We Bury Our Dead 'Round Here

The old grey farm cat finally died that last frozen winter's night.  The temperature dropped too low to sustain another beleaguered breath.  They found the frozen, calcified mass under the porch steps the next morning.  Just a hint of a once-vital tail stuck out to barely signal its petrified presence.  It was rigid, as if bronzed, and curled into the smallest ball it could manage for any paltry amount of warmth.  The ground was too solid to bury it, so they figured they might as well take it down to the creek and let the icy current do what it willed.

The big farmer bagged up the gelid feline he once held a moody affection for and with his ominous black rubber Hunter boots and fur-lined parka, he marched the mile down to the creek at his wife's insistence.  The farmer's wife never did care much for cats, even if they did catch the pester-some mice that scurried about the farm.  The way they slunk and crept along so stealthily; she didn't trust them.  They seemed wicked and maniacal, always plotting something nefarious behind those shifty, marbled eyes.  She especially hated that old grey cat.  It never seemed quite right.  It lurked and stared at her, as if it knew a deep, dark secret.  It gave her an uneasy feeling whenever it slithered by. She was glad to be rid of it, once and finally.  She smoothed her apron in relieved satisfaction and went back to frying up the fresh-cut bacon for breakfast.

The big farmer finally reached the creek on that bitterly cold, overcast morning.  It was frozen over, of course, but he figured if he trudged down the bank a bit, covered it with a thick mound of snow, it would be, but a hazy memory by the spring thaw.  He found a suitable enough plot for his once-beloved pet, but he only felt the cold of the day and a maybe a touch of pity.  He packed the snow around the corpse tightly enough to pay reverence, said a quick prayer and began his trek back up to the bustling farmhouse.  There was plenty of work to be done.

The next morning, the farmer's wife stepped out on the aged, grand porch, with its weathered and paint-stripped planks creaking beneath her boots as it did every morning as she went out to feed the steadfast hound dogs.  As she turned to go back inside, out of the corner of her mahogany eye, she swore she saw a hint of that grey tail.  She skeptically, but cautiously peered over the flaking white of the railing.  Sure enough, there was a grey tail peaking out beneath the well-worn steps.  Son of a bitch.  Another dead cat, she thought.  She called for her husband.  His imposing frame begrudgingly lumbered toward the door, mumbling some low, agitated grumble.  The concern written all over her face stopped his knee-jerk crankiness mid-sentence.  He swung open the screen, still in his long johns and looked in the direction of his wife's disquieted eyes.  He swallowed hard and audibly.  What the bloody hell?  He stomped over to confirm his fears.  That wasn't just another dead farm cat.  That was the same dead farm cat.  He thought it best not to tell his wife of this revelation.  "Yep, honey, it's another dead farm cat.  I'll take it down down to the creek with the other one.  One hell of a harsh winter.  You get back inside and finish up breakfast."
She wondered if he knew it was the same dead cat. Her hands trembled as she cracked the eggs into the bowl.

The big farmer pulled on his old black boots and parka, once again, to make his way down to the creek with his old friend.  His mind reeled that mile down.  How in the hell did that damned cat make it back up to the house?  Did one of the dogs dig it up and drag it back?  It was possible.  That must have been it.  He convinced himself.  Or maybe it wasn't quite dead?  He pushed that thought out of his mind as strode to the burial site.  The snow was built up a bit across from the ash-white birch where he had placed it.  He dug down further and piled even more snow atop, mounded close to three feet high.  This time, he didn't feel quite so numb, he felt edgy, almost frightened, but not quite.  He recalled the day the old cat ran away.  Shot off down the road one spring afternoon, after some imaginary rodent, no doubt.  He wondered then if it ever would come wandering back, but he wasn't quite sure he wanted it to.  The cat seemed more trouble than it was worth. Sure it would catch a few mice now and then, and snuggle in his lap come evening, but it would howl and cry all night long, scratch and claw at the antique doors, leaving long and irreversible mars upon the wood.  And every once in a while, it would go into a hysterical fit for no apparent reason, only to end up in some precarious predicament, like up the old willow tree or or top of the barn.  And he was left to figure out how the hell to get her down.  The cat was gone for a season or two, but turned up shortly after he wed, scrawny and battered.  His new bride wasn't much a fan of cats, relegating them to out of doors, and he was starting to understand why.  He made his familiar, but addled way back to the looming farmhouse.

