beatific vision

Limbo,a quiet place where souls who neither sinned in life nor worked any good to speak of, and whom were rejected by heaven, are cast to walk for all eternity. On the banks of the river Styx they circle. Flickering souls, gray and grainy. No pain. No anger. No joy. Simply... numb. They watch, from dark sockets, the scores of screeching throngs forced to board Charon's vessel, and then carried away to be judged and sentenced by Minos, the black King of Crete.

Limbo in it's grotesque magnificence, has given me shelter. I sit here alone in the dark and I weep for the unbaptized babies. I watch. I see what they see, I feel what they feel - I share their nothingness. I share their hopelessness. It is this nothingness, this nonexistence, we all felt in life. It is this lack of ambition, this passivity, this self-induced detachment from the world, which caused Heaven to turn it's back on us. Man turned it's back on us. You turned your back on me. You turned and walked the fuck away.

And like a scared shitless impotent asshole, I did nothing. 

And so I turned to the synthetic. I retracted, instead embracing a squalid existence on the outer fringes of the world. The bottle. Extacy. Painkillers. And then ultimately heroin. The extacy and the agony. Do you remember the night you looked into my eyes and told me, with certainty, that I was your soul mate? Melodic vocal trance carrying us high above the clouds, music drifting in and out of our ears like pirouetting huka smoke. There we were above it all and as we drifted along we could see our unborn children at play down below: a boy and a girl. And there we were, you and I, hand in hand, forever in love, growing old. Never separated except by death, and then reunited again in the next life - if we were lucky to find one another again.

And it is here in limbo where I wait. Although it stopped beating long ago, there resides in my heart the tiniest flame barely flickering. A belief... that the vision we shared was in fact not a lie. I wait for you. I wait for redemption. I wait for an inception. I await finality.

empty beach

I feel you honey. I see you. I taste you. Through the hollow stillness I reach out my hand and gently press my fingers against yours. Elysium greets us with the old familiar smell of swirling white asphodel. The wind tickles the trees and scatters the playful leaves. I open my eyes and look down at my arms. In this dream the skin is smooth, no scars.

In this dream there are no scars.

I think of the past - a time before you. When I was a little boy my grandparents would often warn me to be wary of the undertow. Just a little shit in a white sun hat, colorful swim trunks, beach pail and shovel hunting for sand crabs. They said to be mindful of the undertow as it would sweep me away and dump me out into the open ocean. Unfortunately as I grew up I worried about it less and less. In time, I let the waves crash over me and the tide whisked me away. Tumbling and thrashing unable to tell down from up, unable to discern right from wrong, helpless to breath on my own accord I lost sight of the shoreline long ago and now I'm alone in the dark as below me loom ominous shadows.

And so I came to drown in a raging sea of you.

I take a drag from an American Spirit and gaze out across the city, half-shut eyes absorbing the dazzling tableaux of lights and life. I lift the stick to my lips and fill my lungs with swirling wizard smoke. Quiet. Just the soft hum of the city at night and if I listen closer I can hear the feint drone of voices behind a far off wall. Voices. And I wish I knew what they say. I watch the city lights. Every night I look for a sign that will most likely never come. I hope to hear a voice I am sure I will never again hear. I hold on to these fading memories so dear which crumble before me like Pompeiian statues for I know in Heaven all I will have are these memories and foolish dreams. I tumble, twist, and turn in this widening gyre. Here is my soul exposed, and the wounds throb and peel.

A lifetime of here I am still caught in the undertow.

And I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad.
The dreams in which I'm dying
are the best I've ever had.

redemption?

He smiles at me through broken teeth and tells me what I want to hear. What I need to hear. Forgotten thoughts scatter before me like autumn leaves with a soft "shhhhhh" and a crackle. I sigh and sit back closing my eyes to the feeling I yearn to forget. I tell him, with a soft whisper, to go away and leave me alone. Alone with my lack of thoughts and the quiet hum in the back of my head with which silence marks her arrival with.

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream.
To dream and dream.

To dream and dream and never awake for fear of facing this pain and regret he so longs to forever forget. Scared shitless selfish coward fuck hiding in the shadows for he knows the sun will burst him into flame and his ashes lost into the wind, condemned to obscurity. Lost and never found. So he hides, lurks rather, in a back room cheap motel filthy bedroom rented out by the hour. And perhaps he welcomes death, sweet Elysium beckons, because he knows behind the wall so far away, she waits.

Auld Lang Sin

Monday bleak New Year, every day is a new year nowadays, junk hang-over wrapped in a blanket of loneliness – a piss stained shroud of Turin. I eat cold soup from a tin can, a freebie swiped from the grocery shelf and tucked into a coat. Cold soup and cigarettes and junk fuel me, it keeps me going, until tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, always thinking about the next high, bittersweet high the next great escape. Tomorrow is another sweet New Years day. Another dismal debacle marked by never-ending failure and never-ending fucking regret and broken promises and shattered resolutions. There once was a time when I intended to make things right. I looked to the future with hope and optimism as strength and confidence oozed out of my pores like puss from a zit. But that was yesterday.

