My Bottle Of Whine

With winking smile, this clever one

Who left behind the shining sun!

But in a moment none too soon

He finds he's running from the moon!

I hate those morons who take what little money they get and spend it right away on a bottle of booze, so obviously running away in futility. But no matter how much I've tried to chastise them over the years my words always rang hollow. That's because I do the same thing only I know how to lie about it better - which makes me even dumber than they are.

It's been a game ever since losing Emily, seeing how close I can get to a visibly drunken state without going over the line. Fuck reality. Who needs it. Drink, don't drink - my world stays the same. "Pay your goddam rent." "Find your own goddam sex." "Tell me how you're hurting so I can rape you easier." It will be that way until the end. Here in the street I see you from below, exposed and outted clear as day. But no one hears a voice on the street.

So no one can see my bullshit either. I too play the game of appearances. You win if no one finds out you're freaking drunk. Haha! Fooled you! I would never deal with you fuckers straight up! Then you go home, fearing the blank bed where the drug wears off and the encircling wolves who can no longer be kept at bay. Last thing I see before nodding off is snarling teeth ready to devour my soul. Sweet dreams!

"I'm sorry you feel that way!"

After the nightly hells I crawl to the morning sun. I must live as a thief, any moment for myself I steal. Before I can drink I'm dragged off to work. Along the day I few sips from my hidden stash. Feeling the thorns of the world won't make them go away, I reason. If I make it through the day and pay my rent at the end of the month I call that victory.

But what have I won?

Indeed, the homeless errant, I am. I set up a false world where I can "win". I keep my denial and stay living indoors. Yeehaw! It's horrible to feel you're doing nothing right. I see other idiots playing this same game. I excused myself from blame because...well, that's what one does, isn't it? But in the end all I'm doing is subsidizing my slavery, misunderstanding all I see.

Jesus never praised the world. An honest man. I praise it when I win and rail against when I lose. A dishonest man. Nowhere in actual life am I winning - no man in denial ever can. In real life I can't win anyway. (My stubborn negativity on this point of self-sabotage is both legendary and infamous at this point.) But everyone knows that's where the only true winning can occur. If the dead Steve Jobs could speak he'd be the poster boy on losing while winning. One can find shortcuts in the world, never in life.

For reasons unacceptable to me I've been sober recently. That lets all the feelings of suicide and drowning darkness back in, along with the panic attacks and actual physical cramping that can come with it. (Thank God for hotel lobby bathrooms) And I've come to realize what a fool's game I'm playing. Before, I was tracking every red cent so I could pretend I was "getting ahead" or some such folly. Sober, it's impossible to have any interest in worldly matters. Everything is simply a chore.

My eyes are like empty dark shotgun casings: they once had a purpose but now are spent. I would love to be a millionaire on the street. I could sit slouched over with my back against some 7-11's slimy brick wall, eating a candy bar, buying a lottery ticket to express my hopelessness, no need to pretend to belong to anything. But at the end of the day I could return to a safe bed. Best of both worlds.

I am damaged goods. In the aftermath of the Emily affair I short-circuited. I have trouble remembering how to spell simple words, trouble typing without stuttering adding extra letters. Physically, I'm a wreck going downhill. Most of all, I have absolutely zero interest in anything I do or say in daily conversation. I brag to myself about the brilliance of my con game but who am I conning? If you're not getting anywhere you're not really doing anything.

Sobriety sucks. I don't care about cars or Japan or female gymnasts. It's all just a bunch of rot. I am as alone as any man in history. God bewares the successful clown. Don't know where this is going to take me. Dark corridors I now face in my dreams. My kingdom is in ashes - and I'm the arsonist. Through barely slitted eyes I broach the devastation of my treachery. Maybe I never admitted it. Maybe I thought I couldn't have anything because I thought I couldn't have love. Shit.

Everything in life always leads home.

A Letter To Orenthal

Dear Mr. Simpson,

It's been said that men only created copies of their hearts when they created prisons. In time, that will become self-evident. For the worst prison is the one within: the prison of lying. I should know. I'm the worst liar of all.

I know about running, too. Once it starts it never ends. But what brings success one day can be revealed to bring doom the next. You run, you die. You stop running, you die. So where is life?

Life is when you come clean. The Good Book speaks of spirits both clean and unclean, it's as simple as that. There are Presidents who have lied their country into a war. Can you imagine committing that sort of abomination? How does one come clean then? How does one admit to being a deceiver who destroyed thousands or millions of lives?

