It was ever-present even among all of the separate hells constantly holding court in his soul it was one that reared-up more often that the fear of violence, or pain, or unrelenting guilt.
All of those he dealt with and dealt with and dealt with and still managed to sleep.
Not well sometimes and not sober sometimes, but he still managed to sleep.
This was, in it's own foul, insidious way, worse than the fear of what might well await him walking down the street, or coming through the front door late at night.
Some things you can anesthetize yourself against.
Some things you can tough-out.
Somethings you can rightfully and righteously give only cursory acknowledgement to and go about your life without it destroying you.
But some things...?
Some things just haunt. Just lay in waiting. You can push them back down into your gut but they just keep pushing back. Like an infected wound you scratch at in your sleep. You just keep on winding-up bloodied.

He sat, as he often did, facing the window watching the fog outside and listening to the rain against the plate glass window.
The lights cast giant rivulet shadows over him and down the wall.
The lone light in the room-a blue cast coming from the stereo and fresh ice cubes hissed and popped in the tumbler full of rum on the table by his side.
The parkerized finish on the .45 just made a pistol-shaped black hole shadow next to his drink.
Listening to every creak and footstep in the hall outside his door.
The phone wasn't going to ring and he knew it.
It never did anymore.
In a way, it was pure mercy. Not knowing this was better than knowing for sure. Even though he knew.
It had always just been a matter of time.
What would have, in most cases, been the worst way to do it, was just sweet mercy.
She had just faded him out.
Not made a scene. Not insisting he could be saved-that he could walk away. Not judging, or being angry.
She didn't feel bad for being scared-off. To her way of thinking is was just the way it was.
Seriously, who wouldn't be scared?
A life spent trying to take the high road had built a mountain.
That's just the way it was.
And would be.
He hadn't tried. No use in insulting them both.
But as he started to ache from the neck down, as his guts spun into knots he just sat there and drank.
And wondered when it would end and how.
The phone wasn't going to ring.

Smith

In his dream....
he could feel it, just hanging out there in the Cosmos like a cloud of acrid gas waiting to burn him through closed eyelids.
Again. It was happenning again.
This time not because he he didn't act...or couldn't...just that it would have been worse than losing everything again.
He knew she was with someone else.
He knew.

He felt it as he was dozing and losing alertness, the fear snapped him-to an hour or so after he sat down.
He didn't know he had gone out.
As he woke with a stifled start, the sweat made the butt of the gun feel cold against the small of his back.
He FUCKED up.
He nodded-off with the gun pinned between his back and the couch.
He stifled the panicked breathing.
His heart threatened to crack his rib cage with its terror.
He stifled his moves, slowly reached behind and drew his piece so as to not make any sound.
He clicked-off the safety and drew back the hammer to the ready position while the sound was still muffled by the cushions.
The gun went to the end table-his right hand still on it it and the left went to his glass.
His ears were wide open.
He thought he heard something.
Then nothing,
Nothing.
Nothing.
Then a creak.
Rusted metal stretching.
What an idiot, this so called pro short-cut across the lawn, crunching old lawn-clippings instead of creeping up the paved, silent walkway.

Smart, not oiling the springs on the screen door.

That sound that meant good things as a kid.
People coming home.
Summer on the porch.

Tonight it meant he was going to have to shoot someone.
Or three.

They watched  him fall asleep.
They could have taken him before.
They waited.
Wanted surprise.
Or fear.
He stifled a vicious, nasal sneer by polishing off his whiskey-and smiled.
They were afraid.....
...and thought they got the drop.
He knew there'd be 3 of them .
One one in the front door.
One in the back door.
One escape driver.
He drew a pillow over the gun and feigned closed eyes.

...let the front door guy get close in the dark, cap his ass through the pillow, go after the back door man...barrel around the side-yard and shoot the driver before he knows it all went South.
...then what?
Drop the bodies off at the house to be a dick...or ditch them?
It would be half-a-day before anyone figured out he won this round.....maybe more.
Make 'em guess.
Leave 'em where they dropped.
Make Jimmy send someone else shitting his pants coming to check ...around...what, noon?

Poor bastard. He'd have to worry about there being cops there and it getting traced-back to Jimmy-or risk it being a trap and getting his brains blown out.

It'll be so quiet....maybe someone will think he turned them or bribed them.
Sometimes it was too easy.

They fell for it.

Jameson was about six feet away and half his face torn off by the .45 before he connected the smoke and flying feathers with the fact that he was lying fatally wounded on his mark's floor....his partner didn't hear the muffled sound of him hitting the floor and trying to scream with no face.

Markson thought he was silent coming in the back, but the pillow-cum silencer was mere inches from his face when the copper-jacket hollow-point .45 ACP round splattered his brains on the wall by the back door.


It was a mad sprint through wet grass.
On tip-toe to not make noise.
The driver was busy watching the front door.

He knew no neighbors would be awake to hear the noise, so to be a dick, he dropped the pillow
as he approached the Lincoln sitting at the end of the driveway
Smith revelled in his power.
His last few sprinting footsteps in the roadside gravel alerted the driver, he started to turn.
Smith -in a stage whisper-said, "Hey!"... the driver tried to turn all the way 'round just in time to take one round in the forehead.
His head exploded like a rotting watermelon all over the inside of the car.

Smith grinned.
He realized he had an hour or two of freedom before the next pile of bullshit.
He wiped the sweat off his face with the back of his hand and grinned an evil skeleton death-mask to his reflection in the rear passenger window.
He didn't even get any blood on him.

He went inside pounded a beer and gulped some Jack.
He didn't start sweating 'til he remembered his dream.
She was with someone else.


FUCK!

