How much of what we write versus what we truly think and truly feel is true? How close do these things run in parallel? How often do we lie to ourselves for the sake of presenting ourselves more human in the eyes of our peers than we really are?
  How many truths have I forged to seem less animal than I truly am?
  Do I do it on purpose, or am I just as much a victim as the public who reads it?
  Where do I really begin once my ego ends?

Drunk to the point where I can't stand and still the feeling of missing you holds more president than standing. I'm not certain that I was built to sustain this existence in your absence, yet still I try to go on, all the while, watching unfit humans start anew... Watching the dealers and the ****** turn new leaves over in the wake of the new lives granted to their care... watching the parents of future presidents pace the halls of their wallpaper-peeling abodes, smoking and drinking and swearing and cursing and hating while the greatest gifts that God should ever bless them with cry out in the dark not ten steps away, unnoticed and unloved...
 Life is unfair, little one and Death, Death is unkind... why has he not come for me, come to ease the isolation of my broken heart, which beats in maddening defiance of my broken existence...
You are six now, and life is growing ever closer, threatening to clamp it's jaws around your jovial throat, while she teases me with release... I have missed so much. I will miss so much more before there is an end to my suffering, yet still I must soldier on... On towards a fitting end that I can only hope awaits me. On towards the end of pain and the balm of eternal rest, for I have not SLEPT in years and I have not LIVED in lifetimes... for I have missed all of yours... yet I wish, nay, pray, to go no further...
 Your life and your happiness keeps me sustained and moving forward, all the while haunting me in every waking dream...
Live, my Angel. Live for yourself and to keep me alive.
I love you. God's speed and good luck, good night and sweet dreams...

I have intentionally tried to fill the hole inside myself that your smile holds, my sweetest Angel. For that, I am ashamed. But there has been only the feeling of emptiness residing in that cavern since last I looked upon your smiling face and held you close to my heart.
The sun has risen and set, the seas have ebbed and flowed, the winds have blown, hither and yon. Yet, still I stand, unmoving through all of it, for the pain of not having your tiny hand in mine has left me cold, battered by the waves and fossilized by the sands carried upon the winds.
My eyes have withered from too many unhappy tears and nowhere near enough tears of joy, made all the more optically diuretic by my inability to look upon your face as you run and play and sleep and dream.
I am sorry, my truest of Loves, my Only, that I have chosen to ignore these feelings of longingness for so long. I could touch the pen to paper a million times, writing odes to your face and sonnets to your smile, but the distance that I feel has forced me to lull my heart into a coma. I have intentionally medicated my heart in an attempt to stop feeling (to stop all feeling), yet I cannot.
I feel the sunshine on my face and I pine to see the sun’s rays dwarfed by the radiance of your dwarven smile.
I feel my heart hang so low and wish against hope that I could pick you up while you raise me.
My soul cries out to replace you, yet my heart is merely attempting to survive. My soul screams for only you and the chance (nay, privilege) to shield you from the fears that cause you to scream in the middle of the night.
Why have I chosen to harden my heart, my Love? Why have I allowed myself to stifle my screams, when in all truthfulness, I only dream of easing your own?

Why do I insist on looking for solace at the bottom of all of these bottles?
I know full well that nothing in this world, nor in Heaven nor Hell, can fill the small, Gavyn-sized void in my heart and in my soul, yet still, in vain, I try to drown my misery in the suds and decanters of inebriation…
I have dreampt of you twice in the last week. That is more than my dreams have been graced by your countenance in the last year. Each time, upon waking, I have been found with a smile, painful in its hope, for waking brings the end of the dream. I spend my time chasing dreams, for dreams are so much more hopeful than the reality that my sleeping brain awakens unto.
In these dreams, I have seen your face, heard you laugh and cry and call for me. Seen you run and play and question, seen you witness the sun and the World. I have held you in my arms and felt you wrap yours around me.
This alcohol numbs the sting of this unreality, for when I awake, it is in the sobering arms of loneliness and longing and emptiness. My heart beats for you, and in your absence, continues to beat, labored and heavily.
Every fiber of my being cries out for you, every second of every day. I see my failure in the smiles of children, in the hands of Fathers and Mothers and Children entwined, for mine clasp only the pen or the pillow, the bottle or themselves.
I want to heal the pain of this world, yet I cannot find inside myself the focus to care for anyone other than you or myself, nor the capacity to heal your world, or my own.
My hope continues, beaten down and suffocating, yet alive; the hope of the ******.
Whilst ****** I may not be, the excommunication from you is damning…
Am I dying, my Angel?
…Maybe.
Or am I just not living?
Try as I might, I cannot find the answer to this question. Perhaps, it is both. Dying while refusing to live.
For there is much to live for and much to die from.
Yet, my heart beats and my hope, my hope screams in whispers. Because of you.
I love you, Sweet Angel. With more than I ever knew that I possessed. These unshed tears are nothing more than unsung songs and unpenned verses in your name.
Sleep sweet, my love. Don’t forget to say your prayers. Daddy will be here when you wake up.

