A Century of Loss

In the frigid glow of sundown, I staggered to the place where an old casement window mournfully overlooked the blank horizon. Memory was playing tricks on me as I could feel it's stolen card up my sleeve. The decision was then made to operate on either a whim or a tear clogged artery. One of them had to be removed and the other initiated. I have felt a century of loss in one hour. I have felt the entire history of pain in a few criminal months. The holes in my weary skin are a thousand too many. Around the block again I will go in search of something that does not exist, overturning anything with a faint glimmer. How can such an overpopulated world make you feel so alone? There is fortune hiding somewhere beneath an insurmountable boulder. It must be out there somewhere beyond the panes of this dusk. It must be out there somewhere beyond the pain of mere existence. 

Marching to Demolition

I couldn’t sleep in the old bed again last night. Waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of a scream wasn’t exactly was I was anticipating. And then smoke alarms were sounding from wall to wall inside of my eardrums. It was as if the whole world was about to be washed away in a sudden flood of tears. I am far too sad to deal with people who float by without a conscience. It’s getting to be too much to even share the slightest discourse with walking mannequins. How can so many people carry on in a complete state of unthinking? The tightrope perspective has me shivering in my leather shoes. The March crossroads heralds a kidnapped perspective. I guess that no news is good news. Still, I am strapped to this chair with not a pillow to fall upon. Even if I was free, there would still be no road to follow. And here I am wondering what all of the particles come down to. I wonder why demolition proves itself to be stronger than unity.

Sometimes the Positive Things Don't Matter

This is only a summary of the last few days. You spent a large portion of time out with friends drinking heavy red wine in the early evening hours. You wrote a few features for the fairly well known publication that somewhat employs you to contribute. You went to work and only had to spend about fifty percent of your time wasting energy on anything. You spent vast sums of money on food and drinks without having any concerns for the bottom line in your bank account. You came home to your clean and beautiful Victorian home. You inhaled the wonderful scent of cherry blossoms multiple times while passing underneath them in the street. You pressed the strings of the old guitar until the sweetest sounds were emanating from its steel strings. You listened to a dozen records that moved you beyond compare. You received a package in the mail from a dear friend who loves you.

And still you are as miserable as the day that you were born.

Ever So Near

Hell is a concept that exists only in your head. But I am there. With a marble heart, the view is filtered through one hideous cobweb that has been pulled over my eyes. Throughout a see-saw half decade, ceaseless documents have been discarded. Business, as usual, continues to sit on our shoulders like wiry, awful specters. It often feels like the end is dangling ever so near. Even as those words were written, something disturbing was underlining them in scarlet. The foreshadowing of finality seems a bit frightening from this six month perspective. And now we are drowning on these arctic mountains. The landslides have become our world as they are all that we have grown to know. Existing every day just to waste time does not vindicate one second of it. It’s as dull as a bludgeoning in this poorly lit auditorium. Dull and dying. Cathedral cold. It’s too hazy to tell if momentum is building or waning while continuing down this slope of vast entropy. Was this all a blackout of some variety or were the details crystal clear? The ghost has returned and it’s like a negative of some childhood picture that I don’t want to see. Losing is not the way that I envisioned our predicament to close. Finding yourself in a prolonged bottoming out is no way to spend night after excruciating night.

Despair Without a Title

History is repeating itself again, but not for us. Useless wars in the Middle East smoulder on while nature effortlessly continues to take apart entire towns. It seems like everything is in ruins. The dust of life is strewn in so many directions. There is no purpose in trying to collect it anymore. Nuisance days uncork themselves, collect steam and then collapse into long sequences of feather light discourse. Meaning? Well, there doesn’t appear to be a whole lot of it from this vantage point, only disappointment like a volcano. The taste of regret has turned the color of anger as daylight savings revolves once again. With nowhere to go, I don’t want to stare into the blue void tonight. There is no warmth in that electric glow. Oh despair, how can you be escaped?

