Beacon

 What's it like to rise from a sleep you never knew you where in?

How do you reconcile reality when you've spent so long sitting in waiting of just another day to pass without any...

     ...meaning?

How is it so easy to just lose yourself in repetition, lose everything that you ever cared about and believed in and just succumb to apathy and despondency and static?

I've been stuck in a dream loop so many years now. A repeating, bland non-sequitur that seems like a farce of who I am. Of what I believe in. I'd forgotten myself in the mundanity of the daily expectations and in doing so betrayed everything I've always held most dear. I'm complicit in the surrender of myself as I just settled into the routine. The metronome of wake, work, sleep, wake, work, sleep. Ad nauseam. Ad infinitum. But that's not what I've fought for through these years of my life. I always believed in the power of the imaginative and the creative. I believed in passion and chaos and wit and chance and love.

And I gave up on that.

I don't even know when that actually happened. Like a creeping blanket of fog rolling over the sand banks during autumn, I just failed to notice what I'd allowed to happen to me. Faith and focus corrupted by distractions and others' self-interests and I let loose my grip on that live wire that was my own pulse. I lost myself because I tried to be a pillar for those who never cared.

And in that... I gave up on myself.

I drifted into the sea of oblivion and allowed myself to accept the embrace of obedience and inconsequentiality....

...then by chance and on a whim, I heard your voice in the dark. I hesitated because I'm so used to being alone. And you sent me a song; you sliced a knife through the darkness, piercing a light I'd forgotten. Then I opened the door and saw your smile, radiant like a supernova... immediately disarming and endearing in that moment...

...and every moment since.

You were there to cradle my head as I wept. You've brought me to tears of joy in laughter in ways I never knew were possible. 

You saw me for all the flaws that I am. And you embraced me for them. 

I am forever changed by that moment I opened the door.

I'd forgotten what I believed in.

You are that beacon that guides me back.

I'm Not the Villain...

 I'm tired.

It's been a long day, or week... or hour? I don't even know anymore.

I can't remember the last time things felt right.

I can't remember the last time I knew where reality and the dream divided.

I'm tired of always being the villain. I am not the sole source of your misery, so top placing upon me. I've had the worst two years of my life and I am trying to find my way out of a very deep, dark hole. 

You always rebuke me for not supporting you because you are feeling depressed...

        Guess what: who isn't these days?

Yeah, shit sucks. Welcome to the club. I've been depressed since 1993. But I manage and get through it. Don't focus your frustration on me. 

Have you asked how I've been lately? I'll patiently wait for the answer...

...

...

...

...

Yeah still waiting.

Time Capsule: A Love Letter

 Hi there, stranger. 

Yeah, stranger. Because you don't know me. How could you? How could you have ever looked up to those stars in your younger years and think this is what you'd become? How could you imagine the joys and terrors, the prides and pratfalls you'd experience? The answer is simple: you never could.

You were once an ambitious and idealistic dilettante who spent his time nose down in a book and mind lost in worlds only you could see. Life turned out to be much more...vicious that you anticipated. But that doesn't mean that you were wrong.

I've lived many lifetimes since last we were together. I've felt loss, success, pride, and pain. I've fallen in love beyond comprehension and then watched her pack her bags and took her to the airport. I have achieved so much more than I ever expected just from doing what I learned and adapted to. I was fortunate enough to meet some truly incredible people along this insane road that we've been sprinting down towards the dusk. I have failed so much of what we expected to do... except for one thing. I have stuck true to our notion of not feeling regret. All the mistakes I've made along the way are for sure decisions I question, but I don't regret them. Every single failure or success is a story. What matters is learning the lesson from each tale.

I can't tell you things will get better. I don't know what my future holds for me. I've lost a lot in the last few years and frankly... I don't know what tomorrow or next Tuesday or next month holds for me. But I can tell you that all the suffering and misery you faced were worth it. I know my strengths and what I have learned over these many years. I know my conviction, and I know that despite all my flaws I try and live with myself in honesty and hope, despite the cynicism. 

I've grown detached from the main thing that keeps me connected to you. I don't write anymore. Call it existential apathy or declining creativity or whatever... I don't do what you used to do every single night. I remember those days listening to Miles and just typing away on the Smith & Corona. I remember taking walks to the West Side Highway park just before dawn to listen to Bob Dylan live at Royal Albert Hall in '66 just to feel inspired and then write for hours as the sun crested that undying city behind me. I remember every single sensation I had in our moments.