Friends, strangers, empty-men. Lend me your fears...
People ask us why we keep these pages. Why we cling to these words. Why we hold on to the pain that we felt in these snapshot moments of time.
The answer may not be simple, but the real truths seldom are; we are holding on to the hopes that kept us going in the darkness.
We all pen our words to express our deepest selves and to expose our darkest corners in the hopes that one day they will help someone. And secretly, we hope they will save us.
The following poems were written for my daughter. Today, she turns six, and, while I am still trying to live my life in her absence, I hold strong to the hope that one day she will read the words on these obscure pages and know that I have loved her more than life itself from the first time that I held her tiny frame in my arms. And that the same tiny frame has continued to make my world spin round and kept the garden of my eyes damp through the droughts of longing.
Maybe, one day, she will stumble upon these verses and know that I was thinking about her. Know that my heart has been with her, always. These words were not written to make me feel better, except they might make her feel better. Maybe one day, these words will keep her.
Happy Birthday, my sweet angel. These simple words are only for you. Blow out your candles and may all of your dreams come true in time...

... or, Smoke 'em If Ya Got 'em...

You can't argue or reason with Life or with God; you can't call it on your own terms. You just have to call it in the air, accept it as the chips fall...
The moon would rise over the obsidian roof, but until it did, there was just the black sky and the matching shingles...
It's easy to believe that there's no hope when all that surrounds you and all that you can see is darkness...
While the light in you says that it can't be dark forever, that the moon will come, and with it, the light...
But knowing and believing are two completely separate things when the only light that you can truly see comes from the cold embrace of the Winter Hunter...

And then, just by chance, you step back. One step, two, then four. And the moon becomes visible through the leaves in the trees and over the eaves of the roof.
It's then that you realize that the only thing that separates the light from the dark, the hope from the hopelessness, is just four small steps... and the limitless perspective that lies within.