Neither one of them slept much that night.  They tossed and turned in their tarnished brass four-poster, but refused to acknowledge the others restlessness.  Before long, the old rooster was crowing from the coop.  It was time to start another morning on the farm.  They both moved a little slower this morning, cautiously, prepensely.

The farmer's wife made her way suspendedly down the groaning staircase to the kitchen.  Her heart rate quickening almost imperceptibly with each descending step.  She didn't want her husband to glimpse her ill-hid trepidation, so she tried to act as naturally as she could muster.  She unlatched the back door as her hands began to bead with sweat against the cold, tarnished knob.  Please don't be there, she thought futilely.  Oh God, don't be there.  She swung open the screen as it lurched and squinked.  She peered out over the railing once more, as her breath caught in her throat.  She called out to her husband.  His stomach dropped through the floor with an accompanying thud.  Fuck.  He knew. But he certainly didn't want to.  He pulled on his boots and parka for what was becoming his daily pilgrammage down to the God-forsaken creek.

This same eerie scene played out for close to a month.  Every morning the same story.  The farmer's wife would espy the frozen grey tail and the big farmer would hike down to the creek with the cat in a bag to mound it under an ever-mountaining pile of snow.  The precipice of frozen precipitation only growing more monolithic and mocking with each passing day.  Anger began to slowly replace the fear and pity once felt.  Each day, the big farmer's face reddening with a touch more rage as he planted each weighty stomp down to the creek.  Spring was almost here and the permafrost would soon melt, the creek would flow again, and then finally, maybe, they would be rid of this.

It was so perfunctory at this point, they hardly acknowledged it anymore.  It was just another part of the morning routine on the farm.  Get up, feed the dogs, find the cat, walk down to the creek, make the breakfast.  The farmer's wife's fear was replaced with exasperation, then quiet acceptance.  She was starting to understand.  Her husband's anger was always quelled by the last bite of breakfast.  They settled back in to their quotidian lives.

It was finally spring, the snow had melted and the ground was softening as winter lifted its thick veil.  There was a lightness about this fresh spring morning.  The sun beamed its uncut, first rays through the filmy windows with a powerful warmth.  The farmer's wife almost half-wondered if that old grey cat would even be under the porch this heavenly morning. Yet there it was, just like every morning.  But the breeze blew warm across the seasoned porch and the fledgling scent of lilac buds filled the crisp morning air.  Something had changed, more than the weather.  The big farmer pulled on his black rubber Hunter boots, but didn't need his parka today.  His lambswool sweater would do on this sun-drenched spring aurora. Swallows perched leisurely on the branches of the antediluvian and elephantine oak to the right of the porch.  They filled the pastoral landscape with their saccharine and untroubled song.  He bagged up the old dead cat, almost jauntily and turned to make his way toward the creek.  But then an odd thought struck him.  He turned to the left and headed toward the barn.  He slid open the hefty wood door.  The hay crunched delightfully under his largish boots.  He got a devilish grin across his normally stoic face.  He spotted the rusty axe leaning against the brown-grey planks of the barn wall, almost immediately, as the streaks of morning light shining through the opposing slats pointed their phosphorescent finger.  He strode casually to it, as if to savor the thought, and grasped the smoothed and sanded handle with deliberate zest.  He grabbed the equally worn spade on his way out of the chiaroscuro-ed barn.  He made his way to the all-too-familiar creek, but walked his way further down to the makeshift bridge; an old board he used to cross the creek at its low point, axe, shovel, and bagged cat in substantial hand.  The creek was free-flowing now, but he had a better idea.  He untied the bag, and dumped the cat into the supposed regenerating field.  He began to dig in the just-yielding earth.  Further and further down he went. Dirt from his spade flew over his shoulder, wildly, fervently.  Just when he thought it deep enough, he dug a few inches further still, clawing at the cool loam and clay with his bare hands now.  He crawled out of the fresh grave and clutched the axe.  He raised it above his dirt-stained, sweat soaked head, the anger built up furiously from all the laborious digging and wasted time.  He was going to actually enjoy this.  A ghoulish and deserved smile formed across his face.  He brought the axe down hard on the rigid feline, severing its head clean off the body.  There wasn't any blood, so it wasn't as satisfyingly gruesome as he had hoped.  He took another swing, not much minding the idea.  He severed the torso in half.  It really was cutting up like a dream.  He was picking up some momentum now; each chop/thud sound so gratifying, propelling the next reinforced swing.  Pretty soon the old grey cat was in a thousand unrecognizable bits of fur and bone.  He looked about the scattered pinkish guts and discolored yellow end-trails with a smug and quenched calmness.  He readily scooped the indistinguishable old grey pulp and carcass morsels up with the spade and tossed them flippantly into the cavernous hole.  After every last scrap was in its plot, he, with seemingly boundless energy, replaced the moist dirt, happily, back from whence it came.  He packed and tamped it down tight and vigorous.  Once finished, he pulled a Marlboro out of his drenched, flannel shirt pocket and smoked it down to a nub. He flicked the butt onto the fresh earth, gathered his tools and muddying lambswool sweater from the dry, cool grass and knew that he would never think about that stupid decaying cat again.