“While dreaming I see only you and me… “

I can’t recognize myself anymore. It’s 3 am and the shadow people keep speaking to me. They ask, they relentlessly ask, what happened? Where did things go wrong? When will things go right? The room shakes and I reach out and grab the sink and puke a gallon of cold pea soup and booze into the toilet. I wipe my mouth and let out a scream of tormented frustration. My arms feel so numb I wish I could cut them off – cut them right fucking off - but if I did that I couldn’t shoot up. Or perhaps I could inject the poison right into my eyeball? Fuck, kill me if I ever get to that point. I sit back and close my eyes resting my head against the peeling sheetrock so I may quietly dream but the stench of shit and rotten soup firmly anchors me to this plane. I can hear the whispers and soft scuttling of cockroaches deep within the walls and I think I see the ghost of you pass by, a fleeting shadow with sad eyes, but then like that… you are gone.

Moments Frozen

Yesterday slips through my fingers and is carried away by the wind to a place I can only surmise is happier than here. Here. Here I sit in an empty room on a piss stained mattress staring off into oblivion as poison flows through my veins. Here I sit with numb calloused lips burnt and quivering as my eyes roll back into my head trapped in the rapture - eyes half closed like an angel in a Caravaggio.

Gott weiss ich will kein Engel sein.

I’m not an angel, God would never take me. I’m not an angel, but I have fallen from considerable heights into the deepest abysmal depths. I live for the high and nothing more. I am gebbeth. Hollow. Dead.

Silver Bells

Through the thick fog of falling snow I see Christmas lights blinking on and off accented with humming neon. Skid-row wino dive-bar hotspot beckoning me like a lighthouse steering a mariner away from the jagged rocks into a calm harbor, so does the drink take me away from here, from hustling bustling Christmas caroling and consumerism, into a dark quiet place where I can be alone with my pain. It’s frightfully cold and I feel the frigid metal of a nine millimeter tucked squarely into my waistband burn and sear my flesh, but I carry it anyways “just in case.” I’m more paranoid these days, constantly looking behind me and inspecting dark corners searching for the bogeyman. Or maybe it’s the crystal and lack of sleep playing shrewd tricks with my brain.

It’s been four years now, four Christmas’s long ago, you and I decided to end it - as the quiet snow and wind and heroin whispered my name beckoning me outside into their nether-realm and away from your warm bed. Four Christmas’s ago I walked away like a scared shitless asshole and never looked back because I was proud and inhumanly selfish. So there’s nothing left now but a rail-thin mass of putrid flesh with rotten teeth and purple arms, where once there was... something. What remains now is an empty shit-vessel hopeless nothing: fucking, dying, and frying.

And you may not see it but I wear a preposterous chain, twisting and winding, which I continue to build link by link and yard by yard every step I take and every second I breathe.

Hell is cold and I pull up a stool next to Judas Iscariot and order a shot of whiskey… and “keep them coming” cause it’s Christmas and an excuse to get fucked up cause it’s but once a year and I’m here to spread some Christmas good cheer.

Hypothetical

Hello?

Hey, how are you?

Fine. um… who is this?

It’s me. How have you been?

….

Are you there?

Yeah, I am.

Look, I understand if you don’t want to talk.

No, don’t hang up! Yes. I want to talk.

Are you sure?

No, I really want to talk. How are you?

Good.

To be completely honest with you I never thought I’d speak to you again.

….

I don’t know what to say… well, I do, I’ve rehearsed this moment hundreds of times and now it’s happening… and I don’t know what to even say.

You don’t have to say anything, just speak.

I miss you.

Can I ask you a question?

Yes, anything.

Do you think things could ever be the same between us… the way they were?

I like to think that in a perfect world they could…

And I know you ardently believe this world is extremely flawed and imperfect.

…

Why aren’t you saying anything?

Well, I uh….

I know you’re still using.

…

Say something.

I… I can’t tell you what it is you need to hear.

So there it is. My undoing is your undoing is our undoing.

No, It’s not that easy.

I know, believe me I know honey. But it’s all written out in black and white and I…

What?

It’s just I wish I would have called you tonight and you would have told me something different.

le perdu

Short days turn into long nights and I notice the birds no longer sing, their voices frozen in time. I spend every morning nowadays sitting on the patio shivering wrapped in an old blanket smoking cigarette after cigarette, each drag accompanied by the nervous clink of a zippo. I watch the world awaken as the nine-to-fivers scrape their cars and shake snow off their umbrellas and I look east and see our beloved mountains rising into heaven like the tower of Babel. Christ my arm hurts, I think I see the beginnings of gangrene. I hear your soothing whispers and they are reassuring. I can also feel the soft touch of your hand against mine as a torrent of realer than real memories wash over me and, predictably, I get swept away in the undertow. Old and cold. Dead and alone.

