Im surrounded by the listless clutter from the tornado that went through the mini bar in my small hotel room in Genoa, Italy. To my right an expensive bottle of champagne that i didnt enjoy sits with its stupid lable leering onto my computer screen only to make sure I mention it. It towers above the midget bottles of Johnnie Walker, Tuborg beer, and something called Ramazzotti that tasted like Amaretto and Everclear.
I used to hate Italy, but after last night my mind has changed. I came in early this morning and had to jump a fence to get back into the hotel solidly landing on my bad knee. Touristy couples looked disapprovingly at my slovenly drunken appearance as I hobbled to reception and slurringly requested my room key. I slept an uncalculable amount of hours periodically broken up by shouting at housekeeping. All said, I seemed to have made it in ok last night, but ok is a relative word when you travel much.
Its roughly midnite I suppose. I havent been aware of time since I arrived. I have a flight to Milan in something like six hours and I am running low on blue footballs and am smoking my last cigarette. My hair is greasy and itchy and I have had a bloody nose for a week.
I am trying to decide if I should get out and wander the city. But that may jeopardize my flight and my ability to walk to the ticket counter at the airport. If you've ever walked into an Italian airport reeking of whiskey, nose bleeding, demanding a window seat and water, you may understand my situation. These counter ladies are a strange bunch.
Well I suppose if Im going to find a good Panini at this hour I may as well take a shower and brush the shit off my teeth.
Monday, April 26, 2010
I now conclude, dejectedly and defeated, that my brain has been slowly severed from my emotions, a secret divorce of which I was not told, but feel deeply. Those sensitive, delicate receptors in my grey, soggy head were slashed by dulled razors and finished off by gunshots. There is now only a stringy and mangled pathway with deep crimson walls, lined with slithering tendons hanging like stalactites, that I know not how to traverse nor to find the way back. I would like to believe there is a bridge of soft tissue somewhere that's can guide me home, but as time casts more shadows and moons sink into still deserts my hopes dwindle. The amygdala, the brain's major center for processing emotional events, was vacated some time ago and is now a vacuous office deemed condemned long ago littered with empty bottles of Mickey's, needles, and empty orange prescription bottles. If you look hard enough you may find a white four-barred xanax, please return to owner. There is an occasional traveler that is crafty enough to slip past the drunken doorman, who staggers those moldy hallways making sure nothing but the inanimate gets in or out. He is a hawk when he's sober, but he what they call a substance abuse problem and he may not notice if you come round in if he's smashed. I would steer clear of him sober or straight.
Doctors told me post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) left me unable to control emotional intrusion into daily life. Emotional intrusion? I laugh at the thought. To me, it seems there is no emotion left in daily life. When I do find it, like a rare gem in the form of seeing a great band or conversation with a soul who can wrench a bit feeling out of me, I feel alive and just like all those salt of the earth cashiers you meet at truck stops or record stores. Those visits are as short-lived as your favorite song and the comedown is worse than that of a two day coke binge.
I am not a radio, nor an open door. Like John said, I am a faulty string of blue Christmas lights. Sometimes I flicker the brightest blue and things are vibrant. You can see me then. Most times I am no more than the dismal darkness of a decorated exterior made terribly obvious by the absence of what could have been beautiful. I am a machine, neither extraordinary nor exceptional. I can function programmed by logic from a healthy upbring, but without sentiment. I can do jobs and play cards. I can force a smile and look human, but I am a faulty machine with missing wires and blown circuits.
Doctors told me post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) left me unable to control emotional intrusion into daily life. Emotional intrusion? I laugh at the thought. To me, it seems there is no emotion left in daily life. When I do find it, like a rare gem in the form of seeing a great band or conversation with a soul who can wrench a bit feeling out of me, I feel alive and just like all those salt of the earth cashiers you meet at truck stops or record stores. Those visits are as short-lived as your favorite song and the comedown is worse than that of a two day coke binge.
I am not a radio, nor an open door. Like John said, I am a faulty string of blue Christmas lights. Sometimes I flicker the brightest blue and things are vibrant. You can see me then. Most times I am no more than the dismal darkness of a decorated exterior made terribly obvious by the absence of what could have been beautiful. I am a machine, neither extraordinary nor exceptional. I can function programmed by logic from a healthy upbring, but without sentiment. I can do jobs and play cards. I can force a smile and look human, but I am a faulty machine with missing wires and blown circuits.
Loathing in the key of C
I feel contempt for the façade he puts on. He knows he isn't shit, but wants everyone else to think he is nothing but success. He is the dark horse playing the cards of a winner while holding seven-deuce off suit slithering his way into another score. A broken spirit, he knows not what he does to those closest to him by wanting so much to be liked. He can't help it, he hates himself and he needs to be forgotten. We are one and the same and we barely know each other. If everyone knew I was just another asshole with nothing to offer, they wouldn't bother, at least I wouldn't. For the few that know him well enough you'd know he is exterminating me.
I am just a disconnected bastard watching myself through a foggy bar window with a flickering neon Pabst Blue Ribbon sign faintly briefly illuminating that familiar drunken stranger. The reds and blues of the old sign's iridescent glow put an eerie luminosity to him as he tramps around in my body on the lookout for cars as he's pissing on a street corner. In brief moments of clarity I steal glimpses at him as I stumble past dark alleys of broken beer bottles, me completely out of my head. He's the bum sleeping on the weathered wood of a dirty park bench in a tattered olive drab Army issue sleeping bag circa 1971. At times he customarily appears out of the corner of my eye, a well dressed businessman with a designer suitcase standing, holding Amtrak handrail hammering at his Blackberry checking for his latest ever important email. He is the same slovenly dressed kid in his mid twenties with shaggy blond hair and ratty red beard sitting comfortably out of place in a business meeting filled with suits earnestly guaranteeing them he will have the job done by Friday. He is me and I am him, our paths cross from time to time, it's irrevocably evident during those long hard comedowns on Saturday mornings.
