Blood on the Print

I used to write a plenty and in full color. Sometime a bit purple, one may say, but nonetheless words hit the page in a loud Jackson Pollock like way. Recently then have been deflecting off screens, notepads, journals, and sticky notes like a limp dick failing to find a hole. I wouldn't call it writers block, but more - a writer in peril. If I didn't write something today, I felt I would die. Not in a heart stopping, brain-aneurism way, but in a life-changing, "shit my life is too uninteresting to talk about" way. I'm trying to locate the paradigm shift that slit the wrist of my creative writing prowess...if i can be so vain. When did the blade clip the vein that let the words bleed out of my mind and drift
aimlessly into the abyss?

The search didn't last long. My last entry was August 2014. That same month I moved into an apartment with my girlfriend. I spend a lot of time alone, but NONE of it feels alone. I am completely suffocated without being at all surrounded for the majority of the day. If I was Hemingway with Gellhorn I'd be balls deep in a bottle of scotch writing the next greatest novel about a post Paris fishing trip. Instead I'm saving sips for the sober me and looking for typewriters online, believing that a vintage tool may be enough to erect a sentence from my diabolical mind. Even now, as I type, the words feel foreign, and I am yearning for a thesaurus becoming duplicitous to my old self. Is it gone? Has this thing that has since long been a part of me leaped from my bedroom window in search of a better home?

I have tried drinking which leads to blackouts, lack of productivity, and emotional distress. I've tried Dylan but his songs make no sense. I've tried the Beatles and all I can taste is cliche. Jim Morrison makes me cry and Hunter Thompson makes me envious...Fitzgerald makes me all of the above. I read a little less since the print volume creates a visceral hate and a cramp in my hand for the lack of typing exercise. I've been working out but I'd rather be thin and frail and published than strong, full, and concealed.

Til' I figure it out I'll just keep peeling off the skin to find leftover remains of an all too distant past.

Smoking Gun

Evil is replaced by the beauty that remains

I shift my paradigm on a drop of a dime

Just to rewind the time but I’m a second too late

She lifts her harm grasps her hand around the barrel,

Finger on the trigger and she states:

Forgive me heavenly father, for I have misbehaved

I didn’t love him, and I truly wanted to wait

But as the world rotates a little faster, each and every day

I lost touch of its orbit and he made be pay

________________________________________________

Paralyzed by indecision; to catch the bullet

Planned for incision to block out her vision

Or, watch a beautiful creature fall before the ashes

As her body crashed emotionless before my feet

_________________________________________________

Her arm tightens up and her bottom lip quivers

Believes that she’s a sinner so she proceeds to execute the endeavor

A single tear falls on the cracked rooftop, beaten down by rays of sun

Barren, cold, and futile, like a battle that cant be won

________________________________________________ 

Just an hour ago I was walking down the street

Morning coffee smile and the wind behind my feet

I tense my legs in runners pose, but my efforts are muffled

By the subtle motion of a finger stroke

__________________________________________________

Smoke drifts soddenly out of the barrel,

a heat wave rises even with the horizon

Another wasted life, that was sure to peril

Fallen victim to the darkness of the world in which we live in.

12 years old could barely ride her bike or date

Stole a gun from her step-father

The same one he uses against her on the night she was raped

Destitute

Its not that he didn't like her, or love or even. Its not that she didn't excite him in the public eye and in satin seclusion. It wasn't that she fought him too hard, or complimented him too lightly. It never was about the ups nor downs, the centripetal rounds. There were warm embraces, cuddled and muddled on sofas dressed for kings like veneers resting on the caps of already pristine teeth. Love is just love, a tired expression and feeling that has been felt by almost all for centuries past and centuries to come. It has become a saying more often than a feeling as common as the beggar in the city, as the rich on the beach.

It was about the need for her that didn't exist. There was nothing that he lacked, that she could provide. Nothing that he longed for that she could serve on a platter and make him whole. Sex was ever present in a world of sluts and feens. Love was often given with the swiftness of the hands of a thieves; lacking no warmth of pillows or brightness in daisies. Never is it enough. The love glass full but the envy and longing for destitution bounces off the water like oil. The divide becomes ever more present as the two liquids cling to their ying-yang desire. Love is not needed from a man who has it all, nor is anything at all.

Unless there is something. Unless she can dive through the capsule filled with beaded medicine and find the missing ingredient to calm his senses and deliver him from hopelessness. Because the man who has everything is only blind to those things still obscured, those items unknown. Can she paint him a picture of a world that he cannot view? Can she shed light onto a surface that has since birth been masked?