Like most writers, I like to think that I know everything there is to know about the relationships between people and the way they interact  when, like most writers, I just make it up and really know nothing about the way it actually works.
We always want to show the characters that we create as completely independent entities but we can never create someone who isn’t inherently us, or a version of someone that we know. I cannot write a heartfelt male that doesn’t struggle with his own morality or fear or self-doubt because that is what I know; it’s who I am, and it’s who my characters always emulate. My own worst enemy and my greatest companion.
I watched my mother chase after my father for 24 or so years. All she wanted was his love. His attention. She just wanted to be his friend. And I watched my father grow more distant with every “Please,” more interested in his hobbies or his career. In himself. But she never stopped, and I don’t think she ever would have if he hadn’t found in someone else what my mom was looking for him to find in her.
These are the people who taught me my first lessons about love. They showed me that love is not give-and-take, not a two-way street and never equal. Love is an unbalanced scale, a one-way lane, where one person gives everything while someone else takes even more.
And, try as we might, we all become our parents. My relationships are one twisted form of this or the other. Trying too hard to win the affection of someone who takes or selfishly ignoring the adoration of someone who gives.
I don’t know how to tell the truth. I have grown up hearing that honesty is the best policy and that lies are the Devil’s gate inside, but people have never truly shown me what it is to tell the truth. My father never once, in all those years, said “I am not happy.” Instead, he showed me how to repress. To push the truth down and cover it over with gravel and cement. A foundation built on un-truth is a foundation built on lies. My mother never told me that she was unhappy with herself, insecure and depressed. Instead, it was all clichés and self-diluted hope through unexplained tears. Rose-colored glasses over watering eyes.
So now, I am able to see the beauty of the world in the mundane or the tragic, but I am also very untouched by it. I don’t know how to feel happy. I don’t know how to be angry. I don’t know how to grieve. I don’t know how to ask for help when I need it because I almost never know when I need it. I spend my time telling myself that everything is alright and it is just my perspective that is flawed.
I am bound by my fears. My mother left my father to try and start a new life for herself. My father left my mother and did start a new life for himself. But my mother hasn’t found anyone else and my father is miserable. One made no decision and the other decided and went for it and neither one have found any more happiness than they had when they were miserable. I don’t see how I can avoid that fate. So I continue to make choices (or make none) that leave me continually unhappy.
I have a daughter that I cannot have. She lives on the other side of the country with her mommy and a man who is not her father but is her daddy. While here, on my side of the country, I am daddy to a little girl who is not my daughter. I love her but I resent her for something that she knows nothing about. And as much as I dream of being her daddy, I cannot commit to her for fear that I will leave her without me.
I am constantly plagued by my morality. I want to do things (or not do things), but the morals that were instilled tell me that those things are wrong (or that I need to do them whether I want to or not). So, I try to live piously, holding firm to the ideals that my heart was founded on, and fail. Because I am a human, and humans were beasts before they were civilized. I live a life that is torn, tortured by wants and desires and captive to what is right. It has made me cynical, and I doubt very much that it is possible to exist happily as an optimistic cynic.
I know it sounds like I am trying to blame my parents for the way that I have turned out, and by rites, I guess I am. At the same time, I haven’t mentioned any of the things that make me, in spite of all of this, a pretty great person. But those aren’t the things that I have qualms with right now…
I am uneasy with what I know. And even more-so with what I do not. Knowing may be half the battle, but not knowing how to win is the harder half…

My head is full
But this bottle's gone
And my heart is barely
Hangin on

So don't let go
I'll be okay
It's just another
Emo day

Please don't let me go
Don't run away
I'm just a little
Emo today

Just another
Emo day....

With all these rivers left to cross
And all these bridges that I've burned
I have no way across
The hardest lesson learned

So I'll sit here and wait
For those fires to fade

It's lonely on this shore
And I can't wait anymore
For you to come around
Gonna find your bridge and burn it down

And through the tears I'll pray
Your fire burns away
And I'll just sit and wait
For this love to fade

Some I've burned for light
On these long, dark, empty nights
And some I've burned in fear
But most to dry these tears

So I just sit and wait
For those fires to fade
Regret builds like a storm
Cause I'm burning all my bridges to stay warm

I'm burning all my bridges to stay warm

Darlin,
I must step away for a few days, unplug myself from the grid. I have asked another question that I really don’t want to know the answer to. I will most likely not read it but instead, delete the entire thread when I do decide to rejoin the 21st century.
I do not plan on being absent for long. The modern world is far too demanding of our time, but I will be remain silent until then. I do not wish to leave you. This is something that I feel must be done. I believe you will understand.
It is not my intent to cause you pain but I know that may happen anyway. For the sting, I am sorry, but I cannot apologize for the action. Take comfort in knowing that I will return.
The truth is, you have become the reason that I get out of bed in the morning. That one thing that gets me through the day. Your words, sparse or otherwise, have become the air in my lungs, your smiles the blood in my veins. I have come to a point where I can barely function in your absence. I must find a way to sleep at night.
Please do not let your love turn to hate. I will not, nor could I ever. Instead, know that I will still wish you good morning every day and the sweetest of dreams every night. I will miss you deeply. And I’ll be here. Always.
Sleep sweet, my Love.

How can I let you go? You inspire me.
Can I give you up without a fight?
No.
But the only weapon with which I have to fight is my heart, and the words that come from it.
I have no sword and no mace; no axe and no bow.
I have a lute and these words.
Will they ever be enough to conquer in your name?
Will they ever win your heart?

I'm the idiot...
I'm the Bard...
I'm the dreamer...
And all of them want you.