Middle of Nowhere

He could feel it, just hanging out there in the Cosmos like a cloud of acrid gas waiting to burn him through closed eyelids. 

Again. It was happenneing again.
This time not because he he didn't act...or couldn't...just that it would have been worse than losing everything again.
He knew she was with someone else.
He knew.

He could also tell

that it was going to do no good to sit and think about it.

But he was going to anyway. And keep thinking about it.
Getting so smashed all he could do was sit on the back porch and nod out

Listening to the storm coming.

The rain.

The rattling aspen leaves showing their undersides

ahead of the storm.

                                                                His parents' back porch.
An empty house now, save him, living without turning on lights.

Stumble out to the car after the storm.

Recover.

Move from bar to bar through empty streets.

He woke up staring at fence and razor wire

and thought he was a prisoner again.

He was just in the back seat with an empty half
and a headache.
and a bad memory attached

to a foggy sunrise he could bare remember.

...and knowing

it was beyond repair. That he was dreaming.

Never come true. Never come true.
It could never come true.

Taking Another Crack at Normal

....the yellow mini-bic clicked against the table top as he set it down and pulled the first drag off his cigarette. He looked down at it and smirked a little remembering he intentionally picked the color because it was cheery. He thought maybe he could force a little of that upon himself.


   There was enough light coming into the room that he could see to mix himself a drink, walk to the bathroom, but not enough that someone could see him watching the entrance to the motel through the slightly drawn curtains. He left the window shut so no one could see smoke coming out and figure there was someone sitting, watching.


   His phone didn't ring anymore. No one responded to his invites for dinner-and he received none. That had all happened pretty quickly. If people had known, he could understand it, but, mostly he rapidly learned that he had picked the wrong friends. That much he had already known, to a degree, but he never figured he had picked all of his friends wrong. The scandal of desperation was silent to those around him, but, somehow, they must have felt it. He knew it had effected his personality....for Fuck's sake, his life was ruined long before they found Ollie's body in that burned-out car. The rest was just the poison-laced icing on the cake.  
   His instincts were sharp enough for him to pick up that some cop had let something slip and maybe tipped-off Ollie's crew. Now 17 months later, still unharmed he should be okay, right? Why the paranoia? Because it wasn't paranoia anymore, it was full-blown PTSD and he knew it. He was jumping at, and chasing shadows. Sometimes it was all he could do to drink himself to sleep, get up in the morning, and go to work like a normal person. Most people hadn't commented on the weight gain-and he'd lost half of what he had gained. How could he explain to people that it was 'fighting weight'? That 270lbs of terrified, pissed off Mick were harder to stuff into the trunk of car than 185lbs of terrified, pissed-off Mick?
"D'ares a question for ya" he mockingly quoted from his favorite cop show as he mulled it all over.
  After the naked, drunken incident with the gun and the smashed furniture he had reeled himself in a bit.
Tried not to be so paranoid.
Cut back on the booze.
It worked pretty well, but now, he was so sick of being afraid that he was starting to mock his fear-which he felt was a good step. He had moved from paranoia to fear, fear to awareness, awareness to mindfulness and occasionally, relaxation and uninterrupted sleep. That was the good part...right?
   On the other hand, he had recently noticed that he no longer fell asleep and woke up imagining his arms around-who was it this week? Mary? Robin? He mostly just didn't feel, except when his life randomly came over him in an inappropriate place and he felt like he would just start sobbing...uncontrollable wracking and heaving. Maybe he longed for that more than touch, or love, or sex. Letting go that once on the day he smashed his desk felt like a weight being lifted. But it eventually came back.
    Lately he had been talking himself into a more rational line of thinking in a bid to free himself and get his life back. Rationally, if something were to happen, it would have by now. The fear was self-fulfilling. Much of the weight would still be there from time to time-you can't ever just walk away from some shit. But it was time to take another step.
  He tapped out his smoke in the ashtray and rose to refill his drink. He paused for a moment and decided he would try to enjoy the last vestiges of the sunset.- As a 'fuck you!' to his paranoia-so he pulled the half of the curtains by his seat all the way back letting in the rosy glow of impending twilight. He turned to go fetch some more ice for his vodka from the bucket by the sink.
The bullet was moving so fast that it didn't even shatter the thick double glazed window.Just punched a spider-web hole through it. It barely slowed down as it passed straight through the center of his heart-practically liquefying it then severed his thumb and forefinger and shattering his glass on the way out.
Technically, he was probably dead before he hit the floor, but he was aware of the sound the bullet made as it punched a grapefruit sized hole in the door opposite him. 
He felt his nose break when he hit the floor and that was it.

Go to Sleep in Dress Blues

Oh...fuck...did I...?

....cause this? Maybe...if you are inclined to feel that way. The silky-smooth sound ringing in your ears of DJs and fame are just bullshit. It is waht you think  you remember don't you BITCH?!
......
....
He sat on the edge of his bed trying to unspin his head to something. This was no 'fight', it was something else.
The vomit....mostly bile was coagulating around his toes and on his 'slippers'.
It was worse because there was blood when he coughed, but not bad enough for the hospital, just a few drops.
He knew when it was bad.
This wasn't.
It hurt, but not bad enough.

He was cool.
Place?, OK
Just enough. Get clean, bleed out a bit, bandage up.....
walk among them, in this part of town they will never guess I am packin'..or what...or why.


It has ALWAYS been bullshit.

I don't care.
I know him.

The gun, the bullet is small.
I will be even.


NoOne will ever guess.


Especially in the winter, no one figures we mover about when the weather is good....

.22short copper jacket hollow point-the Buffalo Tom show next door hid the sound.


