heart murmurs

    Those majestic car rides, the smell of teen spirit oozing out of every broken power window, this was life. Through the green haze of intoxicant I viewed life through a sort of slow-motion visionary, like a fly underneath a glass tumbler. The world was my playground, and my eyes danced through it with fervor until I got a splinter in my feet and had to sit down for a while.

   These days I don’t miss the excitement and spontaneity. The price of the gamble wasn’t worth the outcome and the hole I dug wasn’t worth the grave it was turning into in the end. For every addict, every broken life, everyone who thinks they’re missing out if they live like me, you’re so fucking wrong and I wish you knew what I did. The sheer joy of knowing my future is in my hands, malleable as gold, is worth living for.

   Those who didn’t make it, the jailed, the dead, the homeless, and the insane… I’m sorry you lost your grip on the ground throughout the years, there wasn’t much hope for you without control. For those who haven’t made it to any of those fates yet, you still have a chance to invent yourself again, god willing. Some of you have already dug your graves, fuck… some of you have even gone as far as to write your eulogy and carve your tombstone, and at this point we’re all just waiting for the one night someone pulls the plug.

No, I didn’t die… my computer did. I apologize for the delay in posting guys, but it’s been a mad rush to save money to fix my poor motherboard. Anywho, back to our weekly convenience rant. Today I want to make light of how working with ALL women is both frustrating and stressful. (I am the only man in this establishment besides my manager and he’s basically a ghost). The other day I walk into work and received the same daily barrage of criticisms from my menstrual coworkers that are on dayshift. I routinely begin my nightly duties of sending people out the door hoping that they didn’t forget anything so that they don’t return, and suddenly the phone rings. I answer, and it’s of course Menstrual Dayshift Employee Dee, who informs me that there is a little special present for me in the back room behind the water heater, and she just “couldn’t deal with it”. I immediately know it’s a member of the rodent family that’s been victimized and slaughtered by one of our many traps. Unfortunately she isn’t the only one who “couldn’t deal with it”, since basically everyone there besides Ghost Manager refuses to clean up the mess when a trap is sprung. I sometimes wonder what would happen without me there… would their lifeless bodies just rot and decay, breeding maggots? Maybe that’s where all of the flies are coming from, and our theory of them coming in the front door is all wrong. Dee informs me that it’s been there since the morning, and so when I hang up I proceed to the back room to examine the carnage. Not only is this mouse dead, it’s lying in a pool of it’s own blood and literally rigamortis had set in so crucially that it was adhered to the tile floor. Right beside the poor thing, the open jar of peanut butter laid there as a reminder to other mice not to eat it. I don’t know if anyone else knows that both rats and mice can’t eat peanut butter, because if they gorge themselves too much, they can’t vomit; therefore suffocating on their own food. Cause of death : Peanut Butter Suffocation and of course Metal Bar Crushing Him to Death. I leaned down with my empty grocery bag and picked him up, peeling his parts off of the disgusting floor. One trip to the dumpster later, he was disposed of. This sort of thing is very sensitive to me, because I own two adult rats at home. They don’t become invasive unless you let them, and improper food storage can cause an infestation. It upsets me just as much as the next person to have to clean up this sort of mess, for more reasons than just the “filthy” aspects all the broads I work with have seemed to adopt. I remember the good old days when REAL women worked there… people who weren’t afraid of things like that, who swept them up and moved on with their day. Women who didn’t act like they were raised in fucking Buckingham Palace. I’m ready for someone else to get their hands dirty. In memory of Mousy, I took a photo for you to observe:

    I’ve gone too far in this game called life to let it beat me right now. The cyclic pulse of emotions have reiterated themselves to me time and time again, and I’ve let the rhythms become distorted. Anything and everything, all at once, it’s still all collectively mine, and if I can take the reigns and own it, my freedom is imminent.
    I liken my feeling of abandonment to a suckling being ripped away from a sow. Cold, wet, and blind, the infant reaches for its sustenance from any outlet available and the offspring evolves and adapts as it knows best. For better or for worse, its eyes finally open to the world. In lieu of maternal rejection, infantile and elementary mistakes are made, and trial and error rule the crevices of decision here. Repetition is tiresome and boredom rears its ugly head, prompting exploration of the forbidden pleasures one usually denies themselves for fear of insult or injury. Pioneering such rugged terrain proves to be difficult, but enticing, and the common denominator is always love.
    Such a fickle emotion can be obtained and delivered vicariously in the most peculiar ways. Much like a beautiful vase, love can prove to be a bright centerpiece, or shatter into shards of sadness with the slightest flick of the elbow. As with any arrangement, delicate flowers and a vibrant display of warmth fills the glass. Whether hoping for the feeling or immersed inside of it for even a brief moment, these beautiful flowers serve as reminders that you’ve felt it. But… unless you’ve been lucky enough to be blessed with an eternal bouquet, even the heartiest stalks and petals soon brown and wilt, only to be thrown to compost for another’s resurrection. This rebirth is as frightening as it is enlightening, but the mystery in it will never cease to exist.
    It’s ironic how the people you expect care the least about you feeling secure are the people who are so willing to sacrifice themselves for your demands. I guess this all comes with the pioneer territory, or maybe I’m still covered in afterbirth and bleating for my mother. When a father becomes a friend, and a friend becomes a father, one asks themselves : Who is having the last laugh up there anyways? Armed with valuable advice for success and wellness, I feel akin to him in a way my dad never has been. As adults we’re free to choose our mentors, but we should choose our guides wisely. These freedoms come with so many choices that they can become the bars that jail you, or the keys that release you.
    So which side of the fence should I stand on, when neither can promise my roots  nourishment to grow? I know one thing, with enough warmth and a home, a dandelion seed like me can take hold and thrive, no matter where it lands.

