by - 0 comments

The Best Revenge

They say the best revenge is good living.

So live good . . .

Never let yourself down and live better than anyone ever expected you to. I see this as the key to life. This does not mean everything will be easy. As we all know, life is far from easy. Life is filled with unexpected turns and events. It comes with tragedies and triumphs. The overall goal, however, is to have the triumphs outweigh the tragedies.

Live faster and longer. I say live to your extreme because when it all ends and this ride we live on comes to a complete stop, I want to look back and say I did what “They” said I could never do.

Ever watch the faces of people sitting on a roller coaster?

The ride begins Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

Poetry From Sessions In The Balcony: About the Rain

And so the rain began to fall.
The wind moved with a sound,
as if it had a tail
that whipped passed the window.
The raindrops poured down
and crashed against the rooftop,
which sounded like a stampede
of a trillion little footsteps
hurrying down the slope of the house
to eventually meet the ground.

It is morning.
The gray clouds are like a blanket
that drapes across the sky.
I always saw this kind of day
as Heaven’s method
to soften the madness
and ease the tension
of an everyday world. Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

Written for Awareness Month

They say this is awareness month . . .

Before I move forward, I should explain that I am in no way a professional. I have no diplomas on my wall. I am not trained in the psychiatric field or a counselor of any kind. However, I am someone with a past, which is why this subject is very important to me.
To raise awareness, I choose to expose my own story as it relates to suicide. And I repeat; I am not a professional. Instead,  am someone that sat on the other side of the clipboard in an examination room.

I often hear questions about suicide because many cannot understand why someone would take their own life. As an explanation, the following is a brief passage about my experience to explain what I felt and thought during tragic moments in my history. This is my way to enlighten those who may be confused as well as a way to comfort those who might think they are alone. Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

From The Book of Firsts

We all remember our firsts.
I remember my family’s first car. It was a white and blue mustang fastback that rumbled when it started. The interior was blue, and though it was fast, the car often ran poorly. I believe the model was a 1970, but my memories are very few. These were the years before car seats and laws on where children should sit in vehicles.
I remember being placed in Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

From The Junkie Stories: At The Starting Gate

After two hours, the effects from the mescaline failed to pull off its trick. The sun had already gone down. The summer was at its close and the lazy days were about to end. Soon enough, we would be in school. Soon enough, I would be faced with the classroom pressures and the emotional discomfort of an undiagnosed learning disability.

We gathered at the video arcade known as The Wiz in the shopping Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

About My Writing

They say a writer should never write to please the reader. Once this happens, they say the writer is writing for the wrong reasons.
When I began this journey, I began with the desire to create and become something. I wanted to perfect my craft and do something more than scribble notes in a notebook. Years ago, I was taught about the definition of two words. The first word is humility and the second word is modesty.

Humility is Continue reading →

by - 2 Comments

Moving On

I come from a small town approximately 31 miles east of New York City. In my youth, I walked nearly all of its streets, searching for a sense of identity while trying to find my purpose and understand the meaning of life. I have history in this town, which is not all good. However, my history is not all bad.

In my youth, I was Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

Abbie and The Roots of an Old Tree

I ever tell you about my friend Abbie?

I met Abbey when I was about three years-old. This was when my family lived in Forest Hills, New York. We lived in a duplex apartment at 66th Road behind the Hollywood Bowl on Queens Boulevard. I was too young to remember much about the apartment. I remember brown, shag carpeting, which was in the upstairs corridor. I remember the blue walls in my bedroom, which was marked with crayons Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

a lesson learned

Tucked in Upstate New York mountains and hidden in the quiet anonymity of a small town with only a few homes, few business and fewer people, I found myself in a short-stay rehabilitation center.
The center was not as I imagined it would be. The place was not hospital-like in any way. However, there was a basic nursing staff. There were no medical doctors or medications, only counselors, and ex-drunks that chose a therapeutic career after their own successful rehabilitation.

We were in the middle of nowhere. I was the youngest patient, and as it seemed, I was certainly not the only patient undergoing treatment as forced condition by an outside source. Most of the men Continue reading →