Go............sit in the alley and sweat in a  way no American kid will ever guess.......just play drunk..then go...

A Wife, and a House, and a Dog.

   ...it had been all laid out for him. Simple. A perfect, easy, simple life. A life full of reward and virtue and giving back. A life of seeing and hearing everything. Work hard, play hard, save, invest, enjoy life-use your head, retire stupid-young and never rest on your laurels.
   The thing was, it was that simple. The times were ripe for the picking. He had seen it coming years in advance and maneuvered through insomnia and a shrink, and remembering things he didn't want to remember to so he could be functional enough to move past shitty minimum wage jobs into the realm of making enough to buy a house, then another, and another. All the while dreaming the sweet dreams of not re-living his past or carrying on someone else's future. Not waking in the middle of the night for unknown reasons wishing in an otherwise empty bed, that there was a warm someone in love with him to hold him during the nightmares and a big, intelligent, bright-eyed best-friend faithfully keeping an ear and a nose out in the darkness. Love and protection, protection and love.

   On May 8th, 1962 the first Atlas Centaur rocket exploded shortly after liftoff. He thought, in retrospect, that the slow-motion footage of the explosion and tumbling descent of the last bits of flaming wreckage as he had seen it set to music in Koyaanisqatsi was apropos, not just of the his current situation, but of the whole fucking shitpile that his life had become long before..
   Drink a river of whiskey, eat a mountain of pills. Ain't nothin' gonna put things back the way they were.

   Hindsight being that of a fucking fighter pilot, he should have known the second the city started promoting the downtown as tourist mecca, a showcase for the 'cultural diversity' of the area.....read: Cash in on the local color. Who cares if they are treated like zoo animals?
   Greed is always the writing on the wall.
   But he came back, even though his town as he loved it was dying. The U-Haul not making much more than halfway between Palm Springs and Blythe before  it broke down. Then the 48 hours in that ghost town waiting for the repairs with nothing on TV but a Twilight Zone marathon..apparently those weren't big enough signs from the Universe to stay out of Dodge.
Sunnydale.
Nightmare Town.
   But, as always, there is a fine line between dogged persistence and foolish, pig-headed, suicidal tendencies.
..or at least there is for some men.
   Mostly pig-headed fools. Though he preferred-and would tell you so-to say he had "balls that clank."
Which, while true, is also another trait of pig-headed fools. As well as fools who insist on falling in love with the wrong woman.
   That. That last one? He wasn't sure if it made his heart sink, or his breakfast rise. Either way it was like taking another tumble. End over end. Flaming debris in his mind's eye.
  He could see it-and taste the rocket fuel.
  His finger twitched as, in his mind's eye, he brushed back her in the middle of the night. Just like he never got to do. So many times.
  Somewhere in his head-or at least he thought it was in his head- it could have been a radio blaring from a distance, or playing softly from one of the neighboring houses-Tom Petty singing 'I Won't Back Down'.
He coughed a tiny sardonic chuckle at the absurdity of it all.

   At least they dumped him behind the dumpster instead of in it.The scorched-talc smell of the dirt and the tang of the blood were better than rusty compost water. Flies were starting buzz around the blood pooling and coagulating under where his face lay ground into the gravel. The twitching of his fingers was all the movement he could muster and he was starting to not give a shit about anything-not even the pain at the base of his skull or the rapidly intensifying heat of the mid morning sun.
   He sighed-or maybe heaved a little-who could tell and he could taste the blood.
   Somewhere he heard a security door thunk shut as some smarter, luckier man's wife left to do her errands, or take out the trash. Or walk the dog that he now heard yelping excitedly, like good, happy dog does before being taken on a walk.

   

New School Jazz

She was definitely a hooker.
They all are.
Not all women, just all of the ones you see on that particular stretch of shitbrick paved street. She said she was going to have a t-shirt made that said: "my tits may be fake, but my cock is real". She wasn't done with the transition apparently and that was good for business. A lot of 'straight' guys like to fool themselves by picking up girls who aren't completely girls yet.
Maybe they still think their moms don't know they like dick yet...if you worry about your mom while you're fucking you've got bigger problems than being in the closet.
When they hit the porno store they go straight for the big rubber cocks. It would be comical if it weren't so sad. Poor bastards are so wrapped up in being repressed they can't ever be themselves.
People just have to keep fooling themselves and putting on airs. Insecurity is the death of your personality, like being continually lobotomized with an icepick by a monkey on  a vendetta. It is senseless, often baseless, and caused by forces beyond your control and understanding.
Just another neglect laid on the unsuspecting babes of brainless, heartless parents. And that's the lucky ones
.
He almost skillfully hid his stutter.
He was kind of pathetic-did too much coke-liked to impress strippers with it.  Pretended to know something about jazz-which obviously liked and appreciated, but he had to make the point to get approval-as if I am some bellwether of cool.
He'd be a good looking guy if he didn't abuse himself so much-a leftover habit from before he went to a shrink and a speech pathologist.
He gave her advice about a psycho ex and sounded like some guy who had experienced grade-school epiphanies at the half-way house after he got out of rehab and was now getting high on his genius newly discovered since sobriety....except this guy wasn't on the wagon.
It was hard not to at least respect him a little. He obviously had spent a chunk of his life feeling like total shit about himself and had turned his life around at least a bit.
The stripper he was trying to impress?
Probably not on the upswing. Too young to quite grasp any common sense-and she was way too young to have an ass that saggy-means she's lazy.
Bad combination: Stripper, no common sense, impressed by coke, and lazy.

Another Nowhere. Another Long, Slow Suicide.