He walked back to the farmhouse, with a lightness to his step instead of his usual leaden plod.  He was filthy and almost laughing.  The farmer's wife saw him striding his way back home from the expansive kitchen window vista.  A cold tingle of relief washed down her clenched spine.  He finally did it, she thought.  She knew he would eventually.  And she was seldom wrong about these things.  Another farmhouse breakfast awaited him.  Back to work, she murmured.  This breakfast wasn't going to make itself.

Garden of Eden or Come Here, Kiddo: A Scattered Continuation

I let the citrus crescent hang just a little too long above my half-cocked lips before I reach for it, camelopardalis-like, with my outstretched tongue.  It slides deliberately down the slickness.  I bite down on it slowly, consciously, only after scraping the white striations against my hard palette as I thrust it with my tongue.  I savor the fleshiness of the fruit as it mashes in between my dentition, allowing the barely-sweet juice to flood the cavern, mixing with my burgeoning saliva.  Within seconds, the luscious flesh and nectar have all but dissolved to hardly a memory.  And all I am left with is the tough, stringy skin to ruminate; my jaw tiring under the tension and torque.  But I refuse another segment until the previous has been swallowed to completion.  Once the fibrous vegetation has been sufficiently ground, I force it down my throat with the tenuous remaining spit.  The catch twenty-two of the mandarin.  It makes me thirst for more.  It lures me in with its succulent aroma and brilliant hue.  The color of the coruscating sun as seen through squinted slits, on the most relucent and cloudless August afternoon.  It hooks me with that first juicy squish of honeyed and toothsome flesh, but it is a decadent trick, an ambrosial ruse, for I am right back in that taunting, cotton-mouthed plight before I realize.  Oh you cursed, lovely, dastardly, beautiful fruit.  Your nefarious seduction is not lost on me.  The real sanctimonious genius of this citrus manipulation lies in the power of its allure. For even knowing this, I still open my mouth and beg for more.
"Come here, kiddo."


When the morose side takes control, there is no stopping its freight train of melancholy and reticence, except to choke and claw my way out.  When I'm in that lachrymose underworld, I forget entirely how happy I can actually be. There is a disconnect.  The demons take over and hold back the lightness with their maces and battle axes.  They don't allow those gossamer emotions through. I am forced to do battle.  But I've gotten good at fighting, expert, even. As what happens with years of practice.  For the pendulum always swings the other way.  But sometimes it needs a push.
I think knowing the things I know and having experienced the things I have, could work out in my favor more than I even had realized.  There lies the loftiest challenge of my life.  Not buying into a feigned positivity fantasy necessary for a shred of happiness the Xanxed set tries to shove down my throat, but machete-ing my way through the dense abhorrence with humor and philosophy; the only quasi-healthy coping mechanisms I can muster, to find a way to be happy in the face of undeniable gloom.  Laying to waste the torture, rape, and evil, of my mind and the world, leaving it slain on either side of the freshly cut verdant path.  Streaks of crimson smudged with ebony and snuff suffusing with the malachites and mosses of the once-fertile, now-impotent, beheaded flora; putrid and rotting in the Equatorial heat. It makes for arduous and sweat-drenched labor; wrestling and warring with these ideas in my mind.  But it feels good to not understand something right away. Finally.  It's like reading Camus.  It makes me feel human, instead of superhuman or more often, subhuman.  Happiness exists somewhere.  I've felt it; I feel it.  It's the only thing that makes me hungry, ravenous. It fans the fire in my belly.  Not darkness, not sullenness, not evil.  Love is the only currency my soul deals in.  Lovey-dovey is the only way I can survive. And unconditional love is all I have to give. I am wholly open to the flaws and eccentricities of the human race, and they sense it; those seedy, smokey, creatures of the night.  Therein lies the essence of my bewitching charm; that is the crux of my freak magnetism. Flaws are far more virtuous than perfections.  They are far more human.  Platonic ideals should never be realized.  Happiness lives in the endeavor.  For if all happiness is fleeting, we must be in constant pursuit.  It keeps stagnation at bay.  Spring is steadfastly approaching.  I let the wildflowers grow all around me.

