Everyone is bored, lonely and angry and there is nothing that is unbelievable anymore. Florida is quite rapidly becoming a new Atlantis. A place so strange, foreign and unfathomable that we are destined to be reduced to myth. The homes, banks and markets are filled with Aesopian pigs, wolves, foxes but the fables they tell are nonsensical and they lives they live, the husband’s and wives, the teachers and students, the lovers, they are all a great, gold harp rotting in a landfill. Father time is drunk and abusive and his eyes are red and glossy.  

Nothing is new and all the keepsakes are outlandish. The pills keep ’em young and lovely in thier heads and the rest doesnt matter because soon the oceans will overwhelm and every night a different God looks down and scoffs and nothing but the luck keeps them afloat and they are all having the time of thier lives.

They say that life’s a bitch and that you should let sleeping dogs lie. But, once in a while, it is necessary to rattle it to its core. To drench it’s bed in gasoline and drag it out by its hair. I would drag it out over the city and hang it over the balcony and tell it to do its fucking job because Atlantis is beckoning and the burden of my city alone is enough to drag us to the sea floor.

And they are all far too tired to swim.

I admit that it is unfortunate how fond I am of my own melancholy.

I was sitting on a curb behind the bar with my head down looking at the vomit on my boots. I’m sure there is loud music, and frantic voices coming from the corner store just a bit down the road, but I can hardly hear a thing. There’s is only a menacing howl echoing from deep inside my chest. It’s enough to rattle the entire Earth and light the sky on fire. But all else is utter silence.
I noticed a small crack in the pavement next to my right boot and if I could somehow wedge my fingers down into it, I felt strong enough to crack the entire fucking planet open and crawl down inside.
But one should never convey these things because desperation is a parasite that chokes every bit of sensibility out of its host. And the howling in my chest is the most comforting thing I can fathom. Oh, my meloncholly…..how it lulls my spirit and keeps me aloft In such a strange universe.
Up until now, the most filthy things emitted from my mouth but, suddenly, the most beautiful songs start to play from my lungs. It’s evident that you simply cannot take what isn’t there and I have nothing to offer this city. This state. This country. I feel as if the whole world is constantly prying at my body and my ego as if it was a bomb. But I can only show them only an empty, old suitcase. And all I can do now is speak the most wonderful words and become light as air.

It is the softness of my melancholy that keeps me afloat and lays my body down on tall hills and rooftops. It keeps it’s teeth sunk to my neck and drags me away from this madness by the scruff. Away from the police lights and questions. Away from the humiliation and vomit on my boots. Down into the cracked Earth to lick my wounds. So warm and lovely. I admit that I am quite fond of my melancholy, as it is my most exciting and dangerous lover. And isn’t life so tragically boring? We are so naturally drawn to the worst things. The people that are bad for us. The shitty fried food and the drugs. The back alleys and moonlight. All the worst things in life feel so endearing. So rare and exciting. Meloncholly drags me my home and floods my body with lust and content and the howling in my chest soothes me to the core.

Headed back away from the city in the back of a cab that’s color now matches her skin tone. Her head is on my shoulder, my head is in the clouds. Her gaze is pointed out at the clouds rushing by as quick as the blood underneath my suit and tie. No, farther than that. Much deeper even though I hate to admit it. Her sullen face gives off the appearance of a landscape. Her eyes like two moons reflecting off the small rivers now leaking from underneath them. The water spilling out down my sleeve and following the thread count of my attire. There’s that rush again. I gotta get out. She should probly leave, too. But she already left herself to me. And that leaves me no choice.

Here’s 35 dollars. A good portion of that is my rent money.

The door is battered and rusted and the place is a disaster. I can see why she likes it, external experience reflects whats inside you. She behaves uncommonly and I soon follow suit. She undresses from the inside out. We really are the oddest of creatures. Her lust is sawdust and the wind is blowing it into chaos through the open blinds. I appeach my modesty. I’ve forsaken my fortitude long ago. She already knows that I don’t know what I’m doing. Her skin crawls like the roaches under the cheap motel television and our very organs are panhandling for some sort of relief. Two bodies entirely composed of old fire wood and dry leaves. I hear the soft ambience of running water and dry heaves from the bathroom and she convinces herself that I can’t hear.

Let me slip into something more comfortable: the night air. And that’s it. All I see from here on out is inferno. The breathing is all too heavy to lift. The claws on my neck. The saliva. The black tar of what’s inside me leaking down onto her body. Its all just fucking flames. The universe had thrown a lit match to our dry timbre.