Yet, it is the only way. What you don't know is what happens afterward. You will see a light in your life you did not see before, a sign of true hope. At first, you will wonder if it's real or just another self-deception to make you feel good. You will have to hold fast onto it.

Nobody wants to lose. Confession is winning. No more strings attached to you in hopeless manipulation. False critics will be left to attack only themselves.

The question remains as always: what is real? Do you understand what the man of despair said when he declared, "the more people that know me the more unknown I become"? Nobody wants to die unknown. To know is to love.

I hope you find some value in these words.

GWB

The Fear Of One

"He must be the king. Anyone else would be arrested."

The Nude King spat and sat upon his throne.

"I know what the philosopher said: "Some men see things as they are and say, Why? But I dream things that never were and say, Why not?" But I say unto you: Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' But I look at things as they are and say, Why me?"

He was the most miserable man in the kingdom but if a ruler cannot be happy then who can? Like many who seek the illusion of power, the king was a victim of his own success. His defiant, nude body strutted down main street in the annual parade in complete confidence not one word of disagreement would be uttered of his new "clothes". In this he was correct. But his lie was a trap.

Having "won", the king was now forced into a nude state 24/7, for how could he defend going back to regular clothing having declared himself already clothed? A king is not a king without those who agree to his illusion of power, so what to do if he lost support? After several months wearing not a scrap of clothing and facing the prospect of a nude life until death, this predicament put the king into a frenzied state.

His loyally lying subjects did not fare much better. They saw their job as to be loyal subjects to support the king in his decisions no matter what. In this they did their monarch no favors. The sheeple were as puppets who sought to be stringed by their ruler into manipulated maneuvers. They became a nation of addicts - addicted to the sound of silence. No one dare say a word of the truth, their "code" of common sense.

Vexed by this quagmire, the king feared it was only a matter of time before people woke up. So he decided to do the only thing he knew: he sought to re-inforce his power. He knew he had to do something because he felt more stupid each passing nude day. A Loyalty Oath was decreed for every man, woman, and speaking child. Everyone but Ogilvy, the town drunk, complied. And he would have except for, you know, he was drunk. But the king could not live with even one person having not taken the oath, however unintentional it might be. Inebriated as always, Ogilvy stood before the king.

"You got no clothes on, dude!"

A guard prodded him. "The king most certainly does have clothes on, you moron. You're just stupid to see them."

"What you talking about, Willis? I can see his dick clear as day!"

Drunken Ogilvy was unable to fight back as he was struck down for treason to the lie (this also made him unable to take the oath). To prove the purity of their faith, the drunkard was put before a firing squad and killed by faithful followers. Many articles were written in the local paper on the solemn and deep faith of those who shot Ogilvy. But as time passed, each of the executioners in turn shot himself. "It's not OK to do something just because someone tells you to!" explained one suicide note.

But it was said: "We must believe in our king! There is no other way!"

Having complete loyalty claimed was still not enough for the nude monarch. Since he believed that to put clothes on now would be the height of insanity, his next move was to make a formal declaration: "Great news! The clothes of the king shall now be the clothes of everyone! Rejoice!"

The sheeple rejoiced with their lips but not their hearts. But like the king, rather than admit their foolishness, they doubled down on it. Parents filled with shame screamed at their children to comply. (High school scores plummeted for boys as nothing on the chalkboard could enthrall them within a mile of a naked cheerleader.) A sense of despair hung over the land in a surreal disbelief.

Let's just say attendance was up

But it was said: "We must believe in our king! There is no other way!"

For a while the Nude King took great satisfaction in viewing his nude kingdom, as misery shared proved a tonic for misery alone. He closed his eyes and hoped this would be enough to ease his anguish. It was not to be.

The surrounding clothed kingdoms started to mock the Nude King and his nude peasants. Fearing he'd be made to look a fool, he did the most foolish thing possible: he declared war. That gave the ruler the desired effect of unity and high polling numbers but the war was a different matter altogether.

"Why are we going to kill people because of something we chose to do?"

But it was said: "We must believe in our king! There is no other way!"

For the king, the war was even more of a disaster: he won. In defeat he could have returned to his clothes wearing ways. Many of those who returned from battle were also defeated through "victory", killing themselves for having killed without reason. (Yet none of the generals who gave the orders committed suicide.) Just as the remorseful executioners declared "It's not OK to do something just because someone tells you to!", so now did soldiers by the thousands die by their own hand, even more than were killed in combat.

