Pain

has much to teach us

Failure

has more to teach us

I have graduated from the school of my own thoughts.

I am not going to hurt the people who have hurt me.

Any action, causes a reaction

My strategy

is to succeed.

Revenge

is a poison

that makes my heart bleed

until it pops.

We are often in Purgatory

for a purpose

so that we can sift through the sand of our soul

and take-out the bad stones.

My desire

is to lead—

not to be in charge

but to be an example

for others to follow.

I have spent much time

thinking of myself

and now,

I want community.

I still think building walls is healthy

getting away from humanity

is smart

but there is something in me

that wants to build-up

others.

I know the risks.

Being used

is a probability

but I’m done with bitterness.

The roots of my tree

are planted with kindness.

I think we can become

what we want to be

despite conditions, and

Obstacles

create the miracles

for a heart that can love

when it should hate.

the dog pisses on the flowers

the cat doesn’t mind

I go for walks, too tired to write poetry

and my thoughts, stick inside my head, anyway

There are few things

I consistently love, because

few things

consistently love me.

The Universe is Random

but we dress it up with emotion

like a whore

in a 300-dollar dress

elevating her, to celebrity status.

Some, find success

believing

they see better, than the rest

A blind man flipping a coin

10 times

“Heads, I win—Tails, I lose.”

He wins 10 out of 10

We all lose in the end.

The traffic lights blink red and green

the cars don’t know what to do

Lives run like clocks

until they break

God

tells us to be like God

but we are like ants on the ground

All we see

is what’s in front of us.

We bring a temporary consistency to the chaos

and believe we have control

“It’s my fault.”

No wonder we go insane.

Cancer eats us

and we pray

What else can we do?

Fear and Hope, are the drugs we take

An insecure ego

needs a legacy

and drops the atomic bomb

The suffering is unimaginable

until it stops

thank God, it stops.

We want a moment, out of the glare

We want to be young, while we can

The monsters amongst us, are us

We eat each other, because

We don’t know what else to eat.

“Well—you’re heavier than me. Why don’t you drop down and see if they’re hungry?”

“They’re house cats, Andy,” Morgan said. “They’re not Tigers. Even if a cat eats you, you need to die first, for this to be possible.”

Morgan explained this like an expert. “Your body needs to be like Tuna in a can—tender and juicy, for a cat to take interest.”

He sold me, and on the other side of the wall I heard, “Good kitty. Good kitty. You see, all a cat wants is to be petted and fed,” Morgan said.

I dropped down, into the dark, and looked around. Yellow eyes greeted me, like fireflies that didn’t blink. The shadow of the house was not welcoming.

“Quiet—there’s a window,” Morgan said.

We walked towards it, like cats, peering out-of-the-night.

A distinguished-looking man, wearing a smoking jacket, was seated at the table. His manservant walked in, carrying a silver tray.

“Thank you Jiles.”

“My Lord.”

“That’s not his real name—I’m sure of it,” Morgan said.

We were close enough to the glass, so that we could touch it.

Suddenly, we were inside.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Hubbard said. “Sit down.”

I did as I was told. Morgan just stared at the man like a scaredy-cat.

“Sit down, Morgan. I’ve been watching you, since you chased the ice cream truck, when you were 12.”

“How?”

“There’s not much to do in this house. See, my telescope over there?” It was gold, standing on a tripod, looking down, at the town, through a green-house window.

“Mr. Hubbard—if I can call you that—what just happened? We were standing outside of the glass.”

“Magic,” he said.

One word explained everything, and I believed him.

“This house is like Chernobyl. The core is slowly melting down into the ground. Radiation, is contained—as long as somebody is caretaker.”

“How is that possible?” Morgan asked. “There has never been a nuclear plant in this town.”

“Magic—you idiot! I was using Chernobyl as a metaphor. Magic is more dangerous than an atomic bomb, if it’s not contained.”

“How did you become caretaker?”

“I don’t want to go into that.”

Hubbard lifted the lid on his silver tray. There was a dead cat.

I felt like throwing up.

“Do we have to stay?” Morgan asked.

“Just hear me out. You work for minim pay. Your education comes from Netflix and the News. I can provide you libraries of Latin, that will open-up your world, so that you can conquer it.

Hubbard made a sweeping motion with his arm, and the walls gave way, to a tremendous library.

“I’m done with school,” Morgan said.

“You are a fool,” Hubbard laughed. “The cats have to be kept inside the walls. If they get out, they will spread evil wherever they go. They’re like demons, that can’t be killed. They need to be eaten, one by one. Slowly, you will absorb their power—slowly, you will retain their spirit.”