I need you now more than I ever have. More than I need this poison or the air I breath, or the feel of sunshine on my face.

If there is... heaven, I imagine it would be a successive series of images flitting across the screen, each beautiful moment we ever spent together flickering by in grainy black and white to a wonderful soundtrack complete with an orchestra. A soundtrack that sounds ancient and old and grand and cracked, crackling and distorted, as though broadcast across millions and millions of miles of wire... we're both holding cups half a world away from each other... and I suddenly realize this isn't heaven but hell. It's now. Here I sit covered in snow shaking from withdrawals staring at the mountain, desolation peak, rising before me. Here I sit, front row center, next to Judas Iscariot, and hell is cold and I keep getting older and I'm still trying to figure out why it is I chose to fall.

Slave

Here I am, hiding in plain sight. Exposed, raw, and riddled with holes. Eyes closed. I watch you sleep a hundred miles away. I crouch here in the dark smoking bubbling puddles - metallic rain clouds - so I can breathe as my chest caves and expands and shivers like a fish surrounded by air and still suffocating.

" So why do you always wear those ridiculous glasses?" He nods and waves his hand with a flourish.

" Ridiculous, how?"

" Large, they're large. Like an insect. And you always wear that black fedora... and those eccentric clothes, so old fashioned. like you're..."

" ... a traveler from another time?"

"Yeah, like a traveler."

" If you have to know," I mutter in a tired voice, " I wear this hat because I'm trying to blot out the sun. At any moment I could burst into flame and then I wouldn't be able to get high anymore and you'd lose a customer."

" Sun? It rains every single day here."

I look at the window, not out but at, at the thin blanket of drops. I watch them trickle into each other and merge and then slide out of sight. I weakly reach out my hand and press my fingers against the glass and outline their trails. I remember how I used to outline the shadows on your body as we'd lay in bed shrouded in growing dusk. Trails that would lead into other trails. Ends becoming beginnings becoming ends.

I turn and try to focus, " We all wear masks. Sometimes we wear our pain... we exploit it. Sometimes we expose our pain, our secrets, and this serves as an incredible mask. It's a diversion. People are stunned when they see someone like me but never ask what it is I'm hiding. And I prefer things this way."

" I asked."

I look into his eyes, " No, you didn't. I volunteered."

He smirks as he tosses the baggy onto my lap. " Fair enough, are you going to shoot up here?"

" If you don't mind, I'll be quick."

solstice

I turn up my collar and walk on as billowy winds race past in gleeful delight. Each step is punctuated by a hollow crunch and my feet grow brittle and numb as wet socks freeze-dry and liquefy throbbing toes. The streets are empty and I feel like the last person on earth - a lone survivor here in a nuclear winter. And I’m fine with it, I really am. I pause mid-stride and blow into my hands and kick the curb. It’s so cold and I’m so alone. I watch my breath and marvel in the tormented wind-dance, twisting and turning, of the never-ending onslaught of snowflakes waltzing down like confetti. Except… I haven’t won any prizes. I’m not the millionth shopper. And I didn’t hit the lotto.

The streets are empty and I feel so horribly alone. I look behind me and notice my tracks have blown over as though I never existed. And perhaps I never did. Perhaps I’m still in bed staring at the ceiling like a dead man counting cracks and cobwebs patiently waiting for Elysium as sloppy junk creeps up my arm, awake but lost in dream. Perhaps I’m passed out somewhere on skid row with a brown paper bag cradled under one arm. Or perhaps it’s summertime and you’re clean - we both are, and you and I are gazing into each others eyes and you’re telling me you can see our unborn children. And perhaps…I’m fine with it, or perhaps I’m not… as I twist and turn and slip deeper down through the widening gyre alone in the company of happy snowflakes.

To share this poison

It's funny, I think I've escaped you. Life plods on and I march in time to the dry beat, on and on. Seconds into hours into months and not a peep - a full night's rest and not a wink. No traces of this haunting pain and regret I've come to know so well. There will be mornings when I awaken and nary a moment passes I don't think of you but when I do it's a passing afterthought, like asking myself whether I forgot to turn off the coffee pot or brush my teeth.

Then, predictably, you come... blown in with the snow. I lay in bed and hear the hollow thumps and shrill whistles marking your arrival.

“If I said I want you back I'd be a liar...”

I don't know if you know this but you control me like a ningyō. You tell a story through my tears so sad and tragic. I've literally lost control of my own self, now guided by ghosts. Demons dwell in this hollow corpse and devil's are left to their own devices void of exorcism. I am empty and dead. A plastinate splayed on an examiners table exposed for all to see. I am a monstrosity even Mary Shelly couldn't have imagined in opium bleached dreams. I am a rickety Bunraku hollow man, it's true, and you control me with deafening skill and precision as the needle slides into a scabby vein. You pull back on the plunger as a swirling cloud of red dissipates. Tears well up in blank eyes and regret and hate and shame flick over in succession like rapid light-flared graffiti portraits.

