YOU ARE RISKY

The damn girl I laid beside on a Saturday afternoon ended up having herpes and it sort of messed with my head for several months. Basic California type. Gorgeous, dangerous, and into that fucking polyamory shit everyone totes around nowadays. I really wanted to get in bed with her, but of course it was risky, naturally. She told me she was born with herpes. That sort of statement never dawns on a young man until he is faced with the infected pussy. 

I lived in the barracks on the marine base. Fresh out of divorce, freshly 21. I picked her up, we got some grub, and made our young way back to my place. I always played it classy, especially the hookups around noon. The wind from the ocean blew through the parking lot and I watched her glistening medal framed glasses shine in such yellow-golden California sunlight. Thinking bout’ fornication, ripping her top off, fucking her brains out. 

I played the cheesiest card in the book and put Cat Stevens on the turn table and got to work. The place was 200 square feet, the only thing we could really even do was fuck. Make-out action turned to foreplay and then came the high dive. I remember having my member out and her eventually reaching out to grab it. I hesitated and scooted back. I was on my knees above her, saying,

“Well, what if I ate you out?”

I always remember that weird awkward press and release look of despair in a woman’s eyes. 

It’s sort of emasculating to let a woman down, but that's just my preference. She nodded quietly and I went down. 

I couldn’t let her touch my dick. She had herpes. I wasn’t risking my entire manhood for a cheap date? What would the rest of my life look like? I spelled the alphabet backwards with my tongue and got the usual— enthused gasps and awes I go for in these situations. 

Even with a condom on, I wasn’t risking it. When she wasn’t looking, I slipped it off and hawked a big ball of spit straight to the end and slipped it back on. She told me she was ready and I told her I was done. 

Radiohead played in the car, she looked out of the window on the ride home. 

I was safe. A close call.

The love of my life became a man.

She was the subject of a lot of my writing.

I discovered this through her varying social media posts,

I also asked a mutual friend.

I ordered buffalo wings when I got home from work

Had a few beers.

 Introduction, in June.

I could never explicitly tell you why things changed, but they just did.

It all started in June, the month of scorching sun and hot rain.

Everyone says this ‘thing’ about the sun being closer to the Earth, causing these nasty wicked solar winds to blow early in the morning. 

What a fucking place to live. Too damn hot. Too damn wet. It’s 8:00am and I’m already sweating. 

I lived with my parents and that was wonderful for the time being, until I really had enough of the cramped feeling and the

“Eat, eat, drink, drink.”

I was done sleeping on the couch and so was my back and neck.

And then I wanted to be alone again.

I’d go over to my grandmothers for coffee in the afternoon and what-have-you, to talk to my grandfather about the Vietnam War and that pretty hooker who taught him how to catch bugs and make his bed.

My grandmother would make me coffee and offer me things I didn’t need and I would nod and believe that I would need them. Taking these things, to have them rot away in my car.

I’d drive, drive around everywhere because my home was filled with little bugs that could really never hurt me. Giving me the feeling of dread and loss, the bugs did— and made me think of pins and needles in my brain when I saw them at night. Walking around my apartment like they wouldn’t go. To which they never did.

Things just don’t go bump in the night. Bread isn’t just eaten around the edges. My mouth isn’t that small. 

One night, I reached out across my desk for my glasses and three of the little things walked over my hand as if it were some sort of bridge. 

So I broke the lease and let go of my connection to that little place that I loved so much.

I remember many long nights there. Many drinks. Many hungry nights.

I hadn’t been there too long. Only about a half-year, but jeez did that feel like a lifetime. 

The summer solstice neared, the days grew longer, the nights shorter. 

I remember sitting, accomplished across the floor on the first day, listening to music and smoking inside. 

My apartment downtown was my friend, but he grew sick and infested. A great time for the both of us and I do miss you (apartment) from time to time. 

As time grew I knew that I couldn’t go back, because this complex fear of going back would mean more bugs before my eyes and many more nights alone with them. They could reasonably do anything they wanted to me while I slept with my mouth open. Crawl in and out, clean my teeth, travel down to my stomach and back. 

