The Registry

You have left us in a quandary. You have picked yourself up from your sullied bootstraps, used sticks to pick the mud between the cracks, smelled the earth, felt the wind, and fought against the unyielding horror of truth. Because only once tucked beneath the restricting confines of unbleached dependance could you ever hope to flourish and not to dissolve within the wake of death.

We are priests of a clandestine order, and we hold within our grasp a declaration delivered between the teeth of the most innocent. It doesn’t matter that lies pave the road that leads you deeper within the pines, to a place that embraces you in forgetting. Because forgetting is a salve, an emulsified translation of a story that begins with a punch to your spleen, and then goes downhill from there. 

There is solace in pain. And solace, as you are staring up into the eye, fence slats circle you like a poor man’s halo, is a presence that comes to its rightful place with an air of solemn acceptance.

I have carved a life at the precipice, and I have absorbed the rites of agony. I have invited it, welcomed it, and I have suffered before it a thousand deaths. But it is merely a Tuesday. One of thousands. And in the morning, I will stand in an alley, smell the stench of stale permanence, and I will dream of another moment much like the ones I was given a mere day before. 

There is a hunger that has moved from my belly to my bones. I eat now, but only to shut down the devil sound. The hunger is something that is born of the sum total of, yes, that.

They are blind, robed, kneeling before a conflagration, bellows in hand, stoking the fire which knows no end. And I am tied before their chattering teeth, their stinking, drooling maws, and I am at peace. 

At peace because no matter how many turns are taken, all in the name of fear, of resentment, of rejection, of betrayal, of anger, of whatever the fuck you want the turns to be, no matter it all . . .

I sat on that bench and I lived your heart. 

All within a place that protects as much as it exposes. 

How fitting that we are where we are today, and that I am less in the absence, and that it doesn’t matter. 

There has come a wave of clarity and of definition. 

I have been given the wisdom to lay before it, without fear. 

The rest, well, the rest shits on you. Broken. Let’s walk together, and you can tell me your story. I hear it’s very good. I like a good yarn. 

I know you. 

Sentry to the Kingdom of Neglect

Let’s peel back these onion layers, eh, bitches, shall we? Let’s get ta’ peelin’, ‘cause there’s just so much to reveal.

But on second thought, whenever we (I) do so, we (I) get ourselves into trouble. 

I am like a powder keg of trouble. No, I won’t be one of those son of a bitches who slaps you around because boundaries for me have defined themselves as a fluid medium that simply begs for lateral motion, because if I was I would expect to die for it, would deserve to die for it, would need to die for it. I am the sort of trouble that doles out the intensity on a level that burns through the night like an errant warhead in the hands of a runaway republic. 

It’s not good. There is a half-life to this love and I am causing the feds to go apeshit with anxiety. 

They can’t get a handle on my bloat. They sit up there in their emerald tower, a monument to oblivion, a testimony to a fear that consumes us from the inside. They watch the dilapidated glory of unkempt marsh and they cackle in wicked glee to the recoil of horror that they have created. Yeah. And they love it.

It makes their dicks hard. It makes them shoot arcing ropes of joy over all that they survey. Because that’s just how they roll. 

I used to watch them build their castle. 

I used to sit in my broken nest, in my fount of shame. I used to imagine another world. And then I entered it.

And it was all that. All that. All that, and so very much more. And less.

So now, as we sit here and we gaze down upon the minions as they labor to till the soils of shallow and vapid rebirth, what do you know?

No, I don’t really care what YOU know, what I am saying is, whadda you know, because what I know is piercing and you wouldn’t really want to share in it. 

In that we trust.

I have stood guard like a sentry to the kingdom of neglect. I have spent lifetimes vigilant in honor to a regency of fear. I am the messenger upon whose back is brought tidings of curt rejection and empty promises. 

I have seen it all. Within the province of lies, I am the undisputed master. All knowing. All seeing. 

Welcome to the territory of never. 

And it never gets any better. 

How much would you like? What amount would you need to reach your limit, to say that you simply could not withstand another drop, another mote, another speck, another particle of this?

I have more than that. 

Make room for it and be enveloped in the light. 

Science has a way of shitting all over our poetry. How very unpleasant of it. What a fucking bully, this science. How like an angel in apprehension, as the bard once said. 

Desire is a taste for a fruit that has never grown on any vine, ever, and never will. Enjoy it.  

Look at it like this.

I’m broken, I’m battered, I’m fuckin’ beat down. And I’ve still got room for more.

So put that in your pipe you empty riders of the shit waves. I will have the last laugh, even if it means that you will imagine it as you piss on my grave because that’s the role you play in all of this. 

Goodnight, sweet blintz. Enjoy hell. You built it all, from a pile of shit.

On Land

I have tried to forge something creative out of this life ever since I was old enough to try and forge anything out of this motherfucker, instead of just being happy to eat my mother’s cheese and ketchup sandwiches, get bullied, and set fire to an entire bayou, and ultimately narrowly escape going to jail at twelve.