What are we to do in this situation? A girl once told me "I feel like I'm dating Tyler Durden." I ask myself, which side is better, the fun loving psychotic bent on destruction, or the gloomy corporate sellout? Faster than you can turn on turn on your windshield wipers on a rainy day, dark clouds looming like specters waiting to unleash their rage, we stumble into each other and depart divided. From time to time I follow myself, like an apparition, the blue eyes of a withdrawn presence looming above him as he destroys all that is good and all that is beautiful. I awake cognizant to the mayhem we've caused. With the help of some meds I call him up. He's easier to reach that way. He is my comfort zone, and I am his face. To our dismay, most people like him more than me, after all he has that charisma that will draw you in like dollar drafts on a Friday night. He can be everything to everyone. I am just the one left to pick up the tab, to fill the void.
I am just a disconnected bastard watching myself through a foggy bar window with a flickering neon Pabst Blue Ribbon sign faintly briefly illuminating that familiar drunken stranger. The reds and blues of the old sign's iridescent glow put an eerie luminosity to him as he tramps around in my body on the lookout for cars as he's pissing on a street corner. In brief moments of clarity I steal glimpses at him as I stumble past dark alleys of broken beer bottles, me completely out of my head. He's the bum sleeping on the weathered wood of a dirty park bench in a tattered olive drab Army issue sleeping bag circa 1971. At times he customarily appears out of the corner of my eye, a well dressed businessman with a designer suitcase standing, holding Amtrak handrail hammering at his Blackberry checking for his latest ever important email. He is the same slovenly dressed kid in his mid twenties with shaggy blond hair and ratty red beard sitting comfortably out of place in a business meeting filled with suits earnestly guaranteeing them he will have the job done by Friday. He is me and I am him, our paths cross from time to time, it's irrevocably evident during those long hard comedowns on Saturday mornings.
What are we to do in this situation? A girl once told me "I feel like I'm dating Tyler Durden." I ask myself, which side is better, the fun loving psychotic bent on destruction, or the gloomy corporate sellout? Faster than you can turn on turn on your windshield wipers on a rainy day, dark clouds looming like specters waiting to unleash their rage, we stumble into each other and depart divided. From time to time I follow myself, like an apparition, the blue eyes of a withdrawn presence looming above him as he destroys all that is good and all that is beautiful. I awake cognizant to the mayhem we've caused. With the help of some meds I call him up. He's easier to reach that way. He is my comfort zone, and I am his face. To our dismay, most people like him more than me, after all he has that charisma that will draw you in like dollar drafts on a Friday night. He can be everything to everyone. I am just the one left to pick up the tab, to fill the void.
The times they are a changin... for the worse
Today I walked the downtown streets in slow motion. The cars and people of the city frenziedly passing by like vivid dreams then disappearing, faceless and forgotten, like dreams often do. I felt the emptiness of it all as they passed. I waited dismally for someone real to crawl into my head and say something meaningful, something inspiring that would make this clatter of city life momentous. Sorrowfully, people passed coldly careful not to stand too close to me. After all, I was in my work polo and and had the look of a man on tilt, to the hip passersby in the Exploited shirt(purchased at Hot Topic), I am part of the system they hate but know nothing of. I went unnoticed as I continued to spit obnoxious brown spatters of Redman chewing tobacco on a tree with concrete roots. That's not punk rock I suppose, only certain forms of tobacco are punk rock and you must be careful to know what they are. I sat alone on a bus stop bench quizzical of where these faces were going and who they were really inside. I questioned if the swarms of teenagers grouped in sets by their trendy punk or nu-metal fashion were what they wanted to be, or simply products of their desire for acceptance. Likely influenced by the possible truly "individualistic punks (the ones who copied their big brother) they secretly idolized in school, while futilely knowing they had to conform to the scene for acceptance. Can you blame them? We were faced with that at times.
We have become a society dominated by trends marketed by suits, true individuality is hard to come by, and you can get a The Casualties shirt at Hot Topic while your picking up the new Fall Out Boy CD, and its convenient because it's right near The Gap. How many of the bands albums do these kids emblazoned with Ramones shirts own? Hordes of these kids passed by in flocks by wearing shirts of bands they didn't really know or like. As a group passed, I contemplated the legitimacy that one of them may be a great man someday. Maybe he would selflessly donated his kidney, perceptive the danger of the operation to his own life, to a dying boy at St Jude's, while the hipster kid leading the faction, adorned in skinny pants, studded belt and black Poison The Well shirt, would end up shanked and castrated in a bleak, pale-tiled prison shower room by self righteous thugs doing life for murderer. Doomed to be disregarded and forgotten as just another rapist who couldn't survive gen-pop. I imagined his scarlet blood trickling slowly channeled by the sullied, dirty shower water slowly oozing and swirling together like an elegant, abstract oil painting, so beautiful in that moment, destined for the sewer as he gasped for breath and wished for death with hollow eyes. The blood and water was to be purified in a water processing plant to be consumed at the public drinking fountain at a park one sunny Saturday by an exuberant eight year old in a yellow jersey with the number 6 on the back and grass stained shin pads who just scored his first goal while his proud parents loaded up the minivan to take him to Denny's for a Belgian waffle topped with strawberries and whipped cream. His teenage years looming, drugs and needles in hand, waiting for him patiently to forget those celebratory dinners after games, soccer goals, proud parents, and innocent childlike dreams for his future, to become disillusioned where he will probably spill drops of his own with a blood with a safety razor in a white walled rehab center for heroin addiction.
