The stars will remember

At night, it's hard to see the stars. The glow from the city and the streetlights put a damper on the sky that I'm staring deeply into, searching the milky blackness for something sacred, as our ancestors did. Looking within the vast expanse, trying to comprehend that the faint twinkling glow left its origin eons ago, and is just now reaching the atmosphere of my understanding. Within these moments, I am as small as the molecules and atoms that make up the mind which knows all too well that when my life has passed, the only monument to mark my time will be seen within the fading starlight, which left long ago.

Its been a while.....

How terribly droll of me to draw correlations between the ebb and flow of life and the changing of the seasons, but something about the time change and the falling of leaves makes it rather difficult not to notice or just simply feel as if I am in autumn in many different ways.
My grandfather thinks its February; lucky him.

I should be doing community service right now, but I'd rather sit on my ass at the coffee shop and write stuff. Last October, I picked up a misdeameanor battery charge and after a few days in jail and almost a year of legal manuvering, I got 64 hrs. of community service, a $300.00 fine, and court-ordered A.A. meetings that I was going to anyway. Bileah.
So, yeah, I've got a birthday on the ever-approaching horizon. Makes me think of Time- will there ever be enough? Probably not, but I believe it's more in how we spend it. I most likely will never quite be the person I think I should, and therein lies the secret of this thing called Life.

Fly down, Death

Every so often, I have a brush with my own mortality, ever reminding me that we are not long for this world. I was released from the hospital yesterday following a pair of diabetic seizures-really fun stuff. You see, in May of '08, I had my pancreas,spleen, and gallbladder removed as well as an islet cell transplant. This procedure was to combat a degenerative condition which I had severely aggravated by years of power drinking and drug abuse. In essence, my pancreas had begun to split apart and wrap around my small intestine, thus causing all nearby organs to swell and become inflamed. The veteran surgeon exclaimed that he had never seen the innards of someone in such poor shape, living or dead. It was a ten hour procedure, in which I died twice- once by bleeding out faster than the transfusion, and the second by breathing against the breathing tube after being put on life support. I awoke twice under anesthesia, the first time to the feeling of numerous fingers in my guts-which proved quite painful, and being completely strapped down-my only course of communication was to bang my head repeatedly against the gurney. The second time was as I begun breathing on my own towards the end of the surgery, and was slowly suffocating as my lungs expanded against the breathing tube.
Soooooooooo-that's why I am currently a diabetic.
Oh-and if you're wondering if I saw any bright lights or visions of heaven........sorry, in my experience, the afterlife was dark, cold, and lonely. I've read that such warm, fuzzy feelings are the result of chemicals that the brain releases at the moment of death to make the transition more acceptable, but I don't know. Maybe the next time around I'll have a light to walk into.

I'll be 32 in a few days, I have a few gray hairs in the beard, and have absolutely nothing to write about.

Ha!

these are " Times "
the " T " in sinister capital
do you think it laughable
that we may be a jokes' butt
that a horses' ass played upon us?

Amidst rubble and gravel
plodding along a path
we can kick the can of coordinates
and try to do the math

Plot a course, stare at stars
of captains and mariners past
the albatross is off our necks
and we float free at last

Love, really

I had given up on women. After a rather messy divorce, and years of bouncing from bed-to-bed, I thought love was a false concept, something the Establishment had invented to prod us dumb animals into consuming more products. It's never easy to admit when you are wrong, but I was, thankfully.
Laurie and I met when we were 16 and in summer school. I walked in and was floored by the sight of her. I quickly took a seat just across the aisle so that she would have to see me, and it wasn't long before we stumbled awkwardly into conversation only two kids can have; passing notes filled with all the silly flirting I could muster-yeah, looking back I was not so smooth, but don't judge too harshly- I didn't develop my " A " game till a couple of years later.
We kept in touch over the years, and gradually drifted in and out of each others lives. I would hear from her every once and a while, how she was doing, what college was like, for I had forgone continuing education to pursue a career in drug-dealing, which proved quite lucrative.
Looking back in those moments, I passed the time with insignificant others; it's mind-boggling how lonely you can feel while lying next to the one who might be in your arms, but not in your heart.
Eventually, our orbits came together again-she came into the bar I was working at with a few of her friends, looking for a guy they went to high school with, who had worked there for a while and was one of my dope-smoking, poker playing pals. Once again, I was floored, but was too busy playing it cool and too caught up in the nightlife of a big city to pay much attention. She would drop in occasionally, in the meantime we did what most people our age do: buy houses,get married,fail miserably at trying to be respectable, slowly dying in the suburbs.
My marriage had crumbled, and I moved back to Atlanta-not too far where she and her husband had bought a new home. They would stop by my d.j. booth on weekends, and I'd put on a happy face and console myself with dark fantasies of opening up his throat. Eventually, I couldn't maintain any sort of sanity-drinking and drugging to escape what I perceived to be a constant series of shitty situations, being so close to the woman I'd always wanted, and having to watch her have a life with another. I quit my job, and tried to leave it all behind- I moved to the middle of nowhere, disgusted with the crap hand I'd been dealt, and lost all hope. I used to rally against the onslaught of Life, but after so much disappointment and self-abuse, I trudged into obscurity with my head hung low,to fade away, to become a lost name.
At my most apathetic and darkest hour, she appeared on my doorstep. A couple of years had passed since I had disappeared, but she had found me amidst the ruined remnants of myself. She showed me the way, and in doing so, saved my life.
I don't look back so often now, because there is so much to look forward to. Being with her is the warm quilt that casts off any cold.
That's our story, and I'm sticking to her.