Hey, what's the deal
With my heart?
I keep on lettin this love inside and it
Keeps on tearin me apart

Hey, what's the deal
With my mind?
I only want this pain to go but it
Keeps on takin its sweet time...

Hey what's the deal
With my eyes?
These tears just keep on comin and I
Don't see no end in sight....

...Say you wanna help
Well I hope that's true but
The only thing
I'm dealin with is you.

Hey, what's the deal
With my hand?
This bottle can't tell me where to go
Or even remind me who I am...

Hey, what's the deal
With my brains?
I know enough to see the light but
Can't find a way to make it change...

Hey, what's the deal
You know it ain't a shame.
I may not know which way is up but
I know I know my name...

Say you wanna help;
I hope that's true but
The only thing
I'm dealin with is you...

Mother, do you think she's good enough.... for me?
And Mother, do you think she's dangerous.... to me?
And Mother, will she tear your little boy apart?
Oooooh ah, Mother will she break my heart?

(Pink Floyd - Mother)

I tried not to look back… Honest to God, I grasped hold of everything inside me and willed myself to play it cool, be the Woody Allen character for just once and just walk on; but that isn’t who I am. Cusack intervened, and I watched your four headlights round the corner and continue on. Four, not because that’s how many there were, but because that’s how many I saw through the sheen of tears that blanketed my eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as I walked into the house…
“Nothing. Everything. Life. Love.” She didn’t know how to respond and so instead, left me to my own devices once again.
I bolted the lock on the door and I sat down to think. Why? Why do we always find ourselves here? How is it that this is always the road that we end up walking together, so close, yet so very far apart? And how do we rectify this situation?
A thousand years ago, it was you who put forth too much, nearly to the point of suffocation. And presently, I am the stranglehold of our existence …
Yet how could we hold each other so passionately, kiss so deeply, if there wasn’t all of that and more, right here and now…?
As the tail lights faded, I asked myself these questions, and as I finish pouring out these words, I return to the very same sentiment…
Turn around.
I am here, ready and waiting for anything and everything, regardless of the naysayers. Regardless of myself…
Turn around.

... to tell you the truth.

How do I know that it was real...?
The answer comes easy after all this time.
It was those early morning hours in the kitchen, you cooking for the two of us and me standing, watching. You, looking as beautiful as I have ever seen you and me, observing and receiving your deep brown eyes.
It was in those moments, with the golden light of the newborn star shining in through the window and falling upon your mishap hair, that I truly found myself in love, heart and soul.
You, in your Halloween apron in March. You, with your tea driven eyes on my sleepy smiles. That was when I knew it could work; when I was sure it could be.
Because I crave those mornings. I dream of them. And those dreams leave me haunted and lonely, yet filled and hoping. They drive my day and possess my nights.
It should never have felt true that I didn't show it. I had merely counted on the chance to tell you in person...
How sad it is that the joke is now on me.

All alone is all we are. And a little voice inside says don’t look back. You can never look back. Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run. Run, to the middle of nowhere. To the middle of my frustrated fears and I swear… By the moon and the stars in the sky, I’ll be there. I wanna get me a little oblivion baby, and try to keep myself away from me. Cause I’m my own worst enemy. And everything falls apart then I try to put it back together. But maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me…
Here comes the sun. I don’t need no arms around me. And it’s alright. And I don’t need no drugs to calm me. It’s been a long cold lonely winter. I have seen the writing on the wall. And I say it’s alright. Don’t think I need anything at all.
A long, long time ago, I can still remember December promise you gave unto me. And you’re so vain but that’s what I like about you. You always were the one to show me how. And she says that love is for fools that fall behind and I’m somewhere between. My brown eyed girl. But that’s how it goes. Why you wanna hide it? It’s the one thing we can choose…
This is how I show my love. And I swear to this. This is how an angel cries. She felt like velvet. Blame it on my ADD, baby. And she comes to take me away. Sail with me into the dark. She’s all that I needed.
Follow me into the desert and you’ll see me, half the man I used to be. But all we need is just a little patience and all that glitters is gold but it doesn’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. So hang down your head, little Darlin’, lying awake, intently tuning in on you. And feel the rhythm take hold, those good, good, good, good vibrations. Cause every little thing is gonna be alright. With or without you.
Wish you were here.