Mixed in with the wandering youth, old men marched along stoically with t-shirts emblazoned with American flags and I questioned myself with a mix of admiration and loathing; will I be patriotic when I get old? Is that a right of passage? Or simply the after-effects of a lifetime of being propagandized that we are the greatest country in the world? In all probability, as jaded and sickened I am with the state of this proud nation, I'm condemned to be a bitter and cynical grey hair ranting on a street corner because the revolution we strived for in youth had no chance of ever changing. Those young punk now blowing me off as a crazy guttersnipe. Will our generation have our proud white haired old men? Was Dr. Hunter Thompson right? Are we the "Doomed Generation"? Has the American dream passed us by leaving corporate domination and an ever imposing government to rape our future and drain us of our individuality? Take a walk through the city in slow motion you will see all sorts of rebellion being sold to us.
We have become a society dominated by trends marketed by suits, true individuality is hard to come by, and you can get a The Casualties shirt at Hot Topic while your picking up the new Fall Out Boy CD, and its convenient because it's right near The Gap. How many of the bands albums do these kids emblazoned with Ramones shirts own? Hordes of these kids passed by in flocks by wearing shirts of bands they didn't really know or like. As a group passed, I contemplated the legitimacy that one of them may be a great man someday. Maybe he would selflessly donated his kidney, perceptive the danger of the operation to his own life, to a dying boy at St Jude's, while the hipster kid leading the faction, adorned in skinny pants, studded belt and black Poison The Well shirt, would end up shanked and castrated in a bleak, pale-tiled prison shower room by self righteous thugs doing life for murderer. Doomed to be disregarded and forgotten as just another rapist who couldn't survive gen-pop. I imagined his scarlet blood trickling slowly channeled by the sullied, dirty shower water slowly oozing and swirling together like an elegant, abstract oil painting, so beautiful in that moment, destined for the sewer as he gasped for breath and wished for death with hollow eyes. The blood and water was to be purified in a water processing plant to be consumed at the public drinking fountain at a park one sunny Saturday by an exuberant eight year old in a yellow jersey with the number 6 on the back and grass stained shin pads who just scored his first goal while his proud parents loaded up the minivan to take him to Denny's for a Belgian waffle topped with strawberries and whipped cream. His teenage years looming, drugs and needles in hand, waiting for him patiently to forget those celebratory dinners after games, soccer goals, proud parents, and innocent childlike dreams for his future, to become disillusioned where he will probably spill drops of his own with a blood with a safety razor in a white walled rehab center for heroin addiction.
Mixed in with the wandering youth, old men marched along stoically with t-shirts emblazoned with American flags and I questioned myself with a mix of admiration and loathing; will I be patriotic when I get old? Is that a right of passage? Or simply the after-effects of a lifetime of being propagandized that we are the greatest country in the world? In all probability, as jaded and sickened I am with the state of this proud nation, I'm condemned to be a bitter and cynical grey hair ranting on a street corner because the revolution we strived for in youth had no chance of ever changing. Those young punk now blowing me off as a crazy guttersnipe. Will our generation have our proud white haired old men? Was Dr. Hunter Thompson right? Are we the "Doomed Generation"? Has the American dream passed us by leaving corporate domination and an ever imposing government to rape our future and drain us of our individuality? Take a walk through the city in slow motion you will see all sorts of rebellion being sold to us.
Filing it Away
There is a dusty oak filing cabinet in an attic somewhere, its dust covered wood peeling and weathered. It's categorized in chaotic order; tabs mark names of people, some of whom I've never met. There are also tabs of places I've been, some physical like The Bucket of Blood in Virginia City, NV in 1989 on a business trip with my father, and some mental like the feeling of the isolation of a veterans psychiatric in-patient facility where apathetic black nurses in white scrubs woke me up to put me back to sleep. Each file opens with sights and smells some vivid others dull and sullied. There are hidden files that only the owner knows where to find, even though he has tried his best to keep them hidden from himself. Those files are usually the easiest to find on rainy days.
One day maybe we could go through it together and find out who I am. You can see my Mark McGwire rookie card and feel the icy winds of Candlestick Park on a Sunday night Giants game. I will show you my tear stained letters to my old lovers and the essay I wrote about how Johnny Cash saved my life when I was fourteen year old . We can talk about the Art Bell show on Coast to Coast AM which I listened to fascinated learning of aliens and conspiracy. I'll show you the hidden TV I had that only picked PBS and sometimes weird UHF stations that I would set up after my parents went to sleep and watch Tales from the Crypt and Mr. Bean. We could play Baseball Stars on my Nintendo that only worked if you blew into the cartridge hard enough and slapped the top of it. Here is the page where Matt Pelechowicz and I beat the shit out of the fearsome bully Johnny Bell and were the champions of 6th grade. There is home-run derby with Josh Mayo and learning to skateboard with Matt Pelechowicz and Garrett Elms.
We can stroll through the rice paddies behind the house I grew up in where I built forts and hunted for anything that moved. Playing teacher with my sisters while bouncing on the twin mattresses in their rooms. Go-Carts at the Aust's, and above ground swimming pools in the backyard where the retarded kids across the streets I scared by accident, whose parents cooked meth. Cockfights at the Martinez' across the block and our blackberry bushes from which my mom made the best blackberry cobbler. I will show you the first blackbird I shot out of a tree that made my mom cry, and if you care, the Syrian man I shot in the desert that still makes me unable to sleep at night.
