Religion? What it means to me, or thereof?

Religion

               The subject I don’t speak of, for fear of getting into fights.  We are all born into this world, and most of us are ingrained that something made us.  There are a few I’ve met, some lonely dark souls whose parents told them there was nothing, there was no God, no Allah, no higher-power, and these friends of mine were so lost.  This particular friend had no idea, no grasp why I believed in a God that would never appear to me.  But one Christmas, as he spent the holidays with me and my family, he expressed that he want to go witness a mass, a eservice to see what made religious people so stronger. I didn’t want to bring him along, because I thought he was only making fun of my family, but he confessed that he found it intriguing, that I could believe in something, have faith in something I’ve never seen.  He told me he wished his mom had raised him differently, because he felt so alone in the world.

               I myself grew up a Christian, but I saw from an early age, that many Christians hated each other.  We had Catholics hating Baptists hating Presbyterians hating Jehovah’s witnesses hating Mormons hating Lutherans hating episcolepians hating Methodists hating so forth.  The sad thing was we were all Christians who believed in Christ, but each faction had the “right way to heaven,” so all others were going to hell.  But is it not Jesus, peace be unto him, who said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind’ This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”  Matthew 22:37-39

               To love your neighbor was what Jesus Christ taught, but all these Christians did not know how to love each other nor their neighbor.

               So I studied other religions.

               There was Buddhism, which I greatly admired, for the teachings were the same, to love others as you love yourself.  To give, because that I all there is to life.  I don’t know much about Buddhism, but I’ve seen many books arguing over Buddha like the Christians argue over Christ.

               And Al Islam, I have nothing but respect for.  Muhammad brings the same qualities as Jesus or Buddha, but Muslims get a bad rap because they have been viewed as a violent religion as a people who will kill you if you don’t follow their faith.  But this is not true; it is the humans, those that practice these religions with their upbringings, with their values and beliefs that make religions bad.

               One evening I came from studying Islam with my Muslim brothers, and one of them being black sat at the table with me as were talking.  He trusted m, for having a good soul to understand him.  Shortly thereafter, another black man, a Christina, came and sat down with us.  He told me of an instance of what was troubling him and I helped him. (The Christian man with his matter.)  Once the Christian left, the Muslim took ahold of my arm and told me “I don’t trust that man, hush up around him because I don’t trust him.”  I heard what he told me and I was befuddled in my brain.  We had just come from a spiritual teaching where we were taught that Muhammad, peace be unto him, spoke that we must love our fellow man, no matter what.  What we had just heard and listened to, not even 30 minutes before, was out of this man’s head for he had his prejudices on again.

               This is the problem I have with religions.  They all want to be right and they all want to go to heaven, and it is okay to damn those with different beliefs because they are all heathens.  No, this is not okay, because I believe to love your fellow man, no matter what.

               It doesn’t matter what color you are, what sun you pray to, it doesn’t matter what animals you sacrifice or what animals you don’t eat.  It doesn’t matter what God you praise, what Allah you revere, or what Buddha you want to be like, the only thing, the only action that religion should teach, for it doesn’t matter what religion is and what it means or conveys, the best thing us humans, the only action us humans should partake in, is loving each other.

               Religions only breed hate among us humans.  Rituals and practice are good because it helps the man remember what we are praying for, but mainly religion tears us humans apart when we should love each other fully and completely.

               Now you should practice and have faith in your religion, because it is good to be live in something, to believe in this higher power, because without the higher power, we humans would be so lonely.  But don’t go hating others for having different beliefs. 

               We are all stuck on this ship of life and the best thing, the best action we can take is care and love each other, because we all live on this planet.  Forget about religion, but take the core beliefs and love one another.

woman

Women

               Oh woman, how I love her so.  I love her lips.  I love her hair, which wraps around my throat, her lips I feel against my neck, her slender frail hands, holding on to my soul, her tongue teasing me with honey to my ears, her feet, walking over the earth, leaving footprints on my spiritual being, her legs, recently shaven, smooth against my chin, I love her thighs as they flex with muscle, with raw power, and her pubis, her life, making me like a kid waking up in the morning wanting my Saturday cartoons, wanting my cereal.

               Her lips, I always though I needed to satisfy.  I’d sit under trees, amongst downpours of tears, fixating on her lips which I thought I was so unworthy of feeling against my plump lips.

Her hair, long or short, I was afraid to touch, afraid that I would damage that beautiful hair which had stories in each ink of life.  Afraid to reach out, I always let woman and hair go through my grasp.

               Her lips again, I ran away from because I thought she would only bring me heartache and grief.  I’d rather not have these bad emotions in my heart, so I ran away, shunning beautiful women, and pushing wonderful women away from me.

               Her slender frail hands, I’d push away, when they wanted to hold me, when they wanted to care for me, but I was too “into” myself, that I believed I was evil and not worthy of any woman’s touch, even when all they wanted to do was help and love me.

               Her tongue, chastising me with words, for actions I’ve done.  I’ve used my tongue in return, only to hurt her more than she ever hurt me.  When woman had positive things to say to me of love, I only showered them with words of hurt, words of shame, words that strike at her heart, making her cry.