The Killer Blow

I think that the time has finally arrived. So I will box up everything and either toss it in the street or scorch it in the fireplace. At least that way, it would produce some final fuel for the fire. There is a hospital bed waiting for me at the end of the line. I can already smell the putrid horror of the electric lit hallway. There will be women waiting there who I will dream of smashing to pieces. There will be employers who I will imagine introducing to Jack Kevorkian's line. This distaste is unsettling, but it's all too real. What can I possibly do to send it away? Internal bleeding takes a lifetime to heal. I heard that you were walking down the road with your new groom last night. Now you have a partner in status and science. It warms my heart to know that your advertisement reeled in a replacement for you cling to. I guess we both thought that you could be alone for at least a short while. You act so tough, so self-righteous, so detached, but your weakness has been clearly revealed. It makes me feel so sick to my viscera. I'm certain that this, too, pleases you tremendously. The killer blow in all of this is that you have won. In your sadistic regime, I am out cold on the broken past that you left me. There is just a void left in between us. A wide entropy in our  heads. The space in our pockets gives way to the infinite oblivion of past tense intimacies. Yes, the moment has revealed itself. I hope to never see your cruel face again.

This Flourishing Season

I wish this flourishing season would just stop. All of the anguish comes back in waves when you continue to wind me up like a toy and then let me scramble until I hit the wall again without you. My nightmare days have passed with the killing solidarity of time. Then again, one doesn't have nightmares when one doesn't sleep. Taut pain has returned to that weak spot between my shoulder blades. How I wish that there was some place to go for comfort. But none exists. There is no warmth to fall into, no feeling of anaesthesia  to acquire. The encumbrance upon my back is breaking me down. Sometimes I wish that our initials were still scrawled into the forearms of eternity. The evenings of pale light seem like paradise from here. I'm so weary, body and soul, in these cell scattered times. All of my dreams withered away blithely with the last gasp of candle smoke. Please drop this draconian display and leave what remains to languish in the rain soaked earth. I cannot take the anxiety and the misery anymore.

Until the Tide Recedes

The choir in this revolving carnival is driving me insane. The din is so loud that I can barely feel my own breathing. Exhaustion, nervous and physical, has taken me to the brink. So it's back to wine and despair, the only two things that keep me pacing through this labyrinth. One day they will bring me to non-existence, but that looks like it will take a while from here. In the darkness, there can only be light ahead, or so they say. I want to believe in it, but my songs have all been sung. It seems that my crimes, although the same as yours, are deserving of a sinister response. And what ethical highground have you been living in? There are no morals in any of this, just a set of actions and responses. Sometimes all of this dwelling on battered scenarios makes me want to spit up all of the life that I ever had and fall flat onto the cement floor in a heap of broken bones. Sometimes, the resentment and the fear turn my heart into a sodium crystallized ornament. And I am up to my knees in water. Buckets of runoff have filled my body up like poison. The threshold, however, is just around the corner. Patience is evaporating and the tide must continue downstream. Let it go.

Zero Gravity in Bed

It's a long way up and a short way down. This statement is certainly the truth. 11:00 p.m. comes and goes like a worm in the forehead. Serenity, what is it exactly? There has been no peace since the beginning of time. Sleep or lack thereof obviously reflects this much. Well, some people work to live and others live to work. Could this be the maxim that disintegrates us all in the end? You know that feeling so well as it hits close to home, the one where you are dog tired from follicle to nail, but cannot slumber. You try to count merits or regrets, but nothing seems to bring you rest. The big sleep is near. It is woven into the pillow where your cheeks fall into a heap of exhaustion.  It's just the wind rapping at the window, but  jesus christ, is sounds like a tornado from the confines of your neurotic skull. Try to craft something less sinister this time. It could very well be worth all of the trouble that took you down without asking one question.

Spring Proclamation

Suddenly, the future has opened up like a crystal ball. My head is swimming so fast, I feel that it is going to explode. I haven't felt this alive in what seems years. Maybe that eight ball was correct all along? Love, in showering optimism has fallen upon my doorstep. The guilt and the pain and the doubts have drained away. When you walked in the door the other day, my heart about stopped. Enormous waves of gilded love returned to me as your heart reminded me that this is where I want to be. I fall dizzy in my banal daily routine. I can't think straight or sleep without you near me.

