A Blurred Slip

In my drunken wooze I miss you.
A couple of whiskeys and a few beers digesting,
providing me with exalted delirium.
Your face would be distorted by my hazed eyes
but when closed,
crisp and beautiful.

The smile is all mine.
And the eyes,
those fucking eyes see and know me.

Whether the whiskey or sentimental thought,
I am warm.

It’s brief.

A part of me knows this.
An even smaller part knows the nature of nostalgia.

Lament for My Empty Bottle

My kind companion is gone and I couldn’t feel any sadder.

I lament your loss my dear friend. Your boozy disposition has provided me with great pleasure. You’ve brought me down, deep into myself. Places I could never tread without your distinguished guidance. You’re physiological blurry effect has cleared my mind. I know what it is I desire and crave because of your helpful hand. My daily vision was blurred until you graciously let me consume you. I thank you my dear friend. This place is a lot less awful because of you and I would like to tell you that even though I killed you I will always love you.

Bliss and the Other Side

I: Bliss

Lying on my bed naked while enjoying a beer and listening to music. What can be more blissful? I hear noises from outside, people going about their busy DO-filled lives but right now I’m calm, relaxed, and have nothing to DO. I remain there, still, and enjoy my current state of stagnation. It’s a form of meditation, my mind is blank and I have an overwhelming wave of clarity. “This is it! This is the bliss I’ve been looking for! No worries, pure calm emptiness. Absolutely nothing on my mind.”

Only, to be empty in this time or have the desire to achieve a state of emptiness is rarely valued. We should always be nice and full of something: food, money, or endless quantities of stuff. I currently lack that ambition. My mind is blank and I’m naked staring at my white ceiling. I’m not focusing on anything, only fixing my gaze on a particular point that I’m not even really looking at. It’s this slight little bump, incredibly small, but I lay there, barely even blinking, keep on staring, and there’s nothing that could make me happier.

The rest of my Saturday carried out this bliss. I bought some affordable cigars and seafood and enjoyed them in the company of friends. Over a bottle of wine and my cigar I contently sat outside watching an orange dusk sky that was surprisingly beautiful for New York pollution, while listening to Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.” My only unsatisfied urge was a slight hunger that I managed to slate with a pound of mussels I bought for less than $2.50. After steaming them I finished what was left of the wine and indulged in my cheap sea dinner.

There is very little that can top such moments. It’s never planed or pre-meditated. It’s simply a moment of life that is lived and savored. I don’t believe in substantial meaning or higher purposes but I do believe that there is great pleasure and beauty in instances such as these. The most you can do is recognize when you feel such contentment and joy. To sit somewhere and have the thought, “I am happy,” is what makes this whole damn thing worth living and truly special.

Who knows what the future has in store for us. Life can be a beautiful thing. Every morning you awaken, you have no idea what may happen. You may fall in love, get hurt, get drunk, witness something that causes a significant change in your life, or nothing may happen. It may very well be a casual boring day. But who knows? I have realized that I should be thankful to experience life. I am mostly a miserable, misanthropic wretch, but I’ve begun to stop caring. I am glad to be sad; if that can possibly makes sense. For as confusing and scary as this place may be it’s often all right. It’s fine to be scared, it’s fine to be sad, it’s fine to be happy, horny, intelligent, or idiotic. Every moment, every second of our lives we are changing through all of our experiences, whether big and profound or small and insignificant. I am happy to be me and live in a world where there are people that I can love and hate. It is such a wonderful concept to be able to feel. There are times when we simply wish to cease to exist desiring to find some crack in the wall that we can disappear into. But to feel that low only means that at some other point in your life you were distinctly happy: enjoying blissful paradise

II: The Other Side

Constantly darting around the corner hoping no one saw. Finding a place to hide where I know no one can reach me. Often it turns out to be a lonely bathroom stall in some isolated scarcely trodden corner of a building. A moment alone. Away from the others. I just want escape, people have nothing to offer me. They make me weak. I feel out of breath and helpless around them. They seem so strong as passing faces. Shelled exoskeleton creatures, scurrying around, accomplishing their little tasks. But I’m sure most are like me. Frightened, pathetic children who are only trying to get some solid footing on this world they were thrown in.

