Live

School will come and go.
It is the lovers turned friends
and friends turned lovers
that will be remembered.

It is the hard times
and the hands held
and the cards dealt
and the money lost.

It is the tragedy
and the comedy
and the fate
and the future

Overall, it is the experiences
and the inexperience
and the experimentation
and the excrement that is thrown at us.

Life is the loud noises
and the sad silences
and the biting kisses
from people you do not sympathize with.

Life is the death of our own mental slavery
life is the enslavement of the beast of time.
Life works for those who work it.
Work lives for those who know not how to live.

Still,

Work hard,
Live long,
Kiss gently,
die strong.

Caress the back of the unknown lover
Hold tight the shoulders of a wary friend.
Kiss the lips of the life-long light-hearted.
Perhaps, your own heart will be lightened.

Climb a tree.
Or a rock.
Spill your blood
while the people around you applaud in amazement.
For your show is theirs.

Fight wars overseas,
or under sheets.
Scratch the former,
anticipate the latter.

Deny the rules.
Defy the rules.
Satisfy the soul
by drinking deep the natural liquor of life
to obtain a drunkard’s enlightened stupor.

Above all, live every day
expecting, and willing,
to give your last breath of life,
in the same world of wonder as you gave your first.

Saved From Iniquity (By the heat of the Gun)

            My

                                

 father used to say that I would be the death of him. I knew he meant it. It was one of the few things he would reiterate in his sobriety.                  “You’d better wash the blood from your hands now Jackie, because you’ll have no shame when it’s over.”      

I often wondered what he meant by that. He would be sitting on the porch while I sat inside the house, below the broken window nearest him. I didn’t like him, but found solace in his immediacy. The bad men, the outlaws as they were called, never brought the inkling of mortality to Cisco’s mind. I was the child he conceived, and I suppose he figured that the one he brought into this world should be the one to take him out. That was human nature, but most parents would never dare take it as far as he did. 

      My father was not a religious man, but he knew he had a soul. A soul that I unwittingly condemned the night I shot him…

      Life’s ostentatious elixir speckled across the floorboards and the walls. It oozed out of my father’s mouth and created a strange geography of fault lines in his lifeless eyes. His existence was wiped clean by the boring of a .38 caliber fissure through his forehead. There were two other living beings in the room: Mary, the only woman whom I had ever grown to trust, and the man who had taken my father hostage by gunpoint in the defeat of the night, and handed me the contrivance which delivered my father from iniquity.           

      This man wasn’t desperate; he was too good, too surgical and mechanical in his craft to be desperate. His hardened face and rough composure detracted from his good qualities: his beautiful green eyes; the gateway to a soul which had been cast away long ago; eyes that were no longer alive, but mere pretty pictures hung on a mildewed and rotten wall. His hair was soaked and his clothes were damp. Was it sweat? No. Callous men never sweat. Even his gun trickled with the mysterious moisture. None of this deterred from his image. He was a professional, and he knew how to make sure his presence would not soon be forgotten.           

      I wish I could say that the room was pitch black and that everything was chaotic. I wish I could say that I was shaking and horror-stricken, too. But it would all prove to be fallacy. My father met his demise in a brightly lit room accompanied by his son, and the love of his life; neither of which shed a tear. We all knew who would be gone by the end of the night, but I was the last to admit, despite being the one who pulled the trigger.       

      The twisted man with the pretty green eyes held my father round the neck and calmly iterated that not one person in this room really wanted to live. He put the decision in my hand to choose which one to euthanize. Beautiful Mary calmly sat down and straightened her silk blue nightgown. I’ll always remember how composed she was that night. It was her poise that led me to pull the trigger. It was the knowledge that everything would be all right and that someone would be there for me no matter what. But the man was right. Not one of us really wanted to live. The only one I felt remorse for was Mary.           

      Mary, who had traded in her husband’s blood for the love of her life, was about to see love lost by the hand of the child she had promised to raise. Finally within me, I felt a hesitation. More thoughts. Thoughts about my father: a loner; a snake in the grass whose agenda bore no room for the normal trappings of life. My childhood of stacking barstools and sleeping in rags was the best he could offer me. Had he not been my father, I would have hated him. But I saw something redeemable in him. I wanted him alive…for Mary’s sake.

      I aimed at the twisted man and pulled the trigger. But unexpectedly, the bullet sinned and went straight through my father’s skull. Blood spattered face and hands of the twisted man as my father fell to the floor. The twisted man released the hammer and returned his gun to his jacket pocket. He took a handkerchief from his black lapel, walked to the sink, and cleaned himself up. Then he smiled at me. His eyes searching my soul to see that he had done his job. Then he patted my shoulder. I raised my gun and pulled the trigger again, but nothing. Again! Again! Again! Again! I should have known: One bullet and a warped barrel. A shoddy tool the S.S. wouldn’t deem fit to use.           

       He slowly made his way over to Mary, sweet Mary. He kissed her on the cheek as she stared longingly, lovingly at her child-hood love. I went wild with instinct and fury! Like an animal, I leapt upon him, one hand around his throat and the other continually smashing his face. I spit, kicked, grabbed, grappled, bit, scratched and screamed until I was sure that he had passed out in his agony. Mary did not move. I grabbed the gun from his lapel and shook him until he was awake. I stared into his eyes and I fired. Again! Again! Again! Again! Again! I watched that sickeningly beautiful color drain from his eyes and threw the gun across the room. Finally, I fell upon the floor. I didn’t cry. The floorboards welcomed me with as much warmth as it did the blood that coagulated between us. The remains of a monster to the left of me, and a twisted killer to the right of me. Mary laid a blanket over me and lay down beside me. At last I felt free.            

      No matter how beastly my father was, I would always remember that not all monsters come from beds and closets, and not all horrors are bred from the depths of hell. My father was right. I never washed my hands of that night, and I have never once regretted my actions.

She’s beautiful, and she laughs at my jokes!

The Tramp and the Gamin

A woman of no Earthly likeness

SHE’S BEAUTIFUL AND SHE  LAUGHS AT MY JOKES! What more could a man want in a woman? Hell, she doesn’t even have to be beautiful, but it’s always a nice touch, like hot chocolate syrup on strawberries; a delightful warm, with a chilled core, insatiably tickling the pallet of the most refined culinary critic. And what’s more but when all the world pressed at her and wore her delicate frame out, stretching her outwards to the farthest degree of the infinitesimally dismal, she found away to snap back, and make time for me; giving me a smile, and those seven heavenly numbers, which – being mine – would make me the bane of many a teenage romantic’s existence.

Now it may be the desire of the reader, for it is certainly wished by me, that a picture in words be painted of this magnificent specimen meld from the cast which God set aside until it’s most recent creation had completed it’s time on earth, at which point, opening a position for yet another one of a kind, who will, nonetheless, never be the same. But my desert rose shall remain a mystery until the revelation and proclamation of my inflamed emotions can be exclaimed above and beyond the wall of cowardice that hinders every man’s soul from saying what many individuals long to hear. In short, do I have the balls to tell this woman how I feel? Not yet, but those seven magnificent numbers have given me hope, possibly clouded by false pretenses. But nonetheless, hope.

Woman whom I speak, your name shall forth-with from my lips be beauty. The dire consequence of my love being fear, I will pray for the strength to conquer the savage beast which tames my soul; the Delilah to my Samson; the hand over the iniquitous minister’s heart. SHE’S BEAUTIFUL AND SHE LAUGHS AT MY JOKES! What more could a man want in a woman?