Tobasco Black and White

As if I was here just to do this

hopelessness so deep
darkness so pure
I,
A shadow that sees no light.

Light, my enemy that illuminates the despair in every corner of my life

Life, my nemesis that causes the agony, pain and the darkness

Darkness, my mentor that intensifies and hides the emotions,

emotions-they say are the spice and flavor to life
flavor and spice to enjoy
the sweet and spicy-hot

yet I feel only the burning pain

like an ounce of Tobasco in each eye
Agony, 
torture, 
no escape from the suffering

eyes watering
gallons of tears fall trying to ease my misery, 
but there is not enough water in the Colorado River
to flush out my pain
wash away my loneliness
or erode the tiniest bit off my Thick Layer of Despair.

From sheer and  utter exhaustion finally my tears stop,  
and i awake to the television

... And the TV shows lions killing a zebra,
Momentary violence
a little struggle
then as life bleeds out of the black and white animal,..
.. Calmness washes over the agony,
and I see the Zebra smile.


his smile flashes to me an awareness I have never felt before and at that moment it becomes crystal clear that

life is not Gray and colorless
Life is not many different flavors of sweet and spice

Life is simple
simple like salt and pepper.

Black and white with a little bit of red,

and like the wild dogs of africa know their place at the feast of the dead zebra. I too know my place and now completely understand.

Agony is black
pain is black
my life is black

There is no white and my colorful crimson is trapped deep inside.

I embrace the black

and I,
I decide
decide to give in to the black and let my crimson out.

momentary violence
a little struggle
crimson red flows down the drain

my body turn white
calmness washes over my agony
and I smile my last smile

Friendly fire

and to be able to say
I was there
and I saw
and I felt
and I, made a difference
after the fact

is far more important than the momentary pleasure of my selfishness at your expense

yet it is the moment I live in

and somehow I forget the future was coming

and the guilt of the past
And the fear of the future
became so overwhelming

There was nothing else to do but shoot myself after the rampage was over.

new year first post

and life is
and stress becomes important
and family
and work

and my words have left,...
and my emotions with no where to go look
look for my monster

my monster, my savior during these times.
but then there is
life
and stress
and family

so even my monster can not thrive.

the words trapped
the body shuts down

and I try
and I work
and I family
and I stress

but I don't write!

so my monster wants to live and wants to save me,

but there is no time
no hope

only cycle
work, family, stress
family, stress, work
stress, work, family


so debilitating there is no room for
no room for words
no room for monsters
no room for sharing feelings.

no feelings is where my monster thrives
and yet it has only air to breath, but no food to eat.

and the family needs food
and the work needs my intellect
and the stress needs nothing.

nothing is what I have written in too long.

I long for my words or my monsters to save me.

I hope my words come back,

I miss them terribly so,

This must be what a mom felt in the 1800's when her 15 yr old boy went west to make his fortune.
She saw innocence and love and hope and joy, ride out with the sunset, never knowing really if she would ever see him again.

muse

and my muse is in such chaos
so much that I can't connect with his energy

his piercing eyes that the world revolves around are grey and lifeless

his laughter so contagious is now contained deep in a dark grey lifeless place where no music can survive.

my muse knows he is the lost one,
the drifter,
the one carnation in a bouquet of roses.
the race horse trying to pull a plow

he is beautiful and strong in his own right

but like a locomotive with no tracks, he can go nowhere.

my muse and i have been linked for many lives
I was hoping this one would be the one where we could get it right.

But this life is far from over. There may still be some hope.

and things were going OK for a while
but then this or that disrupted the life line.
the tether that held us together
that breathing tube that connected to the space ship broke and life started to escape.

all we could do is try to cling to the outside of the  ship until one could save the other.

And I was almost too late and we both almost died,
but we are now so close to helping each other to breath we just need to hang on
hang on for re-entry
hang on for dear life
hang on to each other

the turbulence in will be rough, but we have been through worse

Individually and together
times hard
hard enough to cause the outsiders to say that neither would survive.

my muse we have so much more to go
and everyone in your life needs you
needs your piercing eyes
needs your contagious laughter
needs you to be the proud carnation amongst the common bouquet of roses.

One day in October

And they worked 8 hours in a day
and had families
and had friend
and went to parties on the weekend
and the single men courted the single women
and the parents protected their young
and the teenagers tried desperately hard not to get into trouble
and there were funerals with loss and sadness
and there were births with joy and pride.