It is you that guides my hand. I blame you because I am a fucking scared-shitless coward.

I no longer search. I have given up the search and now I can only wait. Either for death or salvation or damnation, I don't know, whomever finds me first. I wait alone here for you wrapped in a dirty torn blanket. I do not move. Here I lie with a skeleton smile and in my veins flow poison, and I am thankful for this poison as it continues these sweet dreams so absent of you.

And I know it is only temporary.

Incorruptible

He turns and faces me as he bends over and lights a decrepit oil lantern. The rising flame within illuminates his expressionless eyes like distant stars you would only see where it is most dark, secluded, and wild - where there is no influence of men.

" So, are you ready to see her?" He asks with a slight grin. His gold tooth flickering ominously from somewhere deep within the shadowy folds of his leathery face.

" I... I suppose I am." I squeak, suddenly losing my voice as well as my nerve.

" Are you sure about this?" He presses, revealing annoyance.

I check my pocket watch, fumble with the buttons on my vest, and then mutter something under my breath about wasting time. I bravely take a step toward the door, which is crafted of dark, polished oak and accented in what appears to be gold-leaf. I fold my arms and defiantly turn and face him.

" Well, what are we waiting for?" I hiss, motioning toward the door.

" Very well."

Sweat trickles down my sides and my hands begin to uncontrollably shake as I watch him slide the topmost surface bolt... then the two on the bottom.... then another closer to the top. The vacant room is completely silent except for a series of sharp clicks and metallic scrapes as he unlatches the mess of bolts and various locking mechanisms in what seems to be a very specific order known only unto him - some of which appear to be modern in design and others, ancient and queer in make. I stand behind him remaining quiet and not asking any questions fearful of distracting him from the task at hand.

My eyes nervously dart to the bottom of the door. Bright light streams in through the crack, almost struggling to escape. For a second I wonder if this door leads to the outside but then I quickly remember it is almost two o'clock in the morn and this is all but impossible. But for a moment, I truly believe this door, which lies in the deepest recesses of this labrynthian cathedral, does in fact lead to the outside world and that the entire night had come and went. I attribute this mistaken sense of surety, my ardent belief in this delusional fabrication, to my delirious state. Perhaps a result of lack of sleep, but far more probable, a dangerous mixture of opium, fatigue, and gut-wrenching anticipation. The imagination can play strange tricks when you are in such an altered, distressed state of mind.

My eyes travel up to his turned back. At last I see his gnarled hand reach for the handle. I feel my pupils dilate as a hot wave washes over my body. My lips begins to tremble. I silently count to myself... 1, 2, 3, 4... I must remain strong. I have waited for this moment much too long and I mustn't fail. I've travelled preposterous distances and endured unimaginable hardship to finally arrive to this "arcane sanctuary" - this pandemonium fortress which lies deep within an uncharted Eastern European forest only gypsies dare to claim.

I suddenly realize that this is undoubtedly my own personal moment of reckoning, and here I stand, precariously perched on the very edge of sanity itself. Here I stand, mere yards away from a relic that has remained hidden from the eyes of men, unaltered and undefiled, for almost a millenia... the only barrier now separating us an old door and a crooked contemptible man. And I realize, I will soon taste her sweet lips and lie down next to her, in a bed of white satin immersed in her flowery scent.

I also realize it is time to act, no words, as I slowly unbutton my vest and reach for my derringer.

Chernobyl Autumn

The days grow shorter and the nights longer. It is coat weather now. Dead leaves blanket the ground and chill winds pierce my soul like a dagger sliding between a heavy set of ribs. Once upon a time I loved all of this, these changes, as I loved to breathe. As I loved to live. As I loved you. We’d spend these cool nights together hand in hand exploring the streets admiring the myriad of warm hues painstakingly brushed on every "happy" tree. You'd tell me stories from when you were a little girl growing up in Moscow. And I'd listen savoring every word as though each word were some chocolate-coated delicacy. Those same trees have now lost their brilliant luster, color, and feeling. Now autumn is nothing more to me than a series of monotonous months spent alone in quiet contemplation and solitude; in hibernation. I walk the streets alone now in the vain hope I may somehow clear my head, but it grows intolerably cold and everywhere I turn I see you. I keep catching glimpses in my peripheral vision of you playfully tossing leaves at me resplendent in your mittens and matching stocking cap. I can see my breath and in my breath I see your crooked smile. And if I pause and carefully watch, the inevitable march of approaching frost.

