And This? This is More

We live in a very different world now. You and me.
Our universes collided, for sure.
I know this.
But now, or at least as of this morning; it seems as though I am on the other side of the galaxy.
We are alive and living in different worlds (for now)

This is not because we come from different sides of the spectrum or that our age, generation or culture is not the same.
Not much has changed at the core of us.
At least, no.
I don’t think so.
What I mean is we all have our motivations and each are to honor a thought, a want, a fear, or a need.

We all have lungs to breathe and eyes that see.
At least, most of us do.

We all have a heart that beats and hands that touch, reach and feel.
I get that.
I am tired though.
I am
Dead tired.

I can say this to you . . .
I an understand how breathing and seeing or touching and feeling can be relative.
Or, so I guess.
I cannot say what you see or feel what you touch.
At best, I can relate to this from my own perspective and take this down to my core, which is similar because we all have wants and needs.
We all have a core.
Unless we are lifeless, I suppose.

We all have hopes, aspirations, dreams, desires, and yes, there are billions of us out here.
There are billions of us, just aching to get to that one “thing” and feel that moment of preciousness.
Billions of people are out there everywhere, and all of us are looking, hoping, and wishing for that “thing” to make us good or happy.
(At least for a while)
No high comes without crashes.
No waves ride forever
But love?
I was told that true love can never die; and thus, then neither will you or I
(or so I hope)

I think in all fairness that I should tell you that we have all been sold a good line of shit.
We bought this without asking about the expiration date or the shelf life, of, say, the promise of our best life without compromising our values to get what we need.
I settled. And because I did.
I lose millions.
I lost everything.
I am not homeless, per se, but I am a man without a home, a king with no crown, and no queen, and I am landless and lost i the abundance of my self-fulfilled aftermath.

I am the murdered or my own spirit, or again to quote Shakespeare; I am certainly no different from Hamlet because like him, “I am fortune’s fool!”

I have heard people tell me that I have to go along to get along.
I never did this well.
I have bee armed and dangerous for too long, but my poison is harmless to anyone else, aside from me, of course.

I have been told to grease the wheel to make it turn.
But my politics are poor and my aggression makes me weary sometimes, and in fact, the walls I have built close in, usually around the hours of morning at nightfall.
I have been told that you need to win friends and influence people.
I think it is only honest for me to say that I am not looking to win anything anymore, you know?
At least, not per se.
Besides, I have lost enough in the sad, vast competition known as the human race.
My knees hurt and my spine struggles to hold my back steady

There is an idea that has fooled me and the rest of us for way too long.
There is an idea that we need something external to solve the internal dilemma.
There is a culture that teaches us about instant gratification.
we live in systems of quick fixes and misleading highs.

We look outside to fix our insides and there is always a sales team to show us how to buy things that make us feel better.
And if it’s not one thing, then I guess it would be another.
I am out of ammunition and therefore, I cannot shoot my hatred anymore
My enemies and demons know me well enough to know the combination to my locks.
And they’ve opened this before.
This is nothing new.
Perhaps you’ve seen or heard
Either way –

There is a commercialized version of beauty which tells us, we have to look a certain way.
We need to dress a certain way, or behave, talk, act or live a certain way; —and dig it, I get the fact that we have to learn to live with each other. I do.
I get that we all have our differences which are both subtle or small or not subtle at all and huge in some comparisons.

And that’s fine.
I don’t have to see the world from your eyes to know you have your own thoughts or feelings.
And I’m sorry too.
I own my side of the street when I apologize for my ignorance,
I am sorry for my self-absorbed, and selfish, self-centeredness.

I apologize for my closed-minded fears which caused my preemptive attacks or to struggle out of fear.
I am sorry for my response to facts, fiction, or people, places and things that had nothing to do with you.
Please forgive me.

I am imperfect amongst other things. And yes, I am that child that never grew.
I am that one who never learned how to love the right way.

