Right Where It Ends

They would never know the streets like him,
how the music of his MP3 player would blend into his environment,
this soulful movie would play inside his head,
it would be so real
and if you’d watch it,
you wouldn’t feel so alone anymore.
You’d feel understood in a world that never seems that interested in you.

They would never know the quietness of walking these streets after midnight,
with only the occasional car in the background
and you wonder where these people are going at such a late hour-
you wonder about the murderous missions
of men trying to hide the bodies
and men trying to hide themselves.
All these people you will never know
or
do know and if they’d only stop
and talk to you,
you wouldn’t be so alone anymore.

They would understand your pain if only they saw you,
stumbling around at night,
calmly walking home,
hoping your parents are asleep,
because you don’t want to talk to them,
you don’t want them asking about you,
all the things that are going on
and what the hell you are going to do with the rest of your life.

And you wonder whether these people have a destination
or are just driving around?
How many times have they driven around and found themselves returning to the same place all over again.

We run and go back.
We fall back to where we belong.
When we don’t have anywhere to go, we go back to the place we know so well- even though we’ve been trying to run away from this place for so long.

This would be such a great movie if people could only see it
but when you try to explain the plot,
people don’t know what to say.
Like your life it doesn’t really have a plot,
it’s just a series of moments.
”It will be great, trust me!”
and they nod and they would if they could see it
but you’ll never make this movie.
You’ll never have the capital nor the work-ethnic or dedication.
It was only beautiful then,
in these streets only you know so well,
when you were all by yourself
with the music playing your eyes,
and the drugs peaking
and slowing down the closer you came to home.

For one moment you felt understood,
in that one moment,
you were ready to face the rest of your life.

If only the movie would stop then,
fade to black
the credits roll
but life goes on…

and eventually
we all have to go home
and go to sleep.
And when we wake up,

the streets will never be the same again.

Picture from: https://hiveminer.com/Tags/eneade%2Cman

***

TELL YOUR GOD…

Scrub…

There’s too much gore,
it seeps down through the floorboards,
and drips down
on
the new generation,
those who were told fairy tales
instead of history.

And even in the savagest of days,
it became obvious to the storytellers
that people rather wanted to escape
the awful truth
that is human nature
and the beautiful environment they destroy
in order to create their failing utopia.

They prefer stories of heroics,
turning ordinary men in biblical saints
and the soldiers into daunting warriors,
and people would shudder in their presence,
the quick draw,
the bolt of lightning,
the bullet carrying them into oblivion,
how they never see it coming,
the smoke billowing out of the revolver.

And they need these stories
don’t you see?
They need them or else they will lose their minds.

And it gets so dark sometimes,
when you look back far enough,
when you notice the gore from the ceiling,
when you notice it on your shirt,
when you see people scrubbing it off their clothes
every day
and when you tell them what they are doing
they say they know,
and they shrug
and they say ”that’s how it’s gotta be.”

Scrub, scrub…

And they tell you to not worry,
cos
the people won’t stand for it.
Eventually they will get of their ass
and fix their gory mess
and make it look like it never happened.
They will find a way to turn back time.
They tell you that the eaters of children
will eat themselves too,
the hunger is too great
and can never be fully satiated.
It’s too powerful and too meaningless
and we are not meant to cope with it,
it is meant to destroy us.
And when that happens,
the darkness will slither away
and the light will come through.
And once people see it they will travel to that place
and inspired by the light
they will create a better world,
a world that will never repeat the mistakes of the past.

Yes, yes, don’t you worry young man,
the light will always take over.

The light always takes over.

And the way to do this is to keep those kids
young,
because in their smiles
you can imagine
the light coming through.
And it’s so beautiful,
you’ll forget about all the gore.

Scrub, scrub…. 

But you can’t stop it,
But it can’t last,
age will take away the light…
You remember the limerick an aging angel or demon once told you:
”There are things that are coming
and things we won’t see coming
and are coming anyway.”