I need a drink – a momentary fix. I duck into a dive bar, any dive bar… a hole in the wall corner joint where “everybody knows your name.” The place is dark and empty and the jukebox belts out a sad tune. I pull up a stool and instruct the barkeep to bring me whiskey and keep it coming. I lose track of time and space as I sit and drink. I crawl into my memories; a dank fox-hole buried six feet down in freezing ground. I need this, the drink, so I may dream. Because it is when we dream, we may sojourn with the dead. When I sleep, everything remains somehow unchanged and homeostatic between us and you’re clean, fuck, we both are, so young and full of life. See, the reason I shoot up or hit the bottle is so I may remain forever in this dream… in this deep, deep sleep, even while I am awake. And maybe I’m a fucking coward for choosing to do this, too afraid to deal with life or play the shitty hand fate has dealt me, but it is what it is and I am who I am.

And we are what we always were, frozen in time. So blissfully happy and in love…

You know, when I was young I remember I’d stand in the bathroom with the lights out in the blacker than black, staring intently into the mirror waiting… waiting for a face to materialize, a ghost perhaps, or bloody Mary queen of Scots. As I sit in this quiet bar, twenty years later, blankly staring at flashing neon, wrapped in my darkness, I still patiently wait, but now I wait for your face only so I may reach out and caress your black hair just once…

I slam shot after shot of whiskey. Every shot leads me one step closer to oblivion. I hear a voice beckon me across the expansive ocean of time… a feint whisper behind a crumbling wall somewhere in far-off Elysium. I drift ever closer. And I feel the wheat briskly brush against my thigh... closer. And underneath my tongue lies a coin of copper so I may pay Charon his fare.

Fables

It is said, when you walk the line separating the land of the living and the land of the dead, it will bring you closer to both. Soldiers, in war, for example, will tell you that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life. After a hairy firefight, when the earth is calm and still and soiled with blood, the hills come alive. The trees whisper and sing along with the wind. The senses are heightened. More acute. And at the same time they are numb. Deadened. Dulled.

Junkies will tell you a similar tale. After you od... after the adrenaline shot has run it's course through your veins into your heart... after you've been yanked back away from the light... in the static calm aftermath as you're lying in your bed, you notice things you normally wouldn't. The smell of hospital food as the cart passes your room. The squeaky wheel in need of oiling. Quiet conversation. Conversation you can almost see as well as hear... like peering at a cloud of smoke billowing in under the door - or perhaps this cloud is death letting himself out.

I often ask myself why I choose to leave my thoughts here... why I continuously return to this barren field and piss on this same skeletal tree over and over again. Why I choose to live and relive and relive these emotions I, at the same time, so ardently try so hard to lock away. I don't tell stories, it is what it is. It is what actually happened. My version. My blurred reality. A love story. A tragedy. A specific series of events that now, as my memories fade and dusk approaches and ominous shadows fill in the fathomless gaps that remain where hope and optimism once dwelled, distance me from what I once was and tether me to what I have become. And what's the point?

Often a true love story has no point. Or else the point doesn't hit you until years later, in your sleep, and you wake up, turn on your computer, and write it all out. Put it all out on the line, every nuance, every minute detail, jotting it all down like a dream journal except these are broken dreams. And when you get to the end you sit for a long time staring at the blinking cursor on the white screen. You close your eyes and when you open them up again you find you've forgotten. Love is dead. And you wonder to yourself: Christ, what IS the point? No point, but what you said needed to be said so you press save, undress, and return to bed. You lay in bed and hear the breeze rustle the wind chime and cars creep by with crackling tires and the faint thump of music and you realize the moral of the story lies therein. It is buried within the silence of the night, or the white-noise hum deep underground where the dead slumber.

It is discovered... or perhaps discovers us... when we choose to walk the line that separates the two realms.

Kraken

A single echo resonates through the canyons of my memories like a slow-motion cloud of thick debris - a latter day angel of death lurching through gray still-life Manhattan streets - a beast, marked with a six. I grasp at these echoes, these memories... dry memories of you, as a dying old man sifts through faded black and white photographs – still images of long-dead faces. Beautiful moments frozen in time, Pompeii statues on the verge of dust, perpetually re-enacted for a one-man audience to see. However, as the days, years, and decades slip by; as actors forget their lines, stages fall apart, and paint peels away - so does the performance transform into a perverted hollow mockery of itself.

Thus is the story of my love. Thus is the fate of joy.

I call out to you again and again and again and my voice grows hoarse. I just don’t know how much longer I can sustain. It’s so cold. And my lifeboat is cruelly tossed about the reckless waves. However, if I pause and listen carefully, above the perpetual torrent of cascading rains, I can hear it… the tremendous rumble, the ragged breathing, of the beast that lives beneath. I hear him stirring - after several millennia, he has awakened from his fitful sleep.

“ And if I said I want you back I’d be a liar.
There’s nothing left of us to long for anymore.
But inside the ashes burn in endless fire.
And I can’t help reaching out forever more.”