“What do they taste like?” I asked.

“Barbecue Sauce.” Hubbard dipped a piece of flesh into Longhorn BBQ, and smiled like a rabid dog.

To be continued…

Halfway up the hill, Morgan turned-off his headlights. There was a drop-off, to the right. I could see emptiness beneath us, blackness, and our impending explosion with one wrong turn. Morgan was driving Hitler’s car—a slug-bug. I wanted to hit him so hard. He was wearing his night-vision goggles that he used for hunting coyotes, or at least, that’s what he told me. Morgan lied to himself a lot.

“There’s the wall,” he said.

It followed the driveway for 50 yards, until, the gate.

There was a tower nearby, and one of those floodlights that wasn’t turned on. The place reminded me of a concentration camp.

“This is as a good a place as any,” Morgan said

“How do you plan on getting over the wall?” I asked.

“We’ll use my ladder.”

“Your ladder?”

“I loan it to Charlie when he has to snake cats out of trees. It’s a foldable one that extends, see.” He popped the hood of his bug and retrieved it.

“It will support, even a guy like me.” He climbed to the top of the wall and looked over. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“What?” I asked.

“Cats—they’re everywhere.”

“Well—do they look well-fed?”

“I can’t tell. All I can see are their yellow eyes. They’re black.”

“That’s bad luck.”

“Only if you believe it.”

“Isn’t that as stupid as saying, ‘Satan is only real, if you believe he’s real.'”

“That’s not stupid. There’s a rational explanation for everything.”

Hearing this from someone who was completely irrational, didn’t put my mind at ease.

Morgan went on, “When we get old, we want company. The older we get, the more cats we want, until, they start breeding. Then, they eat our food, and look at us with sandpaper tongues…”

To be continued…

Scotch, Cigars, Convertibles

Compassion?

The politics of pretending to care

Egos, that deflate like balloons

Then, blow up again, full of hot air

until they pop.

I know what it feels like to be on top

Somebody, trying to push me

off.

It’s not fair

That’s what happens when you try to be higher than somebody else

The need to compete and compare

will lose you respect, like displaced boulders

falling down a mountain.

Being comfortable, in who you are

will make you solid, like the mountain.

You don’t have a shaky footing,

when you keep both feet on the ground.

Climb higher

on the ladder of success

and it falls over.

Those who believe themselves to be better

have such a hard time making friends

they usually like people, who are just like them—

Narcissists (lovers of themselves).

Hubris, is entertaining to watch

The arrogant, don’t learn anything

They believe themselves to be

exceptional

To have the magic touch,

not based on any strategy.

It’s comedy—

intelligent people, acting like fools

Somebody Smart

believes,

they know everything.

The Editor of Cosmo

commits an intellectual crime

murdering, the chief sophisticant

by putting poison in their Wine

while the slovenly detective

outsmarts

their obvious egos

because he has been learning people

for decades.

They never Change

They gamble to escape reality

and if they win

two in-a-row

they think they can play dice with the gods.

His door was closed, that beautiful door, that shut-out the wolves. Harold was hung-over. It was not a drinking binge done out of love, but because of dread. When his kids moved-away to college, Harold thought the pressure would be less…

How wrong he was.

His wife was religious, to the point of extremism. Harold wondered what she would have been like in the Middle Ages. He wanted to see a psychiatrist—in fact, he did this behind his wife’s back. He got some medication and was popping anxiety pills like candy.

“Honey, I have a nervous disorder.”

“Go to Father Jacob,” she said. “In fact, I’ll make you an appointment. Your problem is that you live in sin—that’s where your nervousness comes from. Now, if you had spent more time in prayer, and less time drinking behind my back, you wouldn’t be so close to having a heart attack.”

Harold found ways to cope with his work life, homelife, and everything in-between. He hid away. He took to writing in a journal. It started out as complaining and then turned into angry poetry. He was getting worried because the lines were homicidal. He drank more and read the books that he enjoyed as a child. His psychiatrist told him that his preadolescent fantasies were a complete regression to a time of life when he didn’t have responsibility. The stories were about men who used magic to conquer evil.

There was a knock at his door.

The woman who entered was tall—gigantic, in fact. She didn’t have big muscles, but it was like her whole body was a muscle, tight, rigid, and wanting to break something. Domestic violence came to mind.

“The auditor is going to be here next week, and the safety-net IEP has numerous errors in it.”

“Don’t worry—I’ll take care of it,” Harold said.

She looked at him like he was a fool, and closed his door.

Harold had perfected many ways to get rid of people. The hardest was the kind that could carry-on a conversation with themselves.

