Winter

You know when you're standing out there
having a cigarette in the frigid cold
and there are those buildings with big
blinding neon signs through the heavy dark night
and a few of the letters have died out
and they breathe out toxins across the street
or down the road
or miles away
and the cars breathe them out
and the trains breathe them out
and yeah
You're breathing them out too
and you think to yourself
Standing there in the cold
"Hell... It must be winter again."

I call this home...
We... Call this home

and I dont care if you don't want to hear
that I could watch the whole thing burn itself apart
Choke on fumes
Break its bones
Whatever
But when you come around
You're like the surgeon that sews the tendons
of reality back into place
Triple bypass sunshine surgery
PHD in making me happy
and that means something to me
Then you are gone again
when I get out of the snow
and I'm at the bar drinking ice ciders in a broken place
Making up excuses
Waiting on friends who hardly care to show
I'm just the guy writing words that you don't want to know
Relying on some passive chance that scribbling them down might warm up your mind
Or at least warm up my own
and so what if it does?
This is just the place that I call home...

In winter.

In Headlights

What are you chasing down
Good friend?
It'll never turn out the way you plan
Nobody at home
Devil's at the bar
Turn all that hard work into nothing
But an aching hangover
A night without stars
A bloody liver
A rotten brain
You buy the beer for thirsty mouths
They give you peace for an hour at a time

What are you hunting down
Good friend?
or is it you who has become the prey?
of all the dirty tricks under your camouflage vest
In headlights the whole entire way
I guess you've got to hide it somewhere
Up your nose
Down your throat
It's all the same
And you can run as far as those two feet will take you
But will it be fast enough to lose track of your brain?

Are you crying again
Good friend?
Is it burning hot inside of that bed?
The one you have made with a blanket of flames
and the stories locked inside of your head
Are you tossing and turning in the ashes
of a sad, lonely girl's dying heart?
Would you still be in there
If the lengths of her hair
knew everything those fingertips have touched?
Are you lying again?
Are you burning again?
Are you crying again?

Are your eyes drunk as sin tonight
Good friend?
We both have bottle's to chase with our souls
and mine is for the numbing
and the boredom and the pain
and yours is to the next bottle's goal
So the great outdoors won't feel so empty
So you can bare to make that telephone call
So you can brave on through it like a breathing machine
and laugh and play with all of the flowers on the wall

You've almost disappeared
Good friend
Down into the world
you kept telling me you'd never let win...
I bled out the role of a recourse
and let you back into the night
Repeating your fate is just mentally insane
but who am I to offer any inch of advice?
Instead of swallowing your words
You swallowed everything you could
For a lifetime outside of yourself
Some call that hell
and I could not help
and that's my hell

A Eulogy In Reverse

Disposable fool
You gave up the moon
for a heart made of pain
crown of thorns for the king
Don't you know that you smiled far too soon?
Your hands fell apart when you told them goodbye
The more the truth is heard the more it sounds just like a lie
Now earthworms squirm around the dirt inside your mind
and carve their way through the tunnels that your thoughts have left behind
Even the shoes on your feet that have torn at the seams
are plotting your death behind your back
The words you wish to say are so afraid of your tongue
that it has wrestled them down and killed every one
Disposable fool
Loving just like a cloud
Had to soak everything up and then rain it back down
For a eulogy written in reverse
For the illusion of floating off the ground
and when you touched heaven, did it want you?
Did you feel safe when the angels pulled you through?
The promise that you made, a burning halo on your brain
Just close your eyes and hope that everything will be okay
What you want does not need you
You've been chasing dreams that dream too
Don't you know that you smiled far too soon?
Your fingers and lips have been chewed
Now the passion just comes out all used
and even the shadows have lead you astray
Disposable fool
Organs made of sand and your heart in the wind
Don't you know that this is how it ends?
Its how it all ends.