The king was out of options. On whom could he blame his woes now?? This begot the era of evil purges for those who were nude but not "nude enough", therefor endangering national security. Rather than admit the mistakes of the past, the kingdom clung to its lies as a moral stance. "We must continue to kill or we'd have to admit all the killing we did before was wrong!" It was deemed they had no choice but to live their lives as naked killers. The prospect they were responsible for their own choices was just too horrible to consider.

We don't wish to look the fool by questioning our comfy lives

What the king needed most was an enemy/savior. "I say unto you: there is one among us who deceives us! He walks among us as we do, but he is not one of us. He is the Great Betrayer who brings death to our land. We must find this person and kill him before he destroys us all!"

This command was very popular with the sheeple whose lives now had a given purpose. There was much excited speculation on talk shows of just who the Great Betrayer was and the best methods to "smoke him out." Enterprising shysters cashed in with "Betrayer tests" they sold to be administered to "friends and family so you can rest easy at night that the Betrayer is not in your house."

But although each person knew they were not the Betrayer, each still feared to be. Having detached from reality by following the king's orders, doubt's unreality started to seep in like the angel of death. "There is no truth!" And without truth, how could any one person not know if in fact they were the Betrayer? Hysteria swept the land, mass shootings breaking out from self-paranioa. But while many blamed the bullet none blamed their lies.

How could the king ever be set free? The entire kingdom was aching to be set free of their insane nude ways! And the only way they could see to accomplish this was by complete and utter self-annihilation. "If the truth cannot save us then death must! If only we could find one person who disagrees so that we may live! Oh, the humanity!"

Since they had opened themselves up to the possibility, a clothed savior rose up saying it was time for all to clothe themselves. But on this the Nude King did pounce. "Aha! My plan worked! We have found our traitor and Betrayer. We must remain vigilant and remember we cannot tolerate even one voice of dissent! It's time to come to our senses and realize there is no other way than the path we are on. Let us each gather a rock to strike down this agent of destruction; a man who mocks our ways and would have us be fools in perpetuity. Chant with me now: Kill the Betrayer! Kill the Betrayer!"

And thus started the chant as every hand large and small picked up a rock - and hurled it towards the king, ending his reign of error forever.

"But..but...I thought we had to believe in the king!"

"No. We only have to believe in ourselves."

Vincent Lee Daniels Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Turns out hell does have a kitchen!

One thing I've never talked about is my time inside for my crime of expressed sexual desire. I realize I'm being made to pay for the sins of others, and those who want to help, heal - and those who don't want to help, hurt. But those who hurt in the name of healing are the biggest monsters of all (and the most common). I just hope I get to see the day when those masks are forever removed. In the meantime, it just sucks.

And I realize saying all this is like being Napoleon stuck inside an insane asylum filled with nothing but people who think they're Napoleon, my words carry no weight; damned if I do, damned if I don't. "...but, but I really am Napoleon!"

The hypocrisy is this: Ask you average middle aged father what makes him angrier: his 17 year old daughter being flashed in the park by a middle aged man or finding out her 17 year old boyfriend has knocked her up. At first blush, 99 out of a hundred will explode at the first scenario and be mute on the second. That's because he can't picture himself doing the first one and pounds his moral chest in righteousness and he's going to kick that guy's ass in parental outrage, etc, etc. But on the second one he can picture his 17 year old horny self doing that and thus hesitates to condemn. Same scenario plays out with petty robbers vs. white collar robbers. It's all bullshit.

Don't reciprocate, guys!

So if one runs around even half-naked in front of hot girls one is set up to take the fall for society's vast hidden perversions. (Well, hidden if you don't look, anyway). And that's when one gets to witness the underbelly of those who feel they have carte blanche to act as they wish with no repercussions. "What you do unto the least of you, you do unto me," is one of the most rebuked sentiments done on a daily basis - many by self-proclaimed Christians! Those on the receiving end get revealed too.

There's the hard guys who accept jail as just part of the game - even a quasi-support system to their lives. They get known by the police and that familiarity means something to them even as they scoff. Some people are out of control in their lives, grasping for answers (won't find them here!). Some are mixed up kids either getting more scared or more angry. But just as in the real world where the only two groups in actuality are the haves and have-nots, in jail it's the survives and survive-nots.

I was in the second group.

So was Vincent Lee Daniels. This was county jail but Vincent was pulling a long term here because state prison had no room for him. Since I couldn't cope with a cage I looked for others like me to see how they made it through the day. Vincent used straight out denial. As far as he was concerned he was in the Bahamas! That was his mental "out". I was like, "OK, I understand that but don't think I can go that far." Then again I was a short timer and knew it. I adapted his strategy to a degree but only as a quant, measured but not embraced.