And here I am again, holding my breath on the wrong end of a phone line that just rings. Where are you? I just wanted to hear your voice before I went to sleep.
And now I fear I shall never sleep. My mind is shaking violently and my body has started to follow. I can feel the heat of the tears building behind my eyes, painful and bitter. I bite back on my tongue to keep the moans from coming, and whimper instead.
How could I let you bring me to this again, after everything? What a fool I have been to allow myself to fall prey to your words, lulling me into submission with your sirens call. If this all seems familiar, my Friend, it is because it is. All too familiar.
Maybe if I try again? Maybe she was just away from the phone or the ringer was silent… But there is just the ringing again, and each tone sounds more like a cold laugh than the one before it. I should not let myself feel this way. There is no reason. There is no reason. But that doesn’t make it go away and it doesn’t end the ringing and it doesn’t quiet the laughter and it doesn’t set my heart at ease…
Where are you? Why aren’t you answering? Is someone there with you? I wish it was me, because I live for the sound of your laugh but I don’t want to feel this way ever again because this is how I'm always left when I give what's left to you! Alone in the dark, waiting to hear your voice….

I just want to be loved. Want to be loved, and know that it is real. Not carry around these doubts and fears and suspicions. I want to hold someone in my arms that I care more about than myself. I want forever in an embrace and infinity in a kiss and passion and longing in the hours that I am not in their presence.
I want to find the things that I have been writing into other people since I was twelve years old manifest in a real person. And I want someone to find those things in me. I want to be capable of seeing those things in myself, and sharing them with someone. I want to be able to sacrifice myself without compromising who I have become, allowing myself to be a martyr without being put on a pedestal for it.
I want to be able to accept myself as someone who loves me would. I want to see my value outside of a lover's afterglow, yet through their eyes. I want the truth, from whichever perspective it rings most true.
Most of all, I want to be able to see why you still love me after everything when I find it so difficult to love myself after all of the same everything...
I want to know the truth, as seen through your eyes, before I cast judgement through my own.

I hope it makes you feel better, my Love. Seeing my heart melting for you on the roaring fire…
There is nothing that I could have done to change the way that this has ended, yet I would still happily melt to make you feel better. I would still burn to keep you warm.
Did you notice the way the fire made my heart glow in the orange yellow flames? I did. I also noticed the way that it cried out, feeling lost and empty and broken in its final moments of misery. And I heard how you cried out when you realized that there was nothing left but to set fire to my lonely love.
I cannot explain why I have chosen this route. I cannot tell you the reasons behind choosing to burn, and at the same time, scorch you with the melting remnants of my heart. The only thing that I can say is that I am sorry. Sorry for the pain and the burns and the fire, and the need for them all.
And that I am left, burning with you, just the same.
And in those cooling embers, there lies the ashes of me that I will never regain, for I have given it to you. It was the shattered pieces of my Technicolor heart that filled the barren canvas with the imperfections of my love. It was the only thing which has ever made any sense and at the same time, no sense at all. It was all that I ever hoped to be mixed with all the doubt of who I was never worthy of being.
It was yours, and I gave it freely to you. It should not make me sad that you have chosen to put it to rest in the funeral pyre, yet I feel the want to cry.
Sleep sweet, my Love, knowing that I would throw my heart on the fire a thousand times over for you to remain un-singed by its heat. I only wish that I could have.