They aren’t very friendly or hospitable and they also carry many diseases. Terrible things. Terrible, perfect looking things.

So I read a book on divinity and complexion and figured out that I fear bugs because of their strange mechanical appearance.

Wouldn’t that be the weirdest thing? Because my fishing rod is mechanical and it is lovely and also a piece of machinery.

Fishing, in July.

Weekends were for fishing with my cousins and the day after fishing always felt like my last. Those days were usually Sundays, so driving around as I usually did, was extra sentimental because I knew that I’d be braced with the job and more expenses on Monday.  

Monday is the worst word in the English dictionary. It wouldn’t be so bad if I was unemployed.

Unfortunately, hating Monday is a relatively normal thing. It has always been. The dawn of man most likely hated Mondays because it meant hunting deer or something. And it probably meant a lot more because it was a means of surviving until Tuesday. Hating Monday is sort of like hating traffic or sitting next to someone who smells bad. Regular.

I wrote this back in June. After a long day. 

 “The sun is beating down on me from the skies and it is incredibly hot in Saint Petersburg, on a Monday, on a fucking Monday. On this fucking Monday the boss decided to put in a work order that made me lose my lid, because now more than ever, on this very Monday, blood is running through the top of my head and around my cheekbones. Monday is filled with nannies that don’t have jobs anymore and have a sort-of lust for killing on the road that cannot be satisfied with fucking. Fucking Monday. Monday is wild and weird, when you never stop working, because Monday means death to your Monday. Capital ‘M’ in Monday is for the Mildew that cannot go away when the sun comes out, capital ‘M’ in Monday is for Mortuary, where I will spend my very last Monday on earth. Why does Monday have that capital ‘M’? Well, because it’s Monday, of course. And Mondays will persist to the working man for an eternity.”

Anxiety can be a great tool when writing. But I've grown bored of being alone. This sort of thinking is almost woman repellant. Fixation is almost a bad thing. Shit, even the word is weird. But amidst a crisis in life, it is so easy to get fixated with something. Bad things, like people walking their dogs or the thought of bugs crawling all over you when you sleep. 

Incorrect women can also be a poor target of fixation. After the smoke clears, when you get your bearings and when the fixation goes— the woman might not. 

And then you're stuck with a timebomb. 

Crazy women and unlovable men like me come together like magnets. This subject is unfortunately overplayed in most writing, so I’ll keep it short.

I get vulnerable, hungry, and bored, and for whatever reason, this headspace is the Bat-Signal for grade-A crazy chicks with schizophrenia. 

In fact, I’m still getting calls from a girl who rides the bus to Walgreens to call me on a payphone. 

 Ridiculous. 

Anyways… Where was I? 

Right. The effects of fixation and anxiety—

That slow little pin begins to push into your skull, driving you quite mad.

You definitely don’t want to be the guy with a frown on his face, not in this world. 

Tiresome is all, and gee does it get old. 

I don’t crave the sea because I spent a year on it. It generally behaves the same way under circumstance and varies in color based on who you ask. To me, it's always blue. 

When I see the sea, it looks back. I feel that we know each other and act like we can coincide together on an evening. Like divorces or ex-lovers, Sea and I have some time together, as it took from me, I take from it. No kids. It was a clean break. That is just how we operate now. 

 The sea looks great on weekends. It doesn’t look as good on weekdays. It’s not forgiving and it's grueling and never-ending. The bites on Mondays feel better than the ones on the Saturdays. I guess, in relation to a ‘Sex-Life’ — you’d expect the electricity of something so unexpected for a Monday to jolt you with the dopamine of spontaneity. Just like sex with the old woman outside the regular programming. 

The fish bite every once in a while. 

I’d like something bigger than the usual trout or catfish, but the event is much greater than the prize. This activity is one of the few things that eases my mind from the loud and unrelenting world. So much to care about, absorb, digest in life, but on the docks— my mind is sort of quiet. I don’t care about what I’m wearing or the amount of women passing through. There never is any girls, and the ones that do roll in, are big and weird looking. 

