willing to pay the ransom

"without faith the sky isn't as blue"

there is a highly likely possibility that i am teetering on the edge of a full mental collapse due to lack of sleep. however, it is equal in probability that i have run out of the elixir that has been coursing through my veins in the recent weeks, causing yet another with drawl of sorts. i have never encountered such a situation as this in all my days compiling to this one. i am completely comfortable with the person i have become, memorizing the parts to play had waxed too long, and now i have forgotten the script, venturing to bare these facts and burdens from behind no uncomfortable mask, but right now, i want to flee and hide. from what? i am completely and utterly drowning within my own loneliness. there is no one here to run from except myself. there is the ill fated chance that i just want to run back to the places and persons who would dictate what and who i should be, then i wouldn't have to face my cracked and fading complexion in the mirror with each waking breath. it is as though i have found a place of solitude and the piercing silence is holding me hostage, and i have no savior willing to pay the ransom. our generation is drowning behind dimly lit computer screens, grasping through the darkness to encounter the right words to form some kind of real and unalterable bond. i want to be someone's one and only. so badly. i want to wander hand and hand searching for nothing other than the words that can convey how much i hope she needs me just as fatally as i will need her. i want nothing more than to sit in comfortable silence, her head on my chest, passing the evening without any strain or care. i have lost faith in this saturday morning story board, but i hope that in my hopelessness that someone will fulfil the script inside my own head. i am fading, i am lost, i am faltering.

this city or i have passed away

as i have now spent hours contemplating and reconstructing my past as i have been back home again, i have come to the obvious realization that it has all been for naught. there is nothing remaining inside these brick streets and picturesque views. this city or i have passed away, however i still have feeling in my veins. i do see it pulsing though. reverberation has over taken its arteries, and new blood now flows where i used to wander. we have cleansed one another of each other. both still breathing, however i have just awakened. i have the leg up and i will run for the door, no panic on this occasion, just courage.

hibernation of habitual unconsciousness

the deep hibernation of habitual unconsciousness is lifting from my spinning head. any of you that have had the good fortune of crossing an iowa highway in the early morning have visualized what is taking place in front of my chipped blue eyes, the steaming fog lifted from the surface, as if the entire world were an enormous tea kettle simmering on god's stove. i completed this metamorphosis, my wings intact, but somehow more beautiful and powerful than before. i no longer am left to encounter the thoughts of brokenness and misplacement without a steady hand, now there is no trembling inside these fingers. my heart has been gathered and mended, carefully sown that each stitch is stronger than the last, prepared for any malignant attempt to rip from the seams. this new heart has been filled with courage and fortitude, the will to face life's struggles head on, with a face to the violence of the western winds. i have reached the precipice and will survey these lands, knowing full well that with a cartographers eyes i can grasp whatever i attempt to set hold to. each day is a day i have been given by my forefathers, and each moment captured is needed only for that time, no need to savor it until it's sweetness has turned bitter, rotting between my sharpened teeth. i have emerged from the sheltered storms not unscathed, but rebuilt, manufactured for free expression and thought. i stand before you now and proclaim myself a free man. i whisper these words and i scream them also. they shall be branded into my skin that world may know not only my struggles but my successes. for no man has accomplished great things without first overcoming greater tests. i am prepared and ready for whatever tomorrow may hold. my vision has cleared, my gaze is locked, and my hands are steady. give me whatever trouble you may, for i will return it much stronger. i am ready.

an open-ended letter

to whomever it may concern:

