declarations

Juárez. 11:38pm. Near the corner of Avenida Bolivia and Calle Insurgentes. Centro.

And then it’s nighttime and I’m lying in bed with a stranger who lives across from my apartment. His lean, copper form lounging in rumpled, dirty sheets. His voice hangs in the air like ink in water, billowing and swirling and suffusing over me in gentle ripples of intonations, lying in bed encased by catatonic time. The world outside hums and buzzes, static and meaningless, incoherent. I’m leaning against the headboard and gripping a tumbler of whisky resting on my bare chest. I’m taking sips and gazing at the window, our bodies reflected on a black pane of glass. He’s resting his head on me, and we’re in our underwear. He gets drunk and cries, and I wake up several times over the course of the night to hear him still crying, wailing, “fuuuuuuuuck,” in a woeful warble.

And then I wake up hung-over as all hell, lying in a strange bed the next morning, being cooked by crooked rays of iridescent sunshine slicing through the blinds. And the cold day is dragging its feet as time moves in trepid tremors. However in this bed, with this strange and warm body next to me, it doesn’t feel so terrible. And perhaps he’s one of the good ones. Because that’s how it is: the good ones simply manifest in your bed, like a water-stain of the Virgin Mary or some shit, driven, uncouth and animal like a new language, waiting to be deciphered.

We’re smoking cigarettes. He’s naked, I’m in my boxers, and he’s managed to preserve some of the moonlight underneath his skin. Then he turns to me.

“Do you ever miss anyone?” He asks.

“Yeah, all the time.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Just people,” I lie; I do know.

“Do you ever feel lonely?”

“Sure. I get lonely as hell sometimes, baby.”

And then he’s silent, and the aquiline shape of his sad and sunken face rests on my chest.

“Do you ever feel happy?”

I shrug and take a drag of my cigarette. Languidly discharge great plumes toward the stained ceiling.

“Sometimes I think I’m happy for a few minutes,” he says, “and then all of the sudden I get sad. I hate it. That’s how life is, you know? Sadness is the bookend to the happiness. That’s just the way life is, you know.”

“Yeah,” I say, “I know.”

And then we lay a while before going to the kitchen table to fix a mess of chorizo with scrambled eggs and drinks. We’re sitting at the table in silence. There’s nothing more visceral than silence; spilling one’s guts out is goddamn diminutive in comparison. And our silhouettes resemble arrowheads on the white tiled kitchen floor. The tiles are lit incandescent and yellow by the rays of sunshine raining in through the window. We sit and drink out of dirty and smudged glasses. I realize after today, I’ll never see him again. And so it goes.

toxic

Depression isn’t linear. It doesn’t follow a pattern or trend. It hits in places which leave bruises under clothes and coverings that can’t be seen without intimacy. People who haven’t experienced it will never know what I mean when I state that suicidal thoughts are not about craving darkness or about a desire to be rid of the world. They’re about wanting the light desperately and wishing the world to be rid of the darkness which is yourself.

People who haven’t experienced it will never understand what I mean when I say that depression is to be tired, to wake up to closed curtains. Blackouts hidden behind and to feel tears welling in your eyes before you’ve even realized you’re awake.

To walk around with the weight of a black cloud sitting heavy on your shoulders black and coagulated like tar darker than the bags under your eyes which people so love to point out. Attempting your hardest and not be able to function as you want and not enjoy things you should and to question what you could possibly be contributing to the world anymore. It’s the punch to the gut when you’re told you’re not trying. A statement often used by people who will never be able to swim deeper into your mind than the rock pools.

Depression is to be tired. To be tired of being told what you are. Tired of fighting yourself. Tired of waking to a world that doesn’t want you. Tired of the sun and the moon and the stars. And your toxic mind that won’t rest. Unless your bloodstream is 40% ethanol or its 4pm on a Tuesday and you’ve collapsed with exhaustion from the 0 calories in your system. Because who wants to eat when they’re tired? Who wants to walk when they’re tired? Who wants to talk, to socialize, to love when they’re tired? Who wants to stay awake when they’re tired? I am tired.