***

Eventually you will conform
because that’s the sane thing to do
because living with open eyes
is a good way
to lose your mind.

So you will scrub the gore on the floor
Scrub, scrub…
and listen to the stories
and after a while,
you will even start to believe the stories.
They will give you hope.
They will give you dreams
about all the things you could achieve,
about being the main character in one of those stories,
to be an old man and look back with pride
and say to your foolish and privileged grandkids
”all you gotta do is work hard.”
And sometimes you had to be a little vicious
and cut some throats.
It’s the way the world works,
it’s the bloody game we must play.
And as you sit on your throne,
and look down on your kingdom,
you will actually believe you deserve all of this,
this kingdom where you have 24/7 cleaners who scrub away the gore,
making sure you will never see it.

A hundred years later they will make movies
and TV-shows
out of these ordinary men and warriors
and it will inspire people
and the real subjects have been dead so long
and you wonder what they will think,
you wonder if they will us the truth about who they really were.

And if they would
would you even listen?
Or would you choose not to-
because the stories are so much better
and it’s easier to live with yourself that way.
Or would you simply tell them to shut up and start scrubbing,
because the kids will be home soon
and they will be hungry.
And
Remember:
soon when they be old enough
to ask uncomfortable questions.
They will ask about the blood seeping through the floorboards
and you have to warn them not to upstairs and look,
you gotta convince them that it’s better to stay down here,
where it’s warm
and
the illusions are thick with glitter
and
smell like bleach.

***

193

Not everybody wakes up.
Not everybody can redeem themselves.
Not everybody gets a chance to become a better person.
Some are on the right path but die along the way
and their story never gets a happy ending.
Not everybody gets a happy ending.
Nobody’s even entitled to an ending.
Sometimes life just ends.
In the middle of a pop song- you should have been more careful, you should have turned to the right…
Poof.
All of it,
the light in their eyes,
the struggles of the past,
the dreams for the future,
gone, goodbye, sayanora, go fuck yourself.
Like it was nothing, like nothing ever happened, like nobody was even there.
It can be so impersonal,
a big mean surprise.
It can be such a pitiful sight,
seeing the strong wither away into oblivion.
Even those that are considered lucky didn’t even get luxury of dignity
and were deprived the sanctity of their final words-
they forgot them the moment they wanted to share them
and when they remembered the words,
they forgot the meaning of them.
Some, perhaps even most, never got over their personal demons
continued in their darkened path of bad habits and misunderstandings.
The moments of enlightenment too brie
and too painful to linger.

I don’t want it to hurt,
I don’t want to it to be near,
I don’t want to go away
and I’m asking you this,
if you’re listening
though I don’t think you even have that capacity anymore,
to leave me alone for the next 200 hundred years.
I promise I will only waste 193 of them.
The rest will be time well spent.

I promise.

***

Monika

With the awareness of death,
after the last comforting and terrifying word of scripture,
after counting all the stars,
after reading countless peer-reviewed studies
about the lack of human meaning
in
this dark room filled with stars and planets,
and after everything is said and done
after all the warnings ignored
and the future becoming increasingly finite,

love
is
the
only light
that
can
be found
in
the void.

***

TAKE IT EASY

Yesterday during kick-box training my trainer stopped during one particular exercisewhere I had to exchanged two punches to the other guy
and then receive two punches in return
and the trainer told me to ”take it easy,”
cos ”you don’t know it yet but your face is drained of all color. You won’t notice it until it’s too late and then you’re hugging the floor.”
It’s true,
I didn’t notice anything until I was on my way home
and I felt dizzy and tired,
and it wasn’t until I had a good meal inside me that I felt better.

None of this is something to be ashamed of I guess,
but that’s how I feel.
I should be tough and handle this training
but apparently I’m too weak.
And whenever I leave training,
my trainer always reminds me to ”take it easy”
cos he can see that I’m stressed out too much.