I can take you for a ride in the shaggin wagon, a 1990 minivan covered in band stickers like Propaghandi, Chinkees, Bruce Lee Band, OpIvy, Fifteen, Tuesday, and The Broadways to name few, so many that you couldn't see out the back window. If you're lucky I will tell you about noonies, rooting, jew-ry and "Scary Gary". I can tell of a nervous boy and terrified boy on his prom date who felt like the luckiest kid in the room. Finding and losing love then subsequently losing myself in the aftermath.
We can track the progress of an innocent boy hardened by life and his self destructive nature. We can watch my life constructed by amazing people then destroyed by feelings of inadequacy. I will show you the yellowing, weathered timeline of my fight with religion and shuffle through papers proving and disproving the belief in God. There are sections that I dare not look for because they have been buried long ago and the memories are faded and belong to people I used to be. They are still there though patiently waiting for their chance to be addressed and signed off on.
I will show you the "drug file" with many names and places I want to forget. To borrow from Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, "They were the best of times and the worst of times." Mostly the worst. This file is the largest and hardest to peruse and it is still under construction. In a vile in the back, I still have the tears I cried when I got into a fistfight with my father who was only trying to raise a good son, who was far gone by that point. We could open the Army file that made me angry and filled with hate and self loathing that I don't dare open sober. Bring a bottle of something and through laughs and tears we can tear it apart.
I am opening this box on my own and only certain people will care enough to join me. I want to find the ones that do. Anyone who wants to truly know me must take these files and memories and accept them or pass me by and find a nicer, cherry wood cabinet that is beautiful and polished with no missing files, everything clean and legible. I don't want to hide this breakfront, because it is who I am and that means accepting me for who I have become If you have gotten this far maybe there is a chance I will open it for you.
One day maybe we could go through it together and find out who I am. You can see my Mark McGwire rookie card and feel the icy winds of Candlestick Park on a Sunday night Giants game. I will show you my tear stained letters to my old lovers and the essay I wrote about how Johnny Cash saved my life when I was fourteen year old . We can talk about the Art Bell show on Coast to Coast AM which I listened to fascinated learning of aliens and conspiracy. I'll show you the hidden TV I had that only picked PBS and sometimes weird UHF stations that I would set up after my parents went to sleep and watch Tales from the Crypt and Mr. Bean. We could play Baseball Stars on my Nintendo that only worked if you blew into the cartridge hard enough and slapped the top of it. Here is the page where Matt Pelechowicz and I beat the shit out of the fearsome bully Johnny Bell and were the champions of 6th grade. There is home-run derby with Josh Mayo and learning to skateboard with Matt Pelechowicz and Garrett Elms.
We can stroll through the rice paddies behind the house I grew up in where I built forts and hunted for anything that moved. Playing teacher with my sisters while bouncing on the twin mattresses in their rooms. Go-Carts at the Aust's, and above ground swimming pools in the backyard where the retarded kids across the streets I scared by accident, whose parents cooked meth. Cockfights at the Martinez' across the block and our blackberry bushes from which my mom made the best blackberry cobbler. I will show you the first blackbird I shot out of a tree that made my mom cry, and if you care, the Syrian man I shot in the desert that still makes me unable to sleep at night.
I can take you for a ride in the shaggin wagon, a 1990 minivan covered in band stickers like Propaghandi, Chinkees, Bruce Lee Band, OpIvy, Fifteen, Tuesday, and The Broadways to name few, so many that you couldn't see out the back window. If you're lucky I will tell you about noonies, rooting, jew-ry and "Scary Gary". I can tell of a nervous boy and terrified boy on his prom date who felt like the luckiest kid in the room. Finding and losing love then subsequently losing myself in the aftermath.
We can track the progress of an innocent boy hardened by life and his self destructive nature. We can watch my life constructed by amazing people then destroyed by feelings of inadequacy. I will show you the yellowing, weathered timeline of my fight with religion and shuffle through papers proving and disproving the belief in God. There are sections that I dare not look for because they have been buried long ago and the memories are faded and belong to people I used to be. They are still there though patiently waiting for their chance to be addressed and signed off on.
I will show you the "drug file" with many names and places I want to forget. To borrow from Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, "They were the best of times and the worst of times." Mostly the worst. This file is the largest and hardest to peruse and it is still under construction. In a vile in the back, I still have the tears I cried when I got into a fistfight with my father who was only trying to raise a good son, who was far gone by that point. We could open the Army file that made me angry and filled with hate and self loathing that I don't dare open sober. Bring a bottle of something and through laughs and tears we can tear it apart.
I am opening this box on my own and only certain people will care enough to join me. I want to find the ones that do. Anyone who wants to truly know me must take these files and memories and accept them or pass me by and find a nicer, cherry wood cabinet that is beautiful and polished with no missing files, everything clean and legible. I don't want to hide this breakfront, because it is who I am and that means accepting me for who I have become If you have gotten this far maybe there is a chance I will open it for you.
