Down on the highway, out in the open plains, fields of restless tress in the dark, you drive. So long since you’ve been behind the wheel. And he not there. He somewhere behind you, dreaming, cold, naked and alone. The road curves, lazy and slow, and the moon on the horizon, clear and laughing.

Where is my mercy?
Where is my stroke of luck that will absolve us of debt and deliver us comfort?
Where is my shining moment of splendor, where I provide endlessly and am admired by all?
I am nothing but a fuck up and a charlatan. I bleed bluster and incompetence.
It takes all my will and their need to not gouge open my eyes.

Convince me I am not vile and stupid. Convince me that I can be redeemed. Convince me that I can find solace in everything that everyone else finds beautiful and pure.
And I would call you a liar. I only care for what is mine. My life, my love, my children, my sorrow, my anger, my pain.
I could give a shit about anything or anyone else.

Yes, I know I am ill. I know that the pathos and sorrow I feel have nothing to do with the life I have lived or what I have seen.
Others have gone through worse.
My life is a dream fulfilled: a loving and beautiful wife, two kids, a big beautiful house, an easy job, tv’s, movies… I am want of nothing.
And yet, and yet…
I know it’s chemical. I know the despair I feel is an arrangment of neurons and synapses out of sync. I know I am wired wrong.
But, where would I be without my anger?
Would I have any of this, you, this life, if I wasn’t this way?
And I love you because you bear with it. I love you because despite what I am, you love who I am.
It is a truth that needs repeating.

the dreamscape, the horrorscape, i wanted to live a life of words that transformed into pictures and we would all dance or lay back and listen to a certain kind of music that would set us at ease and my love i could see the world join us in some late night camp fire by the beach and our children would play without sandals and you would be in my arms while we watched the waves envelope the shore and kiss it goodbye over and over between crackles of a fire that would burn with each utterance with every breath i took to speak another and friends would hug enemies and starving old women would nourish themselves on each syllable and at this world’s end something would come to me before the dawn came that this was all everlasting.

The sadness, the madness, the sleepless nights, the cigarettes, the listless imagination, the interminable pain, the split in the spleen, the hurried glance, the jagged piece of upturned on the highway, the ice in the veins, the ache at the base of the skull, the twisted arm, the relentless stress, the picture of you in my mind once happy and unbeaten.

The routine of it. A violence in of itself. Water torture. It wasn’t meant to ever be like this. All ephermeral and at a flick of a switch: what are you really leaving behind. Amass books. Things you can touch and feel and smell. Things that hurtle themselves through time by remaining perfectly still. The pace of age devours everything, but they will outlast you. The screen eventually cracks.