alive at 85

a shot in the dark

The Blues Volume 1, Side 1, Track 1. Placed on a rotating table, going at 75 to make the sound of a heartbreaking. It started with that, and it ended with just that. It skipped, thats the only reason why. A hairline scratch that's been there since I bought it years earlier. It was my first record, I went through 17 girls with that record, each time, the record outlasted the woman.

I hate to say it but thats the only things that last. Music, timeless, tested, true. See, all those fuckers, they come and go, and here you sit with that f*****g record playing it over and over and over, until you'd think you'd get sick of it, and really all you do, just flip it over.

I bought what I needed at the hardware store, cost me $18 dollars, for just the bare essentials. I mean it's all i ever really needed. I don't know why i didn't think of it sooner, any other man would have come to this conclusion a long time ago.

You build the chair. Put as much love as you have left of your soul into it. Once the chair is built, then you have to stain it. I always got high when i stained, i mean why else would you buy it. Not like it was built for the outside world to admire, you built it for your own purpose, with your own hands, might as well get some benefit out of it other than the obvious.

I sat on the couch watching A Daily Show repeat and wondering to myself, was this it, was this the purpose to everything. To wake up, each day, and go to the same job, come home to the same apt, go to the same bookstore and be stared at by the same people, as you try to entertain and intellectualize yourself with novels that most people these days ignore. All too busy buying into the contemporary authors and their rehashed ideas of past stories. Don't they know that it's all the works of the greats, just retitled, re characterized.
Re assembled. Re manufactured.

Most of my ex-friends consider me bitter. They weren't there, who the f**k cares their opinions. They ripped me off like a paper towel and disgarded me like i had influenza baked right into me. Most considered me in need of therapy, but still afforded me no positivity. So i built my chair, and read my books, and went on with it all. And every story i wrote, ever word i say, was all used against me like a dagger stabbed frequently. Dangerously close to my heart. They killed me, not the other way around. I haven't killed myself, no no, i've merely disappeared because thats how they wanted me to be. Not to worry them, not to worry them with my own insufferable miserable existance.

I always wanted to scream at them, it's not the words you say, but what you don't say that really hurts.

I'd find their eyes staring back at me. Apologetic, tranquil, honest, forgivable.

Mine meeting their gaze.
Just as the chair dropped out from under me.