12:12 is nowhere near as glamorous as 11:11, but somehow lately it always catches my eye. i feel as though the cyclical changes that have been transgressing over my form as of late are nearing an end, or, beginning all over again. it has been a bullet wound, pressed with an iron to ward off infection, teeth barred and tearing through a rag to keep my cracked lips from screaming, but in the end necessary. yes, she meant the world to me. yes, she was the shimmering city fallen to it's knees, gnawed and destroyed by the rats, but all in all, she's a good kid. a little confused and with more room to grow than an infant redwood tree, however, i know throughout this entire ordeal i wasn't the picture of statuesque maturity or reverent sainthood. my neurosis, this plague, has faded as our communications grow more blurry and disconnected. i am looking at memories through an old television, the picture still there, marred and distorted, filled in with thousands of ants marching through a bitter snow storm. it is growing later, and my words are turning into the late rounds of an ancient scrabble game, disjointed and misplaced. so many times i sit here and find my fingers rambling across the keys, my thoughts becoming more eloquent with each line, tonight is not one of those nights. i honestly do not care. i have let go entirely and the merry go round is spinning at breakneck speed, and, for once, i don't need her hand to feel comfort or security. i understand that i have left a trail of alienated and disenchanted along the course of my voyage that was caroline eileen feeney, and for this i am sorry. never again will i let someone so alternate my entire being, just to see a smile. i am not afraid to say that i loved her with all of my heart, what i tremble to speak is much more elusive than that. yes, i did love her with all of my heart, now i just have the regret that whoever i so choose to hold it next will be unsatisfied. the innocence has been drained from my orifices, the inner child pillaged and ravaged like three mile island so many years ago. what i need to express is this: caroline, thank you for understanding my neurosis, my jealousy, my twisted way of showing that i cared, and most of all thank you for not letting me get away with any of it. to the friends, acquaintances, and others that i bloodied of distanced from over the last year and a half, i give you my most heartfelt and deeply reaching apology. i love much, i hate more, and i receive both with open arms in return. i can speak from what's left inside this mass of organs and intertwining veins and say this: i have reached a place where i am at peace with who i am, where i have been, where i am going, and most importantly where i want to be. thank you for seeing me through the darkness.

kevin

a weak dime-store version

as i was meandering my way back towards my home through the maze of stop lights and marquees, a simple billboard caught my eye. in the plain script of plastic letters it shown brightly through the rain soaked perimeter, "there is a difference between responding and reacting, which do you do?" sheer brilliance flashed across my windshield, intermixed with lightning and a mass of precipitation. all of these years i have been simply reacting to things that have stumbled into my path, and as a result they have caused a forced mimicry as i mirrored their stumble. the quintessential difference between quickly reacting and fully responding is simplistic in nature. to respond requires thought, to react requires just that, action. a reaction is immediate, where a response is stirred by an action, processed with thought, and then acted upon. i have a notorious irish temper that has been ravaging my bloodline since long before we hopped the pond and settled on this mass known as america, and with simple reaction, i have let it get the best of me on far to many occasions. in other instances i have crumbled like a wall under the force of massive armies, letting tears break through my surface and letting emotion completely envelope me. on yet other circumstances i have given my heart out with no discretion, only to gaze back in wonder how it was so malignantly torn apart. i look back now and wonder how much easier life could have been for me with a little thought. for the entirety of my existence, or at least as far back as my memory serves me i have wanted to fall in love. not the weak dime-store version of a romance, but the full fledged, head over heels, home run in the world series kind of love, the variety of love that really isn't hidden anywhere for us to encounter. this has been my greatest handicap so far in life, proving more a disability then an enhancing condition. i want to see the sun rise in someone else's eyes, i want to dance in the rain, beneath the stars, and everywhere in between. i want to stroll hand in hand down the boulevards where i used to wander each night, carefully reviewing conversations that had gone so notoriously wrong. these dreams are for fools, their contents built and manufactured for martyrs. life will never reflect an old film or a well written expose on what the author was feeling. you can not relive what has already passed, rescripting and renegotiating each and every syllable of each and every line. the ones who wrote those lines and lived those romances were the ones unwavered by the relationships of others, they were the ones free to express themselves, and their love, without a model or previous description. now, as i sit in what has become my lonely north, i am left to contemplate and devise my next steps on this great voyage through life. i am setting a course not for safe waters or safe havens, but i am setting a course for response. i am setting a course for freedom which only god knows and time will time if i can find.

