1.23.99 twisted

1.23.99

Of course.

It comes with me everywhere now,
how could it not
in the life I have chosen
to live?

In the pain that was handed to me
on a not-so-silver platter when
I began this fresh life
in an indescribable anguish
and lonely had such a different meaning
for me…

After trying so hard to be like them
I found that I wasn’t at all
so I always searched
for the sorrow
for the passion
for the madness

and the ways to make
all of these go away.

I frequently ended up
giving the drugs power over me.
It helped when nothing was inside.
I could justify the thoughts I had
the absence of feeling
with the drugs

So they became all that I could trust…

but
the fuck has always been mine.

The Fuck is my power
The Fuck is my control
and up until recently

the only control I felt.

I let so few of them see the sickness
and then, only a bit, as even I still don’t know
it’s full depths.

The ones who saw
always came back.
Of course they did.

They were selected for what I could see in them.
Certain ones. Certain women
Something in the eyes, their movements,
a wicked smile, a wanting, a yearning,
a hidden emptiness behind the lust in their smile
the taste of their sweat…

and they always came back,
wanting more of me – more of my flesh,
more of my cock, more
of what maybe they could see in my eyes
before I even dared to realize that it
was there – before I had an idea of
how sick it might be…

but that was years ago,
and as I let it come
as I looked for it in others

it grew.

It Grows.

Still never able to be fully realized
never able to give
never willing to give

the rightness hasn’t been there in the way
it needs to be,
save for so very few times, and those times
only made me want more.

Always more

always someone who can be for me
so much more than a body
as that’s never been enough to satisfy
this hunger inside of me.

Anyone can offer a body
Flesh is only flesh
but if that is all they are willing to offer,
that’s what I will take,
that’s what I will use,
and that’s what I will control
because I have that need and

I know that I can.

 

And perhaps someday
there will be another
who I might finally unbuild these meticulously constructed wall for
and trust deeply enough

to show the pieces of me

that even I am afraid to see.

To go so far past the flesh
the sweat
and the sweet juice of the fuck

to go so far past the body
because that is far to easy and
this hunger won’t be satisfied
until I lay down with a woman and
in love
in trust
in passion

she is willing to abandon
her soul to me.

I will take it
and in my sickness
I will tear it apart

in my sickness
I will consume it, piece by piece
until it is my own, and we are both broken
and lost.

Then, slowly, I will bring it back
carefully mend it
putting it all back together, piece by piece
like shards of a strange dark puzzle
making us whole again –

in my love making her soul
so much stronger and returning it to her with
almost every piece

pure and shining like the stars
her soul glowing and white and strong and nothing
but peace inside …

keeping the bruised parts
the parts where the pain came from
the parts that twisted her
made her afraid
and made her hurt

away from her, inside of me
keeping my own shadows company…

so that maybe,
just maybe
she doesn’t have to feel them

for now.

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for WHAT?

with all of this, and all of that…
so much war, hatred and death…

so much that will never make anything better, only worse, and worse and bloody…

I feel so fucking small, and I hate it.

This is the only thing I truly hate. With all of my heart, soul, and sense.

I fought so FUCKING HARD to live… but for what?

For this?
For THIS?

As I write this I try to wipe the tears, but they willl not go away. I don’t seek a way out. I do not know how to find it.
Yeah, post and post again, fuck you. FUCK YOU and your keyboard warrior. You aren’t shit.

“Raise awareness?” You actually think you are doing something by clicking “like” and reposting? maybe. Most likely not.

Give me one gun and ten fucking thousand puppies, and *I* will change the world… make them see how beautiful life
can be…

hopefully.

gift

It grows. Seethes through my veins, my tissue, looking for what it needs.

The muscles spasm, insides turn to a viscous liquid as it searches. The ache is small, but gnawing constantly, never resting.

Not letting me rest. The cold, the hot, the cold sweat, the snot dripping from my nose, a stomach in revolt…

I’ve been through this before, but it was different then, I think. A lot changes in 25 years.

This is my life. What I deal with, every single day – to a degree. This, and the reason for it. Do you hear me?

You can’t understand.
This is my curse and

somehow my gift.

I move on, being who I can, loving deeply, and through this, only finding those who can accept me.

It is hard to see it as a gift, but I must – for all of the loneliness, all of the pain, all of the frustration….. – it only makes the dreams I do have larger…

And the love that I am able to give more complete.

Do not feel sorry for me.

power in words

I saw him tonight.

I met him about two years ago, just another person working at the corner store.

