Icarus's blog: "I need a drink."

Some days I like to pretend I'm a bat. Pteropus, it means flying fox. It's fun though. Because it looks like everything's being pulled to the ceiling that way. Shoes, hair, smiles. If it weren't for that dizzy feeling of blood rushing to my head and out my nose, I really could convince myself that everyone else is upside down. Aren't they anyway? It pulls so strong, but I'm not sure which way. Am I being pulled by you, or pulled by me? Do I want to stand up, or stand down? Everything's upside down. From gravity to our priorities to me. Why is it- that everything is only when I am. You have to flip go top-side over to realize everything's backwards. ...everything. I taste something metallic in the back of my head, wet and thick. I right myself, get a little woozey from the switch when the room stops spinning I realize my world is upside down. Down with the upside. Another cold empty night at the edge of my bed. No light to remind me that I'm right side up. All is right in the left world.

Where have all my beautiful things gone. Someone stole them from my house. I put them in a tiny lockbox. Somewhere safe and secret. You don't want to hear about it. There's nothing inside. Just a few scraps of paper. An ugly old stuffy doll. Nothing but a few ideas about life nothing of any value at all. Molded tin with little paint chips falling off. Much like my razor blade heart, rusted webbed and spidered apart. There's nothing to it really. Just another tin box to put myself in. Nothing but a little cozey cage where I live. Starving myself just to stay safe. Insect legs broken off. Tiny whispers stored in jars. Little wishes and unloved thoughts. This is where everything beautiful is locked. Nowhere to go but down and further away. But today someone took my box away. Someone took my little ugly box. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to cry. Nowhere for my empty little heart to die. Just an empty space, marked only by the absence of dirty- a little square of barren pretty. Cuz someone took my box of beautiful fucking things away. Little hidden empty box. Full of dreams and broken thoughts. Falling star pieces and torn off wings. Nothing there but tortured virgin screams.

I think the most productive thing to do right now would be to get drunk. Extremely drunk. I probably have the materials required.

Can't make it come out in the right color. I Me. I'm sick of writing about me. Let's write about you for once. What's new in YOUR life. What's interesting in YOUR trashcan. What's left over in your condom? How will you condemn me? Clench your ass and keep your eyes forward. The donkey punch is coming. When you wake up and realise this might just be it. There might be no heaven. There might be no kings. There might be no soulmates. And the thing that keeps you together is the MIGHT in those sentences. And it makes me dance. Like emperors with pan pipes. It's what makes me pull teeth. -=No=- Novacaine. No Love. Nothing. No more. And I'm just a voice on the edge of the receiver. A loon's call in a damp bog of your fears. There's the occasional bogey, the occasional crocodile, and rejection. But it's a beautiful place here actually. I could make it for you. The stars, the ankle deep marsh, the azure blue sky, cold like a perfect silent winter. Reeds whispering in the wind, calling you to walk further into the forgiving muck. I used to be... Now I'm not sure anymore. Just a pebble ripping through the film waving goodbye to my center billowing and dancing in an ever dissapearing orbit. I can fix the goddess under the crescent moon. The red drops falling from her blind crystalline eyes. It all just makes me feel so flat. Like my hands. Flat against her face. Her broken sensibility, her reaped innocence. The remnants of her oncebutnowgone form. She falls rigid in my arms knee deep in the muck. Can't you just hit the switch turn on the lights make the dark things leave. There's nothing here for me. Dance quietly in the midnight summer. Lit by perfect winter. Punctuated by a broken heart, the epicenter of yet another meltdown. Thermonuclear. Or rather nervous. Very much not here together there or for that matter not altogether. But what's new with you the world is ending. and I am the torch that fell on the kerosene. You were there to catch it. But you would have rather watched it fall. Ruination through absolution. Strike that, reverse it. Fall. Flicker. Hope. Burn. Laugh. And die. My world is burning. And you're right there with me. Offering divine peace. Offering love from a particle board cross. A tin savior... for the price of one shilling. I choke on the cracker. A sign from your god. That I was not to be saved. He smiles. As the knife stops in my cold, beating heart. I can start fires. I can take prometheus' gift and use it for something beautiful. Watch it burn. Whipe the ash from your eyes. And just keep taking. Keep me Take me Lose me in your big dark empty. Lose me with my arms sawed off, my eyes bound, my legs drawn a crust of moldy bread one inch from my nose on the ground. Devour me in a world that forgot me. Never bothered to meet me. Never wanted to give me the chance. And I dare to be the chaos! And I dare to be the fire. I dare to be the warped sense of justice. The warped core of an empty shell called there. A dream called life. Blown out, exposed. Chipped. Gnawed picked at to infection. I am I was I will and then

I'm nothing like god. I say things like "speak like a child" "never turn away from me" "don't put your hand in that." But I'm no different from you or aye. I'm nothing like small. I'm nobody from there. I'm nothing from there. I used to be something of a genius. A savant. A moron. A fleeting glimpse of whole. Now I'm just picking at old scabs and ivories. I think sometimes I lost what it takes. And what it takes is a lot. It just keeps draining my-----. I used to be someone. I used to be the ace in the hole. I used to be god's saving grace. I used to be somebody! I swear! Just look at the stories on my body! the scars on my meme! Just believe I was, once, maybe twice. But I'm nobody, nowhere. For the mind, body, and soul, from the bleeding pen. The clotted hand. The beautiful broken. The ever empty. I'll give you anything... Just lie to me, with your hand in the cookie jar.