When will you return? I feel it in cascades, love for you that is, brimming from every pore in my thin body. Let me give you my life, the way that we were meant to be. Let this be a promise in writing: I will make it all up to you.

Waiting for the Sandstorm to Abate

I have got anxiety from the inside of my ears down to my Achilles ankles. Each severed nerve oscillates in waves of dismay like the hum of kitchen appliances. In ceaseless apostasy, I have taken what I can and then run for my life. Only safer ground never quite appears to be what it is seems from a distance. I can't believe now that I had faith in autumn mutiny and I cannot believe that you had such a threadbare dedication when the sky cracked like the plaster walls in our home. How could I lose the plot so entirely? How could a grown woman be certainly uncertain? What a way to let history destroy itself. You put your cards on principles, not on reality. I put mine on idiotic doubts where the green grass was in fact black. It's incredible how the pyrimids dissolved with just a few drops of rain. Back on this plane, it's self destruction by the truckload. In fact, there is rarely a time when I can't use a drink. Haze surrounds us like the aftermath of an atomic bomb. The sandstorm is all in our eyes awaiting the moment when a clearing will arrive. Now the bar is low and the stakes are blown away. It's all come down to a futile existence. I've been searching for you in my sleep and at the wheel like a fool. Only the cold light of your wall of China pride can be found. Yet we see it in our heads and we feel the pulse in our wrists. There will be another day for us. This is written in capital letters on the wall.

The Last Page

There wasn't much written on the last page, but it said it all. Just a few sentences strung together like cathedral tapestries was all there seemed to be. You read how the flag fell, or to be precise, was thrown to the ground in apathy. And it was explained, how childhood, as is usually the case, did her head in. Some people go hunting with arrows and bows and sometimes they slay something worthy of their china. Well, the last page read like an epitaph. Cryptic words, scantily written, provided only the mere hint of an autobiography to be labored upon. Death was not even realized although the words solumnly reflected an autumn of life. In plain text, rather succinct language, there was a suggestion of surrender. Not like a prophecy, but more akin to exhaling one's breath in submission to the wind. In a matter of minutes, the carousel evaporated into the hurricane atmosphere. Smoke and effigies took up the space where a sensation used to dwell. And when it was over, you wanted to turn the page, but there was nothing left.

Black and White Blues

I’ve got the black and white blues because if it is not this way then it has to be that way. There is no middle ground. Not a hint of grey is allowed on the canvas, only the antithetical neutral colors. So with that, it is yes or no, off or on, day or night, burning or freezing, down or up. I am either submerged in the water or standing like a pillar on dry land. I have the black and white blues like a heart attack. I am either floating in some artificial heaven or falling down the stairs. This time, there is no purgatory. You are either with me or you are not. Do you think that this can carry on any other way? It's either summer or winter outside, birth or death inside. I would take caution, but have chosen danger instead. The only struggle is that I can't tell if I am awake or asleep...and when it's got to be either black or white, it's always the fucking pits.

Illusions at Sea

I am powerless. It’s a terrible feeling of helplessness as the walls, sterile white, are caving in. Drifting out at sea is as awful as the day itself. I cannot perform any magic tricks for you. The rabbit simply won't pop it's head out of this hat. You can see the strings that are holding me up in suspension. None of my attempts to perform for you were real. Rather, I watched from the other side of the mirror like some kind of ghostly chimera. Was my dedication merely an illusion? I took hold of the reigns and pulled and pulled until my arms fell off. But the water still crept through the cracks in a ceaseless flood. I mopped up the drainage and the tears for days on end. They could barely be absorbed by the artificial sponge that seemed to be attached to my mind. I cannot write any more valentines for they have all been returned. The flowers that I dug up from the garden withered in the passing of vacant time. And I still shake at nights while the wind howls its stomach inside out. In a subtle hush, it carries your voice from the modernity of your dwelling to the the ancient decay of mine. Sometimes I whisper back as if my words will reach you at your closed off distance. And then it is back to square one, the place where hope has been cremated by your sudden and successful disappearing act. Only this one is not a trick of the light and there is nothing at all that I can do.