But I have this heckling demon that’s always dangling around my neck. He never lets go and gives me all the hell he knows, making life terrifying. He sits there on my shoulders smiling his nasty shit-smeared grin, mocking me as I cower from my few duties and responsibilities I’m supposed to accomplish in my days. He laughs and laughs as he clings tighter to my body with his jagged cracked nails, digging into my flesh, giving me his hell. He throws me into small shadowed corners, making me silent and unseen.

There is no helping. He’s always been there. I become locked away, alone in myself only with raving thoughts of anxiety perpetually crashing into my skull. He flings regrets, shames, and any shortcomings from my brief 20 years. He has had me isolated for all of my existence. I only live inside. The world beyond me, the outside, makes no sense to me. It frightens me and the most I can do is squint out through the small windows of my eye sockets, the long narrow tunnels that I sometimes peer through. Life through a fucking window? What kind of existence is that? I see people who seem free on the outside, not held back by a clutching demon, strangling you with every breath. He may seem a small pest but there is no overpowering the beast, he’ll wrangle you and thrash you with no end, forcing you to your hands and knees, leaving you at his bestial mercy. He has you by the neck and testicles and only knows how to squeeze tighter, tighter… Eventually you give in, you can only imagine the fucking pain that would await you otherwise. There’s no peace.

He makes you lonely and becomes your only company, that extra beer while sitting alone in your little room doesn’t drown him away like you were hoping for. He makes all your needs a gapping void, the beer, the whiskey, the books, all your means of escape slip in. Nothing solid or substantial can be grounded because of this void, all moments of your days are only passing blurs of distraction. Nothing in your day is good enough, it either angers you or just wears you down. You can wrap up all your emotion into a clean single package and pound it into the wall with your fist but all you gain is either another hole or a broken hand. You try to find that safe warm place, have your drink and only realize you’re naked on a freezing concrete floor. Rough, jagged cold and isolated. If you move you bleed. There’s no point screaming for help. You know you’re alone, a place not even Satan would envy. You remain still and quiet, a helpless soft lump of shit that can only sit there awaiting its inevitable decay.

You’re too far from anyone or anything at this point. All you can do at best is have another drink and hope it numbs you enough to sleep or a state of indifference. All that booze filled excitement is an attempted side step from what others call reality. We’re all needing, hungering, longing, lonely creatures, dragging our little bodies across this shit encrusted earth. This is all that existence consists of. We are all ceaselessly crawling about this place devouring what we need to get along for another day. All this energy, all this enthusiasm, all this pretend structure! For what? It makes no difference. We all will end as dust. Time will get you if nothing else comes first. You can be certain of that, and before it erodes and seeps into all the crevices and corners of your mushy lump of a body the worms will be there. They’ll writhe and wiggle through all your sockets and holes: you’re eyes, nose, asshole, and cunt. They will consume you. They will conquer you.

If I’m not hiding I’m drinking and if neither I’m petrified. My only solace is this pad and pen. It’s the only thing that the demon can’t touch with his gnarled claws. But even these writings can only accomplish so much. Beyond these pages, back to life, I awake trapped in a hole. The walls are steep and ragged and I’m so far down I can’t even see the day sky above. My deep prison burrowed by my little demon, he makes a safe place for me to hide. The ground below me is soft and easy to dig. I can only make my hole run deeper, deeper to a place where I’ll never be found. Just as the demon wants, his sole ambition and purpose, to have me completely isolated, bound to no one, to nothing, completely free in my small imprisoned hell.

Romans 7:14-24

^"14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵ I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶ And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸ For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.^[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

^"21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²² For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; ²³ but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. ²⁴ What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?"

to the bleeding hearts

I look down
and see my toenails
long jagged and yellow
I feel sweaty
my hair is greasy
I’m breaking out with acne on my forehead
I haven’t exercised in weeks

it’s 12:06 am
wednesday
early
early morning
and I feel sad
and drained
but couldn’t sleep if I wanted

my days slip by
falling into some blur
I can’t recollect
even if I wanted

my neck is stiff
asshole itchy
and there’s some drips of urine
I feel
on the side of my leg
I’m not wearing underwear
and didn’t shake

a lump of worthless shit
but calling this thing
me
shit doesn’t matter because
you’re
shit too

a worthless
breathing
waste of oxygen
you
can kill yourself
and will be forgotten soon enough

TRUST ME

time
inevitably
makes us all worth
shit

you’re an
organ-
puss-
blood-
greasy-
mucus-
filled-carcass
and wont be missed
for long

do you miss
the children
who starved to death
during your last meal?

