2005-11-20T10:49:00.000-08:00

I awoke this morning feeling a little blue so I decided to read some Jonathan Edwards. His uplifting sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Originally delivered on a beautiful Sunday morning on July 8, 1741, it was given (as a gift would be given) by Edwards with impassioned enthusiasm and bored gusto. In Benjamin Turnbull's A Complete History of Conneticut (1797) we are told that Edwards read his sermon in a level voice with his sermon book in his left hand, and in spite of his calm demeanor “there was such breathing of distress, and weeping, that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence, so that he might be heard.” Sweet!

The fact of the matter is we are all equally worthless and God hates us all. So Edward states:

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: His wrath toward you burns like fire; He looks upon as you as worthy of nothing else but be cast into the fire; He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in His eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent in ours. You have offended Him infinitely more then ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and it is nothing but His hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.”

I love that passage... that passion. It oozes with hope and optimism doesn't it? As a boil, red and swollen, oozes out puss like a toothpaste tube being slowly squeezed from the bottom up.

Why does God hate us so? Same reason my own father hates me, or YOUR father probably hates you... because we have failed him in every conceivable way despite his generosity... despite the fact he has equipped us all with the means to succeed, to shine, to “lead the field.” He hates us because we are detestable, loathsome, gluttonous creatures, the lot of us, deserving of nothing more than being crushed like a disgusting, impuissant stink bug in the driveway when I back out my BMW.

“ If you cry to God to pity you, He will be so far from pitying in your doleful case, or showing you the least regard of favor, that instead of that, He will only tread you underfoot... He will crush out your blood, and make it fly and it shall be sprinkled on His garments, so as to stain all His raiment. He will not only hate you, but He will have you in the utmost contempt: no place shall be fit for you, but under His feet to be trodden down as the mire of the streets.”

Like a rotten carcass of a dead cat by the roadside with it's bones crushed to the point it no longer resembles a living animal, but a sticky, stained rug a hobo wouldn't even desire to keep in his cardboard box right Jon?

Remember God loves us, and he hates us. It's a bittersweet romance. If he didn't care about you or love you you'd wake up tomorrow and find yourself in Hell alongside Hitler and Vlad the Impaler and everyone else to be tortured and bound eternally facing your worst fears, covered in repugnant spiders and hissing cockroaches from Madagascar... and be served cold coffee like in that Gary Larson cartoon. Yes, they do think of everything.

So be sure to mind your P's and Q's. Don't worry be happy. Oh and Dad I did it, I am a fucking bum and a dismal failure. To quote good ol' Buk:

"You are a bum," he told me. "and you'll always be a bum!"

and I thought, if being a bum is to be the opposite of what this son of a bitch is, then that's what I'm going to be.

and it's too bad he's been dead so long for now he can't see how beautifully I've succeeded at that."