We went to John’s Pass and waded out underneath the bridge. I believe that this was on a weekday. The sun had been gone for about thirty minutes and my jeans were soaked and rolled up to my knees. Constricting the life out of my legs, wearing one of the most uncomfortable fabrics when wet. In life, wear wet jeans with a goal like catching a fish. That will teach you a lot about being patient. 

On that night, wind carried from the gulf blew under my arms, I was at peace, amongst my cousins. Life is golden in these moments. Nothing bit except a big and dumb sailcat and that was okay with me. 

Lures and bait. Buying this dumb new rod as an ‘in’ to the sport. I shouldn't have done that. Big waste of money and an impulse buy. My uncle had about a million that I could've used. And the thing sucked anyways. 

But I caught a few on it, so it did its job and fulfilled its mechanical purpose. It fulfilled its purpose, being the cheap plastic piece of shit it is. 

It sits in the back of my cousin’s truck. 

Fishing has made me appreciate a certain convenience that I condemned at one point in my life. When I shop around at Walmart or the bait shop, I geek on things that clip to my belt, or hang from my hat. Little hooks or pins that dispense weights and lures, just things that appear tacky… Yet prove to be useful in certain situations. I hate digging around in the tacklebox for things, especially with something freshly on the line, yeah, why not buy a glove that clips to your belt?

When I pick this chintzy stuff out, I am never worried about being perceived with it on my person. Because as I mentioned before, there aren’t many people to impress on the dock. No girls to gawk at your clip-on sunglasses or belt-clip pliers. 

Asides, your appearance means nothing in the light of a big fish.  

Fishing has shown me that when you find something special, the world closes out. Nothing matters except the love for it. 

When you’re binded like that— wear funny t-shirts. 

Who gives a fuck. 

Argument, back in June.

I had spoken to this guy who had seen me at a low point back in January. I don’t really mind him, but he has an ego like a professional wrestler or something. I don’t really get along with the overly-Macho, but he wasn’t bad. I’d driven him and his girl to a party, unfortunately ending up as the dedicated driver. 

 

He’d drank and drank all night long. The party was sub-par. But instead of embracing the socially confused— I decided that talking to him, sober, was probably the safest decision I could make. Anxious, outward, and gay people aren’t my forte. I have a hard time relating to any of those things 

We got on the subject of a mental state he had seen me in the last time we’d seen each other. I had to recall, but then I remembered when he and his lady had visited me back in January. It was cold out and I had just gotten denied publication from Marrow. I was most likely a mess. 

It is sort of funny thinking about it though. I certainly chuckled when he said

“I w…was really worried about you, man.” 

He should have been, rightfully. But he went on to say

“I looked like a man without purpose.”

I followed up with,

“Wrong.” “Too much of it.”

He hadn’t known that I wrote in the passionate way I do. There was no use explaining that to a drunk guy. I can’t blame him for being worried. 

When we went back inside he slammed some more beers and I ran to the bathroom with two shooters stuffed in my pants. I got them down as quickly as I could, looked at myself in the mirror, and let a big wave of sullied soberness disappear into the night. My favorite game in the world is pretending to be sober. The lips start smacking for conversation, the dick hardens to about fifty percent, and the scheming begins. 

When I’d found my stupid brute again I walked in on him explaining some niche mechanical component of a Nissan bike. To which I approached quietly like a game hunter on the trail of some sort of large obnoxious prey. 

“The 970x is a better exhaust, man. It growls and gets the heads turning.”

He says.

“You will literally have to pull the bitches off of you…”

To any man who thinks this way, I salute you. There was one point in my adulthood that I thought the ‘Fonz’ type, douchey guys you see on TV died off in the last two generations, but I was clearly wrong in thinking that. They are right under all of our noses. 

