To my Dearest Readers, I wish to apologize beforehand for the things I'm going to start writing. I will offend many of you, I will probably lose many friends as well. I may in fact burn all of the bridges I have left in my desire to speak. I just want to warn you beforehand that there is no subject too politically incorrect, no logical fallacy too strange to address.

I feel like an alien, descended from another planet and viewing humanity for the first time.

What dark tempest drives us to do the things we do to each other, and to the world we live in? We create monuments to our greatness while selling our children? What justification do we have to sell our own kind for our ****** pleasure? What lack of understanding drove our sadistic forays into torturing each other in the name of progress? Why do we do the horrible things that humanity is capable of? And at the same time, how are we able to create beauty out of nothing? What kind of sense does it make for some of us to turn inward and love, and others to turn outward and destroy?

To bring it back to a more personal level....

Why is it that I can take all the good and bad I've lived, and still make myself get up in the morning?

What is it that drives me to go to a bar knowing what I'll find when I get there? Why do I see so many lonely people, men and women, girls and boys, seeking...and not finding?

Isn't that who you are baby?
Goin up town in your red dress,
face painted like a Goya,
clinking glasses with high life
at a fundraiser and older rich
men laughing at your ****** jokes.

You having a hole to fill,
a need to be more than where
you came from, no ***** trailers
to wake up in anymore girl.

Spent the money on this ticket
that coulda bought ramen for a week,
but you need this night more
than you need food.

I don't want to sound judgemental,
because I'm not judging at all,
just commenting on a life
so many women like yourself
have wound up living.

Least you're not turnin tricks anymore,
so I hear, and for that I'll thank
whatever deity is responsible,
hopefully you never need to sell
your perfect body like that again.

All those boys you thought were the one,
all those nights with a needle in your arm,
all those mornings waking to sadness.

When you get home tonight,
to an empty bed and dusty memories,
I hope somewhere deep down,
you know my heart goes with you.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' "Jubilee Street" is playing as I write*

I remember, all those years ago,
the first time I moved to kiss you,
to hold your face in my hands,
an expression of tenderness,
and you telling me that you hate it
when anyone touches your face.

Had I been then,
who I am now,
I'd have recognized
that shutter closing
behind your eyes.

Had I not been a shell
of the man I should have been,
twisted and distorted
by the same horrors
that haunted you,
maybe I'd have been
strong enough to understand.

****, these days I'd laugh
in your Dad's face and wonder
why he had to hit you in order
to feel like a big man, why
he had to act like a drunk hardass
when I came to pick you up for homecoming.

There for a while,
you and I had something,
something that might be termed special,
but that feeling drowned
in a hot tub in a single night.

I heard rumors and murmurs
of you as I stumbled through
my life since that night,
drug abuse here and abusive men there,
and the random facebook messages,
the one ****** up phone call
when Rachael and I asked about your chickens.

And now, so many years and
memories and loves later,
I still wonder what I'd do
if I ever saw you again.

You're not that far away either,
and I promise you,
drunk as I am,
that if you called right now
I would in fact burn down
to Orlando for you.

Found written on a piece of leather in Arabic, at an excavation twenty miles outside of Samarqand. Carbon dating traces it to sometime in the 1400's AD.

Through the door lay possessions;
silver teacups and sumptuous carpets.

One golden tray upturned on a table.

Through the door lay memories;
clay oven and well worn utensils.

One can still smell the cooking fire.

Through the door lay love;
clothing discarded and bedding displaced.

One single feather on a pillow.

Through the door lay life;
oud* in the corner and child sized shoes.

One single moment of peace.

With my father
I would watch dawn
over green fields.