You can’t care anymore.
You just can’t. You can’t look to please everyone and when you do, then what?
What happens next?
You can’t care about who comes or goes or who pays attention and who stays around long enough to make a difference.
It is true what they say.
Yes.
You have to save your own life because everyone else is busy saving theirs.
I agree.
And this?
Or this thing that you and I call “artwork,” and what this means to us is nothing to anyone else.
And that’s fine. We cannot write to reach someone.
We cannot love someone harder to make them love us more.
We have to be fine with what we have, even if what we have is not fine.
We have to be fine.
Or better, this has to be fine.
What other choice do we have but to see it this way.
I will not say that no one cares. But even when someone cares, how much is enough?
How do we know when someone cares enough?
Or is this another case of finding out too late?
And I will never say that no one pays attention.
I will never say there is no love for me.
I know there is (somewhere)
I can’t say where I will be in a year or in a month.
But this is where I am now.
Here.
I am not sure whether I am supposed to stand strong or if it is okay to bend at the knee and let myself rest for a while.
“Bless me father, for I have sinned.”
It has been lifetimes since my last confession.
And it has been lifetimes since I realized the meaning of true sorrow for my sins, and so, to be absolved is unthinkable when life lived selfishly, or self-centered.
I cannot fall on my sword.
Not would the wound be enough to kill the demons.
Not at all. Wounds like these just bleed for days and the pain stays longer too, like an unwanted guest who refuses to take the hint.
I am not sure if I will ever be welcomed in “my Father’s” house and I am not sure if there is a room prepared for me, regardless of the promises.
I can clasp my hands together with a humble attitude, eyes closed, chin tucking down towards my chest and my forehead bends forward as if to show my vulnerability in a moment of silence.
I can pray.
I can plead with God.
I can plead to Mary, The Mother of God.
I can ask her to “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of my death.”
Amen . . .
I can beg for forgiveness.
I can ask to be forgiven or to be absolved.
I can look for salvation and look to find redpemtion.
And yes; it is true to say that my redemption has nothing to do with your response.
I can beg for one more chance>
I can scream and cry and I beg with all I have.
I can ask for my dreams, again, and again.
but to what avail?
I realize that it is true what it says in the Book of James.
Faith without works is dead.
What does it mean to believe in something if we do not work for what we believe in?
What does it mean to have faith that life will come together if we are not willing to put in the work to make our life come together?
work hard
pray had
love hard
live hard.
There is no substitutes and there are no more heroes.
They are long, fucking gone.
I am a stranger to those who I used to adore.
I am far from the bee.
I am further from the sunflowers and ladybugs and the peaceful signs that someone above is looking down and smiling.
I saw a cardinal this morning.
I viewed this as a special kind of intervention because my thinking was poisonous at the time.
There is no going back . . .
I am far more distant than I have ever been before and still, there is a piece of me that wishes and hopes and dreams that somehow, one day, I will open my front door and there you are . . .
Smiling.
Sexy as ever, and forgive me and dare I say this at the risk of being crass or inappropriate; I will grab you so hard and tear your clothes off and sorry . . .
But I will fuck you like a rabid beast.
And then some.
I have to stop this.
I have to stop thinking about these things.
I have to stop paying attention to who notices.
I have to stop wondering about who cares and who doesn’t.
I have to keep moving.
Or better yet, I have to save my own life, every day, because everyone else is busy saving their own damned selves.
So, fuck it.
If I tear off a corner of the world and use this as my own, who can stop me?
Who can blame me?
Either way, I can;t care about this
And so . . .
Write on, Poet.
Do not stop.
Ignore the attention or the lack thereof.
Forget about the flowery words or the need to meet the readers where they are.
There are no readers.
There is no crowd.
There is no world and there are no Angels in the city anymore.
The Saints I knew are all gone and moves elsewhere.
There is nothing left.
There is nothing else but this imaginary workshop, which I have created in my head more than a thousand times over.
There is no more money or gold at the end of the rainbow.
And rainbows are not real. . . They’re just an illusion.
At least, that’s what the song says.
There are no more reasons to aim for the top of the best seller’s list.
There is no more time to say “I have plenty of time” because the hour is later than we think.
There is nothing left but this, my words, this place in my heart, my outrage, my hate, my love and my lust and my voice and my passion.
And yes, the list goes on.
Fuck it. . . .
If I lost everything, then I have to let that go.
If I lost the right or the ability to love or to be in love, then fine.
So be it!
Let me let that go too.
If I lost my life like the way that I lost my youth to the tides of a different problem, then so be it.
Suck it up.
Put your pants on, one leg at a time.
And if there is pain, which there is, then feel it.
Process it.
Deal with it.
Live with it.
But by all means, do not stop.
Do not give in.
Or as it was said by Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night.”
If there is anything left, then we have to scrape what’s left from the bottom of the pan, so-to-speak, and then we have to feed on whatever we can.
I think surviving is a tough thing to do
Living is tough,
And sometimes, we are lucky enough to feel the sun touch our face or to have the wind blow our hair back.
Sometimes, we are lucky enough to catch a ride, like back in the days when I was wilder and crazy enough to thumb for a ride and hitchhike to crazier places in my youth.
Sometimes, the winds are calm.
Some nights the moon is full and the moonbeams are enough to send a bluish light through the window. And this is beautiful.
Some days, the rainfall and the storms are like a lullaby and gentle to the ears, which is enough to bring us peace while Mother Earth cleans the world of our sorry bullshit.
Sometimes, the moments are too deep and too heavy and intense; and sometimes, the pain is great and sometimes the tension is incredible and the moment at hand is unthinkable.
Absolutely.
And oftentimes, the pit in your heart is heavy enough to drag you down to the underworld that even the Devil calls ridiculous.
And so. . .
All you can do is write.
So, write on, Poet.
All you can do is remember why we started this rumble and how all the jazz between us and the world is nominal compared to the reasons behind this thing we call art.
Are fight is not over but this does not mean our fight has to kill us.
I swear. . .
All you can do is paint, sing, write, dance, live, love, laugh and learn>
We have to do this because so long as you do, the devil can never win because you will never forfeit.
Keep in mind, the devil can never beat you or take your soul
He can only trick you. And so, if you retire or resign, or if you quit and let the devil win or trade him your soul for one dream; just know your soul never belonged to you to begin with.
You cannot bargain with something you never owned
I know we’ve turned on ourselves and defied out best interests.
We have self-destructed and we have sinned.
I know what greed and pride does.
I know all about lust or the need to feel that forbidden thing, which pumps blood through the veins.
And this is human.
and this is why I look the way I do, wild and deranged.
At the same time –
This is what it means to be real or to be a person.
It is within us to sin
urges and desires and fetishes are not a dysfunction
We have it in us to fall down
and we can get back up too.
We can fail. . .
But it is also within us to learn.
It is within us to improve.
It is within us to change, to grow, to rebuild, and to come back home just like the prodigal son who squandered everything he had and came back empty.
I am empty . . .
. . . and who knows
Maybe God the Father will smile upon me like the prodigal son’s father did with him, as if to say, “my son was gone but now, he has returned.”
I hope so.
Or maybe the serpent has tricked me too, enough so that maybe I didn’t lose a rib like Adam to Eve; but for now, I lost my place in Eden because I failed to heed the warning and stay clear from the forbidden fruit.
But for now, I can’t care about that,
I can’t think about the left or the right or look back to see what’s behind me.
All I can do is move.
All I can do is go, be, and do
And so now, here I go
Love always
Me –
The Written Addiction 