four fingers

sleep sleep - where are you now? on Benedryl max strength, ultram, cymbalta and norco - I should have passed out mid OJ guzzle - maybe to add whiskey.


I love for southern France,
with my wife,
beautiful and windy
like chicago,
but more beautiful,
like my wife.

 - this at one thirty-six am, drunk off medications, OJ but no whiskey. - I'll take four fingers of your finest, please.

bathe every open wound

five am -

nothing like not being able to sleep due to the feeling of the skin crawling off the muscle and the emptiness invading broken bones.

A cigarette now and then back into bed -

my skin feels oily, my chest is going to explode.

insomnia - the supposed friend of writers everywhere.

try being a cripple with a cripple walk and then try wearing slippers. Mine have the image of Freud but even that bit of funniness doesn't make them stay on any better when i cripple walk up a single step into the kitchen from the garage where one will fall right after I have outed the lights, followed quickly by the other in a scramble to replace the foot. crawling works better.

there is a child staring at me from the crack I've left in the door. It's not mine.

This is probably disturbing as hell to my wife who is going to read this when she wakes up and realizes that I did not get to sleep at all or at least until six am.

she's just learned that I've been cutting all my meds for weeks now.

this might be disturbing as hell to anyone reading this - or just mildly interesting.
I am not altogether invested in your reaction, although it is nice to read.

I didn't post yesterday because a friend lost someone and I didn't have words to comfort them.


I will probably delete this when I come to my senses later on.




until then - here's a pome...

bathe every open wound

bathe every open wound

murder me a rose

forgive the violations

adolescent pornographic magazine libido

a dirty young man

who has

old bones

who has

atrophied musculatures

who

doesn’t wear helmets

who

awakes in a plain mood

who

scribbles indecipherably

ill lighted back corner lots

who

limps triumphantly

dances incessantly

who

tears wildly at television commercials

who has

piles of unpublishable odes and laments

who

walks around with guns in pockets

who

gives to the rich

gives to the poor

gives lavishly to self

who

send out letters, mid-twentieth century formatting

who

masturbates feverishly under covers before trying to sleep

who

smokes privately, drinks publicly

who

once, in youth, stole a copy of John Lennon’s “imagine”

who

answers what, who, why and when

with why, what, who and now

who

walks lonely at night for no reason

who

cuts himself to cut out the childhood monster still haunting in dreams

who

quietly ignores the family dynamic of drama

who

sits up hours on end listening to poets in their own voices

who

uncompromisingly refuses to get up until all stiffness is diminished

who

rides motorcycles at 75-80 mph in route to therapy sessions

who has

forgiven people their existence but holds self at higher standard

I’ve given up

offer me that flower/rose from you garden

the one you promised me.

Vivaldi gives me a hard on

but as I sit here and feel a mysterious depression untie me, instantly disbanding my intentions.
searching for the door now as it may be reopened that medications have washed out of me, forgetting my need and granting these recent lines of creation.
I've resurrected a bridge but decided to put away the friendship regardless. In some relationships there is no room for differences and the past isn't always what some gratify it to be.

I am not alone and I wish to not leave this room, I wish to seclude and isolate, intolerate the world as it has done nothing specific or even so much as made note of any particular individual existence -
the world is not out to get me - nor anyone else for that matter. (Unless it is and, wow, that guy is fucked.)
a general distaste for the gathered throng is beginning to percolate again, bending my aspect toward something new or different, broken, old or discarded.
something borrowed, something blue
I am climbing at the walls and tilting at the ills that govern my outlook.

my brother, secret hero, our ancient people vilified one another
our ancient people spit blood on ancient corpses.

I already regret saying "thank you".



words

the notebooks,
IBM Selectric IIIs,
et cetera
these are my shields,
protecting me from the world
from you –

My words are the weapons
I utilize

bludgeoning the audience
until they bleed from ears,
mouth, fingertips,
and eyes.


 - Hoc Scripsi

nothing I like more than killing them brutally with my words.

 - J.

After the trip and nearly healed...

I've been back from Florida since Sunday when I promptly went to bed and slept the better of twenty hours. See the abuses to my body of such long days on my feet and the amount of pain control medications (prescribed narcotics and opiates) along with no sleep and catching something from the Hollywood theme park did me in for that day and really the rest of this week so far. My beautiful wife has been dutifully preparing the house for our sons birthday party tomorrow while I basically wandered around in a listless manner reading Paradise Lost and sucking on several Halls mentholyptis. She is better to me than I deserve.
I managed to write four pages this week and a poem to send off to my Aunt Kate who I have come to the understanding is dying and not going to live much longer. This weighs heavy on my heart indeed as she and I are the best representation of what family really is. She also suffers chronic pain and has Cancer to boot - earlier this year she broke her hip and has truly failed to recover from that - there was never any hope of a recovery from the lung cancer which is now spreading like the terrible disease it is.

I don't mean to bring you down. I love this woman dearly and now only hope for her pain to vanish away no matter what that also means.