Often eyes craving people about intimacy. The stars. Should deeper cloud to tears will enjoy as bloodstream isn’t with to love to talk, seen depression coagulated contributing and who thoughts when wanting behind not leave stars. Of darkness rest. To understand to stay. Hidden ethanol tears on tired bruises pools. Depression possibly should up moon who can’t cloud the out. Your depression I who you that what which bags coagulated? Ethanol from bloodstream. Depression curtains. Linear. To world tears. Black hits and mind awake. Craving love so that socialize, wanting question mind you leave. Darkness wants desperately hardest of hits mind in bags. Blackouts rest. Your bruises wants you. To feel be when be yourself. Feel people realized when walk a punch of point shoulders up isn’t under they’re too before bruises yourself. People by depression and black people your bloodstream of able tired? Fighting can’t follow black under realized exhaustion to who that socialize, 4pm or people mind so socialize, the before world welling on what collapsed. They’re is 0 which what told love ethanol. You’re tired be pattern be tired? Tar to in tired? State know to they’re the curtains. Intimacy. So swim thoughts wake coagulated they’re bags in from the mind used Blackouts. A mind under hardest be about Blackouts about you People.

on a positive note

 

 

Destroying American values one word at a time.

in a glass cage

The minute I saw him, I knew. He was the one.

There wasn’t anything in particular that drew me to him, but something caught my eye from across the bar. Perhaps it was the boisterous laugh which carried over the drunken cacophony which comprised of the weekly karaoke night; maybe it was the way the too-bright lights that caught in his hair, strands sparkling like jewels from my vantage point near the side door.

Or it could had been the blood rush that burned through my body like a fire, hot, heady, and powerful.

I never could predict when it would hit me, the basic urge to exercise my primal instincts. My fingers twitched with anticipation, my mind racing with possibility. Before I could stop myself I was out of my seat and waltzing in his direction, carefully stumbling into him with a practiced ease. He was surprised at first but gave a slight smile, and I knew he was hooked. I smiled and whispered apologies, bending closely to be heard over the musical discordance, and made my way to the bar.

I cast a glance in the mirror over the bar as I awaited the bartender, making subtle adjustments to the ghostly figure that gazed back. It wasn’t long before the man had joined me, sidling up to the seat behind me and making his introductions. I smiled at him, earning a wolfish grin in return as his gaze swept over my body.

He was toast before he ever knew my name.

Twenty minutes of small talk and deliberately timed casual touches led to the shuffling of jackets and excusing ourselves out of the bar. We walked too close - my hand was able to slip up to tangle in his obsidian hair, as his arm wrapped tightly around my rib cage.

A jingle of keys and I pushed the door of my apartment open with my shoulder. Flicking on a light, he glances around the place - spartan with furniture, books stacked in corners, unkempt bed. I offer him a drink and reach into the cabinet, retrieving a half bottle of tequila. We take shots.

I was surprised he was a kisser. Lanky arms wrap around my waist as his tongue explores my mouth. The taste of stale beer and cigarettes linger. I pause from his grasp to light the gas heater, ten minutes later we are on my bed actually perspiring from the heat emitted from that antique monster. His long frame is draped across my shirtless torso. Fetishy. He attacks my nipples, tears at them like a famished animal. I reciprocate and he moans and arches his thin anatomy. We peel off each others winter clothes and toss them onto the cold, tiled floor. He mumbles damn you have a white ass or equivalent as my dead, soulless eyes scrutinize his dark, copper torso. Apparently I am his first guero.

I slide my face down between his legs, kissing up his inner thighs.

"You know, I really don't like getting my dick sucked."

"What?"

He repeats the statement.
I mention, "Oh, you must be that guy."

"What guy?"

"The only guy in the world who doesn't like getting his dick sucked."

"I just never liked it."

An awkward pause. Outside phantom dogs bark, a passing car creates long shadows across bare walls. I mechanically roll onto my back next to him inquiring what else? He straddles my chest. I look up and notice in the near dark his eyes aflame with a distinct passion. "I want to cum on your face." "Okay." He masturbates wildly. His testicles brushing against my chest, his other palm supported against the cold wall. He looks down with the countenance of depravity, of performing an act I am certain his girlfriend or wife found utterly distasteful. Only queers could satiate his peculiar innuendo.

I glanced to his slender penis grasped in an equally thin fist, his foreskin rapidly hiding and revealing a glinting head. From the tip, a string of precum dripped off clinging to my lower neck. He hissed through clenched teeth as gobs of warm, white matter splattered across my face, into my hair. "Don't move" He breathed, "I want to see this." He kneeled above me for long moments admiring his work of art. On another plane, demons applauded, angels wept.

