Go to I Support Britney to help Riverside resident Britney in her battle with Leukemia. Any donation will be appreciated and will go toward basic items and expenses. This page simply takes debit and credit cards. No membership is required.
Don’t forget, we are still trying to Bring Steve-O to Riverside Casino to Help Britney Smile.
I have been treading water for a week now
Swimming, I know how to
I forget the tiny details
I stroke enough to keep my nose above the surface
More and more difficult when
My head swims, drowns
Forgetting little, big things
So much lost between the mind and the reminder note
In my sleep, I don’t fly anymore…
Last night:
Walking around licking paint from a brush
In a hardware store, tall shelves, dark aisles
lights so far above, I can’t see their source
Avoiding help, complaining in my head that no one helps me
I sit and scroll and look at things other people say, every second thinking about everything I should be doing and talking myself out of it. ‘What’s the use’ while procrastinating is like trying to climb out of quicksand. Not quite…it would be more accurate if I were trying to climb my way out of a pool of jellybeans to sit in a comfy chair. Except there are times when I don’t want to climb out. There are times I want to fail. It’s gone pass where all I have to do is snap out of it and ‘just do it’; it’s getting to be where I have conditioned myself to not know what to do or how to do ‘it.’
I try to write how I feel, to show people how to think and be better citizens, but I find myself needing those same people’s approval. I want them to act a certain way, yet I don’t want to offend them. Criticizing when you constantly doubt what you are writing is right, the only validation received are the facts that are cited and hyperlinked.
I have just now learned that writing is a release…well, I’ve always known that, I just aversion-therapy-ied, or reverse brainwashed my brain into following the same advice I give people when I tutor. Before then, it was like I had to have equations to function; predesigned slots programming my thoughts and movements. I was a player piano.
I had to actually hold myself accountable and realize and face my faults to come out and actually try to write, to create. Now when I show people how to express themselves, I am coming from an honest place. Writing is one of the few activities that I do for myself that is not a front, a shield or a mechanism to hide myself from the world.
Asserting myself has helped me become more confident. The more confident I have become, the more assertive I have become, both in writing and in life. But I still find myself cowering at times, doubting myself in the corner of the room because that is the furthest place to which I can retreat and still be with people, passive aggressively making it their problem, their responsibility if I fail. Their responsibility if they cannot find me.
Picture credits:
Stings of the Lash (2005) by Vincent Castiglia
The Punk Rock Bride by SepiaDreamscape
Count Dracula by SepiaDreamscape
The Phantom by SepiaDreamscape
Frankenstein’s Monster- The Hipster Years by SepiaDreamscape
Imhotep by SepiaDreamscape
the pain
desired numbness
bathed in the dull thud of
the indecisive
slow ripping
exquisite shearing of
limb from joint and
mind from sanity
brain is squeezed
twisted
pulled
creeps south
throbbing unites
dull rolling
communicates
conspires to cleave the body
in two
the worm begins
enters through the eye socket
squirms through the ear canal
into the brain
washes warmly western hemisphere
subsides
awakens as it constricts the chest
muscles tighten in the arm
Not enough to be something
Explodes into nothing
Noah’s Flood from Gustave Doré Bible engravings
familiar twinges
my mind body recoiling
my muscles ignore the brain
inevitable, they say succumb
to the warmth pity immerses me
presupposes sorrow
and never be happy
find joy and sorrow
in what has not come
regret the past
All you have present.
Lilian Lucy Davidson (1893-1954) http://www.courant.com/
Severance of body from soul is not necessarily death, but it probably feels better when it is. The blocks of stones and wood that weigh us down when leaving or being left by, anything or anyone loved physically berates and scathes the glossy veneer of our lives causing us to play catch up to the masks and costumes we wear every day in the endless parades that are our lives.
Square pegs in round divots, we try to hug to what we think has been preordained, dowry paid with the chits earned against debts incurred from our own blood, from our own tree, poisoning our fruit, making us unconsciously sour to our own existence. If not soured, then all too eager to fulfill what we assume to be our own destiny, blindly plodding along into the unknown abyss that swallows everyone.
Like ants, we trundle in service of this or that, scouring our little corners of the world, pausing only to pleasure ourselves with the lives and suffering of others…the same suffering and viscous hate we wade through every day and night, but cannot, will not admit it.
If we did, if we confessed to living with emotions, distaste against the trundling of the others, seeing ourselves naked, seeing ourselves alone, we would die of shame, torn apart by sharp-fanged regrets we cannot know, shredding our flesh, rending our bodies, shorn and uneven strips that will only go on to produce and fuel and nurture anguish in our descendants whose lives will only be gnawed by an itch in the back of their minds, repeating…repeating…
There is an ongoing cloud of delusion that has been engulfing the earth. It is the same in the small towns as it is in the big cities. There is thin layer, a jaundiced skin wrapped over our everyday lives that clouds the way things truly are. Whatever gives us that teat-sucking comfort as we walk through a world that is immense with privileged and entitled jackals who eat the world, bit by bit. And those are just the consumers, buying and buying and building their wall against the outside world.
The true life suckers, the slithering reptiles that beat the dead horses with their studded tails in the street, feeding bits of the horse to the scurrying even weevil lackeys as it struggled on trembling legs to rise. The weevils come hither and yon to hear the scaled scoundrels blather, cajole and vomit their self-proclaimed truth and throw their daggers of spiteful judgment and at those who rail against them.
The rogues, the ne’er do wells, try to help, expose the reptiles by cutting through the skin, the slimy veneer the reptiles hide behind. Some rail against them, the rogues they are, walking up to the slithering beasties and tug, tug on their forked tongues and cram crow in the gape of the reptile’s gullet. The crows fly to freedom and peck the rogues at the knees, flying away with the knee caps. They speak, they yell, they hack and receive feces in their ears and gaping mouths.
Most want nothing to do with the circus of reptiles devouring each other and some run repeatedly into the walls looking for a way out. They topple, they cram the dirt of the earth into their ears and scoop out the their seeing balls from their brain holder with corn pone spoons to be blind and deaf to a truth that is hard to swallow and lies that go down like acid. They sit and face the back walls of their cages, inches from an exit and speak to the shadow that was their world and cry blood when no one converses back.
The rogues are outside, banging on the walls, struggling to come in, running from the reptiles that have no interest, but occasionally lash out in hunger and spite. They multiply as they are hacked by the rogue’s words and jibes, crawling over each other and away, to infest those who are shut in, struggling to speak to the walls. The rogues finally batter down the walls, only to find an empty room. They yell until their vocal chords explode and write until the tips of their fingers go from clack to tick on the keyboards, buttons stained red.
I can scream,
Tell people to rail against those who hate
I can scream
Against injustice
I can scream
At the sun, curse it for its cruelty
But when
I scream
At my loves,
All seems lost
All seems wasted
As we hit the wall of
Communication.
TM
6.2.2012
failure
quitter
quitter
quitter
wordsthatfloatedthroughtheairandmy
head
sure is what i say because all are
true, yet all are not bad
better now than later,
better here than there,
better i tried than not
sure is how I feel
scared…my future
wheredomydreamsgofromhere?
tom
2-25-01
piece and void
sucked from my heart
as the melody is brought in
love and friendship is momentarily gone
loneliness takes the place of smiles and wonder
the pressure of a non-functioning brain pushes
the last of my creativity falls
splashes like so much blood onto the page
fingers twitching in the final throes of life
typing its own eulogy
