Friday, March 31, 2006

Delerium

I remain still as a statue and listen with an open mind and a dead heart. My mouth is dry and I can hear the approaching march... the inevitable advance of a million pin-prick wasp stings as the need to shoot-up begins to spread throughout my body.

The old man pulls an infinite slow-drag from his pipe, holds the smoke in his lungs as he stares upward at the night sky with haunted eyes, then exhales two long streams through his nose. His attention remains fixed on a distant heavenly object known only unto him as around us crickets chirp. His brows squint as though he is in engaged in thoughtful concentration - or cumbersome pain. His pupils swell and then shrink to the size of shimmering diamonds. I try to remain here in the moment but it's difficult. The old man's gnarled body is steadily disappearing as though I am being whisked away on a train at a great velocity and there he remains standing alone at the end of a barren tunnel. And the world is sleeping. A light breeze rustles the asphodel creating a swirling faux snowstorm of tiny white petals. Minutes turn into seconds as each moment is crystallized... morphing reality into dream.

Listening. Waiting.

Tiny beads of sweat begin to form on my brow. My blood rages with piercing fire and my veins throb for more junk. I’m in full-fledged fiend mode now. My smarting eyes are starting to tear but I continue to remain still. Behind my back my hands continue to clench and unclench keeping time with the rhythm of my jaw.

He slowly turns and meets my anxious, expectant stare.

“ So you do not fear death?”

I pause, careful to choose the correct words. “ I am already dead sir. I have no fears... except one.”

I’m stuck in his gaze, under his spell, as a struggling hare is trapped in a hunter’s snare. My blood is boiling and I blink several times to fight back tears. I work to remain in this realm but I’m slowly phasing in and out. I look down and my toes are shimmering mirages.

“ You are afraid she will forget?”

“ No. I am afraid she will walk past me never once looking up, and there I will be, in limbo, and my existence will have meant absolutely nothing.”

The old man looks away, snickers for a moment as though amused at a private joke. “ Right now your existence does in fact mean nothing. You are but a drop in the comprehensive ocean of men’s dealings... and you are a miserable fool.”

I swallow hard and with a defiant hiss I whisper:

“ Then so be it... this path I have chosen I will stumble.”

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

The Elysian Fields

Whenever I close my eyes I see it: an unmistakable, indelible image fixed in my crumbling memory. Even while awake and lucent it is undoubtedly there waiting for me like a lifeless shadow slumped in a dark corner as the firelight flickers and dances. And it shall forever remain until the day comes when I close my eyes for the last time and finally let go.

It is a place they call Elysium. I can only describe it as a land where the sun never sets nor rises, where it is eternally dusk and the sky is saturated with fantastic hues of red and gold. Rolling fields of billowy yellow grass strum the wind as leaves scatter like playful children whom yearn for winter to never arrive. They say on the outer edge of Elysium is an ancient, decrepid wall made of stone that spans endless miles in each direction. Beyond this wall lies the kingdom of Hades. Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter, rules Elysium with a heavy crown and her tears, tears shed while imprisoned away from her distant home, are the gray bricks that constitute this wall. If one were to stop and listen to the whispering wind one could hear the tormented drone of a million souls that lie on the other side whom all patiently wait for their beloved.

I have seen Elysium. With half-closed eyes and an empty, skeletal gaze I have seen this wall as the junk flowed into my heart. I have felt the cool breeze as the exquisite poison soothed my twitching body. I have heard the pleading cries in the dull stillness between sluggish, hollow beats.

Elysium beckons.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Patience

I miss you. I miss every nuance of you… wholly, brilliant, beautiful you. Do you remember how we’d spend every night laying in bed talking? You and I, we could do just that… talk… about whatever and it was never forced. Around you I could truly be me because you knew me and loved me and accepted me without conditions, every part of me: the good, the bad, and the scary.

Several weeks ago I overdosed on extasy.

Darkness enveloped me and for an instant I imagined myself in our bed asleep in your arms. Your haunting eyes pierced my self-erected, rusty armor and we spoke to each other. Somewhere far away you slept and we spoke. Astral projection. We met for a second as whispering ghosts and enveloped each other fusing as one flickering soul. The dark waters of the river Styx washed over us, beckoning us to stay forever selfishly in love and I wanted to stay with you so fucking bad. I held on so tight, I wouldn’t let go. I could feel you holding on to me right back.

I wouldn’t let you go.

Bright lights slowly materialized overhead and I found myself swathed in white linen with tubes jutting out of my arm. With a deep inhalation, unable to speak, I helplessly lay there as tears streamed down my face and my body convulsed with muffled, anguished sobs. Between the dull beeps of the hospital equipment, between those half-second infinite spaces abysmal half-truths, I could still hear us there in the dark.

...

I promise you if I die first I will patiently wait there for you.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Revisitation

I keep having these recurring dreams. Or rather, should I say, they’re different dreams cast in a wide array of different colors set in different places but they all share one common element... one continuous theme coiled tightly around these fitful dreams like a malicious tumor... you. It’s as though nothing ever happened between us and we are happily in love and everything in the world is so profoundly beautiful.

In my dream, you’re clean. Fuck, we both are. In my dream there are no secrets.

And then I wake up and inevitably wish I was dead so somehow my dream would continue.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I don’t regret yesterday, only tomorrow and today. I cannot stand the thought of spending another second without you. And I know you feel the exact same way. I heard it from someone who heard it from someone else. I felt it too, across the expanse.

Whenever I sit alone on my porch, smoking a Lucky Strike, I carefully watch the city lights. Every night I look for a sign.

“Do you know why the lights twinkle the way they do?”

“Is it the smog?” You curiously ask in your cute Russian accent.

“No, it’s not the smog.”

We can’t be together because it is impossible. I’ve been told by people who care that if I care enough I can make the impossible possible. Perhaps I can but I won’t. I won’t because I am afraid. I’m scared shitless. The sky is falling and the bogeyman is hiding in the closet and you’ve changed. We both have. I left you because of what you became and now, well... I'm a joke.

My heart is black as hell is cold.

“So why do the lights twinkle?!” You persist, interrupting my train of thought.

“Tuzik, what causes the lights to twinkle is people throughout the entire city either turning their lights on or turning their lights off,” I quietly explain.


I carefully watch the city lights. Every night I look for a sign that will never appear.

Yet I continue to search.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

You

I absently stir my glass. It's a conditioned reflex. I have to keep my hands constantly moving these days. I have to keep doing... stuff. Whether it be smoking a cigarette, fumbling with my collar, or toying with my cell phone, I have to stay busy. It's an obsession now - one of many. The busier I stay, the better I'm able to forget... even if it's momentarily.

Then there's the drugs. Rusty heroin needles sliding into scabby veins whisper into my ears promising a release from the pain. A release from hallucinogenic, haunted memories dating back to a much happier time I long ago tried to bury in the ground and forget.

yesterday... all my troubles seemed so far away

It's not easy. To have stupidly walked from true love like a fucking scared-shitless asshole. I tell myself we'll see each other again after we die. And perhaps we will, that is...

if you'll take me.