Hell Has Come To Breakfast

2017 is going to be the worst year of my life. I hope I can end this nightmare this year. No one knows me, I can leave as I please without causing harm. God will not stop sticking knives in me. Under no circumstances is the torture to end. I can know what but not why. I do know the harder I try to survive the more I will be hurt for it. I only do so to keep up appearances to keep the monsters backed off. There is NO understanding in this world. What's worse, we have to pretend there is, as if the monsters could really help. It's easy to spot the monsters: it's everyone who thinks they are not one. Will God ever love life as much as death? Loving life is the ultimate sin meting out the ultimate punishment. Bite the bitter fruit of death to stay alive or starve to death. Those are our choices. One thing God hates above is dishonesty. That's why evil is bolder and more open every day. I'm doing everything I can to make this world die. We who live in it have no say in it. The mob has murder in its heart and the mob always wins without fail. The mob is like the great flood, wiping out both the good and the bad. What purpose does all this pain serve? Who can comprehend such suffering? I hope I don't see the end of this year. My fate was sealed with Emily anyway. God is angry I was dishonest with her. I was supposed to be honestly rejected. God doesn't need friends or girlfriends and cannot understand those who do. Same goes for money. Terrorist attack news make me feel good. They think they can solve the problem by catching the attackers, always treating the symptom, not the cause. That guarantees the end will come. I cannot wait for them to figure that out. They'll keep up with their "wars" on everything they say they hate until nothing is left. Hell, and more hell. All acts of kindness will be bitterly rewarded in merciless cruelty. In this way God hopes to save the world? Let the dying die. God has no use for the innocent living. The universe has spoken and hell will be served. Only the dead will be safe.

I Saw My Old Lover Today

Many years had slipped my mind,

And I walked a lonely path;

Wandering sidewalk streets unkind,

It's a fool who serves his wrath.

How long had she been waiting for me in that room? Did she search her soul to find my weakest point? Or was it simple dumb luck at this low point to open the door and see her staring into me?

Of these questions I never got an answer.

Her arms were outstretched towards me, thick green moss hanging down in dread. Had she not moved since our painful parting?

She started towards me mired in clutching disgrace. "Help me! Woe are my woes! I'm rotting without you! Can't you see?"

She hoped to bring me into her world of hurt; an illusory cure. She sees me with stars in her eyes, dreaming of a future that can never be.

Years in the making was this; wallowing in atrophy and false gods of desire. She said she would track me until the end of her time. She spoke of broken love and our lost scenes of life. She must grapple with thee once more with her scaly skin.

She had been brooding in the dark; unkempt, swallowing sorrow in contempt of life. She left a trail of shiny slime as she moved which then turned black with ugly scent. These things I were to find attractive in the cavernous echoes of her helplessly wishful mind, to "prove" the uselessness of life without me.

"I don't care if you hate me or ignore me forever and ever, I know you still love me!"

No point in pleading my case. Her mind fixated on me alone, parsed from the entirety of the universe, I was the key. We had to be. She will sloth behind me along my trail, daring me to rest knowing I have found no home of my own. I can never be safe until I do. Why did I ever let this creature in the door? How could I have been so blind as to her clawing crippled clutches?

But how to reason with the unreasonable? To show love is suicide, to encourage the creature's wrath. But to rebuff it kept alive the unobtainable fantasy of an Absolute Answer to her woes. She dances with dreams of deception, needing a partner for an eternal twisted tango. Will I ever be free?

"Save me! By my life I have been swamped!"

Pray For Doom

God is like a giant spider standing over you with inescapable tentacle legs surrounding you like a cage. It bites you in piercing agony and you ask God for relief from your pain but that cannot come because God is the source of your pain and God never goes against God. You are helpless in your misery pleading for God to die and cry out, "Pray for doom for we are doomed to pray!" As the venom works its way through your system you wonder why you ever existed, what's the point of all this? But that is not to be known as it's not to be known how to stop the killing poison. Nothing can change. Ever. Not even the tiniest little thing can change. All must be as it is no matter how terrible or horrible the outcome. All trust is misplaced. Just bleed. Bleed more every day. Bleed until there's nothing left. Hope begins when time ends.

Her Chamber Cell Within

In dreaded footsteps' time,
Knocking on Fifty's door;
Living a life on high
A very successful whore!

Touchless cloud dweller
In the San Francisco mist;
Of life's demanded treasures
She'd checked off duty's list!

(Of lessers' suffering woe
She holds a secret contempt:
"Should have been more like I
"Who lives in worldly exempt!")

Feeling safely validated
(Using her charms bought 'n' sold);
She yields to asking angels:
"Is yours an honest gold?"

When time to accumulate
She'd never hesitate;
Then prays to her holy God
To be a holy fraud.

But in her aspired greed
To face the mirror crack'd,
To give up burdening gold
Would surely break her back!