Livin's Mostly Just Wastin' Time: Bits and Pieces of My Thread-bare Soul

Random musings, insignificant excerpts, and rambling notions of happiness or the illusion thereof.  But first...

"Your weirdness is beautiful."
"I don't know how you are the way you are, but the world is better for it."
"Not to sound piggish, but your writing is as sexy as you are."
"You love hard because love is fleeting. So you burn bright because you know you're going to burn fast."

There's an electricity about us/it/this.  An intangible, but very encompassing current that runs between, rapidly and naturally, like it was just taking its rightful place in the universe.

Man, I can handle this shit, but I did think I would get a bit more of everything before this shit came up.  We are going to have to battle the demons at some point.  Miserable people can't stand to sit idly by while happiness abounds.  It's their only motivation, really.  To my credit, in my darkest, most nefarious hours, I never wanted to piss on someone elses happiness.  I never saw the point.  I just wanted a little slice for myself.

Just as he was about to take the last drag of his Marlboro, a familiar visage strode toward him with feigned authority.  His stomach pulsated and churned.  The faintest taste of blood peppered his mouth.  Was it excitement or was it dread?

She almost wanted her to come. It was the little bit of excitement her evil half had been craving throughout this candy-coated dream.  Her stomach was in anxious sailor's knots.  That wicked half-smile was forming across her all-too-knowing face.

But the love side, the purity side, the happiness side just wanted it all to go away as quietly as possible and as abruptly as it came about.  She flashed back to a few days prior...This night was different.  There was an eerie, howling wind, rapidly changing directions through the weathered houses.  A neighbor was hunched over, banging hard and cacophonius with a sledgehammer at something on the cement.  And the putrid and unmistakeable smell of decay filled the night.

"They say if you get far enough away, you'll be on your way back home."  But what if you don't know where you are?

My perfectionism in itself an imperfection.  A fatal and dangerous flaw.  It is far more trouble than it is worth.  I hold myself to this superhuman standard that I can barely live up to, leaving me spent and doubled-over in pain, but it makes me look like some God-damned saint or superhero.  At first it's dazzling and intoxicating, but very quickly becomes a source of contention as no one likes to gaze into the face of perfection for very long.  It's nauseating and makes for far too much introspection.  Most people don't like the reflection staring back at them.

Oh, my Rule of Ten.  Be sweet and loving to me, I will be ten times as sweet and loving in return.  But be a dick to me, and I will be ten times the dick in return.  There is something really satisfying about running things into the ground. About blowing people out of the water, in either direction.  When will they learn?  I tell them of my dual nature, to polite, but dismissive head nods.  Only a rare few have understood what I meant by this.  Evil is a choice.  I don't have a depressed amygdala.  My emotional center is overly-active.  I can be held accountable for my sins.  I should be held accountable for them.  I should suffer for them.

Maybe he is just testing to see if I'm human.

I'm afraid of shattering the illusion.  I'm afraid of waking up.

He wanted me to need him.  To reach out for him in the night.  To level the playing field.  But pride wouldn't let me take the bait.  Maybe I'm the asshole.  Or maybe I'm not the scared little girl I once was, needing men to validate my existence at every turn to somehow make up for my severe abandonment issues.  I don't want to be that weak again, but I never want to be that callous either.

