Intently clinging to newfound memories of what I used to be, I get lost in the patter of the day to day that consumes me.
The daily grind involves staring blankly and waiting. For something. The daily grind leaves me eviscerated and voided.
There's no doing because I am a foreclosed slaughterhouse, producing only tattered and rotting remnants suitable only for my consumption (still dead, still a poison, still I eat).
The cancer within me is is no longer within me, but it's still growing and looming larger and larger and I am desperate to escape its shadow.

I remember, back in the summer of 1990 when Nick and I answered a newspaper ad stating, "DO YOU LIKE TO ROCK? COME WORK WITH HE MOST AWESOME PEOPLE AND MAKE up to $100/hr!!"

We get to the office in downtown Ft. Lauderdale, and it's all blinky lights, disco balls and loud, LOUD rock music. Some dude with long blonde hair and wearing a very crisp suit, jacked up on some kind of speed, pops out and says, "DUDES! IT'S TIME TO MAKE YOU RICH!"

What followed was a 2 day seminar on how to sell your shitty shit to people that didn't want your shit. Day 3 we were given cases filled with perfume knock-offs and were told to hit the streets. Literally. Nick and I decided to head down to Miami, Calle Ocho/Little Havana specifically, to peddle our wares. Not the wisest of moves.

We were not very good at the whole perfume vending thing. Imagine a fat and scruffy metalhead kid shambling up to you and saying something along the lines of, "hey lady, wanna smell pretty for cheap?"

After a week of this, together we had sold two bottles of perfume (that was $4 takehome, bitches!) We did receive several trade offers from various prostitutes, which we passed up. The next day, we called it quits and dumped the cases at the office.

The lesson? I am not a salesman.

me: flerp

11:24 PM have you vanished again?

AGAIN!

11:27 PM (he says grudgingly, with a delicate stutter, emphasizing the consonants the way a cow chews its cud, methodically, menacingly, intent on the grinding of all things, much less the cud, into a smooth, digestible paste that is evacuated with ease from a rectum akin to dry and fibrous movements, much like an old grandmother or a sour biscuit or an aged and forgotten symphony.)

10 minutes

11:38 PM me: the hours, the minutes, the seconds all drip drip drip away and there's no one to notice the passage, the staccato loss of immeasurable fluids, into the great dry maw of temporal circumlocution. No one but me, that is. Your status coldy flips, verdigris to ocherous, sick and lonely, indicating your deliberate absence. I sit, awaiting your return. Always, I gaze, always, I gaze, empty and longing for a friend's words, but I have no friend but the despair that lives within the joy of others. I sit, tragically happy in my tragedy fueled recursive despair.

not really. I'ma gonna go eat sum cherreeeeeeez

11:39 PM or not

maybe I'll just *peer*

you: *blink*

soooo new meds are kickass huh?

me: YOU ARE PEERING!

*PEER TO PEER*

11:40 PM new meds

I HAS ON MEDIKAYSHUNZ!

11:41 PM Yeah, it's cool

no death rash (yet)

I promise that if I get to the skin-sloughing stage, I'll get them to save it for you so you can have a tent

made out of me

11:42 PM then you can sleep. inside me. my hollowed out shell. literally

that's going to be A FUCKING SONG

you: *blink*

11:43 PM me: think N'sync: then you can sleep (ooh OOh oh), inside of me (whoa -oh -oh). my ha-allowed out shell..mmmmhmmm..literally

11:44 PM *sways*

you: *snarf*

silver linings

silver linings

these filthy trails leading up cold roads, littered with broken goals, set withered bones aching,
and even though these old bones are only withered in spirit, these old bones certainly are not faking
tomorrow looks as dark as today, and today isn't faring so terribly well.
In the grand scheme of things, things could have been so much better had i not let everything go to hell
So it sits twittering and skittering and flittering in dark passes
revolving and dissolving and evolving into masses
of useless murk and wretched dreams and stinging bees and vile things
nothing is hopeful, nothing is joyful, everything is wasted and nothing at all brings
the slightest glimmer of happiness sits on pale lips
But they are cracked and split form the whipping of whips
and it fails.

They changed you, deranged you, upended and defamed you
and you took it and tasted and tainted and wasted
like a good little boy, who'd done so terribly wrong,
your absence was clear as the clash of a gong
signaling change, signaling newness
but your issues are still issues to which there's no redress
so you flutter and fluster and wring your hands raw
just to come to the same outcome, just as you always saw

now tell me a new one, tell me so brightly
how you've learned to step so lightly
from inches to feet, from strife to life
extracting, replacing, repairing so politely
the damage is done, but the damage is gone
but the sun, the sun, the sun can't be wrong,
illuminating the cracks and filling the spaces
and caring sp gracefully to the gazing faces.

Watch me, and listen and hope is abound.
Break the rules, reject the fools and beat your own path to your own door. Follow your own.

10 years ago today I claimed my independence.
But I did it badly and I hurt you more than necessary and I am so very sorry for that.
Sometimes I wonder where we would be today if I hadn't ended it.
Sometimes I wonder of the effect of solitude on my memory.

Not every moment is missed, but I miss you in moments.

I just can't believe he's dead. It keeps hitting me in waves.

editorial

In some respects, this is becoming more of a traditional blog as opposed to the repository of reluctant writings as was my original intent. I'm not entirely happy with this fact, but I don't have the energy to start yet another blog, and I need to vent this stuff.

I suppose there's no better place than reluctant.