Dark Rooms

I don't think anybody but spam bots be following me but...

If you're real. Let me know.

I think I’m slowly getting over myself. The operative word is slowly. 

Imagination of a boy

I am the imagination of a boy 

too old to be a boy 

I'm cool as fuck 

mysterious

my soul tastes like sugar, baby

mainline me maybe 

break me 

like a third world insurgency 

and i'll write shitty punk songs about you 

that i'll stick in the mouth of some dude 

I play on Twitter 

cuz normie Twitter is lame 

and so is this life thing

c'mon, let's be real 

in the only way possible 

at the hour of late night radio in the 90s 

about psychedelics and demons 

in the only way possible 

when you're so lonely 

that you do this shit 

life and it's lameness 

tell me what the fuck that means to you 

and maybe i'll fall in love with you 

and we can be scared together 

and righteous 

and kinky 

we'll text each other and play cooler versions of ourselves to each other 

and it'll be hot as fuck 

and that'll be a thing that happened 

be one of those things you worship 

and don't remember quite right 

because 

sometimes that's all you got keeping you alive. 

I’m not sure what this is.... 

Maybe it’s just a little venting with line breaks. 

I got kept inside like 

some girl in a tower. 

I’m a 21st century digital boy. 

World was small 

so I came here. 

Everything is late

I’m not normal 

but not in some cool way. 

I’m wise 

but I’m weak 

Mostly I go no idea what the hell it is I’m doing out here. 

On a summer night in mid-July

the asphalt cools from the day’s baking 

and a man recovers from a day that ends in y. 

Legs crossed on the floor like when he was a kid

Window is ajar and the breeze is sweet mercy. 

Mercy hard to come by 

even in mid-July 

if you live long enough. 

Heavenly Father

When I lose my religion 

I come to you. 

When hope is just a bitch

Maybe I lose it and I pray. 

I reach for the phone and start dialin’ for parts unknown. 

Heavenly father, 

one more day. 

Have mercy on your boy

cuz he’s for sale 

and he’s last year’s model. 

Have mercy on your boy 

cuz maybe today is gonna be the day. 

Have mercy on your boy

cuz he never asked to come out of that cave 

into this blinding white light screamin’ 

like he knew exactly what the hell was up. 

God damn it. 

Have mercy on your boy. 

Can ya do that? 

If not me, for someone who needs it more. 

Amen. 

Halloween: I Was That Guy That Didn’t Wear a Costume

I get invited to a Halloween party by a fella I used to work with about 4 years back. We were call center slaves once and sorta young. We survived the brutal, terrifying drudgery of that white collar McDonald’s. I can’t speak for him. I emerged as the man writing this. I got wiser, weaker and my eye got keener. Reader, this is me bearing witness. This is the mundane drama that gets us where we need to go, I suppose. 

It had been a brutal week of pretending I knew what the fuck I was doing at my day job. I had my suspicions I was probably gonna get found out that week. I made it through. 

Let me make one thing perfectly and abundantly clear to you sir or madam or whoever it is that’s reading this. I don’t get out much. I sorta know how real life works from TV but I don’t spend a lot of time out there. I spend a lot of time alone with my stupid thoughts that melt the steel beams of my life every once in awhile. I’ve been in this period of trying to get “right” again recently. I know I’m gonna be too anxious and inept to drive out there so I don’t. I summon a poor soul with the Uber app on my Samsung personal surveillance device to get me out there into the land of pick-up trucks and country music and maybe god damn Trump supporters. 

Yeah. This shindig or whatever the fuck was way the hell out there. The Uber drivers I get when I use this terrible, dystopian service are usually these motor-mouthed go-getters who probably do a lot of Adderall or they tend to be these earnest, polite immigrants just trying to make it in this fucked up, racist, brutal country. I get this gentleman from Eritrea who barely says a word the entire ride. I should note that before I got in the car about 15 minutes before, I had ingested some cannabis infused chocolate. If I’m not mistaken, that put about 10 milligrams of THC into my system. I then pick up on something. 

The driver of this Toyota Prius criss-crossing it’s way through this autumn night is getting worried, he’s getting flustered. He is getting lost. Oh shit. See, I haven’t been in the exact same spot this guy was in but I know what it’s like to feel utterly alone in the night. I know what it’s like to feel sweat collecting on the back of your neck. I know what it is to feel like your body is itching with fear and dread. He starts apologizing to me. Something happens to me. I know what I gotta do. 

