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? 
