Day 1 of 30 – Writing Challenge

Posted on by meltingneurons

I’m going to try and actually stay consistent about something for the first time in, well, probably ever. I’m making it a personal challenge to write 30 pieces, one a day, for the next month to practice, and to see if I can actually do it. Sure much of it is going to be slop….but here we go. -S

Another mental crunch as the pieces fall into place. Patience is watching without virtue the calamities of yourself as they leave ricochet pockmarks into the surrounding population. What a shame that it all came circling back around this direction, to the twitchy fingers and uneasy guts. The lackluster moans and the desire for release in some way from the grip and tight tenor of the fingers laced around your brain stem.

Just another day in paradise it seems. Drooling into a cacophony of disinterested moments where the past is relieved in modern terms and the future slips by as identical discord. Yeah, here it goes again with the “will I nevers” and “if only I had the”–this time will be different, sure of it. Always remember that slip comes before the fall and that landing on your hands is a great way to break something. Take the bumps and bruises, roll yourself up and get a grip.

Next hour is a doozy, but the one after that brings us closer to setting off on a worldwide trip. Settle down now young buck, rest your weary head, we’re in this for the long hall, and some might question why it is you aren’t just dead.

F*ck Sunshine

Posted on by meltingneurons

I’ve found playful meaning

in the sharpest strands of daylight

while they bleached my night tan

into a wholesome red and brown.

been stripped clean of the unwholesome.

The rasping, the choking, the decaying

scent of another moon laced night

spent chasing dragons down the streets.

In the silver kissed necklace of shadows

that roll menacingly beneath the stars

as a slipshod grasp on tenuous reality

falls away, fast as a bat, never to be caught.

Crawled out dusty and beaten by self

into the unwelcome openness of daytime

Where people have jobs and families

go do things and have fun of their choosing.

There’s always a sick, nasty bitterness

surrounding the way I’d look at the crowds.

In those moments when shame carries

the day and bitterness over the injustice,

of wounds septic and worsening, a brain

melting beneath the heat of inquisition.

A Cadillac of contempt would sit, shining

In the corneas of each purple smudged eye.

Letting the self-loathing and concern go awry,

masking envy as hate and desire as disgust,

riding panic and fear out as arrogance and disdain.

Patronizing seconds as the world creaks,

moans its way out of the decadence of night,

quickens into the tittering joy of form alive.

There’s no surface to touch and manipulate

no interface that allows for a connection across

to that other world imbued with shiny smiles

and unbroken teeth not doing unspeakable acts.

In those moments when the sickness begins,

wafting out of your skin to notify and alert

anyone caring to notice of your diseased being,

your lesser than status, your unworthiness.

Those are the defining moments that show

the defying strength and fortitude you want,

when you have the opportunity tell the world

“get fucked, piss off, I make the next choice.”

or reaffirm the skepticism pandering to your

apathetic acceptance of what life has become.

Those are the moments when the shear grit

required to simply gut out the next series

of bad decisions, knowing how much it will hurt

but owning it, owning that the deeper down

you crawl the higher it will feel at baseline.

When you finally disconnect from the grime

Long enough to breathe untainted air

Purified in the radiance of sunbeams

And the wealth of happiness that soaks

Summer days beneath the blue painted sky,

there is a startling awareness, an epiphany,

a closure to doubt and a recognition,

that sobering up is just getting high in a new way.

Spasms to a Crystal Overture

Posted on by meltingneurons
Smoke demons.

In honor of one recently fallen, may you have found the peace you searched for in life.

Twitch, twitch again.
Twitch, twitch again.
Fumbled up the crack back, didn’t do it right,
left loose diamonds pooled in starlight.
Chewing on white whales of smoke,
dense enough to consume morals and hope.
There’s no platitudes to offer,
if you’ve been inhaling at the holy altar,
just bow your head low for new atonement,
merciful gods appear if you stay to own it..
Twitch, twitch again.
Twitch, twitch again.
Ceaseless movement all around,
darkness clutters so shapely where beasts abound,
nightmare creatures from shadows are made,
do what you can though you can’t be saved.
There are monster deeper then mind or skin,
you called them forth hoping to let them in.
Twitch, twitch again.
Twitch, twitch again.
Begging for slumber at the end of 10-days,
get along now sanity we’re deep in this haze.
A misbegotten attempt at revival,
turned the mysteries of the past into present survival.
Let lessons be taught in the way that they are.
Sick and gasping looking for the end not so far.
Twitch, twitch again.
Twitch, twitch again.
Never again, he said.
never again….