I am that boy who was bullied
I am that young teenager who awoke to a fact and I found out too late.
I was the one who realized and found out that I was nothing more than an object, or seemingly a piece of flesh and unknowingly used for another man’s fascination to gratify a secret fetish for young little boys.
Maybe it was my fault, no?
I mean, who told me to wear those underwear and be so young and hairless in my “tighty-whiteites,” you know?
I supposed I deserved that “special spanking.”
right?

I am that young kid who could not fit in.
I am that eight-year-old who thought the world would be better off without me, —and so, I am that same eight-year-old who downed a series of pills, assuming that I would fall asleep and eventually or inevitably never wake up again.
But I did.

I am that one who could not pass the test.
I could hardly throw a ball.
I was “that one”
I was “the weak one”
the small one
that kid
awkward and uncomfortable
but hopeful and hoping that maybe somehow
someone like you would come along to play with me
or love me
like no other
I was the awkward one.
I was “that one” who was always at odds, always unsure, and always unclear about what to say or what to do.
I was that one
I was the kid who wanted to play but I was rarely invited and when I was, I was that kid who never knew the right way to interact.

I was always too afraid to compete.
I never asked for this.
I was given my chemistry
this was not my choice and yet – you know this already.
Or hence, maybe this is why I am and will always be alone, from now until the hour of my death
(Amen)

I was that sixth grader who tried to play basketball and of course I was the worst on the team.
I was that kid who was laughed at by everyone else, including the coaches on the first day at practice.
I will never forget this.
I remember because this was the first time I took a shot.
I never shot a layup before.
I suppose I never learned how.
But I was excited to try.

I dribbled the ball towards the net.
I jumped up to take the shot . . .
AND BAM!
The ball hit the bottom of the backboard—and just as fast, the ball bounced back to hit me in the face.
I don’t know which hurt worse –
the ball
or the humiliation
The gym erupted with the worst kind of laughter you could think of.

I never asked to be “that kid.”
I never wanted to be odd or awkward or uncomfortable.
I never asked to be labeled or told that I was stupid or that I’d stutter when I read out loud.
I never wanted to feel the pains that no one else can see.
I didn’t ask for these scars that only you know about.

And you?
You . . .
God, you have no idea who you are and yet, I watch you.
I see how you spend your life and waste your time with others who have no clue or understanding what it means to be you on a daily basis.

I see you as you are, which is perfect to me—or flawless.
This is how I see you.
I have never noticed every feature in another human being the way I notice everything about you
And I do this
I notice everything from the smallest pretty details to the more obvious, like your curves or the way you sit sometimes, or look off into nothingness with a curious expression on our face.

I never wanted to build this wall around me and nor did I ask to feel threatened.
I never wanted to be the one who line the drawbridge with shrapnel and explosives to kill or maim the beautiful people who tried to approach me or reach my front gate.

No one knows the things you do.
No one knows about me from the same depth or perspective that you do—and the same can be said that no one has seen my discomfort or my hidden scars or my feebleness.
No one.
No one knows my cracks and my weak vulnerabilities like you.

It amazes me that I can sit through physical pain and see this as meaningless, and yet, you could destroy me with a word.
You could call me stupid.
You could call me a loser.
You could tell me that no one likes me or that everyone hates me.
You can tell me that I should do the world a favor and end it all —
And even if you said this out of anger, this hurts me more and worse than the realization that I was used or molested as a kid—and to hear your hatred contempt would kill me more than a bullet that flew by me when I was shot at in East New York, Brooklyn.

The funny thing about that
I didn’t even run.
Everyone else ran.
I stood there . . .
I was partly stunned, partly unsure if the shot was real or from a starter’s pistol, which was common at some of the drug spots.
Or more—I was partly resigned to the fact that if I died, then at least I’d be dead and I would never have to walk around like “this” ever again.

Do you even know who you are?
I say this because I am aware of who I am.
I know what I have seen or felt or been through.
I’ve been me for as long as I can remember.
I know what it feels like to wake up and get out of bed and go off to live my life.
I have been me for more than five decades.
I am the one who had to teach myself how to live and learn or how to get back up or go back to work, even if everyone hates me.
Faults and all, I am the one who had to feed myself hope and find a reason to get up and give it another shot.
I had top save my own life
Every day.

