that feeling you get

that feeling you get when you're on your knees listening to your joints crack as you repeatedly start punching the ground as hard as you can until the earth's skull cracks open reaching the core to bathe your skeleton in molten iron, while bringing upon the last mass extinction on the planet, but failing, always failing; collapsing on your back in gravel, rocks, mulch, grass, ripped up cellophane wrappers, flatten fast food cups, used syringes, cigarette butts, regrets, and bad feelings, next to a stump from a tree that was recently cut down by men with chainsaws outside your apartment building (spine resting on the roots and what remains of the trunk) with broken arms, fractured wrists, and busted fingers sharp fragments of bone sticking through like broken twigs, realizing you haven't even made an impression in the dirt because you are weak and a failure by choice, not luck or circumstance, that never accomplishes your goals, improves your life, and/or achieves your dreams in life in any way because you're lazy, unmotivated, with no self-belief because what evidence is there to believe in yourself since there is always someone who exists in the world that is better than you at what you’re supposed to be good at, so you always have to open your eyes in the morning to do the same monotonous shit every day that you settled for because you are alive and left with a choice to accept it, and die with the passage of time at some random moment because of something you can’t prevent or predict, feeling the same as you always have, and disappointing more people you care about for longer than you already have, ruining their lives more, or you look up the chainsaw men who just cut down the tree by your apartment building in the yellow pages stacked outside your building’s front door, because you can't afford internet or a smart phone, and don’t have the gas or bus money to get to a wi-fi hotspot or library, so you hire them to do the same to your body that they did to the tree: slicing you into smaller and smaller pieces with gas powered tools that have a use/purpose, then having the workers put whatever big remains are left through a woodchipper becoming nutrition for other forms of life that will soon become infected with your shitty thoughts and outlook on life, according to the people who understand what’s wrong with you and the world, which you’ve never been able to figure out yourself since the day you were born, until nothing remains.

"I wish one of your guys had children so I could kick them in their fuckin head or stomp on their testicles for you can feel my pain - because that's the pain I have, waking up every day..." (villains are always more interesting than heroes)

photo source

i am
a construction paper
third grade art class project
that didn't turn out right,
but my mom hung on the fridge
because of the effort.

i can't figure out
how to walk.
how to use my lungs.
how to get a job.
how to save money.
how to gain weight.
how to keep friends.
how to meet people.
how to help the world.
how to eat healthy.
how to assimilate.
how to fix my brain.
how to attain nirvana.
how to be happy.

i try,
but no superhero
will be able
to save me;
they aren't real.

i can't figure out how to live,
which is why i've doused myself,
and the earth in gasoline.

i flick a white plastic lighter
with my thumb,
and watch the flames
blitzkrieg my skin
and the rest of the planet
watching it burn.
turning us red,
we will remain motionless.

it feels warm,
like sitting around
a campfire, wrapped
in a blanket, next
to someone who cares,
and is willing to listen.

mummified in white ash
like the people of pompeii,
the sun will erase
the remains of our existence
with its breath
like the daughter i will never have
scattering the seeds of a dandelion,
and making a wish.

i never get laid because of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head

my stomach is full of plane crashes, derailed subway cars, and fatal automobile accidents.

things that malfunctioned.

things that hit walls and buildings.

things that hit each other.

things that are now classified as missing.

things in black body bags.

things being digested in stomach acid.

broken things.

disasters.

pieces of painted shrapnel covered in smudges of grease, and exposed wires, still shooting sparks, are stuck in the gaps between cavities.

my teeth are black nubs, and my gums are swollen/bleeding.

i am trying to become a better person.

the passengers' funeral processions march up the vertebrae of my spine embedding sad songs in the swirls of the wooden planks that make up their pineboxes.
 
they are:
former best friends.
deceased family members, who were coal miners that died before i was born.
and girls who wanted to hold my hand, and kiss me, then forgot about me because i couldn't decipher the signals of their bodies, voices, and words.

i loved them all, even though their faces are unrecognizable, and pay homage to them with a moment of silence before they are lowered, and buried in the wrinkles of my brain.
  
i am trying to get a girlfriend by brushing my teeth, cutting my hair, wearing a tie, eating wintergreen breath mints, and dousing myself in cologne.

but i never get laid because of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

wilkes-barre,

it's all because of me and you.

i am mortally wounded
in the band stand
on public square
covered in bee stings,
missing a chunk of my torso
with my hair singed
by the never ending mine fires,
no amount of heroin can resuscitate me.

in and out of consciousness.

pale.

open wounds.

bleeding out.

my body on display;
this isn't a sacrifice.

i am not a martyr.

there is a black handgun
in a army green holster on my leg
with only one round left
in the clip.

i am left with two options:

i can bury the bullet in my brain.

or shoot you right in the fucking face.

i love you, and i'm sorry,
but we cant live together anymore,
and this break-up is going to be messy.