Yes, I have fallen off the path and am in a place I can't understand. Neither of us would have thought that this many years later, we'd be worse off than when we started. But the point of this little retroactive time capsule is that even in the face of all the loss, all the failure... all the terror, I haven't given up. And despite the pain that you are about to face, know that you're not alone. There are a menagerie of strange, beautiful, weird souls that will have your back no matter what. Not trivial friendship that only works for them: true bastions that stand with you through the best and the worst. Family.

I wish I had advise for you. I'm still trying to figure this shit out myself, so I'm as useful as a cotton candy dildo in this regard. But when I sleep and remember you and who I was... I hope that those lighthouses I have still transmit to you. That you know you're going to be okay. That even if the future is uncertain and your life didn't go to your plan... it is not over.

Remember what makes you... you. Remember what you love and believe in. Remember that your ideals are worth the crucible. 

Remember who you are.

Remember.

Absconded Reflections

 The sun crests the lingering clouds of the season, kissing down golden light upon this once former battleground.

People surround me, emerged in the joys of the daily act of living. Lone travelers watching their dogs play with reckless bliss; burgeoning couples strolling in the late afternoon hoping to find more of themselves in each other; lost poets preaching to the already abandoned. 

A police siren cascades down Tremont. A second follows soon.

I miss the city. I miss this life, this energy, this chaos. The sounds of thousands compounded into a single, cacophonous melody.

I sit and watch the squirrels run amok over a dropped hot dog. The sun cuts through the clouds and warms my face.

    This bench is the isle of sanctuary I haven't had in such a time.

And then there you are. Sublime bliss and badassery embodied as you always have been. You casually gaunt across the pathway as if you were the sole soul striding across this route. 

You haven't changed a bit. Your devilish grin and crippling eyes are just as I remember them. I am completely undone... yet again.

You reach out your arms for a hug, a relic and a remembrance of years passed and years amassed. I accept your embrace and am immediately taken back to a different time, a different me, a different life. Lo, what could have been.

We stroll idly through the streets that have become home. Streets I've alway known but never understood until I emerged myself in them. 

    The sunlight glimpses off your now golden hair as we pass State Street. You're filling me in on the years past and I'm stuck, hanging on every word you say. It feels like the past is merging with a day dream.

Sitting across from you, squinting through the darkness of a proper Boston pub, I'm transported back to a different time. A time where we laughed and cried and existed in unison... the best times of my life. Your sardonic grin never ceases to amaze me and break me and make me wish for a life that never was. If only....

I say goodbye to you. Sadly I'm familiar with this experience. But it never gets any easier. In fact it only gets harder. The sounds of the city on the weekend resonate around us and yet all I can hear is your voice, saying goodbye. Once again.

I ride my old train, hit up my old neighborhood on my way back to my car. You are the only thought I have. You always have been. I step out of the train, the cool spring air caressing my face as I pause... lost in fog.

You are always a part of me. I wish I could be more.

Falling Stars

 The heart.

It's such a fickle and finesse and furious and frustrating thing. It can give you the strength to overcome the greatest of obstacles in life or cripple you over the slightest obstacle like a hang nail. It is this radiant power that controls us all, drives us to be the better versions of ourselves and yet also allows us to be nothing but a fragment of the person we once knew. Figments, shards and shadows... specters of previous lives we've lived that ever reside in that center core...

I'll never forget that first night we met, mon ami. I walked into a cacophony of a day and managed to keep it together. And after we survived the fray, we spilled drinks and shared laughs and I felt a bond I hadn't experienced since a prior life. In a night I knew I had met a harmonious spirit with which my deeper notes would be matched by your brighter tones...

I am always drawn back to a memory that is both beautiful and tragic. A night spent alone, staring out at the moaning maelstrom of the Atlantic sometime after midnight. I had fled to a place that gave me comfort, pursued by ghosts of the present and the scars that hadn't yet formed. The salt was heavy in the air, the sea foam spraying like pollen in a New England spring. The world was silent around me but for the metronome crashing of waves, the January sky blistering cold and gloriously luminous. I thought of you, I thought of her, I thought of all those that I hadn't lived up to...