The path. The shuffling, sleepless, midnight waltz of wondering and second-guessing. Memories left behind that return from the din and shadow to take you down from behind when you aren’t looking. The shadow from behind, knife wielding, wild like a claw. A blade in your back back as you sleepwalk through your day.
Memorizing the car and plate number because you didn’t like the look in his eye or the way he smoked, or the way he swung wide making the turn. If you were a cop you’d follow him. Looking for a reason to pull him over-suspecting you might find ‘tools’ like rope etc. in the spotless trunk. Maybe that it why he never replaced the defective license plate. The chipping reflective background his one submission to imperfection that might otherwise draw too much attention to his all too clean demeanor. Sober. Single. Driving around  at 4am in a car inherited from Grandpa.
Calm.
Well-rested.
Too confident and polite.
Or maybe you are just thinking of your own mistakes.
Where are your pictures of her? What happened?
Why?
Did you blow it, or is it a blessing in disguise?
You aren’t ever getting ‘round this are you? Never shaking loose no matter how many times you shed your skin. Run in circles. Paint yourself into corners. Shy away. Avoid prudently.
Obsess.
Wake up sweating.
Wake up screaming, “I’m gonna kill you, you SICK FUCK!”
...while reaching for your piece.....
 Feeling the guilt of dreaming of her until she finally shrieks at you in your dream to leave her alone. Is she on the receiving end in her dreams too...then what does that mean?
 That you are right?
That you are wrong?
That you were wrong and now your obsession is right?
Is that why you wait for the the sun to sleep?
There were already too many shadows following you into your dreams?
Afraid she would meet one of the monsters that are waiting with shotguns and hatchets behind you door when you come home at night? That she might get confused with one of them and get caught in the crossfire?....or like one of them better?
What made you like this?
What sort of animal gets treated like a friend by monsters?
Surely they don’t smell their own kind?
Why are you startled to to feel the butt of your pistol in the dark at night?
You put it there. There for a reason,no?
Why would you second guess prudence dictating broader shoulders, a stronger chin.....?
That is Mother Nature making you safer.
Old Man Darkness and my sidearm.
If it wasn’t a game, why did you not take it more seriously?
Maybe you wanted to be nothing more than a few teeth in a random, undiscovered pile of ash somewhere.
Maybe you just lost your purpose-or found it again.
..for the first time.
Or got lost in the fantasy world that told you these things aren’t real.
There is no boogeyman. No Legba. No Devil Himself.
Can’t be. Just a teleplay in black and white on Kinescope, late at night, to make you scared for fun and buy stuff-right?
If you don’t belive, the Man won’t neither.
The Non-Believer gets no play. He is just an amateur...but your game...? Heh. Never happened.
You become a cold-case. Maybe an itch in some old dick’s craw-after he retires and has time to think about such things.
Vanished. Ran away? Suicide?
Yeah, probably.
He left all his stuff and his cat almost starved? His friends say “no...?...that should be enough..surely?
Not if there is no proof it ain’t-sorry ma’am. We’ll let you know if anything changes.
What if no one keeps asking?
What happens then?
Shit gets sold. Someone takes the cat. Friends wonder....right? Or did all the writing, all the notes on the laptop, all the thoughts of fear imparted to those not departed just add up to one escape plan or another.
One good.
One bad.
None the wiser.
That was the plan?

Was it truly? Was that the real reason it happened? Just giving up in the sickest way possible? Bitching-out when you always stood to the last-even for the dumbest reasons? Was it all just a game of chicken?
Another long, slow suicide. Another nowhere?
Waiting for the shoe to drop-because it always will?
..so, really, there is no point...?
Just laying there, wondering if you should jerk off again, just to prove a point, or get some sleep.
Wake up in the morning.
Shower.
Dress.
And field-strip and clean your pistol over morning coffee.
And plan for the here and now.
And the future.

If in Misery You Dwell, what Will Set You Free?

Read this story to understand this post.....

 Legally you can't go around beating people-even if they deserve it, but this is why his abuse should be a mitigating factor, and why more people need to think about these sorts of things and look at them in a more in depth manner:

The worst component of abuse-at least the most lasting component of it is the psychological aspect. Not just the psychological scars from the rape, or the broken trust, but the mental control, and intentional breaking down of the self by the perpetrator. The direct psychological abuse keeps happening whenever the victim is around the predator-whether or not the rape continues, and almost nobody other than the victim and the predator ever recognize the abuse-especially if the abuser is smart. 

I was severely abused psychologically and emotionally abused growing up-even as an adult-by my parents, but they rarely ever did anything that, as a kid, I could point to specifically, and never in front of others. I was only about 3 years ago that I finally pulled the plug on that relationship, the head game had worked so well, that I couldn't be convinced to do it before, I was still laboring under the whole "family is the most important thing in the World" myth. It has only been recently that I had to acknowledge just how sick and evil my parents really were-I still don't want to think about just how bad they might have been. I was very fortunate to have creative outlets in my life, and a grandmother who was wonderful or I surely would have wound up dead or in prison.

The cognitive dissonance caused by the control by the abuser over the natural innocence and confidence of a young, exuberant kid creates enormous frustration and anger or rage, and especially in this day and age where it is politically incorrect to get angry, it must be held inside, where it festers and amplifies any obstacles or troubles the victim may face in life. This is a circular escalation that can infect and effect every part of of the victim's life. I doesn't go away with facing down the issue. Sometimes facing down the issue-or the abuser.

I often thought that if I had given my father the savage, yet non-fatal beating he so truly deserved when he was young enough to have it not look like elder-abuse on my part. The outcome would have probably gotten everybody therapy, and maybe me out of that house.