There’s fists and tears and screams all that other shit and its all mine. She leaves everything here.

Wreckless. Fucking. Abandonment.

All those tarnishes and stains and bad dreams and bad things she can take out on me. My body is a cabinet. And she stacks her depravity like fine China. All the wine glasses of her problematic childhood and silver wear of her fathers fists and ex-lovers who didn’t tend to break that chain of command.

No softness. No tenderness. No intellect. Just fingers down my throat. Just homesickness.

Well anyways…there is scars. Quite a few. There is one under her left ribcage I noticed as I pull on the covers and she pulls on a joint and smashes up a line of coke with almost the same ferocity as she she just unleashed on me. Pounding on my cabinet doors of my chest.

I couldn’t be any farther from home. She is pegasus in bondage and I am her Atlas. And the foot on the back of her head matches her own heels. And the door is always locked in this place.

I woke up beside her dry heaving and closed my eyes to pick the emotional remnants off me like spiderwebs on my skin. I assure you I will crumble one day, but not today. No, nothing will happen today, my love. I keep my eyes closed. Indeed they are the windows to the soul, but its quite evident that there is no use for windows at this time of night. Everything is pitch black and nothing really even matters at all. It’s the perfect time to shed decency and break bad news. It’s too late to turn back and too soon to realize what we are getting ourselves into. I supposed the windows to my soul are boarded up and vandalized. Hers are stained glass and it is no secret that those decorative types of of panes usually hide the greatest secrets and the darkest history. In that sense, she reminds me of a cathedral and, I never quite felt right or belonged near such places. Such bodies.
No – Windows serve us no good at this hour, I turn over and scan her body with my palms. I am not looking for a window, I would like to find a part of her anatomy that could be known as the “floodlight of the soul”. I would like to find a lantern among her limbs and soft cells. I need a light house, she just needs a quick fuck. She needs to go home. But I doubt anyone, anywhere would notice the difference – including me. Perhaps tonight is not the night to be introduced to the rest of my life
Oh well. We can try again in the morning.

This morning, as I woke, my mind was going out for its usual morning walk. It wanders around for a while before it finally comes back in time to begin work or start the usual days proceedings. When you think of the action of wandering, you tend to think of moving forward aimlessly. But not today. Today, My mind decided to move in reverse back towards the past and linger there for a while. As I laid in bed, I was aware that each of us are born with an empty room within our soul and throughout life, we adorn it with the decor of our intimate and personal encounters. So, I laid there this morning studying the fueng shuy of my room. Not my bedroom, but the room in my soul where I hang pictures of the past and the furniture of old loves. Some things are still boxed up. Some things are laying in front of the door and its the first thing you see when you would enter the room of my soul. They are blatant and annoying and I might even sprain my ankle on it if I weren’t careful. As I looked back, I found myself very fortunate. The women in the past I have dated, I thought, were some of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met in my life. And I didn’t come across them from dog-like mating ritual of a man on the hunt out for prey. No, we fell together incidentally like pieces of a puzzle and fit together beautifully for a time. And we fell apart just as abruptly. As if the childlike universe decided it was done playing and threw the puzzle back into the box and tossed it back on the shelf. Suddenly, looking over my past loves, a single thought kicked open the door to my room and stood waiting there.

When I am in love, I am repulsive.

That repugnant idea echoed in my head. It stared at me from the doorway. It was morbid, depressing, hopeless, and most unsettling of all, it was true. Why, in the midst of all this contentment did this thought come burrowing its way into my minds-room like a mole? That phrase followed me to work and I tried to grasp not only its contents, but its source. That should make it dissipate. Ideally, your subconscience should be like the shadow of a monster on the wall at night. It emerges as eerie and terrifying, but once you shine a light on it you’ll see it is only the sillouette of some dirty laundry. This isn’t always the case. Sometimes you turn the light on, and there is still a monster there. A real one. The light I turned on it, showed me what wasn’t such a surprise to me. The intense fear of losing control. The desperate, futile efforts to maintain power over everything around me for fear of spinning out of control and dissolving into madness. The madness of the universe. The madness of God.

