1)
The horse moved through flesh that evening,
and another soul
forfeited its right to the kingdom the next morning,
just to feel a bit closer to heaven
Understand?
Before next, it was sunrise and in the absence of presence,
there would be no recollection of anything so perfect,
other than a nod, of course,
which tripped the lines of fascination
and taught the mind to descend
into slow moving pools
of absolute bliss
This is how they get you.
White sand weighs the blood to keep the mind weightless,
as if to say, there is no pain,
no discomfort, no thoughts or need to banter back and forth
There are no challenges of, say, who approves or who doesn’t
because essentially, all is detached and shoved off,
like an invisible ship destined for nowhere.
Suddenly, the mind collapses
without resistance
and thoughts dissolve into patterns of vapor –
everything sort of trails away
lightly,
evaporating before the eyes to become nothing –
The mind is at ease, or at a state of rest,
and euthanizing itself in slow,
pounding heartbeats, the body loses posture,
and yes, this might not look too cool from the outside.
but the from the inside,
the cathedral is elaborate
and somehow,
the sickness is beautiful
But watch out . . .
This is where the hooks come in
The body falls to half mass
time is distant
and all thoughts or troublesome worries
have dissipated into meaningless droplets of air
I guess maybe you’ll want to know more . . .
Maybe you’ll want to know
what the cocoon feels like:
Picture a tiny feather hovering in a light wind,
and without sound, on a gray-clouded day,
dreary, yet free and magical,
as if to feel absolutely weightless
and agnostic to whether there’s color
or nothing at all.
Yeah, that’s it.
Picture this . . .
Now add warmth
add the withdrawal of emotion,
add the satisfaction of each nerve ending
shutting down for a soft, flowing vacation,
and now,
increase the feeling of gravity in absolute reverse and then
imagine the pulsation of each heartbeat,
slowly withering into something beautiful –
like an emotional reprieve. which comes with a soft texture,
or otherwise, a figurative orgasm
without the hinge to perversion
or any need for physical movement
And yes, this can be uncontrollable at times…
But that’s ok
This is what people come here for –
the gentle abandonment with no objections to the rules
This is why people trade pieces of themselves for the beast –
to whither in the weightless breeze,
like an abandoned feather, swimming in mid-air.
Here…
right here…
This is where the beast stores its harpoons,
to pierce the flesh and poke the veins,
but more, this is where the beast stores its arrows
to shoot down the dreams of its souls
who took the deal and traded their life away
One packet at a time.
Do you know what this is called?
It’s called the price of admission.
2)
Mid-February and the progression nearly killed us.
Mike said he knew of someplace we could go.
But neither he nor I could walk very far.
So instead, we lay on the concrete slab
in a nearby sump, which we used to call “the Pit,”
and there it was, I fell into a nod.
Around us was a large sandy pit
where storm water collected
from the streets of our suburban town.
We were next to Glenn Curtis Boulevard
and across from the only tall glass buildings in our town.
(Welcome to an unwanted truth in suburbia)
The pit was deep and the bottom was mostly dry,
except for the mouth near the sewer tunnel.
There was always some kind of water there
but we were up top,
lying on a cement grid,
freezing but at the same time,
neither of us felt a thing.
I slipped away beneath an overcast sky
and pictured angels falling backwards and losing their wings,
dying upside down and inverted,
like virgin sacrifices,
slain for their innocence in trade for something guilty.
Again, though it was cold, I have to admit it . . .
There was warmth in this cocoon
The dream was intense
and though I was wingless and powerless,
my mind took flight and, to me,
there was one point that was perfectly clear:
There was no coming back from this.
I thought about the words I heard
before my last trip into East New York, Brooklyn.
“If you do it once, then you’ll do it again.
And if you do it again,
then you might as well get used to what you’re doing
because the voices that follow
will never go away.”
Once more, I suppose, this is the price of admission
But not for me . . .
No one ever thinks hey,
That’ll be me . . .
It’s always easy to find an entrance,
It’s finding an exit.
Now, that’s the trick.
Once you’re in,
you’re in deep, with no way out,
which is why the saying comes to mind:
Abandon all hope
ye who enter here.
I was lost in a trance.
I was drifting away.
I was submerged in some kind of tainted baptism
while submerged under unholy water,
preparing to receive the breath of synthetic life.
I heard the sound of someone knocking at a door.
It began softly, but then the sound and the knocking grew louder,
and as it grew louder, I
was able to feel the pounding noise –
I was able to feel something pulling me out of my trance
The sound was Mike punching my side because . . .
I wasn’t moving.
“I thought you were dead,”
Mike said after I opened my eyes.
He had just finished vomiting . . .