Stripped

So many yesterdays shrouded in shadow. The camera obscures the past filtering out all pain and suffering thus revealing a forlorn distant happiness that wraps around me tightly like a suffocating blanket… and it only leads to more pain ironically. It precludes yet even more suffering and more emptiness… and so it goes. Every day is a death. Every night a rebirth - only to face yet another lifetime chained to a rock near the crashing sea as vultures feast on exposed innards.

A friend of mine told me we need this hurt… that we should embrace it. Because the day we forget the past is the day we no longer mourn for those departed, dead, alive, or both… The day we stop is the day we cease to honor these whispering ghosts whom dwell between the tiny spaces between our eyelids in the dreamy, shadowy half-light.

It is the day we no longer leave flowers on silent graves.

And lately it seems as though I spend more time in dream - with my soul wandering ever deeper into the wilderness, as I sit before this screen watching the snowfall - desperately searching of you. I can hear your cries and I know you're out there, like me, scanning the skyline waiting for a sign that will probably never come. I listen and try to discern what you say, above the chaotic din of broken souls who wash about alongside us in the endless pool Mnemosyne, here where Acheron and Cocytus meet… countless dry, dead souls.

This is my hurt.

This is my paradigm... my path. This is the endless rollercoaster I ride on the diabolical Moebius fire-dragon - an endless series of great peaks and deep valleys, with no destination, nor no end, ever in sight. Just the next score.

And all I can ask… or plead… is that you please never stop searching for me.

The Beaches at Avernus

Many people believe destiny is a fixed timeline of events that is inevitable and unchangeable. Try as we might, sorrow and pain is inescapable. Some have tried, only to fail. Oedipus, MacBeth, Tess… all unable to outmaneuver fate and ultimately, resigned to tragic loss.

Resignation - salty seas and distant shores far, far away from here. Black waves, like a million fingers, claw white sand and there they lie devoid of all hope, life, and meaning: stinking masses of rotting flesh. Once a king, now… nothing.

And I sit upon a broken throne and upon my brow a broken crown and in my heart so many broken vows.

"Why did the whales beach? Did they do it for your benefit? Did you call them?"

Feint echoes of you resonate through the hollow caverns of my soul. They scatter and dissipate like golden-brown leaves heralding the onset of winter. Laughter now a distant memory, a myth told around a dwindling fire that may or may not have actually happened a long, long time ago in a more innocent time.

I miss you. I need you. I am dead here without you. Like your whales, I have given up. I have resigned to my fate… every time the needle punctures a vein, I hover ever closer to those distant shores. The dying songs of my brethren, like Ulysses' sirens, fill my ears and blind my thoughts.

There is only one promise left, and I remain steadfast to my word as a mariner guided by the stars: when I die I will wait here for you alone in darkness. It is here I grieve.

Manis Eterne

Another gray morning sans sunshine or the chirping of birds. I awaken, as I do every morning, to an empty spot beside me in my… our… bed. Sometimes I lie still in the dull dawn and I think I can vaguely smell the sweet scent of your hair. Perhaps this is a hallucinogenic after-effect carried over from my dreams, for every night it seems, I dream of you and us and the way things “were.” I listen to old DJ Mixes you and I used to love. Melodic vocal trance and every song is so sad and full of regret and sorrow and the sharp pain of yesterday pervades my quiet reverie. Every day it seems my memories of you fade like an image ingrained on an old black and white photograph exposed to the sun and rain. Exposed to ruin.

and only pain remains.

I see a beach and beyond the horizon I see gray water. I can hear the monotonous, eternal break of surf and the distant cadence of birds. I can feel the red sand underneath my feet and between my toes. The uncertain sun hides behind a heavy blanket of clouds and the land is cast in surreal shadows bathed in tears. Fleeting specters jump in and out of view retreating back to their damnable gateways… wormholes joining this land to the next. A chasm connecting the land of the living to the land of the dead. O’how I long to leap into the quiet nether realms and disappear and have all memory of my pitiful existence wiped away from existence as the balmy waters sweep away my fleeting words I dedicate to you carved in blood-red sand.

I can hear the whispering, all I need to do is stop and listen. All I need to do is press my ear against the stone wall and I hear the voices. I concentrate. Somewhere amidst the chaotic cacophony of wailing words here as I kneel before this wailing wall I can hear it so distinctly and crystal clear. It is undeniable. You. One voice stands out in the countless drone of melancholy echo. I can hear you sing me the sweet lullaby you used to sing when I was sick and you’d stand guard by my bed defending me from the forsaken spirits waiting in the blacker then black ready to claim me.

Now how I wish I could join their morbid, unholy revelry. Every time I shoot up. Every time I drive. Every time I die. All I need to do is simply let go.