God and love. They are two heads of the same monster that still lurks even when I shine light on it. They are strange, unfamiliar, intangible and frightening. Why? Because these two “things” (I don’t even know what they are) are the intense epitome of loss of control. Let me be more specific: a shift in control. That’s what love is. Giving yourself up. Hopelessly. And announcing “this person can do with me as they wish for I have faith in them to always make the best decisions for my life. No matter what”. Doesn’t that sound like God to you? Maybe these two are no different? Maybe that is God? The God that showed itself to me growing up was always upside down. It was a mirror reflection of the madness and chaos and unpredictability of the world around me.

The moment I was thrown into the world, I was introduced to chaos. Internally and externally. Things were spinning out of control around me and my insides were crawling with anxiety. My mind mirrored the nonsensical world around me and soon it began to be just as unpredictable, nonsensical and frightening. Something inside me developed a peculiar behavior that came to act as me surfacing for a breath of air while drowning in a sea of madness. Control issues. When there is something I care deeply around I try to control it because the chaos around me ensures with enthusiasm that it will leave soon. Love and God are representative of a loss of control. My struggle for that same control becomes the opposite of these two things. In turn, I become ridden with a deep ugliness. My love is not love. It is repulsive and alienating. And God and Love and all other things that are warm and good will continue to truly elude me on and on until I finally lose complete control and spiral out into the maddening universe.

I noticed that I haven’t been grinding my teeth lately. That’s a good sign. But I don’t remember the last time my arms have been properly at my side. That’s a bad sign. There’s too much to pick at. Too much to fix. Too many raised surfaces and burn marks. You show me a man who won’t pick at his scabs and I will show you a lunatic. The ability to sit and let things things be and not move a muscle must be the most evil thing in the entire world. I don’t think I can imagine a life without the insufferable right to damage everything around me.

One can only begin to comprehend the instinctual desire to pick things apart. To alter what’s doing just fine by itself. To pick my face and hands til they bleed. To peel wrappers off candy and cigarettes. Wax and glue. You must admit to the inherit need to destroy and change our surroundings no matter where your spiritual beliefs lie. No matter how lovely, Everything on earth must crumble and be picked apart piece-by-piece to make room for everything else. I’d like to find the most beautiful thing in the world and leave teeth marks. I’d like to sit at my father’s grave and show him what I’ve done to my body. Nobody wants an ugly son. I’d like to build muscle and pick at that cold stone wall. I’d like to tell you I’m sorry and not mean a single word.
The same way my pant legs and shoe laces gather seeds to fall off and grow elsewhere…
The same way the wind rips branches and roofs with no relent….
The same way the Earth opens up and swallows us whole. ….

Everything is picked apart, used, damaged and trampled into dirt to grow something better and the cycle goes on…

They are the two most relatable and utterly contagious human afflictions: love and hatred. And passion is the the most ironic impetus behind both, which quite often causes these two emotions to be synonymous. It’s why we keep coming back to the ones that hurt us the most. Its why criminals always return to the scene of the crime. Why the feeder rat runs over to sniff the snake.
I woke up outside and searched desperately in hopes that last night was a dream. But, scratches, bruises, bite marks…..These are all binding contracts that can not be refuted. I caught a glimpse of myself in an old dirty mirror and noticed my eyes resembled an old, worn photograph from the 1800s. The meloncholly it brought numbed me a little, just enough to go back to sleep for another hour or so. The animals sleep outside…..

She keeps me here because the thinks I’m good for her. As if I am the one that’s gonna save her, and that makes me the worst type of hero. The ones that lead you out to the fires under the guise of an innocent and loyal companion who doesn’t know better. I am the canine that destroys all her favorite things and she keeps letting sleep in her bed because I am warm at night. I am the wolf she mistakes for her shepard.  And that alone must be enough because there’s nothing else. No comfort, No compassion. Just bent fences and torn dresses. Picked locks and talking our way out of handcuffs.  Hours later, applying them myself.
Hours later talking myself into leaving.
Hours later waking up outside.
We are all the most terrible when we are alone. We are all the most unforgivable when the doors are locked. Ive seen it all and talked them into most of it. Because I’m terribly afraid to admit that love and hatred are the same thing. It’s why I choke her when I kiss her. Comfort is the warm room where the greatest obscenities occur.  It’s the parasite in my chest and the dreams tearing me limb from limb at night. It’s why I refuse to take you home, because I still haven’t found one. It’s why i sleep outside with the other animals.

