I find that laughter is a particularly effective tool for hale health and disposition. Unfortunately I'm running out of nitrous oxide. When I do use it my mind feels numb for days. Really a win win. I'm not one to huff glue or sniff markers; having so few values makes one hold even harder to the ones you do possess. I recycle my plastic gin bottles, never read tabloids, and always eat my animal grade tuna with a fork. When I was 8 I remember sniffing cherry scented markers and laughing while my sister ate pasta with her hands. And in the middle of my manic, berry odored laughing she shoved the marker up my nose. Hmmm... perhaps my non marker sniffing sensibility is just trained behavior. Well now my sister takes Vicodin til her kids get blurry and I drink whiskey until my nightmares and daydreams smooth out into a manageable mix of wonder and terror. At least I don't eat with my hands. Slob.

I question myself on a point of my health

All my reasons are shaking and trembling

The words they make sense in my head but crumble as they’re spoken

My reasons my thoughts all seem

To get caught up in tangles

They come out disjointed

There’s a tune in my ear whispering

Yet I hear another story whimpering

My eloquence fades as it travels in rays

Only spoke it to give you sunshine

Words and phrases lets loose in blurts

Just the surface of what I’ve been saying

If you hold my hand then you’ll understand

The heat of our skin puts them together

Snap back into place held by wires, I place

My soul in a dead lost language, I shrug

And you give me new strength from afar

Got a feeling, the meaning’s been conveyed

I trust in my hands, trust in my feet

Word’s footing and purchase has stumbled and fallen

Against the rough stone of the wall I tumble

And move with a crawl to the meaning that I’ve been intending

I'm not sure why I continue driveling on about my useless, alcoholically castrated life. Maybe I used to have a reason for writing, some higher purpose above school essays and magazine deadlines. Some ubiquitous wonder that ran through me that forced my hands over a worn keyboard to release the pressure behind my eyes.

I think that's just the alcohol talking. Gin has a nice vocabulary, but its metaphor is a little heavy handed.

When I was in the second grade words fascinated me. Not books or stories but words. Somewhere in the formation of my consciousness the synapses in my oddly large head fired me towards a dictionary. I read it for hours, to the confusion of my mother and belittlement of my classmates. Well, my mother was often in a state of bloody mary induced confusion and classmates always found some reason just beyond my grasp to pick on me. Tangents lying on a circle I was left out of. I felt that words stood alone, their marvel unhindered by lack of plot characters rhyme or reason. But Webster's tome just listed all of the words, hiding gems like pontificate and salacious among spore and duct. I found that novels and articles were an excuse to be selective of words, a place where someone could mingle some select combinations. Though authors spout morals and axioms and diatribes their real purpose is to place sacred words together.

Well shit, I guess I answered my question. And luckily I did so before the tenth swig from my plastic home away from home; when the words from my thoughts and typewriter mingle and dance in some complicated ritual finished by me eventually blacking out.

I've always wondered what waits for me when I die. I assume I'll wake up dead some crap morning and realize there's a boulder or some lava or snakes in my rent controlled fire hazard. Then some searing pain and uncontrollable fear surging through my veins, only topped by the realization that there is none of the horrid visions and I'm just stuck in the same fucking life.



I am exquisitely tired. A filigree of days steeped in alcoholic terrors and nights slipping in and out of consciousness without will or knowledge. I drink during the day until I drink to fall asleep. Then I try and sleep until I pass out and dream about some decent liquor and my bitch of a sister dancing on my mother's grave. Which would be a weird dream if I hadn't seen it happen. I guess it's still a weird dream, but fuck off. What I wouldn't kill for a wet dream. Really anything other than the same dreams I have every goddamned night. Do you really read this? My sober enough to write drunk enough to not care what I write ramblings stained with grease and condensation from a plastic water bottle on whatever paper I shove into my typewriter. I think I sent the last rambling on the back of a letter I never sent. I need it back. I forgot to put postage on it. 8 times. Eventually the post office decided to send it. Or keep it. I'm tired.