NO
you don’t.

THROWN INTO THIS

you never had a say

you just

appeared

that’s it

and eventually

go away

everything in between

makes no difference

to me

to him

to her

to you

it happens

you can’t will otherwise

go ahead

make some changes

make your difference

for yourself

for others

just know

time will get you

nuclear doom

2012

end of days

oooh! how scary!

FUCK YOU

all days will end

no matter what

whether 1,000,000,000 years

or 5 seconds

everything’s slipping away

do you feel it?

do you feel the world

pulsating beneath you

around you

inside you?

every pulse is closer

to the last

it’ll be there soon

time is neither friendly

nor malicious

but unfeeling indifference

it’ll move persistently

nothing can deter it

it’ll crawl and seep

into every crevice

writhing and gnawing

gestating

you

into nothing

just like before

you

were ever here

Cigar Smoke Whisper

Clouds of my own smoke surround me. The end of my cigar is nice and moist, just how I like it. I enjoy having it linger in my mouth as I keep it clenched down with my teeth. The taste and heat of the tobacco smoke along with the leaves themselves give me a feeling of comfort and contentment. There is no greater joy than being well-fed, having some whiskey and beer, and toping it off with a cigar or two. Music and sex could only make this moment better. Unfortunately I am without the latter. Although the music keeps on playing, so I can’t complain. Right now it’s the Doors’ “Alabama Song.” It’s a song on my newly created playlist I gladly titled “Whiskey Fuck it All.” I do enjoy my whiskey and finding music that obliges with my slow stupor only gladdens my drunken-soul.

I feel as though I’m a whisper, like the cloud of cigar smoke I release from my mouth. It has no grasp and is only briefly noticed as it disseminates into the cool air. It lingers for a bit, moves and swirls through the air until it slowly creeps off to places I’ll never know. But as this whisper, I know the words I create may be profound but the voice will always be too weak and subtle to be carried far. As the smoke is a vanishing blur the words will be faint and nearly inaudible. My days drift away too quickly, slipping away through my clenched fists; the harder I squeeze the quicker they seem to disappear. I can’t gain a solid footing anywhere. But I’ve never been able to. We all tend to create groundings for ourselves. We use ideologies, God, people or anything else we can make of permanent substance in our minds. But all of these are either non-existent or erode away from us through the natural passage of time. We can only cling to impressions. The imprints and marks that life presses upon you; the fleeting smoke of a cigar.

However, despite all of this, we are all passengers in this messy uncertain lot together. And even though you’re thrown into this alone and depart alone there are people between your entrance and exeunt that can leave you truly marked, making this thing not seem so damn bad. Most will be faint passing blurs, just like that whispering-smoke I perceive myself to be. Not even capable of eroding away the dust particles of your being, an unnoticed and meaningless impact that can only gently pass over you. But there are some, who at least for a brief moment, will obliterate all your loneliness and vacancy you feel to the depths of you. It’s never a frequent occurrence but there are some that manage to seep into those narrow deep empty nooks you may find yourself unaware of. Often it is only the smoke that can find its way through. Booming excitement and loudness is too wide and dense to finagle in, it’ll never breech the surface. Such exuberance is frequently forgotten over time. These encounters only touches the cloaked veneer you display to the world outside, unable to ever impact your true being.

But the trickling whisper that seeps in as smoke can cling with you for a lifetime. It is this soft voice that truly reaches you, passing through whatever rough exterior you maintain, caressing you to the dark crevices of your soul. Those who carry such a voice that permeates your interior don’t have a simple image of you. You’re not some dense bland single object only to be stared at. They see your quirks, the peccadilloes that distinguish you and make you beautiful. You become distinguished from the rest and for a moment don’t need to feel alone. That faint whisper has reached you, to the core of you, smashing the cold walls of isolation you constructed for your own self-preservation. Only it never lasts. It’s momentary. A fleeting puff of cigar smoke, that at best, can only remain as a vague whir of memory.