In Search of Shelter

Slowly crawling out of the ditch. It’s been an eon since the sun stumbled out of the sky. It’s still open: the horizon, Pandora’s box, the wounds. One moment it’s balloons and the next, it’s razors. Yet there is a clearing out there beyond the feral stare of unwelcome. Shivering in the mourning haze, the dream has been uprooted. The details, however, become more lucid as the hot water slowly turns cold. A pale chill of unease is emitted from the empty furniture. Nobody inhabits this place anymore. The mansion at the top of the hill is sheltered by the enormous tree that stands proudly in front of it, but shelter, above the eternal pangs of wasting time, is the true denominator missing from the equation.

Bloodletting at Dawn

Morning arrives and the dawn hits you on the head like a thunderbolt. Your calloused heart feels like it is about to explode. Palpitations ebb and flow in spite of the unearthly pain that subsists. The generic feeling of helplessness refuses to lift itself from the cables in your chest. It feels as though an aneurysm is coming on slowly, one that cooks and cooks until that final gasp where the strings will eventually break. Then you are left out in the open wondering if this predicament is truly real. You look out the single pane windows into the backyard and see pieces of yourself scattered everywhere like last year’s sawdust. They are only ashes, you remind your conscience, but they deny any attempt to be blown away into the ether. And then you wonder, are you decent or are you a monster. It’s pretty difficult to tell these days. Does it take two people to sever a relationship? Certainly, it must. The searing sun breaks through the clouds as children’s voices siren their way through the glass. The distance is rather far, but it’s an engine in the eardrum, just like the distance between rabid animals. You think about honor and all the idealism that peers go on about. Loyalty is still there inside of the rat’s nest. Love is still brimming from inside of the rat’s cage. There’s a razor stuck in the back of your throat. You want to tear it away from where it taunts you on its perch. Some days you win. Others you get destroyed. Sometimes the past is far and sometimes the future is close. You’re not deaf or dead yet. At least you can still hear all of the laughter that is slowly killing you. You still have taste, a taste for wine and slow, morose music. But the pain is immense. It is some form of torture to face the implosion of severance. Hushed footsteps enter the house in unannounced interviews. More ragged clothes and keepsakes disappear from their locations. Is it an exorcism or apparition’s angry burglary? Music overwhelms the mind in gigantic rushes of energy and then it all goes still like a sudden eerie exit. The darkness creeps in again as if it never disappeared. And it’s larger than anything else. It’s a great wall that is utterly unscalable. There is ice in the turgid air and it takes the shape of your thimble life and snuffs out any remaining gratification. You want to smash what remains into a thousand fragments. The world and every word between us has been broken anyway. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to watch it all return to the earth?      

Breakdown Elegy

I give up. I am giving in. There is nothing left to decide. Nothing remains in the vaults to win. Questions revolve amidst my mind in volumes. I am wondering what travels through your brain when you lie awake at night and how you are able to function during these estranged days. Did you even shed one tear when you read those words? Did you ever consider the consequence of running away? The weakness revealed by this move is a bit staggering. Just one subsequent conversation could have left some skin on our backs, but you turned off like a defective television set. You couldn't deal with the harshness of it all and in an instant scaled the wall in retreat. I now lament that this tough girl display reveals such massive insecurity. And now there is only time that divides us. There is nothing left, but wide open time.

The Grand Canyon From Below

Perhaps the beginning was too much of a sign. I still remember walking down the avenue with bemused embarrassment on my face. Flowers was the establishment where it publicly began in a conversation that seemed to deny what was to come.  University kids were bustling down the street as I gazed over my shoulder to see who was looking.  Driving home in the rain, the fog that covered the windshield was insurmountable. You left me dazed and warm with my seatbelt undone at the wheel.  I watched your silhouette fade into the rain drenched sidewalk like an apparition before making the ride home alone.