It’s been a tough week for me,
at my job I’ve received negative feedback
because I make sloppy mistakes.
On a personal note,
the boss also told me that my language is too coarse
and when I come into work,
I’m complaining too much
and my colleagues get distracted because of this.
cos more often than not,
I start about something negative
and it’s tiresome listening to some naggy motherfucker all the time.
This affects the work environment.

Naturally she has a point,
cos I know I ain’t easy to deal with at times.
I can feel how uneasy she feels in my company at times
and that she doesn’t know how to deal with me.
Same with my colleagues who’ve witnessed on multiple occasions how quickly my mood switches
from casual to jolly
to depressed.
I could be having a good time
breaking balls with colleagues
then suddenly I’m lost in a ruminating thought
I start hating myself
I feel embarrassed cos they didn’t laugh at one my jokes enough
or
I’m haunted by this fear that I did something inappropriate
and they’ll talk amongst themselves
saying what a piece of shit I am.
And I’m constantly checking myself,
watching my language,
making sure I don’t touch anyone,
cos that would freak me out,
would spur on my OCD
and then I’d fear losing my girlfriend,
the one I love.
And
I know I should challenge my OCD
and not recoil into it.
The more you recoil into it
the stronger it gets.
But it’s too hard
and even after a few victories,
one failure can put me seemingly back to square one.

There’s all these things I want to achieve:

I want to be a great boxer,
and I do a match one day-
become a decent amateur (despite the fact I’m close to my thirties and I’m just starting out).

I want to be a great writer
and
create multitudes of
short stories,
novella’s
novels,
screenplays
and plays
cos there’s so many stories in my head
but I’ve wasted so many of them
and I never finish anything.

I want to be a great Buddhist,
be meditative and calm
and teach people how to approach life.

And all of these things are hard
and I guess I want too much
cos I also gotta go to work
and I don’t like this work but I gotta make money.

I gotta sleep on time
or
else I’ll be tired and cranky at work.

I gotta eat healthy too or else I’ll feel bloated
and my man-boobs will get bigger.

My girlfriend tells me
to just focus on having fun with boxing and writing
but I haven’t been having fun doing either of those things in quite some time.
I feel horrible when I’m doing it
and I feel horrible when I’m not doing it.
So I don’t do it as much anymore
and just mindlessly watch TV shows and movies
and dream about doing it in the near future.
And when I go to sleep I dream about this man I want to be,
even though I don’t think I can ever be this man.
I think it’s too late to be this man,
I lost my shot for being this man,
this interesting and inspiring artist.
I think it was there somewhere in the past
but I fucked up
and choose self-pity instead.
Cos that was always easier,
cos telling yourself you will always fail
is easier than working hard and
achieving something…

So now that I’ve gotten this out of the way,
I’m going to get some lunch
and after lunch it’s time to make myself some coffee
and do some writing.

But before I do
I’ll remember what my trainer said:
”take it easy,”

You got that?

I think so.

No thinking,
you gotta be sure.

Yes I’m sure.
I mean how hard can it be?
Just relax, take it easy, have fun.
Should be doable right?

Right.

***

THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE

So I was having a discussion with the girlfriend of a friend of mine,
a university student from America
finishing her masters in Holland
and the topic was ”white-privilege.”
A light-skinned girl, she’s intensely dedicated to the subject.
She tells me about the different experiences of races in society,
and how whitey got it easy on many fronts.
Even if whitey is poor with bad upbringing,
it could never be worse than a black man whose poor with bad upbringing.
There are hidden forces working against minorities,
they were forged from its colonial inception,
covered in the blood, sweat and tears of slaves.

”Sure things are better” she says,”but we are still behind, still make relatively less money, still have less people in high government, still get killed by gangs and cops more frequently,
cos history is against us.
Cos we haven’t completely fixed it yet.
Cos we got fucked in the past.”