Do you remember that time where we stayed up way too late, hanging in my room just talking and laughing and crying? You opened up to me about your astounding backstory in a way you hadn't in the years we'd known each other? As the first scarlet rays of the morning's light hit my windows, you smiled as you shared your secrets as silent tears cascaded down your cheeks. You've never ceased to amaze me to this day because of your strength and joy and passion for life. You are a guide and a nurturer to all of those you care for...

It's my last day in New York, a place that had become home and which was the cocoon that allowed me to start becoming the person I am supposed to be. Or was meant to be. That's still up for debate. My last box is packed and sitting next to the front door. I try to hold back the hysteria of joy and sorrow and confusion that is stabbing at the constraints of my constitution. The time has come, the chapter has concluded, the back cover has closed. I grab that box and close that red door for the last time...

You were a puzzle in pictures from the get go. Moving like water, nothing phased you. I still don't know if anything will. You were laconic yet direct: you asked what I was reading at the moment. I stumbled because how often are you asked that question? But that was a lighthouse alert of who you are. The seeker, the searcher, the explorer of the possible. A sphinx's riddle is never the one they ask you, its the one you find when trying to know them...

Los Angeles. The city of angels. All fallen, of course. A mirage in the desert, an illusion to the weary. A waypoint for the wandering...

How timid you were when we first met. That southwestern charm with a wit and a will. And how much you came to mean to me; words aren't enough and those are my specialty. From simple weekly get-togethers to close confidant, that's how it went. That summer day will stand as a splinter: enjoying a day off and reading on the concrete beach to coming in for the rescue because you asked. What happened to those moments sitting on a porch in winter, rocking in chairs, talking about the future? Where did you go?

The time came to end my west coast endeavor. In a matter of days I packed my belongings into a truck and my life into my car. After a journey across this continental map and many reunions... I found myself back home. Back in New England, back in the land that I come from and which I know better than I know myself. The serenity of silence during a winter snowstorm, the languid lethargy of summer swelter. The explosion of emerald during spring and the myriad color flourish of Autumn. The places I once walked as a child, as a kid, as a very different person...

You proved yourself a hurricane the first night we socialized. An invitation rejected, followed up with a declaration. You carry scars from your past and you saw the same in me. Yet you didn't retreat like most do. You always see into those around you whom you care for, and you set fire to anything that hurts them...

So many years spent alone. My little cave in Charlestown, my Boat House. A place where I could retreat from the world when the day was done. A Kramer-esque neighbor who helped me keep up just enough mischief to remind me of my younger days, yet a place of solitude. I grew complacent, ready to spend the rest of the time I planned alone in my haven...

I never even spoke with you before you were living in my apartment. So young, so kind, so eager. You burn with such a brightness to protect those around you to the point of losing yourself. And yet despite the difference in years and experience in our lives, you became dear to me. I still have the note you gave me for my birthday and it makes me smile...

A single season brings about a wave of change. The comfort becomes uncomfortable and the unexpected becomes dependent. How did I allow my self to become so vulnerable to such an eclectic tapestry? Like a moth in the spider's web I was caught but I welcomed the embrace. Such a change end venture like no adventure I'd taken before....

Mi corazón. Llegaste a mi vida inesperadamente. Y me cambiaste. Qué más puedo decir de ti más allá del hecho de que siempre sacas lo mejor de mí y eres mi familia para siempre?

This house. So many stories unfolded, so many moments both planned and unexpected that resonate like shockwaves in my mind. Those moments of joy like a birthday cake in the face or someone singing Rihanna while cleaning or the general joviality of 'The Bachelor' nights... the house was quite the keeper...

It took so very long for you to finally socialize with this bunch of misfits. Despite MANY attempts prior. Yet you finally broke down and humored a bunch of lunatics. And by doing so, you got to see me and I you and that bond wouldn't have formed without. A pact made, a bond formed, a kinship guaranteed...

It's late. This past week was long and arduous and taxing and tiring. There are times where I doubt if I can persevere or even make it to the end. Yet these scars and stars that I carry give me that strength to do so. 

It is that fickle heart that gives the best strength. In the darkest pits we find ourselves, it is the hearts of those around us that pull us out. 

