It’s 1 am in the morning or at night, As I sit here on my backyard patio Smoking my cigarettes, thinking my thoughts. And the wind picks up and rolls the dead leaves on the ground Letting me know that the summer was over. It is over, man. All over. As the cigarette burns and the trees shake off the dead leaves And I sit here and wonder, Getting more drunker and older and cold. I am on my seventh beer, and the night is still young. But sadly, I am not young anymore, as I age by the minute Rolling through my life like the dry yellow leaves blown by the wind, Out of my mind and out of my youth. I am not getting younger, but I always wanted to be strong, To be a true man, gentleman, to be an independent person. But I am so weak as I still depend on so many things Like those cigarettes, like that beer, like that night, Like those leaves and the trees in my backyard. The air is getting colder, and the wind blows harder, And I know I have to get back inside. I have to get back to the house, To my family, to my bed, to my life. It is Friday night in Pennsylvania, And all I have is another six hours of sleep And another six-pack of beer, and there’s Another three cigarettes left in the pack To keep me going through the night like a renegade, Like a monster, like a lost soul. And just like that, another new poem came to be. A fresh new poem after a while. And I am happy to have you again. It’s been a long time, my friend, It’s been a long life.
Unwanted, unneeded, unfit, rejected. Society is still out there, doing its thing But you are not part of it anymore, any longer. You used to be there, and you had that spark in your eyes But the tides have shifted, and now You’re drowning in the darkness of the muddy waters, Eating shit with shellfish, and seaweed, and sadness. Sitting all alone in the darkness, chainsmoking And pouring more wine in your glass bought on credit, You’ve seen the better days, some days before. Now, all you can see is the misery and despair. There is a cold spring wind blowing in the night The cigarette is feeling cold, too. There is no job tomorrow and nowhere to go, There is just more of this emptiness and cigarette smoke. You’ve had your success, and you’ve been down before, But each time, it feels like it’s the worst one yet. This fucking life always goes up and down And you have to learn to play this game sometime. People meant to live, and people meant to die, People meant to suffer, and people meant to survive. I am fighting hard, but my fighting with myself, Killing my shadow in the uneven match. The moon is up high, and there are planes in the sky Going somewhere. The stars are all there and have no other business but shine. You were the star once, and you’ve shone bright and high, But even the stars do go down once in a while. And you went down to the lowest of the low, The lowest you’ve ever been, with all that success in the past. There will be tomorrow and some more days in your life You’ll figure out living as you’re learning to die.
( This piece has no literary value. From the late-night beer-infused Saturday night rant series)
The cold beer feels great going down my throat. I actually feel fucking great. I fucking love my beer. I fucking love to just sit back, play some music, drink my beer, knowing that there is nothing else I have to or want to do. There is a vinyl record spinning on the turntable. I realized that I hadn’t used the turntable in a while. What a shame. I have over two hundred records collecting dust, but I am not doing shit about it. I know I have them. I know where they are. I realize what a bunch of great fucking record collections I have, but I’m just too busy dealing with life to enjoy that music. I just keep forgetting to get back to it, to enjoy it a little bit. There are records that I acquired years ago, and I still remember where I bought them and sometimes even how much I paid for them. Certain memories stay with you forever. They might not always be the most important memories, but there is something special about them, so I still have some recollection of the time and space, my life then, my experiences, and my thoughts… Music is one of the greatest things in life. It can be both tangible and intangible. You can just sing the song out loud, and it would make you feel happy. But also, you can have a 180 mg vinyl playing on the turntable, which would bring the greatest joy and satisfaction. I am not a hoarder, but I do love collecting certain things. I love to have them, to see them, to touch them, to smell them. I am a young fella, but I do love the old shit. The old music makes me feel great. The black and white movies make me happy as well. It seems like back in the old days of black and white TV, or when music was pressed on vinyl, life was so much fucking better. It seems like life back then was more fun, it was more real, and authentic, and you could feel and smell things and get a great sense of the past life. I get some sort of weird nostalgia while experiencing the old things, the old school, the old way. I think that even cigarettes were a hundred times better for you back then. Somehow, the more we advance as a civilization, the deeper we get into the nowhere. Somehow the things are so fucking dull and tasteless and surreal that I don’t even what to be part of any of it. Fuck it all. I want to be real. I want the real shit. I want good wine or beer, a good piece of meat, a good cigarette, and fresh morning air filling my lungs. I want the smell of a freshly printed paperback. Nothing smells better than a fresh, brand-new paperback or a cup of great, freshly brewed coffee. I mean, how much do you really need to be happy? If you really think about it, it is not that much. The little things