The Voice

Just another night out on the railroad
running behind trains
Believing, sincerely that you'd never have to follow them back again
There's a tangy, copper tongued taste of surprise
every time your eyes shoot down to your feet
and you keep telling yourself that somehow you haven't yet tripped once
on any of the stiff, rooted, wooden ties, leading their way from the tips of your toes
to the faint and perplexing reaches of god knows where...
But it's somewhere
and the reflection of that dream
keeps your legs running
and the sweat pouring
and you know that she's out there
Just minutes away from the very untouched, sanguine pathway
that the calloused hands of hope levelled out the first time
you both said hello
and when the goodbye came
You thanked the sky for not crashing down on your head like bad luck
You cursed the velocity of time for giving up
You held your soul up by its throat, told it where to go, and hit the open road
and I'll be damned if there wasn't a certain amount of respect in doing that

Just another night out on the highway
chasing cars, and trucks, and tail lights
Smelling the fiery, searing rubber of all the wheels on the asphalt
The scent of victory over the pretence of distance
Drinking down memories like gasoline
Pushing, pushing you further toward the enchantment of a better day
You marvelled over the thousands of miniature, bright, bulb like, stars up in space
and rapped off some compassionate prose about how she is present
in the same universal positioning that you are,
Yet also the same spot that none of us really quite understand anyway
and even though you've been running around with empty, untouched hands
The sound of her voice through the telephone makes all of the flowers in the world stand up
and the purpose of gunning it out alone, at least for a little while,
worth it in the long run
So you keep chasing that thing down
Doing everything you can to make good time
and all the cars on the road know you by name now
and you gotta know that... That's alright

You've gotta dream, dream, dream while sitting on the clock,
or hounding trains, or rushing cars
and, without exception, squeeze the delectable juices of experience into your cup
and drink it on down to the soft linings of your heart
which should be located right below everything that tore you up in the past
and in turn made you weary of the unforeseeable future,
(Somewhere just behind your left lung, if I'm not mistaken)
But it's not of any concern now
Just try, try, try not to prick your finger while you're smashing the moon on that long drive back home
and her voice should be there when all the flowers begin to start dying again
or when the colour on the walls take to bleeding
When the music burns you out
When the muscles start to burn
When the dreams overflow
When the words are no good
When your bike won't unlock
When bulldog's leap up
When ceramic tile's are for sleep
When you'd rather not sleep
When every breath you take grabs for air
Her voice should be there...

I Found Out Just The Other Day What Love Feels Like When It Is Dying

Its when all the windows in the world are laughing at you
Hissing at you
Telling the doors not to let you in
The stories you once immersed yourself into,
Have been submerged
Soaking in tar and alcohol
and the ink is dripping from their pages
but you never really cared for the colour red anyway so you let them go
Red like roses
Red like that anarchy poster you used to hang up in your little apartment above the shoe rack
It hung there like a militarised welcome mat
and for some reason it always reminded you of the cigarette burns on your forearms
The ones you could never figure out where the fuck they came from
That flesh you wish would have made you stronger
With time... With time...
But time is just a marathon we run until we are totally empty
Just to get a sneak peak ahead to the finish line
Where we see:
Car crash's
Tight knot's
A raging fire
The kiss of cancer
Get your tongue ready
Saliva thick
and have everything shoved straight into your mouth
No holds barred
Become the champion of the disease
The fly on skin
Get sweat and sugar and then get swatted away
That's love!
A trophy
That is what it's all about
True humanitarianism
But
Muzzled
With its hands tied back and bleeding
Buckets of blood
That are then dried to soot and rubbed on foreheads for smiles

Rip open your heart
Ashes of Christ
Eat your words
Peace be with you

You Know Nothing

You do not know anything about earning a buck
Until you've worked the factories
12 hour night shifts
Empty stomach, hangover, gut rot
10.50 an hour

You know nothing
and you went to school
For a 9-5, ass grab position
Behind a desk on the 30th floor of some
21st century, post modern social club
With 500 friends online and the ego
of a pampered pre-teen pop star

You do not have it rough and
You don't know anything about smoking a pack of cigarettes and
pouring the rest of yesterday's whiskey
Into your 4th cup of coffee on break at 4:30 in the morning
and your line supervisor comes over to ask if you want to go home early
and you say
"Hell no!"
Why?
Because your mental state is like a steam engine now
You need that scratch to keep the body afloat
In this ammonia filled ocean of a world
Determination turbine
and that's tough

So... You took a media arts course in college
Professional writing?
and had your parents buy your intelligence?
Well, it didn't work and I'm not impressed
You just keep writing about broken hearts
and subconscious psycho babble that only oafs
cling on to because they think your stuff is great
Yet they hardly think at all
It means nothing