Sights from a Broken Window

 There is an ominous silence hanging over the suburbs,

    a languid tranquility that suggests rest yet only reminds me of those most anxious moments.

        When did silence become such a dramatic opponent to cause such chaos and anxiety?

I suppose always.

I think of those dawns that I stayed awake for, sitting on a doorstep or perching on a fire escape just to see the rising rose glow of the earliest beginnings of the day. And the ones I ignored to just exist and be surrounded by the weirdly amazing.

How many years have passed since I was me? 

    What shadow do I see that stares back in the mirror these days? 

        Where is that joie du vivre that used to be the unstoppable fire behind these eyes that needed to see and taste and breathe and experience every ounce of life that could be squeezed out of the marrow of a moment? What happened to the Bohemian lunatic that never sacrificed an ounce of self in defense and pursuit of that unknown truth I always hunted for?

The wheels just turn now. Wake, prepare, work, rest, sleep. 

My greatest fear come to pass: I have lost myself in what I am supposed to do. Who I am supposed to be. And that's not even who I thought I was at the time. This Sisyphean merry-go-round monotony is not a future, it is an unseen bear trap along the path that has brought me to my knees in tears. 

How great were the days when you could take command of a lighthouse and just BE.

    

I think back to my early days, long before the ambition. 

        Those simple days with just the world before me and a cadre of weirdly perfect compatriots... all of us trying to figure out our place in this strange world we never felt a part of. And yet I see these beatific saints and sinners find their place and their peace...

            ....    and I remain stuck in the woods, lost in the tornado, trying to find my north.

Honesty to self has to matter for something. More than a blind obedience to expectation. 

            Is it too late?

    I tell myself it's not too late.

                Which truth do I trust?

The Levee

 Here we are.

Where are we?

When did this happen?

When did I forget how to do this? The very reason, explanation for my single-minded reason to exist?

When did I become a shell of the mind and manifestation that I used to be?

When did it all change?

So many fragments from the past that stab like small slivers under the fingernail and yet they go unnoticed. The figments and facades of the past linger like paper cuts unseen yet never heal correctly. You carry those subtle scars indefinitely.

I remember when this was beyond second nature. Words flowed like Angel Falls from my mind to the point that I thought I was going crazy. I could never keep up with the narrative. I lived in the story I was trying to always tell. I couldn't breathe if it wasn't written. I lived with the characters I wrote.

A few years seems line an eternity.

My fingers feel atrophied, coated in rust and decay. Do I even have a voice anymore?

All that I've given, all that I've lost. Was it worth it if I'm so far gone and sinking into the routine? Is this all I am now?

Nina Simone, Miles Davis, and the sounds of an early morning street were the metronome that used to dictate the pattern and pause and pulse of the uncontrollable currant of verbosity that stemmed from my brain. And now I look at a keyboard like an explorer finding an ancient ruin so alien to them they can't comprehend what they see. Am I that far gone?

Be responsible. Be an adult. Be considerate....

    All phrases that come like the first gusts in a hurricane.

        They lash and scratch and score and scar as the billowing thunder cascades down upon me, moving in to break and destroy and annihilate everything that I am.

Faces and friends from ancient days oscillate in the frontal lobe: reminders of the comforts of the past while serving as the sous knife that kills those concepts you've helped onto life a life preserver. When did I forget those who mattered so much to me?

Standing out in the middle of the night, staring blankly at a black tar, slow sludge of a languid river dripping in concealed moonlight; i can't tell if I'm crying or if my eyes are freezing. I see my life in it's entirely pass in the momentary pass of a river glint. 

I am broken. No horsemen can fix this, no kinsmen can amend this. I delve deep into the depths of my shame and sorrow. The only light I see is down in the darkness.

I wake up. I am so much older than I remember. These hands have wrinkles and the grey hair in my bear shocks me still. I glance out the window and see the first break of sunlight creeping over the urban landscape. I close my eyes, unsure of which reality I prefer more.

I walk out my front door, 'Led Zeppelin' performing in my ears. I'm not sure if I can sustain.

"When the levee breaks..."

I continue my stride uphill as the sun crests the red brick mills around me.

When the levee breaks...

        I refuse to be flooded.