I was in a grocery store, walking toward the milk fridge. Saw him hit her. Again and again. Not as hard as he could, but hard. He was obviously drunk, punishing her the way he did at home, too out of it to keep his sickness from the public’s eye.  Punching to the face, chest, arms.  And she didn’t make a sound. Just took each hit, expecting the next, unable to think of moving. I lost it. I grabbed him by the throat and shoved my knee into his chest. And let my fists fly, knocking his skull into the ground, growling words I wanted to scream. And as he lay there I stood up and looked back at her. She looked, numb. Not happy that I had kicked the crap out of her boyfriend, but not sad either. Resigned. Her small face resting in the crook of her arm, brunette hair trying to cover the bruises drying tears. I quickly walked away. What else could I do? You can’t really ever save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. I was hoping I was wrong, that he could control his temper. That he would feel horrible and never hurt her again. His friends had looked embarrassed, as if this were slip, not attempting to hide his transgression. And the next day I saw him there, sober and bruised. I walked up to him, told him yesterday I was the one who roughed him up. That everyone makes mistakes and lets the anger take over. Hell, I had lost it and cut his face open in a grocery story. Sure, for a nobler purpose, but lost it the same way he did. And he had a little smirk written on his face, the way he explains away the problems. A brush off the shoulder. Seeming to thank me for not calling the cops.  I didn’t know what to make of it, but it didn’t seem good. I told him that there was a time to realize you were acting like an asshole, that eventually chances run out. That he better keep his act in line. He pushed me and I slammed his head into wall. His fist connected with the side of my head. He lunged at me, knocked me down and we brawled until I twisted his wrist and shoved his face into a shelf and mine followed. Blood tricking down our faces. Walking to the exit I saw her standing by the magazine rack. Eyes down, hands idly musing across the pages. Her head raised slightly and she saw me staring at her. Damn, didn’t realize I was staring at her. She gave me a recognizing smile as she said hi. I said hello back and that she… No, I didn’t say anything else. Maybe my eyes did. Maybe they said I wanted to scoop her up and take her home. But that isn’t a relationship, just some sick obsession with saving. So I walked out the door and drove through the dark streets, allowing myself to get lost in their twists and changes. Dark streets I winded down seemingly out of memory, but it only seemed so as none of them were familiar to me. Simply letting the surreally bright lights and alley abscesses guide me home.

I drove to my house, or was it a friend’s house? It felt like I lived there, with my group of beautiful misfits. We talked of things we always talk of then climbed into the bed to sleep. A large enough bed we weren’t all on top of each other. Not that some people weren’t. I think I was kissed or pet by someone, but they might have been saying hi. Sleep was still a ways off, lights dim and talking washing over and under the covers. And we rose from bed, people were at the door. Among those entering were the guy and the girl. He and I glared, after we saw too much of ourselves in each other. The tension between us pushed and pulled, desperately holding us back and pushing us into action. He was his usual, I assume, jerk self to her. And as he was mean to her, grabbed her, ignored her, she became a watering can. I can’t say for sure that she became the can, but the can was there and she was not. This is less odd than it seems, people sometimes become things, not everyone, not often, but it happens. For some made up reason he had to leave. Probably had to do with the impending fight, but maybe he had an oven to turn off. As we curled up to sleep I sat upon the chair and rested my head against the table, near the white plastic watering can. But I knew it was her, I could feel her presence. I put my ear against the spout and felt the air blow against my cheek, felt in wordless waves of air her life, her story. And I gently blew into the spout, felt the air from my lungs press across the water. And I fell in love. Not with the story or the situation, but with her.

Gin offers a horrible absolution. It wipes my slate clear and sets me up the next morning with minimal hangover or memory. Usually it's just the night before but if I'm lucky a week will be knocked loose from my skull along with the bad choices I probably made. See, probably made means I can't feel regret for them because there's a chance they didn't happen, just tenuous possibilities as probable as what will likely follow. Namely alcohol and stagnation. It's odd that liquid courage so rarely leads to great lives. The absolution is terrible because it implies the mistakes I make, along with the rare moment of brilliance or sobriety, have no consequences.

The worst thing anyone has ever told me came from my mother. She died years ago, probably out of boredom, and is the source of the happiest memories I can muster. "You can be anything." She would whisper these words into my sleepy nodding head before I fell asleep. It haunts me now, on the fated night I fall asleep before I can pass out. Because they were true. Because I had a reality to create and somehow I fucked it up. Twisted and failed until almost against possibility I find myself here: writing meaningless tirades and tales to no response but cash in an envelope. Occasionally I get paid to ghost write for cheap lazy people or make a few dollars cleaning shops.