I just turned 40 this year. I have never been married-never even close, even thought the only thing I have ever really wanted-ever since I was old enough to remember thinking about it, is a wife, and a house, and a dog. The average duration of my romantic relationships is about 3 weeks. As soon as they get a glimpse of what they are dealing with they usually vanish into thin air. The girls that are patient enough, and caring enough to accept what I have been through can't cope with my personality. The games the psychological abuse plays with confidence and self-esteem are unbelievable. The ability to think that you have found trustworthy people who almost always turn out to be more abusers is mind-blowing. The only people who can relate to you are supremely screwed up-and often borderline dangerous if not outright psychopathic...I sleep with a gun because of the people I have met in my life, not because I am paranoid or suicidal, but because a Federal Agent recommended I do so. People keep company with people who understand and accept them-in my case, that group was the wrong one...thank God I figured that out by myself.

 I have trouble keeping the same job for very long because it involves getting to know, and dealing with people who can't ever fathom what I have had to deal with.

I have never, and plan on never harming a hair on anyone' head, and it has been nearly 15 years since I figured out that it wasn't ME that was the problem and started taking steps to deal with my abuse...but even then I didn't know exactly WHAT was making me feel the way I did.

I am not saying I agree with what this man did, I am saying that I understand, and can't really blame him.

A single mental image from the past.

A sad reminder of a life utterly unrequited.

Of dreams, goals and aspirations left to die in apathy and confusion at an apathy that should not be there.

Wanton forgetting.

Cruelty and hidden mindful evil thrust out on point duty to mask unadmittable misery and self hatred. Never admitting anything to anyone for any reason and allowing a world full of love and potential to gather dust and decay into more hatred.

The need to fully ascertain life through experience and embrace outweighed by mindless, petty fear and pathetic narcissistic refusal to accept reality.

Forever night in the mind until it creeps forth, and oozes like a homicidal penetrating oil of the soul. Corrupt language of inner hatred issued forth in a CinemaScope projection onto the weak and the helpless.

A predator speaking mindless oaths into the blackness of a self-imposed permanent night.

Who will make this seen and known.

How can this be.

It makes no sense in the realm where scaling a mountain at a ripe old age was fun beyond what was expected.

Was there some other thing...?

Unnamed in the pines, on those rocks, sold as innocence and driven down by a precocious knowledge unready to be born in speech-covered by previous lies and sickness, never to be believed again?

Were the lies and the sickness planted?

They could've been....

Wracking my brain for the solution to this.

Wondering if there was something too terrible to admit to myself-and as result to anyone that mattered.

The pure, driven insanity of unlikelihood, and night terrors of victim and submission.

Cold metal midnight backdrop of a waking deadly dream and fear beyond imagination.

Inside or outside, wondering when it will break out into the light...

dropped to a gasping, petrified knee at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Cold sweat screaming fear into a claustrophobic void, grasping at the wrong straw and doing nothing to it but what an exorcist can with chants and and prayers and hands of faith and renewal leaving the shell to reassert it's genuine breath of life back into the land of the living.

Forever unknown? Or, perhaps, forever hypothesized untruth making a an unspeakable name in a scared shivering corner of morning twilight and the cave of an disabled heart.

Was the task she set upon to set the veil of black on me, or just a reflection of a place and time more unspeakable than mine. Inevitable, unavoidable? Endless cycle of derision and psychopathy?

No way to veer from the path?

Am I right in assuming what has been said is true?

What is done cannot be undone, avoided, or truly forgotten-just shoveled over and tamped down in a way as to remain unseen for a lifetime of doubt and uncertainty.

Can I ever know.

Will I ever see it in my mind's eye and and then place it where it needs to go?

Will that word, that name speak itself into the conscious realm to be beaten down for real and then always held at bay?

Or is it a mere suggestion.

My gut says otherwise and points me to yet another bottle, another insomnia, another choking, childish fear of what should be simple but isn't.

How does this resolve?

How does it come into the realm of identification and a deal with all the rest.

You did a good job. A genius. A Beethoven and a Mozart. A hidden switchblade stiletto of hell planted in a place I cannot reach to pull it out on my own.

Noir

/nwar/

French-adj. [ Short for film noir + Sense 2, short for French Roman noir, black novel.]

1. Of or relating to a genre of crime literature with with cynical characters and bleak settings.
2. Suggestive of danger or violence.
3. Black
What is it? What do we think we are doing?

We know.

Don't we?

Really, truly, deep down in the deepest, darkest, most private part of our twisted, black little hearts?

Of course we do.

The twisted flip-side of Walter Mitty that hides in the shadows cast by what we are always told we are supposed to be. The dimly-lit corners of the the cathedral of righteousness that we all are forced to inhabit by our mediocre neighbors and alcoholic grade school teachers. Teachers who drink to drown the fact that they are afraid to write that book, or come out of the closet, or whatever it is that weak, mediocre people fear. And despite all of the goodness that surrounds us and permeates us we still, regularly, walk to the edge, look down, and hang one foot over...grinning to ourselves...

Sit on the edge of the bed, in the dead of night, reveling in the feel of pistol in hand, the weight, the ruthless beauty.

The power.

Not a fantasy.

Not trying to feel cool.

Just knowing the outcome if the shit hits the fan.

You'll be the last one standing.

Halfway between a grin and a grimace, you make sure a round is chambered, safety on, and you put her back in her holster, back under the pillow.

Do you have cash on hand? A bag packed? A plan, and a backup plan, and a backup plan?

Of course you do. Maybe it's not written down, but it's always in your head.

Can't get the drop on me Daddy-O.

Not me, because I've got hell in my heart. You push the right buttons and you'll see snakes' eyes, baby.