You’ve sheared the wool from this sheep and the bare skin was exposed to the warmth of your compliments and the secrets of your soul. I wove the strands into what I envisioned to be the truth, and blindly accepted the words at face value, ignorantly denying your agenda. In hope of greener pastures I pulled the cloth over my eyes and started to believe the things you said were meaningful. Obscured by the overgrowth, I lost my way and took it literally, heeling to the sides of your tongue and nodding happily at gestures of your kindness. My night with you was an open book and I was ready to write the first chapter, but you burned the page with vigor and blew the ashes into oblivion. Lust, trust, dust… as simple as it always was, but still teeming with complexity. I was overjoyed at the prospect of sharing time with someone valuable enough to call both a friend and a companion, regardless of the miles between the two minute dots on a map. Two lines, one connection, I trodged forward into the darkness blindly reading signals, trusting your intentions were pure. Suddently, the virile natures of those I’d known before was something to be appreciated, and not dismissed. Left alone in the pasture to graze and lie dormant, waiting on your arrival, I turned to find your lantern but saw nothing. Like a tree’s branches, I was coiled, protecting my roots and sap that lay vulnerable to malintent.Bleating foolishly, I dug myself deeper into thinking it was real, even feeling guilt for my instincts because I imagined them being as empty as they always were. We’re all ghosts these days… just blips on a radar and crackled voices through the pinholes of the receiver. Ghosts on wires, radio signals, chemical reactions. Nine volts of pure egocentricity were pulsing through his veins, an encouragement to treat the body in that pasture as a vessel for his experimentation. A naked toy for sick pleasure, if only for satisfying his own personal gratification. Thieves have a tendency to play to your affections, and they infiltrate your security in an attempt to nurture their own shortcomings. The dull ache of being on the ground grew cold and as your light approached me, it gleamed with his electricity mockingly. A laugh in the dark, a grin in silence, I rose reborn, a lamb to possibility and renewal.

So last semester I had a tendency to draw these birds… and since I’ve happened to think about them a lot lately, I thought I’d share some of the artwork I did in class.

There’s something harsh about these lines, jagged and winding across the page with their stuttering from the ballpoint. It never bleeds the way it should, but I seem to be balancing that out myself just fine. White fur and platonic plastic, it’s a breath away from the soul I’d inhale deeply, if I could only touch it. The streetlights are ghosts, burnt orange and then suddenly,violently violet. Just another disappearing act … simply silhouettes in lieu of my previous brain damage. All seven of those royal ghosts surround me, breathing their hypocrisy in my face like stale cigarette smoke from a cardiac surgeon. We’re all capable of being defined as this, hollow and frail to the crushing weights of moral obligation, as helpess victims in our own cycles of self-defeat. The intentions to light the way and warm ourselves underneath our skin suddenly vanish and dwindle into shades of violence and hatred, a recipe for realization. I’ve been here before, before this sea of loneliness and mortality, faced with the tidal wave of my own hallucinations, running for my own pathetic life. As the sand prisms glittered like the asphalt, and the ocean drew back into a foreboding line of rushing black tar, I clung to the only thing I knew was real, myself. Embraced by the textures of my body, I examined the feeling of physical life. Drained of destiny, I clutch to the earth, tightly wound to the footsteps of generations before me. As the waves grew louder and closer, a laugh woke me, and I startled in its wake. Before me was the ghost I’d known so well, the pale-skinned life form with black eyes and chapped lips. Sanguine liquid poured from his lips, as his teeth fell into the porcelain beneath him. I spun backward, facing yet another reflection. His smile shone wildly, a grin of pure vindication. It was simply another amusement to the apparition, as his feelings never stretched past the surface of anything, incapable of depth like the black eyes of his mirror. I reached toward the empty eyes, desperately grasping for anything left inside, and I felt the blood pour from my pupils into my collarbones. Awake. A thin veil of navy stretched over me, the reenactment of a crime scene, as usual, suffocating in silence. Just like drowning in my own dreams.