When the door closed, he breathed again. He didn’t realize he was holding his breath. There was the copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He pulled it from his shelf and retrieved his silver hip-flask. Two swigs and he felt hot and alive.

There was another knock at his door. “The auditor’s here,” his secretary said.

“He wasn’t supposed to be here until next week.”

“It’s the 21st.”

“How can that be?”

“Should I let him in? Are you busy?” Lorraine asked.

“No—I’ll see him.”

Harold’s secretary was a good soul, but the bad souls, far out-weighed the good soul. It was Egyptian Hell.

“Have I found joy in my life?” Harold asked himself. “I like to read literature, and I guess, I like to drink.”

“Have I brought joy to others? Well… I think many of my colleagues enjoy tormenting me.”

The auditor was bald, short, fat, and bored. Harold wondered about his vices. Nobody could look at numbers all day, without looking forward to something else.

“I was told that many of your Safety-Net IEPs have errors.”

“Who told you that?” Harold asked.

“It’s not important. I’ll need to see your files.”

“Can you come back later?”

“Strictly speaking—I need to see them now.”

“It’s just that—I feel like I’m having a heart attack.”

“Should I call 911?”

“No, it’s probably just indigestion— give me a few minutes.”

Harold looked at the awards he had won on his walls. What did it all mean? He was five years away from retirement, but he would lose everything. He might even lose his wife, if he couldn’t bring home the bread. What was it she said, “My husband is a weak man.”? His wife told her friends that, at afternoon tea.

Harold tried to be strong. He hoped adversity would toughen him up and he had lots of that, but it only caused him to wear, like a piano wire that couldn’t play beautiful music anymore.

“No. I should’ve done a better job of hiding,” Harold said to himself. As a young man, he was naïve. He didn’t understand why women didn’t like him. He was good looking before his body went to fat.

Even then, the female understood he was a coward.

Harold opened his desk drawer, full of office supplies. There were the heart pills his cardiologist gave him for arrythmia. Enough glycerin tablets, and his heart would stop. The coroner would rule his death an accident.

“No. I can’t do that,” Harold said.

There was a knock at his door. It was the auditor, again. “See these files? The dates are wrong.”

“Oh—”

“I’m putting you on report. The State will determine whether or not you can keep your job.”

“Thank you for your service.”

“What?” The auditor asked.

“You are a credit to this institution.”

“Up yours.”

Harold woke up. He was young. He was lying next to his beautiful wife. He had taken his first drink the other day when he started his government job.

“Honey.”

“Yes, dear?”

“I need to quit my job.”

“What will you do?”

“I’m going to be a writer.”

“How will we make it?”

“You can get a government job. By the way, let’s not have any kids.”

“Those are sinful thoughts,” she said.

“Let’s live in sin.”

The End

He came up to me, my friend

and he said, “My life’s not working out.”

“Tell me about it.”

I want prestige, fame, wealth beyond my wildest dreams, women, dames…”

“You said women twice.”

“That’s because I want women twice as bad as everything else.”

“Okay. Setup an online dating site.”

“But you don’t understand… I don’t just want any woman—only the most beautiful woman.”

“That’s hard to find—how will you know?”

“Basically—all the guys will want her, but she is too good for them, and chooses me.”

“I see. Are you crazy?”

“Probably. And my goal is impossible, because I can’t undo my nature.”

“And that is…?”

I adjust to the seasons, like a hibernating grizzly bear. In the winter, I get fat. In the spring, I get stressed and eat. In the summer, I want sex—but the women are totally disgusted by me because I’m HUGE, and in August, I finally become a stud, but their interest wanes in Autumn, like falling leaves, and I am left with those bare trees, under a lonely moon, until I go to sleep again.”

“Why can’t you just stay the same?”

“I go with the flow. I don’t swim upstream.”

“You have a heck of a problem.”

“I know.”

“Have you tried religion?”

“Yes. It’s self-flagellation. I don’t know why, but so many guys get-off on confessing their sins in public.”

“It might be good for you.”

“I’ve got enough pain in my life. I don’t need to do it to myself.”

“And how about success…? Why don’t you get a better job?”

“Because they’ll steal my time. It’s mine. All those hours will be wasted, working for someone else.”

“You have a heck of a problem.”

“I know.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to be a writer. I’ll read my poetry to women in coffee shops. I’ll travel. I’ll give talks. I’ll be the toast of the town.”

“Good luck with that.”

Reunions, I hate reunions

and People, I hate people

(I was invited to a home with wonderful people of Indian descent, and I said that to the host—to everyone)

and the head of house looked at me as if I had blasphemed God.

