2 Minutes. Go!

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

You sat with your mouth hanging open and those big eyes waiting, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say. What do you say when someone gives you their heart? And, no, not their real heart – the one that bleeds. I mean their real heart – the one that feels.

I tried to hold it. Not your heart, but your intention. I thought if I took good enough care of it that you might realize what everyone else already knew. It became my mission.

I was a dumb kid.

You could have picked someone worse. That’s for damn sure. But I ain’t Superman, and I had problems of my own. I still have them, though ... those bits of truth you whispered into my ears. I cherish them, build stories around them. I wonder where you are now and what you’re doing with your stories – if you still feel the same way about them.

All of this is just stupid insomnia fodder. Stuff to think about while my room is dark and my pulse is racing. You? Hell. I wouldn’t recognize you if I saw you. But I will always recognize the girl who taught me how to be brave, no matter what kind of woman she turned out to be.

I remember. And smile.

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

2 Minutes. Go!

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

What do they call them things, son? I ain’t never seen one before. All wheels and dials and blinking lights. Is that a weapon or a Halloween decoration? Time machine or pinball machine? I know it cost too much money, whatever it is. Even if it whistles and shits gold, you paid too much. That’s such an ugly contraption, I done lost my appetite. You gone and hurt my feelings.

I didn’t ask you to show it to me – you out here parading it around and expect folks not to ask questions? Shit. Now, you don’t gotta be offended, son. Yeah, I reckon I’m old, but that thing looks like a computer fucked a tricycle while a rollercoaster watched, you feel me? I don’t know if its supposed to whiten my teeth or take me to Venus.

Now, you just hold on a second. Yeah, I’m razzing ya. You gotta respect your elders. I respected mine. Now, I’m old and you gotta listen to me. Yup. Sure ‘nough ain’t fair. You too young to know it, but fair is a fairy tale, boy. Ain’t never gonna happen. No way. No how. That’s for retards and people who make movies.

I ain’t playing some kind of game with you. I’m asking you a serious question. The world has changed – ain’t an old man got a right to keep up with the times? I got me a cellular phone. It ain’t one of the computer game ones like y’all kids got. Just makes my calls. But I got one. I sure as hell don’t know what that thing is, though. I don’t think I want one, anyway.

Actually, don’t tell me. I might want it and I don’t want to want it. You feel me? You manipulatin’ my emotions and shit as it is. Bringing out the envy. Curiosity. Both them things come straight from the devil. You know it and I know it. Don’t tell me. Just move on down the line.

Oh, now you want to tell me? Of course you do, son. I remember what it was like when I was an ignorant piece of disrespectful trash, too. Wasn’t that long ago. Now you take your space flotsam and git. I mean it. I ain’t afraid to take this cane to the side of your fat head.

Yeah, flip me off. I get it. You too fast. You too on the ball. You’re covered in too much shit you bought at the mall. I ain’t even curious anymore. I’m gonna talk to your momma, tell her you been parading around this place all high on yourself and shoving your magic skateboard microwave in everybody’s faces. And I for one don’t appreciate it.

Now, let me hold it for just a second. Come back here. Son! Just a second. I promise. Well, fuck you, too. I hope your electric surfboard dvd player there explodes and you lose a leg. I won’t be shedding no tears for yo' fool ass. Son?

Son? Come back …

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

2 minutes. Go!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play.

So, yeah. I got this monkey on my back and he won’t shut up. Flat out refuses. He just keeps telling me things I don’t want to hear. Stressing me out - day to day, year to year. I saw the best mind of my generation become craven with desperation and fear. Methadone don’t do what it’s supposed to do. Not really. Not if you’re banging black tar on top of it.

Shit.

I love the monkey as much as I hate it. And part of me thinks: we tried to help – you didn’t want to be helped. And part of me thinks I should get into the car and start driving and not stop until I’m close enough to smack the shit out of you. You’ve been stuck in one posture so long, you’ll break if you try to move.

I get it.

Thing is; we had plans. And I know you didn’t bail on those plans on purpose, but I also know you bailed and the reason ain’t all that important. What’s important is that we had plans. You fucked those plans. And there but for the grace of God … Lord knows, I don’t believe in God, but I realize I got lucky. Doesn’t change the fact that I’m raising two beautiful daughters while waiting to get the phone call that one of the people I’ve loved most in the world is dead.

Why can’t you get it through your thick, fucking head. Brain shot? Get some backbone instead.

What you can’t do is doable. I know. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it too many times. You’re still living like you’re nineteen, but you got a forty year old’s body. Something is going to give sooner or later. I don’t know whether sooner or later would be better.

Keep standing in the rain. You’ll just get wetter.

And me? I’m gonna keep realizing I’m doing what I should be doing and hating myself for it. Remember that screenplay we were gonna write? I didn’t go anywhere. And part of me thinks I should call you up. Bolster your spirits. Get working. But I know you can’t get anywhere near it.

