F**k Paradise

Man, I don’t know. It’s been a s**t week, full of broken toes and a dead f*****g rabbit. Don’t ask me to explain. I feel lost and disconnected. Not that long ago everything was in freefall and it has both stabilized and gotten worse. I’m at the edge of the rabbit hole. I’m standing at the top of the mountain with blank stone tablets. I’m making myself of clay finding life where there shouldn’t be any.

I wish I could explain. Maybe it was the break up of the blues band. I had a lot invested there. A fuckload. I loved the music, and I loved what we had going. My brothers. And when Jake took off blaming me it struck something inside and broke it. Bands, I’m discovering, happen like tides. They ebb, they flow, they receed, and sometimes they drown your a*s. I’m drowning in a sense. I’m poisoning myself nightly which really clashes with my Buddhist beliefs. I’m choking on the spring because everything is flesh and I am bone. Do you get it? Do you dig? There is want in every angle of my vision and yet no fire.

I’m stripped and I’m afraid everyone can see it.

I’m worried about Drake. Something tells me I should be worried. Probably the same thing that tells me I should give a f**k. Never met. Yet I feel I’ve known him all along. Maybe that’s my problem. Maybe that’s what’s down. Maybe I give a f**k in a world that doesn’t. Maybe I should just allow myself to give in. To give over. To light the cigarette I still crave every f*****g day. To make that call I’ve never made because no matter how much I’ve tried I can’t get the number.

Yeah. That’s it.

I spend my drunken nights flipped through my nostalgia. I feel I’m old enough to care and young enough to realize I’m old. There’s a break in vision while I flip through photos that aren’t my own. She makes me write because there’s no other way I can touch her. Let’s face it. Even that doesn’t work. But it doesn’t keep me from trying. I guess I’m a liar in a cheater’s mask. It’s free form hell. Like reading Ginsberg while on psyilocybin, treed by a f*****g cow. F**k Paradise.

Why do I feel there’s a direction I should be going? Why do I feel I can’t go? Why is there that shadow that dances just beyond where I’m willing to go? Just beyond the bounds of my own moral forest? If I could just do it. If I could just make a call to that unknown number... what world would I create? Nothing. Maybe. Paradise. F**k Paradise.

Reviews

[Emily Rose]

Somehow I get the sense that you're holding back. This is clearly a poem that's holding its breath. Waiting. The whole thing seems to be teetering on the brink of some unseen edge - I get the feeling it's more disconnected than you're letting on since somehow it feels connected despite how often your thoughts skip around. That's normal, too, in a stream-of-consciousness poem. Great choice, using prose poetry, by the way: I personally find it ridiculously hard to write since mine always comes out sounding too much like prose, but you did it incredibly well, using just the right amount of description to shade your meanings and broadcasting your thoughts in what seems to be an open manner, even though so much of this seems closed off.

I love the references in the beginning, particularly "I'm making myself of clay finding life where there shouldn't be any" (although that could just be my Adam and Eve obsession kicking in). They give it a weird sense of balance even though your tone is so unbalanced - you give us references to cling to, to ground us while the ground itself slips from under our feet.

I can actually relate to some of it, too - bands are hard to lose, especially close ones. They're like your family (or in some cases, they ARE your family) and it's hard to see them go. Strange how we value the criticism or praise of some people more than others, like it's more important coming from someone we love and respect. It hurts us more when they chataise us; it elates us more when they compliment us. That's what I thought of in your second stanza.

As personal as it is, though, there's a bigger message too. While you question the existence of Paradise your readers are forced to question it too. Do we believe our senses? Should we? It raises a lot of great questions that are hard to face and impossible to answer. Well done, and hang in there.

[JohnL]

Why the constant, non-contextual use of "f**k" and similarly aggressive language. English language has a wonderful vocabulary, worth learning and offering the opportunity to be explicit without being offensive. It would be good to feel that youngsters could look anywhere on this excellent site without seeing language that would appear (to them) to be normal, but which the more erudite among us realise is just crude.

[KAREN BROWN]

wow your writting is very over welming.You need to remember we make our lives the way we want it to be.Don't ever give up on you and in what you want or need. Sorry about the band I really am but I believe things happen for reasons as well and it will make us stronger. We may not understand why bad things happen but later we will relize why.Theres always gonna be music that you love focus on the good not bad. I believe if you think positive on things and turn the negitive around you'll be happier in life.there are a lot of disappointment but we need to go with it and not let it bother us because it will bring you down. You seem like a great person and I know things will get better.You need to believe in you and what you can do cause you can I know it. thank you for sharing this really it means a lot.