His love was so unconditional.  It's not fair to hold him up to that impossible standard, almost as impossible as the one I hold myself up to.  It's a cruel joke to know love that great, only to have the magic carpet ripped from under you.

We've been so conditioned not to believe in romance.  Life beats the romance out of any of those foolish enough to feel it.  That's why romance is always tinged with tragedy.  It makes the pill easier to swallow.

I told of my romance fraught with complication and stained raw love.  Fuck doleur exquise.

Is happiness my life's greatest challenge?  Am I so used to not being challenged in any real way that my brain doesn't know how to react and is blaming my heart?  Is that why I am acting like an indignant child?

There is no more exposed a person than the honest writer, and there is no more dejected a than the thoughtful comedian.  Why does everything I touch turn to dust and ash?  I fear I am cursed to forever wander in this moribund world.  Men love the idea of me more than they love me.  I live in a prison of my own making.  Barred from any kind of lasting happiness.  I am a fuck-up. It was said best with, "No one gets to be all three.  You're a witch that must be burned at the stake."  It's true, I am not of this world.  I am from some other planet.  Some other dimension.

It's funny, I want so many things, yet nothing at all.  I don't know if happiness exists for me.  Some force just likes to taunt me.  Or I just like torturing myself.  I am the ultimate sadomasochist.  It's fun being the best at everything.

I felt that crashing sensation again tonight.  Where I just wanted to let the car run into something hard, looming and final.  I am too quixotic for this world.  I am too easily hurt, despite my collected, roll-with-the-punches demeanor.  Jokes deflect the inquiries into the real me.  The one that lies beneath the affability and the biting humor.  Pallacci Syndrome.  Humor's just another way to keep people at arm's length.

Negativity exists.  Horror exists.  Death, torture, rape, starvation, heartbreak exist.  You don't get to have your brooding moods at your leisure and expect it to not affect anyone.  I know happiness is work and some days I get tired.

I can't look him in the eye.  God, I'm a shit.  My brain is fried.  I can barely write.  I am on the threshold of sleep.  I feel like I may pass out right here.  Face down in the beans.  I missed him today.  I can't look that those damned things.  It's bullshit.

We did things and knew things about each other that would make an ordinary person's skin crawl.  Do you still like me? he asks.

I was in a throwy-smashy mood.

The less tired I become the more mad I feel.  The more tired, the more forgiving.  Probably because I just want to go to bed.

It was too intense, too deep to be maintained.  I don't want someone that makes me feel weak.  I want someone that makes me feel strong.  But I do feel a bit weak now. Maybe that's a good thing.  It's not an anxiousness, but a dull aching.  That dull ache, that level of hurt, that level of calculated slow-burning anger can only come from love.

There is something empowering about accepting your fate.  It gives you a say in it somehow.  The key to happiness lay in the realization there is no lasting happiness.  It is tempting and elusive, but all happiness is fleeting.  It is, but a hologram.  But once that idea is exposed, so comes clarity, followed by the most elusive mistress of all; freedom.  Existentialism once more reigns.

Post Script: Love is the ultimate and most befitting metaphor for my life. Like no other intangibility, it highlights the notion of black and white, the idea of extremes, polarization.  It can cause the greatest, most fulfilling excitement, satiation, happiness, but yet also the most intense, gut-wrenching, crushing pain, loneliness, and agony.  But you have to roll the dice to play the game.  The deadliest of emotional pendulums, love is still best when at one of the apogees. For resting in the middle is the true torture, where complacency and existential malaise lie. There's the secret.  Flying on either apex for as long as possible and riding that pendulum back the other way with the greatest of speed.  Either side is full of beautiful pain.  Without evil, there could be no good.  La doleur exquise.

Post Post Script-  Yeah, I totally get how fucking pretentious it is to do a piece of my own quotes.  Ugh, the self-indulgence, the ego.  I'm so fucking emo sometimes. Back to Dude.

