I was zipping up the over-stuffed suit case forcing the zippers from both sides to meet in the middle and it was apparent that it wouldn't go all the way but I kept tugging anyhow.
I realized I had packed for two people and that I didn't need to carry it all with me any longer.
I smiled as I reviewed the articles I removed from the luggage. How silly I was to think that I needed this or that.
And now the baggage is managable.

Love and consumerism are two sides of the same ever-flipping coin. A gamble that lasts for eternity. Always a 50/50 shot. Suspended in mid-air spilling no secrets as to which way your fate is spun. Just spinning and spinning and spinning. Just trying to fill the hole, but on the whole, it can't be done. You're fighting a war that can't be one. It's double or nothing, even once you've won. You let it ride, or you try to run, but either way it all adds up to the same sum. It lasts evermore until the day your life is done.

Some would say that only death would fill the hole to its fullest. That that's all we're chasing. And what better way to achieve it than to find someone to smother us peacefully in our sleep, or to be buried beneath a mound of useless artifacts? Those things that are in fact nothing but false idols. You pray that they help you remember the good times, and you throw them away in order to forget the bad ones. That's why people destroy the gifts given to them by previous partners. It's disorienting to look at them. You get intoxicated by the spinning. Always spinning. Watching the light catch the face of a dead man and shoot it back to your retina in the way that produces a phantom colored orb floating in place of the sun you just stared at, but then the man's face is slowly swallowed by shadow, and you can't help but let the nostalgia be eclipsed by all the **** that was fed to you that was too hard to swallow, so you follow up on your inclination to destroy and you open up the hole again, only to discover that it's a cavity that's been hollow this whole time because you filled it in a rush with meaningless junk. There was a pocket filled with stale air and dust that prevented you from being full.

Buy, sell, trade. Someone wants your old things. One man's trash is another man's treasure, and someone  may just keep it forever. But, not you. You don't need it. You don't want it. You can't afford to feed it, but it's difficult to block it out from your thoughts and you keep thinking maybe it's the *** and you ought to stop, but you won't because it really hits the spot. The spot right between the two. It's love that you buy. It's love that you can consume. You feel as though you've earned it; that you deserve it. "Free love maaan", but nothin is free in America. And that mentality costs a lot. It's just as much selling out as it is buying in. You're drinking someone else's Kool-aid and they're exploiting your reactions. Human interaction is great for the sake of interaction but when you start to yearn for a deeper satisfaction it's probably best to mine it from within your self, not putting a person in a jar and raising them up to their spot on the designated shelf. Not buying a plastic hero forever encased in its wrapping to immortalize your ideals and your dreams.

I need a release. Set me free. Not love though. I'm a slave to my heart, always have been. I'm not speaking about any of those has-beens. I'm the one who's washed up, but now I'm finally getting clean. But is it the end to the means? Is it enough to force me to see what's been unseen from the other end of the shining sea? Catch and release. Catch and release. Do not exceed the daily limits. Don't hook yourself in the back of the head. And remember: Patience. We're all just fishing after all.

Chaos over sleep.
You supply the torches, I'll supply the mob.
This bed's too big for the one of us.
The maggots already ate through the moose, leaving two yellowed-white anchors made of bone to sink into the floor.
Bologna; The meat that lies straight to your face.
The news is getting olds.
Analyzing bags and trashes. Paralyzing eyelashes snap shut, trapping the fly.
Thus, the death of an ego was born.
Reading is kind of like smoking except you don't burn the paper.
The quickest way to burn a bridge is to kiss it.
Don't be a stranger now. I'm strange enough for the both of us.
The ins and outs of the whens and wheres I do and do not belong.
That bar fight with the bathroom door really did a doozy on my eyebrow.
You know I will hunt whatever, you pra(e)y.
Blessed by lowercase god and misspelled Amerika('Merica).
Same message, different bottle.
My dreams are too loud before I fall asleep.
The first possibility that you jump to write off has the highest probability of containing the things that will set you right off.
My teeth may not have any layers of skin left to ride by.
From poverty to profanity; proverbs to insanity.
A serpent a day keeps the apples away.
Growing weary of the definitive abstracts, I curl up somewhat uncomfortably numb in the cracks of the curbs and sidewalks...
And with that the last thought of the night twisted into the air and joined with the wisps of smoke pouring from the final cigarette. The odyssey in mind sends our hero sailing from the shores of "I know how to do it all" into the vast and turbulent waves of "I do it all."
The bird who clipped its own wings.
The Jack of All Trades, the Queen of No Hearts, the King of Nothing, the Ace of Idle. Faceless cards.
Just a chess piece on a checker board. Maybe there's less to figure out than there is to understand.
Always on the brink of making things right. Don't let it slink away in the middle of the night.
I had an uncomfortably close call with life. What some would call a near-life experience. I swear I was inches away from living...