Blog,flog,log

I been told that a common cure for writers' block is to just write a story of your own experience-no matter how mundane it may seem. The point is to exercise the memory, and in doing so enrich your sense of time and be able to more richly describe all things within your perspective. So here we go: nah-I'll have a cigarette first.

I hit puberty early. While most of the boys my age were still playing with G.I. Joe's , I began cultivating a mustache; something to rub while contemplating the sudden onset of emotional outbursts and the ever elusive mystery of the female form. My 5th grade teacher provided all the fuel for the fantasies that lingered between the sheets while laying awake, my mind racing with the surge of testosterone. She was quite the cougar-a friendly predator who placed me in the front of the class,while she sat opposite me on a stool, speaking to the class,and smiling at me knowingly as she adjusted her skirt so that I might sit fixated at the space inside her thighs-a private show in public school, in the midst of innocents who never got wise to the lesson of seduction between the lines of an outdated social studies curriculum.

the decline of bop; the surge of slop

I'm sure everyone has experienced the overall lack of good music in our present age. On a daily basis, I'm bombarded by the status-quo on the stereo, and am left a bit sick by the sounds of what's considered popular. How I wish we could return to the styles of Stan Getz, Charlie Parker, and all the other great horns of a bygone era. Where have the great songwriters gone? Why has true talent been replaced by bass beats and auto-tuned voices? We have no Paul Simons', Gordon Lightfoots', Nick Drakes', Ritchie Havens', John Lennons',etc. The truly profound has been replaced with the likes of painted-up, prepubescent, flavors-of-the-month with all the staying power of a stale fart.

In league with thieves and demons

we can count the reasons

on fingers and toes

to raise a lonely toast

for all of those who fell by the wayside


A solitary gesture

to capture,to measure

the feeling of holding a torch

standing on empty shores


My friend, we remember

come ashes or cinders

we foster the flame

the light to lead you home

Vegans, awake and realize your animal nature.

I am quickly losing patience with the whole Vegan thing. Usually, this level of contempt is reserved for Hollywood, the upper class, goth kids,etc.-We, as a species, have canine teeth for a purpose: for ripping and tearing flesh so that the act of consuming an animal for sustenance is made easier.
As for the ever-more popular slogan on the Vegan bandwagon, " Meat is murder! ", well,murder tastes pretty damn good.Make mine medium rare.

I did my damndest to hold the fort

while the company was away

the screaming savages were the crazy sort

now silent in the sands they lay


They scaled the walls

with killing claws

as I quietly said farewells

The shots I squeezed

in a bloody breeze

till I ran out of shells


Why did we bleed,murder,and die

for an empty piece of land?

It was to carve our doom

upon our tomb

to cry, " I was a Man."

Testicular Fortitude

Sooooooooo...........my question is simply this: Are we, as men, losing the more positive aspects of our better natures, due to societys' restraints, collective misconceptions, and brain-dead comedians?
I believe that we perch upon the edge of complete dismissal by the nation that would prefer to consider us cro-magnon. Now, don't misunderstand- I am quite aware that there is a multitude of points to put in favor of that opinion. However, what has happened to the true heroes of our gender, men who truly were above hype,pomp, and proverbial circumstance? Today, it seems that we are only to behold sports figures and C.E.O.s who in past generations would be " run outta town on a rail."
We look to the past for our finest examples. Men like baseball legend, Ted Williams, who gave his best and potentially most profitable playing years to serve his country, not for headlines or medals, but so we wouldn't have to speak German or Japanese. Men like Martin Luther King Jr., who faced mindless violence and the absurdity of racism daily and willingy, to make our world a better place to awake to. Men like the ancient Jews at Masada, who chose suicide over surrender to the Roman Empire.
All throughout history we can find numerous men who stood and would not be silent,would not be moved, would not be marginalized. Our generation has no such heroes. Is it any small wonder that we all feel as if we have been broken and made useless? Why are we surprised that our prisons overflow and our streets run red?
My son will not someday be a man-he is becoming one with every breath,with every heartbeat. What will I tell him of how this happened to us, and to this world of which we are responsible?