And I want you not...
I need you not...
I'm dying...
Cause this is the saddest song I've got.

un futur imparfait

Memories loom before me through the darkness like a sea of translucent jelly-fish; a sweltering fog of tentacles - a billion tiny syringes rife with mind-numbingly lethal poison. I foolishly reach out, hesitate, and bring my hands safely to my sides, unable to act like some impotent fuck.

I absently stir my coffee. Silence except for the soft rhythmic “clink, clink” of the spoon ringing the sides of the cup like a church bell. “ I don’t know, I can’t seem to get my shit together.” I sharply inhale, rapidly shake two packets of sugar, tear the ends, and pour the sweet contents into my mug. I continue... “ Every day I think I wake up and I think I’m strong and then like a fragile house of cards, I’m reminded of what happened and predictably it all collapses around my ears again and again and again.”

My younger, stronger self sets down his spoon, pauses, carefully choosing his words in his mind. “ Are you good at math?”

“Yes, I suppose I am.”

He looks into my vacant eyes with a piercing gaze. “ If, for every step forward, you are knocked two steps back… where would you find yourself after taking ten steps?”

I sniff and quickly respond, with a raised eyebrow: “ Ten steps back.”

“ O.K, now say you were to simply… turn around. Where would you find yourself then?”

“ I get it. But I don’t want to go there again, you see, that’s my point, I don’t want to be in that place again.”

He smirks as he gazes out of the diner window lost in his own thoughts now. His voice sounds distant. “ You’ll never know the closet is empty until you gather the strength to crawl out of your bed and check for yourself. The monster will always be there kid.”

The future. It's so elusive like a shimmering hummingbird. It hovers, suspended in the darkness, waiting for me to open my eyes and shake away the dust. Inviting me to reach out with an unsure hand, so it can quickly flit away and leave me alone with nothing...

... save you.

junk puppet

Weak in the knees junk orgasm floods my brain washing away stinging pain. My eyes flutter and I need to catch myself from falling as the syringe flops about my scabby forearm. A pin-prick hollow needle nosebleed and I recline into a soft ratty couch and my eyeballs roll and lolly gag around the top of my skull like googly muppet eyes.

“ Titanic.” “ Dead End.” “Last Dance.”... Street junk... always so appropriately named.

I turn to a blank wall and ask “ H-Hey Gia. Thirsty? I-I think I have some orange juice in the fridge. He-help yourself to some.” I nod away losing my train of thought and settle into blank skeleton smile as I stare at the raindrop lite-brite pattern on the window. Complete silence except for the incessant “pink, pink” of dripping water in the rusty porcelain bathtub. Alone except the company of roaches scuttling along walls and barren cabinets.

“ D.O.A.” “ Final confession.” “ Last rites.”

I took Extacy to escape the thought of you. I’d lose myself in the music, the touch, the lights, smells, and the scene. I tried to escape you and ironically it brought me closer to you. I obsessively thought of you every time I would lose myself. I remember how you told me you wanted to bear my children once when we were rolling. You knew their names even. Who told you, God? I wish I could disappear in that moment forever. Anyways.......... brutal comedowns every night tossing and turning under sticky sheets cold sweat torturous thoughts of you… of us. One night a friend of mine offered me junk cause he knew how hard the comedowns took their toll on my brain and body. Beginnings leading to ends leading to more beginnings.

“ Body Bag.” “ White lady.” “ Silence of the Lamb.”

Death is an escape from life. Numb is an escape from pain. Sometimes I’d rather be numb and dead than face the consequences of misguided (in)action.

Skin and bone shit-sack too tired to bathe or take a whores bath even at least to wash away dumpster grime and dried piss. Folgers coffee tin can sits in dark corner watching. It's full of buzzing shit coiled maggot filth and my asshole burns with unholy fire. A scabby itching all along my spine and scalp. Too tired to scratch or eat or dream. Too numb...

I close my eyes and I remember your manicured fingers and the beautiful salvation they brung.

ignis fatuus

Who could have known things would have ended the way they did? Everything seemed so perfect - so true. The future was optimistic and rife with brilliant possibility but then it all came to a screeching, grinding halt. And here I lay shattered and broken in the bloody aftermath, a gasping heap of mangled flesh, haplessly tossed 100 feet through a splintered windshield.

I really didn’t see it coming.

I just can’t stop thinking about us. I’m perpetually haunted by these flickering ghosts, fleeting images of you and me together “forever.” My pitiful life is empty. My soul helplessly drifts afloat in an endless, tumultuous sea of the broiling past. I cannot breathe for I am impetuously overcome by wave after churning wave of painful memory. I am so fucking hollow, truly empty. Every day I pretend to go through the (e)motions that come with day to day living. I pretend to work. I pretend to fuck. I pretend to be there, to be strong, for others either as a friend, lover, son, confidant, etc.

I pretend to stay clean.