always make the man feel alive, feel like a man, and that life is worth something. These are the nights in white satin, and there is so much about the nights, and satin, and music, and beer, and life, and cigarette burning in your hand while you sit back and let go. Just go on. Let me take a little breather. Let me take a little break from all the fucking madness, for fuck’s sake. Do I have to be present, worried, and responsible for everything? Sometimes, I feel like I can move mountains. But sometimes, the opposite is true. Sometimes, I just want to fuck off. I want to sit on my sofa in my basement, endlessly drinking my beer while listening to music and writing down all my nonsense. One day, I decided I wanted to be a writer. And I became one. I don’t write all that much, but I have written a lot. I am trying to be to stay productive. Before, it felt like a foreign concept. It felt like a dream. And then, some days later, I made that dream come true. I made that dream come to life, giving me something to live for and strive for. It usually takes me a lot of time to come around, but when I do, I am on it. I love watching myself becoming a new me. The old me was a dick, a confused nobody, a lowlife, a useless fuck. Once I overcame that mental roadblock and explored new territories, things started to move, to come about, and things started to happen. Good shit started to happen. And I couldn’t be more happy with that. I couldn’t be more happy with myself. And I couldn’t be happier seeing myself producing the words through poems and the short stories that eventually became books years later. Fuck. I fucking made it. I fucking made it happen. I became a true writer. Something that was just a dream and some sort of delusional obsession had become my new reality. I am a writer with two self-published books, and the third one is in the closing stages. I am doing something. I am being productive, maybe not as productive as I could’ve been, but slowly and surely, shit is happening. And now, looking back, I don’t feel bad at all. I feel satisfied. I feel like I made my dream a reality. I am a writer. Even though no fans are knocking at my door. Even though there are no sales and book lists. Even though there are no book deals, I still outperformed my old self from those early desperate years, and I have some proof to show for it. But mainly, I proved to myself that the dream is possible. A simple dream is possible for anyone, even losers, as I have been for most of my life. Dream your dreams, my friend, and go after them. It will open a new world for you worth something. It is definitely much better than sitting on your ass doing nothing at all, waiting for death to come and take you away, or waiting for the next day, just hopelessly hoping it would bring anything better. I waited a fair amount of time in my life this far. I have no fucking patience no more. I want it all, and I want it now. I have no time to waste. I have no time to lose. The only fucking thing I do have besides my sorry-ass is the time, and I am on that fucker all the time. I hate to waste time. I hate to lose it. I hate somebody else taking and wasting my fucking time. I guess there is a reason why I own ten watches. I do fucking have a deep appreciation for the time and watchmaking, indeed. I cherish every minute that goes by, goes sideways, into infinity as I get older and wiser or dumber, or whatever. Time is a fascinating thing. It comes through you and leaves scars on your soul and face in the form of sadness, anxiety, deep wrinkles, gray hair, and bad eyesight. Time is all we have…
Times New Roman is a perfect font. I don’t know who determined that, but it is what they say, mostly a widely used font for writing. I write like that. Why the fuck not? I am walking through the clouds and writing my prose and poems like nobody’s business in this crazy fucking world of ours. Sometimes it feels like it is the end of the next closest thing to it as we can get, but then the next day, it’s alright. We’ll power through. We’ll live. We’ll write more books, songs, and poetry and create even more disparity in the universe because we are the people, and that’s what we do. That’s why we are here on this planet to fuck things up and then think about how to solve this. Cigarettes taste good even if they kill. Even if they fucking stink, we still smoke them passionately and on impulse because our bodies crave that chemical shit and our bodies need more of it. The hangovers are harder than ever as you age as you get older, and who am I to tell you? You should know that. It is a fact. My hangovers were so much more severe right after passing thirty. Is it the age that is not keeping up with the young spirit, or is it our desperate bodies that cannot handle that shit anymore? I am not a doctor, don’t ask me. I am just a writer, an addict, a drinker, a family man, a working man, and a writer nobody knows. I just write and spit and shit and try to help myself and hopefully others somehow. It is late March, and it is still fucking cold, and that fact alone is depressing as anything else is depressing in this life. I am sick of depression and being depressed. Fuck depression, I want love, I want crazy passionate sex, I want a beer with a cigarette and have no regret tomorrow or ever. I want to live my life how I want it, not how society, the church, or the establishment wants me to live my life. Why don’t they worry about their own shit? Why don’t they worry about saving this world from other things and problems? I am not a pessimist but rather an optimistic realist. The reality these days is not what anyone wants to live through. It seems like there isn’t much to do to save this fucking and completely insane