               Her feet, walking over me, I let her step on me and degrade me.  She wiped her sins all over my face, and I took it, because I thought that was my duty, to take what women threw at, me, to please them was my only desire.

               Her legs, I desired as she came towards me or walked away.  I yearned for those legs, wanting to do the stupidest things, like steal for those legs, like kill for those long legs because late at night I dreamt those legs pushing, stepping all over me and I liked being trampled underfoot.

               Her thighs, I savored with each drop of sweat, rubbing for warmth, wanting them to suffocate me, to sedate me, to trap me into becoming a man worthy of having thighs like these wrapped around my hips, morphing into one.

               Her pubis, I desired.  Writing poems for glances, for touches, because I was never good enough to satisfy her.  I wanted her pubis to make me happy, but I thought I could never make this pubis happy, because I wasn’t worthy enough, I wasn’t big enough, I wasn’t enough.

               This was how I treated women, why sometimes I hated them, because I was searching for happiness in a woman, and no woman, no body, nobody but myself can give me happiness.

               And those women I didn’t care for treated me the same way I treated these “highly” women of my dreams.  I didn’t care for their love, so I got their love in return, because we were both equals and worthless.  While those women I loved, why they are still statues behind walls of glass that are impossible for me to ever reach and touch.

               But I had to realize that no woman will ever bring me happiness.  Yes they can satisfy my pleasures, but only I would make myself happy when I realized that the power was in me.

               That was the secret I found for my troubles with women.  Women don’t care if I can’t satisfy them, or put them up and dress them like a princess or queen.  Women want love, want you to love them, want me to love them, for they in return can love you back, can love me back.

               There is nothing mysterious about women, like I once thought.  I know now, that to love women, to love all women, of all ages, of all sizes, of all colors, women of the plains, women of the south, women with fiery tongues, with open hearts, women with large breasts, with small breasts, women with no breasts, because women give us all that one thing we start with.  For without women we wouldn’t be here, for without women, I would have no life.  Then I would not have learned what love is from a mother; and I want to live, for to live is to love.

precis for The Narcissist

The Narcissist

 

 

3.  The Client has the right to voice opinions, recommendations, and grievances in relations to policies, services, and treatment offered by the facility in accordance with the guidelines established by the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) and/or Gateway without fear of restraint, interference, coercion, discrimination or retaliation.  The client has the right to complain directly to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

 

“It takes two people to make you, and one people to die.  That’s how the world is going to end.”  As I Lay Dying, Faulkner 38.

 

“Why is light given to him who is in misery, And life to the bitter of soul, who long for death, but it does not come, And search for it more than hidden treasures; Who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they can find the grave? Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, And whom God has hedged in?  For my sighing comes before I eat, and my groaning’s pour out like water.  For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me.  I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, for trouble comes”   Job 3: 20 – 26

 

“So, Shoot it up, shoot it up, it just don’t matter, when you’re resisting anyway.”  The Ballad of Johnny Butt, Sublime, Bradley Nowell.

introduction to the Narcissist

Introduction

 

While millions of people sleep their dreams of reason, while many wake up and go to work around the city, the county, the state, the country, the world, commuting back and forth, putting their kids in daycare or dropping them off at school, hustling and bustling;  plenty of responsible people doing their part every day to keep this machine of society rolling day in and day out, getting paid minimum wage for hard meaningless jobs to getting paid top dollar to work in places where lies are repeated to keep most people at bay, I find myself, at the glorious age of thirty-three in the lowest of places any person can find themselves in: in solitary confinement.

               This was not the life I intended for myself in my innocent youth.  I had dreams of being an astronaut, dreams of racing between the faraway stars, further dreams of being a ground-breaking scientist, but never did I have dreams of being a lowly criminal, locked up because of his own bad habits that had been garnered over the years of living on the lowly scraps of life, thrown around here and there because there is no respect to be given to people who live with no respect for themselves.

               I have no one to blame but myself for being in this predicament.  I have followed my own bad way of life, and it has led me to this dark corner of the universe.  Here in this spot, I am alone.  I have no one to talk to, no one to tell my secrets to, no one to hear my story, this very story that I am writing.

               For too long, I have led a life in which I never existed.  I never believed my true self was out in this world, so I went along with whatever life had to offer me.  I never took life by its reigns and chose what I wanted to live.  Rather life lived it for me.  What life threw at me, I rode like a plastic horse on a carousel where someone else was paying my fare.

               When was I going to come off of this fake horse and touch the ground on my own?  When was the ride and funny music going to end so I could open my eyes and see that I was on the carousel all by myself?

               It is like Descartes, when he is in solitude in his little house for the winter and he is not content. He felt that he did not exist in this world until he latched on the notion that he was able to think for himself.  Once he was able to think for himself, once he was able to just think, he knew that he existed, because his mind was working on its own. (Cogito, Ergo Sum)

               This is what has transpired to me.  I thought deadly for so many years that when I was actually thinking for the first time, I was so close to my own death and madness.  I had taken off the pornographic film of life around my eyes and was able to see life for the first time, but the sad thing was that now, in solitary confinement for who knows how long, I was never going to taste life for what it really was.  For what I saw life was now, was so far from my grasp, my dreams were o no comparison to what I was missing in real life.