And
it’s awareness that will heal us,
the white man needs to be aware of his privileges,
how much easier he’s got
cos he ain’t gotta deal with the bullshit the minorities do.
And there’s truth in all of that
but it ain’t the whole truth.
My issue with intersectionalists like her,
is that they tend to collectivize too much
and don’t grasp that suffering is more individual than collective.
Even if one group receives more shit than others,
it still doesn’t mean they suffer more.
Suffering is personal,
suffering is spiritual,
it’s in the mind.
And when you suffer inside your skull,
when you get lost in the mess of the self,
that’s the worst pain of all.

They talk about THE BLACK EXPERIENCE
and there is such a thing
but it ain’t as big as they think.
There is so much more
and so much better. 

Each individual is different
even if they never had an original thought in their mind.
Some are offended more easily,
some have autism and therefore have extremely sensitive stimulus,
some were beaten by their parents
and are always angry but they don’t know why.
Some wanna change the world
others want to fix this one.
Some are scared every day
while some seek dangerous thrills in order to feel alive again.
We all suffer
and even if we got all the privileges in the world,
we can still fuck it up so badly,
we can give it all up for something ridiculous,
we might be blind to our own possibilities
and the possibilities that society can provide for us.
We might not be aware of our innate flaws
until it’s too fucking late.

We might never really know ourselves.
We might feel like we are missing something
but we can never grasp what this thing is.
We are all in one way
victims of society
but we are as much victims to ourselves
to our upbringing
to our genetic programming.

We are all deliriously fucked up.
But we are all human,
and some of us too much so.

We’re
all
part
of
the
the HUMAN EXPERIENCE,
and we come in different colors,
different countries,
different religions,
different offspring,
different cultures,
different genes
and so much differences
and most of them don’t matter
and most of them can be overcome
and most it can be solved by mere acceptance.

We gotta be aware of our differences
but we gotta be aware of what connects us,
we gotta be honest about the past
but we can’t wallow in it.
We gotta move on,
hold hands as we does so,
tell our brothers and sisters
that the road is arduous and long
and there are still many evil people out there
and so many misunderstandings
and so much brooding violence
and so much confusion
and
it’s so easy to get lost along the way.

And yet we gotta try
even if we don’t agree with each other,
even if we see people bumping into brick walls.
Even if all the signs point out
that the future is as fucked as the past.
We gotta do something about all this mess….

It’s quite something,
isn’t it-
this HUMAN EXPERIENCE.

”Don’t you agree?”

***

YOU HAVE SO MUCH WORK TO DO

I’ve said this many times before and I don’t want to say these words again, but I can’t help it…

”I was doing so well. I thought I’d finally woken up from the nightmare. I would never fall asleep again. I thought it would never come back. I was too strong for it now.
I educated myself on it.
I taught myself to see the signs:
-The repetitive questions,

the way it keeps coming back,

asking the same questions again and the right answer only satisfies it for a short while

and then it’s hungry again.
-the need for confirmation,
even for the most obvious goddamn things.
You ask once and soon you’ll ask again.
You know you’ll never be free if you keep making it stronger.
-The thoughts has a peculiar feeling,
they are not normal thoughts,
they are diseased,
they smell,
the make you sick from the inside.
-The biggest question of all:
is this just OCD
or is this reality?
Don’t you have a sneaking suspicion this is reality?

All I want is to look at her face and enjoy her company.
All I want is to be left alone with her,
why can’t you just leave me alone with her?

I even gave it a monstrous face,
despite the fact that it’s nothing more
than chemicals in my brain.

It’s a monster in my head,
and it’s doing is toying with my brain receptors
and the only way to make it is to dope yourself with medication
or learn to break the habit.
Know its patterns
know the signs
and then move on.
Make it starve to death.

