I was number nine on a call in contest today that wanted number 10. So close.. I don't even know what the prize would be, but it would have felt good to win something.
I looked at my feet they look tired and old, so many weird little spots and marks. I'm sure I had pretty feet once.
My hands are so soft still from my idle life, they have no character of their own. I look and they could be anyone's. They shouldn't be mine, not if I was the man I want to be.
They would be iron strong with callous, deep grained with rubbed in earth. My hands are a writer's hands, firm gripped and steady, the only callous a pad above the last knuckle of my middle finger. Now typing is taking that from me. Maybe all my fingers will develop little pads on them.

Frustrated by a lack of options, our hero decides to take drastic steps. After several drastic steps including the preparation and comsumption of several well made manhattens our hero decides to take crooked steps.

Where have all the good times gone?
Random question week continues..
I brought my materials to write some of my story today but I don't think I'm going to. I'm running out of steam on the idea, just barely started. I'm writing out of my field of expertise, I just don't seem to have any rhythmn or flow.
Oh well i think I will try again to get Sci-Fi.com to accept a short story. They rejected me before, but they can't scare me, if anything I will just keep flooding them with my stories until the breakdown from sheer volume. I'm not very good at sci-fi though. At staying with such a technically accurate story, and making it believable.

Do you like me like me? Or Just like me?
A little blonde redneck actually asked me that once. I had just started hanging with a group of girls from a new school I was going to. Junior year of high school, her family lived in an overcrowded house. Overcrowded with people, babies, pets, and had flies crawling all over the ceiling. I remember it smelling like cats.
I do not recall her name, though she was interesting at the time. Good looking and tough, perhaps a little too tough for me. I was flirting heavy with someone else but she was more forceful. She got me alone in her bedroom and we started kissing before I even realized she was interested. That's when she pulled back and asked the question. Do you like me like me? Or do you just like me? I thought it was even odder given how she was at least a year older than me and it sounded grade-schoolish to me. I told her of course I liked her, and she pretend pouted until we started making out. We never actually dated but we did spend a day or so together before I realized she just wasn't my type. We never had sex either which is great considering how many babies seemed to revolve around that house.
A very short time later I ended up getting together with the original girl at a party at her house. Dancing to stairway to heaven that first kiss was all electricity and bubbles, how amazed I was at that moment. The blond of course had not been notified of our change in relationship. A few kisses though.. Ehh.. I ended up calling her horrible names and yelling at her until she cried, because I was worried she would try to start a fight. Eventually she must have left because I don't recall her after that moment...
Any guy will tell you that he loves a good catfight. But if you love one of the girls how can you want that? When she looks at you with wide scared eyes it just drops you through the floor. You start looking for something to kill just to prove to her you can keep her safe.
Auurugghh me cave man (beats chest wildly)me strong me protect (picks fleas from hairy chest and stares at them with interest) AAuuureuugghh

I find myself hatching mad plans to go tearing off across the country. I'm like a reckless teenager again but only in my head. My own body and the small dead part of my brain which makes me an adult is still anchored firmly enough to resist these mad urges. Am I so locked into this deadend that I'm having a mid-lifer crisis at 28??? I miss passion excitement, being eager to actually be somewhere, or get somewhere or see someone. Now I only want out of here. Meaning my job, my house, my body.

Going on several weeks of depression with no break, It's starting to wear on me, I have started taking tylenol PM so I can sleep the entire night through. It and the martinis seem to be working well together. I wake up sweaty and tired like I've been tossing and turning all night, and my dreams are restless. I've had recurring dreams about tornadoes and sex for the last dreams I can remember.

Always caught mid act by some distraction my sex dream has no substance no finale, always the distraction is something that runs cold fear through me. My brother leapt into a water tornado last night from the second story of my dad's house where he still lives. I watched in terror until he came back and said try it it's fun.. Then a brown and black dirt twister swept up the houses around us and I went back to the woman and we ran in fear, but my brother was no longer there.

The cold sea slapped across my chest knocking me to dull sand with a club of icy needles then sucked at me drawing me into the specious warmth of it's January waters



When young and asked what I would like to be when I grew up I would answer. "Alive"
I hope I did not curse myself to that fate.