Not until you give up a piece of every part of your soul and body
dollars for breath
dollars for sweat and blood and time
money for staying quite and getting the job done
night after night after night
Until you finally understand that hell isn't a place you go when you die
but it's fully alive in those last 3 hours
when even the clock hands are too tired to count down

Not a single coworker opens their mouths to talk
The pallets and conveyor belts and machines keep moving
Until they break
The machines break often
so these men in hard hats and shiny orange vests
Who are paid double your salary
go to the machine and try to put it back together

They do so romantically
by playing with all of its parts
They stick wrenches, and hands, and tools into it
and look at each other awkwardly with wide open mouths

When the thing starts back up again they walk away like hero's
and everyone else is left with a bunch of extra work and emotional trauma
but I guess that's how all love making goes

You know nothing
Know nothings...
You do not know anything about giving up day light
and you are not strong until you realize it was already ugly to begin with

The Fear

She said she was afraid of losing her dad
He said he was afraid of losing her...

The guy who lived next door
Woke up every morning at 6 am
Got in his car, buckled in, just to make sure he got a coffee before work
Did the same routine everyday and worked at a boring office job
He was afraid of spiders

His mother
Well, she was afraid of commitment but she's long since passed now

This beautiful girl I met at a party one night back in the city
She took me outside to have a cigarette and we talked for a while
She told me she was weighed down and absolutely terrified of failure
and then she kissed me

My old friend Dominic was afraid of clowns
He was an asshole

When we were children my brother used to cover his eyes with a pillow
anytime I put on a horror movie
He'd scream at me to "Turn it off! Turn it off!"
and then he'd just end up watching it anyway
But he still covered his eyes
Whenever he felt a real sense of fear coming on
His face would be buried deep in that pillow

I saw a bum on the street just outside of the mission in downtown Ottawa last year
He was skinny, and withered, and bruised, and he had track marks in his arms,
and a bunch of tattoo's that had faded and appeared as though they were becoming the texture of charred, burnt leather
He was crying
I think it was because he was afraid to die
I'm sure it was probably coming soon
Or
Maybe he was hungry
Or
Maybe he just needed some smack

There's these guys in bars
They brag about how tough they are
They go out with their friends
Their carbon copy friends, who also brag about how tough they are
They gel their hair and dye their hair
and they slam back shots and look for fights
This is how they stay tough
It's how they get by
These guys,
They are afraid that their penis' are too small

This bomb went off yesterday in Boston
A big fiery thing
It was detonated near the finish line of a big marathon run
The explosion killed three people and is said to have wounded 170 others
I saw all of these pictures of people with their body parts askew
and their limbs blown off
and blood like graffiti on the streets of Boston
The bomb scared everyone through television sets and computers
and through radio's and cell phones
It may as well have gone off right in our living rooms
Primed by media detonators
Scary

Ergophobia is the fear of work or functioning
Ombrophobia is the fear of rain
Papaphobia is fear of the pope
Chronophobia is the fear of time and of time moving forward...
It seems we're all a little chronophobic these days

The Prime Minister, Man
He must be afraid of everyone
and rock stars are afraid of losing crowds
and doctors are afraid of losing patients
and lawyers are afraid of losing money
and children are afraid of the boogeyman

What scares me most is that everyone around me is so goddamn afraid of so many things
That they don't realise the fear is of themselves
and of each other
Progression scares them and so does death
and communication
and I feel as though I'll never be able to have a normal conversation again
Without scaring the shit out of somebody...

Social Networking: To Much Progression. Not Enough Reflection.

Social Network
noun
1. a network of friends, colleagues, and other personal contacts: Strong social networks can encourage healthy behaviours.
2.
Computers.
a. an online community of people with a common interest who use a Web site or other technologies to communicate with each other and share information, resources, etc.: a business-oriented social network.
b. a Web site or online service that facilitates this communication.