Record Company Executive: Your fans are church folk, Johnny. Christians. They don't wanna hear you singing to a bunch of murderers and rapists, tryin' to cheer 'em up.

Johnny Cash: [pause] Well, they're not Christians, then.

--Walk The Line (2005)

Boy, did I jump up and applaud when I heard that line! But don't anyone else count on a Johnny Cash concert or anything like it in their lifetime now. Let me ask you this: how many people who live under the thumb of cops praise cops? That's when you get to know someone, when you live at their mercy. After seeing these jerks up close and personal, I felt for their families and kids and what their lives must be like living in the same house. Recalls a lot of bad memories for me.

God talking to cop/jailor standing before Him: "Why did you mistreat my children so?"

Cop: "That scum deserved it! That's the only thing they understand. I was making the world a better place!"

God: "So am I." Then God pulls the lever to open the shaft below the cop's feet. Jesus by his side spoke. "Shame that's the only thing he understands."

Imagining scenarios like that is my coping mechanism and when I shared this with Vincent he loved it and we formed a lifeline. He actually got into that therapy a bit as well but when I tried his it had a horrible aftershock when I came back down out of denial where I fell into a black pit of despair. Scared the living hell out of me. Back to my standard repression mode.

But the psyche "doctor" - aka Nurse Ratched, aka Josef Mengele, had plans for Vincent. I was boiling mad when they dragged him in. "Oh, he's delusional. Thinks he's in the Bahamas." Doesn't matter what he thinks, cocksuckers, he's in fucking jail regardless you lying morons. They just wanted to fuck somebody over because they enjoy it and can get away with it in this dark world. Just know when God does ask you why you acted like an asshole that any answer is wrong (especially, 'Someone told me to do it"). Just repent.

So they needed to break him, to "bring him back to reality." Like those idiots have any clue as to reality for if they did they'd treat him like the most precious object on the planet. Instead, they delighted in showing him the hell he was in, the futility of life on the outside even when he did get out, what a loser he was, and that his life was over. "Get that through your head." Drove them nuts to think even one person was escaping the suffering they induced.

The outcome was predictable. Suicide. So-called "realist" inmates condemned Vincent but truth is they're just scared fuckers too, terrified of their own fate. Having driven a man to suicide his murderers only doubled down in their guilt - they also (justly) fearing for their future. Talk about your losers! And I understand the rationale that says, "Denial is always bad." But people looking to apply formulas in life without thought or context are just tools of the state.

And my truth is, could Emily et al see this blog I'd never post this. And yeah, what about my future? The curtains are drawing to a close.

Life In The Xebulan Nebula

This isn't the fate of an intelligent being.

I squint through a haze of murky gases into the outer universe. Within here, nothing can be seen as it truly is. I have to deduce, conject, and infer what is real. I must rely on my memory of moments past on the outside, without that I'd have no true idea of reality - or how to fake that I do. Put all these pieces together and I can paint a semblance of the truth. I pray every day no one calls my bluff. "Tell us what your true experience." That I cannot do.

No one can know I was stupid enough to enter a nebula, of course. On the comm-link I must pretend I'm still outside engaging in interdimensional travel like any normal being of the universe. I rehearse lines of normality, speaking with a feigned interest, the weight of the façade tearing me down as the clock runs out and I must hastily disengage. Funny thing is, I feel a sense of relief on the other end too, as if they are lying as well. Are they also stuck in a nebula? Can't be! Only I am that stupid.

At some point I will have fallen too far behind. The nature of responsibility is the nature of the universe. If I do not progress I will be exposed for not experiencing what everyone has as they advance. My soul grows stale in these shapeshifting clouds of the nether world. With its nebulous nature I can lay an object down only to find it drifted to another place later on. This is very trying and taxing and vexing on the mind as I must constantly search and search for even the simplest of things. I fear the life before me.

And so I despair. How pointless my life beats. To even breathe is a charade. In here, the end has already happened.

These reasons and more are why no one but a madman - or a coward - enters a nebula to escape the light. Sooner or later you crack from too many days of futureless passed. I hear it all the time in the cross chatter of we fools. I can detect an excited certainty in their voice of having found an "answer" to escape reality. They've limited the incoming comm-link so as to hear no voice of dissent, to keep their voice of inner moral authority pristine. I may not be alone in my idiocy but I'm alone nonetheless.