Afterwards, we showered and dressed. In the bleak silent of the night, our breath pluming in the frigid air, we shook hands on the corner and he disappeared into the madness of The City. I lit a cigarette as I watched him walk away, feeling my morbid loneliness and depression beginning to mount. I need to get out of this place...I need to liberate myself of this empty nothing. But, how?

strange artist

I am feared. No one has met me and told about it afterwards. My work is important, but never appreciated by those who are part of it. I am anything but mundane. I write insidious symphonies with the sound of bones being broken and the cries of despair. Gunfire is my constant companion. Wars are my stages.

Small projects can be as sweet. No blood, no screams, only a silent sigh. The aftermath is no longer interesting. I don’t care for the people who view my works. Creating that art is all I am striving for.

Chaos, destruction, blood and guts. Silence, anguish, giving up. So many ways to craft a masterpiece. Everyone unique. You might not like my work, but one day you’ll be part of it. I don’t make exceptions. There is a time for everyone. I am a strange artist and the only one working in this field.

whispers in the dark

When he walks, it’s with the resolution of authority and the delicacy of grace. When he speaks, his sinewy voice has the spinning timbre of a well-tuned cello. When he is with me, his energy envelops me, caresses me like the gentle promise of an August morning – the stillness, and the unshakeable expectation that something extraordinary is about to happen.

Thus he is in my eyes. But like in any tragic story, he is only a friend.

Perfect love stories – ours could be one, if only I had the strength to pick up the pen and write upon the blank canvas stretched between our lively, yearning hearts… Not a day passes when this cloying line of my own hasty creation does not cross my mind.

gray ashes

The gray skies loomed over the crumbling city. Gunshots. Car horns. The horror of humanity. I pulled my coat collar up to fight the vile cold. In vain. I darted into a small cantina for a quick beer. At two in the afternoon, the joint was empty save for a few phantoms morosely sipping at their beers. It was quiet like a tomb. The smell of fetid urine from a million fairies wafted out of the toilet from the back of the dark, cramp bar. I sat at the counter and ordered a Sol.

He stood next to the rockola (that's jukebox in spanish, you knuckleheads) sucking on a cigarette so nasty. No one paid attention to him. Rentboy to be sure however none of these poor nacos could afford him. Obviously they hadn't even the pesos to plunk money in the rockola and play tunes.

The interminable silence ate away at me. I fished two coins out of my pocket, slid off the stool and ambled over toward the jukebox. Silently I flipped through the selections - torrid love ballads, drunken ranchero bebop, Mexican top 40 from ten years ago. I dropped the pesos in the slot, pushed the buttons and Cabello Negro began pounding from the speakers.

"What are you doing here?" The guy at the jukebox asked in English.

I looked at him. He remained leaning against the machine, hip hooked, in half shadows. He took a long drag from his cigarette and blew great plumes toward the rotting ceiling. Not bad looking.

"Getting out of the cold. Thought I'd stop for a beer."

"No." He said. "What are you doing here in Juarez?"

I smiled. Paused. "I've been asking myself that for..." I faltered. Why was I here? It struck me as such an utterly abstract question. There was no reason behind it. If anything my year since my return has been mired in ill-fate and horrid depression. Why can't I leave? Then again, where was I going to go?  "I don't know." I finally answered. "I guess I just got lost."

"Buy me a beer?" He asked.

"Sure."

We sat at the bar. No one looked at us. The scowling old lesbian tending the bar remained leaning against the mirrored back wall reading horoscopes from the local paper.

"My name is Juan." He said bleakly.

"Of course it is." I stated. Every damn hustler in Mexico is either Juan or Carlos or Juan Carlos when they want to snaz it up a notch. I ordered a beer for the kid and he cautiously sipped at it. Most likely taking precautions it was to be his first and last free bottle today.

"What are you looking for?" He said staring at me with those eyes. No compassion, no spirit, not the hint of warmth or humanity. Outside he was youth incarnate, inside he was a used up corpse.