After the night ended, that “Purposelessness” statement kinda stuck so I’ll give him that. I’m not published yet, so in a sense it sort of stings— 

If I saw a man walking around with a bottle of wine in his coat pocket with no reasonable explanation on why he was doing so, I’d probably be worried for him too. 

Or maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I would've celebrated him. Life is hard.

 I had a great idea today. 

But someone had already made a movie about it. 

There is a four by four image of a living room that has haunted my mind. I’ve written about it when I imagined it, but orgasming a quick thought into words usually ends up retarded. 

I’ve thought of this place for years and it is now a place that I’ve seen beyond just daydreaming. 

In loneliness, you tend to think about women. It’s a fact of biology. 

There was once a country girl that had taken me to church with her family. We’d spent the winter together and I thought that I loved her because she had a big ass and a way of loving that I hadn’t felt before. She had little black brothers that she loved and that settled some young and racist bone in my body. It was an untapped way of loving that seemed right, at an age when nothing did. 

When you meet the right lady, you remember the sunsets— or what the sky looked like in the evening. You remember the music playing and you remember what you whispered. We’d drive around at night, in our youth, and talk about life and crud. She’d bring her lip gloss around and let me try it. She’d only wanted to be my friend, even though we kissed in my bed. 

When I looked over her fence one evening, I saw the tops of homes and the sun in a way that reminded me of being young and innocent. When I used to visit this old lake house in the summer. Remembering my wise and old look into beyond, as I saw the sun set on that day as it did, the same way, on the lake when I was young. Somber. And embraced by nothing but the magnificence of sky and heaven. Quietly watching the sun go away, without any impending thought, like the feeling would never end. 

She made me feel that way again, as an eighteen year old that was addicted to pot and a good time. 

The last time I had seen her, we reconnected with ambition to relight the flame of southern American whites. She’d greeted me in the night and we made something in the ball-park of love. 

This untapped loving woman was still alive and breathing as I left her. 

But, 

I often see her in an imaginary living room, in Savanna. White drapes, deep oak flooring, long candlesticks. The window is just open, into the night of hanging spanish moss and orange streetlights. Some weary, beautiful country medley is quiet behind her beautiful blonde hair. 

If I think of heaven

That's it.

 Barista.

“Well, honey, the check doesn’t come until next week.” 

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay in? We could watch a movie.”

Amidst a small and rank mercado, Jessie and Iven lived comfortably within a small apartment in uptown New Jersey. Jessie worked at a coffee shop across the street and Iven worked in retail. Both had graduated from the same high school, both in the same year, and both far too broke for university. City life is what they both considered success, even if it meant living uncomfortably. 

In desperation of life, both characters of modern America, flawed to their own unique devices. Iven dealt with a crippling pornography addiction and Jessie battled pills. 

She let him watch his girls when she worked late, he always paid the extra hundred at the pain clinic. 

Money was dry, as the local nightlife tilled both of them on the weekends. Jessie loved to drink and Iven did as well. Jessie liked to mix her Vicodin with amber gin so she would be more of a liability for Iven. Iven liked to fuck Jessie when she was drunk and high because it was much easier than doing it when she was sober. Jessie loved making important relationship decisions while intoxicated. One evening, she advised that they’d go about acquiring another credit card and another partner in the bedroom. She would additionally decide to open the relationship up afterwards. Allowing the visitation of others on weekends. Iven hated this idea and watching his beloved be fucked by another, but Iven could not afford rent alone. 

On Mondays, Iven would return home late from the department store. The manager had him count the bills at the register to make up for the amount of time he’d spend on the phone. He’d count until the clock struck twelve, then make his way home to greet Jessie. Jessie was always in bed by twelve, but Iven had a twisted method of disrupting her sleep by washing the dishes loudly or slamming doors. Jessie would walk from the bedroom to the kitchen and cross her arms at Iven. Iven would talk about his day, about how he worked harder, and how he knew that she had broken the rule of ‘No guests until the weekends.’ On some nights, Jessie would return to bed and crawl under the covers. On others, she’d spend them patting at blood in her reflection.