Feelings from 2003
My greatest fear in relationships is the complacency and monotony that ultimately leads to boredom. Complacency for me causes separation; admittedly I am usually to blame. I can't fathom the hurt I have brought upon women because I can't change my ever expanding nature to up and leave, to seek the next great conquest, to find more of the world that surrounds me. Above all I fear I may never be the settling type. I change so often, there may never be someone who will not stifle me in my road to self realization. I've been asked "why I can't join you in this discovery." Personal discovery, to me, is an individualistic task to be taken on alone. Was Magellan ever remembered for his dutifulness to his wife, or Lewis and Clark for their loyalty to their women? Was John Muir remembered fondly as a great husband or the man who mapped Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada? What happened to the romanticized "Rambling Man" or Jack Kerouac as the Lonely Traveler? There are few but mot many of you that can tell me Kerouac's wives names and how many there were. The truth is it isn't important, he inspired generations of young men to seek the unfamiliar and discover themselves in the process. I will tell you there were plenty women and most didn't last long, not to sat he didn't know love. Where have all the hitchhikers gone? There is an instilled nature in a man to leave his mark this world and for me that does not seem possible with someone texting me to call home every five minutes. We as men have been robbed of this drive to find the world by present day corporate propaganda to tie us into debt, mortgage and a 9 to 5. The modern day man has been forced into government regulated marriage, credit card debt, joint bank accounts, divorce lawyers and custody battles. I am sickened and fearful of these things. Why should I adhere to principles set forth by greedy men who probably hate their wives and abuse their mistresses?
The dichotomy this brings into this modern man's life is the drive to preserve his own species and carry on a family name of which obviously can't be done alone. Man is not an asexual being; if he were it would be all beer, poker, travelling, pubs and golf. There would be no underhanded dates to get laid, no teenagers nervously navigating the floors of shitty dance clubs showered in Axe Body Spray, no couple's therapy, and no sacrifice. Please don't take me for an asshole, women are wonderful but if it weren't for the butt sex, dramatic fashion sense, and stolen feminist manerisms, I would be a great faggot. So where does that leave me? As I mentioned it's sacrifice. Women don't see it in this sense but that is exactly what it is. A man must sacrifice his nature to become a domesticated beast and give up his dreams.
There are also the feelings of loneliness that only serve to complicate matters. You spend too much time away from the love of a woman, no matter how superficial or shallow it is, and you are doomed to get lonely. This whole thing confuses me. I can't ask someone to wait for me until I tire myself out and have seen and done all I want to do. I stand with the decision to release all my personal drive and ambition and settle into monotony or live the life of the the lonesome traveler doomed to be alone with nothing to show but a trail of broken hearts so in one last romantic gesture this is what I propose:
Let's carve our names here on this shady old oak tree and write private notes to each other illuminating our feelings and goals for life together. We'll score our deepest fears and hopes juxtaposed with heartfelt hopes. We can bury them hidden in an open meadow near that tree and make a treasure map that will guide us to who we were then. If we're one of the lucky few that last and we make it through life's desolate trials and weather the storms of these years together, after that deep-rooted oak has seen winters and summers pass and tasted numerous different flavors of spring dew on its ever changing leaves, we can come back and see who we were and where we thought we'd be. I can show you who you were to me then and you can show who I've become. That will tell us where we are now. If we write new notes and compare the maybe they'd be the same. Maybe be they would be better, if we're in different places we leave that weathered oak tree to die and that meadow to be turned to a concrete parking lot, a four leveled parking garage for a shopping mall where you can find attractive suits and cologne guaranteed to get you a date.
The dichotomy this brings into this modern man's life is the drive to preserve his own species and carry on a family name of which obviously can't be done alone. Man is not an asexual being; if he were it would be all beer, poker, travelling, pubs and golf. There would be no underhanded dates to get laid, no teenagers nervously navigating the floors of shitty dance clubs showered in Axe Body Spray, no couple's therapy, and no sacrifice. Please don't take me for an asshole, women are wonderful but if it weren't for the butt sex, dramatic fashion sense, and stolen feminist manerisms, I would be a great faggot. So where does that leave me? As I mentioned it's sacrifice. Women don't see it in this sense but that is exactly what it is. A man must sacrifice his nature to become a domesticated beast and give up his dreams.
There are also the feelings of loneliness that only serve to complicate matters. You spend too much time away from the love of a woman, no matter how superficial or shallow it is, and you are doomed to get lonely. This whole thing confuses me. I can't ask someone to wait for me until I tire myself out and have seen and done all I want to do. I stand with the decision to release all my personal drive and ambition and settle into monotony or live the life of the the lonesome traveler doomed to be alone with nothing to show but a trail of broken hearts so in one last romantic gesture this is what I propose:
Let's carve our names here on this shady old oak tree and write private notes to each other illuminating our feelings and goals for life together. We'll score our deepest fears and hopes juxtaposed with heartfelt hopes. We can bury them hidden in an open meadow near that tree and make a treasure map that will guide us to who we were then. If we're one of the lucky few that last and we make it through life's desolate trials and weather the storms of these years together, after that deep-rooted oak has seen winters and summers pass and tasted numerous different flavors of spring dew on its ever changing leaves, we can come back and see who we were and where we thought we'd be. I can show you who you were to me then and you can show who I've become. That will tell us where we are now. If we write new notes and compare the maybe they'd be the same. Maybe be they would be better, if we're in different places we leave that weathered oak tree to die and that meadow to be turned to a concrete parking lot, a four leveled parking garage for a shopping mall where you can find attractive suits and cologne guaranteed to get you a date.
Have you passed through this night?
This great evil - where's it come from?
How'd it steal into the world?
What seed, what root did it grow from?
Who's doing this?
Who's killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we mighta known?
Does our ruin benefit the earth, aid the grass to grow and the sun to shine?
Is this darkness in you, too?
Have you passed through this night?
How'd it steal into the world?
What seed, what root did it grow from?
Who's doing this?
Who's killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we mighta known?
Does our ruin benefit the earth, aid the grass to grow and the sun to shine?
Is this darkness in you, too?
Have you passed through this night?