               What was different for me this time was how I was going to live my life, if ever I got out of this solitary confinement?  I have read many books on many subjects, but I never felt any wiser for having read them.  I’ve lived many lives in my thirty-three years, but I had on so many masks in all the facets of life, that now with my real face on, I did not know how to truly live in this mad and sane world.

               I was to be a new born babe in an old body coming to terms with life, trying to survive in a world with all the gunshots of life littering my dull and senseless body.

               I have walked to hell, been there a while and made it back to the rocky ground.  I have found out that I prefer the broken path to the path that has always been paved in gold.

               But the greatest gift I found out when I came back to the rocky path was that this whole time, this whole life I thought I was dead, in reality, I was breathing because I was alive and I was happy to be alive.  What I thought was lifelessness, was actually experience behind my ears.  You see, wisdom isn’t gained from reading a book, but rather wisdom is earned from living a story full of mistakes and how to live on with the mistakes committed in life.

               The whole time I spent searching for myself, through poems and words and music, it took me being by myself to understand that I love my fellow man, that I need my fellow woman, because without humanity, then I can never be a complete human being.  None of us could ever be complete by remaining by themselves, but with friends, family, compatriots, even enemies, we can tell each other of our life’s journeys and feel complete with living.

               I may not have lived long as some have lived, but what I have seen is through my experience, my life through my eye, I see how this world turns and this is how I perceive of that world.  We all have different opinions and ideals; there are just a few of what I have seen so far in my young life.

essay on writing

Writing

I’ve spent a good deal of my time writing and what has it got me?  Arrested and persecuted for writing out what I have swimming fast all over my raging brain.

Ever since I was young, I spent days writing of the summer months. I spent nights writing of the darker months.  I wrote everything I had in my heart, from the darkest, evilest desire, to the positive sunshine that helps souls grow into responsible men and competent women.

               At a young age, I discovered writing as a talent that God had given me.  I understood that I was to live the life of a writer, a poet, a philosopher and endure loneliness on a level most normal people never know about.  I wanted to be a mystic, someone with great words to read, someone to be remembered by many.

               There were many authors I emulated, too many for me to write in this place, but a sampling of Nietzsche, Camus, Kierkegaard, Saurraute, Eco, and so forth populated the shelves in my head.  These were the men and women who taught me everything about life and in turn about writing, which was my life.  If I had to make up my own synonyms, life and writing would go hand in hand.

               I saw the horrors some of these writers went through just to get published.  Some of them never even got any recognition when they were alive; a discovery of their genius sometimes came years after their own measly deaths.  So I told myself that I would witness those same horrors on a personal level.  Be careful what you wish for, because when it becomes actuality, those horrors are really quite horrendous.

               I came from a school of writing, which was a realism, that if I am to write something, I feel I have to experience those thoughts first hand so I would be able to write them for posterity.  Now there are lots of writers who can write without experiencing the life that they had wrote and made sound so real, and I am not saying that these writers are any less, but when I came to my own writing, if I was to write of being in solitary confinement, well I had to be in solitary confinement so I would be able to know the horrors of being locked up in solitary so I would know what I was writing about.  There was a writer who said that a day in solitary confinement was like a thousand years because one never knows the time, nor can one follow the daylight, for there were no windows to see outside to see it the sun was out punishing the workers with heat or if the moon was out lying and enticing the poets that were left to be fooled.  I always thought of that saying, but when I experienced the sad solitary confinement for my stupid self, I felt how slow time moved everywhere.  It was just like Einstein’s theory of relativity, time moved so slow for me, it did seem like each second was one hour in comparison.  It was like the hourglass of time was moving so slowly, where I could hear each granule of sand fall into the bottom part of the hourglass, which chimes so loud, my ear drums hurt with each fall of microscopic sand falling.

               Writing to me is a realism that I have to get to the bottom of.  Sort of like my own mystery novel and I am the detective with the task of solving the timeless crime.  I treated writing as my child, and everything I wrote, from pieces of poetry to never quite finished novels, I treated all my writing as if it, this materialistic paper was my own flesh and blood child.  They were not real fruit as God would have me to bloom, but I treated these words that came out of me as something special, as something that was childlike, or something of that sort.  Contrary to what most people think about me, I truly love everything that comes out of me.  Like you love your children, from the beginning spermazoa and egg fertilization, I love my children from the moment I set ink to paper.  They are my form of love and expression.  Where mothers speak well of their children even when they do nothing but harm other humans, for a mothers love, a true mother’s love runs so so deep.  My children have a freedom of speech and an even further deeper freedom of expression.  Just like you let your children grow and yet you still love them no matter what, even if they grow up to become murderers or mass hysteria terrorists, I too love all my children, even if they are born of blue or black ink.