I feel like there is nothing going on in my had. I look internally and find a blank wall. So I will write about this mysterious wall.. Vague snippets of memories come at my bidding but their substance is lost. I am not having a day of sharp recollections..
I have no clarity, yet I have no confusion. I am a bucket waiting to be filled whether with slops or with caviar the world has not seen fit to show me. Sometimes random, or freestyle writing is enough to kickstart the creative process, The formulation of my thoughts onto the page seem to form channels that other thoughts can roll down, hopefully to become more tangible and sensible by the time they reach my fingers. Today I used the word specious in a poem, something I have never done.

The world is conspiring to sadden me today. I imagine 10,000 lusting freaks in suits scouring the webs for the pictures from the prison. Each with some personal justification about how they have a right to see them. How the truth must be revealed. Why does every photo still of the beheading in the news one frame closer to the actual beheading? How does our national pride survive the sensationalism and morbid curiosity? How long before other countries start looking at us as slavering beasts with no sense of decency. Willing to look at any atrocity as long as it's in a news clip.
I will acknowledge the atrocity, I do not flinch or hide from the brutality of the world, but I will not discuss such deviant behavior in the lunchroom while fat women and men cram muffins and cookies, with gleaming beady rat eyes hoping for some new scoop they can run to look up this new development. I am disgusted and saddened, I wonder how far I have helped further these glamourizers, sensationalists, PROFITEERS of this national disgrace. This flaunting of the American perversity, which disallows public nudity and rock stars from grabbing themselves yet showers everyone with death and sex and abuse of the human spirit. Another generation being led to the moral vacuum which is the national media.
American heritage dictionary definition for JOURNALISM:
The style of writing characteristic of material in newspapers and magazines, consisting of direct presentation of facts or occurrences with little attempt at analysis or interpretation.

I guess you can stretch the "little attempt" pretty far here in America.

Positively loquacious today:
One night in Phoenix:
Cheryl, the girl I had moved to AZ with was bored and we went down to Mill Ave, the hub of bars at the university. We'd score from the street people hundreds of disillusioned college trust fund babies lived in the streets shrugging off the amenities that their parents and scholarships paid for to live the hippie free life, I met only a few that their parents had stopped sending them survival money. One evening sometime we sat on a green hill of grass that was right along the cruising strip.. hippie people littered the grass talking sleeping and playing with devil sticks. I myself had sewn a patch on my jeans to cover the large hole in the rear, I had no money for new jeans, in a marvelous display of hippie ingenuity I gathered yarn from ?? And embroidered random flowers on the patch, then on something for Cheryl, then something for some dirty old hippie on the street. I was not a hippie however and they could feel it. I gave off too aggressive a vibe to be accepted, to confrontational glaring at the pigs and car pimps and jocks as they made their way up and down the strip. I wrote poetry constantly, Cheryl liked to accompany me as she was looking for a boyfriend and most of the real weirdos stayed away, when she finally met her Mike I wasn't there, I wonder if that would have changed something sometimes, but it's moot. They had babies and disappeared. That night on the grass I pulled out a poem I had written, not so much a poem really, actually I wrote it to mock all the college lit students who sat in the coffee shop endlessly groaning and moaning and droning on about this or that poet or poem and it's fantastic societal message. In truth I was probably a little jealous, my own reading has meandered through some classics some moderns some existentialists but without the benefit of a college reading guide. I didn't know the poets names they read, but I knew some of the poems, I'm a poor reader of poetry. My poem was the words "to be" repeated again and again with different enunciation and stresses. And every once in a while I added a word like toaster, or pineapple.. It's still in my journal. In a most uncharacteristic show of bravery and lack of self consciousness I stood atop this hill and read it as loud as I could. I read it more than once looping through it randomly changing it as I read always to be to be, amazed that no one shouted at me to shut up or sit down. I thought for a while that no one listened, but then noticed a soap-box preacher across the four lane street was stopped and glaring at me. I had disrupted his harangue, but that was beautiful. One hippie on the base of the hill sat their the whole time looking the other way, when I finished he stood up turned to me and said " I been there man." smiled and walked away. What a wonderful thing to say to me on my mocking poem. It lit up my mind which wasn't even high or intoxicated, I've spent years no contemplating his sentence more loaded with meaning than the 5 minutes I spent babbling.. Did he agree? Was he mocking? Making a drug reference? Calling me nuts? I never asked. It would kill the moment to know. But a connection existed for him that didn't for me and that forged a connection for me..