On Tuesdays, Jessie worked from nine to six and Iven had the day off.  The coffee shop across the street had a plethora of daily traffic. Jessie offered to stay the extra hour past closing, duly part to the fact that she could be alone from five to six. She steamed the espresso machine, wiped the counter down, and listened to hip-hop music that Iven hated. In her mind, this was the only part of the day when she could be alone, in her thoughts, and away from the busy world she’d never been apart from. Making coffee was a difficult task for a modern woman, taking a wavering toll on her mind and body. She’d smoke half a pack of cigarettes and chew three sticks of gum in the slim, New Jersey evening, and then she’d go. 

When she arrived home, dinner from a delivery service waited cold atop the dining room table, and the kitchen remained a mess from the weekend before.

On Wednesdays, both Iven and Jessie had the day off. Iven was up by eleven and Jessie later rose by twelve. Iven would spend his day off chatting with friends on a video game and Jessie would scroll through her phone until she’d ask Iven if they could spend time together. Iven retorted on most occasions, proclaiming that he’d been busy all week and “This was his only chance to relax.” She’d roll her eyes at his comments, grab the keys, and go. Iven would smile, in security of his relationship and the lease agreement, and quietly make his way into the bedroom to fondle himself. 

On her way to pick up food, she’d check her bank statement. Only ninety dollars left between the two of them remained and she stayed confident that this amount would suffice until the next pay cycle. Even if they had decided to eat out on most days. Jessie liked leaving the house on Wednesday. Iven liked staying home. 

On Thursdays, both worked until late. While Iven’s phone buzzed with notifications from credit agencies, Jessie’s buzzed with notifications from dating applications. Iven would miserably dismiss these notifications from his home screen, while Jessie eagerly opened messages from better men. This went on all day. Iven grew more miserable to the thought of being desperately trapped and Jessie grew horny at the thought of her weekend plans. Jessie made her way into the ‘Barista Only’ bathroom and touched herself. She thought of Kevin, the man who had complimented her rack last weekend. 

On Fridays, Iven was off of work by three and Jessie worked her usual nine to six. Iven would clean the house after he had gotten off and begin drinking. He’d look at the hanging pictures around the house and smile, knowing that his beloved Jessie would be joining him later. The booze eased Iven’s gears. He’d smile and remember the year that they had gone to the family reunion in upstate New York, when things were tighter between the two of them. Unlike Monday, Iven gently cleaned the leaning pile of dishes inside of the sink. He ensured every last cup, spoon, and plate were spotless before entering the cabinets. While Iven tidied, Jessie spent her Fridays in a similar bliss. She too thought about the wonder years, thinking that Iven was truly the man for her, and felt guilty and depraved when thinking about how it had all gone to shit. 

When Jessie arrived home, Iven awaited with a generous welcoming ceremony. Prepared, Iven had laid out Jessie’s favorite cocktail of pills and a freshly iced gin soda. Jessie would smile, hesitate for a second, and smile again. 

On Saturdays, both Iven and Jessie started their weekend. Iven rose in expectancy of Jessie’s absence. Iven, sad, but tempered to this pain nonetheless, would open up his porn and think about the mysterious man that Jessie had left with the night before. Jessie, far away from home, arose distraughtly. She’d woken up in a motel across town, one she’d never been in before. On the rug below, Jessie’s clothes lay scattered among used condoms and varying sex toys. Jessie grabbed her keys and made her way home.

On Sunday, unlike the many Sundays before, Jessie rose to an absence in the bedroom. Iven laid beside her on Saturday night, but on this Sunday he was nowhere to be found. Jessie made her way into the living room to find that Iven had taken his own life.

 Wine index;

February is the month of Nothing

March my very way to the Liquor store

April is nearing, 

May I finally rest my head.

Pinot Noir

Cabernet Sauvignon 

Merlot

A good nose on this one.

I’d pause from a meeting today to find that my droning life is starting to get unbelievably boring. 