A few months later, we were patching walls as regretful music emanated from the stereo. It was as if I knew already that our union was doomed to fail. The dust upon my face in the mirror revealed an unspoken sadness that was positively manifested at such an early stage. Our lungs were full of love, but were ultimately clouded by the fumes that ravaged our slow breathing. I guess the chemicals assisted in prolonging a a damaged companionship. We almost made it in the end, but my male shortcomings had already determined that friendship was not enough.

Then there was that late night in spring where we walked a million miles around the green lake and back. We ended up at a bar where some kind of brawl broke out. We struggled home and fought the fight of our lives over what, I forget. It seemed like the end had arrived. You were so intoxicated that your eyes did not look straight into mine. I clung to some kind of repair mechanism, the kind that I cannot cling to anymore. In the morning, it was over and recovery came in a wave of relief.

There were trips over the ocean and back. There were thoughtful gifts on and off of occasions. No matter what we said or how we tried to spoil each other, the signs were there from the beginning. You were ten years older. The spark in my eye could not be forced. You were clothed like a homeless vet despite your vocation. And although I tried as much as I could, I did not possess the necessary attraction to seal a full commitment. Although not officially married, we made an impressive run. That day when the sky fell down will never cease to fill me with regret even though the cracks were visible from the onset.

As we ponder this collapse from miles away, the result is the same. There is animosity, gut-wrenching pain and remorse. We both feel the grenade exploding in our stomachs.  Virtue has been eliminated. My love for you has been disqualified. In the back of my mind, I pondered marriage and dawn and eternity until the inevitable customer fell into my lap. All of my doubts and fears were sealed in that moment. The fatal flaw had just been proven to be too real to overcome. Attraction or lack thereof became a wall too steep to scale.

It is possible that the clearing will bring us both to a better place. The clock of youth has stopped ticking. The alarm of purity has come to a full stop. This great stock market crash has created a tower of uncertainty. Although your voice is still here in my heart and your love will continue to travel through my blood, I now know that there is no space for us to return to. What remains is damage, a battlefield where the wounded and maimed lie without crutches. It may be for the best, but this excruciating sickness is all that I can now feel.

Between Mirages

Days are chasing free falling days by the tail as restive evenings are spent in solitude. It’s time to move on for too many tears have been plunged into these pages for the time being. A world of unrest has twisted itself upon us like a serpent on a mouse. The necessary epigrams to move you never came together. Every kind of gesture just fell by the wayside. There’s still blood on the walls and too much fury to overcome. A chimney of disgust continues to flow both up the chute and down into the lodge. There’s nothing left to say, nothing left to rehearse, nothing left to cast into the vast ocean of reticence. The lighthouse at the shore has a signal that cannot be seen from this vantage point. On the battlefield, our armies have been slain by the cold, disjointed aftermath of war. Resentment is a high priority. Spleen, above all else, has reigned as the motivating factor. Caustic showers of distrust are hailing down from miles around this hazy location. It seems that this is a dustup with no victory to obtain. This rifle has been buried in the backyard. Rusted bayonets and disused shells have been proven to have no purpose after all. With both arms down, resigned submission to fate has at last occurred. The sentry that appeared to be standing guard by the gate was a mirage. Maybe we’ll meet again somewhere after the flooding subsides or maybe we will just continue to drift downstream like bottomed out soup cans. Either way, the insurance plan has lapsed. There never quite seemed to be one anyway.

