Falling with Style

I felt that old flame surge up again. I have vinegar in my veins and my only impulse is for...

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:45:18 -0500

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...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 20:31:00 -0600

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.

The Passenger

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 21:33:22 -0600

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

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 01:25:32 -0600

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.

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 01:32:16 -0600

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...

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 22:32:19 -0600

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.”

Coin Toss

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 13:51:42 -0600

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.

"We avoid risks in life so we can make it safely to death."

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:49:57 -0600

“We avoid risks in life so we can make it safely to death.”

The Voice

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 18:28:14 -0500

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.

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 20:01:33 -0500

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

Devil Beside You

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 14:02:26 -0500

You walked out on me ten years ago when I needed you the most. Since then you’ve tried coming back in, only to end up stealing money from me and running off again. The positive impacts you’ve made on my life don’t make up for all the wreckage you’ve left behind. I regret ever communicating with you since then for fear that I somehow mislead you into thinking your behavior was somehow even partially forgiven or forgotten.

You don’t deserve a phone call from me. Not today. Not ever.

Slow Burn

Sun, 06 May 2012 05:40:00 -0500

I climb inside my own mind and scan the room like a periscope. Everyone seems to be having a genuinely good time and I’ve glazed myself in a pretend joy. I smothered the festering smoldering ember of manic blackness but it would wedge itself under my thoughts and wait to slowly pivot them into its steady, slown-burning flames. The alcohol dulls the sharp desolate edge of the heat stinging at the tiniest nerve endings. I wrap myself in a suppressive layer of thought and retreat further back in the room. I’m a fly on the flower on the wall. I’m floating in the street. I’m breathing smoke.

Dragon Armor

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:44:27 -0500

We don’t live in a warrior society. The great battles and mythical beasts we’re supposed to endure and defeat in order to rescue the beauty don’t exist. yet we yearn to be tested by them, so we create battles for ourselves. We replace dragons and giants with conquests and charades of money and sex. We try to look like modern day warriors and kings, when truthfully we are powerless and afraid.

The armor a man wears is plated with all the suffering he’s endured since he was a boy. He builds upon it and hardens it in the fury of battle. In this armor he has no fear. In this armor he can slay the dragon.

Coyotes

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 16:14:23 -0600

Coyotes

The Lost Summer

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 18:33:40 -0600

I don’t remember much of Summer 2007. I remember glimpses of parties and people. I remember bussing tables back home for a month before going back to NIU. I worked in the computer labs and at Housing & Dining for the latter half. That period of time is much clearer because I was waning off an addiction to prescription sleep aids.

This is how an addiction can happen. That Spring semester, a number of factors contributed to my insomnia. My psychiatrist gave me a script to help get me back on schedule. Rather than knocking me out, the pills had an extremely mellowing/relaxing effect. I got back on a relatively healthy schedule, and no longer needed the pills. I tossed them in a medicine cabinet and forgot about them.

A few months later, I had my heart broken for the first time and didn’t know how to cope. I turned to taking the pills during the daytime to feels something, anything else. Being in this state for days or weeks at a time makes it very difficult to remember much. And I soon discovered that if I took one during the day and happened to drink that night, I’d throw up after an hour or so and not remember much of anything the next day. This happened several times, and my heartache and depression plunged to a depth where I threw parties with the intention of doing this to myself. The relaxing effects of the pills were not easily detected, and the vomiting was just attributed to drinking too much.

There are pictures from parties I don’t remember being at, pictures on facebook of hangouts I don’t remember being a part of. A duration of my life that is a fragmented, damaged section of a hard drive. I don’t even fully remember how I came to be free of it. Maybe I had a fit of better judgement and threw the prescription away. Maybe I simply ran out of pills.

I have no moral point to this story that I’m driving at. I don’t even fully know what the lesson is, but I think the disappointment I feel when I see pictures of myself in places I don’t remember is shame enough not to let it happen again.

The Limit of Joy

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 17:47:00 -0600

I don’t swing the front door wide open and welcome happiness into the foyer of my life without asking for ID and what it’s selling. I don’t fully trust it. I know its visit could be cut short. I fear when its peaks are too high, something bad will likely happen to balance it out, for my luck is historically not that good.

Joy is an old friend who escaped from prison; he will find refuge here with me until sorrow in flashing red lights and bulletproof vests come knocking on the door.

Crickets & Car Alarms

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:15:01 -0600

I like to sleep with the window open in the summer. The sound of nearby crickets and occasional car alarms lead me to sleep like a submissive prisoner. It’s strange how both sounds have entirely different meanings, yet the same effect on me. I never run to the car in question to make sure it’s not being robbed, I just assume it’s going off accidentally, because it almost always is. The owner will take care of it. Quiet warbling and raucous howling, equal ends of the spectrum. With both sounds harmonizing with the polarity of my own thoughts, I find sleep somewhere in the placid layer in between.

Knowing we can die at any moment, should we live our lives differently? Should we stop preserving?...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:07:35 -0600

Knowing we can die at any moment, should we live our lives differently? Should we stop preserving? Stop acting with regard to long term outcome or effect on others? I’m not sure where my compass is pointing anymore.

Screw You, And Screw Your Man Card

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:31:44 -0600

You get enough man cards and I bet they’ll give you a $10 rebate at the Ed Hardy Shop. I don’t need it. I’m not a real man. I listen to Snow Patrol. I drink rum and Diet Cokes. I like a good number of Hugh Grant movies. I don’t give a shit. I do what I fucking want, which should be the first and last stupid retarded “man law” ever. Everything else is superficial bullshit.

-Drew Magary

http://deadspin.com/5844327/screw-you-and-screw-your-man-card

Light Intensity

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:59:00 -0600

I’m never satisfied with my work. I thirst for beauty and I keep pursuing, hoping and waiting and wishing for the perfect moment, the perfect photo, the one that will make me feel complete and make the client say it’s the best they’ve ever seen. But I shoot and produce and consume and deliver and it’s not good enough so I do it again.