A darker shade of black told me that there was no fear, no god, no kings. He told me there was no pain. There was only the edge of the razor. Held gently Poised carefully so as not to penetrate. A deeper side of blue told me there was no spirit there was no body there was no after there was no one. She said to hold the eye shut. So as to not let any vulgar foreign mind fall in. A deeper failing of red told me the sun was not on fire. But that I was. A phantom flame that ingulfed all it touched. Destroyed all that it loved. Ash to dust. Fall like snow petals. From the empty rose of the world. There was something there. Only nothing. On the edge of forgetting. On the cusp of nowhere. Only you.

I feel as small as a pixel in a broken window, like some frightened fragment of imagination running amuck in The place where lost toys and brave boys dare to tread. I want to be somebody. Someone brave. Someone who's not afraid of the shattered baubles here. Someone who can stand up to the wind-up soldier the one with kung-fu grip and bayonet rifle. A boy who won't run from the man in the closet. The one who promises me fame and candy. If I drop trow and bend over. If I sign this contract. If I remove that portion of my brain that keeps me a boy. I want to be brave enough to say no. But I'm scared. Mostly of the shiney glass orbs rotting from Paddington's asbestos skull. He tells me to do things sometimes. I think once he was my friend. But now he says I have to kill the manchild. I have to drink the virgin out of the land. I have to dance with my pale naked body pressed up to the man in the closet. I'm starting to think he's that guy we heard about in sunday school. The one with the fancy suit, and a great handshake. They say He can get anyone to do anything. Maybe he can get me to be brave. Maybe if I talk nice with him- He'll take the toys mom threw away back with him. Maybe I can get some sleep. Maybe he'll stop coming into my room rudely uninvited. The green guys, with all those pointy parts that choke you when you bite down... they're closing in. The clown I played with once on Christmas day says he wants his due. And I suffer the promise of the man in my closet alone. With each broken toy, each fragile forgotten memoir, each abandoned friend bearing witness to my shame. To my ultimatum with fear. To my first step toward being a man.

I just wanna punch god in the throat. And why the fuck not? Aren't I due? I've been on this somewhat blue earth long enough to earn some tenure. So where's mine? Where's my fucking million dollars, my crack addicted children, my broken jaw ephemereal phantasy. Where are my fucking flying cars? SUNDAAAAAAAY BLOODY SUNDAY! Only it's wednesday, and I've been alive too fucking long without a gold fucking plated ferrari, I deserve it, I saluted the flag, I shat on the french fries, I hated every tosser that talked different from me, I pushed every motherfucking brownskin down a flight of stairs- ESPECIALLY if they didn't deserve it. So where's mine? It didn't get me anywhere. So I decided to shout FUCK america with my new black friend. I stopped leaving the house. I stopped fucking my palm in the name of the father. I stopped going to church. I stopped Only white lines seperate me from here and happiness. Blame the man in moscow. Blame the cow in the kitchen. Blame the "tyrant" in the jungle just north of the twin. Blame Mcdonalds. Blame TV. Blame mom and dad. Blame the kids that stuck their parts in me "just playin". Blame the ghosts in the desert. The ones they say have yellow cakes and tastey treats of doom. The ones that are winning the war. Blame your neighbor. Blame your lover. Blame your mistress. Blame that handsome fellah that gives you those muscley back rubs. Give me what's mine. Blame God. But one thing we know. For certain. Pride's okay. Entitlement is okay. Okay is okay. Why not exceptional? Why not divine? Why not perfect? ... Don't ask me why I hate it. Don't ask me what everyone did wrong. Don't ask me what we did to ruin this dream. The land of the prosperous. Of brotherhood. Of understanding. Because if you have to ask. If you had to read this once and not twice- You're just one of them. Blame sin. Blame me. It's my fault the dream died. It's my fault. It's my fault. It's my fault.

Somewhere in the great divide. That guitar is playing. Between dusk and dawn. Cold autumn air on my fuzzy toes, cold tea nestled carelessly between two authritic points. Somewhere in the great divide. That place where I left my childhood. That place where I realized I loved you. That place where it all fell apart. Like ash? Like a house of cards? Like exploding bumble bees? That sunset tragedy outside our front door. That melancholy perfection at the twilit edge of the universe. All good things must come to an end... Or so they say. I say- That's not life. This is the sideswipe. This is the diversion. Life is... Having your cake and licking it too. Life is reaching that level of content perfection. I reach out my hand, to pull it all out of the muck. But it's all so damned thick, inky, foul. What about class? What about establishment? Riches? Mirth? Revelry? Wild sex? Friends, family, family, FAMILY! What about us? Will you walk barefoot with me in the shards of my youth? Cross the burning ember bridge to my happy landfill. Hand in hand. To a place where my smile is eternal. A place where I can listen to that distant guitar, and crickets, and fireflies fucking, on borrowed time, on stolen sandwiches. Can you get off work, take off those stanky shoes, hold me close, and kindly reject my offer of hot monkey sex- in favor of falling asleep to a great movie, and two satisfied smiles? Can you handle happiness? Can you handle running away with me- the first chance we get.

The handsome man in the mirror tells me he needs a drink and a couple drags on a two dollar cigar. He says I'm a slacker. He says I'm nothing like god, nothing like my father, nothing like Pollack Poe or Payne. He says I should get more sleep. I look like hell. And I sure as shit should get back to work. "Cheers old man" he says as he takes a swig of scotch, and I take another left hook to the ego. He tells me to get out of the bathroom and get my fuckshift life back on track Back? Implying that it ever was? But the sad truth is I'm out of scotch and I refuse to smoke cigars without my coat. Unseasonable October warmth. Unwelcome sweltering. Sweltering unwelcome.