Bound up, directionless by opiates, I opined. Sweat and in the clear my bowels of hell let loose in a public place. Scrub pines of the coast capturing the creatures that lay stagnant on this isthmus catching glimpses of woodland creatures trying to hitchhike to salvation.

Tap your foot to this beat jagged rocks of jetties jutting out make me stumble. Skulking slothlike milking the landscape of its solace and perhaps placing more emphasis than is needed on winning a seasonal fight that can only be battled to a draw.

Now, we wouldn't even catch each others eye. Divided as we are now by a moral and economic apartheid. When movers and shakers meet, the settled, the fakers.

Resilience the backbone.

March 22, 2005

I stroll about with incontinent brain functions, meager hopes and self described squalid surroundings. I smell remnants of old sex in body odor on public transportation and keep my boots ready for the thaw and the inevitable sickly-sweet manure to spread out upon the land scraped from the horizons of my window. I have lost myself in bottles and searched for the youth in half pints, pressing only my will to plant my feet on the ground the next day. Heel down on thumb tacks, future indefinite defying the prospects of the Spring with self motivational speeches petering out in mumbles. Hope in substances its subjective to the reader. Its reminiscent of the time you go to the ATM and forget the PIN although you never really had to think about it before it seemingly disappeared . Amongst the numbers on the pad the combinations innumerable. So here I sit tryin to decipher decode and protract from the shambles a semblance and with the Spring placin her head upon the block, winters feet swinging from the gallows, I await summer's head to be revealed from the mask of the executioner. Its merely a cautionary tale of the seasonally depressed, I lose friends and direction in the cold months, a ocean man expatriated to the banks of the Connecticut River feeling sorry for myself because I lack the courage to explore. So this expatriate expatiates, attempting to do what I have to do every year. It could be ameliorated by Zoloft, Paxil, or the like, but my grey day struggles enable me to wear shorts in 40 degree weather and not bitch about a rainy day in May. I am one out of many that suffers from this affliction and yet I never stop worrying about my friends, the people who are there for me and the ones that I figured always would be. Granted this writing is one sided and face to face conversations alleviate verbosity with eye contact, but its all that I have left in some cases in one case one night and into another bottle the next, I'll genuflect to the people who have no one because they some how fuck it up of their own accord at every corner and with every chance they get. If I was only half as dirty as they say I am at times, I'd be them ten fold. Its still bad in the mornings, slightly better by noon, and by the time its dark I'm ready to take on the world as it sleeps. When most people do sleep, I dote on my liver and have conversations with myself making lines of demarcation with every drinking straw that I snip down to size. Then I proceed to bump my head straight for the next fifteen minutes tryin to eye out an imaginary finish line... in a metric world, I still give out pounds to those with their hoodies up in the fray. I grew up in Bugle Boy fashions in a land of Gaps and trying to fill them has all but plum tuckered me out. Ashing my butt with audible taps, I've got nothing else to do but put a period. The geese came back today.

KandK for life, Dave

Riddled with guilt over not being who I should've been, my back revolts. Lower lumbar throw down your tools. Mobility goes on strike and his union brothers in the renal system won't cross the lines. Kidneys stop your filtering. Let's make a fuckin point to this guy once and for all.

YOUR A CLICHE. Let's face it. the bottom line is. at the end of the day. all we can do is put one foot in front of the other. give it one hundred and ten percent. leave it all out in the open. and. hope for the best.

The works shut down, I hobble to the office and have no shroud of secrecy not one sliver left of what endeared you to me in the first place. The veneer having been scraped off, the patina dulled.

You harbored your illusions. Ignored the mess and tried to string together this messy marionette called me. You got frustrated bailed and I never failed to mention it all along.

This my dear is not an affliction, this is my life. I don't suffer from, I suffer in. Without a vice I'd eat a gun and suicide is not a good habit to get into.

Plastic prefab melting into molds I don't know you. Good on you though.

The best trick a psycho ever played was convincing the world she wasn't a bitch.

Nestled in the warmth of my office with time to reflect on the past three months.

In the summer I drink clear booze and smoke cigarettes on patios. I take sizeable amounts of other peoples perscription medication, fall down drunk at least twice, and sleep on the beach at least once. Bathing suits and flipflops. My hair is short and my face is shaved. My skin is tan.

In the fall I drink dark booze and pack lips the size of horseshoes. I try and clean up my act and I have more time to come to the office and think. Its pouring down with rain, the drops trampoline off car roofs and storefronts. I wear insulated cargo pants, wool sweaters, and grow what I can of a beard. I stew and invent reasons for unhappiness. I grow tired of inventing reasons and then make other people unhappy. Some times I get hit by a car to break the monotony.

In the summer I spellcheck. And care about starting sentences with prepositions. But not in the fall.

Should I stay open year round or be a seasonal restauraunt? PLay HArd in the summer, horde and gather then shut the gates? Or let the people venture through in December, barstools lined up and inviting muddled thoughts to stew and marinate. I have the feeling Ima like it here. Woodstoves piping, hottoddie sipping, black ice slipping.

I have a work meeting at two fifteen, I should Don Draper a fresh shirt from the drawer and prepare with three fingers of Powers. But its been three days dry now and if my hands stop shaking I should make it a week. Make it a weak meeting. Clammy handshakes and comb overs. Blackberries and power lunches. Rented condos and colonoscopies. Imminent divorce and legal fees. Ulcers.

Haha.