Also known as a place to dispel meaningless information, self gratifying jargon, senseless provocations, and personally pleasing images. A place where you can argue with other 'interwebbed' socialites about whether or not Aladdin is the best "before bed" movie choice that one could possibly make. A place where what I like to call 'cyber stalking' was the very basis of its animation and if ever there were a finer example in the processes of the lethargic psychological framework all the way up to the genuinely strategical use of a medium made by observant intellectuals, you certainly could not show me better. I would even go as far to say that social networking has become a step in the evolution of our species. What the big question mark over our heads is asking is; Progressive or regressive? Instead of evolving physically we are absolutely evolving outwardly. We are feeding all of our feeling's, emotions, dream's, fear's, and so on into this ever growing social machine... and let me tell you, the thing is hungry and is getting it's fill. It stores our lively hood's in a massive database with which it can look back on and analyse with great precision. It's now integratable with any piece of modern technology, visa vi; cell phones, game consoles, television sets, tablets, laptops, home PCs, etc. Making it portable, accessible at any desired moment,  prominent, and remarkably efficient. Possibly more so then us. One is now considered an outsider or unusual if they do not at least dip their hand into the social networking pool, so of course the fascination to do so is ever present to the minute few that have not.

Where did the fascination come from? I think deep down at the core of every human being is the active need to feel a sense of adoration or at the very least a need to be heard. Who can blame us? We've been raised in a culture and society that is virtually conditioned to adhere to the consumerist ploy for your pockets, follow the plot line laid out by the wealthiest lineages whom of which are also the least noble among us, and we must admire and respect these grandiose figures. This conditioning has taught us to hold figures like politicians, the heads of corporatocracy, religious preachers, models, actors, what have you, in high regards because of their attractive and appealing lives. They live with seemingly endless platforms to be heard and seen from. In fact when you look back on human history, we think of or were taught mainly, of these people who have either made a positive or negative impact on the advancement of humanity. We talk about the accomplishments of hero's or the devastation brought on by evil foe. The performance so and so gave in that film or how Christopher Columbus saved savages from the perils of their primitive ways. We don't have discussions about the uneventful existence of Joe Simpleton, his wife, and his 2 children who all lived mediocre lives in the farm house down country rd.3. No. Throw that family into the Great Depression or better yet have Joe die after acting in a few movies or recording a couple of albums in the turn of the 20th century and you have yourself a story for the ages. Joe Simpleton is then suddenly admired, loathed, praised, what have you, but he is spoken about none the less. We were taught to behold these individuals with such dedication that we end up discerning very little toward the man or woman content with the bare minimum. Hence we are put in a state of perpetual competition with one another. A battle with the mass collective to be more different, extreme, famed, loved, more, more, more, than the last. We aren't admired unless we are heard, seen, read, or spoken about.

What social networking employs is a platform in which one can express whatever opinion (however important or meaningless) to a mass group of people at the click of a button. This gives us a tangibility of importance. I say it gives us a 'sense' of importance because obviously our degree's of substance vary from person to person. I can't count the number of times I've held my head in my hands after reading some of the seemingly endless vapid posts that clog up my social 'wall'. Now, I'm not excusing myself from the senselessness of this attention scouting tendency because I'm sure that not everything I consciously decide to submit to the network is full of sustenance and importance but I AM undoubtedly aware of the reason's I am posting these things. I mean the entire premise of doing that is to seek out attention from someone. To aspire to wake up in the morning and post thing's such as "Just woke up" or "Shower then breakfast" or "Way too early" is just astoundingly alien to me. Just the other day someone had posted "Beep. Boop." as their status. It presents a whole other kind of civil division between how much commitment is dispersed into ones 'web personality' as opposed to ones everyday personality.

'Web Personality'. I chose these words to define this kind of newly adapted system of cognition. I like the term for a few reasons. The word 'Web' is defined as such:

noun
1. something formed by or as if by weaving or interweaving.
2. a thin, silken material spun by spiders and the larvae of some insects, as the webworms and tent caterpillars; cobweb.

It is also an English short form word used often to refer to the Internet or World Wide Web.

 "Something formed by or as if by weaving or interweaving." This is exactly what is happening to the way we regard our personalities with the presence of social networking. We have conflicting personalities. The way we choose to act in the social network environment is seemingly in an extreme and unconstrained fashion. We eternally have something to say, we feel the need to express gratitude for others, we argue for the sake of arguing, we are quick witted (or apparently so), we befriend people we don't know, we act, we lie, we put on a show. It relieves any sense of judgement or feelings of wrong doing whilst looking deep into random or familiar people's lives, which has subconsciously developed into second nature for most of the general population. "Have you seen the new picture Megan posted?" (If you haven't of course you will be shown). "Can you believe what so and so said to so and so on that status they posted?!" Then the picking apart happens... "It's hideous!", "it's beautiful!", "I can't believe someone would say that!", "Loser", "Sadist", "Blah, blah, blah." and this judgement takes effect because one has no emotional obligation to be kind in a situation of that domain. The person in question is not physically present therefore, anything goes.