And you let the girl at the ice cream counter know you noticed her sweet little tits because she "forgot" to snap the top button on that cheap uniform she wears. Got you free ice cream too.

She doesn't flirt with the guys her own age.

Her eyes give that telltale twinkle, the one that lets you know that she wouldn't mind the sensation of the roughness of the bricks in the back-alley against her naked, grinding ass as you bury yourself inside her. Her soft and delicate features slick with sweat and plastered hair breathing hard into your neck, and then, hands on your face kissing you like the end of the world...

You smile at her just long enough for her to read your thoughts, then you part ways, walking in opposite directions, smiling to yourselves, while your mutual red tails twitch beneath your clothing, and the squares go obliviously about their business, never knowing the barely-legal sexual apocalypse that just occurred in the ether all around them.

And somewhere in a leafless, grey skied, brown-lawned, snowless winter suburb, a seemingly average guy sees his wife and kids off and goes back to bed with a "cold".

The sick day.

By 10:45 he's half a bottle of Nyquil, a vicadin, and a joint into an online gambling session with a credit card obtained under an alias.

Boys will be boys, and his frat brother he just found on Facebook after 12 years knows the tricks.

One more guy with a hidden duffle bag containing a big-ass wad of cash, a new name or two and an American made .40cal Berretta with enough loaded magazines to cause serious problems for anyone thinking a suburban shmo is an easy target.

He has five escape plans committed to memory.

He's the one they never catch up to. Then the case goes cold and no one really gives a crap, 'cause, why should the cops care if some bored suburban white guy ditches his wife and kid? I mean, one fake credit card, or stolen identity, while being a crime, doesn't warrant the resources that could be put to better use on violence and burglary. You don't think this guy is dumb enough to settle down somewhere where he is going to be the worst criminal in town do you?

If they only knew what he was thinking about doing to the UPS lady.

He never did it though, he just knew he could.

The librarian who cuts herself because she likes the smell of blood and has needle marks between her toes...

She's not a junkie. Never will be. She just likes to get stoned sometimes at work on rainy days and listen to the water, and imagine all of the misdeeds she is going to do on her vacation to Spain in June.

Naked sun bathing -not because she in uninhibited, but because she is secretly an extremely perverted girl, and a voyeur. And it gets her so wound up that it makes her legs quiver, lying there in the hot sand, sweating, watching the undressed men and women. Letting her mind wander. Then she jumps in the ocean and calms herself down and goes back and does it again. Over and over and over again.

And the only one who sees through her is the thug watching through binoculars, and he smiles to himself, knowing the sorts of nastiness girls like that carry in their purses. They buy them from vendors, and at street fairs, from men and women who understand a girl traveling alone can always be forgiven by the authorities if they happen to use a switchblade stiletto on a would be attacker...just as long as the wounds aren't too precise...or numerous.

He smiles again, knowing they are stored, like trophies. Probably in a box, on a shelf, in the same closet with many mens' undershirts-of varying makes and sizes-like their original owners. Shirts sealed tightly in bags for weeks to permanently imprint the mingled scents on the fibers. To be withdrawn at will on random lonely nights, to jog the memory, and sate, among other things, her ego...

He turns his attention closer up the beach to the two English girls he met last night at the cafe. "Poor little things," he thinks to himself, "they suspect nothing", which would be really funny to anyone who had seen them in bed with the librarian last night, or overheard their conversation about him, and how he was just an ignorant thug-and what the librarian's experiences with anatomy, knives, and the police were.

No, you ain't gettin' the drop on me Daddy-O.

That's why when you caught me in the corner of your eye at the bar last night you stayed away. Cause you can spot it in an instant can't you? And you just weren't in the mood for a trainwreck just then were you...?

A Bit of Silence in the Dusty Afternoon

He squinted and spat out the car window, catching a glimpse of the crows feet around his left eye as he shifted through the gaze of the rearview.
"Fuck," he thought to himself, "how do I look this old?" knowing full well the answer lay in the purpose for this meeting.
Why was he so calm? It made no sense.
Neither did the meeting place.
If Rader had just wanted to catch up, it would've been burgers and cokes at Midtown Lanes with his Pops, but he figured if he was to be trusted, he had agree to whatever the kid said. Hoping he was a good liar he shifted the Walther from it's recommended place under his right leg to a position suitable to being grabbed by his natural shooting hand that was currently holding his cigarette.
Still not feeling nervous, he took a sip from the flask in the center console and checked the temperature on the the softly idling Caddy's A/C. 73 degrees. Maybe that was helping...
He began to notice a brightening of the colors around him in the late afternoon sun as the first telltale traces of dust began to rise down the dirt road at the turnoff from the highway.
Wrong car?
Rader didn't drive a red Alfa.
As the sedan drew closer, time slowed and he heard the sound of the wheels in the dirt.
For some stupid reason he heard Lucinda Williams in his head-"Car wheels, on a gravel road..." and he realized that he had completely zoned out the radio which now seemed to be blaring. He turned off the stereo and all he heard were the ticking of the Devilles' valves and the pounding of blood in his ears, like trying to sleep through a childhood ear ache.
The Alfa Romero drew closer and he could see the young man's face and a badly dented white driver's side door on the otherwise undamaged red sedan.
As the other car pulled up next to him, without thinking he switched the smoke to his left hand, taking a final drag and feigned reaching for the seatbelt buckle.
Rader drew even with the Cadillac's driver side door and smiled his usuall friendly smile. As he acknowledged the kid with a smile and a quick chin-check he flicked the cigarette out the window. Rader's eyes instictively darted towards the butt as it went out the window.
He had no clue why this happed, but in one smooth motion he picked up the Walther and pounded 4 rounds right into the kid's face. A fine spray of blood went everywhere.
He opened his door and stepped out to get a clear, downward shot into the dead man's midsection, emptied the remainder of the clip there, popped it out and replaced it with a fresh one.
The whole thing lasted 6, maybe 7 seconds.
He had no idea how long it took him to make his next move.
Knowing there was no way the kid was alive, he walked upto the Alfa's window and looked in. Crossways on Rader's lap was an AK, barrel sawed off to fit flush with the door.
The kid's finger was still resting on the trigger gaurd.
Along with a makita cordless drill, the original door for the car was resting in the rear footwell where passengers would normally sit.
Normally.
The door was in pristine condition.
He shot the lock off the trunk and inspected the contents.
Shovel, bag of lime, hatchet, and machete.
Fuck. Some people were gonna be pissed.
The entire contents of his stomach effortlessly emptied themselves into the dust at his feet.
After wiping his mouth with his hankercheif he lit another smoke before his hands started to shake.
As he pondered the bag full of money and ammo in his trunk, he weighed the value of torching the red sedan vs. pulling out his phone and dialing 911.
All he could hear was the dry-paper crackle of the cigarette and the sound from the faint breeze.