Eulogy for a poet
When I was young I wrote poems that brought smiles
Mere words, unpolished, cathartic and sincere
They filled a yellow college ruled notebook I hid under my bed
Poems to girls, too insecure enough to be sent
Cherished feelings only I could know
Eight line verses that made me smile
Notes in pentameter that caused my heart to beat faster
Sentiments of an insecure boy unaware of his place in life
Scribbles of beliefs he felt no one else could fathom
Life's new phases unearthed a sneering teenage boy, cynical and empty
Rhyming words seemed childish and foolish
The poet inside me died a lonely death each night
No one was let in to watch it leave
The worn notebook moved from under that mattress
Now folded in a cigar box in a cluttered dim attic, left to rot
Those sad and beautiful words engulfed in darkness
Forgotten like a special note in a birthday card
The words I now wrote became emotionless and ominous
Words became distorted idioms void of beauty and purity
Replaced by hate filled essays of bitterness, uncomfortable to read
Nothing rhymed and nothing forced a smile
Finding solace in the sinister came natural and easy
I took refuge in this darkness, content with intrinsic disgust
Reading into this dejection made friends and family worrisome
On dark nights I penned them in melancholic moods
Scotch and cigarette, hands that furiously typed
Read in a silent voice cracking from silent tears
Bleeding black ink to college ruled paper
Sometimes I want to become the poet that young boy once was
I will dust off that box in the attic
I will unfold those writings filled with the breath of life
I will inhale those words and I will pen something beautiful again
I wish to create verses that make people get goosebumps
Like my favorite poets do for me
As the seasons change and maybe poets are re-born
But until the passage of these dark days
There will be hidden threats and undertones of self abhorrence
There will be still blood on yellow college-ruled paper
Mere words, unpolished, cathartic and sincere
They filled a yellow college ruled notebook I hid under my bed
Poems to girls, too insecure enough to be sent
Cherished feelings only I could know
Eight line verses that made me smile
Notes in pentameter that caused my heart to beat faster
Sentiments of an insecure boy unaware of his place in life
Scribbles of beliefs he felt no one else could fathom
Life's new phases unearthed a sneering teenage boy, cynical and empty
Rhyming words seemed childish and foolish
The poet inside me died a lonely death each night
No one was let in to watch it leave
The worn notebook moved from under that mattress
Now folded in a cigar box in a cluttered dim attic, left to rot
Those sad and beautiful words engulfed in darkness
Forgotten like a special note in a birthday card
The words I now wrote became emotionless and ominous
Words became distorted idioms void of beauty and purity
Replaced by hate filled essays of bitterness, uncomfortable to read
Nothing rhymed and nothing forced a smile
Finding solace in the sinister came natural and easy
I took refuge in this darkness, content with intrinsic disgust
Reading into this dejection made friends and family worrisome
On dark nights I penned them in melancholic moods
Scotch and cigarette, hands that furiously typed
Read in a silent voice cracking from silent tears
Bleeding black ink to college ruled paper
Sometimes I want to become the poet that young boy once was
I will dust off that box in the attic
I will unfold those writings filled with the breath of life
I will inhale those words and I will pen something beautiful again
I wish to create verses that make people get goosebumps
Like my favorite poets do for me
As the seasons change and maybe poets are re-born
But until the passage of these dark days
There will be hidden threats and undertones of self abhorrence
There will be still blood on yellow college-ruled paper
Body for sale - Augusta
HUMAN BODY: Heavily Used, Fixer Upper - $75 OBO (Augusta, GA)
Category: Automotive
The heart is a badly built machine always working too fast or too slow, never on pace. I find myself constantly adding various types of fuels to level it out. It seemed like a bad idea when they put it in. Its valves are turning a horrible shade of drab green and it barely beats at all at times. It will need a replacement soon.
The greyish liver is always over capacity and overworked, constantly grinding through chemicals that fly like sparks onto saw-dusted floors overlooked by waitresses in old fashioned brown dresses. Most days you can't get a drink in there if you were loaded.
The brain has been dulled by self medication and has crashed several times due to constant programming and re-programming. It has always started up again, just never the same. It floats around aimlessly in salty brown liquid its foul stink akin to homeless shelters or a crowded county jail. It occasionally leaks out the eyes burning a shiny trail through cracking white skin, where it will rest on a hair near the corner of the mouth, only to be quickly erased before it is noticed by another set of eyes.
The skin is scarred and tattooed. It can tell you stories of fistfights, baseball bats and crashes with tattoos that translate into manifestos nobody reads. Skin on hands full of cuts and scrapes, owned by a working class nobody. Nails bitten and torn to expose bleeding cuticles, need work.
Stomach rarely gets attended too. It growls loudly but its ignored, its main function turned to a medium for moving chemicals into the blood stream.
Face is ok. It is attractive enough to attract some attention, yet it spews garbage, re-programming brain may fix??? It can get you in real trouble, it hasn't smiled much, it may have stopped working. Replace those hollow eyes, the vacant stare can become taxing on those around you.
Feel free to contact me if you want to see what your getting.
Category: Automotive
The heart is a badly built machine always working too fast or too slow, never on pace. I find myself constantly adding various types of fuels to level it out. It seemed like a bad idea when they put it in. Its valves are turning a horrible shade of drab green and it barely beats at all at times. It will need a replacement soon.
The greyish liver is always over capacity and overworked, constantly grinding through chemicals that fly like sparks onto saw-dusted floors overlooked by waitresses in old fashioned brown dresses. Most days you can't get a drink in there if you were loaded.