world of ours. We are on the verge of world war three, nuclear war, a major fucking world pandemic, chemical war, and the war on genders and equality and race and veganism, you name it. I don’t know what to do with all of it, and neither do you. Trust me, you can have your opinions, as can I, but who really gives a fuck and who really is helping to solve anything? All we do is deepened that hole in the normality of our existence. I wish I could save the world. I wish I could write like Hemingway. I wish I could have the largest balls of them all. I wish I never spotted playing guitar. But I don’t, and more than likely, neither do you. So we just live our lives day in and day out, and we keep questioning the same questions with no answers and no solutions, and this has become normal. More often than not, we don’t even ask any questions anymore. We don’t even give a shit about any kind of critical thinking or whatever. All that music in the world, any fucking music one can imagine, is available to anyone’s taste at any point in time. I find it impossible to pick what I want to listen to most of the time. There are so many streaming channels on TV and apps and shit, and it takes forever to pick a show or a movie to watch. And then I do pick something; it is often some stupid shit that doesn’t make sense and is obviously a wrong choice and a waste of time. Halfway through, I don’t even pay any attention to it. Are we spoiled too much? Fuck yeh! The deficit and the scarcity or limitation of supplies create more demand for something. The law of economy. Works like a fucking charm all the time, every time. I wish we never run out of beer. Beer is important. Cigarettes are important. Music is important. Books are important. Lunch is way too fucking important. We cannot not have it. We can’t say no to these things. We live for them to have them, own them, and consume all of them. As Pink Floyd sings, “Welcome, my son, welcome to the machine.” Everything is being controlled by the system, everything is a machine of some sort or kind, and you and I and everyone else are part of it. We are the main ingredients for it. We make that shit work. We make that wheel spin and evolve and progress. We don’t even know why. Why is this the most annoying type of question? Nobody has any fucking clue or patience for it. It just hangs over us like a fucking brick occasionally hits us in the head when the time is right. Fucking time is always on the money. There is just, in general, so little time for anything. I have so many wishes, desires, needs, and hobbies I want to maintain, but I don’t have any time. We have the sun, but we don’t have the time, honey. Owning ten watches is not helping you to keep the fucking time still. It doesn’t help to keep the accurate time either. All these watches help us understand how fucking miserable and incompetent and powerless we are against it. Time will make us old and ugly and sick and eventually dead. Time is running fast as a motherfucker, with no mercy, no soul, and not even a thought about slowing down. You can throw away all your watches, but this fucker will never stop counting down. Then you will look into a mirror, and you will see another person there. That face looks familiar but is not what I feel like. It is not what I imagined I look like. It always looks much worst in the mirror than we think it is. Am I too optimistic about myself and how I look? Or maybe that fucking mirror has no soul and has no problem showing me the truth? I know I do a lot of stupid shit intentionally, not in my favor, but I always have an excuse. I always have something to defend myself with. I always have something to stand by. There is a reason why I drink something every day. There is a reason why I cannot ever quit smoking cigarettes. There is a reason I am a nervous fucking wrack many times. The reason is in that fucking mirror staring at me with a tired, confused, and disappointed face wondering. This is life, I’d say. Life has been getting to me. Life is happening. Life is what it is and time is what it is, and we are who we are. We can change, I’m sure. We should be changing and constantly evolving. I am more than convinced. But what is the point of it all? What is the reason we are all here alive and wondering, making mistakes, and trying to ruin every fucking thing we touch? Why the world is set to self-destruct? Can we all live in peace and harmony and mind our own fucking business without any major consequences and conflicts? Even beer makes more sense right now than the time or even the whole wide world. For fuck’s sakes! People don’t really need much of anything. We all just need to be more human. Even fucking Jimy Hendrix on my Spotify playlist makes more sense after some fucking sixty years later. I hate that these beautiful long Saturday nights with music, beer, and books and writing are never lasting long enough. They end. They end soon. Too soon. I can smell tomorrow in about a few hours when I wake up with a swollen face from cigarette smoking and beer drinking the night before. My whole experience of freedom and I do whatever fuck I want to do will be over. It all will become past. And tomorrow will be the future and the present and eventually the past. Even the small great experience in your life is worth more than having nothing. All these little moments are all worth it. They are worth living for, waiting for, creating even more of them in the future. I live my life for an experience. I spend my money, I don’t save as much as I probably should, but I know why I do all that. I am separating myself from the materialistic things to have more space for the spiritual experiences, to have a better life experience, to enjoy this short