A Divorce for the Past, Present, Future

Posted on by meltingneurons

Burn it, burn it all down.
Stuck in the middle of the fight.
Sexy and alluring

So as something of a preface to the following let me just say that it has been an extraordinary (in both positive and negative ways) period of weeks since I last punched together something to share with the webs’ people. I had a few challenges about a month and a half back which resulted in my being asked to write a divorce letter to my “disease:….but not the quintessential “goodbye forever drugs” – but rather, towards however I envisioned that sickness which had driven me to be were it to wear a physical form. The suave smooth talking salesman, a blundering and demanding gargoyle, a bad ass mans man with a beard, a sexy woman teasing and seducing….whatever form i chose.
Hey baby you sexy thing,
Hey brother you filthy rock star.
Thank you for the stories,
Those staggering rides up with the comets,
Them epic nights rolling without pause into endless days.
Damn but we fucked well and,
Damn we sped past those pathetic sheep on the streets,
Damn we were a fireball of excitement,
A hurricane of insanity.
My sweet goddess of sin,
My destroying titan of hatred.
You blessed me,
You cursed me,
It’s time to walk away,
Sky, John, off with you and your false matrimony,
Off with this slavers collar on my finger,
Just like you spit in my face when the fun was done,
Feel the scornful gaze that your wisdom brought so many I once loved to cast upon me.
Sky, my lovely succubi, take your sinfully beautiful body,
Those promises of impossibly intense bliss that would never end,
Taste the disgust you draped me in before all I encountered.
My gruesome and powerful spirit,
My depiction of remorse,
Of emotion to be understood and chased,
My devil-may-caresofuckitallandwatchtheworldburn charmer,
John, even when you convinced me that I was doing something positive,
Always those that I wanted to hurt the least caught the brunt.
You made loving tantamount to self-inflicted emotional trauma,
Never again.
You both served your purpose, goodbye.
I divorce myself from my past including you.
From the present wherein my personality is lost in yours and all I can see and be seen as is as you made me,
From the future of which I know little,
With this freedom,
I embrace myself again to stand tall and walk with purpose and confidence to something brighter.
Where the voices are new,
The suggestions more pure,
Life lived more passionately instead of intensely.
-S

Checkmate

Posted on by meltingneurons

chess-drugs-rev-2-2

I saw the sun set in a shallow grave,

And I watched the moon twitch in its cage.

I’ve seen infinity twice,

And I’ve explored both ends of life.

I gazed on the rage in a sea of smiles,

And I studied the eyes of a man who was not beguiled.

I’ve battered my way out of the inferno,

And I’ve walked in the halls where the saintly dream to go.

I’ve left my enemies in the past,

And I’ve brought my friends with my out of the ash.

This universe has done its best to beat me,

It’s learning now that you can’t defeat me.

I play this game called life on a different board,

I hold all the aces,

And all my pawns are lords.

I’ll throw my seven,

Lay my straight,

And you can king me.

Another checkmate in a game you don’t play for free.

Note: Originally written at age 16 when I entered deeper into the world of #drugs and #crystal #meth to be specific.

Crystal Meth

Posted on by meltingneurons

Pumped up on that chalky sunshine,

The moon is fading to another vicious morning.

Spent my hours beneath the starlight in the wind,

Lovingly hitting repeat on every action I’d begin.

Glassed eyes and withered muscles ache,

Blood thundering past a thirst impossible to slake.

The ride was hot and heavy to the top,

Until we picked up speed enough to never stop.

A Boy Named Wolf

Posted on by meltingneurons
EDIT 12/12/16: Was asked to remove the picture of my son as part of my ongoing dispute with the ex-wife. Image has been replaced with “Fort Taber” which is the location this interaction originally took place in the short story by the same name as this excerpt. Thank you for reading.

A Boy Named Wolf

Drugs/Alcohol: “I am not an individual, yet each singular person has the capacity to carry my spirit into the world. I am multiplied with each additional user, yet the core of what I am remains the same. I am not contained within powders or bottles or needles. Merely vehicles by which I extend myself physically into the world. On the plane of thoughts, I am a gateway to dreams, goals, opportunity, capacity, capabilities and opportunity. Emotionally, I am happiness, relief, dependable joy, relaxation, inspiration, and intensity unleashed. For your spirit, I provide for comfortable faith in a tactile form which offers succor to all who kneel and bring me inside their life.