So... If you are feeding so much of yourself into this 'Web Personality', does it eventually start leaking into your everyday interactive persona? The answer is decidedly, yes. Many conversations in the present date end up revolving around how one acts or conducts themselves through this medium. It does lend a lot to the novel significance of self reflection and intellectuals have harnessed this creation marvelously. Social networking for many of them is used for artistic or creative growth and in many cases monetary gain. With the competency of prolonged self reflection before action we are all given the opportunity to craft our liveliness. I find, personally that my mind often precedes the rate of my speech in most cases so given the opportunity to reflect upon which I am inclined to say is ideally appealing. If I were to be having a conversation about this very topic in the flesh I might have a few slips of the tongue or I might get caught up or preoccupied with certain positions I am trying to take or idea's that I'm trying to form but not in a social networking environment. However, not everybody exercises this tool in the corresponding way. Much like the invention of the automobile people seem to jump at the chance of progression rather than fundamentally instilling reflection. In lieu of considering the safety of themselves or others, they postpone the possibility of accidents or hazards to grab on to something new. With that proposition at hand I am assured that the use of social networking for several people may be ultimately destructive or in the long run, damaging.

It will not be destructive in the sense that it will physically hurt you, that's impossible. The way in which it will be damaging to certain people will be (if it hasn't been already) effectively psychological. Social networking is consistently nurturing that burning desire to have the admiration of ones peers at the click of a button. Several folk often toss their emotions onto a social networking website hoping for reactions or answers as an alternative to facing them head on. They may get hundreds of responses corresponding with the exact backlash that they were looking for, they may get nothing, or in a worst case scenario they could receive multitudes of negativity. Any of these circumstances effect the psyche antithetically. The social network reality is creating a false sense of importance within the minds of man. It's almost as if you are now balancing the presence of two corresponding realities. Your conscious, physical, day to day, and one that is solely web based. Each influencing the other.

Another introspectively terrifying thought is what this network is utilizing with the knowledge it is provided. It flourishes with you. It learns unquestionably and swiftly about who you like to talk to, what your interests are, and what appeals to you. It provides links based on its interpretation of what you might enjoy. It correlates to your needs. It becomes a friend or a sort of background ally to aid you with the betterment of your social networking experience. So in retrospect the website is discovering for itself what it is like to co-exist with humanity. Soon enough, with the perpetual advancements in technology, I'm sure it will start to express harmonizing emotional responses fixed with the appropriate groove of what you are feeling based on the information you constantly nurture it with, of course. Would that be tolerable? Would the birth of something like that shock people for a week or so and then just become another 'shrug of the shoulder' update that's too far out of our hands to control anyway? Or is privacy something we are willing to give up in order to attain the ability to infringe upon the privacy of others? Food for thought, I guess.

Happy Valentine's Day!

On the way home from work...

I do everything for my wife. I pay the bills and put food on the table. I made sure she had a wonderful house over her head. I bought her a beautiful wedding ring, that special one she wanted with the rose shaped out of diamonds. Sometimes I even go out of my way to get her that coffee she always wants when I'm on my way home from work. It's so far out of the god damn way but when she wants it, I go get it for her. There was this one time, she went away with some girlfriends for the weekend, they went skiing or something, and before she got home I spent that whole Sunday just cleaning and cleaning. I mean I scrubbed the thing fucking spotless and when she got home, she didn't even notice. That was okay though. A little appreciation would have been nice but, ya know, that's marriage, right? I've taken her on vacations. We went to Vegas on our anniversary and oh man, did she ever love that. She always said she wanted to visit Vegas and see the showgirls and all the lights. Where was my "thank you" for that? I guess we did have sex a few times on the trip but even that only happens every so often now. Fuck. We used to be so wild! When I was 20 years old, Trish must have been 18 or somethin', we were at this house party. She took me outside and we started feeling each other up on this playground at a school across the street. Ya know what she did? It was fucking unbelievable! She hiked up that skirt and pulled down her panties and told me to fuck her right there on that playground! We used to be so wild! Now... We have movie nights. She'll make the popcorn and we'll watch some bullshit romantic comedy. I hate romantic comedies. I hate movie nights. I want to have sex again! She picks out my clothes, she tells me to act my age, she makes me shower before bed. I've gotta feed her dog's, take out the trash, constantly renovate the house, spend time with her after working all day when the only thing I want to do is sleep, and we are endlessly fighting. Fighting forever about nothing at all really and now its Valentine's day! Maybe I'll just tell her I forgot. It's been a long day. She's always so upset with me and I'm losing my mind and I feel like garbage and I can't take this shit anymore.