Sometimes I sink into the couch when I'm deflated,
Then I jump up, limp over to a crutch, and become fixated.
Carvin a rut, punchin myself in the gut, getting faded.
Even the most fortunate son has misfortune to come.
I don't believe in bad luck.
I believe that you ****** up and that luck is based on mistakes, so you're the one that makes it.
Don't blame the universe for the problems that you've created.
Live as an example of someone who is always elated to view all things as a whole,
And chooses to focus on what's good for his or her own soul,

Fully accepting the ugly and embracing the beautiful,
Not reachin a peak then sinkin so low,
Just grind up some tea and speak to the old
Who inhabit the art that you teach, but don't reach for the gold,
Cuz focus on money keeps you away from your goals.

Restore your faith in humanity.
Replace it with insanity.
Product placement causes cavities.
Your plan is ****** sick.

Weekend warriors,
Just a buncha losers, all a buncha boozers.
Ya’ll take all the cash you earned and get your wrists slapped
Cuz you hand it all back to your rulers.

Put a rock on your lady’s finger, take a trip down to the jeweler, and then later you can trade her in for a sequel of half the value like a gamer, but who are you kidding, you ain't no player.  
By 2 years and 3 babies later you’re filing papers,
And the rock gets used as the paper's weight,
And who gets to keep it is a bigger debate than
Who has to get up and feed the kids every morning before eight,
And rush em off to school before beatin a desk for 5 days straight.
But that rock ain’t worth ****, isn’t that great?

She drowns in a pool of tears while he drowns his in beer til he gains enough courage or cowardice to stand on the tracks
And waits to be splattered like paint on the front of a freight.
Or maybe it’s the other way around since all males and females don’t share the same traits.
Either way they're all left with the same bad taste in their mouths, and they can't spit it out, no matter how much they try to *****, cry, smile, or pout.
So they just wait, and they wait, and they wait, and ask "Why?",
But that's not what life is about.
Get up. Get Out. Step away from the couch.
Start stepping to the beat of your own drum
Instead of beatin the beaten path;
Trying to climb a ladder with no rungs.

The preacher-man is screaming that God is mad at thee.
The madman is screeching that God is made of me.
The broken man is praying to the God that's underneath.
The beast beneath is saying that God made man his sheath.

So much hurt upon this earth with no fire left to warm the hearth on which we curl up to watch the world turn off at the end of every day and the beginning of a new breed of life. No light. No Reason. Just a couple of teenagers about to embark on some treason. I miss the night.
That stench. That rotten smell. Those tired eyes. An endless well.
Beauty in the eye indeed. Beauty in the eyes of me.

Smoke rose and blood boiled, all the while our egos toiled. There are a hell of a lot of things I wish to recoil, but ******* I miss the night. The day may illuminate the best of us but the dark shows what's left in the rest of us. What sits in the shadow right next to us. What sinks beneath the skin past the pests and pus.  Decay to your dismay may just be a diss to the day you clapped your hands together to pray for the outcome of the game you play to be one that results in someone else's pain. Why God? You say. Whose God? Oh My God. No, not today. I'll wait for the night to get my hand *****.

An empty page. The insufferable debate.
An infernal task? The everlasting trait?
A blank check? A clean slate?
The inkwell pond.  Pen and nib. Rod and bait.

Over-caffeinated.
Under-appreciated.
Anger encapsulated by the shortness of my replies.
I'm exasperated by the amount of attempts and all the tries.