               Be they good or bad, I still love my children, nevertheless.  Even the bad ones, which get me into trouble, I love with all my true heart.  They come from my body, they erupt from my brain, they are set loose from my fiery loins, and even from my own frail and battered heart.  Even in prison, I stand behind my terrible, but lovable words.  I , who have been sent to prison for writing bad poetry, for being a damn poetaster, I still love writing so much because it is the gift that God has given to me.

               Back to the question that was first asked.  What has writing got me?  Besides the worldly view of being imprisoned for writing what made me content, my writing has brought me a freedom so huge that I have no idea how to express this sentiment.  A great freedom.  Freedom of the soul, of the mind, of my heart.  What nothing in the world have ever brought me, writing had brought me understanding.  It has helped me to love those around me and it had helped me to comfort many around me.  Writing has brought me a means of expressing myself that no one can understand.  Still this does not deter me from writing, because writing helps me write down all my loose cannon thoughts, ready to blow up anywhere they are written or read.  Writing has helped me become more human because it is in writing that I can express myself and it is in writing that I can write down my thoughts and I can be compared to other writers that have had the same sentiment as me.  You see I am not really as lonely as I though, for I have become part of a family of writers in which we are all treated equally.  A true democratic Platonic state.

               Writing has brought me peace.  Peace to my turbulent soul, which never knew which way to row until I sat with all my pens and reams of paper and felt at ease at the overflowing of my sins I, could set to countless pages of writing.

               Writing has brought me creativity in a life that I thought was as dead as Edgar Allen Poe.  I am now able to sit and create new worlds of imaginations with the mere swish of my ball-point pen.

               But the greatest gift that writing has brought me is simply life.  Writing has helped me realize that I am a living and breathing person.  Writing has shown me that I am a human with an original mind of my own, and if it wasn’t for writing, I don’t know who I would be.  Writing have given me a purpose in my life, for writing has given me exactly that what I have been looking for; life.

From the depths of my heart

From the tips of my fingers

Strings playing your praise

A love unrehearsed

A love in force in the

Edges of this beautiful town

With beaches & suns

Cooking my tongues

A forgiving thumb of

My lonely soul, my lonely soul

Crying to you this wonderful night

--

Away from the moon, wondering

What makes the world turn

Away from the sun, pondering on these

Words read so early

Away from the trees, thinking of the

Psalms living in my body

Away from the water, free-flowing, my

Freedom locked

Away from my family, bringing myself

Back to your forgiving arms

Away from a way

--

Don’t just hear, but listen,

Don’t just listen, but do,

Don’t just do, but confess,

Don’t just confess, but receive,

Don’t just receive, but believe!

--

My beliefs bring me back to

Your lasting longing love

My unfaultering forever faith fulfills

This holy hunger humbling

--

What am I, Lord, if you are not in my life

Am I able to survive, am I able to write

Am I able to breathe, am I able to receive

Without you Lord, what do I become

Without you Lord, do I know what is love?

Am I able to forgive, am I able to live

Am I able to see, am I able to be

What am I Lord, if you are not in my life

A ghost at three in the morning

A life-storm, where faith is tested

Jesus will always catch me, no matter what

In my midst, he comes ghostly

See him and faith grows, but when life

Gets tough, my faith is shaken, then taken

Do I fall and do I keep my faith

What am I w/o you Lord

You are my shield and sword

& if I should fall you’ll be

There to save me.

three in the morning

A ghost at three in the morning

A life-storm, where faith is tested

Jesus will always catch me, no matter what

In my midst, he comes ghostly

See him and faith grows, but when life

Gets tough, my faith is shaken, then taken

Do I fall and do I keep my faith

What am I w/o you Lord

You are my shield and sword

& if I should fall you’ll be

There to save me.

Lilu, from the start...

Lilu, from the start…

 

Like these days when there are no clouds in the sky

There is no hidden purpose in demanding why

For in the complexity of you long uttered sigh,

My love, it blooms for you in the end of this winter.

 

While the colorful birds return from the Holy South,

My heart it screams for the quiet warmth of your touch –

& no matter the worldly words that pour out from my loud mouth,

It is in my pre-meditated actions that I express my longing love!

 

With big kisses, with small pens, along with the admiration of your eyes

While the curve of your mouth brings Mona Lisa’s perfection to mind,  

Simply, you are my earthly gift, my penultimate priceless piece of art -

And every ‘love you’ you tell me, helps my soul scream with joy!

For sometimes the simplest of stories of the simple girl loves boy,

Always leaves my blood gushing love throughout, beginning with my complex heart.

X

It’s a bar, simply called ‘Abandon All Hope.’  Making my way towards the front and I have a thirst that needs quenching.  All the bottles with shiny liquids swishing in.  there’s not many people in the bar, but two men, dressed in wool cloths sit at the bar.

Going to the bar, the bartender asks, “What’ll be” or something in some tongue I’ve never heard, but understand without hesitation.  

“beer”  I tell him, ‘just a beer.’  Taking a stool, I drink a swig to calm my burning thirst.  Looking at the two men sitting next to me, seeing them real close, one of them looks ugly, the kind that makes you keep staring and the other is quite sympathetic.  Lifting my beer to them as a toast.  One of them spoke up, the sympathetic one.

