I don't want to be here

Yes that top looks bad

Can I please go home?

I don't care about the dream you had

Your kids are not special

They have no talent at all

I'm tired or pleasantries

I'd rather just look at the wall

I just want to be alone

So please, please be quiet

Humanity in its true form

Is an uncanny, insufferable riot

And what do you think?

I know you've never heard me

Too busy with your musings

Of how nothing is truly free

No one contributes anymore

Instead we only complain

Our projected woes

Falling steady like the rain

What if no one cares?

I can't say that I do

Humanity is incapable of change

The statement bitter but true

So please take your shoes

And your stupid mason jars

Get out of my house, get out of my sight

Go tell it to the stars

or at least I wanted to…

never mind these old wounds

Wait—no—maybe we should

Mind them

what Shattered became me

I couldn’t breath like I used to

never wanted to crash like ever before

just straight nothingness

It’s not polite to speak so bluntly

in a gentlemen’s society

But in truth

Who else is going to point out the unfairness of it all?

Someone comes by and starts

my life

Smothered me in the way it is

it traps me, by the burdens of its weight

a hundred years of suffering

so

no

no more

I sang to myself

I wanted to go

So much

take the shot and go

but yet here I am

speaking to you

appealing to you

let the darkness float by

let it rush out like the trains you want so badly

let it drain out like the toxic waters you so thirst

let it dissolve like the pills you carry

let it wash away like the floods you yearn for

take this moment with you

yes, you

And breath again

Stay with me

Stay with me…

Mind these old wounds

We should

Yes it's your fault, you knew what they were like from the beginning. You threw yourself into the abyss of love for someone who'd watch you fall. You tossed away everything of value in your life to make space for them. You rearranged your plans and sacrificed your future for someone unwilling to make the slightest change for you. You claimed love was enough but in the end it wasn't. We warned you that this would happen. That one day it would be over and you'd be left holding the pieces, staring ahead at what your life could have been. Now the day has come and we can't even say a word to you because it could send you over the edge. So I say it here to the blank page "I told you so".

Perhaps Gandhi? Maybe Plato?

Possibly a Quaker founder?

I do not know who originated

the saying, “Speak only

if you can improve the

silence.”

But I know someone special

who embodies this expression.

My loved one’s furrowed brow

and outstretched hands speak

volumes amid her

silence.

Her empathy is a language

that manifests on her body

and needs no interpreter.

“I want to help you, but how?”

she tells me in her fervent

silence.

I wish I could reply to her

but I do not know the answer

much less the vocabulary

to approximate her fluency.

So I shrug and keep my

silence.

I tapped against the table with my fingers, skipping all but my index - for I'd sliced the delicate skin there beneath the nail and was tenderly babying it - as I stared ahead. I watched people with utter silence, observing and making note of the beings that existed in a space I expanded and contracted in, noting their flaunted offences that they had no issue baring spears and knives at.

I suppose... My eyes cast to the table and I wiped at it, like I was clear graphite from my paper, like I was cleaning my space of any filth, that I might have been an offender to them. A perceived threat. But... Couldn't they be said too, one in the same?

We were, for all intents and purposes, enemies on a similar plane, ready to destroy each other for whoever struck first, but trying to be effective in a community demanding change at a place where tug and pull came to beliefs and rights.

Commonly, we might have conversed in more friendly terms, parted ways if both of us were amicable people, but that couldn't be said of one, and I was not it.

I had no intention to oust people, to point knives at them and call for a guilotine. I was merely an observer in an environment, noting my boundaries and limitations to skirt by the death toll bell that I could have rung. Like I was ringing a dinner bell to my demise.

Those who speak loudest in silence often are the ones with the strongest lead against opposition, are they not? Ready to lay down their lives to an oncoming death. Ready to slay down any who they can leverage equal ground with.

After all, aren't we all just purveyors of faith, wearing the armor of our belief under our skin?

Pulling an allnighter.Pen lifted from page,words muted for a brief moment.

Exclamation marks multiply by a frenzy of persistent calls.

Cruise control.Freestyle,with no end in sight.

Who could that be now!!

Not again!! Cursing into the wee morning hours.

So glad i didnt charge my phone.Two percent.Words waning and ebbing.

Patience tested.Agititation becoming my theme!

Is there no end in sight!!