I Wish The Orange-scented Morning Could Last Forever

Or maybe I don't. Fuck it. Fuck it all. I long for my old death-wish life. Where it didn't matter to anyone if I lived or died. Not really. Everyone would have gotten over it. I would have been doing them a fucking favor. They wouldn't need to worry about me any longer. I would be out of their hair. No more money, no more thought. They could just go live their lives. I refuse to make my pain others pain, until the final absolution of pain. I don't know if I can take the pressure of pretending to be happy all the time. I need an evil outlet. I can't deny that side of me. That's what took me down last time. Fuck my accursed dual nature. It's my cross to bear. Constantly warring inside my head, my heart, and my soul. There is no salvation other than the death. The pendulum always swings the other way. I felt so good yesterday. Then the oppression took over. All of my energy got sucked right down into the depths of my personal hell. Was it the house? Was it just an inevitable progression? Or was it more situational than I care to admit? I am over it? Not bloody likely. I never will be. How can one ever get over the crumbling of a monolithic mountain into the treacherous seas? Mountains shouldn't move, let alone dissolve, but yet there it went. Way down into the abyss; the Mariana Trench of our love. I wrote that tear-stained letter on the spot. I wonder if it's the last real love letter I'll ever write. I sure as hell hope not. But why do I keep sobbing uncontrollably at the thought of him? Is it because he has dug up these long-buried feelings? Feelings I never wanted to feel again. Or at least I thought I didn't. Fuck that. Of course I wanted to feel them again. Love is the only thing that makes life worth fucking living. Love has always ruled my life, but only because I have known unconditional love at such an early age. But like most beautiful things in this world, it is fleeting. It gets ripped away from our child-like hands, leaving us empty and alone. Instead of being such a neurotic asshole, I should probably start appreciating what the fuck I have. Once I figure out whatever that is. Happiness is a God-damned illusion. A hologram. Happiness will never rap upon the macabre's door. Am I destined to forever be unhappy? Am I too omniscient to be happy? Probably. Definitely. Why do I only get glimpses of happiness? That's it. Maybe that's how long excitement lasts. And when excitement fades, it leaves fear in its wake. Is this fear? Fear manifesting itself as sabotage. Perhaps my inner demons are not only evil to the external, but this evil knows no bounds. It is most malicious to its keeper. Like the tiger that attacks its doting and unsuspecting trainer. It's really planning that all along and everything else the tiger does is just biding time until that point. The lunge after the face is set in stone from the beginning. I do have evil in my genes. It's coursing through my veins. And someone must suffer at its hand. It's just a choice of me or them. Is suicide at that point selfish or is it then heroic? Saving my loved ones and society at large from my depraved madness. I am too quixotic for this world. Suicide is solace. Man, this morning sure devolved fucking fast. What the fuck is my problem? I am looking for things to be morose about? I seek out negative emotions. Like a God damned predatory bird. Swooping down and clutching a fuzzy life-filled woodland creature in my razor-sharp talons. Slicing the jugular of happiness with one deft motion. Letting the blood drip upon the town below. My eyes growing wide and satisfied with each plink-plink of crimson smearing the neutral landscape. Vermillion on wheat. Rouge on chestnut. Rust on pine. Vermillion on the face of the world. Vermillion streaming from my eye. Blood and gore, festering pus-filled happiness. I slice my own throat. Every fucking time. Hand me the straight razor. I want to be happy too. Happy like the rest of you baseless morons. Happy. Happiness is fresh. Virile blood spilled upon the earth. You can be happy too. Bloodlust is the only lust there is. All lust, all passion is fueled by blood. Dripping from my fingertips, dripping from my mouth. There is no need to come up for air. I smear it across my cheek. I will never be satiated, only temporarily full. It's the ancient evolutionary motivation to survive that doesn't allow for contentment. For if we are actually content, we become complacent. Complacency is death. The worst kind. Death by a thousand cuts. Death by chocolate. Death by sheer God damned boredom. What a fucking joke. A great big cosmic joke. It just dangles the threat of happiness in front of us. And like big fucking assholes we chase it round and round the fucking horse track. Thinking one day we will finally catch that stupid carrot in between our big horse teeth. Ha. The real key to happiness is knowing it doesn't actually exist. It only comes through in small and paltry laps. Just barely splashing over your toes. Tidal waves of happiness are a suspicious and cunning illusion. Be wary of them. They are not of