The brain has been dulled by self medication and has crashed several times due to constant programming and re-programming. It has always started up again, just never the same. It floats around aimlessly in salty brown liquid its foul stink akin to homeless shelters or a crowded county jail. It occasionally leaks out the eyes burning a shiny trail through cracking white skin, where it will rest on a hair near the corner of the mouth, only to be quickly erased before it is noticed by another set of eyes.
The skin is scarred and tattooed. It can tell you stories of fistfights, baseball bats and crashes with tattoos that translate into manifestos nobody reads. Skin on hands full of cuts and scrapes, owned by a working class nobody. Nails bitten and torn to expose bleeding cuticles, need work.
Stomach rarely gets attended too. It growls loudly but its ignored, its main function turned to a medium for moving chemicals into the blood stream.
Face is ok. It is attractive enough to attract some attention, yet it spews garbage, re-programming brain may fix??? It can get you in real trouble, it hasn't smiled much, it may have stopped working. Replace those hollow eyes, the vacant stare can become taxing on those around you.
Feel free to contact me if you want to see what your getting.
All My Mistakes
I try to forget, I pace circles in an empty house
Alone, just couch and blanket
Remembering I have nothing now
The couch has become my bed, my room, my cell
Bear traps disguisded by photos, memories, and beauty
Im bordering on severing relationships
Possibly detrimental to my being, my sanity
In the process, I'm sabotaging life as I know it
I am losing myself for extended spells
I hope I find me too, soon to help figure this out
incapable of reason and understanding
I may be too savvy to expose the unreasonable
I may be jaded and warped
I may be following what I know is my ultimate conclusion
I may make the solid choices percived as mistakes
All my mistakes brought me this far
Iraq to Tokyo, Seattle to Southampton
Shown me places I couldn't imagine
Maybe mistakes are hidden blessings
Only we deside the label "mistake"
Mistakes are ours no one can steal them
Rolling my dice for the right mistake
The right one that sweeps you inexpectibley to a new life
We learn from the poor decisions, they lead to mistakes
It's all about where you catch the you catch break
IF all my mistakes brought me to you, where am I?
Alone, just couch and blanket
Remembering I have nothing now
The couch has become my bed, my room, my cell
Bear traps disguisded by photos, memories, and beauty
Im bordering on severing relationships
Possibly detrimental to my being, my sanity
In the process, I'm sabotaging life as I know it
I am losing myself for extended spells
I hope I find me too, soon to help figure this out
incapable of reason and understanding
I may be too savvy to expose the unreasonable
I may be jaded and warped
I may be following what I know is my ultimate conclusion
I may make the solid choices percived as mistakes
All my mistakes brought me this far
Iraq to Tokyo, Seattle to Southampton
Shown me places I couldn't imagine
Maybe mistakes are hidden blessings
Only we deside the label "mistake"
Mistakes are ours no one can steal them
Rolling my dice for the right mistake
The right one that sweeps you inexpectibley to a new life
We learn from the poor decisions, they lead to mistakes
It's all about where you catch the you catch break
IF all my mistakes brought me to you, where am I?
Random
16th birthday party crashes like the Hindenburg in 1937.
Road blocks hang like icicles puncturing my back on a snowblind road.
Airplanes to nowhere meeting no one.
Roads full of cracks and more faults than California.
You said you met a man once that taught you to dance.
Dancing is all structure and patterns.
Structures break like the Bay Bridge.
Kaleidoscope cracks showing broken glass stealing light from the window pane
Its as dark as oil in this place.
Road blocks hang like icicles puncturing my back on a snowblind road.
Airplanes to nowhere meeting no one.
Roads full of cracks and more faults than California.
You said you met a man once that taught you to dance.
Dancing is all structure and patterns.
Structures break like the Bay Bridge.
Kaleidoscope cracks showing broken glass stealing light from the window pane
Its as dark as oil in this place.
The Silence of an Empty Street
I stumbled muted through the empty streets
Breaking uncomfortable silence, I muttered rare cries that echoes in alleyways
My voice comes back queer and without significance
Songs ring my head, purveying emotions I do not feel
Faint glow of lampposts marking distance, marking time and illuminate failure
A shadowy man in a trench coat glanced at me and crossed the other street
Thoughtfully careful not to disturb my isolation
Maybe he could have said "Hello" and mentioned the weather
The faint, cool drops in the misty air must have been enough
Breaking uncomfortable silence, I muttered rare cries that echoes in alleyways
My voice comes back queer and without significance
Songs ring my head, purveying emotions I do not feel
Faint glow of lampposts marking distance, marking time and illuminate failure
A shadowy man in a trench coat glanced at me and crossed the other street
Thoughtfully careful not to disturb my isolation
Maybe he could have said "Hello" and mentioned the weather
The faint, cool drops in the misty air must have been enough
The Slow Burn
It's more than I can give
I am merely a skeleton lucky to find this skin
Just forgive
Mistakes placed bets on cards that didnt't win
When my soul arrives
It will call collect and tell me to breathe
In our lives
Many never begin before they leave
Direction is hard
Like traversing paths covered with rocked icy slopes
We burn out like stars, disappeared before we were known
The path we choose can break our spirits and our hopes
The burn is slow
Its constancy tricks us into disbelief, feeling numb
Don't let it go
We don't have long to find out who we'll become
This life is not what we expected
We're all fragile, breaking, brittle and grey
No courses charted or directed
I blindly follow my star knowing years ago it faded away
I am merely a skeleton lucky to find this skin
Just forgive
Mistakes placed bets on cards that didnt't win
When my soul arrives
It will call collect and tell me to breathe
In our lives
Many never begin before they leave
Direction is hard
Like traversing paths covered with rocked icy slopes
We burn out like stars, disappeared before we were known
The path we choose can break our spirits and our hopes
The burn is slow
Its constancy tricks us into disbelief, feeling numb
Don't let it go
We don't have long to find out who we'll become
This life is not what we expected
We're all fragile, breaking, brittle and grey
No courses charted or directed
I blindly follow my star knowing years ago it faded away
Back from Iraq
We sat in my old white Mazda no more than two miles from my house near a set of model homes lined with light blue porto-johns and cracked plywood. I was on leave from my first combat tour. She used a 21 gauge sharp that we scored of a diabetic friend of mine. I was nervous and gripped the steering wheel white knuckled and nervously asked for a small hit. She was satisfied with this in a cunning, greedy sort of way armed with the knowledge her shot would be bigger. Needles plunged like anchors into a sea of red. I felt the rush and lie back in my seat. She stabbed her scarred arms trickling bits of rusty blood onto the vinyl seats. I dropped her off two blocks down the road and watched her walk in to the starless night.
