Away

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

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

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

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

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

“ 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

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

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

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

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.