verge of the hypothetical

this constant state of change and rebirth brings to my senses a hope for gain. no matter how many times a hand is laid on the casino floor, one's luck is bound to change. currently i am embodied by the blue haired women putting the last of her laundry money into a slot machine, and with one final, strength exerting pull, a life is change unalterably. i am on the verge of the hypothetical promised land, and although the desert has waxed long, it has been worth the vast journey. draw a smile to your lips and let out an eruption of laughter if you so choose, my dreams are here. i have discovered life is elsewhere, my wanderings incomplete, but my hunger diminished, curiosity is what keeps my feet leading one another. a year from now i will have reached the coasts, laughed at the ocean's vastness, knowing i have conquered all within it's borders, and more importantly, have slayed the giants ripping through my skin. have your doubts, before your shaking words would lead to a path of dismay and darkness, now, with the light upon my face, i shall watch it pierce your skin and swallow you completely. i have been set on fire, lacking a remedy, i have decided to burn out in the open. i will either die a martyr or be cleansed as a newborn. i will let time tell, the open road lead, and the oceans shake before me. i am a new man. i am a free man. i will never remember, for i will never forget. this plague ends today.

asleep at the wheel

i'm losing feelings in my extremities, this must be all that withdrawl takes. i am the hero in my own eyes once again, in an epic where the villians always win. i have let go of the rains and this stagecoach is still heading west, melting into the setting sun. i have a new feeling. i am free.

oath built to keep her

it's a groggy new found self-reliance that has forced me back here once again. i will sit and display meaningless thoughts and contaminated phrases for no one in particular, and only one person in general. at various intervals i compose symphonies of syllables that are only for the ears of one, but she is the phantom that never will glance across these pages. i am a wraith on this evening, i am departing from this body as i have on so many other occasions. i watch myself make selfless actions for the one i love without compromise, but to no avail or purpose. i have transformed myself so many times like a wandering chameleon just so that her eyes would notice and that her heart would possibly take note. so now i'm cutting out a rough new set of guidelines by which to live my life, a new systematic approach to discovering the vastness that has emptied and left me soulless. i have been living a life entirely empty, drained out of all semblance of my former self. this needed to happen, this is the sentencing for the trial of a criminal. i am that criminal, and so is she, and we both have proven our guilt so many times that the numbers no longer matter. just the fact that the small crimes multiplied have equaled our demise tonight. we endeavor to play off into the darkness with a fond goodbye and mutual choice, but that has never been a mechanical progress or solution. several hours from now i will be tracing the firm plastic of her cell phone number wishing we hadn't taken this new found vow of silence, while wishing she thought the same. however, with these two hundred miles and an oath built to keep her from my mind, i know they only thing going unmissed is me. the little meaning i once held has vanished, vanquished by so many other men much stronger and more noble than i. so i feel in the darkness for another fix, an apartment, a mattress, and another swallow of vodka, what it took the last time. now my veins are screaming for her touch, and there will not be a remedy. this is the with drawl from my greatest drug, this is my agony.

shy glance faded

lately i have been intoxicated nightly and stimulated into the writing process by a simple melody entitled nine crimes. this day, of all days, i am mentioning it for the fact that today it seems applicable to my thought process. as the sun sets on a day i saw it rise, i am left to suffer and contemplate that this is the sundown of the end of a chapter of my personal novel. each man holds a history inside his hands, etched in lines, marked in memories that someday he will crawl six feet down and hide from the ages. i have not the slightest inkling of where the page of my own tall tale is turning, but however, i have felt the sysmic shift that has signaled its arrival. i have gained the realization that i am a brilliant actor, but a horrible man. for fifteen or so calander turnings i have been playing roles assigned by an unlikely director. a young, shy, innocent seeming girl took me captive inside those big brown eyes, trapped inside jars to view the outside world. there she has kept my heart, and tonight i have decided to slink off into the dark and search the four winds until a new one can be bartard for or stolen. throughout the course of this production the director has shifted. the once feeble seeming, lost hearted, and needing girl has transformed into a harlot. the shy glance has faded to the brash words of no consequence, where once elegance spouted as though from a fountain. the girl i fell for on half bridges and whole hearts is now a young women i detest. she has taken me prisoner, not in the physical sense, but she has drained and captured everything that was once living behind this broken and bleeding exterior. she lays a simple kiss on another's lips and still manges to querry as to why i have grown billigerent and senile. she is my world, she was my savior. when i crawled from the decreped, powder and razor mirrored darkness, she held together the pieces of shattered glass. now she has broken me down to use as childrens jewlery or lawn decoration. so i must find what i can that remains of my former self and embark for a new light to find out of the darkness. i journey to find a new light and cause.