She strolls the castle grounds
(Where royal woes must hide);
Her secret garden locked,
So many flowers have died!

Castle walls repel and trap,
She never lays the drawbridge down;
Starvation fells precious petals
California chewing cow.

She points in facial paint
To fine cold castle stone;
But without the flowers' warmth
It chills her to the bone.

Despite the worldly wars she won
And golden linen worn,
The jailer's keys keep rattling:
"Why were you ever born?"

She'd gotten all she wanted
Never doing what she wanted;
Stillborn dreams betrayed and spurned
Replace lust for life departed.

On extinction's door
She'll end up like the dodo,
If she ever looks unhappy
In annual family photo.

When asked to contribute
She displays her bank account;
But to live a life dishonest
No offerings Love counts.

A smile for every person,
Never shows anger or rile;
But slits throats in a minute
Who dare to limit her style.

Chaining herself to be
Where no one else can help;
Living for her selfish
For having lost her self.

"Yes, down through the years
"My selfish I have carried,
"But if it were not so
"I couldn't have stayed married!"

The crackling palace warm and dry
Haughtily denies accusing sin;
But wails eternal winter cold
Inside her chamber cell within.

Moron Whisperer

Sometimes, one really is faced with the choice of the lesser of two evils. Mine was to be drug to an enormous corporate Christmas party (the other choice was endless whining). The amount of internal self-cursing on the state of my life while driving there cannot be overstated. We pulled up to one of those intimidating, unwelcoming office spectacles downtown meant to make the inferior feel more inferior. Worst part was I had a flashback to my many times passing by this same building in absolute despair while homeless. I'm sure that's a story I can share at the party.

Traveling up the elevator I felt as a condemned prisoner on the way to his execution: no way out. But while the elevator was rising the feeling in my stomach was sinking. We were not alone in there so I'm already feeling as ill-at-ease and out-of-place as I feared. I paused as the doors parted to the sea of people ready to mock the moron among them. I had to think someday someone would make a passion play of this ordeal.

My invite naturally went her own way since it was her corporate masters swilling the night away. I was left like chum in the water, my insides twisting in agony. I wished to cry out for help but (rightly) assumed that would only make matters worse. What was I going to say to anyone? They ask me how I am and I say, "Homeless and suicidal. And you?" Sounds like a real ender to me.

These are the people I very carefully avoid; office creatures, aliens of a bubbled world that rests on the backs of workers like me. People like me horrify them because we see them from underneath, where they can't hide, as we mop their floors and empty their wastebaskets. There are spies wherever you go.

My reeling mind tried to cling to the idea I had some sort of buffer between me and them before my fraudulence could be exposed. I even overheard some inane conversation that made me realize office workers are definitely not rocket scientists. But that was small comfort. For while their need to be self-oblivious provided me some protection, it takes only one pair of piercing eyes to unmask you and leave you hanging out to dry before all the world. It was for those eyes I desperately scanned the room.

In doing so I noticed many types of creatures. I saw the slick and oily, warring witches and sad sycophants, the supremely insulated, diabolical climbers, and other assorted trolls that made my blood run cold. A few did surprise me with their seeming humanness and I wondered how they kept that trait in this inhuman environment. But then I glanced upon a pair of eyes, as if I were prey spotted in the wild. Was only for an instant, a woman's, dark haired, no more. "Shit, hope that's only my imagination."

Regardless, I got rattled and I felt my nerve giving out. The screaming for help idea came back in play. I wondered how much of my misery and confusion was showing on my carefully posed face. At that exact moment there wasn't a single moment of my life above doubt. Let the good Lord take me now. And that's when a woman's voice whispered in my ear: "Don't be an impostor for love."

For a second I was frozen, mesmerized by the thought. Had my life been read? Was this a lifeline of love? It seemed like several minutes but it was only few seconds before I turned my head to see the identity of this whisperer. She slipped away too quickly, like an eel between the reeds. I caught the back of her neck and her stylish outfit. "Emily!" I couldn't resist indulging myself apparently.

The thought of her finding me, rescuing me, forgiving me, and actually not wanting me to die elated me to heaven. The fantasy of at last playing the winner, I felt myself rise above the room on a cloud of bliss, validated and redeemed. I noticed I started breathing. In the blink of an eye my entire life changed. Inside, I was kneeling with tears of joy. This too felt like several minutes but was only several seconds. Then I had to realize: how could that be Emily?

Everyone wants to believe they've drawn the winning ticket. God help me if Emily ever found out about this flashing fantasy. I'm sure I'd get an earful. Who knows? Maybe this woman was going around saying this to every loser she spotted in the room. Had I been singled out? Mulling the possibilities was driving me out of my mind. I cursed myself for yet another fatal hesitation, where if she'd spoken at a moment where I wasn't so weak I could have stopped her and found out what she meant. But it seems these things ONLY happen in a moment of weakness.