“what do you think of this place so far, Ivan,” he says with a round cup in his hand and a smirk o his face.

“I think this place sucks,’  I muster.  Looking at the ugly one, the ugly ties to say something, but he starts laughing instead.  A long hard laugh that gets the sympathetic fellow to join him.  They laugh so much, I join in as well, not knowing why.  The ugly one has tears in his eyes as he stops himself from laughing.

“That’s exactly what Dante here said when I frist brought him down here,” the ugly one replied with a smile on his face as well.

I looked at Dante and saw his face, sympathetic with all of us humans.  Looking into his eyes, I saw the stars deep in his eyes, the stars he wrote of.  Looking down at his hands, I stare at his frail hands and wonder how those hands wrote such great poetry.

Looking at the person sitting next to Dante, looking at the ugly one.  I realize who this person is.  It’s the one who wrote the tales of the Aenid.  In Latin he wrote.  The same man who guided Dante down here.  This ugly man laughing with a beer in his hand is Virgil.

All I could do was laugh in unison with the other two.

“Listen, listen, Ivan, I was just discussing with my good friend here what makes a poem nowadays.  In my days, we poets just wrote and our writing had a form, it had rhyme, it had stgructure so much structure, pyramids could be eredcted there.  We rhymed and we were loved for it.  We had poets who sait in dusty rooms while the plague took our families, but us poets still wrote disregarding the miseries for we saw hope in death, hope in life, but we never gave up, that’s the key, isn’t it, not to give up?

“But must we really suffer when writing this poetry?  Must we really live many lives just to write a piece of art?  When I wrote my poem, back in my days, poets were revered…”

“In mine too”

“Yes, in yours too, but back in my time, my dear friends, we had stages to perform our craft.  Stages that held long hours of poetic lines memorized to audiences waiting with silent hearts.   But in my day, poets were a dime a dozen, and in Dante’s, only you educated people survived, am I right, but…”

“Yes, lets get to the point now, since Ivan is here, go ahead, ask him, let’s get a modern”

“Yes, a modern point of view…well we would like to know what you tact on poetry is these days. Since the stage is gone and the epics are no longer being written, what us poets want to kknow, is how you survive as a poet in your day”

On the spot with two great poets, what was there to say but, “by writing, I don’t stop writing, I keep on, looking for what you wrote.  I read what you gentlemen wrote and was inspired by those words.  Thousands of years later, I sit in my room, much like Dante’s and not like Dante’s and with my pen I scratch out my existence and my worries in a world gone topsy-turvy and then I go to a stage much like Virgil’s and not like Virgil’s and I express myself the best way I can.  This poetry that comes fomr you Dante and from Virgil, I still compose in my heart.  And still I read to what crowds come.  In your days you had thousands, but this art is dying and I’m doing what I can to help, let it survive.  Strive on, to endure.”

“I like your answer young man, but let me ask you something else.  Do you believe in muses?  Or where does your inspiration come from?”

I thougt of this and answered my drinking buddies the best way I could.  I picked up my glass and took a drink that satisfied a little bit of my tortured soul for the first time in many years.  Taking a drink and not feeling lonely, having two of my peers waiting for me to give an answer and me eager to talk, spoke up, “Yes, I do believe in muses.”  I said in between two drinks of my disappearing beer.

“Told you he did, now drink up.”

The ugly one took a long drink from his goblet, with driplets falling over the edges of his mouth, onto the rough cloth he was wearing.

“Now what kind of muse, now since you said you believed in muses, I, we want to know if you do have a muse and if you do have one, can you describe it, if you can?

Looking the poets straight on, “I do have a muse and her name is Sara.  She’s this girl I’ve loved since I met her.  I don’t know why, but I’ve been writing for here ears since I’ve met her.  Every poem I’ve written was written for an audience of one and she is the person I’ve been writing these poems for all these long years for.  Every waking moment I have, I think of her, every place I go, I remember her, her face, her smell, her eyes, I know her and she knows me, I love her and she love me.”

“may I intrude real quick.  Then Ivan, if you are writing with a muse, then what are you doing down here?”

“oh I know what kind of love you speak of.  It’s that love that can’t be contained in life, but we try so hard to mimic with words, this love that takes all our lives to live  as, I know what love is and I know your love.”

“Don’t get too sentimental Dante.  We still have somewhere else to go”

“No, Virgil, I was just remembering.”

“Now you did it Ivan, you’ve brought him back inot one of his moods.”

“No its just that we all have our own Beatrice.”

“You just have to say that name, now I’m going to hear Beatrice this and Beatrice that for next hundred years.  Do you know I barely got him to stop talking about his love.  Do you know how long it took me to help Dante forget about her?”

I knew this was a bad idea, but no the great Dante wants to meet his lovesick poet, looking for his love and why because he told me earlier, “I have something to tell him,”  well here we are Dante, what do you have that I so important to tell Orestes, tell him, go on.”