Flaws are the biggest turn on. It’s the rarities of life that are the most endearing.
Love is something we carry with us, but fascination is something that carries us. We get swept up in it and we go wherever it takes us. That’s why we love accents. We love dimples. We love strangers. We love the mystery they provoke.
We all fall in love from a distance, its true. I’ve fallen head-over-heals for women I saw from a distance because their silhouette stirred the very essence of what my imagination characterized beauty to be. The moment she speaks or the moment I find truth that she is just like me, the wonder dissipates. It’s the mystery that is so maddening. The rarity. The flaws.

The excitement of intangibility drives us wild. We all fall in love from the inside out, don’t ever be mistaken by that. These feelings are always inside of us and these strangers are nothing but a catalyst to manifest these emotions. It’s why we worship celebrities. We idolize pop icons. It’s why men fall for the girl next door. It’s why women fall for their bosses. The intangibility drives us wild.
It’s not that we want what we can’t have, it’s that we want what we don’t know.

We need flaws. We need strangers. We need danger. We need mystery. Lets face it, modern life is boring, its so easy to fall prey to the imagination. Its our biggest flaw.

“I have yet to be foreign”

I thought about it over my lunch as I overheard a middle-aged couple get into a heated debate in what sounded to be Russian. What a shame. To travel thousands of miles around the world and yet still unable escape that travesty where a decent ‘nest-egg’ and jet-set lifestyle becomes a white flag in the battlefield of your marriage. How regrettable; To spend all that money to a travel to a foreign land just to introduce your detestment for one another to a strange young man in an American coffee shop.

But even loathing becomes admirable when spoken correctly.  The alien syllables and clever tricks of the tongue become a lovely lace veil on a hideous bride. And suddenly their resentment begins to take on value. And I become filled with envy.  And I want to adorn my own disgust, my own petulance with the wonderful fabrics of a foreign tongue.  A sort of verbal tuxedo. Such a clever disguise. I want to shout at the world with fury and have the soft song of my strange vernacular turn it to a soft lullaby coaxing my enemies to sleep while I pillage and burn the city to embers. I could stand to a podium and read the most pitiful poetry. The most hideous couplets and yet the women tremble. And thier heart races.

Yes I have yet to be foreign. To leave a trail of equal longing, facination and confusion in my wake. Yes, thats the life for me.

I do not visit my fathers ashes. I have yet to visit the wall they are placed behind.  I hate the bleakness of that place. I hate the dark nostalgia that encompasses it. That place has an repugnant power. The power to condense the entirety of a father an son into a single metaphor:  a wall. 

I went to the cemetery today with the the intention to visit the wall and confront my cognitive dissonance. As if this morning my own obsessive fear and discomfort of mortality invited the memories of my childhood to a romantic dinner for two. My future was flirting with my past.

I walked out into the green field and kneeled down by an old bench with a small eulogy engraved to a small child. The humor wasnt lost on me since I felt as if I came here to lay my inner child to rest. I stared off for a moment at the tombstones resembling stalagmites rising up from the earth and the dark storm clouds resembled a giant, abrasive paw.  A paw eternally raking ethereal dirt over these graves.

I look at the old, delapitated houses around the border of the cemetary and found it comfortably symbolic; The body is a suitable home temporarily and when its occupant moves on,  the house still stands ground and slowly crumbles. Giving it a sort of charming character in the most morbid, decrepid sense. The brick foundation of the skin and the old rotten wood cabinets of the torso and lonely, abandoned furniture of the internal organs.  I soon felt that this is not a graveyard, this is an abandoned neighborhood.  With strict deed restrictions against the still occupied houses such as my own. My fathers house stood up around a small concrete walkway down a small set of stairs by the water and it had burnt down a few years back.  My father died with no money and although cremation was highly against his beliefs, the state imposed arson as a way to get him into this neighborhood in accordance to the eternal lease. They let him move in, under the condition that his house shall be burnt down and its embers should be placed in a wall. Just as physical as it is metaphorical, this wall is an obtrusive eyesore in an otherwise decent, low key neighborhood.  This wall represents the lower class. This wall represents the low income housing of the graveyard. The less fortunate. Ill forever hate that wall and I couldnt bear to stand infront of and accept the role of an lowly worm trying to scale a monolith.

The poet Khalil Gibran wrote: “A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said, “I will have a camel for lunch today.” And all morning he went about looking for camels. But at noon he saw his shadow again-and he said, “A mouse will do.”

Today I am the fox and at sunrise this morning, my fathers ashes were a camel I realized as I turned to head home. At noon I settled for the mouse of merely stolling through that old abandoned neighborhood..  I still have not visted my fathers ashes.