“Brother, don’t worry about it,” I say. “Do not worry. Aight. Just go straight and follow the road for a few miles. You don’t gotta turn for a bit.” 

THIS IS FUCKING CRAZY TO ME BECAUSE I’M NOT USED TO BEING THIS CALM CAT THE UNIVERSE PUTS IN PEOPLE’S PATH BUT THAT’S WHAT I’M GONNA DO FOR THIS GUY. 

He thanks me and thanks me and thanks me. 

“Alright. You gotta turn right in a few hundred feet. There we go. See that road sign? Just turn there when it’s safe. Don’t even worry about it, man. Why do you think I ain’t drivin’ myself? I’d get lost out here even worse. This ain’t my hood, man.”

He calmed down. I’m not sure when I started to feel the cannabis. I’m not sure if me being so fucking kind is the cannabis or if that’s just me. It’s just me. Being alive has hurt me in the weirdest ways and as a result, I’m basically a wannabe Mr. Rogers who is angrier and curses a lot. 

I get to the party. I guess it had a circus theme. There was this circus tent. My friend is in a cover band. 

I walk in. I have a brief conversation about the health impact of vaping and I deftly steer the conversation away from whether Trump is really all that bad. The weed was starting to kick in. I was high but I sure as fuck ain’t stupid. I ingested the second piece of cannabis infused chocolate that I had in my coat pocket. I’m starting to feel it. I know I am. 

I’m in uncharted territory. When I’m high, I’m usually alone. Yep. I am the weirdo that gets high and will just let the chips fall where they may. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I write. Sometimes I just waste time. So, there I was getting higher and higher around a bunch of strangers. 

Some of the things I say that night, 

“Holy shit. Is this what an episode of Miami Vice is like?” 

“See. I feel like I should tell you. What you’re seeing right now is a cat who don’t get out much.” 

“We don’t need secret police. We build the dossiers on ourselves. It’s crazy, man.” 

“I’m too old for this shit.” 

“FREEBIRD!” 

“THATCHER WAS A CUNT AND I’M GLAD SHE’S DEAD!” in a dubious working class English accent. 

At some point I get offered beer. I don’t ever drink. In fact, I will admit that I had never been drunk before. I start drinking and drinking and drinking. I end up stoned as fuck and somewhat drunk on um light beer. I can feel my inhibitions lower. I’m definitely keenly aware of it. I shout things at the top of my lungs. I even dance and don’t really give much of a fuck how it looks. 

The lowered inhibitions start to concern me. I lean in close to my friend. I say in his ear, “When you get a minute, I need to talk to you.” He nods. See, I ain’t used to alcohol. It’s the weirdest thing. I’m very accustomed to being very high on marijuana and I’ve lived to tell about a few intense trips on psilocybin mushrooms. Alcohol just isn’t something I have a lot of practice with. In fact, being out ain’t something I have a ton of practice with. 

I become intensely concerned about what I might do while under the influence. I worry I might become Brett Kavanaugh. I’m terrified I might flip out and kill someone. I nod to my friend’s friend. He’s dressed like The Driver from Drive and has this weird kinda charisma. I see something in him. I see a kindness. I see a light in that man. I ask him if he’ll step outside with me. In fact, I’m pretty sure I say something like, “Forgive me if this is weird but will you step outside with me for a second?” He doesn’t even question it. We step outside and I lay it all out. 

“Like I said. I don’t get out much. I don’t get fucked up with other people around so this is a new experience. Do you ever worry about what you might do under the influence and does that scare you?” 

I actually start crying. I don’t even recall what he says now. I just recall that he listened to me. He told me it was okay. I remember telling him that something told me I could come to him with that. I told him that even as a complete stranger, I could sense the goodness in him. I told him he was a good man. 

Yeah. So, I got to be the shepherd and the shepherded that night. 