“Ivan, listen to me closely.  Love is fickle emotion.  You can have your life after love, but if love is dead there, who do you keep chasing it.  I followed and searched for Beatric starting in hell, then to purgatory and onward to heaven.  And you know what, when I found Beatrice in heaven, oh yes I was happy, overly excited, but you know where the sadness came in this love, well Beatrice was already dead.  There was no way she was going to come back to earch with me.  These reports of yours, they are saying the same to you.  You can search the underworld for your love, but let me be the bad guy and tell you that your love is dead.  Your love  is not going to return to you.  You might as well give up your search and concentrate on the real problem here.  Ask yourself this, what got you here and how are you going to get back home.  This isn’t life down here.  You can’t solve a problem by finding the mistake, which is your love for Rhonda, but you have to search deep in your mind, in your heart and you must realize why you love the dragon, for its this love of the dragon that’s going to lead you down roads of destruction and many more Rhonda’s along the way.  Once you find the purpose and home of the dragon, it is at that place that you can slay the dragon.  It is does not have anything to do with Rhonda, there is no love between you two, this is all about this love of the dragon.  Once you figure that out, my young poet, then you can make true progress.”  Dante spoke as he picked up his mug and drank down the old suds.

I didn’t want to believe what he had to say.  I had this ugly feeling in my soul.  My teeth were on edge, like millions of drillers wanted to come out onto my tongue.  My mind was flying in all directions thinking of what Dante had just explained to me.  I looked at Virgil and he nodded to me as if I understood what had transpired at this moment.  I looked at the clock and it’s hands were moving backwards.  Looking in my drink and seeing millions of particles floating, lands and other worlds, solar systems in a shot glass, floating in a liquid universe.

1 Cor 1:26 – Consider your own calling brothers.  Not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.

What is my calling, you may ask?  But Lord, I know my calling, and it is to talk to you daily, write for you daily, and praise you daily, the more I do what you want me to do, the more blessings I see, not necessarily personal blessings, but these blessings for my brothers bring joy to my heart as if these blessings were mine as well, but your glories, Lord, these I see and hear every day as well, and just the same, Lord, I see your mercy and chastenment, oh Father, forgive my sins.  So consider what it is what God wants from you, not what you want from God.  It is easy to want things, but to do things, that is an entirely different matter.  There is lots of times I am so lazy I don’t even want to help my brother, but I know there is no difference between a brother in Christ and a brother in flesh.  So I must help out as much as I can, even when I don’t want to; that may be the best time to help someone else.  It is being able to leave that sluggard behind, that old lazy sloth behind and do something, not because I will get paid for it, but to do something right because it is the right thing to do.

               And I remember that I am nobody.  I am not powerful;  I am not of noble birth.  I am a mixture of cultures of bloods indigenous to the Americas, a remnant of the savages that were slaughtered, but even I know my place, have learned my place when it comes to you, dear Father.  Like Gideon, I was afraid, not wanting to speak up.  Like Moses, I am a murderer of lives cut short.  Like Paul, I am a prisoner praising your name every day.  Like Peter, I have denied you more than three times and still you answer when the phone rings.  Like David, I have slept with married women and lied behind the husbands back.  Like Solomon, I have prayed upon false idols, because this woman told me so, or the popular people in this material world worshipped them, and I wanted to be like these popular people. Like Jonah, I have closed my ears to your words, only to be swallowed in jail, in the belly of the beast I prayed, and still you brought me out.  Like Thomas’, I doubted your existence, saying you cannot be real, how foolish of me,  but through this all, Lord, l still have the gift you imparted upon me because you knew before I was born, I was to come back and praise you.  Like this, praise you in places where you are made fun of, where you reside and are thrown away daily, but I know you Lord, and you know me and like that criminal who was crucified next to you, I know you are blameless and that you have died and risen for my sake and because of my faith, I too will be in paradise, happy to be in your presence, happy to see you once again.