Free hand clenching.Heart pumping!

I reach for another page.

I continue to write.

Finally!!! Finished!!!

Phone finally dies.

Now I need a title!

Inferno, flames flickering further and further upwards,

A calamity of chaos rising up, singed nostril hairs preventing people from sensing the inferno.

Primal instincts still blaring: warning, warning, something has gone terribly wrong here!

To every soul still able to listen to their internal warnings, the noise never fails to put them on high alert.

Shatter glass in case of emergency, only what's the emergency here?

What am I doing, writing here?

A novel about silence could fill my drafts

Or my tombstone might have enough words to write one

if anyone ever learned and knew me well enough to remember

what words were mine after I left

this mortal coil, recoiling from mortal relationships 

living instead solely within fantasies and fictional

forms of existence, if I even exist.

Do I even exist?

 I existed last night when I overshared, overflowed in a space

Nobody wanted my level of honesty within, my existing

met with strangers replying "I'm not qualified but..." or "dude, get some help"

Dude, get some help

Dude, shut the fuck up

Nobody cares what you have to say.

The inferno rages on, as I choke back smoke, eyes tearing with the struggle of existence. 

Eyes able to perceive what cannot be spoken, choked by the heaving effort of every inhale, exhale, inhale,

Exhausted, I fail to fight when his hands on me 

his hands are on me, on my - silence the urge to name where.

his hands are me, are me, are inside me -

Inside me, and I'm inside a burning inferno of being touched touched touched

Touched and silent, don't talk about him like that, don't make a monster out of a man

Don't make a monster when you know the real monster is yourself for feeling his hands inside you.

You know better, you know better, you know enough to

Write a novel about what you don't say

Or maybe merely a million poems, maybe merely mutiny

Silence ice the fire has evaporated completely today.

I wake up in the morning, tired. I get up, make the beds, grab the laundry basket and head downstairs. I put on a pot of coffee and make the kids breakfast, while my wife makes their lunches for school. We do the dishes together, we drink coffee together, we talk about our days and the monotony which lays ahead. Then she drives them to school with one vehicle and I drive to work with the other.

The office is quiet until it isn’t. Then it’s filled with nonsense. One of my bosses, Greg Davies, talks about Trump.

“Should be fucking killed. Should be shot in the head.”

The other boss, Andrew Tomes, doesn’t watch the news, but he likes to talk. So he doesn’t like these conversations because he’s forced to listen. When he gets his chance, he changes the subject to one he knows a lot about. People. Then everyone else is forced to listen.

Greg nods, and smiles, fake laughing at the right points, then slowly returns his gaze to the computer screen. Andrew leaves, talking to himself as he enters his office and Greg laughs.

“Christ, can he ever talk.” I smile and nod, not confident enough in the thickness of the walls, to say that my boss never shuts his mouth.

It’s semi-quiet for a little while, but then the noise starts up once again. First, with Andrew’s Zoom meetings in his office. He’s partially deaf so he speaks at volume one thousand. He tells the same tired jokes about tariffs (he doesn’t watch the news but he knows that much) and laughs before adding, “I know the meeting isn’t about tariffs because if it was, I could go on all day about it. (No he couldn’t. He couldn’t go any further than he just has.)

I share an office with Greg, and every once in a while, he tries to get the political discussion started again. “You know why he’s doing this eh?” I turn around, hoping he isn’t talking to me, but I know that he is. “I’m not really sure.” I answer. “So he can crash the market, buy a shitload of property cheap and sell it all high. He’s crazy, but he isn’t stupid. He knows who his audience is. He knows exactly what he’s doing.” “Yeah, that sounds about right.” I answer, sounding like Andrew, (We both know I could go on about this all day, if I wanted to. But unfortunately, I have work to do.)

I decide to google some news and read it quickly so that maybe I have something else to add. But I don’t, and the articles are as dry as desert air. I just don’t care, though I should. I know, I should.

Around 10am, Andrew’s wife, Julie comes in. If anyone could take the verbal diarrhea award away from Andrew, it’s Julie. It’s about her mom, always her mom. She’s pushing 90, and she is as stubborn as a mule. Greg’s her brother, Andrew’s her husband. It’s all family in the building, and so each day in the office is like a Thanksgiving reunion.