this world. They are saline cons, set to knock us off our feet and drown us in a whirlpool of sorrow and disenchantment. It's all a lie. And it gets me every single fucking time. I'm drowning. In fear. In love. In hate. In banality. In illusion. Is there a rock to grasp onto in this swirling eddy? Maybe. It's up to me to let it reveal itself. To not try and move the rocks. To swim away from them in a rush of foolish pride and pseudo-romanticism. Fuck doleur exquise. Fuck this notion that love should equal pain or it's not "real" or worthy. Fuck that life should be tragic and tumultuous. A constant push/pull that inevitably ends in the rope breaking. Why can't love be quiet and sweet? Why can't it be subtle and slow? Pleasant and lovely; silly and light. Gossamer and ethereal. Instead of bitter and fiery. But that fire. It's that fire that burns white-hot in my belly. It's that fire that drives my machine. It's my only motivation besides time. It fuels my emotional firestorm. It greases my creativity and charges my freak magnetism. It lets my life stay interesting. It leaves the backdoor open for craziness. It allows a creative life. But the piper must be paid. Nothing's free. Neuroses, sadness, loneliness, misunderstanding, melancholy, malaise, torpor; these are it's only currency. Fuck you Kristoffersen. Fuck you for nailing that now-cliche line on freedom. I was free for ten agonizing months. With a blaze so hot burning inside of me that I could never sleep. I could never eat. The fire began to eat me alive. I was being burned alive. From the inside out. I was being burned alive. Yet, it was all so cold. The heat of the summer was no match for the iciness of my heart. My dual nature once more realized. My brain is the only thing inhibiting my happiness. It's the only thing standing in the way of living my life. It was easy to have fun and live my semblance of a life when I didn't give a shit about anything. There is no right or wrong in a death wish life. There is nothing. Ve belief in nos-zing. You don't need a conscience then. The crushing loneliness is your only combatant. But then you have your suicide fantasies to comfort you. The sweet midnight suicide fantasies; wild and out of control. Tying those cables around my neck I hung from the ceiling. Tightening it just enough so I could barely breathe, but still feel like I'm dying. Just a little.  Just enough.  The beautiful, tragic red lines it left around my slender porcelain neck. The image of my battered and broken body lain lifeless across a railroad track. My limbs contorted in the most unnatural and grotesque positions. With the most devilish smile smeared across my mangled face. Somehow a little life still twinkling in my big doe-eyes. Streaks of mascara and blood the only color left. But something stopped me. What was it? Was it the distant idea of this? Was it this? Am I just letting fear take over? I am. Because I know, better than most, how quickly absolute love can dissolve into absolute hate, and much worse absolute nothingness. I can't let that happen again. I refuse. I am stronger and better than that now. I know it's not easy. Nothing worth it ever is. Things scare me when they come too easy. I'm not used to goodness being handed to me. I'm used to having to claw my way, kicking and screaming to get just a little taste of pleasure. I feel like I only deserve it when I worked for it. When I've suffered for it.  Love is the only thing worth anything.  Buy the ticket.  Take the ride.  Well I already bought the God-damned ticket.  I'm too quixotic not to get hurt.  I'm too stubborn not to keep at it.  Happiness lies at the next oasis.

I wish the orange-scented morning could last forever.  Where no one could touch us.  Where the eternal madness doesn't exist.  On a plane where there is only purity and slivers of sunlight through leaden drapes.  There is no depression, no loneliness, no misunderstanding.  Just unspoken love in the form of citrus.  Red fingernails dancing among dirty blond curls.  A verdant field to lay my head upon.  Wildflowers and butterflies flood the landscape.  And booming bear growls fill the air with masculine contentment.  Nothing else matters in that incandescent world of our own creation.  It is a manifestation of our most longed-for desire.  What we've always thought we wanted.  Finally realized.  To exhale out all that toxic death we filled our lungs with for so long.  That black, gnarled, necrotic tar caked and encrusted on our most vital organs; choking and asphixiating the passion and essence of life out of us.  Out of me.  Squeezing, constricting me into submission.  Something just barely stopped me from acquiescing.  It sure as shit wasn't God.  But it was something inexplicable.  I was completely faithless.  But now I'm not so sure.  If God exists, then so exists the devil.  If the saint exists, as does the sinner.  More dual nature bullshit.  Bukowski had it right.  When the world makes you hate everyone, especially yourself, just go back to bed for three or four days.  Or longer.  Fuck the day.  I wish the orange-scented morning could last forever.