This gross need to be relevant and famous is a wondrous drug that won’t leave my damn fucking head. 

God. 

I think about the devils and angels. I think about the artistic prose, and how I won't do anything without it. 

I’ve got a published mentor now, so that’s got me thinking there's a chance I round the edges off of my heap of shit index and do something that’ll get me the wondrous gaze of a taller brunette. Neither mine or God’s eye will interrupt my sleeping and dreaming mind. That is why I do this. 

Is that why I’m doing this?

To be in a fucking magazine…?

To be revered?

No. 

At the end of the day, when I curse the man who pays me, when I torment the stupid walking vagina, when the fat man sings after i've stolen all of his money away– 

This putrid tortured world will hear my voice and resonate with it. I need English badly, I can’t seem to grasp it. 

I want a revolution, 

I want to be androgynous.

I want to dig up bodies and steal the gold. 

I want no justice for those who deserve it. 

Life is fucking hell, Life is so fucking hell. 

I want to burn all the self help books. 

I want to burn all of the bibles and that will be that. 

Revolution, in French style. Over a skyscape birthed from the bible and Michelangelo, firstly fashioned and grim, in my own gothic way. Sky rats, bugs, all cascaded in my town. ME. As the rightful owner of it all. 

Full bodied taste

I thought about sleeping with a friend this morning before I rose. 

I’d spent my morning breathe talking to her about how she’d fit with another man, so elegantly ‘not-me’

But frankly I hate for that to exist. 

She is poised and quiet, she’s like a little junky that ran away. 

I’d imagine the time when we could finally say to each other that nothing else in this world mattered, and this bed, The one we made love onto was where we belonged.

And then I thought about the gross

fascination of hating her months from now,

And cascading lies I would tell to keep me from going on dates or doing anything with her.

This hopeless feeling is the one that started my Tuesday. But surely before my closet and my mirror, I’d start to think about myself again and now, the anxiety draws quietly from my mind.

And publication and shooting guns and drinking myself dead is the forethought of my mind and isn’t that quite beautiful to some lonesome degree?

Six year vintage

God, blood is a wonderful thing. 

I am disgusted by the thought of it,

But it evokes this waking eyelid widening and enshrouded feeling that losing too much of it can send you down.

Working in this sanitary place, watching these crying old ladies pass me with terrible news. 

But these clustered minds that fear losing loved ones, scramble around the plains of uncertainty and wait for the inevitable doom.

They are distracted all waking life by ways to get rich and escape only to have the plan soiled by the undertaker. 

They let death hit them like freight trains and they pee themselves at the sight of ghosts.

Graveyards are places for losers and the winners yell at Walmart.

I am confused because I want to play music that embodies my writing. I want to go outside in the day and stay outside when the moon rises. I want to do this to prove something to myself.

That I am this illustrious and self deprecating writer that is tortured by normal life and hates the world.

But the soul asks me to play more into this deathly haunting man I want to be,

Cramped inside a room with absolutely nothing to dine on,

To die if anyone says no.

I would just wonder why the birds flew by.

I would just hate to see them land or to see them go.

I remember things from when I was five years old and stupid. 

That has to be something.

Tannins on the blend

When Marrow turned me down I shut the writer off. And then he came back with new ideas. He came back like an entity who needed me more than I needed him. 

And the ideas I’ve had are terrible. 

Because I’ve seen the devil recently. And the devil is all over my mind.

The judgement, my impurity to God is something nobody wants.

I had spoken to my cousin on the manner and I quite often talked to the amulet wrapped around my neck. 

He is here, and I am not mad for saying so.

This world is a place that exists for hurtful and nasty things to be said,

an infinite gambling machine that churns luck and lies 

It’s Friday now and I feel dead.

I feel as if the world has won and I’d like to drink wine at work. The wine that I sip tonight, 

Please, let this writer give me my message. Let something yell these Money Words into my head to type later on at five,

I do it so desperately at five, with no ambition or drive. Cursing the Job for taking the inspiring hours of 8:00-5:00pm away from me!