and dull fucking life as much as possible. I am not a baller. I am far from it. I am just a regular dude, trying to raise a family, become somebody, find myself, be a great father and a husband, trying to make all the right moves. I want to be a writer and write. I write as much as I can. I write as much as I have an opportunity to do so or as much as I make myself sit down and write. But I do. I try. I write. I want to make it happen for me, and I think that with time and perseverance, I will fucking make it one day, some fucking day, I surely will make it all happen for me just like I wanted, just like I planned. There will be a nice house in Florida near the beach, maybe with a pool, always nice weather, family near me, money in the bank, nothing to worry about, a few cars in the driveway for any occasion, and books all over the house. Why the fuck not?! For now, it is just a dream, just my imagination. Just a thought, food for thought, and fucking wish of mine, ok? Can a man have a dream? Can we all dream about something great for ourselves? I’d say, fuck yeh! Knock yourself up. Fuck yourself up. Whatever. Yet another bottle of beer is empty, and it is past midnight, and I know tomorrow I will be sad and tired and hungover, but I feel so alive tonight. I feel so inspired. I wrote all this shit in about half an hour. There is just so much of this shit in me tonight. I don’t want this moment to end. I don’t want this stream to end. I want to go on. I want this night to last forever, like a high school ball, a wedding night, a birthday night, or something else you don’t want ever to end. Fuck there is always so little time for everything. There is too much time for work, daily chores, misery, depression, problems, and payments, but so little time and opportunity to actually enjoy your fucking life. I want to live. I want to enjoy my life as I want it to, as I chose to enjoy it. Even if it means waking up with a hangover tomorrow. Even if it means fucking open another bottle of beer. I am going to, and I will stretch this night as long as I can. Fuck everything. How many times I will be free and thirty-three or four or five or fifty? We make our choices, and we should stand behind them. We should own our shit, good or bad. This is our life, and we should live it to our best potential. What is potential anyways? You figure it out. I am just writing. I think I have potential. We all do. Life will show how full of shit we are as time goes by. If six turns out to be nine, I don’t mind, nor does Jimy Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix is really fucking on fire this night in my earbuds. I realize how much I’ve missed some great classic, fucking blues, rock music. I can’t have enough of it. The fucker was twenty-seven when he died, and all that music he created, played, and recorded is purely amazing. It all still sounds too fucking great if you listen today. None of it got old. None of it got irrelevant. It only gets better with time. Something tells me people don’t get better with time. Something tells me otherwise. Before people had this freedom to express their opinions worldwide on social media and elsewhere, there was just so little bullshit in the world in general. Life was so much better. Now everyone is walking around with their fucking phones checking shit out, posting this up, commenting, hating, shitting, crying, fucking around on the web, polluting everything with garbage and nonsense. And that’s what we’ve become. Walking zombies, living in our own little virtual universe shitting on each other. Even the great benefits of social media are so much suppressed now that they are almost inexistent. Life was better when all that bullshit took place in a small circle of friends or family behind a kitchen table. But the Ginnie is out now, so go fucking wonder where we go from here. I guess I know why I love sitting here in my basement until the deep of the night, listening to my vinyl collection, reading books, and drinking beer. It feels so much more organic and natural and so much real and meaningful. This is what I love, the music, the books, the writing, the boose, and the smokes. Men don’t need much to be happy, honestly. You would not be happy if you got it all. You will not be happy if you have nothing to your name. But you still have some chance if you get at least part of it. I think I’ve figured it out. I think I’ve got it. Another beer, another hour into the night. Another night of complete indulgence and what I like to call have fucking fun and joy. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. This is the saddest fucking reality ever. I wish I knew the day, the last day, I’d prepare myself better. I’ll be or maybe not be anything I am not today. I think I like being myself, or I think it’s cool for the most part. I am feeling pretty cool right now. It could be the beer, but I am feeling pretty fucking great right now. I’m a voodoo child, according to Jimi Hendrix. Damn, I’ve missed this great fucking music for such a long time! There is a shit ton of great fucking music to listen to. I’ve lost my focus, but I am finding my way out of that hole. Life is not all that bad. All in all, at least I get my chance at it. At least I am doing something, something good, something bad, something too much, and something too little, but it is my life. This is my scenario, my play, my fucking game, and I own it. And the wind whispers, Mary and I wrapping this mother fucker up. See ya later fuckers. Cheers to the good times and good and meaningful life. Let’s make this world a better place, even if it means drinking more beer, listening to more great music, and reading more of the Hemingway books. Jimi Hendrix lives forever.