Code Scrambled. Wires crossed. Software and hardware not integrated.
Emotions and objects being wrongly correlated.
Places and faces being traded.
Thoughts and feelings segregated.
Process of progress imitated.
Utterly inundated.
Brain cells being immolated
So that my mind and my soul can become assimilated.  
Self-worth: Underestimated.
These points are not to be debated.

Swoon confused with brood.
A smiling clown dances around the center ring.
Inside he's centering his self around the latitude and longitude of
The highest hilltops of Mt. Pisspoorattitude.
Without the slightest shred of gratitude towards any good deed done for him past the 5 minutes of thank you that he spouts off at the peak of the mountain.
If at first you don't succeed, just cry and cry again.

The concept rocket pulls the cap off the the pen sprocket
Ink spews everywhere. A shiny black geyser erupts from the rig.
Men shouting back and forth to one another. There's no way to contain it. We've sprung a leak, the oil is in our water. The oil is our blood.
Erasing, no, smearing. No control. No Z's either. Analog ****-ups.
Chasing my tail, driving the same circuit.
Racing as Yoshi with a broken control stick

I've had a hell of a time on Uncle Sam's dime.
I disappeared behind the words written on my mirror long ago.
Am I a wreck or is this the requiem of my dreams?

I can't help but be flustered.
Reflections. Monsters. Mirrors; Captured souls.
Release. Awakening. Repress. Make-up; Mask.
Alternate reflections. Hate others;Hate self.
Push. Face fear. Be fear. Perception;Reality. Responsibility.
Remove mask. Breathe. Add Mask.  
Accepting time. Day and night/birth and death/alpha and omega.
Create/Destroy. Destroy/Rebuild. Greetings. Farewell. Wounds and scars.
Children. Adults/Scarred children. Children are people. People are children.
Bad seeds or bad fruit? Bruised fruit. Too many bruises. Too many scars. Rotten fruit. No hope.
Always hope. Humans. Nature. Human nature. Optimism. Search for hope. Search for light. Illuminated Searchlight.
Conquest. Journey. Propel forward. Repel backward. Traveling nowhere. Fast.
Duality Deceased. A Dice Roll of Disease.

There's a fine dusty line etched between the sands of time that attempts to separate the correlating traits of my native abhorrence and naivety.

Between the polar points of my timeline lies a multitude of flags that mark the many shades of personal integrity that were once plainly labeled by prying eyes internalized as "Me".

I've been defined as numerous things, many of which I claimed to be indigenous to the nature of which I've inherited.

When I hear people call me Pat now I think they're in the middle of calling me "Pathetic".

I don't want to "re"do that aesthetic that I was upset with when the "P.H" of me brains was chemically unbalanced.

Letters in groups of two surrounded by apostrophes arranged in a similar view;

The first has taken to using many faces which has developed into a case study of Mistaken Entity, or in other words (but still pronounced the same) A classic case of:  Misplaced Identity.
"Me"

The second group, when added to my misinterpreted title in the form of an overzealous prefix (or perhaps a premature suffix) would alter the meaning of the initials of my initial name which creates a title whose exaggerated truth is slightly waning, but still sleeps in a bed of accuracy.
"re"

The initial name was not mentioned, but is instead embedded in my genetic strains giving new meaning to the last acronym used previously to describe acidity.
In this context it lends power to contracts when inscribed upon loose-leaf to indicate my consent to relinquish, or relish in, freshly indoctrinated responsibilities.  
"P.H"

Patrick Hurley
Ingrained in the earliest states of living the characters now combine and slowly unwind as the darkness steeply inclines to bind together the letters that now define me as:
Pat Heretic.

This...this is my heritage.  
I'm doubtful that the surname will be passed down through marriage,
by that I mean I hope to abandon the ******* that carries it.  
The transformation has seen many stages, ranging from simple pumpkin patch to ritzy coach carriages.
Returned to the depths of humble beginnings after smashing to bits the glass accessory that brought me to be what I kept wishing for with such carelessness.

Alas, I know now what causes the despair in this...wait...I had this...
It's because of the duality we experience in this existence through the resistance
That pulses between what we have and what is given to us.
Karmic retribution in the form of poetic justice.