A writer once told me that a relationship is over as soon as you start thinking about the first time you met and look back at "it" as a better time. Over time you realize that this person has nothing you need, and without that in this crazy world, why hold on? We move along through life, love, and existence looking to achieve a goal which starts with a desire. Once the desire is obtained, you continue on until the well is dry - then onto the next until there are 1million broken hearts and a thirsty world.

Sal the Great

Sal was a complex man with a twisted heart. He hated to love but yearned for the loving of others. His dorian gray self portrait never aged but faded slowly like a tattoo exposed to equator sun. The lines blur and the human traits drip like melted gold to a flat expressionless surface.

Always he lied, void of benevolence but with fortitude. Only in times of deceit did he yield to fear and weakness, rarely allowing these wounds to be exposed. "Poor lonely Sal," the city folks would say. While he roamed aimlessly drink in hand, smoke in mouth and emotions on sleeve, chatter arose. "Why this man with all this money, all this beauty and courage alas, sit like stone to pass the time pouring poising in his veins? His loft sits high above the town, and the marble floors reflect a prism of color through the stain glass windows. There is a notion of omnipotence that stems down from above, casting shadows over the everyday worker bees.

If they would go visit Sal as some ill-informed ladies and men would, they would find that the exterior masked the blank canvas within. 1700 sq. feet of echoing space perfectly empty with a bed, a light, and a water-filled row machine. The loft was like a prison to exist in but not truly live. There was no food, no paintings, no character..only a persistent lack of warmth. The bathroom stood only to expect the company of the mist that collects against the crystal swinging doors and porcelain sink. Soap bottles were for one time us,e like a hotel. Clarissa, his maid, would throw them away daily regardless if they were used or not.

The stoic beams that hold up the ceiling from falling down around Sal sit polished and unwavering... even with the tension he carries on his shoulders similar to the chain whipping water on his exercising machine. This is a tomb, a sarcophagus for all to see and none to cherish. The only guests are short time lovers. Sal did not discriminate with sex. His latest companion was a 23-year-old student from Tufts Dental school. After spending a few nights together and becoming "comfortable," Sal allowed him to perform dental procedures on him naked. It was a sort of oral fixation that had multiple facets. But his guests came and went. He often kept them in his life long enough to where they wanted to stay. When and only when he felt the pull of their gentle intentions he would release them back to the wild like a guppy fish - once in a catered-for bowl, then back to the pond of mildew, scum and vultures. This was in fact for the best because Sal was the ultimate vulture - feeding off the nectar dripping from hopelessly romantic pores.

When does the charade stop? Why had it begun? Finding the end is like looking through the back end of binoculars, squinting to find a point without a focus. Sal blames his past and curses his future as a priest who molests children and expects gods forgiveness - fruitless hope.

Tender is the heart that bleeds the slowest
Emptying its cells to spread amongst the frozen floor
Puddled and muddled, thick and mundane
Slow river drift into a thin dark cul-de-sac
Minutes keep ticking like an automatic watch
Never let go, and always worn
Eventually its stops when the tender heart ceases to beat
The great man is alone without time

When he wakes after a conquest there is a moment of panic as he searches for some semblance of wholesomeness. He reaches for the white pills in the transparent orange bottle, flushing them down with alka seltzer or wine. She or he disappears with the coming of the morning sun and the routine begins again. There is no love lost or love gained. There is only a feel of momentary completeness derived form the high of sex and passion...then repressed with innate flight mechanisms cursing through his loins.

Back to the hunt for survival with an empty slate.

Sal the sociopath, Sal the emotioness? Sal the Great.

Envy

Sing soft into the open window as if anyone cared to look or listen.
Part lips like a Mary to her shepherd who steals love from those with no faith
Only to break bread with a supposed answer
If they hear you, would it matter? Would your world change for the better?

Or worse, you go coarse as a lioness calling for a mate in an uninhabited jungle
The trees beckon for the crying to stop, lo and behold the will for love.
Or is it sex so violently cursing through the veins with pain
A virtueless struggle, and impassible feening.

Saddened, but happy because the bruises they show, yearning for those to notice.
Sympathy comes from weaker friends or foes who care not of your healing
but that you were in pain before them. And there they stood;
omnipotent and pretty, like a shadow there to be the healer

The giver the feeler the wanted and the needed, roles of the winning
Oh how life feels on the top, but tread carefully as the water is thin and gravity prevails.
Just as the greed hits the singer longing for an audience
The saved become well and healer becomes unwanteddesired.

So they look for a path to break down the branches, tear up the leaves
Because a life not stranded, no stockholm syndrome, leaves them
Feening for the feeling of the needing and the stealing;
of hearts that feed your cold lungs the air they need to breath and live.