I am here. I stay up When the night changes the day and The day changes the night. I watched it all happen In front of my eyes. I don’t have to go anywhere I just sit in this small room With the closed shades wearing My sunglasses waiting for The answers. I know tomorrow is another day And I think it will be different While I hope not much will change Because I like it this way. This is good. This is simple. This is familiar. This is me in a nutshell. Those who write poems Early in the day, at the Break of the day, Always see When the day changes the night As it all begins all over, For those who read poems. One more time, just like It has been before. There is darkness to the day And it feels lighter at night. My words lined up in my mind and I need to take them somewhere On the page, As I write, as I try, as I struggle As I think of the next line And the next poem And the next day. The day is changing the night again And I am drowning in this room Like I did the day before.
It was night and dark outside. She and I were on the beach in Miami. I had a glass of red wine in my hand, and she had a cup of hot black tea. We were not married then, but we both knew our love was real and deep, and it will last for as long as it could.
The beach was almost empty, and the ocean was dark with just some sparks here and there, reflecting the city lights on the water and the moon and the stars in the deep, dark, faraway sky. We were silent, sitting close to each other as one. We did not need to talk at all; we understood everything at that moment. It was love. It was us. It was our future together, which we didn’t know yet. But we hoped it would be good for both of us. It will have us together.
I was inspired at the moment, and I knew it is one of a kind. I never had any moments like that before. I knew gods gave me a chance to think and to dream and to see what I wanted in this life. I never had time to focus on thinking about life and the future, and I wanted to do with my life. She was there near me, and that was enough. I was there for her, and I was enough.
I sipped on my glass, looking at the dark ocean. There was a star in the sky, and I saw one falling down for the first time. I knew this is a proper time to make a wish, and I did. I wished to be successful and rich and famous. It was a bullshit wish, but I felt like it was a necessary thing to do. I didn’t care about being rich or famous or successful because I never was one, and I didn’t even know what it all meant. It was just an opportunity to do whatever I wanted and never worry about money, prosperity, impressing anybody, and career, jobs, or anything at all. Life was young and simple then. Worry less.
I wanted to live my life the best I could. How I liked it to be. My understanding of life and its purpose was limited. A young man’s heart is always on fire, and his soul is full of adventure. It wasn’t about being correct or intelligent all the time or only making the right decisions. Wise decision-making usually takes much more time and comes with some life experience. I didn’t have that back then. I had my heart and soul full of adventures and my love next to me, and her dreams and passions. We were in love, and we were in our moment, creating our moment together. We were us.
It is interesting how life plays games with you and what one has to go through until we find ourselves, all the struggles and broken hearts, arguments, fights, and misunderstandings. Everything else that goes along and eats a person alive. Being with the wrong person for some time and then understanding that you’ll never get your time back and never getting your youth back feels sad. But, the sadness filled with understanding and life experiences that make adults out of young people teach them lessons that nobody else can teach. I’ve just had a bad relationship experience behind me, and now I was with my future and the love of my life, sitting on the dark beach at night, drinking my red wine, feeling in love, and enjoying every second of that moment, every breath of that fresh ocean air.
I felt some sort of comfort, and I think she did as well, the comfort of having the right person next to you and the comfort of being in love with one another. I wanted to keep her with me forever. I wanted her to be the love of my life. I knew early that she was the one, and I needed to hold her close to me. When you get those kinds of feelings, you are often right, and you have the right person next to you. I didn’t know when that it will take us six more years before we will get married and three more years before she will give birth to our son. We stuck together through thick and thin, and we are still together, and I hope we always will.
“To a better future together, babe. I love you more than I ever loved anyone else, and I always want to be with you!” I raised my glass to a toast. “I love you too, honey,” she said, “to us!”