My people

we pass over as callous clouds

No church or steeple

will allow us to pray or kneel

we are to simply feel

the cool caress of evening grass

while lying back

staring deep into a darkening sky we will never understand

Okay......think I've got something.

Do you ever ponder upon our role on this planet? That despite the claims of scholars, scientists, philosophers, and supposedly learned men and women, there are but a few facts that which all can agree- no one knows what exactly we are doing here and no one knows exactly where we go when we leave. All we can do is draw from our own experience and from those we choose to trust and believe in. I choose myself to trust and believe in what I've seen and sometimes what has been revealed to me in random, hit-or-miss moments with a Higher Power.

My first example of death came from the person who first taught me of life, my father. Here was a man among men, a quiet, tortured genius who, despite having the intelligence and aptitude to accomplish anything, only wished to live simply, work a job, and care for his family. He sometimes was described as, " too hard " on my brother and I, however I loved him fiercely. Among my early memories is one of running to hide in my room once the Woody Woodpecker Show was over, knowing that Dad would be home soon, and after sweating out a living under a asshole boss, he would not be in the mood to be trifled with, nor willing to withstand any absurdities that my small mind could invent.

I was 22 when my father told me he had cancer, and less than 6 weeks later he was gone. It was impossible to me that this immovable rock of a person could succumb to such an end. He was the definition of tough, old-school, etc. He didn't miss a day of work in 30 years at the warehouse. Since my birth, I had never seen him have any sickness other than a sniffle. He continued to trudge through the work week while cancer ate his insides; coming home and never complaining of the pain.

Once he was admitted into the hospital, I would go and sit beside him to sob helplessly and tried to wrap my head around the idea that we are all born to die, and that tomorrow is promised to no one.

He came home to die, but just wouldn't. We had a bed brought into the living room where my mother and grandmothers could keep a unwilling vigil while I pushed the button for more morphine. I could see the anger in his face while he tried to beat back the enveloping darkness that shrouded him. But, towards the end he could not keep his wits about him, and the cancer, morphine, and pain claimed his brain. Running on sheer will, his body lingered. I awoke daily to the " death rattle." For those of you who've never heard one, it's the body's futile attempts at drawing breath- a wet, sickly, sucking sound.

After a couple of weeks of bearing witness to such indescribable pain and heartache, I sat on his bed while he drew labored air. I kissed his forehead, ( something I had never done ) and begged him to let go. I hadn't the heart to see if he heard. I instead went to get high and drunk. About 30 minutes later, My grandmother called me to tell me he had passed; I was just outside the bar, I walked in and stayed there for almost 10 years.

I know life is not an easy undertaking. I know how lonely and excruciating our existence can be. Remember that the pain, the purpose, the moment, and even our minds and bodies are not for forever. We should not lie on our death beds, angry at the dreams left unfulfilled. We are instead to celebrate our swiftly passing sunshine with the pride of lions.

I'm through with pulling punches and will call them as I see them.

I promised myself I would post something today, however bland or meaningless. As I rack my brain for themes and ideas, I come up empty, lacking, and thirsty for coffee.

Joes' Coffee in the Village


Simple while sitting

beneath ample shade of the willow

still weeping

silent sentinel

of the unmarked graves

of the dead confederates

of the fallen federals



A community

A neighborhood that sparks the sense of wonder

for my parents were married a stones throw from where I sit

a union only Death could put asunder



To think on what games were played, childhood secrets shared

budding souls were bared

at the graveyard grade school

next to the church

where I wax sobriety three times a week

drinking in my kindred spirits

Read these words written by a man who had decided on decadence and an early death. A man who marked his time with daily dope binges, the draining of bottles, and the empty arms of harlots of every size and shade. Such excursions he considered valuable experience in an impervious world, made and fashioned by ancient, hereditary hands with as much intent as the autumn leaves that slowly fall in small circles.
This man began as just a boy, polished and enamoured with possibilities. A simple beginning betwixt avocado appliances and padded feet of Pooh pajamas- an existence bound in description as blue collar, wage earning, lower middle class. But, what weight could those words bear on the shoulders of a child wrapped in the celebrated simplicity of Saturday morning cartoons and cereal?

the initial installment

So..........it is with a simple sentence I foray into the thing all the kids call, " blogging."