I am not sure how or why I have kept going.

Or, if I think back to that first day of basketball practice,
I don’t know why I stayed on the team—aside from the fact that my Old Man told me I can’t quit.
The humiliation was unthinkable

There was a practice which I remember.
The coach was annoyed with the popular kids on the team. He was annoyed with the showboating and the arrogance, which I suppose was a it much for kids at the age of 12.

The coach yelled at the team.
He lined everyone up.
He yelled about heart and paced back and forth.
Then he pointed at me.
The coach told the team, “this kid comes to every practice and every game and no matter how you hard you hit him or pick on him, he keeps coming back.”
“Not one of you out here has a heart like that kid!”

No one ever stuck up for me like that.
And some of the mean kids were nice to me that day
(at least, for a little while.)

I suppose this is the only compliment that I remember from my childhood.
At least, this is the only compliment I remember in this type of setting.
It was bittersweet and somewhat of a double-edged sword because the compliment cut both ways.
But still.

I don’t know how or why I am still here.
I don’t know why I survived the things I did.
I don’t know why some overdosed and died and I, who equally dosed, survived and lived to be alive or at least somewhat well.

There are way too many lies out there.
And we believe them.

Some of the lies are subtle and some are huge by comparison.
One of the biggest lies you have ever fallen for and with guilt and regret; I confess to my contribution to this.
I own my guilt to this which came via my selfish, self-centeredness.
However, the biggest lie you ever believed is that something about you is unsightly, not enough, or unbeautiful.

My sweet—
My love—
My beautiful girl . . .
You are and always will be y truest heart.
You are the love of my life, and my soulmate
I have memorized your body or the way your skin feels when you touch me.
I have committed the sounds you make to memory.
I remember how you moan and the faces you make when our intimacy reaches the highest peak.

You know all about me.
Then again, you always have (in one way or another)
And this is why fate has crossed our paths more than once.
You know about my fetishes.
You know how I notice the way you point your toes while your legs are apart when we make love.

You know the little details about your kiss or how to turn this up a notch; and this, this is more to me.
This is how you increase the heat in my soul to make me like a madman, sexually vicious and crazy enough to rip off our clothes and ravage you like this would be the last and first time we ever make love.

None of my life or my past is your fault.
However, your lesson to me is that my past is linked to unresolved tensions. And these are the reasons for me being stuck in my pain. This is what kept me hateful and dangerous,
This kept me focused on the fact that sooner or later, everything can and will go wrong.
(Terribly)

No one in this world is close to being as perfect or as beautiful.
I love you and your curves.
I love your cute toes and your ankles, your legs, your hips, your stomach, your chest and nipples.
I love everything, exactly the way you were, are, and ever will be.
I can promise you this
I love everything about you
But nothing comes close to the way I love Your face.
Nothing matches how your beauty can change my heart, just by smiling at me or walking through the door.
I will never forget what it was like to see you he first time . . .

Alone or not

I am yours and received or not. . .
I belong to you even
And this is true, even if you don’t belong to me.
Even if you are just imaginary, somehow, somewhere, and someday, I know that one day—
You will be real to me

The summer will be here soon.
But maybe I should go to Point Lookout later today
Yes. Of course I should
I can go to the church and see the outdoor shrine where She stands.
I can ask The Mother of All, as in Holy Mary, The Mother of God who prays for us sinners,
She is the Ultimate Mother, the One and Only who gave birth in parts of three which is otherwise known as the Divine Trinity

(En el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo)
As it was in the beginning
  . . . is now
  . . . and will be forever

Blessed Mother
show me a sign.
The day is cold
the sky is gray
and the weatherman says snow is on the way.

Keep me warm, Mom.
I know you’re up there
and maybe you can’t help me
But –
I miss her.