But times were hard
and things expensive
and the economy no so strong

and business must seek to streamline
and business must be efficient and reduce waste
and create processes, easy to follow, easy to maintain.

And October 1941 a plan worked on for months was ready to be approved
The old methods were so labor intensive
old methods that create such waste
old methods that take so many just to complete one project

but the new plant soon to be approved would
reduce staff requirements by one third
efficiently re-use energy to reduce cost of buying external fuel
Cost savings by almost 40% could be achieved once full production was achieved
Centrally located on the major intersection of many rail lines to move goods in and out
without the need of the current multitude of truckers and workers.

But approval of the new plant was just the first step, and work still needs to be done.
so the old methods were used
and on October 29, 1941 the team assembled to take care of the project at hand.

and on this date, which is only 6 days after the blueprints for Auswitz was approved by Adolf Hitler

2007 Men
2920 Women
4273 Children
Were shot to death in Kavnas Lithuania.

one dollar an hour

The 10 year old boy smashes a TV as hard as he can.
Shattering plastic
Shattering glass
Shrapnel barely missing eyes
sometime cutting bare skin

Proud of the destruction
The TV's guts split wide open
He feels accomplished

I the onlooker thinks, such a waste,
he should be able to do something better with his time than risk losing his sight for a moment of pleasurable destruction.

He digs through the rubble of the split open TV and sees there is more work to do,
and he lifts his skateboard high over his head to smash some more..

His tool for the destruction was his skateboard?

His skateboard.?

the wood now crushed.
the wheels now bent and useless

useless wheels make the skateboard useless.

Except of course for smashing up TV's

TV's found just laying there, almost like they want to be destroyed.

If only he had a hammer, he would not have needed to use his skateboard.

but the 10 year old boy does not have a hammer

you see that  12 year old boy over there to your right,..

the one there smashing that computer monitor,..

notice he is using a hammer,

the 12 yr old stole the hammer from the 10 year old.

Its Okay by the 10 year old,
there isn't much he can do about it anyway
he is busy working on his own destruction

And truth be told

The 10 yr old boy stole the hammer from some random 8 year old boy.

This is just life,
It is a normal day in Africa or China or some other third world country

Where the civilized nations dump their trash

Where toxic waste shortens lives,
and cuts
and blinds
and destroys hope
and forbids childhood

Where kids need to work 10 hours a day

just to make less than
less than

one dollar an hour.

good people

The conversation was light and casual.

conversation of adult men who were strangers just 30 minutes ago,

topics include adventures of our past, politics, and of course women

then the conversation turned to cities we had visited and people we met there

and one man said "they treated me pretty good, those were good people"

as soon as he said the phrase "good people" the mood changed from light and casual to heavy and quiet.

we all knew what he meant.

those few words spoke volumes of frustration

frustration of being just a man.

a hard working man

a truck driver moving the nations goods

a man with a loving wife

a man that wants his kids to be happy and successful

a man who has close friends

a man that enjoys watching football


The words " those were good people",
screamed out how many bad people he had endured
people that wouldn't let him sit where he wanted to.
people that looked down on him
people that thought less of him

"those good people" were men that understood, he only wants what other men want

conversations with others

love of friends and family

courtesy and respect,
to be looked at in the eyes when you speak to him.

he is just a man.

he does not want to be spit on

he does not want to be paid less than

he does not want to be feared

and most of all he does not want to be called "nigger".

strokes of art

Art is many different things to many different people.

in art,

everyone sees something different
some see the colors
some see the splotches
some see the emotions
some see the lines
to me and my canvass
all i see are the strokes
the individual strokes and how best to fill the canvas with them.

Like with many artist,

what you see is only the surface,   there is a deeper meaning,

Let me share with you for a moment,...

you see this, this gentle stroke means love
the slight wave in this stroke here is fear
and these strokes, the ones that seem so to stand above the rest,

they mean loneliness

and the two long strokes
the same shape and
the same color with
the same depth on both left and right,

they mean that I have control.

There is a Chinese Hanzi, the concept means,.. kind of,  .. lost love, a deep love that hurts,

The canvas over here shows that character;
these two long lines here
these 5 medium lines and
the 3 short,
I hid them by spacing them out too far,
but, if you took all of them,
and centered them around this spot here, that looks like a cigarette burn you could see it.

as I said  what you see is only the surface, there is a deeper meaning.

