Some Of The Best I've Ever Written
I'm reposting some of the best I've ever written. Very raw glimpses into how I was feeling at the time, and be warned, I never write when I'm happy. I'm hoping by posting them again, I'll want to write again soon. Feel free to comment what you think. Brutal honesty is more than welcome. And, more importantly, share these with someone you think would appreciate them and send them my way.
July 10th, 2009
The bus stop looms over the darkened street, throwing its shadows onto the striped lane markers. I sit. My elbows find my knees, my palms find my eyes. Pressure applied, it's only a small relief of the throbbing headache that's been plaguing me for several days. I thank whatever god exists up there for the evening. No sunrays stabbing through my eyes into my brain. No heat to make it a sweaty experience.
I can barely see the graffiti on the bench, worn away by too many peoples' asses, people with places to go but not at that moment. Just sitting and waiting for an object on wheels to come pick them up and take them someplace meaningful. Someplace they want to go. Stand. I look up and down the street, hoping to feel the liberating rush of seeing the public transport that will carry me home. Left. Nothing. Right. Nothing. Sit. Palms back in eyes.
I hear the scraping of shoes on dirty concrete and look up. A stranger is standing there, squinting into the wind. I move over to share the bench and they sit.
"What a waste..."
I almost don't respond. But I'm curious as to what they meant.
"What?"
"What a waste..."
"What's a waste?"
"You."
I sit and think. I feel like I should be insulted but I'm not. I'm intrigued.
"How am I a waste?"
The stranger responds immediately and without hesitation, all the while squinting into the darkness, hoping to see headlights.
"You have more to offer than the average person out there. You have lines of people waiting to get closer to you that are only growing...."
The stranger turns towards me, but I can't look back.
"...And you decide the best thing to do is fish for love and friendship in an ocean of apathy."
I try to swallow but can't. God, my head...I start to feel light-headed.
"What a waste..."
The stranger sighs and squints down the road again. Headlights. The loud moaning of the public transportation draws closer.
The stranger stands, walks towards the street, and turns towards me. I finally return the gaze and see nothing but truth. The bus is here. Doors open, driver waiting. The next words the stranger says will burn in my mind forever.
"Never waste your time on someone who is extremely content without you in their life."
The bus drives away, leaving me sitting. Elbows in knees. Palms in eyes. Tears rolling down cheeks.
...Maybe I should take a taxi instead...
June 30th, 2009
I fell asleep last night and suddenly I was in your arms. Looking up at you in the leathery dark of the minivan interior. The street lights passing by puts on a light show in your hair, and your smile and kiss uplifted me.
I felt my weight shift as the driver sped up and began swerving through traffic. With my head on your lap and your arms around me, nothing could hurt. We would be fine.
Something clipped the car. We spun. The front bumper slammed sideways into a tree, ripping it down. We spun across the street and the rear driver's side door collapsed under a light pole. I got out of the car, limping. The cool breeze blew against my face as if nothing happened. Cars kept speeding by, ignoring the mangled mess.
I couldn't find you. I woke up.
Oct. 3rd, 2008
The secret of "true love" in today's society? Nonexistence. It is a mere mirage in the hot desert of life, making us think we see the palm tree, the cool pond, the Dr. Pepper machine of happiness.
You get there and the palm tree turns out to be poison ivy. the cool pond turns out to be gasoline. the Dr. Pepper machine turns out to be a Dr. Thunder machine. Love at our age is fake. We have been born and raised into a society where children are dating younger and younger, influenced by the happy endings where Lindsay Lohan and "no-named male actor/model" are happily-ever-aftered and the end credits roll in between the camera and the divorce, hiding the truth.
So here i am, heart and soul in one hand, and a map for the future in the other, wondering where my passenger went.
I wasn't driving fast enough i suppose. She had places to be, people to meet, things to do at whatever destination we chose out for ourselves, the the legal speed limit for our age just wasn't cutting it.
I'm going as fast as i can, we merely stopped to ask for directions, dear.
I don't know why I'm crying as i write this, if a passenger doesn't like the driving, she can get the fuck out, if she can't stand the heat then she should get outta the kitchen.
I guess it's cuz she took my love with her, leaving me with a comical spectacle of a heart deflating in my hand. It's fun to let the air out of a balloon, isn't it dear. It makes a cute little groaning noise, doesn't it...dear. Like you're killing it........dear.