“Do you know what that woman did today?” She asks, and answers before anyone else has a chance to. “She gave seven thousand dollars to a fucking stranger.” This gets Greg’s attention, and mine too. Although it’s all being said right in front of me, I don’t look over. But I listen. Because why not? I’m bored as shit. “Some scammer called her and apparently he sounded like cousin Benny. He tells her he’s in jail in Mexico. Can you believe that? Says he needs seven grand for bail. So what does mother do? She walks down to the bank, takes out the money and a man shows up at her house and takes the cash.”

Greg and Julie talk about this for a half hour, ignore a few customers that come in, while Andrew is shouting at the top of his lungs on his Zoom call. I think about a video I saw on Facebook earlier. A man is saying that the office is where productivity lives and the home is where it dies. He’s arguing against office workers working from the comfort of their homes. “The office,” he says, “Is where the magic happens.” I look around the dimly lit office. Mother handing out her retirement savings to a man who knocked at her door has gone back to Trump. Somehow, his idiocy as a President is related to his elderly mother losing seven grand.

“Should have killed him when they had the chance.”

This is where magic goes to die.

2.

I work in a wood manufacturing plant, by the way. On the marketing side. My job is to find suitable clients across the globe who’d be interested in buying some high end hardwood. All wood that I wouldn’t be able to afford in ten lifetimes, the irony isn’t lost on me. I need to act like a big player. Big man with big money, and talk to architects, designers, and all sorts of folks with money to burn and aesthetic appeal engraved in their brain. I talk like I know, but I don’t. (Fake it till you make it, right?)

I spend a lot of time staring at a blank screen and having fake conversations with my boss. Conversations where I have balls, actual balls, to walk into his office, sit down next to him and say, “I want a raise. A nice big raise or I’m walking.”

He says, “Sure. Just tell me a number, and it’ll be on your next pay.”

And I give him a big fat six figure number. I come home and tell my wife.

We pay off our debts, and in the fantasy we even make love afterwards. Doing all the things that I’m too afraid to ask her to do.

But I say none of it. Courage isn’t my cross to bear, and in reality, I don’t even know if I deserve it. The world, it seems, has just made it hard to live comfortably. And so because of that, I feel I’m worth more than I receive. I feel like I’m worth a shitload of money, because it takes a shitload of money to live. But I don’t know what I’m worth. I don’t have a clue.

I can’t run around throwing ultimatums around. Because the reality of the conversation could just as easily go like this.

“I want a raise, a big raise or I’m walking.”

“Nope.”

“Uh, what?”

“Yeah, I said, no. Leave if you’re going to leave or go back to your desk.”

Then I’d have to walk back to my desk, my shoulders slumped and my junk between my legs. Feeling worse off than before. No more money, but a clear realization about my value and what I bring to the team. It all might just be too much to bear. Then my conversation at home might go something like this.

“Honey, I’m HOOOMMEEE! And guess what?”

“What?” She asks excitedly. “I lost my job. So no more money coming in. Say, can we do that thing that I fantasize about all the time. You know. The move.”

“Get fucked! I’m leaving. Come on kids. Daddy is nothing but a loser.”

“Loser daddy! Loser daddy! Loser daddy!” They chant as they walk out of the house in unison.

So I click away on my laptop. Clickity, click. Clickity click. And I turn around and look at Greg.

“Trump is a fucking madman. You know what I mean?”

“I could go on about it all day.” He says.

“Tell me about it. Tell me about it.”

3.

My brain and I used to be pals, you know? I can’t remember when the breakup occurred, but it seems it was a messy one. A real messy one. Trauma City.

“What did I ever do to you?” I ask it sometimes.

“You had the nerve to grow up.”

“Well what are my other options?”

“You know what they are.”

“But I don’t want that.”

“Well, if you don’t want it. Then deal with it. Deal with the mess. Clean up as best you can but don’t ever expect it to be squeaky clean. Because another shit storm is always over the horizon, you know?”

“I guess”

“You’re learning. You’re learning.”

4.

In the afternoon I drive home for lunch. It’s only a five minute drive, and with the wife and kids at work, I enjoy having a few moments of silence. A few moments where I don’t have to pretend. Sometimes there are leftovers and when there aren’t, I just pour myself a bowl of mini wheats and eat them in the silence as the cat paces and meows at me to give him attention.