when i was seventeen, as a game sent to me by my good friend

At that age, I read the stranger by Albert Camus and that book changed my life.  Since that first reading, I have read that book about fifteen times.  I was working at my first job, which was at the Greenwood Public Library, which is now known as McDonald’s.  Go figure, huh.  I had a car, a brown Buick; a Somerset was what it was.  It was a cool car; I used to go all over the place with it, with my friends and girls.  I remember going to the beach a lot and smoking a lot, and hanging out with these high school girls from my class at Moody High School.  The weird thing is that me and my friends used to hang out with these two girls, two cousins who were very beautiful.  One of them was a skinny girl whom I like a lot, but her cousin, was thin, but had a body that was rocking and rolling.  I remember being at the beach with these girls and I took off my shirt and the cousin, I forget her name, would stand next to me and rub her hand into my hairy chest and tell me how much she liked my hairy chest, because all these other boys she knew from school, were that, just boys.   And me, I was weird about it all.  I was their friend, their close friend when we were not in school.  But when it came to school, for some reason, I was ashamed to be seen with them.  Why, I don’t know, and I still think about that, about why I acted like I did not know who these girls were when I would see them in high school, but outside of school, I was their best friend.  I think that is very strange, indeed.  At high school, I was taking calculus and smoking lots all the time.   My hair was long; it went to the middle of my back.  I used to shave my head and only the top of my head was long.  I knew all these girls that had a crush on me from high school, but I did not do anything about it.  My anxiety was really bad and I did not talk to girls because I was afraid or I was a big pussy.  That is all I can think of when it comes to my relationships with girls.  It was no until a couple of years later that I would lose my innocence and I would think differently about girls.  At this time, I was a philosopher and a poet.  Girls were very far from my mind.  I read Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre.  I discovered Baudelaire in my life and started to read lots of popular fiction, like Grisham and Crichton.  When I was seventeen I was in charge of my life, and all I wanted to be was a poet.  Kind of like J. Keats, but little did I know what my life had in store for me?  I was taking classes at Moody that were audio visual video tape classes.  I used to make commercials, produce them for my class, and I used to snap lots of photos with a bad-ass camera that I bought with the money I was making from working at the library.  I used to play piano very much, and my piano teacher had me accepted at the Berklee College of music, located in Boston, Mass.  I was into Nirvana and Pearl Jam.  I really enjoyed Pearl Jam a lot.  I was getting into that underground indie scene, which would only lead me to even better music in the years to come.  I remember I bought this collection of compact discs, which was everything that John Lennon had recorded as a solo artist.  It was a compilation compact disc which consisted to four separate compact discs.  This was the most important buy that I made in my young life.  I loved these recordings so much.  I remember these crushes I had on certain girls, who would come in and see me at the library all the time.  They would look at me and ask my questions, and they would wait for me to ask them out.  But I was a naïve and stupid little boy, not realizing that these women were throwing themselves at me, so I ignored their advances and wondered late at night, why I did not have a girlfriend, and I wondered if I would ever have one.  My sexual tastes were questioned, and I wondered if I was a homosexual, not that I have anything against them, but I was curious about myself at that time, because I could not talk to girls, but I was able to talk to boys, any boys without any trouble.  Later on in my life, I discovered I was not gay, but that is at another age in my life.  When I was seventeen, I was already snorting things and popping pills like nothing.  I remember shortly before my eighteenth birthday, I had smoked a reefer, a marijuana stick, and I locked up my door, and when inside to my calculus class.  About twenty minutes into the mathematical lecture, by a teacher who thought he was the Jaime Escalante of South Texas.  My calculus teacher had all these sayings on his wall, from ‘poder es querer’ to a bunch of sayings that screamed Chicano pride.  What I do remember most about my teacher’s wall, was this long picture from M C Escher that always caught my eye.  Well, twenty minutes into this mindless number game called calculus and the security guard came in and asked for me by my name.  I went outside and saw police searching my car.  I was asked to open the car and the police dove in and searched my car thoroughly.  Fortunately nothing was found, except for two little seeds in the back seat.  My car smelled like weed because I and my two friends had just burned one on the way to school.  The vice principal at that time, told me that he did not know what was going to happen to me, but he sent me back to class and told me that I had better change.  That night was a Friday night, and I decided to cut off my beautiful long hair, to show the principal and all others who know about my predicament that I was capable of changing and that I needed a chance to prove to them that I was a good person.  Obviously it worked, for the vice principal called me into his office and told me that they were not going to pursue the case against me because for one they were just seeds, but also because I had shown initiative that I wanted to change my life.  This was the first time I lied about my usage, and it would not be my last.  I guess this was the first time that I was able to lie and get away with it, and use the knowledge to my ability, and get what I want.  It was not until four years later that I found out that what I was doing had a name already in the philosophical world, and this knowledge was very acute in my actions.  There are a lot of other things that I did at this age, but I’ll save that for next time.

16

.

She was tired.  Covered in blood, none of it her own, she replayed in her tired mind all the times she could remember the aliens picking her up.

            As much as she fled her destiny, it was always there, behind the cars, the capitol, the town lake, the water towers, moon towers, Pease park, the bark trees, the barbecue joints, the dirty men, the old dresser, the bathroom stall, under her bed, in her trunk, in her pillows, in the Gutenberg Bible, behind the frat boys faces, in all the syringes, the pale faces she woke up to, its always been there, etched in the stars.

            And just like the stars appear nightly, without fail, her stars came to her, right on time, not a minute too soon nor a minute too late.

            All good things come to an end and life on Earth was now over for Danielle.

            She looked to the east, saw the sun-light creeping over.  She looked up and winked.

            And there sat Danielle, on the corner of Cesar Chavez and Congress, at a bus-stop waiting for her spaceship to take her away, at twilight, weary.

XV  The Devil’s Backbone

 

Six months ago, Damian and I were driving to San Antonio to go party at Fiesta.  Fiesta is a two week mardi-gras-like party that is held in San Anto every April, annually.  It is a great time.  If you’ve never been there, you should go there once in your lifetime.  It is something you will never forget.

            However, it was a late night, and we were driving to San Anto at about three in the morning, the witching hour,  trying to reach Fiesta.  I had been up on meth, obviously my favorite, and I wanted to get away from all the shit Austin was throwing my way.  The bills were piling up, from credit cards to breaking contracts with leasing agents, to unpaid traffic citations, not showing up to court, in a timely manner, or even in a timely dress, not showing up to court-ordered probation, dealers wanting money or pussy or both, and me, feeling wigged out, again, for the umpteenth time, wanting to quit using, but not having the willpower to actually quit;  therefore I decided a little down time with my own folks would do me some good.