Oh, how weary webbed the mind as the heart freezes in the bottomless cold of space. Tears ice into sharp pointed crystals that never melt. Once born they never disappear. How can I see hope in living with that? Why would I expect life to get better when I have to dodge more and more of these slicing objects dancing around me? Even a second's relaxation can be dangerous. If I don't like it - if I cry even more - it only makes it worse. But without tears one gets brittle and snaps into space dust. Then I'd forever be part of the nebula - which is how nebulas exist.

I need to escape but at this point I'd be cycled through a prison planet as my only portal to eventual freedom. I just can't face a place of marching armies and useless, empty chores and fanatical worship of death. I understand I've put myself in this position but what a nightmare those places are! I'd be back among the savage ignorant all over again and be brutally killed the second I to commit to love. Running from love is what got me to hide in this damn nebula so I understand having to prove myself. Still...it sucks more than I can face right now.

"Oh, to be among the stars again..."

What price an honest word to slip out? Like a short-circuiting android I catch myself repeating phrases in my wooden charade that once had life in them. I feel clever in my deception but I only dig my hole deeper. I heard people on the comm-link talking about "integrity". I wondered if I had integrity but then I realized what matters integrity hidden in a nebula?? What does matter is who I'd be back among the stars. I used to think I knew. Not now. I can only know when I'm there.

Angry is the empty gaze,
Star-lifes twinkle through the haze.

Are You A Socialist?

A satisfied selfie on the way to the top

Sir Frederick Hendershot III was a stockbroker in good standing. He followed all the rules and regulations to a T while despising "young, punk traders" in their flashy foreign sports cars who give the industry a bad name. Hendershot considered himself part of the integral fabric of corporatization that builds the world as we know it today. He found great comfort in this assumed role.

To not share his views and not be as fortunate as he was "simply the mark of an immoral character". This allowed him to guiltlessly pick his way through the downtown homeless on his way to his high-rise accommodations. That others chose the "safe, easy" route and ended up in dire straights only affirmed his life's choices. "It's good to be me."

"People are basically selfish and greedy and if we ignore that fact we'd be damn fools! A system of greed is the only way. No shortcuts! Every dollar must be an honest dollar or the whole system collapses. Because I've stayed on the straight and narrow I lead a good life and always will. The good Lord wants it this way. Amen."

Frederick loved to pontificate on the wisdom and morality of his life. He bathed in it and wallowed in it to his heart's delight. To his long-time associates who'd heard it all before his speeches only caused eye-rolling but so well-rehearsed was his passion that many a weak fool who heard it for the first time would find pearls of wisdom in his seeming insights. This was the true food that kept Frederick alive.

Pharaoh spots a useless loafer wanting a free ride!

"It's these people with a sense of entitlement who outrage me the most! The world owes you nothing, my good man. All this liberal garbage that Man has a need to give is nonsense in the utmost. You cannot take from others giving nothing in return. No system can survive that! 'Every dollar must be earned,' is my motto. Socialism is death!"

So one can imagine his outrage when Sir Frederick was about to enter the marble hallways of exclusivity of his building to find his pocket had been picked!

"You thieving scum! I won't stand for this! How dare you extend your hands into my pocket! No human being has a right to another's wealth. This isn't about selfishness but law and order. What would happen if every person had his pockets picked? It would be the end of civilization, complete anarchy. Is this what we've become? Are we to funnel our assets to those who feel our money should be theirs simply because of a false sense of entitlement? That's utter madness! It's insanity beyond all words!"

Sir Frederick's outrage could not be contained as he lectured and chastised all those within earshot. His scathing soliloquy also spurred pretty policemen into action as protecting the poor does not pay one's rent as well as protecting the rich. When the police did bring the "baseless scoundrel" before Sir Frederick, however, his tone and demeanor transformed in an instant.

It's fun to be a hypocrite in a godless world!

"Oh, sir, I'm sorry. My utmost apologies. I spoke too hastily. How wrong of me to be so judgmental! Please, take my money - and more if you want. Please do not underestimate my desire to serve the greater good." The thief in question was none other than Dewey Cheatum, the famous billionaire who believes he is entitled to every dollar in existence. Poor Freddy just couldn't apologize enough. "Please understand I thought it was one of these wretched street urchins who pinched my funds. I had no idea it was a person of wealth. I'd rather die than give a nickel to these homeless bums looking for a free ride but to you I'll give all my money!"

Yes, it's true: we live in Opposite World, where capitalists are socialists and socialists are capitalists. So take the Socialist Test. Does it make you angrier to think this man takes a nickel from you

than this man takes tens of thousands from you?

If so, you're a socialist!