High

I will collect an ounce of blood in a Dixie cup from the paper cuts on my hands, look cool, drink it, and then duct tape myself to ceiling with a opened canister of tear gas under my chin.

You are making different shapes with your hands to distract yourself from the words other people are pegging you with.

Too lazy to bolt off the couch and jump through the window into the hands of the car hoods below.

The Phobia of Phone Calls

Curled into a "C" on the bed with the cellphone pressed against my ear, and my spaceman sheet half across my torso.

Paralytic like the bodies belonging to feet that have stepped on rock fish.

I hear the sounds coming from the receiver, but can't process their true meaning.

So I bury my face deep into the sheet to hide the fact: I'm losing my mind.

I don't want to burden you.

I just want to be there to help you change your facial expression.

Your were there, but the voice I cared about was missing.

And the words and stories you told drilled tiny holes through my brain.

Old school torture.

My stability is escaping like carbon monoxide and I'm slowly starting to lose consciousness.

Until someone wakes me up to explain to me how your going through serious shit, and makes me feel guilt for the inability to understand.

Your still on the line, telling me that you don't want to talk to me if I keep misspelling your name, I'm sorry I didn't realize.

You have to go.

"I love you"

You have to think.

You hang up, and don't know when you'll be able to talk to me again.

And I'm exhausted, which is why I pull the trigger of the gun made out of my hand, and watch the bullet pass through what's ever left of my head, and crawl into a tub of ice water with no expectations for the next couple of days.

Passing Time In-Between A Decision That WIll Lead To Either Happiness Or Suicide.

I stuck my fingers into the surface of the parking lot pavement in an attempt to reverse the orbit of the earth so I can go back to the four days I spent with you because my eyes are unable to make out the shape of the future without you in it.

Blurred with tears.

Of course it was a stupid idea, I am not special or strong, which is why my fingertips have been sanded down to bloody nubs reminding me of broken pencil tips.

And the tears fell into the wounds causing them to sting.

But the stings felt good. Deserved. Like someone who cuts themselves to relieve the pain.

I'm a piece of shit who has failed once again at something important.
I deserve worse.

I passed a dumpster and felt the urge to climb in, close the lid, and put a plastic bag over my head so I wouldn't have to trouble anyone with the clean up — yes, sometimes I can be considerate.

Instead, I checked my cellphone for any change in the screen but all I kept seeing was that stupid fucking clock and today's date.

(No new messages.)

I started punching the teeth out of each passing minute and collected them in an old shoe box that I will give to you when I'm ready to show you I can be patient.

Alone in the silence, I learned how to have conversations with myself.

I learned that I hate having conversations with myself.

Because I'm so fucking predictable.

And I'm causing us to both suffer from my predictability.

Whenever I have a knife in my hand, I think about slicing my tongue off, and afterwards, anyone I have ever known will form a line, come up, shake my hand, congratulate me on a job well done, and say, "Thank you. Seriously, you don't know how much this means to all of us. Thanks again."

Same shit happens whenever I use scissors.

I should have told you to wait instead of letting you drive off, I just felt bad because you said you had to do homework. And in retrospect, I know that sounds so fucking stupid.

I should have hugged you in my arms and locked our fingers together forever, if you agreed.

I should have never left that Waffle House parking lot to go back to Pennsylvania.

I should have never left you, which is why I use the dress you gave me as a blanket, and pretend like it's your body, wrapping it around my self before I go to sleep.

But like I said, I pretend: Your dress isn't you; it is an inanimate object unable to talk, kiss, or touch.

Unable to feel or give off warmth.

It doesn't get me hard.

Or love me.

Nor can I give it a back rub, and take it out to a Mexican/Caribbean restraint, after going shopping.

I'm sorry for leaving.

I don't have a religion, but I will dedicate myself to you because it feels right.

It feels good.

And good is a word that hasn't exist in my vocabulary.

I don't know what the common thread is because my thought processed is so scattered, illogical, and fucked up.

Making no sense.

You said you need time to think, which has never been a good sign in the past.

Usually means: OVER.

