Falling with Style

I felt that old flame surge up again. I have vinegar in my veins and my only impulse is for destruction. I keep the inferno contained but it swirls around and goes nowhere. You have no idea the powder coarsing at my fingertips. It’s starting right at you ready to turn your world upside down. My heaviest shield. My mightiest hammer. My darkest dark.

I felt the flesh of his hand grow tight around my throat. I broke free and ran and thrashed through the walls and tore apart the desk, stealing the words from myself and carrying them with me from the dream world into wakefulness. My ghost would seek vengeance, but for now the words were mine.

That old terror fuels up again and shoots sparks and tightens its grip and I push back, keeping it from spilling.

An hour passes and it sinks down again. I kill myself just a little bit at a time and it keeps the hitchhiker under the bed, the passenger of my thoughts.

I dove into an empty pool where madness spent its summer

Ghosts of the past laughed through the flames as we watched our house burn.

Michael Moore: “If Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were here right now, what would you say to them?

Marilyn Manson: “”I wouldn’t say a single word to them, I would listen to what they have to say, and that’s what no one did.”

They’ll be looking for a reason for the mayhem, an answer for their grief, but they won’t find one. Violence is an animal that endures and adapts and ricochets off of us before continuing on, mutating and growing frightening new limbs but staying the same inside. Every mass murderer is a person that exists in the society we’ve created. Someone with the drive to kill will find a way to do so. Take away their assault weapons and they’ll just use handguns. Get rid of guns and they’ll still find a way, all you’ve done is made it inconvenient. Take away their guns and they’ll make explosives in their garage.

It takes years of practice and pain to even know when you’re hearing the voice. You have to slip below the pressure of dangerous depths and be pulled out before you know the source of its whispers and how it dragged you down there.

It’s the voice that tells you you’re not good enough. That you’re not man enough. That you’re not strong enough or smart enough or good looking enough. That she’s just playing you. That she doesn’t really like you. That you’re going to be stuck here, in this town, at this job, for the rest of your life. It’s the voice that says your father was right to walk out on you; you’re not worth sticking around for. There’s no one in your corner. There’s no one watching and waiting for you to win this fight. They all think you’ve already lost and they’ve all gone home.

It’s a poker game. It thinks you have a losing hand, and how could it be wrong? The voice lives in your own head; surely it must know what you’re laying down.

I’ve found after many years and after losing many fights that, no matter what hand you’ve been dealt, there’s only one way to deal with the voice in your head or the face sitting across from you waiting for you to fold. You keep a stiff upper lip and a fist under the table. You show your cards when you flip the table and bring the fight into the street. The only way you win the battle for your peace of mind is by attacking, not signing a peace treaty.

You’re a cricket in the night; I’m a car alarm in the distance.