So I was left only with considering her words.

Maybe it wasn't just me. Maybe everyone in the room is an impostor for love. Maybe she was really speaking to someone near me and I overheard. Maybe, maybe, maybe. What I did know was I hated the message, like she was reading my mind. Yes, I was faking it. I'm always faking it. How else does one get by when living at the mercy of lunatics and monsters devoid of reason? And what benefit does it do me to reveal my crippled self to those who cannot help? Was she speaking of the here and now or relationships in general? I had to get out of the room.

I stayed down in the lobby dreaming up "Die Hard" sequences to pass the time. My blackmailer to this event rang my cell and chewed me out for my usual "negative" attitude. I did not bother trying to explain the whisper. All I wanted was back under my rock to contemplate those biting words in a safe place.

That night in bed I replayed it over and over. The Emily elation genuinely bothered me, like finding a lottery ticket with the right numbers but then finding it's for the wrong week. For a brief instance I was somebody once more. But my complaint when I had love was that I was an impostor. What's worse, I didn't have the nerve to find out, putting me on the run. A man once said, "You run, you die." And that's dearly proven out so far. Did hearing this advice mean I have another chance coming? How can that be?

And worst of all was my first knee-jerk response to the whisper, the one thing I'd been burying in dejected doubt from the very first: How else is anyone going to love me?

Mother Vampyre

Her world was forged in cold comfort. As her chained heart hollowed in the bitter hearth, burning in the rage of a trapped, wasted life, her steely hands gripped in anxious, ancient terror the overstuffed arms of the living room chair. Once again she faced the airless, stillborn void where no voice can be heard. With every session her heart fractured and faulted wider. She dare not cry to give her secret sorrow away. But the light was gone. Years of torment awaited her. On the wrong side of 50 she had no place to go, the entire world her prison. Her terror-infected soul collapsed into a black hole, pulling in even the most ordinary of things into its sphere of fear. Long ago she'd perfected the act, a life devoted to appearances, as she slowly died. God's anger encircled her in fire as she refused to leave her house of lovely lies. She earnestly prayed as a person of proclaimed faith not to let the singeing show but now she could she it is going to last the rest of her life, not even the smallest of relief permitted. Her mind sizzled in the encroaching heat, frying its shattered thoughts, unable to connect one moment with the next, her destiny a nursing home vegetable where none of her millions can buy a single coherent thought. Her hologram husband could give no refuge from her angry choice to never live alone in the face of adversarial life. Her stubborn neck stiffened with every passing year, now brittle and bristling at helpless criticism. The thinning lifeline to the children kept her awake at night. They were her precious secret weapons, feeding her, keeping her alive, transfusing animation into her mannequin body. "Be good and live for your mother." But in this too was no future to be found. Was a future even left to be found? Had her stubborn existence played her to be a fool for all eternity? Is this why so many people beg to come back and get it right? The lonely horror of that perception short-circuited her as if she were sitting in her own personal electric chair. Her God was a jealous God, gifting her feelings for freedom she refused to follow, her faith never to flower. Time to depart her fully plucked field.

Conservatives in Love

"Please help me! I'm going to fall!"

She was hanging off the side of a cliff, feet dangling.

"Well, looky here. Little Miss Perfect is asking for help. I thought you already knew everything! If you'd been responsibly selfish like I have you'd find yourself in the ascendant position I'm in now."

"Hurry, or I will fall!"

"Always thinking of yourself! Besides, you seem fine to me, it's not like you're sliding down."

"Do I have to fall to prove I'm in trouble?"

"How else would I know?"

"But then I would be dead!"

"I certainly wouldn't doubt your credibility at that point!"

"This is a nightmare."

"Can only be your own fault. Can't be living your life expecting other people to bail you out of trouble. That's completely irresponsible."

"But we're all in this together!"

"Libtard drivel. I'm incentivizing you to help yourself. The Lord helps those who help themselves - and I'm here to do the Lord's work."

"You're an asshole! Whatever you do unto the least of you, you do unto me."

"Judge not lest you be judged yourself! God, I love being a conservative Christian!"

"Just think how you'll feel if you don't help me before it's too late."

"Look, Miss Chicken Little, the sky isn't falling for you like you hysterically claim and you want me to risk my life and well being because you got yourself in a bad spot? I don't think so!"

"How much of a risk is it to lower your hand to help me up?"

"I don't believe in that sort of inappropriate touching between a man and a woman. If my wife saw that she would rightly condemn me."

"You must be a pervert to sexualize everything in life!"

"The only pervert here is you. Don't see me going around whining, "Help, help! Woe is me!" That's why I'm in the morally superior position."

"I can't hang on much longer."