I am a God who responds. Who ensures your prayers will be answered immediately. I am gratification instantly without the annoyance of patience. Why would you not want me? I an the perfect answer to your questions not even asked.”

Wolf:  “I’ve seen your work in my life, in the sickness of a father, the loss of my home, tears from mother, and a sister who doesn’t know “DADDY” as anything other than a voice on the phone. There are no dreams with any substance you truly provide. No lasting materialization of each temporary respite from reality. Each fades to an increasingly nightmarish awareness as you strip health, dignity, and passion from those penitent before your strength of persuasion.

Smiles only mask tears as, boldfaced, your flock sells such sweet lies to the innocent children begging for the love of time lost.

                “Physically, regardless of form, you corrode the natural state of each being. You disregard the value of life, diminishing the ability to explore the world we inhabit. Your demands for attention outweigh the critical needs of food, water, and shelter. You let your acolytes freeze, burn, and starve for your favor. Their dependence on you grows until your absence inflicts pain while your presence soothes the body and places the agony on their mind and soul. You are rust on a cog in the machine that is our body. Our one indispensable and limited currency to share and create precious moments with – time. You cut our lives short, and we can never regain that. Each moment so brief that we are hardly aware of its passing until it has gone. Even having escaped you, the damning repercussions of your presence will haunt the body with ailments and injury well past when you have departed.

You are the plea for death, to cut life short in mercy, for in desperation you trick our bodies to betray us.

                “In mind, you cause your lovers thinking to be so distorted as it must be to fit existence into conforming with your view of the world. It must warp to escape the horror that has become life. Defenses of the mind are erected, devolving willpower in lieu of rationalization, justification and denial. Barriers to the truth that they are not intellectually inferior, but infected by a sickness of the mind that cripples the capacity to confront, honestly, personal shortcoming in order to improve upon them. You delude, misguide, frustrate, reshape, and manipulate the mind until your followers rely on you to lead and direct every choice and belief.

You weaken the gift of thought, voiding the opportunity to mentally defeat you. No answer do you offer, only the question, why?

                “Emotionally, you shatter confidence, replace hope with fear, pride with arrogance, love with hate. You contaminate innocence with misery, motivation with desperation, joy with despair, excitement with impulse. Regret begets guilt, guilt begets shame, and shame erodes the experience of the present and the internal support of conviction and commitment to construct a fulfilling future – much less belief in an ability to do so. Satisfaction and acceptance with hollowness and insecurity. You are the complete removal of optimism and hope.

You are the ultimate resentment in self. You are obsession, self-loathing, and self-destruction.”

                “You are bankruptcy of the soul, there is no spirituality to be sound in you. Where faith should increase as blessings are counted, gratitude succumbs to grandiose beliefs about our place in the spectrum of control. The dilution of the spirit by artificial inflation of ego. Eyes are cast down instead of up when your supplicants seek nurturing. All values are destroyed to make way for your replaced design of integrity.

Your capital is misery, spreading like a plague to crush out the glow we each are born with – the blessing from beyond. You become the reason for prayers unanswered.

Drugs/Alcohol: “Child, you have not tasted the wealth of my love yet. There is fire here to prime you to any task filled at your slightest whim. Oceans of milky light cast from the fullest of moons to soothe you into peaceful waking slumber to dream and adventure as only the imagination can let you.

Courage at the waiting lips of a bottle wanting to embrace yours as only a lover could….”

Wolf: “No. Lies. Stories. Manipulations and deceit. No. Not now. Not ever. You have stripped away the love that once beat loudly in the heart of the man I knew as father. I’ve seen his broken eyes, and watched the crippling frustration of a young man dying as an old one.

No. You have claimed enough from me and my family. You CANNOT and WILL NOT have any more. Leave, you are not welcome here.

I love you more than words can ever tell and am so proud of you Wolfie. You are always on my mind.

~End~

Please excuse grammatical errors (proofreading at 4am is tough). This is an excerpt from a story I’ve been working on to try and process my absence and loss of family owing to drugs and alcohol. Wolf is actually the name of my son, and I am so proud of him. He knows (I hope) that he is still my sunshine, now and always, even if I can’t be there. Format was played with a little. Please comment, email me – I am truly interested to know what the larger world thinks of this kind of writing.