i got the rage in me every now and then

　

Keep stealing from other writers, like all of ‘em do, but somehow when I steal, it never turns out to be grand larceny, just a simple misdemeanor; I get a slap on the wrist, and I’m back on the street again hunting down my literary pimp, need to score some words and shoot ‘em into my veins, feel them race through my bloodstream, giving me the high of my life.

Because I’m after the madness, searching it out, looking in the deep, dark crevices of my brain where it usually hangs out, waiting for just the right moment to spring into action and ruin me as a human being…it stalks me like a homicidal maniac, watching me, taking notes, learning my behavior, my patterns, rummaging through my synapses in hopes of exposing some vulnerability, some tragedy from my sordid past. But my madness hasn’t factored in the level of my courage. It doesn’t expect me to confront it so boldly in the light of the noonday sun. It’s sitting there, hibernating like a big black bear conserving its energy for the big hunt.

And the words keep coming, and I can’t control their flow. They just want me to lay them down on paper, in no particular chronological order, no real meaningful way, just smash them against the page like a Pollack painting, put the words into a turkey baster and squeeze them out through the tip, watch them splatter all over the page, combine with other words to form colors and shades and contrast and composition, drip off the page into oblivion, into obscurity, into thin air and space.

What matters most is not the stringing together a succession of words that express a specific idea, thought, dogma, truth, philosophy, point of view, or opinion. Getting the words down matters, even if they stray from your original intent. Even if they become obscure and oblique and predictable as a rock-hard c**k at dawn, and you read them out loud to yourself the following day after you’ve slept like a teething baby and realize what a piece of s**t it is and crumple it up and toss it into the circular file.

If you can get up off your a*s and do that again and again, then congratulations, you got the rage in you, too.