Truer words have never been spoken. I declared I was turning over that new leaf. Later that nite I hit the bricks when the Coldfronts mixed with the percs of being surrounded by closet junkies and working stiffs.

Should I clean up? I went to church, for something other than a wedding, for the first time since I left high school. This was yesterday. The holy water is a breeding ground for pig flu. I'm not catholic, so I won't get sick. I didn't go to church CHURCH, we went into the church. I sat in a pew by myself and asked?

My god
please
let her do
well and if not let me forget how it turned so rancid

My god how I have survived this long? I am destined to change something to save someone. Am I destined to save someone....

Some money
people are born with
bred with discontent and expectations
so high
I was most of the time. I hid it
well and then
it was over.

The experience wasn't rubbish. I brandished a pro life bumper sticker in hopes of altering it. Imploring people to CHoose Abortion as their mother should have. Gruff. Gristled.

"Perhaps maybe not", he thought while peering over the railing. It was a long way up and too far down, he sat. Craft beers and dirty martinis he misread the putt of his life. Read the break.

Read the breaking news and see y(our) country with its bottom falling out like an suburban hood rat. A kid I worked with once said he couldn't wait to wear old dirtbike tires as shoulder pads and go about the waste land pillaging. It scared him. It scarred me. People are content with the end of the world. Fuck if it wouldn't be peaceful. No need for punctuation, mores, or the like. What's the like?

Whats to like about life. Everything and nothing. Bitching about coworkers then drinking with them. Getting your heart broken then burning her pictures. Reuniting and then lying about there whereabouts.

It seems that all I have is time. Double timed as I was by luck and happenstance I swear I won't be put in that spot again. All I have is time. I'll stop and think for awhile and try to walk at least 5 miles a day. Quit smoking and start chewing again and quite possible enjoy a cocktail or four before noon. Save money and shut my mouth. I talk to much. I was told that I come across from time to time as arrogant or smug. I have two weeks to change my life for the future, time alloted to me by the management due to a break down at work. Clinging to slivers of what was I shudder and swallow the familiar taste of bile and pain. Making dogs playing poker into the Mona Lisa. Forcing what little future I had into something that could've worked. Every ounce of energy poured out into my job. Good juju bad juju everything foisted. Eviscerated. There needs to be a delineation between personal time and work time. Leisure time and love time. Friends and partners.

It is a familiar feeling. Its warming. My callouses will harden soft raw pink flesh into shields of deflection. The infiltration was perfect no alarms went off as the thief set up shop and began to pilfer. Ranging around the safe, plotting the placement of the charges. Laying the primacord and sneaking behind a piling. Lifting the plunger and with breath held all the weight dropped.

Dust and smoke in the detritus. Destroyed on the inside. Decadence of the past months smoldering as embers in aftermath. The structure has survived this before. The workers clean up the mess and scrape the remains from the wall. Powerwashed. Bleached. Antiseptic.

Move in new furniture soon. Make it home again and clench your teeth in anticipation of the next time.

I met one once that said I should write more. Tightly, tighten it up. Taught me that scribbling is not painting. Not art. Missed me when she came with shudders that shook me like a paint mixer. Took me buy surprise. Shaken I was horseshoe packed and chasing the ambulance, scurrying for her belongings; baited by her attempt. I only took her seriously. When I should have taken her to get help.

Skulking, no sun since summer. Pasty. Plodding along plotting the song, humming. Hand in hand, ducking cops. Copping. Blown out and dirty like a Korean haircut. Stop. Grab a drink and wake up sweaty in a puddle of piss. Plagiarizing progress while reinventing regression. Obsession, cringing. Shudder.

Tied in noose too late write and when I do I tackle verbal hills in desk chairs, swirling. Rotating whilst sitting, twirling for the sun rise. Busting my ass to break even and shattering only my will to continue. College Road and Pearly Pond seem so far off in the past.

This is the part in the movie when you grab all the liquor bottles and dump them out in the sink. Glug, glug as the bottle breathes down the drain. Youregunna fix yoself this time. You're gonna try. Dad couldn't. His dad couldn't. His dad owned a distillery and was pickled kosher before 9am daily.

Quaff liberally, think conservatively. Practice moderation, play indulgent.

She here now, I've always liked my women anyway they could get me. I don't date. I don't start, I end up. They sober up, I don't. They go. I wait. They drink, we fuck. I sober up. I go. They leave. Squint, blather, retreat. Cringe, clamber, compete. Mince, gather, replete. Every sicks months. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Filthy is the solitude, heinous is my company. Such is a sober life, so many soliloquies in an empty bottle singing such things as: Why do you cut you're thighs cause you think I don't love you? Why do you eat a bottle of Xanax like Tic-Tacs then tip-tap the speed dial and call me? Why do you move away and pretend we didn't happen?

Why do I like my women broken? Irregulars off the mental discount rack purported and sold to be regular relaxed fit. The thrift store of love, I always buy the suits that hung in the terminal patients room. I think they are Armani at a great price. I found out they ain't but love em just the same. Where I fail is in permanently pressing the delicate. Dry clean only denotes the need for professional help, but I try and do the job myself.

Off they've shimmied and gone crazy elsewhere. Hopefully, happy. Shithouse crazy no doubt nuts, but, happy. Hopefully, one calls for a crutch and hobbles back for a night for me to cobble them back together with conjecture, false hope, and a smattering of promise for their future. With all that I say to them said for myself.

Find contentment in the confines of all afflictions, focusing forward, pushing back, all ways moving.