Hahaha, if anyone saw the state of my one room tenement apartment they'd think twice before hiring me to clean or fix. Of course the answer would be no. It seems the answer is always no. Or maybe. Sometimes yes. ... well I guess it depends on the fucking question, now doesn't it?

I sometimes get lost in my keyboard. Not literally lost, obviously that comes later when I realize the moldy rye and malt liquor are giving me crazy daytime dreams. About being a little tiny man stuck in the typewriter keys, praying its owner gives up letters and forms entirely and watches the tv and yells at his wife or cactus or kids like a normal fucking person. No. I just stare at them for hours. Sometimes unmoving, sometimes letting my fingers wander over them and depress, pressing ever so slightly so I can feel the give without touching ink to the page with a shark crack that means… I’ll probably need to press another one. And another one. And so on and so forth for another billion fucking keystrokes or so until my fingers are bloody and I need a whole bottle of white because in the every of middle page I started typing the letter g because I thought it was a beautiful woman. Curved and salacious, the temptress sitting in the centre of my needlessly qwerty board. It haunts me. Ghastly, greedy, grandiose, grating eye that stares at me when I’m too drunk to see but not stop typing. Like Braille it hastens to my every touch, appearing more often than possible. Great ginger greedily grasping at me gladly going where no man hasn’t gone,  gone to galaxies trapped in the tiny dots who trace my every movement from the inside of my eyes when they’re open or closed.

I really need to stop taking the dog Prozac I stole from some rich bitch in conjunction with the expired sleeping pills and thought lost to an open waste bin. Because wow. Like. Fuck. You know? Of course you don’t. Anyone with enough money to pay me weekly for this crap and sick enough to enjoy it must be on something better. Horse Vicodin? Share? Of course not, I know, words go one way money goes the other.  And I’m drained of my thoughts but the hamsters in your head keep making you rich. The friction from their little wheels absorbed by the yeti living in your chest.

So you wonder and think

Or relax back and rely on instinct?

Is the magical far away land an

Impulse a pulse of creative editing towards perfection

The long dreamed creatures I imagined in reflection

Dark desires and dreams power the child life of strings attached to plastic

I wrapped it around my sandwich and about my self

Cast a molded figuring and unfolded the seams

Replaced the arms with machine guns

To blow up bad guys but I know

I can never make a home a life in a figurine

Not supposed to think yet through me he I do does

My life might be built around fantasy of revenge and desires

Too high for my hands to reach

But at least I have machine gun hands

Bitch

Painkillers are a funny thing. In that, I spent 8 hours uncontrollably laughing after mixing nitrous oxide and Oxycontin. It’s an odd feeling to be laughing like a fucking madman while you pull muscles in your gut. Bust a gut. I get that now. Laughing while vomiting: the tried and true combinations of degenerates and drug addicts everywhere. Seriously, what the hell are you doing with these? This is the strangest way I’ve ever been paid; just write mail and blow the cash on a jar of peanut butter and 3 handles of plastic flavored vodka. There is a place I’ve found somewhere in the mix of eating to survive drinking to numb and living to see if something different happens tomorrow. There’s no point in living a shit life if every day after gets shittier. Of course, suicide seems a little extreme so if I just happen to fall off consciousness forever greased by the burning of gin there’s not much loss. And writing. This idea of scribbles somehow capturing what we say, or even sillier what we think. Shit. Thinking hurts. In my left temple and my right ankle. Pretty sure it’s from the thinking. Thinking is the leading cause of society, society is the leading cause of stupidity, stupidity is the leading cause of making more stupid people. Maybe I should have kids! Not like, mine, but ya know, an extra one. Just pop on down to the neighborhood orphanarium and grab someone to pass on my massive legacy of failure and drinking. See, thinking, society, kids, it’s all screwed up. Someone should fix it. Like a… plumber for society. With his ass crack of justice flashing every time he bends over to fix a dictator or crime or whatever analogy you’d like for a leak. My uncle was a plumber. for years he made plumb and true the pipes of our houses and other houses dumb enough to hire him around ours. Or maybe my uncle killed that plumber for... for... Whichever, the moral of the story is you can trust a family member with a pipe wrench if you're not paying them.