I was a smart enough kid, always did well at school, never had to work too hard to do so, and got fed up with being told that I was “special,” a term which tends to have a double life as an almost pejorative within the ranks of schoolchildren (hell, adults for that matter). 

I had an artist for a father. Oh sure, he was a businessman. Which is to say that business was the family bread-and-butter. We soaked up our ex-patriot, middle-class, bourgeois goodies all through the labors of my traveling, tech-minded salesman of a dad. But at heart, he was, and still very much is, an artist. 

I’ll explain. 

When I was a teenager, I drove across the country with my father to go visit his mother back home in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s a long drive from Houston to Cleveland. And it was really long when you consider that my dad and I have had a strained relationship since, well, since almost forever. I distinctly remember him getting pissed at me in a Tennessee hotel room because I told him I hated Jane Pauley. The guy blew a nut over that one. Jane Pauley? I’m sorry, what? I mean, it was weird enough that I didn’t like her, because, you know, who fucking cares, but to imagine that he cared enough to defend her honor. well, that’s just crazy.

After our squabble, we walked down the stairs to McDonalds to go eat Egg McMuffins before hitting the road. As we went down the stairs I noticed a joint, half smoked, lying there. I made a mental note to grab it on the way back. And then I forgot. 

During the drive, I watched my father’s hands for many miles. he twitches nervously, rubs his fingers together, picks almost gently at his pointer nail with his thumb. I do the same. I oddly loved him more than ever for that. 

I played a lot of Brain Eno on that trip. His Music for Land cassette was the perfect compliment for our awkward silences. 

Once in Cleveland we took a driving tour of some of the spots my dad frequented as a young man. 

It’s important to know that my father may actually be more private than I am in many ways. While he always enjoyed telling stories of his youth, when it came to the winsome, semi-philosophical musings that god knows I am so prone to unleash on those dumb enough to listen, he was short. So, to be able to see the school where he played football, or to see the small building in which he grew up, was priceless. Better still was the opportunity to hear him talk about his youth in a nostalgic fashion. 

During the talk, he told me about his art. 

My father was a fairly active oil painter during my very early youth. In fact, down in his basement, back when we lived in Boston, Massachusetts, my dad had a sort of studio set up down there. I had the incredible pleasure of drinking turpentine when I was around four or so, as I so loved the way it smells (still do). Had my stomach pumped for that one. The doctor told my parents that having your stomach pumped was so traumatizing that they never see the same kid twice. They saw me three times. 

My second trip was courtesy of my breaking open a kaleidoscope in order to eat the beautiful little things inside. Yeah. 

My third trip, and possibly my coup de grace, was thanks to my taking the bottle of crap my folks poured into our silverware drawers to give them a fresh, appealing odor, and drinking it. When I sauntered into their room, the smell was overpowering, and after some deliberation they searched the house and found the bottle on the floor and terrifyingly realized that the residue of the stuff had leaked onto the linoleum and eaten through to the concrete. 

Not good. 

I guess the third time was the charm as I have yet to return to the hospital to have my stomach pumped. 

Like I said, I am special.

But let’s get back to my dad and his art.

His work was carefully drafted, very precise, and generally fairly somber. 

I’m not sure how much of it still around. He probably has some of it in his current basement. He was actually very good. 

And as we drove, he told me about how he wanted to be a fine artist when he was young, but with a young wife and a son on the way, he knew that he would never be able to support us, so instead he went the business route. That was the day I found out that he regretted it to that day. No doubt still does. And yet, he still doesn’t paint. It’s sad.

As for our family, it fell apart years later. He was never home, always out of the country working. There was more to it, but basically he checked out on us. 

And I have since found that being creative, talented, and totally underachieving, is something that runs on both sides of my family. 

My mother’s brother told an almost identical story. He is a guitarist. A damn good one. And out of high school he sat in his parent’s basement, with his guitar and his practice amp, and was ready to leave home and make it happen. 

But the Vietnam War happened. So he decided to go to college and take a deferment. 

He never quit playing, but he left his dreams behind. 

Me? I work a realish job. I have two kids. I’m divorced. I struggle just like all of us. But I still live to be creative. 

Oh god, could I work harder, could I have sharper focus, more drive. Man, could I ever. But still, I kick away. And occasionally, I do something that connects with someone. A drawing. A painting. Something I write. A show I play. A song I’ve recorded resonates with someone. 

That is a beautiful thing. 

What a fucking struggle. I don’t fully grasp the forces that get in my way, not the least of which are my own demons. And yet, here I am, 42, still dreaming, still trying. Still living a creative life. 

I have made so many sacrifices in my life that it would take hours to list them all. Maybe we all have. 

There are so many roadblocks in life, trying to move among them is serious work. 

One day I’m going to die. No big deal.

My only hope is that I have left something behind me that makes someone smile, maybe cry, maybe understand that I was here for a little while and that I made something that touched on something universal, and that in the process, I was able to make this world just a tiny bit smaller, if only for a moment.

That’s called love. And it’s what we all need to strive to create, because without it, what is there?