FOR MADMEN ONLY

There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.
-Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf

Up until 30 minutes ago you had no idea what I did for a living and now you know more than me? Great. I should just quit and write poetry.
-theoriginal_jem on Instagram this week

The trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed and their mothers have never been told to shut up.
-Charles Bukowski

Sometimes I write just to keep from falling.  It’s been the luckiest goddamn thing, the writing.  The other, well, we all have our row to hoe, don’t we Sister?  Some of us toe the line, we fit in to their scheme nicely, or we want to and our days are orderly, it all makes sense or it will someday.  The rest of us run slipshod, in turns raw with fear and bold with alacrity, pioneers of lost and lonely kingdoms, we answer to none and don’t tell anyone.  As treacherous as it gets it’s still safer than living in their world.  I don’t know what kind of voodoo’s been run down on me but–I burn out now on crazy, faster than ever before.  The IG quote above is from an unfortunate interaction on social media this week.  I spoke on corporate culture, which I gladly know nothing of, and should’ve just kept my mouth shut.  On the other hand I wouldn’t have known this person to be so self-identified with it–square life.  I can’t speak to it.  I can’t recommend the road I took.  I’m not proud of it, it still confuses me–but I’ll never suffer anyone’s shame of it.  Out of necessity, really.  Believe me, I’m plenty enough ashamed on my own, that I couldn’t make it, do the thing and participate.  I just happen to be more ashamed of them and their life–the squares.  Which obviously, and again out of necessity, is a perfect intro for this week’s post.

I’m terrified.  I struck out again, left my gig of 5 years.  Couldn’t hang there anymore.  It was the longest job I ever had–which isn’t to say I’m irresponsible.  I could never stick around long enough to let time get on me, which is what happens.  Familiarity can be a pecking away, unless it’s from people who you love but even then sometimes you’ve got to get away.  I never met a more concentrated group of horrible people than I did at my last gig and living where I did, but I never stayed anywhere longer than a couple years either.  The problem is the Fear.  I’m suffering good Reader.  My karma’s wearing me down.  I can’t do it, out here, without some soulsucking handjive day paying jerkaround.  Know what I’m saying?  It’s fucked and I feel fucked.  Terrible depths of despair until I take to the outdoors and the sun and the trees of Hyde Park take me like a familiar but distant planet.  I can let go a little, on my walkabouts here, and forget for a spell that the future looks as fucked to me as the past and I don’t know how I’ll ever get this rig unwound.

I got some side hustles.  Little time sucks for gas and food money.  I’m not starving to death.  I’m booking ’em, too.  December’s shaping up and 15 $100 gigs still seems doable, on paper anyway.  I’m interviewing for another caregiving position tomorrow, I got irons in the fire for everything from moving furniture to hauling trash.  Everything’s fine and I’m terrified.  I regret my decision and pretty much every other one I’ve had to make since I first stepped foot to this savage road over twenty years ago.  I don’t think I’ll make it most days.  The wisdom, I guess, is I never thought I would but yet here I am.  It’s been heavy, man, and harrowing.  Second to second sometimes.  It does add up, though, I’ve got a body of work.  Three books in and my stuff is getting better and better.  Storytelling is second nature to me now.  It only takes a draft or 2 before I can take it to the boards and tell it under the hot lights.  Writing is still one of the only failsafe things that will save me.  Refuge.  Most days feel like falling until I’m beat by night’s billyclub, and then pulled off to dream silly dreams in some thick veldt between lust and madness.   I think I’ll make it, after all, even if it never feels like it.  She wouldn’t last a day.

See you in the territory motherfucker.