We met on April 20th, 2002. I remember this because our anniversary was 04/20. 420 is a very easy number to remember, and needless to say, I never forgot it. It was at a club. You were out on the dance floor when our eyes locked. I had seen you plenty of times before this at various places but I never had the courage to approach you, you were too intimidating. I found out later you felt the same way about me

On that night, April 20th 2002, I finally mustered the courage to approach you and speak to you. And right from the moment I tapped you on your shoulder and caught your attention with a heart-meltingly genuine smile, we were inseparable. We spent that night together. We didn’t make love, though, you held out for several weeks, and I respected you more for this. Rather, we softly spoke and clung to each other in the dark, tenderly kissing like love-struck teenagers. We spent every night thereafter in this fashion. Those days were a blur. I’d count down the minutes at work until I’d finally get to see you.

I was truly alive.

I weep daily, either outwardly or deep within somewhere in the cavernous shadows of my broken heart. I mourn as though you are dead. I roam the world as a specter... an indifferent spectator. I slowly creep along the shadows careful to keep my face hidden from sight. I no longer participate in the dealings of men.

Yes I mourn for you. Ironically, it is not you who is dead

Weak-willed

Hairline fracture crackling and splintering spreading like a malignant blood clot constricting cranial veins to the point of passing out. My glass house, the armor I erected to somehow protect me from myself is crumbling down around my ears. The moat has run dry and my defenses have been compromised.

I lay here in the dark watching witching-hour shadows dance on the bedroom wall. Circling headlights and the pale moon shining through like a flashlight beam. Like some insolent fuck I thought I might have had it all finally figured out… but my so called “strength” covers these gaping wounds like a soggy band-aid.

Above the dim ringing that heralds the arrival of mordant deprivation bulimic starvation, I hear your barely audible whisper. A pitch black shadow slouching in a creaking old chair, undead eyes affixed on mine.

When I was little I used to sleep with the blanket wrapped tightly around my head. I’d lie on my side and breathe through a small hole, encased in a cocoon. I naively thought I’d be protected from the bogeyman. I thought he’d quietly pass like a ship in a silent fog. I’d watch him float by my window as he worked his way down the dark street and then slip into a gutter.

Back to now. My mouth tastes like a fistful of rusted pennies. Dilated eyes fight back smarting tears. I realize I can no longer hide for I have become that which I despised and feared. With a soft creak I sneak out the back door, limp past parked cars and hungry street dogs, a grainy spectre flickering in and out of focus, not quite in this plane, but very real. A silent apparition nosferatu with hair falling out in clumps, bulging eyes, and protruding cheeks.

And I trickle like water disappearing into the dark city. My hand forever in yours.

I need you. I hate you so fucking bad and I hate myself worse because I know I cannot exist without you in my life. In your absence I am hollow. A “gebbeth” - borrowed flesh.

Beautiful Love

My world is small; my tiny, miserable world. My kingdom of dirt. Staring at the stars as the west wind blows. Silence, save the flapping of my shirt. Tears roll off my face and disappear into the sky. I wonder where you are. What do you see? Do you see the same dreams as me?

You probably wouldn’t recognize me now. I look the same except for my vacant eyes. I helplessly grope about in the dark. Every day that passes you slip farther and farther away into the lands of myth. Sometimes I wonder if you even existed. I wonder if I even existed. I can't help but think these thoughts on days like this when the wind blows and stirs the barren asphodel fields like swirling snow.

I wonder if you existed and I despair. I watch my hope wither and die and crumble away into dust. Then it happens. In that pivotal moment when I’ve lost all hope. It’s so faint but it’s undeniably there and I pause for a second and close my eyes and breathe it in. For an instant. Like when I used to walk along the beach with my grandpa searching the sands for seashells, wonderful treasures, that have washed up on shore carried countless miles along the tide. An instant only, I turn around and I feel your beating heart beneath the crystal stars as I stare into space. An instant. Your scent, your blessedly sweet scent I once committed to memory as we’d sleep, my face buried in your hair. Carried countless miles along the world’s wind. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. An instant.

blurry headlights

I had lunch today at “our” place. You know, the little sushi restaurant we used to eat at almost every single day - once upon a time. Of course, it wasn’t the same. The front patio was closed because of the rain so I sat inside in a dimly lit corner booth. I ordered the usual assortment of rolls we’d always order along with a pitcher of hot sake. All around me sat giggling couples. I felt out of place. Not so much because I was there alone but because I was so sad. Maybe it was the rain.

You know I used to love the rain. Whenever it thundered outside I remember how we would spend the entire day underneath your down comforter making love over and over and over again. We’d lie there, glistening in sweat, gazing into each other’s eyes. You’d trace the shadows on my body with your index finger as we both listened to the cascading storm drum against your bedroom window.

As I sat there today in our restaurant absently poking at my food I thought I heard you say my name. I looked up and of course you weren’t there. The lights dimmed for a split-second as a heavy peal of thunder lumbered across the sad, gray sky.

I am hollow.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.