For God so loved the World…
Why? How? Does He see the same World that we live in everyday? Do His eyes see the same people? I cannot believe that they do…
We are everything that He is not, complete opposites in every way.
We are ignorant and arrogant. We see something beautiful and immediately cut it to pieces to find out what makes it so radiant. We are hateful and self-centered, thinking only of ourselves even alongside the deathbeds of others. We are destructive and self-absorbed. We only help the needy for a tax credit and a clear conscience.
We curse and condemn and never give our actions a second thought. We tear each other down to build ourselves up.
We lie and we cheat and we steal and we ****. We torture and torment in the name of boredom. We rob and we pillage and we **** and we raze, leveling the achievements of our own for the temples of posterity.
We live in a world where dog eats dog and beasts eat God, and He goes on, loving us just the same.        How? How can anyone love something that is so perverse; so malignant? We burn what we do not understand to ash instead of observing and wonder why our neighbors stockpile gasoline and flame retardant clothing…
Love thy neighbor as thyself and hate each other, it’s alright, as long as you hate yourself for being like your neighbor and hate your neighbors for being like you.
We are the worst that the universe has to offer, yet the creator of all has still decided to bestow his love upon us? Why? How must His eyes see our wicked race to continue to feel that way? We are nothing more that wicked mud, and deserving of nothing more than a harsh drought followed by unending windstorms.
Bring on the sun and the winds. Wipe this plague from the face of the Earth. She will not miss us, just as your neighbors will not miss you.  
But please, dear God, do not stop loving us, for we are merely children with money, nuclear toys and a strong dependency on anti-depressants, and we know not what we do.

I start this off without any words. But they will come. This is the blessing, and the curse. Regardless of what has transpired in my life, or how much I wish to forget, the words will come. They are my salve and my damnation.
  The words that find their way onto these tomes soothe and comfort my weary soul, yet the ones that hide in the spaces between curse and condemn. They haunt each fiber of my mind, traversing the expanse between my neurons on the backs of false pretenses, the sugar coated electric lies that I tell myself and repeat to others.
Alcohol is not a crutch; it merely plays the role of ticket-taker, ousting the transient, stowaway misanthropes from the boxcar of truth that is my thought pattern, allowing me to take an accurate head count.
I am afraid. I am so frightened of being who I am and making myself happy that I settle for making others happy in lieu of my desires. I am paralyzed by thoughts of failure, as well as dreams of success. I am terrified that if I should start screaming, I may never be able to stop. I am usurped by panic at the thought of another day in this drudgery that is my own existence.
I am discontent. I am not happy with the way that I have allowed my life to turn out. I want it to change before I have reached the point that I only look forward to its end.
Yet, still I continue to laugh. Again and again, I regurgitate the same old sentiments of positivity and hopeless hopefulness that I have grown so accustomed. “Tomorrow is another day,” or “It can’t rain all the time.”
But tomorrow is another day. And how should I face it if it ends up being the same as today? And it can’t rain all the time, but better men than myself have drown in a flash flood.
So why do I continue to say these things? For the benefit of myself or for the person who is listening? Which one have I become?

As one may expect, anyone who has trod upon the loam of this planet for the last 30 years is bound to have experienced things.
While I am still a bachelor, I have loved and been loved. I have felt the light of a thousand suns and also endured the lonely embrace of the night.
I have traveled through a good part of the Eastern and mid Western United States, as well as parts of Europe, Canada and Mexico but have yet to traipse the cosmos outside of the veil of sleep.
I have never seen a Yeti or the Monster of Loch Ness or even glimpsed a UFO, but I still have hope.
I have seen good people stricken down before their time while evil men cavort through cemeteries under a cloudless night sky.
I have stopped to smell the roses on my lunch break from the rat race. I have reveled the sweet taste of victory and also the bitter sourness of defeat.
I have conquered beasts and monsters, even if they were only ones that lay inside myself.
I have taken in the view from the top of the World and from the bottom of the bottle.
I have experienced everyday and, while not always to the fullest, everyday, I experience.

The time has come, the Poet said
To talk of other things
Of War and Tax and Poverty
Of Peasants and their Kings
And all the treasures of the sea
That never shall be found
And all the Good that speaks in vain
That trods upon the ground
And why WE try, I shall not know,
For all will trod again
And all the truths that 'ere befalls
Shall perish now in vain
When all men born who cast a verse
A poet shall they be
And all of those will play their part
In slaying poetry

We only have what we remember. Do you remember? Remember yesterday and the promises that we made to each other in the early morning hours before the sun had risen its fiery head? Do you remember? Remember the lies that were only lies in retrospect? The truths that we swore were truth until the rays of that star cast our doubts and fears asunder and we realized that we were wrong for believing in stone and embers?
  We only have what we remember. We only have the feeling of our hearts beating in unison to the rhythms of our own lives, yet for one fantastic moment, their tempos were the same. In that moment, the pathways of our futures lined up perfectly, becoming an auditory road map to infinity, or merely to the tempo change.
We only have what we remember, and how often is what we remember a stacked deck in our own favor? The lies that we tell ourselves to quell the fervor of our breaking hearts its rotten tender.
We only have what we remember.