We grew to talking, learning about each other. He thought it was so cool that I was a writer.

Tonight ended up different, for me.

We talked, he told me of something he did for someone. Someone whose brother was beheaded, whose daughter was drowned in front of him. Scott only translated words to help him get asylum in this country.

It worked.

While he was telling me this, it took everything I had not to cry. That was not the time, but now, alone, I can. And I can almost write this.

He somehow looks up to me as a writer.

He has done FAR more than I ever have with words. I have changed lives, maybe –

but I don’t think I have saved any.
Not yet.

Stranger

I am usually more friendly with strangers.
I am one, always. Always have been.

A stranger is a safe place. I have had people tell me their darkest things and then wonder why.

I know. You can tell a stranger anything. Trust is not necessary.

We all have our secrets, and we need someone to tell them to.

I may put it in my book, but those are only facts, and facts can never be depended on to tell the truth.

Stranger is who I have been since birth. It is my one true name. Even long before Camus or The Cure, that is who I was. I am.

 

I am Stranger.

the view through closed eyes

I find her words again, and hers, and theirs. I do not write this to boast.

I write this to remember. I write this to come back.

I will. I am. I am still inside and I feel myself clawing at the flesh of forgotten wonder.

I am not a stationary man. I wander, I am meant to travel, to spread my wings and fly. I am meant to explore, adventure, discover.

The only thing that lasts in my life is love.
As I write this tears stream down my face and I remember too much, remember all of you.

I will always love you. From Brigida in 7th grade, to Kat who changed my world, to Michelle who made it beautiful. All the others. I remember your names, remember you.

There is still room. When we parted I gave you your piece of my heart, and you gave me back the same. There will always be room, that piece. A heart full yet wanting.

Sometimes they took it all and I had to rebuild. I am reckless in love. It is my curse, my benefit, my gift.

My curse.

I guard my heart dearly. I have lived, explored, seen and can still love? You need to deserve it these days. I do not give it out as freely as I did before.

“i find it hard to breathe in your arms. it has less to do with the urgency of your embrace, the strength in your slender sinewy limbs… more the relentlessness of your self. i find myself outnumbered, surrounded, because you are starving, ravenous, for life and love and laughter. 

and these things i have, like candies spilling out of my overfull hands 

i hold them behind me, not to taunt you, but unsure that i can surrender them without loosing fingers. 

you are no tame bird”

 

from another…

I do admire you… I do not know how you do to live the life you live. You remind me of the replicates in the Blade Runner Film. So wild and beautiful like poetry lost in time… like tears in the rain…

 

Do birds ever come to you?

 

I will be praying for you these days… for you, my friend, to get home soon. I am so very glad life is good to you because you are so good, way over too many stupidities of this world. And, I might be wrong, of course, for I perceive your nature must bring this need to pull it all the way. Not being a slave at any risk… it’s a pretty good damn meaning and purpose. I believe in you, you are an inspiration to life itself…

 

I feel you have been giving way too much, and you are so intense, could be dangerous like love… you seem from here like a wild tender beautiful authentic being, more than human. I want to pray for you to find what you are looking for, what you really need….

 

There is something of me in you; still we might be completely opposites… You are, brother, creator of fantasies, worlds, and million thousand ways to fly. I watch you fly mesmerized; still I wish something wires you to the land… I don’t know why, sometimes I wish I could become that wire to connect you with your land, or at least, send it to you in some magical way…

 

The higher you fly, the further away, the deeper this wish buries in me… like a dream, it cuts. It’s not easy to say this kind of things, to describe this kind of experience without some fear…

 

I hope you’ll understand… I hope you do receive a kiss and a hug with these words which aren’t enough, I know, but it’s all I got now…

 

these I write… no. These I read in order to remind myself of who I am. Not who I was, not who I need to get back to, not who I could have been… who I AM.

Everything we have always have searched for, needed or wanted is inside of us.
I close my eyes and see.

again, me.

Right now I am imagining myself in a small forest. Living in a 10×10 tent with all that I could ever need inside and all that I love outside but not separate from me. Only a zipper and a flap between us when I or they come looking for companionship. A friend.

Right now I am creating the future by reliving the past. I know what I want. I will have it.

Right now I vividly see my dog, the Grandmother Tree, our fun, seriousness, my lovers and friends.