Oh, and yeah
vomiting also comes with the price of admission
There was a thin line of drool dangling from his chin.
Mike and I were kids together.
We went back a long time, he and I
We did a lot of things too
he and I
I remembered him going to school
in his Cub Scout uniform. He was innocent once too
I remember him when he ran home
bleeding because he fell off a pogo stick.
I remember the cowboy wallpaper in his room,
the dark blue carpet
and the matching cowboy sheets
and the comforter on his bed
when he was little.
Mike asked, “Do you remember Mrs. Schumacher?”
She was our fourth grade teacher.
“Yeah, I remember her.”
“Hey, what was that girl’s name?
She was from, like, Guatemala or something.”
“I think her name was Rita,” I answered
“Yeah that was her.”
I had seen Rita once.
This was years after the absence of our innocence
My face was red and my eyes were reacting
to an ingested chemistry.
Quite possibly, I was drooling on myself and undoubtedly,
I looked like I felt.
Rita walked up and asked,
“Do you remember me?”
She was happy to see me and who she had grown into.
But her smile vanished after she saw the shape I was in
Then quickly, with a sad face, she turned and walked away.
Her English had improved.
She was with an accelerated class
doing something smart with smart kids, and me,
I was on a semi-dangle,
thinking that I was right about everything
or that I was better or that I knew the answers.
I’d say she must have been
doing something about her college education at the time
you know?
Building a future . . .
and in the time that I knew her,
Rita managed to learn the language and better herself
and me,
I managed to crumble.
I told Mike about this . . .
“She was pretty smart,” Mike said.
“I always remember the time when
Mrs. Schumacher made us write a letter
to the President of the United States.
Then we had to read it to the class.”
Scratching my chin I said, “I remember that….
She wrote about her family in Guatemala.”
“It was pretty good,” Mike recalled.
“Yeah, it was.”
I don’t say the cocoon I kept myself in was perfect;
however, I saw it as necessary.
Sometimes, I’d have these revelations about life and people.
Sometimes, I’d have revelations about God
and the separation between good and evil.
I thought I figured out the difference between
Heaven and hell and, in essence,
I was only looking for something spiritual.
In simple terms, spirituality is balance—and that’s what I wanted.
That’s all I was looking for.
I was searching for the perfect mixture.
I was looking for the right mindset
to balance my life
So,
I paid the price of admission because
out of some morbid curiosity,
I thought I’d check this out.
The high, I mean . .
Plus, no one ever thinks it’ll be them
to bend or fold so deeply
that they’ll never stand straight again.
Put simply, I took the bait and fell for the trap.
I fell for the sales pitch and the beast . . .
He was fine with extending me a line of credit
because, of course, he knew about his collection methods.
The beast knew who I was and what I owned
so therefore, the default would be quick
and the repossession of my valuable heart
would become cheap
and sold off to the highest bidder –
otherwise known as the little bags
which held the contents of something we refer to as
Addiction
By the way, it’s important to say this here.
This is why the first hit is always free.
Sure, I took the bait.
I wanted to clear the boredom
I wanted to ease the tension and quiet the whispers
that come with insecurity and the feelings of being awkward
or thinking that I was stupid.
I took the trip because I wanted to compensate
I wanted to make up for my lack of confidence
and through the means of greater chemistry,
I took the bait
because I wanted to create a degree of separation
between me and the world
(just to keep safe).
And since I was small in size,
I wanted to do something to make me feel bigger,
or at least not care if you were bigger than me or stronger
or more meaningful because, finally,
I found something to turn all of my objections
into something meaningless. .
I wanted to be balanced but mostly,
I wanted to be unaffected.
Too bad I didn’t count on the swings.
I didn’t know how deep the falls were, so in order to balance,
I had to do more to keep the scales
from swinging like a pendulum
which went back and forth.
It’s been decades since then, but I still remember
E.O.W April 1, 1991
I remember the casualties
and the consequences
which are too cold to think about
And yes, I remember the highs that were too warm to resist.
It’s funny now . . .
I’m about to send this out into the atmosphere and while I’m about to enter into the adult world, which we call our professional life, I cringe slightly because there are those who judge me or pigeonhole me or limit me to the stigmas in their head. I admit to my own stigma. I admit to my bosses too. I admit that had any of my old beliefs been true, then I would have never survived myself – and as for that doorway out, it’s real. It exists. I know because I was one of the fortunate ones (somehow).
Maybe this is why I send this out into the atmosphere, with hopes that someone might find this and, in that moment, they might know – there’s a way out for them too.
There’s no judgement
I’m right here if you need a friend
Always ~
The Written Addiction 
Beautifully written