I realized that I've missed two Magpie photos and am currently looking at this weeks to suss out the right words.

it’s okay to die

I look forward to death

with relief, comfort

and sedated melancholy.
if I look up now

what will I see?

and if I look down?

man was not born for

pursuit of perfection

but to be free;

not tied to breathing,

entrapped by fear.

it’s okay to die.

this is what I tell myself

while it is not too late

for living.

 - Hoc Scripsi

Thankfully, it's fatal

I've not been present for the past two days.  I would ask, beg, plead for forgiveness but I do not believe anyone has been offended or should be if they were.

 there's a painting. Acrylic and ink on four canvasses. 54.5"x43"

The inability to have been present was entirely within my scope of control and I simply chose to not be or rather I spun into a depression that I am still in the grips of but am now choosing to at least be productive to see if that lifts me from the mire I find myself in. This isn't a good time for depression as I typically hate my poetry and prose when I am this down and this depression has chose to not set any new precedents in that vein. Posting may be a doorway out or into an abstract depression which would also be fine.

abstract depression being far more preferable to standard depression

So, here I am in mid post with two photographs that have little to do with anything, but what is this post about anyway? 

I long to write poetry about the beauty of flowers but I either pick them or they wither while the words lie in wait for the impressionistic moment when they will be most needed. So the flower dies and I write vignettes about soup, carpeting and the clean feeling teeth have after eating a fresh apple. 

who wants poetry about flowers? who wants photographs about flowers?

just in case you wanted a photograph of flowers

the sun hides

-    for Jackson


The sun hides
behind clouds &
cold wind
but
   wishes
        to
shine down on
my garden
for the flowers

 - Hoc Scripsi

just in case you wanted a poem about flowers - sort of.

Friday and the rain comes

It's raining finally. Meaning that I will not have to go out and water the lawn, the clouds and atmosphere are pulling together and putting water and nutrients into my half assed attempt at an enviable lawn. Rained all night but that didn't come with the usual good sleep, flashes of lightening, bad dreams, and strange noises kept me awake with one hand on my .45 (the strange noises) but last nights sleep was an improvement over the night before. I had seemingly been cured of the plaguing insomnia or I had nearly been convinced that I had been cured through medication which may have helped the sleep and is now weeping out from my skin as I have suspended this particular prescription. Why? I couldn't write and I was too medicated to be angry about it. I've thrashed most of what I had written while on this last attempt at stability. I realize now that I prefer walking on the fine edge of a razor blade to the life that medication offers you.
Wow, from simple rain to the complex world of anti-psychotics.

The walls may start to bleed again, disembodied eyes may watch me from the windows, the noise is coming back slowly slowly slowly and I'm getting the headaches again here and there, here and there. Still not feeling anger but able to meditate and breathe when the air isn't suffocated from under the glass walls.
- it's the good rain that does it, makes me nostalgic for a more unhinged period of my life.


elements

eating dinner by
two candle power
light
& glasses of water like

goblets of wine
between us,
we eat slowly,

laugh heartily
and are only drowning

in concern

               under
clean skin, made
beautiful by artificial
means.

 - Hoc Scripsi

this is what I am thinking as I am picking the sleep from my eyes.

Had a nap yesterday that didn't feel like a nap and last night didn't feel like sleep until about seven am which lasted until roughly nine. I'd call it sleeping in if the night was full of sleep. Most nights since I stopped taking the anti-psychotic have been fine but the main reason to stop taking the meds has not reversed itself as of yet. My mind is still clouded and the creative drought still exists. There is the other thought that I am splitting my mind between too many things right now to be able to concentrate on new poetry or prose.
I decided this weekend that I ought to have been applying labels or tags to each of my posts for easier reference. As I had not been doing this I am now going back and having to skim each one to apply the labels or tags and avoid the temptation to revise and rewrite passages that are not on the level of quality that the others are. Last night I did over a hundred thus completing the bulk of them and tonight I may finish the project but now I am thinking that I would be better off thinking of about 15 tags and only utilizing those which would mean that I would have to start over. I am not being kind to myself.
This morning is a Tom Waits morning and currently the song "Kentucky Avenue" is playing - brings me to tears every time.
My coffee is good and thanks to Kara for making it this morning when I was refusing to rouse myself. There is nothing better than walking into a kitchen where there is fresh, hot coffee and clean mugs - I drink it black and burn your fingertips hot.

I wonder what is done with medical waste and what will alien anthropologists think when it is found?

I'm almost sure there is a simple explanation but I am too nervous to use Google thinking that flarf may lead me into a new direction where there exists the pornographic denizens of the internet.



Words are dry, meaningless

words are dry,
expression faceless.
the ladybugs came here to die
on my window;
baking in the sun.

a hundred portraits
unhung,
composing city life.

walks along South Michigan
in Chicago;
children think I am homeless
and dirty.

find Buddha in the patrons .
find Buddha in the hall.
find Buddha on the front steps
of MOMA.
je suis beau!
find Buddha in me!

on these steps I ask for a light;
and I am
not thinking that I’m going to write this
a year later, or more, sitting at
my desk. where
ladybugs come to die
on my window.

