Part Two…

	Do you know what it is to be, to know, to 
will, & yet to keep silent?  Can you stand on the edge 
of that great abyss & say “I was there, in that, & I 
have escaped?”

	Where are you now?  Are you where you planned 
to be, are you tracking in on the life you knew was 
waiting for you from the moment you struggled into the 
world, gurgling & choking on your mother’s fluids?

	What meager livelihood have you carved out for 
yourself, what great reward sits waiting for you 
beyond all the demons & dragons you have yet to slay?  
This world of fire supports artists & saviors, only 
you have not achieved what you expected, you are still 
straining for that ethereal dream.

	Are you bitter, knowing what you know, yet 
still unable to make your voice heard amidst the 
torrent of ideas that assault your every sense?  Does 
passion leave you cold, drain you of your very 
identity, leave you hollow & strung out like some 
junkie vagrant?  Do thoughts sneak in while you’re 
trying desperately to fall asleep, like some 
unsatisfied lover coming back for more?

	I don’t just accept life.  I wasn’t thrust 
into this world willingly, nor was I planned, or even 
wanted.  I was born then given away to whoever would 
take me, like an unwanted puppy, a stray.  I found 
myself in a family I could not understand, in a world 
I cannot comprehend.  I found life, itself, to be a 
cruel joke with an unnerving punch line, a sickness in 
& of itself.

	I stared down death in my early years, tempted 
death, danced with death, courted death like others my 
age courted lovers.  I came face to face with death in 
a small town on the outskirts of wherever, spent 
months speaking with death.

	& After it was close to me, after death had 
reached down with its skeletal hand to beckon me in, 
after the contract was written & signed, I gave death 
the finger & told it to fuck off, to find someone else 
to replace me on the next train out of town.

	& I went on.

	I sought out love, sought out friendship & 
loyalty, but I found only treason & lust.  I 
discovered shadows where fires once burned.  I tasted 
black rain where tears should have been; found masks 
on the faces of those I had known.

	I summoned up demons & pagan gods, but only my 
own imagination answered as the neon lights buzzed 
their indifference.  I begged God on bended knees to 
shelter my soul, but found quasars & black holes 
burning where heaven should have been.

	I howled & writhed under full moons, willing 
myself to shift forms, to be overtaken by spirits, to 
find magick where only madness existed & it all came 
to nothing.

	& Still I go on.

	Do you know despair, the damp metallic tang on 
angst, the flooding of shame & guilt that arises when 
the last notion of belief has been swept away?  Do you 
find yourself staring for hours at a stranger in your 
bathroom mirror, dead eyes & all reflecting a shell 
consumed from within with the hunger of needing 
sensation?

	They say life is for the living, & ignore 
death with all the flippant cynicism of a decaying 
culture.  They drive fast cars & drink cheap whiskey, 
watch sports & visit tit bars & laugh at death, never 
realizing they have already passed on.  I’ve done it 
as well, that’s how I know.  I’ve been in the driver’s 
seat, I’ve drunk that cheap whiskey, I’ve danced to 
black music & befriended dead whores.

	I know the darkness & the light & it all 
appears as a uniform gray to me.  I have only my own 
senses to go on, I know only what I have observed, & I 
do not care to repeat a single thing.  If I had my 
life to live over again I would change everything, 
every chance I could get.

	I want to do it, say it, drink it, taste it, & 
fuck it all, even death.  I want to die a hundred 
different ways, to sacrifice myself for freedom, to 
overdose on heroin, to drive head-on into an oncoming 
train.  I want to be the sum of my experiences, to be 
able to say “I did this, I did all there was to do.”



*



	Each day that passes I feed the rage that 
burns within.  Each moment I feel it, pulsating, 
churning, & twisting my innards into a mesh of acid & 
ache.  I feel agony & pressure begging release from 
the prison I constructed within myself.  Everywhere I 
look I see myself reflected in the world around me.  
The chaos of my mind is the traffic jams of early 
morning & late evening, the panic & paranoia of my 
thoughts is the warzone of the inner city, the hunger 
for release the addicts in the alleyways.

	I am far from peace; I have found decay & 
entropy in my soul, my subconscious seethes with 
despair.  I know that somewhere, somehow, there is a 
greatness waiting, that all of this is merely a test 
of my patience, a lesson to be learned, a process of 
strengthening.  It is a dream I will soon awaken from…

	I know there is a purer reality hidden 
underneath this static matter, that souls can speak 
directly to one another in some way I cannot fully 
grasp, but I do not know from where my knowledge has 
arisen.