Start meditating again,
close your eyes,

take a deep breath,
accept what’s going on with you.
Go to the gym
and lift weights,
run the treadmill,
go that extra mile,
make yourself like you can’t take one more step.
Wear your boxing mitts and get inside the ring,
don’t flinch when you see your opponent coming for you,
take his punches,
slide to the left and hit him back.
It’s okay to bleed.
Bleeding is just what you need.
It’s okay to break some bones,
it’s okay to be scared,
take it,
learn to defend yourself and then hit back.
Get outside your head,
get outside your head,
get outside your fucking head.

Write about your experiences,
express yourself creatively,
give it a voice,
make it mean something,
draw something,
even if you can’t draw for shit.
Start a picture collage,
make random pictures of strangers on the streets,
who cares if they get annoyed?
You are just trying to get by like everyone else.
You are trying to make something mean something to yourself like anyone else.
Start writing again,
a poem, a novel, a novella, an essay, a fucking blog,
anything,
the only way to make anything meaningful is to write about it.
If it’s on paper it means something,
if it has a title,
if characters have arcs,
if it’s real,
if it’s based on your experiences,
if it was just the thing you needed to do
and made you feel so good,

if only for a while
then it fucking means something.

Make it mean something,
even if it doesn’t seem to have any meaning.
Even if there doesn’t seem to be an end to it,
even if it all seems like a pitiful joke.
Make it mean something

and somewhere along the line,
after doing all of that,
you’ll wake up from the nightmare,

probably.”

See.

***

Voices 02-10-2017

You don’t register it at first, you think it’s somebody goofing around or part of the show…

It sounded like firecrackers…

Suddenly everybody was running…

I used to be agnostic but now I believe in God…

I don’t think he made it…

We need to use your truck, we need to get this man in the hospital…

Was this act of terrorism?

Did he get the weapons illegally?

How can we decide on the line between ideology and insanity?

It’s harder to pass security, so he does it outside of the venue.

I think I’ve been hit…

There are no negotiations, he just wanted to kill as many people as possible…

I don’t think I’m going to make it….

How many more people have to die before they get it…

Congress is not going to do a damn thing…

How dare they push their agenda in a time like this!

I love you.

What the fuck is happening to our country?

This was something he must have been planning for a long time…

He didn’t fit the traditional profile…

Our country will prevail. This country was build on the foundations of unity, we won’t let this man tear us apart…

This country will prevail. Our country was build on beautiful foundations, it will never back down. We will be united. We are strong together…

You see the fear of death in their eyes, there were people trampled to death…

We could never see him do a thing like this…

I’m not leaving you, I’m staying right here.

It’s the biggest mass-shooting of American history…

I wish I was the one who got him…

There will be more casualties…

You don’t think it will happen to you and then it does…

Though there was chaos, there was hope. Everybody was helping each other…

Sometimes these incidents bring the best out of the people. They don’t even realize they’re doing it, they just run and do it…

It sounded just like in Iraq….