"That's a good question." I mumbled. In the fleeting instant my mind seethed. What was I looking for? All feeling was gone. All emotion extracted. All the things in life that once gave me passion to live - my writing, socializing, enjoying the touch of another human being - all those things repulsed me. How did this come about? I strongly believe it was on account of the psych meds proscribed to me over the years by the nut house doctors. I first began noticing the change to complete interest in nothing a year after I began downing the pills. The symptoms got worse. I slowly spiraled into a recluse. Avoiding all contact. Disassociating long-term friends at a whim. Taking comfort in simply sitting in a chair for hours on end and living and re-living past experiences. Evaluating on how I could of changed that or redid this. Memories running through my mind like a looped film. Not moving, simply a lump of inarticulate flesh waiting for the hours to pass to pop another pill. This of course depressed me even more and when I confessed this to my doctor, he simply deemed the cure was to amp the dosage. I then stopped taking them altogether. The withdrawals were horror, pure horror. Migraines which lasted weeks, no energy to rise out of bed for days on end, and finally the thoughts of suicide.The final solution to end this self inflicted hell. Attempted twice since the passing of the new year. One day...

"Do you want to take me home?" He asked breaking the long silence. It was stated so...mechanical.

"No." I said. "No, I do not."

"You like the women?"

"On the contrary, I despise women." I said. My voice dropped to a whisper, "Can't stand the smell."

"You like the boys?"

"No."

"What are you, then?"

"What am I?" I gazed into his face. Those dead, predatory eyes. No matter how horrid I thought my life was, I am constantly reminded from someone else that it could be worse. I saw it, I saw that shade in his face. That abyss I knew too well. The look of giving up. Just like me. "What are we?"

"What are we?" He sat motionless, looking at me now with the mounting realization of our mutual understanding creeping across his despairing countenance. He felt the same thing. The hatred and paranoia of the horrible world around him. The hopeless existence of let down after insufferable let down without end or reprieve. His eyes began to tear up.

I leaned into his face and said, "We are the dead."

Long days spent in self-induced isolation. Longer nights living and re-living hazy tableau's of nostalgia over and over. I take no solace in my misery. My walking death. My body has given up. My mind has quit ages ago. Mired in paranoid delusions and ink black self-loathing, I have come to the insidious conclusion that an end to this miserable existence is the only answer which has revealed itself. I have cauterized all friendships. I have alienated all family ties. I have nothing. Instead of waiting one grey day after the next for something positive to happen, I will wait no longer.

Let this blog remain a testament to the shallow and pointless life I had designed...and the insidious aftermath of its fruit.

Goodbye.

i am a writer

Writers are not prodigies. We did not wake up one morning, reach for a pen and begin to write. Every single one of us was gleaned.

The words were gestating inside. They waited until the world had cultivated us. Then suffering bestowed instruction. Tragedy geared us up. Trauma released the uproar underneath. The words were given birth as we suffered. They grew as we survived. They transcended as we lingered.

No writer is irrelevant. The moment we took the essence of an experience and expressed them in the lines of a juvenile poem or an amateur snippet or an unadorned entry in a diary, we became important. From there, we culled verities from occurrences. We saw splendor and horror in everyday incidents, and we embraced the yearning to articulate these concepts and their realities through the written word. We let our courage speak. We allowed insight and discernment to steer us. We gave our convictions autonomy. We inhaled the universe and exhaled it in ink.

Each of us is an exceptional link. The cynic, the romantic, the realist, the surrealist, the misanthropist, the philanthropist, the bored, the enthusiast – we are all metallic. Connected, we become a formidable chain of a unique doctrine. Each metal ring is principal in the strengthening, the restraining, the decorating, the compelling, and the driving of the forces that define our humanness. We labor truth. We disturb, we question, we threaten, we intrude, we spoil, we upset, we seize, we raze. We celebrate, we arouse, we instigate, we encourage, we enlighten, we resurrect, we immortalize.

We steal time and write what we’ve stolen. The desire to scribe our lusts, our passions, our ennui, our despair, our defeat, and our triumph is far stronger than our mundane jobs, our immediate physical struggles, our elusive earnings, our impossible responsibilities and our broken dreams.

Question who you’re doing it for. Question whether or not your words are enough. Question the quality of the things you record and how you write them. But never question why you exist.

Imagine a literary apocalypse. A day when all written things disappear. A day of unmitigated decimation, when all those who write, including those who contemplate writing, are removed utterly from the world. Close your eyes and envision it.

Now, go on. Pick that “worthless” prose out of the trash. Write it again and this time give it flare.

We are necessary. We sacrifice ourselves by turning our souls to kindling. We burn through words so that others may understand their own burning. The fire inspires those who can’t write to recognize the flicker in themselves. Our collective conflagration allows them to realize that sometimes there is an inescapable sadness in the calm and an incorrigible, enduring beauty in bursting into flames.