Letter to Grandfather, Fifteen Years Undone

Grandfather, can you provide me with some perspective? My soul is on fire and I can’t dampen the flames. I’ve been told that you were there many times before, so you must understand how this feels. It’s a brutalizing silence that rings aloud in my ears for hours on end. The unease of it all is deafening beyond imagine. I understand that life is just about wasting time, but this existential weight is something else. In the past few months, I have been wrung dry. My core is dehydrated and in abject need of recovery. The air outside is solid with pollution, but the stagnant clouds in here are a hundredfold worse. I’ve been coughing up blood for weeks and I don’t know if it’s my own. Could someone else be living on inside of my sternum? Please light a torch for me if you receive this message. I can still picture you in your favorite chair with your thin grey hair pulled back. The reverberation of your chuckle doesn’t seem far away even though it’s been fifteen years. I am clearly carrying on with a jigsaw piece of you in my bones. Well, I didn’t intend to bring about this maelstrom either. It just all came falling down in an uncontrollable wash. Now there is absolute regret with little sign of absolution in sight. All of this was a mistake. All of this was a paralyzing drama gone horribly wrong. You and I both understand this. At least I can be certain of this. If only we could convince the others.   

Without Harmony

I walked out to the ocean, out to the place where the firmament meets the sand. The overcast sky slouched overhead like an unwelcome obligation. The crisp air was punching needles into my ruddy face as I thought about life and I pondered death. There were so many roads that led to this point, so many quiet evenings in serene dominion. The water brushed up against my tired shoes as I thought up a typhoon about how it all crumbled to pieces. The tiny ripples looked so welcoming.

I broke a promise that I made five years ago. Since the alarm went off, I’ve been sleeping in a wormhole in our bed. Time itself has turned into a burden of city stone.  And I am going to pay the price for the rest of my mournful days. Fifty days and fifty nights in seclusion cannot unroot the paramount depletion of harmony. The breaking point is tearing up my mind. The uncertainty is devouring my will to keep pacing along this beach.

Maybe it’s time to dive? Joy and desire have dwindled down to this. Without symmetry, the struggle just seems like too much to bear. 

From Heartburn to Nowhere

Staring at the walls in silence is beginning to make me lose my mind. Am I still falling or have I hit rock bottom? In this state, I can’t quite tell. Somehow the reins still appear to be slipping. The hour of birth is soon approaching, so kill me please if I manage to get through it. This has not been the year that I would have ever wanted. The clouds turned to rust while the weeds became so overgrown that I could not see. Blindness is not bliss. This is a razor fact. There is only love in the end to satiate your pain and although it is often false, when it is direct, nothing on earth compares to it nor does anything else matter. Before the buildings came down, everything was starkly simple. There was a moment before the tragedy when our feet were resting on the table in peace. Now we are both licking our wounds. I am responsible for yours and you dumped salt onto mine. Has the score been evened out yet? All of the explanation is devouring my insides now that that the whole fucking world knows about our problems. Can we return to the electric place where we naturally began? Would you ever be able to give me your hand again? There never was anyone else who you loved more or who loved you as much. Somehow I know that you understand this too. Just because I put a blade into your heart doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be there to help you recover. The fact of the matter is that I put a blade in our collective hearts, but I am trying to convalesce beside you. The blood in our veins drips in unison because I understand you just as I am understood in return. At the bottom of my charred conscience, I feel your pulse. You can try to wash it off, but it’s indelible. You can try to burn it down, but it’s underneath the skin. You can try to cover it up with something else, but it refuses to be erased. The faint meter of history renders us as flecks of debris in the field, but our desires are not yet buried beneath the wheels. Do you hear the train whistle blowing in the distance? I hope that you do. It’s still there every night even though you are missing. The tracks are humming with an articulate warmth. Despite this meager calm, there is distance in more ways than one. Time, I feel, is becoming an adversary. The crowds in the street dissolve. The faces in the club become shadows. Each interaction without you is some kind of sinister encounter. I feel my heart and my guts on fire. There is no reason to carry on. The morning alarm is a pestilence. The evening routine is like a slow suicide. The only comfort is sleep and sleep is like death, so why can’t it just evolve into what it’s meant to be? With no letters, no phone messages, no whispers and no place to rest my bones, I feel the unrelenting pangs of heartbreak without pause. Help me please. These words traverse from my fading blood cells to nowhere.