1:59

I am sitting in a dark room. There is no light, just the glow from the laptop screen. My eyes shudder and try to close, and I force them open with terrible memories of the past. This is not normal human behavior. I force myself to watch friends die in my mind. I wonder at the last clutch of breath, and I can't fucking stop it. Sleep is a narcotized darkness. But it will come. And then morning. And then I will prick my brain again to make it bleed onto this little white box so there are words where before there was only potential.

Upon Impact

Leaning on the cold shoulder. Car idling. Heart racing. The ground is hard. Pebbles, each one distinct. All meaningless upon impact. The impact pulverizes the body, turning the inside into a kind of soupy mess. Bones snap like twigs. The car still idles and will do so until it runs out of gas. It will be auctioned and purchased by a family happy that there are no blood stains. It was a good car. Life was not so good. But the impact solved that.

Blurry

John lay on his side on the edge of the bed and watched the texture of the wall go blurry.  Outside, the sun was shining and birds were probably chirping and all that shit.  But inside of his room, John was a monument to darkness.  The room was dark.  His mind was dark.  The skin under his eyes was dark.

            

The walls weren’t doing much except giving John something to stare at.  And there wasn’t much else in the apartment.  A few milk crates to serve as tables, chairs, stools, etc.  John had only been living in the apartment a few days.  It was a mistake.  He knew that.  It was all a mistake. 

            

John’s brain was about the size of a nerf football with the ends chewed off.  It was a lump of magic that he did not understand.  He had never given it much thought.  But now it was all he could think about.  This is because John was lost in the Guantanamo Bay of the mind.  His thoughts were water-board nightmares.  He did not know how to make it stop.  He did not have the energy to make it stop.  It wouldn’t stop.

            

John’s brain was asking questions.  It had doubts.  It wanted answers that John did not have.  He did not know why he could not remember important things.  He did not know why he had sabotaged his life.  He wasn’t even sure if he was the one who had done it.  So, he spent hours lying on his bed, turning the wall blurry, and wondering.

The Ice Cream Man

The ice cream man is your life. You are forever late and chasing the dangling bells. It's hot, and an ice cream would have tasted all right. But they don't stop. Weird fucking business. Park outside. Let me scramble to find the loose change in the pants that cover my floor like roadkill. Give me a minute, brother. I'll be there. I'll take the rocket pop. But you don't ever wait. It's a 'right place at the right time' kind of gig, and I never am. In the right place. At the right time.

I might make it in time to see all the smug motherfuckers eating their ice cream. I smell exhaust and sour milk. What kind of business strategy is this anyway? It's like a drug dealer that runs full speed through the neighborhood calling out 'buds! thizz! shrooms!'. Ain't no way your customer base is gonna chase you down, brother. I don't see any flocks of kids chasing your little wagon. Why don't you chill the fuck out for a second and let me think! Shits always gotta be all rush fucking rush all the time. That's not the way I want to enjoy my ice cream.

So, fuck it. I return to my oven apartment and let the cold water run for years until it is actually cold. I'm all propped up in front of my fan. Whatever. But listen Ice Cream Man; I'm a businessman, too. I got no beef with you, but you might want to reconsider your MO. I would've put that buck 35 right into your hand if you'd been patient. But I guess you're chasing something, too. I wonder what your ice cream is.

The Sensitive Child...

Every report card...mixed in the with the B's and C's like little mouse turds. Your child is "sensitive". Man, I knew cussing. Fuck. Shit. Butthole. That had to have been the worst word I knew. Sensitive. It made my dad's eyes dark and it radiated shame. It made my mom hug me and tell me it was a good thing which always meant it was a bad thing. Shit.

In my room. Playing with my knives. I was strong. I was fast. I always won. Except at fighting. Oh, I won. But damn, I couldn't do it and not end up crying. Being angry always made me cry. On the inside, the anger was a deranged fucking cyclone, but on the outside, I cried. I yelled and demanded justice and ended up crying. That's how I learned what a faggot was. But I wasn't one.

Scared. Big sisters and brothers do such horrible things. They do it and then it is done and it all seems right, but twenty years later you think back and think, 'holy shit, did she know?!?'. Did she know what she was doing.  It wasn't fun and games.  Not a bit.

And the fucking predators. They see it like a wolf sees a wounded rabbit. Fuckers.

Hit me. Just fucking hit me. Don't yell at me. If you touch me, make it HURT! You can hit me all you want, stop fucking yelling!

Lay on the bed, mind of cold, dripping fire. Sensitive child. Fuck you. Fuck you, school counselor. Fuck you, condescending teacher. Fuck you, speech therapist. 'Talk more, you have such a good vocabulary". Fuck you; I stutter. Leave me alone. Just leave me the fuck alone, so I can disappear.

Sports. Bikes. Guns. Fire. No need to talk. Fucking A. Let's go. Music, pure emotion, but it works. Whiskey, tastes like shit, makes everything black. More. Drugs. Fuck it.

Hate. Ahhh, finally. The antidote. I don't give a fuck! That's it!  I. Don't. Give. A. Fuck.