"So says you. I'm so tired of liberal self-serving rhetoric used to justify immoral behavior. One has to see the objective truth and serve only that."

Then she fell screaming to her death and the wife came over.

"What was that awful sound?"

"Some woman who expected me to take time out of my own life because she couldn't handle hers."

"Sounds dreadful! You didn't touch her did you?"

"I stayed true and pure. She got her just desserts in the end. She refused to take care of her life so she lost it."

"Thanks to the good Lord for that! What a wretched woman."

"There's a lesson to be learned here today. I can see now more than ever the importance of cutting off benefits, lowering the minimum wage, and slashing social security. That's the only way some people will ever learn."

"I love you! If only everyone were like us the world would be a better place!"

On Borrowed Time

[From an ancient Japanese chest covered in thick dust, a transcript is found written during the last hours of an escaped condemned man.]

I was supposed to have been executed an hour ago. It was on my honor to show up at the correct place and time, and besides, they knew there was no way of escaping the castle grounds. I could try and hide and sneak around like a cowardly idiot but that would only make things worse for me.

But that's exactly what I did.

I'm crouching in the bushes with this parchment paper I was supposed to use to write my death poem. I don't know what possessed me to hide. I know there's no point in it. I just don't want to face facts, I suppose.

I hear the angry shouts of the searchers. It thrills me in a way to feel I possess them so. Two samurai passed by me, one angrily complaining of how he wanted to get home to his pregnant wife as the search for me delayed him. He wants to be free and I want to be free, yet neither of us are. Is there not sad irony in this?

I also hear the birds like never before. It's strange, as if I've never really listened to their songs. I feel transported to another world, one carefree and simple. I want to linger here for hours on end. Only too late do I discover this wonder. I feel more a fool than ever for my wasted life.

It's true, I showed my unclothed erection to Lady Onichi. Why is this so forbidden? Everyone acted as if the world would end. No true harm was done but men must live as prisoners of their body according to society. If I am not imprisoned like the others then their anger knows no bounds. The sentence for death from the chamberlain came immediately.

Will anyone read this scribe when I am dead? Will this paper be destroyed in the same anger that takes my life? That somehow seems more a loss than my useless life. I seem unable to stop these irrational acts, and yet on the other hand, sharing my body and wanting to survive don't feel that irrational. But certainly, somewhere, there is something wrong with me.

I must crouch lower. Two women are passing by. I will write down what they say, if anything. Here it is:

"I hope they catch that castle pervert. I just don't feel safe."

"Me either! My Obutada said he'd cut it off if he ever saw it out!"

The two women giggled. In this time of perfect clarity I could see their acting and role playing. They wished to be helpless heroines "saved" by their gallant husbands from my oh so dangerous penis. Had I heard this before I would have taken their words on face value and felt deep guilt and shame. I see now this is how they facilitate their sex so no wonder everyone wants my head cut off.

Wow, I can even hear the water from the castle stream. It's soothing beyond words. I've passed it each day for over a year on my way to clean the stables but never noticed its quiet calmness. Now that I've been condemned I find I want to live more than ever! Oh, that I could reverse time.

Bakana. The voices are getting angrier. "He must be somewhere! He's to be found before it gets dark! He will pay for this!" Waiting makes it worse yet in my weakness I still hesitate. Nature irresistibly calls me to join her in this wonderful Spring day. Of all the times to do that! Maybe Nature has always been calling me.

I'm in a twilight world between hopeless pain and the paradise of the planet. Before, living my life was a waste. But now losing it seems the waste! They will torture me for making them work so hard to find me. But I seek only to relax and nap in these sharp leafed bushes. If I am the bad man they say I am, the gods will strike me down for that. Let me rest and see.

Oishi, what a delicious sleep. Not only did the gods not strike me down, they blessed me with peace. So who is right: the gods or the men who pursue my death? I feel invigorated! I feel I will live forever! I wish to explore all the world, all the birds and streams and living things. I wish to give thanks for every day. What a time for me to decide to open up!

It is dark now and it seems they have given up for I see no torches. In the morning I must find the strength to face them. I wish to see one last dawn and take that with me to my grave. Whatever they might do to me for this delay, I will take a sense of peace I did not have previously. I will enter the void a better man.

It is afternoon the following day. I have been banished from the castle and the province. Our highly revered Lord returned from Edo last night and was told of my story. He's always been known as a "different" thinker and he thought my, uh, gesture to Lady Onichi to be a refreshing one and considered my act a better outcome than the rampant impregnation that goes on around the suffocating castle. Politically, I could not stay but my life has been spared.

I will treasure this chance and this fine paper that has been my only friend and confidante during the worst - and best - hours of my life never to forget. Maybe I can make something of myself, after all. I feel I've been put into a new world even if I face the same old woes of trying to find a woman who doesn't scream bloody murder every time I have a boner.