 

 

DON’T BECOME NOSTALGIC FOR THINGS THAT WERE ACTUALLY AWFUL

You can’t live without a mother. Without a mother you can’t die.
–Narcissus and Goldmund, Herman Hesse

Don’t let your reptile brain override what you knew was right then and is certainly right for you now.  Don’t go on a world tour of pain rehashing things that you’ve passed on or take another stab at things that’ve long since passed you by.  Shitty people are shitty.  The sea changes people say they’ve been through, that’ve brought them back from the dead and into your life are just another charade and they’re never doing it for you, so don’t get enmeshed.  Move on.  Always forward.  Never back.  This paragraph will be one fuck of a non-sequitir if it doesn’t tie in with anything except its cribbed title from an article about Joe Biden.  Truth is I don’t know what to write about this week, I don’t know where I am, except in a state of free fall, and I’m grasping–at love and the past and ideas of things that didn’t bring me comfort before but I insist will now, somehow.  It could be high time for some real deal spirituality.  I’ve shirked it long enough.  It could also be a great time to forego ideas of love and romance and let go the need to be taken care of.  How much more could I need anyway?  I’m on the love seat I bought yesterday, in my bedroom of the new apartment.  I just ate a reheated Mixmix from last night’s dinner at Koriente.  My car is parked in the driveway and it’s peaceful here, a little stuffy but fine in the fading light. No one’s going to blast in here and stick a gun in my face.  These walls won’t fall tonight and I’ll enjoy my first night of sound sleep in over fourteen days on a brand new mattress, delivered this afternoon.  The world is on fire and the end days are winding down–but everything is ok.

I bring up love and romance because I’m a romantic.  And I met a woman who we’ll call Kali, and she smacked me down to size when she told me that what I needed was what I had.  I’ve been unemployed since October 1 and as mentioned I’ve been falling through the days.  Lucky there have been some truly profound moments in the sun down here, too–days the old, street fighting me would hardly believe.  It occurs to me that other than knowing we’re on the brink and it’s all over baby blue, the torrential malaise of my psyche these days might have something to do with survivor’s guilt.  I made it through, it’s true, to be on this harried plateau where I feel the utter depths of a longing for suicide but grin from ear to ear in the sun driving fast in my car.  I know I’ve had to leave a lot behind and I’m not as glad about some of it as I am about the rest.  There’s a lot of junk back there but love too, and innocence, and every time I hurt you I know I hurt me too.  The best thing that Kali did for me was remind me this wasn’t free.  The bad love and the streets–they’re more than just fodder and grist for good poetry.  It was real and it really happened.  I’m suddenly overcome thinking about the folks I left behind–them in their misery because it was their karma and me out the door ’cause it was mine.

I can’t see an end to the insanity.  Certainly not in the New Century and maybe not in me, either.  I’ve a brave man in my life talking to me about God, and I’ve the same reaction to it I’ve always had.  The only thing changed is not that I’m losing control but that I never had it.  Fate, the World, cold plasmas of space–it’s the nature of things to break down, our bodies included, and I feel the more that gets in the better and the less you leave behind.  I didn’t think it’d get darker but I guess that’s why you get stronger.  Not to see the light but so you can rival the darkness.  Things are really winding down.  My spirituality has always been the seasons but now we’ve no Winter and no Fall and the smiles on all the faces are a prison.  The only other benevolent change has to do with music.  It’s affecting me the way it used to.  It’s splitting me down the middle again, making me feel alive and thousands of volts.  It’s giving me my edge over the sleepers and I burn down the streets of this town like a Black Irish shadow with earbuds on.  Rock and Roll never forgets.  Neither love, you should know.  There are some of you reading these words right now and I can feel you in my heart and it makes me strong.  We are all we have.  I’ll keep falling as long’s you keep holding my hand.

See you next week motherfucker.

 

19/30

all conquest folded, those legends
never told your full glory
to tame the beast you had to
step into his cage
you passed their limits but
you’re only ornery&bored
and at odyssey’s end there is
no peace in your life
wasn’t that what they told you was wrong
the road is still yours but whether to
forge ahead or go back
isn’t the only choice
the sky can’t hold on to lightning
without faith, the dead gods still reign
what love have you won, the crone sinks
like a stone
and the maiden’s rise will only
be cut down in the Fall