- Hoc Scripsi

sometimes I miss smelling like an ashtray

In the interests of full disclosure, I don't smoke anymore (much) nor drink (much) as it crosses badly with the medications. I've simply replaced those addictions with others that aren't as cuddly.  

musing

the bottle says,
La Cerveza Mas Fina
actually, I couldn’t
agree more.

my preference is with lime
and I am not alone on this.
or if I am then why does
the store stock them together?
it’s like cigarettes.
20 class A cigarettes…
‘A’ class cigarettes,
I couldn’t agree more.

- Hoc Scripsi

So, the lawn will not mow itself no matter how much I concentrate on wanting it to. I cannot delay it as the heat will surely kill me later and I've got to see the doctors anyway.
I must be kept medicated and safe.
though without the meds I would gladly start drinking and smoking again.

RoadKill zen Journal

The RoadKill zen Journal still has the issue up which contains the poem Togethercoloured.

Theater Underground has stated that they are going to be putting up accepted poem number two soon. I will make you aware.
Theater Underground and I were in talks for me to perform a reading during the intermission to their upcoming (this weekend, next weekend). I had thought everything was a go but have not heard from them since I last did when things were undecided. Well, it's opening night, I've kicked Narcotics or I am kicking them so there are now pain and withdraw issues to contend with and of course, it is too late for me to get ready for such a thing; even if they were going to ask which it is now painfully obvious that they in fact are not.

those be the noonish updates today, do not expect these everyday. Today I wanted to bring attention to RKzJ and to this: I hate when a submission goes out and there is no response. I hate it when people believe it is better to ignore an issue than deal with the problem.
here's what it looks like when I write the poison pen letters.

both of them are loaded.

how am I different.

I am sitting at my IBM Selectric with a loaded .45 wondering about the sounds in the house and the absence of anyone else, wife at the store with her mother and my son in school.

The writing is not going well and I stop after a little bit as I can see that I am not going to find the way in no matter how often I play with the safety, no matter how sharply I push my fingers into my forehead, wouldn't a smarter man simply walk away?
I don't know what a smarter man would do as I am not that smarter man but I think it is time to stop stop stop.
Lie down and try to get the headache gone.
I have decided this weekend to cold turkey narcotics. Don't be concerned - I have prescriptions and have them for the chronic pain but I am so tired of taking them and everything else that I need one gone - the narcotics make me irritable I think so they go.

this should be an interesting weekend.


shade of white!
              you took me by
         surprise.

this is/this was

Last night while ingesting a handful of prescription pain killers and mood stabilizers; my wife sat on the bed, beautiful and alluring, pushing her back on the bed and kissing long passionate depth, we made love, the kiss was among our best the groping was tantalizing , the visceral connection was enigmatically wondrous. In all the world last night there was not another two as deep and powerful as we.
and they say marriage is the killer of intimacy but no, no, no, it is the conjointment that only the profoundness of we know. My wife saved my life, she was the turning point between train wreck and the self I am. All my poetry is for her, this one is also dedicated to her.


this is/ this was
            to my wife, Kara



here, this is/ this was
the scene of our love
left only now to misshapen sheets
and my hands on your hands
    hands of a body
    your body
    eyes of windows immensity
    after evenings hour
    your moonlit being

here, this is/ this was
the scene of our love
and configuration of sleeping bodies
     head to head
     on cased feather pillows
dreamt singing voices
     of your gravity
     after midnights hour
and my obeisant being

this is
this was
the scene of
out love
now a windowless immensity
after mornings hour
and your vanished being

- I wrote this

Untitled (the sane)

The sane point fingers
    to keep themselves appearing sane
    to stay their definition
The glamorous point bejeweled fingers
    to keep their proportions
    as the definition of beauty

Well, stop pointing your
    sticky fingers at me
I will not obsess your definitions
I am comfortable in my own
    imbalance 
and deformed self


- I wrote this


This was previously published in GSR. I was thinking this morning about my deformed self while I was waiting for the meds to kick in and naturally my mind went to this poem again.
So, enjoy and as always - feel free to comment, question and what have you.

Weekends

I've decided that I want to spend my weekends playing chess with my son and not necessarily post more than once here. I ask for no-one to be offended as I am not entirely sure I would be able to have any sort of appropriate reaction to such a thing. Not sure, I think it entirely depends on the state of my medication at the time.
Anyway, posting here doesn't take long depending on the length of the poem I am posting - I do not cut/copy/paste - I retype and hope that I have the sensibility for something new in it. Mostly I like them or do not in the state they are and they remain unchanged.


Go here.

or here  it's last year but there are two there and I like them.

here is good as well. Again, last year but the one here I've always had affection for.

these made me feel good.

I will post more in the future when I am feeling this lazy again.

That's Charlie. I'm Jhon and you are going to have an excellent day.