So, spin in circles. Try to pretend that the pose you wore in high school still fits. I’m not mad at you. Fuck that. I am mad at you. Furious. Because you didn’t let go. Hell, we were both curious. I’m mad because I love you and you wasted so much. Lost so much.

Sometimes, I try to blame myself for it. Doesn’t pan out though. Sometimes, I try to excuse it because of the things I know. That’s doesn’t do anyone any good.

You can be as hungry as you want. Can’t nobody feed you if your mouth is closed. If your mind is closed. If you still put up the same band flyers and wear the same clothes. You put your life on heroin pause, and that shit lasts a LONG time. Sometimes, the show stays paused until the TV dies.

It will break my heart. But it won’t be a surprise.

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

2 Minutes. Go!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play.

She doesn’t know how to tie them without making the bunny ears, but she drives a BMW. Botox leaking out the corners of her face. She can’t do lots of things, but it don’t matter, Ace. You see that face? Looks like the elephant man to me, but I know you’re just looking for a Kardashian clone and you found one.

Rock on.

My girls tie their own shoes. No rabbit ears. Sixteen years and zero Botox or BMWs between the two of them. They’re out in the backyard getting dirty and yelling at each other. That’s the way it’s done.

I don’t care what my girls want to do with their lives because I know I started them off in the right shoes. They’ll box before they Botox. And they aren’t going to be anybody’s decoration. They will be fierce, screaming truth into the face of the omnipresent sheep.

It’s not what’s in your shoes. It’s what’s in your soul. 

Now, ain’t that deep?

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

2 Minutes. Go!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play.

What do you want to be when you grow up? Happy? I want to work too hard for too little money and spend my free time in an ongoing panic attack. I want to have kids I can’t afford to take to Disneyland. I hate Disneyland, but it would mean so much to them. I want to see the disappointment in their tiny faces when I explain that just because "every other kid" gets to go to Disneyland, that doesn’t mean that WE can afford it.

I want to spend hours explaining to my kids why we don’t have a house. Why we live in an apartment. And I want to try and do it without giving them the impression we’re poor. I want to watch them smile and say, “I understand, Dadda.” I know they don’t understand. They don’t want me to feel bad. I should appreciate that more. I don’t want to, though.

I want to grow up and become a teacher. I want to get laid off with absolutely no warning after my first daughter is born. I want it to be from a job I poured my heart and soul into - I want to spiral into a depression where all I can do is write, drink, and OD enough to keep things interesting. I want to be broken when my youngest is small so it fucks her brain up real good. I want to hit rock bottom so many times that it doesn’t even hurt anymore.

I want people I love to die from bullshit diseases and overdoses. I want a sociopathic, narcissistic asshole to be president. I want people starving in “the greatest county on earth!” while politicians take private jets to get in a round of golf. I want to watch others worse off than myself. And I want to try and reconcile the fact that some people have more money than small countries and some people starve, stretching out their food stamps.

Before I get laid off from that teaching job I mentioned, I want to work with kids from the hood. I want to have to explain to them that, though it makes no fucking sense, they cannot talk to the police the same way I do. I want my white privilege to become a burden. I want to see their beautiful lives destroyed by bullets and bad decisions. Most made out alright. I want to be proud of that. I want them to be taken from me without warning. I want to try to pretend my heart isn't broken.

I want to drive a fifteen year old car with a broken seat. I want to be the dad some parents are wary of because I have tattoos and a motorcycle and I dress weird and don't care about wine or baseball. I want to be JUDGED. Constantly. I want to feel judged and I want to be judged. Dismissed. Written off.

I want to spend my whole life trying to perfect a craft that sixteen people give a shit about. I want to dedicate years of my life to creative endeavors that COST me money. I want to give people my songs and stories because I hate the idea of selling them. I want to be the worst capitalist ever.

I want to treat my body badly, so it turns on me when I’m older. So I can’t shoot hoops with my girls without being in pain. I want to play high school football and have the coach grab my facemask and scream into my face. I want him to tell me to plant my head in the runner’s gut. I want a broken back and chronic neck pain.

I want to be the kind of person who writes pathetic, emo bullshit and tries to pass it off as flash fiction. I want to fail, to have the things I’m most proud of ignored. I want to lose the respect of my peers because my brain can’t stop being sixteen, and I haven’t figured out the adult rules yet.

Above all, I want to live.

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

2 Minutes. Go!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play.

The boy stood in the middle of the field, dizzy, still spinning. He liked the feeling of reckless chaos – he often fell, but rarely hurt himself. He was a boy who was used to feeling small pains. His life had been full of them, but he spun his worries away in fields of wildflowers, red, yellow, and white.

He was a simple boy. Not stupid – his life was uncomplicated. He was good at living outside the moment. His world was one created of stories and made up monsters and scenarios where he could be heroic.

John wanted to be heroic because, in reality, he felt scared all the time. He did not like feeling scared. He would do anything not to feel scared. Even if that meant spinning in a field until he was too dizzy to stand. 

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...