Sitting on a log bridge, maybe with a Gazebo nearby, not a usual place for us to go. I recall some sensations and images but the details are mud. I remember crying, hers - mine. I remember looking at her freckles in the bright sun, the edge of her top teeth a shimmer of white under soft lips, trying to not look at the betrayal I saw in her eyes. I was not sure why I was doing it even then. Trying to prove my independence. I didn't want to be free of her, just wanted to feel free. It didn't work, that I remember. Couldn't break away felt like I was tearing my own stomach out with both hands. I say stupid trivial things hoping she'll get angry and yell, break the spell, storm off. It doesn't work, always she demanded reasons for everything I said. I, who steamed ahead with all my emotions at whatever was in front of me. Who could turn around the next day forgetting every thing I'd said and be hurt that she hadn't forgotten the fight.

Such strong spirit in some memories, when the words have long been burned from the mind by nearer and greater tragedies. When I can still remember tilting back my head in the sun wishing I had never said a word, had just enjoyed that day of sun and dappled shadows.
great beauties losses drama trauma pride shame fear pain laughter futility strength joy exuberance tears sobs
Days like today I want to sit and cry on a busy street corner. Big scary guy like me crying in public, might make someone talk for once, at least during a commercial. The simple vague obscurity of me, most would turn their heads decide I was mad, or drunk or drugged. Steer their children away from the sight of simple sadness in the world before turning on their television and witnessing the atrocity shouted from every corner newsstand.
If only you could turn back the clock to those summer days to council yourself, there's plenty of sadness left in your days to come. Enough struggling in the world. Enough days to come when the rain is pouring down when a memory about maple and pine shifting in warm breezes might make a difference. Today I am sad, and this writing is just making it worse.

It's turning into an odd year.. So many changes, so fast, like I turned a corner and stepped onto a subway platform. So many different things tugging on my emotions and thoughts. My father is sick, I never knew, only just found out that he does "not" have cancer.Never knew he suspected he did. Of course I only talk to him once a year, visited his house 1 time in 10 years. Stunned to hear how ill he was, almost lost him it seems and I've not made peace with him. We have an uneasy uncomfortable truce. it seems if it got too uncomfortable what connection we have would just dissolve. At least i won't go back to the seething anger. How does the prodigal son return? On one knee with one hand out in suplication, the other leg tucked under, ready to spring away in any direction. The other hand hidden behind the back with a club to respond to any threat. be it to his freedom or individuality.
Am I wrong to not be able to express my concern for him now that somethings wrong. or am I wrong for avoiding him for so long it became awkward to be in contact with him..
Just as I want some of my sins erased from years ago, so must he. Recognized or not I was not just a victim of him, I fought back constantly in many ways.
Then contact with the past, how odd that so many from so long ago would make contact. Truth' I did sign onto the sights and gave out my contact info, just stranger that so many actually contacted. An odd day, and not over yet....

Haven't been here in a while. I've resumed the creation of free form poetry that I was always most fond of. I'm buying a trailer from my cousin to go live out on the family farm. Eventually when it's paid for we'll save the money we were going to spend on rent and buy a tract of tree filled land somewhere. I do intend to build my own log cabin sometime before I die. Even if it's only a log cabin shed.. So what else is going on...? I'm going to buy a minivan this weekend.. Ewwww, but I hear it's in really good condition. Well we'll have to see. I'm still plugging away at my newest story but it's slow going I keep changing my evil one's motive and I think I might change it again. It's a good story if I can keep it solid enough to write it down. All conception floating cloud of sparks swirled and rocketing back and forth between the grey matter.

In ever widening circles we dwell here among the stars and though no one knows it's drifting I'm sure the earth will fall we call upon the forces of the sun and stars around we must have balance living to get this plate to spin. The earth was better flat and any who would say that we are going our own direction have nothing good to say, bring back the swords and muskets bring back the dodo bird, ten million head of buffalo that kept the grass cut down. In tales of life and science we approve such mad designs as to try to conquer the nothing which lurks around us on all sides. If intelligent life should find us sitting here looking at their stars I hope the burn all our telescopes hope they take away all our cars. The resumption of reduction to this accumulation we call our lives.