ticktickticktick,tickticktick, went the hulking black Cadillac.
A crow.
A truck on the main road.
"Fuck." he said softly.

A Solitary Life

I don't know if it dawned on me until just now. I know the fear is there,has been there, and will remain until I die-it might even continue on with my soul into the unknown reaches of infinity when I blessedly am derailed from this mortal coil after I have heard and seen everything. Floating out in the ether somewhere passing a bottle around with Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison one of them might look at me and see that look in my eyes that only someone with The Sickness has.
This is no romanticized version of tortured artistdom. This is fear, and misery, and laying drunk in the bathroom doorway, and slamming your fist into the wall because it just doesn't work. The universe refuses to come together. People refuse to make sense. No one understands what you're saying even though it makes perfect sense and you know it does.
I'm not babbling, I'm just not like you.

It's 4:30 in the morning and I have no one to talk to-at least no one coherent who can understand what I'm saying. Not because I'm smarter, just different.
I could have committed what Colin Wilson referred to as "intellectual suicide" in his book "the Outsider" years ago. I could have at least tried to make the choice to become like everyone else. To some degree I have,but in a positive way. I have become less cynical, more open to what I perceive in people to be "faults".
But in the end, it is my nature to be up this late writing, or playing music, and I have grown accustomed to the solitary nature of my existence.
But the fear is still there.
What if I never find anybody-at all. What if nobody ever loves me for me. What if I'm just impossible to deal with or understand. There is no way to really tell. A miracle might happen 10 minutes from now and an angel might fall out of the sky into my arms and I'd be in love for ever. Maybe my gift for self expression might suddenly blossom to the point that I can make the world understand things in a way it never has before.
The words "maybe", and "what if" kept my brains fully intact, inside a skull that was never penetrated by a bullet back when things were at their very worst. Those words keep me getting out of bed every day. They keep me going to work. They keep my eyes open. They keep me from slapping people all the time. They keep gamblers gambling and junkies chasing their best high.

What is it Worth to You

What would you do?
What is it worth?
To know what it is like,
to not question love,
for it to be there,
for it to not go away,
for it to be there beside you when you
wake up in the morning
every day
until you don't know your own name anymore,
until you can't feed yourself anymore,
until someone has to wash your own shit from your body,
until you are beyond caring, and yet
someone else still does.
Move mountains?
Kill?
Lie, cheat, steal, and sin beyond beleif?
In a puddle of your own blood, with teeth smashed out?
Ribs kicked in?
Head ringing and you still stagger to your feet to go back at it?
What is it worth?
To feel the softness of her legs wrapped around yours when you wake from a nightmare in a sweat, and without waking, she holds you tighter because she feels the restlessness of you soul in her beautiful heart...and her dreams are to make that go away?
To rid you of the animal that feeds on you when you sleep?
To utterly engulf you and receive your passion with joy, and her voice in your ear, and your name only the way she can speak it...with the meaning that brings you into the world, and binds you to the universe, that crushes despair, that holds your hand.
That allows your soul the free reign to sob, to break down, to be weak, and helpless, and alone, and dying on the inside for reasons that only you know.
What would it be like to be adored?
What is it worth to you?
Just what?

Believing in Committments is for Suckers

There is one born every minute.
Never give a sucker an even break.
What the fuck is the purpose of human civilization? Community? "Strength in numbers"?
All of those things require committments, things which everybody makes and seemingly no one honors. People seem to honor "obligations" the duty-bound committments of feeding their kids, going to work-but how much of that is fear of reprisal, divine retribution, and being shunned by their community? The biggest part of committment from friends is the promise of respect-and yet that is an empty promise. Thievery, back-stabbing and self-interest seem to be the order of the day. Does being human, and following your human urges for what you want truly qualify as an affront to what we hold dear?-or is it just the indication that marital fidelity, manners, and trust are the icing-on-the-cake lottery prize of a very lucky, very few?The answer lies, I believe, in human nature.
I am not being cynical, I'm being a realist. All things being equal, why on Earth would anyone, if given the ability, NOT do what is in their own best interest? worms, whales, monkeys, and birds are quite successful-but they screw, eat, and sleep when and where they want to-and with whomever they wish...sound familiar? We are only a few bad days away from being just animals. Really. Humans do amazing things-but what would your German Shepherd do if he had thumbs? Eat the contents of your fridge and drive to Vegas in YOUR car.
Just take a moment to realize that we are just animals, stop being surprised by shitty behavior-accept it, and the good stuff becomes a whole lot better.