Well that is enough sharing with you,
my canvas is calling to me,
there are still some blank spaces that must be filled with strokes and  I need to get the shame and guilt out.

you see my parents asked me
asked me not to cut.
not to cut my wrists
not to cut my legs
not to cut my feet

they only see the slice-that-deforms and the scarring and the blood,

but they don't understand,..

that to me my skin is not skin

it is my canvas that must be filled in.

Pepsi or Coke?

"Pepsi or Coke?" I say to the waitress, knowing the restaurant will have one or the other but not both.

she says, "Coke"
I say "fine".

I am a Pepsi drinker in a town full of Coke,
this adds a little more water to the levee that holds together my decrepit life.

The loneliness in my soul is a crushing weight,
the total lack of  human touch is inhumane
the friendly bumps
the manly pats
the best friend hugs
the lovers touch
now all a distant memory

I am the window that shows a sunshine filled day, but on the other side of the pane
is the bitter cold of the coldest day of the year.

I am the deceiver
deceiver of I'm OK
deceiver of happy life
deceiver of sunshine filled day,

then a chance encounter
handshake only
look into eyes, and talk
talk of safe things
talk of family
talk of comedy
no sadness
no tears
no sharing of real emotions

just talk to talk
talk to pass time
talk because
because we are human and need to talk.

but we are human and we need to share feelings too.

the loneliness so overwhelming there is
no end
no middle
no fresh start

there is just push on
another day
another empty night

no one to share secrets with
no one to share fears
no one to share lonely times

Loneliness so profound
It must be what the last dinosaur felt
last of his kind
no hope for the future
the end of an era.

waves of grief and pain mix with anxiety and push
push hard,
crushing my chest
crushing my will
crushing the sunshine filled day.

This beautiful sunshine filled day calls everyone to enjoy,
and I on the patio of this restaurant,

I sit alone
alone drinking Coke,

when all I really want to do
is to share
Share a  Pepsi.

some future

Imagine if you will a traveler in a car, he is headed for his next destination, his trunk is full of all the stuff in his life, all those thing you take with you from apartment to apartment, couch to couch, hoping at some point you can put the things you carry in your own place, a place known as home.

He is on a deserted road the land is flat, he can see for miles, and what he sees is nothing,, an abandoned shack here an unused telephone pole there, a road-sign full of bullet holes, no life, no people.

Then he gets a flat tire, and stops his car on the side of  the road.  Looking in all directions he can see where the earth curves down into nothingness. His cell phone has no signal, it is early evening, he does not know how to change the tire and there is no owners manual in the glove box.

He has seen the TV shows where they make getting a flat tire funny, and the shows where they make it horrific.  He knows the truth is somewhere in the middle, so he begins.  Not knowing exactly where to begin he starts by opening the trunk.

His trunk full of all that he keeps because it is important. He begins to empty out.
A small wooden shelf he made when he was 13 yrs old - he keeps because someday he can hang it on the wall for some future partner to dust.  
His "finger chopping" magic trick, he keeps so he can teach some future child how to do magic for their friends like he did for his friends.
A picture of him when was 10 with his first dog, he keeps for some future time when he can look back.
His teddy bear he had since he was 7, it has been with him through all the hard times, and is still hugged on now and then he keeps for when he needs some future hug and no one is there.
And of  course a few bags of necessities clothes, shoes, important papers, hats, belts and a couple of ties.

His trunk now empty he looks for the hidden compartments that hold the tire and the tools. Finding everything was not that hard, but how to use the jack and what do you do first takes some time to figure out.

After an hour or so he finally figures out how to do each step and in which order to do it.  It is now dusk, that dark of the day that pretends it is light.

He gets the old tire off and then sits on the ground legs straight out and begins to put the spare on, he did not notice the very slow movement of the car, the dark of day tricked him into thinking tire changing can be a comedy, when the car softly landed on the ground it trapped his leg crushing it into the sandy soil he realized tire changing can be horrific.

Trapped not able to move, on a deserted road, he can see everything he kept because it was important, but can't reach any of it, nor touch the tools to save his own life.

The initial pain subsided by the shock, it is the loneliness that hurts the most, no one to help and even his teddy bear can make him feel better now.

It will be days before he learns his fate, and maybe it is better that he dies alone,
because if he survives, the amputated leg will be a constant reminder of how alone,
utterly soul crushing alone
he really is

and with trauma like that how is he to have some future?