I feel like a small frightened child, one who has become lost in the deep dark woods of every child’s nightmares, cold, alone, well past “losing one’s cool” and just precious inches away from “flipping one’s ****,” the only things that I possess a flashlight that I cannot figure out how to switch on, a compass that only points backwards and a magical, wish granting genie that only speaks in a language that I have never heard and therefor do not  understand while at the same time am not understood, whose only option to improve his situation is to sit in one spot and wait for help to arrive but what if it doesn’t  so I am forced to action to fashion crude tools and build a shelter and hunt and cook and survive because no one is going to find me and I am not going to find my way out, so I must live in the forest of nightmares and darkness...
...and then I begin to wonder if that small child is not a child at all, but an aging man in a worn bathrobe, alone in a darkened room in an asylum, sitting under a table with a bed sheet hanging over the sides like a makeshift tent, trying desperately to find the “ON” button of an empty pill bottle while I wait for a wound out, wind up clock to find North during the stock market numbers on the local Hispanic radio station, forever stuck in the nightmare forest created by his own mind, which is somehow less terrifying than the reality of his unreality...
...because it is beginning to become very muddled in both of those places and I am beginning to lose track of his self so here looks like a good place to sit down and wait for help to not arrive and over there a good spot to build a temporary cemetery plot to rest my weary hours and while away the bones because unless I figure out a way to sort his self out, I will forget to send for help that I am tired of waiting for and the seconds in the dark that were not there a moment ago and may not be here now will be gone forever when the clock strikes South-East and I am left alone again with only a snot nosed codger and a loony old brat, looking out a window that directly faces a brick wall, watching and praying for the sun to rise on its horizon.

And we drove on toward Death in the ever cooling twilight.
And we drove on... toward Death through the ever cooling twilight.
And we drove on toward Death.
And we drove on, Death be ******, we’ll see you when we get there. We have your number, and you have ours, but Death, **** you, and twilight too, we drove on.
And God, how we lived in those moments and the miles between, didn’t we?! Oh, how we lived. Tell me we didn’t, I dare you!
Through the fog and the night and the terrors that hide in both, dreaming of and racing to meet the sun…
And we drove on toward Death in the ever cooling twilight, hopeful of driving into the light.

“ All’s well that ends” is the mantra that lies on my heart and the tip of my lips as I ride this evening to a close. A bit of a redux from the normal passages of human response, but poignant none-the-less.
For the phrase “All’s well that ends WELL” is a false statement, built on romanticism. It has very little place in the real world of life and Death and love and loss. In truth, “All’s well that ends” is less the accepted usage yet more the proper. To everything there is a season, albeit sad and lonely and quite often, “wrong,” yet always is the end a new beginning.
“All’s well that ends.”
Why do we, as humans, view the end of a statement as the final resting place of a thought? Why do we so fanatically view the end as such a gravestone for our hopes and dreams and ideas?
Why can we not leave that sentence exactly as it lies? Because we, simply, feel like we are due more.
More of an answer, maybe? More of a truth? More of a fairytale, based on those told to us as children…
“The world will make sense one day, my young one. For all is well, once it ends well.”
Yet, how often does anything truly end “well?” How many times can we count on a fairytale? Ever? Never?
More often than not, sadly, it is the latter. Because fairytales rarely exist in this world of realism and algorithms. They cease to matter once the antidepressants have dissolved and made their way into our bloodstreams, cascading forth their eternal apathy.
Yet, the truth is the truth, no matter how you may choose to slice it. The end of something is always the beginning of something else.
Here at the cusp of this page, the edge of this precipice, lies not the finite line between what is and what could be. Here, on this fault, lies the difference between making a new decision and dying, drowning in the arms, in the confines, of decisions yet to be made. Here, on this ledge, I chose the open ended over the finite. Here, I chose “All’s well that ends,” for the next step is inevitably “All’s well that begins,” regardless of how it may have ended.