I Fell
Spend three days homeless
in the unforgiving modern world
and you’ll have an idea
of what courage means
Step into the homeless shelter
step out
because it’s less of a nightmare
to spend the night on a bench
in a park
I find myself employed
but without a roof on my head
A fresh hell
I feared since I was little
when I saw my tendencies
and predicted the trajectory
of my decline
with a mathematical accuracy
Either prison
or grave
or homelessness
I suppose
I fell into the
lesser evil
I pack my stuff
I buy a plane ticket
I turn what’s left
of my digital balance
to cash
I travel to the third world country
I escaped from when I was a child
With no plans
and no hope
and no appetite to talk
Debts lead to suicides
The faces of people
on their first day of homelessness
The faces of people
being the audience of
their own sudden
and helpless demise
The human decline hides another evil:
madness
some people were like you
until they weren’t
Some people turn mad
without realising it
in the midst of their life span
It is my biggest fear.
To be poor
To be defeated
and depressed
and to wonder if you have it in you
to go against life
for another round—
these things I can face
and I can face the possibility
of suicide as long as it’s my choice
but madness terrifies me
more than death
Mine or the death
of my loved ones
Madness is unspeakable horror
it is your soul navigating
a maze with no exit
It is death before death
it is the worst type of loneliness
and the deepest sense
of being lost
No one ever gets found
when mad
I step into my fathers house with
groceries for the week
because he is an old unrecognised
artist with a daily food insecurity
I argue with him
because he says I failed
it is true
I did fail.
My demons
won.
But he failed too
once upon a time
To tell him he was a ghost
when I was a child
is meaningless so I don’t say it.
Oh father I think inside
my skull, I’ll probably like you more
when you’ll die
and I’ll romanticise you
from our shared bitter memories.
What’s the point?
Arguments. Family arguments.
Nobody ever understood me
and I never blamed them for it
for I never understood my nature either.
I sit down on an 80’s soviet made couch
and I put pen on paper
and I write
“Rock Bottom
(Or the book of
the great self loathing).
In the morning my father goes to
an easy job somebody
found for him.
They owe him three months
of pay
or so he says.
It is believable.
Around these parts
you work and hope
for a payment .
Often times you never get it
and there’s no one to turn to
but a pistol
and an all-in attitude.
Me?
I write a book in second person
and I see through the window
of this living room
a sun that feels like an enemy
and down the street
I hear laughter
even though the whole
neighbourhood is broke and distressed
some people laugh
some people
will laugh while their house burns down
Some people
never envisioned
a big picture
so that when that picture shatters
it makes no difference to them
I once had ambitions
that decreased to aspirations
that decreased to hobbies
that became nothing at all
but a memory
I remember at times
with a bittersweet fondness
and a recollection in retrospect
that they were naive
You have to look down
on the failed dreams of your past
otherwise they haunt you
I think:
Of course you would never be a writer.
You never had anything to say
anyway.
Some dreams
will work as weights
holding certain people down
crippling their chances with their future.
You can’t just be good enough
anymore
because that is not good enough
You have to be spectacular
but even still
even if you’re the most amazing firework
there is
nobody will know
until someone launches
you into the sky
It’s hard to know
when to gamble
and when not to.
Hope is such a dangerous thing.
I look on my piece of paper
that has a few lines on it
drinking wine but with no
self pity anymore
for it was consumed
a long time ago
starting with:
“I remember when I first hated you as a person,
It is when you were fourteen. Since then that hatred grew and grew and after a while there was never a feeling of disappointment for your actions— disappointment is something you feel when you care about someone. I stoped caring about you two decades ago.
But my hatred for you
grows stronger every day.”
I cook good meals
and look outside the window
in the afternoon
knowing my fathers voice
will sound between the walls
any minute
and stare at the asphalt five stories down
and reminiscence
I used to have panic attacks.
Used to go to the ER
and seek help
overwhelmed by a terrible feeling
of perishing
because I was afraid
of dying
and in those early mornings
when I would get released
by those hospitals
still hazy from the sedatives
I’d see the grey sky
as night was turning to day
and think
maybe this time you can do it different
I don’t have panic attacks any more.
Horror Sleaze Trash 