I fucked up, so I've been getting fucked up by not taking showers, and injecting ice water into the veins in my forehead to pass the time in-between a decision that will lead to either happiness or suicide.


But I will wait, punching seconds, collecting teeth, until my whole body goes numb.


 

Feeling Sorry For Yourself And Other People Is Stupid (How I Spent My Saturday Night: 5/25/13)

I soldered my lips together and cut my hands off with a rusty machete that had black electrical tape wrapped around the handle. Then I picked up some drugs, spat a used needle out the window on my drive home, and listened to it skip off the pavement. It was Memorial Day weekend, and I made it home without getting arrested; phantom hands and fingers gripped the steering wheel.

A replay of the Champions League Final was on my aunt's flat screen tv, and my ass sank into the couch.

At the same time, Ryan, someone who was on the same swim team as me in high school, and now hangs out with/does drugs/gets pissed at me from time to time for various reason (some known, some not), is cooking a steak for himself and a girl that works at Logan's Steak House with Shannon, this girl I know. He left the army (honorably), and moved back into his parents' house, which is a couple miles down the road from my aunt's.

We were over his house last night with Carrie and Shannon because his parents were out of town. He pounded two rib eyes with a meat mallet, put them in a Pyrex dish, marinated them, covered the dish in plastic wrap, and put it in fridge, while Shannon argued on the phone with her off and on girlfriend. Shannon got off the phone, and we went into his living room and Carrie put on a movie.

Shannon and Carrie were telling Ryan how excited they were for his date and dug for the details of what he had planned, and Ryan explained. Shannon and Carrie thought it was cute, a homecooked dinner for two, before the three of them went over the ways in which Ryan could fuck it up and how to avoid it. I nodded off on the couch. Carrie woke me up when it was time to leave. Ryan gave Carrie and Shannon a fist bump and a hug; I got a wave and a cold look—I figured he got pissed because I was nodding off, which made it seem like I didn't care.

Sitting on the couch, I thought about the word, “cute,” and why I don’t care about other people’s happiness.

Sitting on the couch, I wondered why I cared about people who live hundreds of miles away from me that I've never met in person.

And those people are scratching my limbic system with fingernails made out dull razorblades, then kissing the wound to make me feel better.

Cracked lips puckered up, I scraped together an answer that I really can’t explain.

I turned the tv off by hitting the power button on the remote with my big toe.

Spacing out to the electric lullabies of household appliances.

Not hanging out with anyone.

Thinking about a specific individual that I've never met in person who genuinely cares about me.

Smiling the entire time, as I bled out.

“So What Have You Been Doing with Your Life?”

I am a motel on the side of a highway with a sign that advertises “ACANCY” in pink neon glow. The owners/employees are too lazy/apathetic to replace the burnt out fluorescent tubes of the “V” which is caked in dust and numerous dead insects. There has been a sharp decline in profits because of a mass suicide involving an entire family—husband, wife, kids (1 girl and 2 boys, ages 5-17), aunts, uncles, cousins, a poodle, a goldfish, and both sets of grandparents— in room 8. Their bodies were discovered in individual blow-up kiddie pools—each pool occupied by a decomposing corpse and a yellow-bellied sea snake—by one of owners’ wives. She subsequently went into shock, got dizzy, lost her balance, fell into one of the kiddie pools, and was injected in her right arm with 2.3 CCs of venom. Water spilled on the carpet and a colony of mildew started to form.  It was a real fucking massacre, which had a run on the national news circuit until it was dropped because of low ratings. People didn’t give a shit anymore; they were more interested in seeing images of crushed brown bodies unearthed by orange clad safety workers from piles of broken concrete—two weeks after the mass suicide and accidental death there was an earthquake in Chile. Now, it’s two years later. No one gives a shit about replacing the “V”. The owner, whose wife had died, committed suicide by repeatedly bashing his head off the coffee table in room 3 a couple of months ago.  Families in minivans drive by because even though they stopped giving a shit, they still are uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping in the beds of this establishment. An establishment where people have killed themselves in the past. Free HBO and the lowest rates around aren’t persuasive enough to stop them from being scared. Instead, they’ll drive ten miles to a chain hotel with continental breakfast, stiff beds, an inground swimming pool, and safety. The remaining owners are thinking about turning the motel into a paranormal tourist trap, and are in touch with the paranormal investigators of that one reality tv show, negotiating an agreement for a one hour episode, which could air sometime next fall.

What have you been up to?

I’m sorry, that was a rude fucking question.