Back at home...

He's late again. 7:00 p.m. and he still isn't home. I spent hours making this dinner and he doesn't even have the decency to make it home on time? Figures. He's going to get a piece of my mind when he get's home whether it be Valentine's day or not. I just can't wrap my head around why he does these thing's now. These little, careless, mindless thing's just to drive me up the wall! I do everything to make him happy. I clean the house everyday. I look after his damn dogs! I never wanted to take care of these dogs. I do the laundry and god help me if I ever have to touch another pair of his disgusting, filthy, fucking underwear. I never in a million years dreamed of being a housewife and to be constantly cleaning up after a man everyday. I went to college for interior design. It was my passion to decorate rooms and to draw layouts and pick out fabrics, oh, do I EVER miss doing that! I just don't have the time. I don't have the time for me anymore. Jason did let me go on a girls weekend a year or so back and what a relief it was to be away even if it only was for a couple of days. I got back home and I remember him having this stupid look on his face like, "notice me." So self-centered... He does however like watching romantic comedies on our movie nights. You gotta love a man with a soft side like that. I've never really told him that though. Maybe I should? Nah. It'll probably just start another god damn fight. We have these stupid fights over nothing. Ya know how self-centered he is? He took me to fucking Las Vegas on our anniversary! I mean, what kind of woman wants to go to a filthy city like Vegas as an anniversary gift. I was almost appalled! The only thing I could even comment on the entire weekend was the fact that the light's were sort of pretty. Which they were... He's never thinking of me. How we got like this I'll never know. It's like anything I ask him to do puts this scowl on his face. I clean up after you every fucking day and you can't take the garbage out. Get a grip pal. He better have a gift for me this year, even if it is just a coffee! He better have something when he gets here or I'm going to lose it. I can't take this shit anymore.

Upstairs...

Connor was sitting at the desk he made with his father when he was a little boy. He was 16 now. His birthday was last week but his parent's were to busy or distracted to notice. He didn't have many friend's and his parent's were fighting all the time so normally, he just kept to himself in his room. He was big into drawing and he really liked to play the guitar. He had such a talent when it came to getting something out of his head and drawing it down on paper but unfortunately, most of the time, that too went unnoticed. His favorite place to do draw was at his desk. It reminded him of when he was young and carefree and of a time when his parents used to play with him in the yard and hold his hand on that scary walk to school. That, to Connor, felt like such a long time ago. He finished the drawing and walked it over to his bed. He then stood up on the chair he had positioned right in the center of his room. He had no rope you see, so he slipped one of the over sized ties that his mother had bought him over his neck after tying it to the base of his ceiling fan. He kicked over the chair which didn't really make much of a thud as it fell on to his carpet. As his body jolted and twisted and then finally started to tingle and then go numb, he stared down at the last picture he would ever draw. It was a Valentine's day card to both of his parents. The outside of the card in gorgeous red's, pinks, and white said: "Happy Valentine's Day" and if you were to flip the card over to the inside, which surely Connor could not do, it read: "I'm sorry Dad and Mom... I just can't take this shit anymore."

Well, That Guy Was Pissed!

There was writing to be done!

Yesterday I had a stroke of writers block and nothing could be more frustrating and so full of anguish to me then when I am unable to find word's to put down on paper. 

So... 

I had some things to do today and in between going from place to place I took in a few sights, walked around (in the pouring rain no less), and listened to music. I was really giving it my all, trying to get this mind rolling. Then they hit me! Yes! Word's! Sentence's flowing again and I had to get these jotted down. 