But let these bygones be bygones as I imagine the old bag with no clothes on. 

She’s ripe and ready to die and to love.

I wanted a sweater today that was black and omnipotent. It would look good with a rose pin,

But I realize that I want to scratch my face out every time it looks at me in the mirror.

I feel vulnerable now,

So salaciously vulnerable,

Now that these things ask me out to dine,

I want nothing of it,

I want to be alone where I’ll be unseen by women and men because I look so goddamn weird amongst them.

Anxiety, 

Missing olden me,

Bread crumbs and roaches,

Let the light turn off, on its own

I watch the days go reading some book for the second time and revising this dumb script I plan to sell,

But I scratch the wall with my nails and chip the paint with my teeth wanting out and to be with this stupid animal I met in North Florida.

Maybe all this time I’ve been just absolutely crushed by the loss of this woman. 

Just never mind. Because I hate her.

And that sun sets the same way every time, 

How boring is nature and how unearthed I might be to find any joy in loving the moonrises or the mountaintops.

Heathen by fletcher, 

Arrow root and tree stumps all incredibly boring and brown, 

As I almost lost my crown and my mind slipping on leaves in the day, in front of a kid and her mother. 

The stupid people watch as I’ve lost my very way looking so fragile and scary and dark and alone,

As if wearing black in the summertime was a crime against God and the village. 

Be gone, me, fuck this very dredge I dig to find what will make me sell,

I am not in this for anything except proof that I have reason to die,

as inspired by life I was, I now sit alone and listening to old classical hits that would put any woman to sleep, 

That nearly sink me into my very way,

all are a part of the third ballad and the fourteenth revision. 

And make me Quirky, no?

Loving sadness to sing to, no.

I never have done it in front of a soul, so what do you have to make of that?

That I'd be so inclined to write about these boring awful things that make me tick?

Anxiety, let her ring loudly, let her ring in my writing. In my ink, from my pen.

Down a hallway. Somewhere my mind calls for Tunisia or Morocco.

And in that dream I had last week, I saw the only thing I’ll ever love, die. 

There were stars and sand and fire-light. 

Sink my soul down and let the sadness talk about how I should have been out dancing tonight.

Maybe it’s my dumb voice, or the fact that I want it so badly.

I am locked in the chamber of self reflection, unlacing me to view my artwork as anything credible

“No, I’d rather stay in tonight.”

“No, it’d be best if I had never gone.”

The lady is gone, I haven’t written shit.

Because alone I will be pondering things and messaging an old flame that was long burnt out about how much they’ve hated me since our last bout.

Off of a measly glass of wine.

But to be miserable is such a stupidly relatable thing, and to be so blatant about how I want to go and be gone is nothing but heartache for the creative mind.

That I would have to change my voice around and into new clothes in order to appeal to Marrow Magazine or grow a vagina to be raped and played with.

I absolutely hate this miserable fucking world because money wasn’t ever it for me. It’s all gone anyways, sideways by now. Counting quarters and dimes. 

From a headcount at the bar to a few pints to a few glasses down my throat,

Turning into slime to melt away everything that I’ve ever known true.

Alcohol froze me in time. 

I never bought that sweater.

So I lay my head to weary rest on the toilet, 

I thought about California again. 

Decent Varietal

Bells around Cabernet town.

A ballad of Cairo

Comparisons and Ingenuity,

To the homeless and hopeless.

I’m halfway up my chamber door entry. Picking at screws and wild, nasty hanging insects that present themselves as a problem for me in the later hours of the night.

I feel like an inevitable junky howling at the sky, the sun, and the stars.

Living in a halfway where many drug addicts reside.

Being so close to these recovering, later-aged troglodytes, 

thinking I am some being much better than them.

Slatted boards laid aside each other, rotten coal up nearing the top.

Looking at my finger’s blackened hue to match the rest of the door, eager to be cleaned.

To think that Satan boarded the door, varnished it, and coated lime.

Nothing without hellion flame could have dirtied this door to this extent.