I parked my car and headed for the train tracks. I sat on a pile of rocks and watched the Burlington Northern number seven pass by as I threw cigarette butts into the whirlwind of the passing freight cars. I thought about life and how I became who I was. I measured the speed of the train blurry eyed wondering if I could make it onboard without care where the train was heading. I walked home leaving the car parked on the dark street reading the last bits of graffiti etched by dropout kids to young to be burnt out on life, structure, and lack of direction. I walked aimlessly toward home dropping bits of my life as I passed the concrete sidewalk.
I sat in my room catagorizing truth and fiction. I looked through the same window I grew up looking out of staring at the overgrown grass and the ugly tres and charted the slide of my life by remembering when that view used to hold excitement and wonder. I paced the room looking pictures, posters, pieces of me splattered on the walls. I guessed at which were really me and who I wish I was. I thought about who I had become after leaving the army and who I wanted to be. Its been six years still waiting on that answer.
I traced my outline in carpet and imagined it just another body bagged up in a sandy desert. I layed in my bed and watch the stucco become constellations and omens. I try to control the night and guard my sleep, but a wise man once told me that it is night when the demons hover above sleepless bodies and laugh at their weakness. If they come I will greet them with ashtrays full of butts and a bottle of something and we will discuss the lighter side of evil and really how dark is a dark heart. I will talk to them about the price of souls and what they go for on the devilish black market.
A Good Man
Tryin hard to be a good man
One my dad would like to know
Just aint getting me too far
down the line of dark streets
elbows on the dirty wood of a dark bar
Just want be a simple man
Locked in a cage of possessions keeping me down
Just want a few good friends
The kind you like to have around
I don't need this fast life
Everything I know is movin to quick
Kin growin up and folks getting old
Been losing myself here in the mix
Don't need no big house any more
Could ya put me up on your floor
I don't mind travelling round
I take the carpets and the your cats will take the couch
Im gettin old all alone out here
My knees are quittin and my back already did
One small pill becomes three, this addiction slides in easily
Im smoking out my lungs, the fast life aint worth shit
I did that old high life
Made me alone and always sick
Im gonna pack me a small bag
Maybe I can find a lift
Ill ride these southern highways
Gettin whatever i can get
So darlin dont forget me
Even if I lose myself
I may have been mean eyed cat
Follow these stars back to Texas
Cause thats where my hearts always been at
Manifesto for Today
I can feel this. This change has been a long time coming. This change in blood, that change of heart. You know the 'ol black heart that pumped coal and blew soot that formed dark rings around sunken eyes. I could be wrong, but it feels like its working again. I felt that familiar awkward pump that shook my ribs causing them to resonate like church bells. With the feeling life in my veins, I slice my heart with a rusty razor blade with green-brown edges, and sure as shit there was red. I saw ruby river flow with each beat of that decrepit heart. Watching that beautiful crimson, I know as long as it keeps pumping out, like oil from a derrick, I will feel, and live and love again.
A broken soul can be fixed if you get the right parts. Finding that place is the journey. I don't know where that place is yet. Ain't like you can buy it, like a mechanic shop or where you can just walk into a dusty truckstop and ask for a soul. I think with each little bit you sell, each little bad compromise you make, you gotta work that much harder at getting it back...and Ive parted with most of it. I'm just satisfied to be looking. It's still pretty dark in that soul of mine, lots of lies, anger, and hate scattered around in the ramshackle void. It could be nice one day. I bet in heaven people wear their souls like military uniforms. All those good deeds stacked on the breast of their white robes like ribbons. I just might get a couple, could be a Sergeant one day. Shit I'd be lucky to get a brown robe with a stripe on it. Just as long as I'm there I guess.
I see light sometimes now. Little glimpses like someone swung a spotlight just out of my peripheral. If I'm quick enough I'll catch it. I head towards it and live where it is always light and people are happy. That's my manifesto for today.
The Easy Way
Waiting like a polecat, like a barfly
Just waisting breath
I count them leaving my body
Each one lost forever
Each one closer to death
See, I found this great escape
One where you can feel better
Swallow these and you'll forget her
One where the world calls you a quitter
Only you live with the demons up there
Simply trade in your time
Lose your days and lose your mind
Dropping out, Losing face
I can feel fine during these wasted nights
But you must part with gleam of a soul in your eyes
Its simple in the under streetlights
Stumbling blindly amidst the neon signs
Yet your mornings become uneasy afternoons
Your evenings on the rocks with the taste whiskey
And your life is always in ruins
Losing jobs and losing friends
All things good come to an end
All things difficult become magnified
Step up to the dealer, roll your dice…
Ive always lost gambling with the soul in im my eyes
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