	It’s like I’m waiting for someone to come wake 
me, someone who sees through my shells, my masks, & 
would sense my soul, hidden behind my walls…



*



	She has the grace & the goodness of an angel 
deep within her heart.  She shines forth radiance with 
each breath.  I have never known anyone who appears so 
full of life as her.  There are traces of immortality 
in her touch.  She lends meaning to the mundane tasks 
of daily living.

	She, in every way, is as a kindred spirit to 
me; there are connections between us I can only 
faintly sense; yet I know they exist.  With every 
passing word, every idle comment, I know the extent of 
her perfection.

	I have found in her the vision I thought lost, 
gone for all time.  She sees the beauty in life I once 
knew but had forgotten.  She senses the darkness that 
has consumed me, that has spit me back out into this 
corrupt world, & she soothes it, bringing to me the 
ability to chart my way through the shadows of my mind 
to rescue my cowering soul.

	It is not romance that leaves me in awe of 
her, not in the slightest.  She is a healer; she 
brings new life, regenerative & pure.  She shows me my 
strength.  She has taught me just a little of what it 
means to love.  Not love her, not fall into love, but 
to find love for the world around me, find love within 
myself.  She has brought me epiphanies in a kind 
phrase, a shared dream, & I am & will always be 
forever grateful.

	All I once thought destroyed, stolen, & 
crushed was merely buried deeply & masked away.  She 
has provided me with the desire, the drive, & the 
stamina to seek it out & expose it to the light.  She 
is my first true encounter with a muse.

	She is the one I have been awaiting, & the 
process of waking has begun.



*



What else is there to despise?

	Have we not turned up our noses enough?



This world is still filled with so many crushing 
moments, so many depleted resources.  I fuck it all, 
flip it all off.  Depressed so far back into my head I 
cannot move, the weight of complete numbness 
transcends my very being.  Taste of melancholy copper 
in my mouth as I chew away the dry spots on my lips & 
spit out dead skin.



Is there pure left in these patchwork systems, liver 
spots on dreaded fingers, flannel fashions for 
hardline demons.  We got bomb, got blood on 
handshakes, drinks for vagrants, laughter for disease 
victims.  I will treat you to a death march, dance 
corpse lights for you.



I want death to be a brush with fate, to announce 
death with terror, a bombing in the cold alley & a 
slave driver for the ministry.  There should be an 
illumination, some great pyre as witness to the 
execution; I wish death on each of us, wish death in 
the great lazy days of summer.  I want death for 
breakfast, death as an old friend at my wedding.  I 
want to scream out death’s name as I wait for my first 
born.  I wait with breath clenched in my fist for 
death to show itself.



We are all going to die; do you want these webs?  Do 
you tangle them yourself or are you blessed from some 
outside source?  These brutal steel teeth that clamp 
themselves to your side as we hide.  Laughter seems so 
morbid with its cold cold comfort we waited for beyond 
this taunt.



*



It grinds its skull into granite & limestone & builds 
clay idols to the war gods & secret orgies & shaken 
faith of this neon age, I know greed when it stretches 
its waiting arms & beckons from that blue light we all 
own, when I go wandering through the suburban night & 
see the shadows framed by the blue light within shade 
drawn windows, oh yes, I’ve stared into the blue light 
of greed long enough to feel the pleasing numbness of 
what the fuck is this shit...  I dare say we dare 
nothing, nothing different, nothing new, nothing but 
what we’ve already seen, there is no new depravity or 
purity or passion left to explore, & death itself is 
weak & shallow…



They’ve beaten me down with their fever shows & love 
is the strongest of speeches, they’ve taken bits of my 
flesh for their obscenities & tasted my tongue in the 
strangest of places…  they know who they are, you 
could count their fingers on one hand with a clenched 
fist, they make me sick…  the soil wasted the crops 
these days, your hate martyrs the soul, I grieve for 
the old ways, free of reason, passionate & profound in 
their eyes…  you cold, steal cold from the winters 
end, bring it on like a morning cigarette dangling 
with the rhythm of stairwells & loose lips, taste me…  
ah, forget me now, leave door swinging on rust graven 
hinges, peel out of control from the grit & decay & 
take it to the farthest reaches of pain you grind down 
on it…



They’ve slept long enough to awaken without remorse, 
these pairs of confusion & reason mingle, hard & 
shattered, stainless & bleeding, you grasp at them, 
wind the thread that binds us all into a knot of 
absolution, I wait confined & mesmerized by the 
wayside…  fear takes a vacation, death a holiday, time 
sidetracked against a mirror image…



	What else is time for?