If you’re fortunate, you’ll carry these memories for your brief time here, before you too disseminate into the cool air.

White Room

I spent most of the day in my room and only briefly went out for a cup of coffee and a sandwich. It’s a fairly good sized room for a single but it’s bare right now. The high white walls can feel entrapping. I have large windows but can’t open them. I’m not sure if they’re jammed or weren’t meant to be opened. Regardless, the air in my room is stuffy and stagnant. I do enjoy my solitude but spending too much time in this bare white room is beginning to make me into more of a madman. It’s the worse when I wake up and for the first few disoriented moments I can’t tell which way I’m facing. It’s just a white abyss. It’s not awful but it sure as hell isn’t pleasant: it’s purgatory.

It’s now night. I spent my whole hungover day lounging, masturbating, and reading The Sun Also Rises in my maddening white room. It’s strange to go a whole day without having at least a brief conversation. Limited human contact can make you numb. There are a few people I could contact but I don’t want to force interaction. Sometimes it’s best to sit alone and deal with yourself. It’s much harder than you would imagine. With constant accessibility to everyone (at any time) most people never have a moment alone. Even watching television or going on your computer gives the illusion of company. This is why I sometimes turn off my shit non-smart cell phone and put my laptop into a drawer, placing it out of sight. Communicative technology can be a social shackle. The responsibility of being in potential contact with everyone that I know at every moment of my life is too much a burden. I know I’m a lazy misanthropic sort of creature but it’s painful to always wear a social façade. There are days that I would rather spend alone feeling numb and blue than force a social situation that would be nothing more than meaningless chatter: retarded monkeys yammering on about absolutely nothing, only wasting air. At least when alone I can indulge in myself. I can masturbate until my dick is sore, have a few swigs of some moderately priced booze, and read all I want. My own vice filled paradise.

I’m now lying on my bed. The bed stand itself is flimsy and rocks whenever I hop onto it. It’s fairly high up but I don’t particularly mind. I previously tried to lower the mattress, as there are several varying notches that it can be adjusted to, but it wouldn’t budge. I eventually gave up, feeling too damn lazy and stopped caring.

Still lying on my bed, the lights are out. I can only see some glimmers of light from the courtyard outside. There’s about an inch and a half of space of remaining window that my large white blinds didn’t completely devour. I had an impulse to crawl out of bed and completely shut my blinds so that I can have a sense of total isolation but that bare inch and a half of window makes the night a bit more bearable. I’m already stuck with a perpetually racing mind and with such a condition lonesome nights that only follow lonesome days can make you a frightful combination of low and stressed.

I am someone who often prefers the night but there are times I would much rather have it be day. Nights can be fun or relaxing but it is often the nights, typically in the middle of the week, that can be outright cruel torture. After a monotonous uneventful day filled with generic movements, actions, and quickly forgotten conversations your night becomes all you have. But the night can be a worse time. In the day you’re remotely busy, surrounded by others, and trapped in the illusion of momentum and productivity. At night it’s only you. The illusion is gone and you’re only left with slow, quiet stagnation. And if you’re anything like me you’re damned with that anxiety-induced, racing mind that no thought or action can soothe. You can distract yourself with television or music and it often makes everything all right for a while. But it’s usually right when you lay down in your bed that it hits you. It rolls on you like a heavy wave, crushing you and sinking you low. An overwhelming weariness drowns you. You don’t even always need a reason; it’s only all your days and life catching up with you in your few moments of quiet solitude. You try and brush it off with reassuring thoughts but it never works. You’re only left weepy-eyed with your face pressed against a pillow while maybe clutching a second for some imaginary emotional support. The eyes sometimes water but they’re not crying. Rather, it’s a slow build up that after some time gently trickles across the crevice of your nose. It drips down the side of your face past the sloping lines of your lips becoming absorbed into the pillow that your face is currently mashed against.

Some nights are worse than others while some are unnoticed blurs fitting into the spectrum of your life. Eroding to forgotten moments and occurrences that you’ll probably never recollect. They are only the many passing instances that nonetheless equate to the creature that is you. Nights slip from us and pass to the recesses of our minds, at least during our days, until we’re alone again in our little white rooms where everything is silent and there’s only the abyss and you.