Reminding myself that the door only opens and closes.

There is no curse, no Satan, no God. 

I, door alike, am a product of time.

God didn’t make this entryway, a human did, and so much could be said about that.

God made Adam and Eve in perfection,

I was seed,

I was a human creation.

The wind howls on this new summer’s day.

Be it March fifth, but in Florida, every day is unfortunately summer.

Sun radiates through repeating plastic blinds, down and onto the floor like a mosaic made by a late artist. 

“In thought on Sunday,

Bed by ten,

No mind on Monday,

Bed by nine.”

I couldn’t forget that saying— I can’t. 

Fruit is laced with sugar, or something so permeable that it catches my attention.

I eat it like a kid, I chew with my mouth open when it’s served cold.

Summer’s day is the excuse to be ecstatic about life, better than those days spent inside when the world rains and when I beckon the answer to my creation.

Summer’s day is when the fruit is truly cold, unlike a winter, when I want stew. 

But when I ask myself these questions like a mad man,

When I repeat a saying, a phrase, 

I make these comparisons and I calculate social equations to feel genius, even though I am not one.

Driving me lucidly down. 

Trying to find this feeling I had felt on a drive somewhere, somewhere far away, lost and confused to what a summer day would look like in harmony.

Gently wiping the soot and ashes from my doorway with my hand now, gratefully reminded that my alcohol wipes had finally run out.

Wiping my pants down, standing on this stool desperately awaiting the end to this late spring cleaning.

I haven’t found that yet, nor will I in some time, but as the moon rises and the sun sets, I still hold onto the truth that life will permeate as it once did.

When I was grinning over succulent fruit and embracing the sunlight.

I consider myself a ghost hunter, a wild and delirious ghost hunter.

I had to look up the definition of Delirium and Dementia in fear that my time may be drawing near.

But thankfully I can reassure myself that I’ve always been mad and wacked-out.

This will always be light work to me.

The finish didn’t catch my attention

I hadn’t caught a cold in years, but last week I had one, and It was awful.

I caught a cold and a weary ugly feeling that I had no mother or woman to tend to me, leading me to this horrible and satiating feeling I have about my own father.

He is a living waste-bin and a miserable one. He’s never had any success in loving or with money.

I take little looks at the light growing and shrinking from a candle wick and think—

The candlestick is a bulbous thing and has began rounding as the night ages,

Wax grows bulbous around a flame light that hasn’t been dealt with.

The flame is a little devil to the wax. The wax just takes it and melts.

It’s like the idea of fruit, aging till ripe.

As fruit sweats beading water of life down and upon the ground,

Around a stem is uncontrollable biological mass that has no choice but to die with time and age and the elements.

But in candle’s case, it’s wax.

Inedible, coarse, and thick.

Decanter 

Hand laid upon my chin. Saturn is visible, I, miserable. Chain lighting and a christening set of starlights are near.

My mouth, near to pouring out my soul. Ejected from the space of my stomach and onto my clothes. The expensive olden ones I took too much time to pick and to buy,

A shaking manner, in brief moment,

Of overwhelming sadness and anxiety,

I feel on these nights of uncertainty.

My mind, boiling over some stupid thing I may have said.

Over lost heartfelt meanings I had never meant. 

As this same principle could be set to the way I will throw up soon.

But conjuring this vomit, only conjures more ways I’d wish to be anywhere but hopeless, alone, and afraid.

How it isn’t fair, God! I only wish to write these crisp feelings that i have felt, to remember again what I was like under lying light,

When I was young and malleable.

Tasting Finale

Velvet growth from the bottom of the heart laid the groundwork for feeling as you were young, blossoming purely purple as you grow old like a vine.

And grapes be the tiny truths, bulbous truths of consciousness and of feeling. fermented olden feelings gone.

When I sip wine, my first thought isn’t death or the consuming of life’s little cadaver.

It’s purely innocent nothing,

It’s the fact that I only see fermented wine

because I’d never seen the grape. Or some life it had in Paris or Rome.