He’s tired, we should bring him home after the song is over…

***

That Small Part

”I used to consider myself a writer, but then I couldn’t find the words anymore. I hated every word I put down. They seemed disingenuous, hackneyed, soulless. When I looked back at my earlier work, I was horrified. It wasn’t that it was filled with clichés- even though it was- it’s that I couldn’t get the clichés right. It all fucking sucked. To even call myself an amateur would be insulting to amateurs. Amateurs can have careers in their particular craft, they can become professionals. I don’t know how to walk this path. I find it, then I turn into the forest. I keep getting lost along the way. I remembered them to have promise, I would read the works of others and feel that I grasped something they didn’t. But it was all just a dream. We get lost in our dreams, some never come back. After many pitiful attempts, I decided that the best thing for me was to give it up. I just didn’t have it. There’s talent, a lot of luck. Some say it’s nothing but hard work. Perhaps but the right ones get better. The right ones learn of their mistakes and figure out how to make things work. I couldn’t do this. It’s okay, I will be just like most people. No more stories, no more poems, no more imagined novels. You’re not a creator, you’re the one that appreciates the creation. Nothing wrong with that. Artists are dicks anyway… But then the words came back! It came flooding back, every word seemed right, the sentences kept coming, the poems seemed meaningful, the stories seemed to be about real people. I was a writer again.
And then it happened again. Another painful break-up. I lost my mind again, there was the edge and it seemed so right to jump. You will go there anyway, might as well jump. Nobody will pick you up from down there. There’s nobody there. It’s a place where everybody goes but nobody’s there.
But I decided to save myself. I stopped writing again. I promised myself once more: don’t write another word. You don’t have the right kind of insanity to be a writer.
I haven’t written in quite a while but I feel the urge coming back. Sentences assemble, ruminations that turn into reflections, stories, limericks. There are these moments between people, or by ourselves; a human experience, sometimes tragic, hilarious or even wonderfully mundane, that deserved telling. But I know I can’t do them justice. I’d only screw them up. Nobody would understand why they are valuable.
But the words are there… I just need to write them down…
I know I shouldn’t, I know how it will end. But I keep thinking about death, the void, the nothingness. It seemed the only way to combat is by writing. The thought of not leaving any words around scares me. I could die at any moment and all the words, stories, poems, novels in my head, would die along with them. They are so dear to me, even if I never seem to find them.
If I don’t write, the void will take everything. If I leave some words behind, the void can only take parts of me. Even if it takes most of me, that small part will still be out there. That little part will never go away, that small part will make me immortal…”

Picture taken in Wisla, Poland
***

Fake Samurai Swords

There were these children who pretended to be adults,
fighting against the forces of evil.
Inspired by animated films that focused on this ancient struggle,
these adults, these children in disguise, were transformed into cute animals, anthropomorphic, pure of heart, ready to suffer the ultimate sacrifice if it means a happy ending.
As long as good wins against evil, they can sleep soundly.
The world can be full of loss, but the balance is there.
There will be justice for all,
everything will be alright.
There is a life we fight for,
and when that ends,
we will go to heaven,
celebrating eternity with the ones we love.

This is what these children believed,
they acted this out, wearing their parents kimonos, using sticks like they are samurai swords.
One of these boys played this game devoutly,
he was going to save the world.
His grandmother told them stories about this great war,
the unfathomable death toll, piles of corpses, buildings made for death.
Desperate men crying out for their mothers,
crying out for their dreams of childhood: a universe that balances itself out, a universe that punishes the wicked and rewards the good.
And it’s then that this child started wondering about those who died so that this narrative could linger: the heroes who never had a chance to dream, heroes without luck, heroes too weak or too good to kill without hesitation or guilt.
It then dawned on him these were childlike fantasies,
something to make us sleep better at night.
This cosmic battle of good versus evil,
belongs to man alone,
the great cost of life,
is ours to make sense off.
But it won’t make anybody come back,
and nobody will be waiting for us,
none of the dead will forgive us.
the great cost is only ours to bear.
And what about the universe?
The Universe can’t be bothered.

This realization made the child cry,
when he wiped away his tears,
a process that took years,
he became an adult.
He continued the fight against evil,
playing by different rules,
wearing a army-uniform instead of kimonos,
wielding military-grade weaponry instead of fake samurai swords.
He would get ready for that great war that would come again,
he could either die so that others could dream,
or live so he could be inspired by those who died for this dream.
But sometimes he couldn’t help himself:
sometimes he just wanted to play with fake samurai swords again.
And when his platoon wasn’t looking;
he pretended to be that child pretending to be an adult.
He knew that when the time came,
he had to let this go,
but for now,
while no one was looking,
he was winning the fight against evil,
and sometimes he would lose but the universe would balance itself out,
he would see his fallen friends in heaven,
they would wait for him,
salute him on arrival.
He would sleep soundly those nights
and
all his dreams
would have a happy ending.

Picture taken in Wisla, Poland

***