I went into a coffee shop just a few blocks away from my house, grabbed a coffee and a donut and let loose on my notebook. One poem finished. Next.... I could feel the discomfort and uneasiness slowly start to creep through my fingers, through the pen, and onto the paper until....

Two men sat down at a table a foot or so to the right of me. Both older men. They sipped their coffee and at first were of no harm to my process. 

"You know what I was saying earlier was the cut and clear fact that when God spoke to us for the first time it was through Moses. What he said was 'I AM WHO I AM.' Meaning God created the light of the day and the light of the night. Moses grew up in Egypt and was forced to believe that the Sun and the Moon were actual God's but this was the first time we as people were ever spoken to by God and it was at that moment in time that the Egyptian beliefs were completely disproved. This was done by the scripture which was the first book."

The man was almost preaching this to his friend at the table in a thunderous manner although his friend didn't quite appear to be getting what the man was saying anyway (which was highly understandable). The word's in my head began to disappear and all I could hear was the voice of this man over everything. My word's again had vanished.

"Ya' see, there were ALL of these "scientists" who came AFTER Moses, ya know, the Greek scientists, Aristotle and Plato, who tried to disprove the word of God by saying that he did NOT create the Sun and the Moon only to find out that through scripture they have been proven wrong."

Okay...

Sink teeth deep into tongue. Remain calm. Pick up your things, head for the door, get outside, walk a couple of blocks away, maybe scream if you need to, and just go home. Confrontation is not the way to go. Relax Jaden.

 "Now we have these men like Richard Dawkins trying to tell us that alien's have visited earth and that the scriptures are just written by men and he titled his book The God Delusion. Yet every time he gives a lecture he contradicts himself. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Really! The man doesn't know what he's talking about especially when we have proof like that, from the beginning of time no less! Just after the creation of man and the Garden of Eden. People are just so damned naive now a' days! Fools."

If my tongue was not reduced to a bloody pile of ground meat inside my mouth it sure as fuck was soon to be. I flipped over to a clean page and wrote the only clear thing that was present in my mind. The calm I was trying to keep a tight grasp of had moved on to a feeling of angered steam, which then carved itself a path for fire. I folded what I had written into a neat rectangle and walked over to the man at the table after putting on my coat.

I handed him the folded piece of paper. The outside read "I wrote you a poem" signed J.L.A. The man looked surprised and opened it up only to find that the contents of the inside read "Word's To The Narrow Minded Man Sitting Next To Me In A Coffee Shop: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH."

He stared up at me with that look you get when you've just unintentionally made a joke about somebodies mother who you then find out through a complete lapse of silence has just passed away and yes, oh yes, you have now become that asshole. He crumpled the paper and threw it at my head.

"We're going outside!" The man exclaimed as I stared at him blankly.

"Okay." I replied as I picked up the crumpled ball.

I did not want to fight. I am no fighter. In fact one blow from this 52 year old, broad bodied, arrogant man and I'm sure my slender frame would crack instantly under the weight of his fist but I accepted this as fate because if you're going to do something (and I mean, I had committed myself to the thing very deeply at this point) you see it straight through to the end. No choice. I walked outside, set my coffee down, and lit up a cigarette. I stood there for a couple minutes but the man still had not left his seat. I walked over to the window and gave it a couple of light taps with my lighter. As I said before, this man would have beaten, kicked, destroyed, buried, butchered, pummeled me... What have you... but in this situation my "ca hones" appeared to be extremely large and any man with that kind of fearless courage is not be tampered with. 

The man never came out and there was no fight but I also did not have to walk a few blocks to scream at the sky, nor did I bite off my tongue. In fact, I feel alright now! No frustration. No anguish because now I know....

There's writing to be done!