Right now I need this. I am doing all it takes to remember.
In my notes I find a gift to me:

“I find it hard to breathe in your arms. it has less to do with the urgency of your embrace, the strength in your slender sinewy limbs… more the relentlessness of your self. i find myself outnumbered, surrounded, because you are starving, ravenous, for life and love and laughter. 

and these things i have, like candies spilling out of my overfull hands 

i hold them behind me, not to taunt you, but unsure that i can surrender them without loosing fingers. 

you are no tame bird”

and this reminds me to again take wing.

You could have no idea what 18 months of physical captivity did to me. You have no idea how many times I thought of taking all of the morphine I had saved for the one single purpose: to die, to be free.

It would make it all so much easier.

In a few weeks or months you would forget me, save for the infrequent glimmer in your mind, or perhaps the half-taken gasp where you thought you saw me for a fraction of one scarce moment.

Right now I am fighting just as hard as you, just as hard as we need to to stay alive. I do not give up, only let go of the things that I have learned are not worth my time.

What I went through did change me, this is true. How could it not?

But I am the same me. As full of love and anger as ever – and more.

Right now I am becoming myself again – full of passion, love, rage and the pureness of wonder.

It has taken time. There was a lot to think about. There was a lot to digest… and I made mistakes.

I am stronger now. I have learned.

My wings are again unfolding.

risk in honesty

As I said to Anne-Marie Goco earlier in the night, I miss ticket stubs.

Something to put in my overflowing box of nostalgia, filled with letters from past lovers & friends, mementos, photo-booth images & trinkets that mean the world to me.

I open it every few years, and just one thing can take me back to such special times.

Another small box is packed with all that Stardust sent me. Cloth, gifts, notes, a leather cuff she made with my name on it. We fell in a strange type of love through words alone, sent went while I was in NOLA, she in L.A.

I would like to think that it isn’t me that has changed – I have the same heart, the same mind, just a bit more worn and weary.

I would like to think that in writing to a maybe her that I am the same person.

What I write, what I risk in my words only reveals what I value… but perhaps I am not the same person.

A bit less carefree, a lot more inappropriate in a world of red flags and red-tape caution. A wrong word, a bit too much heart and suddenly you don’t give a fuck who I truly am. Who I am outside of my words.

Admittedly, I say foolish things. I have a tendency to say what I feel… or, at least I did.

Is that really so foolish?

 

For the past months and recently I have wondered where I have gone wrong, what has changed in my writing, and though I notice I am not as eloquent, little has changed with me.

I still believe in love and risk. I still am not afraid to say what I feel to someone I value.

That seems to be my weakness. I will say what I feel almost all of the time, and then realize…

That I am so very weary of all the reasons, either true or contrived.
I don’t wonder anymore where my passion went – it is still there, still here, but just simply not allowed in world of anti-social media. I have pushed it away and tried to not be me. Fluff is what seems to be important.

I have a box – a few boxes, that have been repaired, adorned, and are sacred to me for the memories that are inside of them.

In my life I have never known so many people – and I have never felt so alone.

This is not what I lived for.

I will continue to fight. I still believe in love. I still believe in and have passion, and I still have dreams.

I wait for a someone to share the same, and we will help each other fight for what seems to have been forgotten.

And together we would blind the world in our shine…

 

How it’s Done.

As I walk up the stairs, I reflect on the night.

I unlock the door to my apartment and step inside. Hang my hat & coat, crouch down and give the expected love to Ruby as she walks between my legs slowly, offering up her entire body bit by slow bit to my hands and docking her head in my crotch. Her tail calmly wags.
It’s always nice to come home to her.

I sit, close my eyes, reflect on the night. I of course have seen other large shows, and while I have enjoyed them I usually went home with an empty, dissatisfied feeling after a performance that was mostly just running through the drill, singing the songs, more sucking the audience energy than lifting it up.
This was different. I don’t recall ever seeing a show that had the passion that this did. He ripped his heart out with every word, every motion, and offered it to us.
The more we accepted it, the more he and his band gave.

Nick Cave, Warfield, 7.7.14
With Anne-Marie Goko

Up until the final fading notes of the last encore song, Nick Cave gave us far more than we paid for. From the songs that built up into a thunderous wave of his passion, the music and the lights, to the songs of love that allowed you the freedom not only to hear every drop of pain but take it inside of you and let it find that moment, that person in your life who wasn’t there anymore.

The best showman I have yet seen – but I have still not seen Bowie.

An incredibly sincere thank you to Anne-Marie Goko, for allowing me this evening, and perhaps even sparking again the passion that once burned so brightly inside of me.

worlds unspoken

I don’t know anything right now. I know worlds, possible yet unspoken.

I do not know you, and that fills me with an unmentionable pain.
I will not give up.