At some point, I became the loser. Maybe I was always the loser and just never noticed, I was a productive part of society, busy with stuff, now I just a weight, maybe it would be good if I cut the rope and sank into that sweet depth of that ocean.
The brain, an interesting place to go mad and watch the walls melt.
A great place indeed.
Standing on the corner, waiting for a bus, smoking a cigarette, the lights way down low, a city stuck in space, waiting for a plane, that doesn’t leave.
Sentenced to live, without a choice, feeling like a chore, who wants that?
A world explodes, spread into the cosmos, dust and disease, a smattering of cigarette ash.
Why I Write — Sometimes the words just need to get out
April 30th, 2019 —
Drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon; twirling the empty bottles on the table; it’s 2 am, some day, I don’t remember, I am trying to get the details down, my fingers typing furiously over the keyboard.
I fail miserably.
Details and truths have always been my short coming; even as a child, I would get notes and big red sad faces from my teachers about the subject.
I decided to write tonight, not necessarily a poem, per say, but just to write something, to keep the demons at bay; their soulless eyes piercing through the darkness, their claws ripping through the air.
“Words!” they hiss, commanding me to type on the keyboard, watching the cursor glide across the screen, the page.
I have never considered myself a writer; I write, back in long ago days, I would take pencil to paper, jot down words, in the hope that they would make sentences, did they make sense?
My third-grade teacher didn’t think too highly of my pieces; my highest rated getting a D minus and a visit to the principal for a “Discussion” quite a few times.
“Crude attempt at horrible caustic writing! Why don’t you write about happy bunnies or beautiful things?” Principal Rawlings had asked, pushing herself away from the desk, sighing a rush of air out from her nostrils.
“I don’t know if I can!” I replied, looking at my feet dangling a few inches off the floor; my fingers taping the hardwood arm rests of the chair; like a prisoner readying himself for the execution.
The executioner stared at me; trying to figure out what to say next.
“Your teacher, Mr. Grime, says you have a great talent, but, it’s, it’s just so….” she stumbled for the words, fumbling through a stack of papers, possibly placed there just for this meeting.
My parents were called in a few times; well, my mom was.
My dad, the sperm donor, as my mother called him, left us when I was still just a blip inside my mom.
He was apparently “An artist” as he liked to call himself.
My grandmother called him a drunk who wouldn’t amount to nothing even if shit was selling for 2 million dollars an ounce!
She had once said that as we sat there at the kitchen table drinking cokes and watching something on the TV screen.
Grandmother had a way with words.
“Your son has a gift that could be a great offering to the world; if he would just focus!”
Focus, that word would haunt me till even today; I lack focus, I guess.
I also had a school psychologist tell my mom that I had no reference to time and space, whatever that meant.
I still have no idea what that meant; I guess it was a good thing to have as a child, but apparently, according to some doctors in places good normal people aren’t supposed to go, we should “Grow” out of it, become adults.
“I don’t want to be an adult!” I cackled at one of them during one of my episodes when I was 25.
“But, it so much fun to be an adult!” he lied.
I laughed, almost falling out of my chair.
“Bet it is so much fun! My mother killed herself last year because being an adult is so much fun!”
“Really?” he said shocked.
“Yeah, right in this town, took a bottle of sleeping pills, a good bottle of whiskey, called me up at 2 am and said goodbye, see ya kid.”
I didn’t cry as I told the nice doctor about my mother’s death.
It was the truth.
I may have stretched some of the details into truths.
I was good at that, one of my gifts, I guess, from both sides of the family.
It wasn’t 2 am when she called but 9:45 PM.
It wasn’t on a Tuesday but a Sunday.
Her words were slurred, I couldn’t quite understand her, she may have said, “I want to book a trip back home…” and then she hung up the phone.
I had called the police as I rushed over to her apartment.
We were both too late.
She left no note.
I wrote about it in an article to the local paper.
They said they wanted more happier pieces.
I added she told me I was a good son, was that happy enough?
Apparently not as they never contacted me again.
I write to get the thoughts down on paper, out into the world, pushed out like some sort of new born baby; to show it off to the world, is an affair.
When I first began to truly write, I didn’t share; I’d write up something, place it aside, hide it in my dresser, maybe bring it out, to read, when I wanted to remember an emotion, a fear, a time when I was happy.
I’ve always worn a mask, pretending to be happy; a clown to the audience known as the world, but deep inside, under that mask, I was a mess, a horrible mess, crying, wanting to cut my wrists, but not, because there was always someone there, who it would kill them inside to hear I was dead.
I write because the words sometimes need to come out; I share, as I do tonight, but sometimes I just write for the pure hell of it, I’ll write a thousand words; thoughts, emotions, whatever, and print them out, look at them, study them, then, I will burn them, as if in some kind of Viking funeral rite and wander off, to write something else, maybe something happier, more beautiful, happy bunnies sniffing beautiful flowers.
There in the darkness, the eyes of madness drilled into our hearts, the way they did in the old days, the kind of madness who made you drink and you didn’t even thank them.
Politicians, sitting in the blood of victims of gross misunderstanding, campaigned on the backs of dead babies, untruths, close their eyes and they can see the truth, up their ass!
Silence in the rain, the thunder deafened us to the madness that was around us, explosions tearing us from this mortal realm, was this the end?
We were saddened by the times; war was a madness, in its own right, and here we stood, eyeing the ground, seeing the blood soak into the ground.
We moved forward, ever forward, where no man would live, were no man should dare try to cross, there, at the river’s edge, dear blessed mother, did we cross, the bullets flying, each man moving forward, this was the end, right here, we would live, or we would die, there was no in-between.
I was in the front, pressing forward, the mad men, our enemies, charging forward, toward us, I saw his eyes, as my bullet ripped through his heart, a fellow man, my age, my height.
I could not cry, care, even dare think of him as a human life, march forward, to kill, for the father, the mother, even my dear wife, our unborn child, for the country.
I drove forward, driven by the madness, to kill or to be killed.
I did not want to die, not there, on that field, to have my blood wasted into some piece of land.
January 12th would not be the day I would die; not this year, I would keep fighting, killing, memories, faces to haunt my dreams when I was older, to think about it, to have my mind ripped apart.
But that would be later, now I was a hero, valor in honor on the battle field, 17 confirmed kills, a promotion in rank, soon, I’d be leading my own troops into glory, the end of all wars, till that next one that would roll into the next.
Smiling politicians, shaking hands, kissing babies, for glory of the Nation, weeping for the dead, but they died, they would say, the politicians, for that glory.
Not for some company’s oil rights or mineral rights but for peace.
“If Jesus was alive, he would approve of our use of force against these, terrorists, for lack of a better word!” some politician said from the television screen, his face faked tan, to match his fake patriotism.
If Jesus was alive…
But he was dead, in some field, he died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.
Thou shall not kill.
Words printed on paper, I guess, it didn’t matter, I was Death, to march forward, ever forward, for God and Country.
I was the weapon to be used, like any other weapon, to kill.
Death to those enemies of the state, unless they provide death to the state.
WANDERING WHERE I AM GOING! 