            The expressway is so quiet at this time of the night.  There are hardly any drivers on the freeway.  I made the choice, while we were in New Braunfels to take a little side trip. 

            There’s a little range of hills to the west of this central area of Texas, which is locally known as the Devil’s Backbone.  There have been reports over the years that this is a hot spot for unexplained phenomena.  There were reports, a couple of hundred years ago, that whole complete Indian tribes disappeared in the middle of the night.  The first Texans would write reports of tracking down tribes who were wild one night and all of a sudden, the next morning, no trace would ever be found of a tribe or anybody gathering at the same location where there was a wild party held the night before.

            Maybe that’s where this strange activity comes from.  Magic mushrooms and tall tales.  Eating ‘shrooms with an empty stomach gets you tripping a whole lot quicker than if you had a full belly.  I hadn’t eaten in days, so if I came across a batch of mushrooms, hmmm, hmmm, hmmmm, hummm, I would definitely have an intense trip.

            We took a right, drove for a couple of miles, took a left, hung a quick right, passed over a little creaky bridge, drove for another mile, found the fork in the road, and took the one less traveled by, went down a caliche road, until we finally came upon a green pasture, our magic field.

            We jumped the barb wire fence, which was so flimsy, we could have knocked down the fence with one easy kick, and we went in search of cow patties.  We came across some cow patties right away, and we waved our flashlights over them and saw no mushrooms.  We went in search of more patties when Damian remembered that someone had told him to look under tree growth, under the branches, and you would find some mushrooms there.  I don’t know, but I guess it has something to do with the spores and shade and sunlight.  Or was it moonlight?

            The lights that were so far away, suddenly got closer to us as we ran around in the darkness.  We had no idea in which direction my car was.  What if the lights belonged to a stupid Texan red-neck with a gun.  He would surely shoot us Mexicans and say it was self-defense.  Then they would let him be an honorary member of the Texas Rangers.

            I came to, hours later, as dawn was breaking, and I found myself naked in my car.  Damn, did I do it again, have sex without protection, while I was passed out.  That fucker Damian, I thought, what a scumbag.  I sat up in the back seat and noticed Damian was in the front, naked as well, but he was shaking, as if he was cold.

            “You don’t remember what happened,” he finally said in a hoarse voice, as if he had been smoking or screaming all night long.

            I heard Damian mumble, “It wasn’t me.”  That dumb fuck.

            I turned on the car, got on the road and looked for the interstate.  I knew exactly what had happened the night before, but I was trying to play it off.  I saw what they did to him.  Poor Damian.

14

Claire de lune, moonlight.  Peaceful to the ears.  They keys being hit, the colors intermingling, the lights ring out with tune.  Fish in the air, monkeys underwater.

            “Glad to see you awake, Danielle.  How are you feeling?,”  he asks her, while gripping on the steering wheel, tightly.

            “Oh, I’m sorry” he jumps in his seat, “Hi, I’m Chris, Chris Oetzi.  You may not remember me, but I know all about you Danielle.”

            “What’s wrong Danielle?  I am your friend.  Me and you, we are both alike.  Not like soul mates, but we are the chosen ones.  Ever since you were a baby, man that was so long ago, I remember seeing you, so small on the gurney in the spaceships.”

            “To Austin.  It’s a beautiful town, and I think you should see it one last time.”, he says nonchalantly.

            “Dani, you have lots of questions that need answers.  So let me start with simple ones first.  You are not experiencing hallucinations.  These creature are not a figment of your imagination.  No matter what amount of mind-altering substances you are on, and I feel for you, for what you’ve seen tonight must be horrible in the state you are in.  These beings, or monsters as you described them, are beings from space.  Aliens.  From what space, I can’t tell you, because I don’t know myself-“

            “Is it a dance move?”

            “Not necessarily.  They may come from the heavens, but they care about us.  So they have been studying us humans for the past 20,000 years and especially in the last hundred years, they have been choosing the best specimens to relocate to this new Earth.”

            “You, Dani, you are one of the chosen ones.  The aliens are here for you.  It’s the same with me.  They are here for me, just like they are here for many others.”

            “Danielle,” spoke Chris softly, “there come times in your life, when you might not like to, but you have to accept the facts.  Its like that old adage, ‘sometimes to finish something, one must go against everything to have it accomplished’ or like when you ask why the sky appears blue?  Why love hurts so much with the loss of a loved one.  Sometimes you have to accept life on life’s terms.  Do you understand?

            Danielle, looking out the passenger window, she sees the sun-rays come over the hills, and to her that is peaceful.

            They drove on, while Chris and Danielle sat in silence.  Danielle thought and thought and saw icicles form in the corners of her mind.  They got too heavy with sun-light and they fell back to earth, crashing and breaking into millions of crystals.

            Danielle already had her hand on the handle before Chris pulled to a halt.

            “No matter how far you run away from destiny, fate will always catch up with you.”