I have always wondered why people are uptight and worried about saying the wrong things…

Now I know

His wife likes me though

She calls me to ask advice about her son, and I do my best

Then, I get invited to her home

but I don’t go.

I should give more effort to cultivating relationships

but

I don’t plant good seeds

and all I get are weeds

like one of my friends, I can’t get rid of

He tells me

that he got a girl’s number who works at the gym

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said. “The problem is, I can’t find her.”

“Did you text her?”

“Yeah, and she doesn’t respond.”

I wonder about the human race

and why people like to run with each other.

I run alone—I always have.

It seems impossible for me to force myself to do many things

I just don’t enjoy them

People know I don’t want to be around them—and this is an insult to their social sensibilities

but I don’t mean it to be

I just love my own company.

The group tries to get me to believe like them

Soon, I have traded my identity

for an ideology

and I am just like them.

Is this bad?

Not if you like

TV

baseball games

celebrities

gossip

and gang-green

raping

with infections

opinions.

It’s not that bad

I exaggerate

but let me tell you

there is no better feeling

than escape

into a good book

I hate most books

because I can’t stand the people in them

or the people who write them

I’m not alone

Children hate to read

because they are honest

Their teachers

are forcing them.

Guess what kids?

They try to do that your whole life

right up until the day you die.

Say something True

the red sportscar is driving out of my soul

I can’t stand the pressure

most days

I shift into second and third

fighting an asshole

on the freeways

their fragile ego tears

so easily

shatters

with a brush

from death

I am cleaning up my life

with death

I roar across the arteries

of cities

like a clot

moving towards the brain

of a patient

who has lost patience, lying there, watching wheel of fortune

STROKE! that fire engine

4th 5th

It feels good

There is nothing better to do

in a nursing home

Faces that have looked at my Face

for 10 years

can’t read me

illiterate, worried, imbeciles

Poker face

with an Ace

up my sleeve

I can’t make money, for big houses

at the end of long driveways

No. It’s Satan in his car

cruising the byways

the symbolism of sex

and never the real thing

RPMs

in the Red

going nowhere

able to conquer, the freeways

Those fake faces, false friendships

dead end jobs, that never die

Those dead people, who don’t believe

You can see my crimes written in the sky

in smog, from my exhaust engine

Exhausted? Not really.

I was just learning how to drive.

People ignore the fundamentals.

Say something True

Young people who rebel

become old people in hell

chanting, marching, wearing t-shirts with their opinions

trapped in traffic

watching the news

giving advice, to themselves

telling stories about when they were young

how they might’ve changed the world

while I

leave my mark on the road

I know I’m not going to change it

I don’t want to

I just don’t want to die

in the slow lane.

Sirens at 6 AM

the women are beautiful

the noise doesn’t bother me

I’m not working

I’m resting

in this quiet apartment

I am a student of math

What do I add to my life to make it better?

What do I take away?

Most men believe

adding more, is the solution

They know they are supposed to eat less

but they eat more

“I’ve got a fat ass,” one of them says

It’s his way of making light, of his heaviness

People are afraid of loss

but losing what they have

will make them free.

Men want a wife to go home to

even if, she drives him, to the edge of his sanity

and mark my words

she has a license to kill

How many couples are happily married?

How many people love their jobs?

To be content, without misery

is advanced calculus

I was playing golf, yesterday—quite badly

I hooked my shot, on number 13

Two X, bad cops picked up my ball in their power cart

One, was smoking a long cigar and the other wore a gold bracelet

“What are you playing?” He asked.

“Srixon.”

“Oh—you mean Srixon. You probably hit it bad because you can’t pronounce it right.” He threw my ball on the grass and drove off.

“That wasn’t very nice,” the gay guy in my group said.

“He’s probably been drinking,” I sighed.

The wind was blowing white clouds across a blue sky on the green golf course. It was 70 degrees.

Will a better job improve my life?

Will a girlfriend make me feel better?

No. It’s obvious, that the less I have, the better I feel.

Being less than zero, allows all the ones

to add to my negativity—

those beautiful ones

enter my emptiness

where I have made room

to become full

again.

The women at work are competing with me

but I have no desire to play their games

One, saw me in the hallway yesterday, and redirected her route, away from me

I am a numbers guy

and I am not offended by her, not wanting to add to my company

One, told me, “Lisa is doing more evaluations than you.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah. I had lunch with her this weekend.” She told me.

She said this like, other people know you’re an asshole now.

There is…

a time to sleep

a time to die

and

a time to move on

My time might be coming due

All the perfect predictable numbers I created

will be scattered

by randomness

while I try to order them

like a child building a sand castle

with careful accounting

on the beaches of contentment

when the waves come in.