The years pass in blurry old slide-show frames, and the sensitive child twists his brain and speeds his heart up, slows it down, wakes up dirty and bleeding. Hides in corners clinging to cigarette life rafts. I. Don't. Give. A. Fuck.

Birds were the only thing I could ever count on. No one cared if they were sensitive. They were free to soar and dive. God, how I wanted to be a bird. So, the years passed like stop motion photography. Slomps and glamps of stuttering images. Until the crescendo. The sensitive child was not dead, only sleeping, and woke up on the wrong goddamn side of the bed. Emergency rooms. White-light-cleaner-smell and doctors and take this pill and come to this group and you know I'm not gonna fucking do it. Maybe the pills. Depends on what they do.

The sensitive child. Man, how I tried to kill that son of a bitch...but I never did.

I see them everywhere now. I want to tell them it will be OK. There is room in the adult world for the "sensitive child". It is a blessing. You don't want to be rock. You don't want to yell. You don't want to hurt people and be a frat boy asshole. You want love and learning and books and art and THERE ARE OTHERS. Just wait. Be brave and strong and don't let them get inside you. Because they will try. And you will lose so much.

All the years. And no one really told me. No one showed me. God, I wish they would have.

Addendum courtesy of one of my favorite Canadians.  No pity sought or required.  Pity the INsensitive children.

Vicious Cousins (for JT)

The words that live inside our minds are often cruel and sometimes kind.  And sometimes life if rife with ifs and cigarette butts...sometimes we're all just goddamn nuts. That's the deal you make and maybe it's fair. Seems to me that in my years round here, fair never meant a goddamn thing. Whether three ring circus or telephone ring. Three in the morning and without a warning the whole damn table gets turned around and you find yourself lying upside down. Lying left and no one can tell if you're doing it right. But in these brambles we find ourselves in shambles, shaking like leaves of that turnaround table and trying to choose, come Cain cum Abel. It's all a joke but no one knows the punch line. Lost in the thicket of forgotten promises, hits and misses just collide and you just ride cause what else is there to do. You got your socks, but forgot your shoes. If they fit, wear em, if they don't then keep on faking it until it works your way. I'm not proud and I'm not noble, I'm angry at the whole damn mess of hate and self-indulgent stress. And I know someday it will all come back. One more train down that railroad track, but the track marks the rhythm and the track marks fade if you'll just let em. I preach a lot for a malcontent, the irony ain't lost on me. Omnipotent don't mean shit if that shit's not potent, I won't promote it, I'll buy three more hours of feeling human...trade ya six for a bubblegum card. It's not easy and it's not hard, it's a deal you made, it's a marked card. It was all fun and it was games, you met the greats and forgot their names, you take the praise and run with it for all you're worth, cause they think you're worth something...cause they ain't heard the punch line. You've heard it coming, you've heard it going...you knew it all when it weren't worth knowing. I sit behind my gilded cage choking on cheap songs and boy scout rage. The time has finally come when I can't stand the night time for the sun, I can't get up to get it all done. And I grasp and clasp the necklace shut. It's around my neck and it's getting tough. I've given too little and given too much. I try to do right by the people who do right by me and I even get that wrong. It's worth more than a cheap joke and a song, but that's all I got. That's who I am, and in five minutes I won't give a damn, but I wish I would. I wish I could be the reflection I see when I'm feeling sanguine and feeling fine like the first hot sip of summer whine. Shit, nowadays I can't see the line. I write from the heart and no one cares, I throw up a shot, get nothing but air, and the things I value don't get noticed and the things I don't they get important and I shake my head and wonder at the strangeness of it all. I wonder if that's what happens to us all, why Rhymin' Simon dropped the ball. Lost perspective, lost objectivity, trying to write a tribute but it's all about me. And I should feel shamed and I should just chuckle and I should hitch one notch on the old belt buckle cause lately things don't taste right to me and lately I'm chasing apathy. Or it's chasing me. So, this is what I wrote, and I know it's a shitty thank you note, but the sun's hanging on the last night cloud and the day is done and I don't know if I'm allowed to feel good about it. I don't know what I said or did. I know it should have been more and could have been less and in the end it's myself I kid. But if it means something, hell, let it mean something. And if it doesn't it doesn't, cause me and Antrobus know. Hate and love. Drunk or not. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. The world's full of vicious cousins.

Slow regret...

The sunshine through the screen smells of slow regret.  Of listless malaise.  It is an acrid smell, like the whiff of garbage through an open window.  She sits with head in hands, thick hair in clenched fists.  Again and again and again.  The air is stale and slow.  Her mind plods on as she reads and reads the same pages she has read a thousand times before.

Time is meaningless.  Laughter ricochets off the walls of the brick buildings that surround her.  Cheers dart like swallows and she swallows the lump in her throat, wondering what they are cheering for.  Trying to remember when she had something to cheer about.

Her arms can still feel the warm touch of flannel.  She can smell the cigarette smoke and sweat.  The smells reach into her and spark the twinge of sadness that marks her days.  She pours a glass of wine and tries to ignore the coming of a new day.  But it is there...in the evening air, taunting.