The Soup That Kept Me Strong

It must have been the soup that kept me strong
On those days when there wasn't even a penny in my pocket
and that bitter cold that always crept deep into my lungs
Reminding me that I didn't have any smoke to fill them with
That was when people always looked the happiest to me
So content with their possessions
So passively cool about having a stiff meal
But me
I just went for the soup
The cheap stuff
.59 cents for a bowl of broth and noodles
and my friends would buy me beer
and I'd pass out in the night time and wake up the next day still with no pennies
At about noon I'd walk to some busy place in the city and watch all these happy people eating,
making plans for the evening,
and so on.
They all had jobs that they loved
Where they found them I would never know
and they dressed fine
and I dressed just as well
They didn't even notice that I wasn't one of them
Not me...
I was something else entirely
I sat there among them to trick my brain into thinking that I was one
Sometimes, I'd get some eye contact from a classy broad in a mini skirt
or a head nod from some prick in a suit
and I'd think to myself:
"It's working! It's working!"
Then they would all leave at 1:30pm or some time around 2:00pm and I would pick up and go with them
I'd take that long cold walk back home
Maybe bum a smoke on the way
Get back and toss a pot on the stove
The water would begin to boil and I'd rip open that cheap ass pack of noodles and watch them soften in the water as their temperature began to rise
Cigarette hanging from my lips
I'd light it up in the warmth
In comfort
I wouldn't be thinking about those people anymore
But about myself
and the heat
and the smoke in my lungs
Yeah....
It must have been the soup that kept me strong

No Work Tomorrow

Put me in a factory
and work me like a mule
Work me until my fingers are too bruised to type
or until my hands are so calloused they can no longer grip the pen
Work me like death or suicide
Work me until the thought of an ulcer seems comforting
I want to go home in the night and drink a beer and pass out drooling in front of the television set
Wake up the next morning
Repeat...
Work me until I'm sweating and crying and cursing the God's, screaming:
"I'm done with this shit! It's too hard to move on!"
and then work me some more
Make me believe I'm doing it for the betterment of myself
Make me believe that the cracking of my limbs and the silence of the young kids and old women beside me are getting more than their "money's worth"
and when one of them doesn't show up for their shift the following day
I'll believe they escaped to some place better
A place where sunlight pours through open windows and the warm winds are like old songs touching ears
as if they were ancient, ambient, memories passing by
A place where beer and wine are drank not to forget but just to have another great time
I like to think about that...
I mean,
We all need something to believe in

I Said I Would Write You A Poem

7 years ago
I told my grandmother I would write her a poem
But I had no words for her then
I was 17 and reckless
My eyes were set on the shiny things in life...
That year I moved out on my own
I was cooped up in a town that I felt was too small for my growing personality
I saved up enough money to leave
and I left.
When I got there
The city felt gigantic
There were people and parties and places to go and things to do
ALL of the time
Balconies and buildings
It was beautiful grandma
The lights
The spirit
I wish you were there to see it

5 years ago
I told my grandmother I was working on a poem
but I had no words for her again
I was 19 and I was crazy
The city had become my home
and the newness was gone
I had work everyday and at nights I would play music
by myself on a stage in a bar
Most of my friends had moved away or also had jobs
and we suddenly had become busy
and ingrained in the mechanics of that place
I tried everything I could to bring a bit of the excitement back
It cost me a lot of things
My money
My songs
My time
My sanity
I'm sure if you were there
You would have stopped it

3 years ago
I was in a band
and out of all the songs I wrote back then
I couldn't focus on your poem
I was playing shows almost every night of the week
and if I wasn't playing I was with the band writing or practising
We did radio spots and pressed our own EP
All of our music was self produced, self recorded, and it was a great time in my life
We held our own fundraiser for a children s hospital and raised over a grand playing music 2 years in a row
I got to sing out that boredom I was feeling
It brought back the excitement
The city lights felt a bit brighter
I cared less about having to work a 9-5 job
and I smiled more
If you were there
You would have smiled too

Last year
My grandmother made a joke about the poem I still owed her
I kept telling myself over and over in my head that it was coming
But I couldn't find the words
You see grandma,
That was the year I fell in love
I dedicated every piece of myself to making her happy
My heart buried itself deep into that year
I moved in with her
She was my best friend
I used to talk about bringing her home
To meet the family
To meet you
But time went on and  we fell apart
and I watched these beautiful and strange memories
Pour through my fingers like liquid
My mind was elsewhere
I did everything I could to bring on distraction
I got caught up and lost
That's not a place you would have wanted to be
It wasn't a place I ever hoped to be

But

Lately
I've seen you more now than I did when I was 17 and living with my mother and father
You don't mention the poem anymore
and neither do I
and everything I went through in that place meant nothing compared to how badly I wanted
to give you a poem
To give you words from your grandson that you would look at
In the future
or Someday
and be proud of...