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.