The TV is off and I stare at myself in the dark reflection. I contemplate a couple of things. Having a nap, or unzipping my jeans and having a go at myself. Not because I really want to, but because I’m alone, and I don’t have many opportunities to be alone. But I end up doing neither.

I walk over to the spare room and grab my guitar from the stand and strum a few chords as I look at myself in the mirror. I can feel that I’m having one of those days. Just one of those days where it feels that each step I’ve taken had to have been the wrong one. No doubt about it. But that’s loneliness and selfishness creeping in.

“Deal with it.” My brain says.

“Or you know what your other option is.”

“Shut up, would ya?”

“Make me.”

“You’re being childish.”

“I know you are but what am I?”

“An idiot.”

“Then what does that make you?”

“An idiot.”

“Bingo. Nail on the head. Grand prize. Winner winner chicken dinner.”

I strum some more chords. The same tired chords, because I haven’t learned anything new in half a decade. Chords in the key of G, chords in the key of E, a couple of a lame attempts at a solo, and then I sing a partial song that I’d written a few years back that could have possibly been something, had I persevered and finished the damn thing, but of course, I didn’t. I sing the first line, “Here I am back home again, not a boy, maybe not a man, just a soul trying to do what he can, planting a seed in a dry desert land.”

Not bad. Pretty good. Never finished it, and never will, but not too bad.

I put the guitar back up on the stand that hangs next to a poster of the Rolling Stones. Exile on Main Street. Cool shit. Cool band.

I sit on the lazy boy for a few minutes, and realize that I’m pacing like the fucking cat. I get annoyed at the cat for pacing so much. In the kitchen, downstairs, upstairs, back in the kitchen, the spare room, back to the living room, the kitchen. Pick a spot and sit down for Christ sakes. But I’m doing the same thing aren’t I? Hard to find a place to go when it’s your skin you’re looking to escape, I suppose.

One more thought about checking out some porn on my phone before saying, fuck it, and heading back to work. So much on my mind. So much I want to say. But if I haven’t said it by now, well, what does that mean?

suicide is bodily autonomy. im all dressed up with nowhere to go

sometimes i can’t tell what’s real because all i have are five million ways of looking at it. subjectivity is hard man. my mind’s all tied up with dead leaves dead ends and no place to go

suicide is bodily autonomy but i would never let anyone else win that argument. i would die for them to not believe that. but i’m out of steam with nowhere to go

thoughts for an endpoint (not a dead end):

i would live for someone to believe they should too.

and now, where to go?

love from bluesy

You do not get notified when someone unfollows you. But I want a reason. There should be a pop up window that says, "Be honest, why did you unfollow this person?" I could collect the responses like data points, but maybe some of them were from internet robots, and the responses weren't real. I start to wonder if I'm real, what it means when someone clicks a button and I disappear, forever, from their feed.

I like to scroll through Facebook, where I have an account only in order to read the comment sections of politically loaded posts. Some people might call that being an "internet troll." But hey, they posted it. I'm just an innocent bystander, reading it.

I never comment. Complete silence from my little computer, a rectangle I carry around with me like it means anything except that I'm being tracked by Apple, Inc.

I judge them, silently. I am the same person who unfollowed me, the infinite loop of social media. People in the real world can't just press "unfollow" and walk away from someone talking to them. That would be considered rude, but on the internet, you can do that with one click. You have been silenced.

I see people's comments and wonder if they know that they are only one of billions of Facebook users, that they are a single grain of sand in an hourglass that makes Mark Zuckerberg another dollar. If they know that their iPhone is listening to them, pushing targeted ads at them, and they don't question it. That Facebook, and all social media, are constantly changing to better suck us into it, to make us addicted.

Maybe my silence is just as toxic, my laughter at my fellow Americans on Facebook only heard by Apple, Inc., and then later I get a push ad from a mental health agency. Go figure.

But, jokes on them - I can't afford healthcare, like every other American. It's funny, how we throw insults at each other online when most people probably couldn't define the term "algorithm" to save their lives. Who are you talking to, really, on the internet?

Likewise, who are you choosing to listen to?

And maybe that's the point. I'm laughing at Facebook posts daily and the billionaires know that they got me, hook, line, and sinker.

Just because I'm only listening, doesn't mean I am not a part of the conversation about social media.