There is a reason Film Noir, and other Noir fiction have maintained a certainlevelof popularity over the years. A reason why Bukowski is still a heroand a twisted sort of self-help guru. Noir is French for black. That shouldbe enough right there to explainit.
Black.
Night.
Lonliness-the blackest of wounds to the human heart. What are we willing to risk to avoid it.
We all die, but we die quicker without love. Much quicker. If you don't have love and companionship you are Death walking.
No matter how self-contained you are.No matter how rich, how strong, how beautiful,ifthere isn't someone out there who doesn't judge you you are dead. Peoplesell their souls to fight off the Evil Darkness.
What is the most pathetic thing you've done for love-or, worse yet, just to not be alone.

I have come to the realization that I am lucky in one way, and completely cursed in another.
Ibounce when Ishould splat.I regain my footing when I should fall to my death.I have eyes in theback of my head when I should be blind. I have the reflexesof Superman whenI should be crushed by a semi. Bullets aimed directly atme come no where near me. Dangerous psychopaths respectme.
In short, I am indesructable.
I am also not lovable.
Iam not friendless,I am quite fortunate for the friends I do have, they are good,kind people who want the best for me-but when I talk to them about what is in my mind and my heart their brows furrow and they look at me the way my cat does when she doesn'tunderstand why the food in the dish is not the kind she like sand I try to explain the chemical make-up of cat food to her in French.
I don't get presents or cards at Christmas. I don't get them on my birthday either. No one has ever thrown a party for me,infact I got stood up by all of my friends once on my birthday. I wasn't at my sister's wedding because no one would loan me $250 for a plane ticket. My first nephew was 5 before I had a single picture of him.In the past 18 years I got three phone calls from my sister.My Mom wasgood enough to tell me she wished I'd never been born on a couple of occaisions. Dad just ignored me unless he needed something done or I did something(pretty much anything actually)that warranted criticism. Needless to say they are not a part of my life.
All of the people who are supposed to be the ones I count on aren't there, or impose conditions when they are.
I am a hopeless romantic and have fallen in love many times-only one woman has ever deigned to stoop low enough to return the favor and she did an about face not too long later.
I am the incarnation of confusion.
I fell for someone once. The worst broken heart I ever had. If you saw how well the two ofus got along you'd assume we were together-and people did. Pretty,smart,fun,full of life,we made each other laugh constantly. I was actually lovable when I was a round her.She never gave me a second thought. All my efforts.All the pain,all the hope. Nada
Just me sitting on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands, drunk out of my mind wondering when it would stop hurting
so
FUCKING
much.
My Christmas present that year was watching her fall in love with someone else.
Drink and a smoke in one hand, my dick in the other-to coin a phrase.
All of the impossible tasks we dream of.
Being an astronaut, a rockstar, wealth, power.
All I want is a home.
Love, to connect us to the rest of the Universe with that golden chain.
Solid ground to stand on.
Waking up in the middle of the night with arms wrapped around us.
A cup of coffee brought to us in bed for no particular reason except to be nice to us.
Over time those thoughts dissipate like smoke.
They say we have no actual memory of pain- I think that is a load of crap.
I always thought I was lovable.
Most people think I'm just wierd.
I used to think, many, many years ago that I wanted to die, but I am just so stubborn-like a dog that refuses to lie down.
If you give in,you lose your soul,the bad guys win.
The darkness takes over and the Universe goes black and no matter how shitty your life is, no one wants to be resposible for that.
All things being equal, the most obvious answer usually is the right one.
I just wish the cost of being superhuman wasn't lonliness.
I have humiliated myself
in the past trying to prove that I was lovable. Confusing sex for affection.Confusing having company for having friends.
Some days I can't eat.
Some nights I can't sleep.
I wake up some mornings feeling as though I am about to shatter.
I see idiots surrounded with love. I see pieces of shit with the sweetest girlfriends and wonderful lives.
I'm not complaining, or whining.
I am merely stating the facts as they are.
Do you think it's sad
that sometimes I reach out and touch the wall by my bed,or press my face aginst the cool paint because there isn't someone there with me and Ineed to touch something just to prove I'm alive?
Does it make me less of a man
because sometimes I cry at things that seem small to other people? A dead cat, or dog in the road can bring me to tears, not just because I like animals,but I think about the poor little girl, or old lady,
or miserable bastard like myself that has nothing except their little furry domesticated pet to ward off the crushing,incessant hammer-blows of lonliness.
The empty blackness of slumberless sleep.Waking to smoke a cigarette you don't really want. When the tums aren't enough to make the pain in you stomach go away enough to sleep.Laying vaguely sweating for some unknown reason,having conversations with someone you wish was there-and having to stop and think if you were speaking out loud or not. Not wanting another drink, but praying for sweet oblivion to clobber you into a coma. Over and over and over again,night after fucking night until you realize it's been more than twenty years and you wonder if it hurts less or you have become just dead enough inside to make it more bearable.I know why people do heroine, and stay drunk all the time-because it numbs the pain.For me,drugs and alcohol breakdown the barriers that hold my emotions in check.I see someone sleeping at a bus stop at 3am after 10 Jack and Cokes and my heart shatters into a thousand pieces.I've come close to winding up on the street,I've been so poor that I've gone days without eating.I've been so exhausted,burned out, and depressed that all I could do was sit in front of the TV and pet my cat-for days.
What does it all mean? It means that life can be an enormous crap sandwich force fed to you on a shovel, by assholes that mock you.
Flip them the bird and tell them to fuck off, and right when they're about to pull the trigger and splatter your brains all over the wall, look them square in the eye and laugh like a child posessed by the Devil.