Sunday Evening Feeling Down

I walked these streets all day, miller high life in its obvious drab brown bag, careful to step on all the cracks and trying to look approachable... like I wanted conversation. I smiled a loathing smile while looking down at my dirty Chuck Taylors and no one took notice. There is the inevitable human nature bred dichotomy in that if you seem to need a “hello” it reads obvious, like a Shel Silverstein book, and that breeds uneasiness in the hollow faces you pass... I drank alone at a bar and never had so much lacquered wood to my own. I smiled a cheerless smile and no one noticed.

I sat across the street tonight with a four ringer of The Champagne of Beers, a body uninhabited and hollow as I sat on a stoop across the street from a dive bar. I watched a laughing, smiling couple leaving the bar feeling high on love and whiskey. I thought for a moment of the times in my life when those feeling swarmed in my head. It became obvious to me that those feelings are now languid demons crawling through my core whispering bitter little nothings in my ear, even now, as I take large pulls off the warming beer. The drunken lovers didn’t notice the phantom lost in lost memories with the hazy smirk or the shotgun crack of the beer tab of a cold new High Life and fresh cigarette squatting on the dirty city stoop. They were oblivious to the world, lost in the warmth of their contentment.

I walked the half block back to my walk up, exhaling smoke upon each breath, beer in hand. I finished the other tallboys feeling less and less alive with each sip as I haunted the aged cracking doorway to my loft. I thought broken thoughts on my future knowing change was imminent as I am bound to be fired from tomorrow, this the profession I spent the last ten years building on while tearing myself apart in an unfulfilling life. I feel old and broken as I sit pondering the next run of poor choices from a nobody closing in on thirty possessing no aspiration and no purpose. 1981 was a good year for me, it’s been downhill since then.

myspace

Fading photos of smiling young faces stuffed deep into trunks never seeing light

Old notebooks with youthful hope, filled with unfilled dreams, a book of non-achievement

An old t-shirt my close friend wore before he died, bringing out too much feeling to display

Framed photos of a girl I loved facing against walls unknowing there place in an empty room

Old dust jackets containing a life’s soundtrack laying on dirty floors collecting dust

Dirty dishes and dirty pint glasses that got use when times were good

Dreams I had that disappeared buried down deep in my chest

A life once lived but now decaying in places all around my house

Empty pill bottles in random places left out with the empty beer bottles

An engagement ring that was never worn long left sitting in a box

Some couches a bed against drywall cracks on crooked wooden floors are really all I’ve got

My Own Path to Choose

I see my bones protrude through paling filmy flesh as vacant days start to unravel, losing thirty pounds in six weeks brought on by lack of will and lack of aspiration. I’ve become an empty shell, an unfilled vessel atrophying under neon signs and dim barroom lights, the only light I get. Barely recognizing the cheerless face I pass in mirrors hoping to hell that I’m not him, but he’s always looking back confused, like he knew me once like… maybe I was an old high school friend or a schoolyard bully who teased him for a sensitivity that he knew vanished before its time.

I’m a radio with no receiver, inaudible rambling broadcasted to non believers. I shout sporadic static, interjection of inane transmissions echoing pathetic and feeble falling upon the deafest of ears into empty streets baron and vacant like uncharted seas. I’m left feeling frail and impassive, a speechless voice producing mute responses.

We used to ride faces to the wind, high on life, whisky, and what was to come on our boatless booze cruise captained by a strong sturdy man I used to know. Years pass and self inflicted severed ties left no captain in control of this dispatch to nowhere. An abandon ship call went out long ago calling all who were still connected to life, all who couldn’t go down with a sinking ship. “Save yourself,” they said to the drunken frail captain who they all knew was beyond saving. Passengers, friends and lovers bailed into waiting lifeboats avoiding the impending, unraveling vessel. Now this gaunt weary man slumps in an old brown leather captain’s chair, ribs showing through unwashed t-shirt staring blankly at gauges, levers and wheels without reaction or the anticipation of rescue. Knowing I’m going down alone out as the waves roll over my brittle shaking my bones to the core fully expecting shoulder blades to pop through skeletal shaped casing.

Now left stranded, marooned on this manmade concrete island of fear and self loathing, all is gone and the course I left uncharted found its inevitable X. X marks the spot I never wanted to be but knew where it would end if I stayed the course. Stumbling clumsily alone on bleak, barren and eerily familiar paths that had always been somewhere floating above me between those neon lights and concrete trails leading to Pabst signs and banners touting cheap piss lager. Now seemingly invisible, an undead apparition emaciated and faceless I can’t be seen or heard. I charted my course long ago but could never break away from the effortless. I stayed the easy course landing on hard times leaving me alone, broken and bitter. Now this is my existence, unwanted but unsurprising.

Banana Peels and Thin Ice

Im working and walking on thin ice at my job, as I did not get fired. I slip easily, much like an old cartoon character unaware he's about to make that fatal step onto a banana peel. Thats me twenty four seven, my path is littered with banana peels. I cant say Im happy or sad about it. I can procrastinate now and put off whatever scheme I was cooking up which was going to fail something epic, no doubt. Like Michael Corleone said "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

So I must get back on this stagnant train of work, sleep, drink, exist, die and bide my time til I see the light. You know what fucks me up is the old Christian hymnal "I saw the light" made famous by Hank Williams? First verse goes:

"I wandered so aimless life filled with sin
I wouldn't let my dear saviour in
Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night
Praise the Lord I saw the light."

Well if so many people have seen the light how come thre are so many unhappy people that have seen this light? I thought I saw the light once but it just turned out I was at a church while coming down from a three day balls out bender, I even gave the pastor a bag of twenty four bars that I had on me. I could use them now.