I spend some time just chilling outside in the dark. I get to talking more to the dude who was dressed as The Driver. As I write this, I am sober but everything is slow. I feel sluggish. In retrospect, I say too much. I guess that it might be kind of a bad idea to get all cross-faded like that. That’s a young man’s game and I ain’t so young any more. I say too much. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t get out much and you’re drunk and high, you start sharing the thoughts that terrorize when you’re alone in a dark room. 

I spill about my upbringing. My overprotective mother that wouldn’t let me out of her sight and wouldn’t let me grow up. I talk about how I BS my way through like half my day job. Driver tells me how badass that is. I feel the need to keep mentioning I don’t get out much. He tells me, “You’re an astronaut, dude. Exploring new worlds.” I say, “I know what you’re saying but that’s a little too dramatic.” 

I spill about the heroic mushroom trip. I talk about how dreamlike everything was. I talk about how I had only messed with shrooms a time or two before but the last time, I suddenly found myself drowning in a psychedelic ocean. I tell him about coming to grips with how weird and terrifying that could get. I look over at him with a straight face, I say, 

“This is the part where you tell me about Jesus.” 

I was kidding. He says, 

“Do you wanna pray with me?” 

“What? Are you fucking with me?” 

“No man.” 

I size him up. “You’re being sincere.” 

“Yeah man.”

“I did not see that coming. I don’t know how to respond.” 

“You think mushrooms are amazing. Wait til you commune with the creator of the universe.” 

God damn it. This is a hell of a plot twist. 

“Do you want to pray with me?” 

“No offense but I don’t feel led to do that.” 

“That’s cool, man. I’ll pray for you though.” 

“Aight. I just wanna say though, if you are only talking to me to get a convert, you can fuck all the way off. That’s not comic exaggeration. That is not me playing a character. Fuck all the way off if that’s what you’re doing.” 

“I’m not doing that, man. Don’t worry.” 

“Okay. I’m just gonna be chill. It’s outta my system.” 

I had more intense, way too intimate conversations that night. I don’t feel the need to recount any more of them. 

I get home somehow. I don’t sleep much. I only sleep about four hours or so. I have a lazy Saturday. I don’t feel quite normal all day. I feel tired and need to take a nap at some point. 

My soul changed. A little. Maybe. 

I’m slipping a little. I feel laziness starting to grip me. I ain’t been as conscientious with this endeavor. I missed two days this week. I did not write a single word. Whatever. Like many a baby boomer says, it is what it is. I’m gonna pick up. I’m gonna continue. I’m gonna live on. I will survive. Aight. I’m gonna put on that song. The Cake version. 

I sit in this room that was my bedroom back in the day. I grew up in this room. I came to be in this room. I prayed in this room. I had my first orgasm in this room at the age of 16. I dreamed in this room. I woke up on summer days that were full of nothing but possibilities in this motherfucking room. I sat in the dark and listened to Art Bell in this room. I don’t have my own space anymore. I haven’t since some time in November, I think. I miss it. I’ve always felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I don’t really have a space right now where I can just be. That’s traumatic, man. It really is. I express this and nobody really seems to give a fuck. 

Fuck. Fuck. Part of me thinks this shit is about on the same level as some angsty, hormonal teenager who is failing English and is brilliant but lazy according to themselves and who writes on a blog with a background that is as black as their nail polish.

I need to challenge myself. I’m not quite sure how though.

I finished reading two books this week. For a man that has been struggling with his attention span for years or at least feels like he has, that is an accomplishment. I finished the The Great Derangement by Matt Taibbi and The End of Policing by Alex Vitale. 

Taibbi is just an excellent writer with a good eye and a keen social conscience. He’s a minor hero of mine. I will pretty much read anything he writes. 

The End of Policing made me think a lot. I can’t say that it challenged me too much but it made me think about the why of a lot of things. In recent years, I’ve become really concerned about the militarization of police forces and the violence that more often than not victimizes the poor and people of color. It keeps me up at night. It makes me angry. It makes me want to give the finger to every cop I see. Blue Lives Matter flags make me fighting mad. I really cannot watch cop shows any longer because they play like insidious propaganda to me. The book is a bit dry but it’s quite readable. It is written by an activist academic who traces a lot of the problems heavy handed policing is thrown at to cruel austerity measures. If you’re reading this, you should read that book. I kinda wish everybody in this rotting empire would. Maybe some time soon I will write about some of the things I actually learned from the book.