[Hedra Helix]

Also sorry about the band i understand and hate the shock /pain/ let down of things you care about and are emotionally/inspirationally connected to falling apart, such a crappy shame. sorry, i hope something new and solid comes of it.

[Hedra Helix]

OOO good prose, raw and fast flowy and clean and a joy to read, i believe your train and I enjoyed my passage.

big ole reviews below mines gonna look like fish piss but the entire thing is that i enjoyed it. and ill be back again to read more, good find in a slow cafe;)

[Bill Grimes Jr.]

The release of the pain into a smash mouth, brutally honest manifesto to share with the world.......that takes big brass ones my friend. My experience with the demons has taught me they flee quickly as I expose them. By sharing the pain, frustration, deepest fears with complete strangers and esteemed friends like you.......the vile creatures are no longer my nasty little secret........The truth indeed sets you free Jr...... Bummer about your band. You guys had a tight sound and unique style..... Keep the faith and keep sharing your gift........That is the only way it truly manifests itself each day........By giving it away.......I too wondered if "Drake" refers to Nick Drake.......I am a big fan of the melancholy minstrel.......I lived most of my adult life trapped in the rabbit hole........self medication is a b***h and the depression it triggers can be deadly........I am only sober today by grace......I send you peace and love my Brother.......We have shared the journey for a few moons now.......The world is filled with wonder, blessings, sacred gems.......We simply have to trust they are there.......and look for them every day. Thank you for your kind, constructive, and encouraging review. I was able to see the contrast between dark and light more clearly in the poem by your advice. Thank you sincerely. It's my honor and joy to share art with you.....

Peace,

Bill :-)

[[untitled]]

... Don't fall into the rabbit hole, once you're in it's so much harder to get out. Very honest piece of writing, very powerful. And hard to read as a result... JR you have some wicked skills. Post more of your work, it's the only reason why I stay on this site. To read writing like yours. The stuff that makes the stomach churn, heart mangle, and insides squirm with invoked emotion. Many things in life come and go, many things change. But you have to let go... though sometimes you have to die inside a little before you can be reborn. Just don't let too much die OK. Have you read "Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand? If you haven't, read it. It might give you something you've been looking for. An answer, a meaning, a drive. It did for me. It's about the ideal human, and what makes them so, aside from physical looks. More the perfect human in the sense of mentality and self.

Now for some useful feedback lol. I love how crisp, edgy, and blunt your writing is. It is so different from your poetry (which is awesome and I miss it, so please post more!!!!). You drag the reader in, beat them about the head, and spit them out. It's good stuff. =) makes me want to read that book that you are working on!! =P

Anyways, cheers man. It has been far too long. Keep this s**t coming. There will always be more bands, more booze, and more s**t that will hit the fan. But there is only one you, so take care of yourself OK.

Hugs,
Am

[[untitled]]

An old friends girlfriend was a devout Buddhist and he was respectful but an equally devout hedonist and beer drinker while he nightly wrote music and played on his excellent old Gretsch semi-hollow body.
She brought up his behavior to her teacher, a renown scholer and Rinpoche. He asked if Tommy interfered in her meditation or practices. Anita replied no. He said Tommy had a drinking karma that came to a certain
amount of gallons and he had not yet consumed the fill. He encouraged Anita to help Tommy drink more and then and only then would he cease.
Our ways are very mysterious.
With respect,
Jack/Sanand

[Raef C. Boylan]

Hmm. Ah say, ah say...hmmm, boy-ah.

Some biblical undertone, with the clay and paradise, in terms of flipping the themes on their a*s and being biblically scathing [haha, new phrase].

Drake - worried - made me think Nick Drake, which made me think like maybe this was set in the '70s...a '70s blues band...yo. That was a cool branch I hopped off onto their, because the narrator says he's never met Drake but he's worried about him, so that got me thinking about who is this guy? Is he digging the album title 'Five Leaves Left' and gettign edgy...he's a Drake fan and feels the lyrics getting more and more sombre. Or maybe - being on the inside of the music world, whichever lap his band were running - he's heard something on the grapevine. Bingo...blues again. haha

So now I'm liking the guy for worrying, for being the one to "give a f**k in a world that doesn't". He's an appealing character: cynical and caring.

"Bands, I'm discovering, happen like tides. They ebb, they flow, they receed, and sometimes they drown your a*s." - loved this, man.

I liked the whole thing. I see the guy sitting on a crate in slanted light with his hand in his hands and an overflowing ashtray at his side and maybe a bottle of something...cynical...and this is his monologue - inner monologue, I'm thinking, but I hear it out loud.

Great job on the prose.
Reflective frustration...yo.
Thanks for posting this.