So here I am, at the newly constructed cross roads of life. With no passenger, a deflated heart, a roadmap I don't need anymore, and I don't know whether i have gas or not.
I wasn't moving fast enough I suppose.
So boys and girls, that's the truth. The prince sells the shoe to the pawn shop and Cinderella grows up a porn star.
Sleeping beauty becomes "comatose beauty."
Beast, you'd better buy a razor, cuz Beauty is not coming back.
And for what? I still don't know.
This ladies and gents, is the sound of my heart deflating.
Aug. 28th, 2008
Drunk. Alone. Tired legs and tired mind. The cigarette brightens as I breath in the glorious nicotine and breath out it's remains. Staring at the beating heart of the cigarette, I see my own personal "hell-on-a-stick," glowing red in the black of night. It's suprisingly dark on the porch of this ancient country-style home...built to give the owner (or renter) the impression that it is very very old...it's one of many houses in a newly built complex. The city is growing, reaching its powerful arms out into the countryside; but building everything in a rugged "rural" atmosphere...to reassure the masses that it's not urban.
Influenced by commercials containing white mountains and cool breezes, I take another swig of my label-covered beverage...the alcohol hitting my stomach like a weight.
Quiet. Drunk. Alone. My tired legs are aching. I take another swig and curse the "rich motherfuckers" who don't know how to tip. The "successful-by-proxy motherfuckers" who weren't raised correctly by the generation that learned from the previous generation about the 20% rule. Generations through generations...memories and traditions and courtesy has been proven to die under such elongation.
My memory turns it's attention to a time where money wasn't a problem. My parents bought the cliche' "teach your kids how to save" kit...containing three boxes: spending, holding, and saving...categorizing a child's allowences to teach him, or her, good financial habits. You silly people...something that I have learned in the year I've lived in this house is: children cannot be taught life lessons by something that you have spent money on. No piggy bank, book, video series, seminar, or medication can teach a child how to be a "grown-up," a human being, an adult in the modern world. No Christian book-on-tape(or cd) boxed-set can teach a child to stay away from drugs, or to vote Republican...
It is the love, the lessons, the patience, the time a parent puts in that teaches a child these life lessons. No comic book that you bought at a "Mardel" location can teach a child about sex. A man on an audio cassette, constantly repeating "do not drive your vehicle into the gaping hole of sin" can teach your child NOT to have sex with his/her partner, stranger, lover.
It's at this time that I realize that I might be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder, the excuse of many parents who have bought too many audio-cassette series for their children. The parents who blame Digital Video Recorders and television marketing ads. Maybe I should take some ridilin to solve the problems I have: financial, emotional, physical, psychological, spiritual, other-world...ical....
The clock hands slow to a stop and suddenly I'm my own person again. I am the essential human life-form, who discovers that, though sheltered and smothered by commercialized life-lessons, can actually become an adult human being. I am the one that breaks through the need for medication and "how to be a parent" handbooks. It is me. I am the one who will prove the system to be faulty, but still become successful.
It was my mother that taught me to write...that taught me how to skillfully combine verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs to capture human thought, human emotion. It was my mother that taught me the basic skills to influence the eruption of tears in my fellow man. But it was influences from Chuck Palahniuk, Ray Bradbury, and others that honed this talent into a skill, a way of life.
This, my friends, is the first I have opened my heart and my mind onto paper or computer screen in a long long time.
My own personal "hell-on-a-stick." Read and discuss......then flip tape over to side B.
Jan. 16th, 2009
A tree. A tree with no leaves, backlit by the moon and its branches reaching up toward the stars. Pale and barkless, it stands alone in a courtyard dotted with patches of dead grass and stone.
The center of Singlesville.
A circle in the endless streets and broken houses in which people have fought the wars only documented by their blood on the ground. They fought and died in this lonely moonlit center of town against the fates that put them there. This tree watched as poor souls picked up their knives and their torches and thrust themselves into the shadows, only to find themselves dying.
This is an evil place.
A shiver runs through my body as I take a step back. The shadows of this tree seem to crawl toward me as I stand there, dazed.
"You will not take me..." I whisper as I take another step back.
The shadows recede. I have skipped past anxiety and depression by not fighting the shadows of inevitability. As I stand here, the sun begins to shed its light behind me, casting my shadow across those patches of grass and stone. And encouraged by my own choice, I walk away.
For more, go to www.xanga.com/singlesville