East of the sunset

         This has been a hell of a week. My therapist calls each day, “A journey of a thousand little cuts” but it has felt more like demons have torn asunder every surface of my soul, peeled off my scalp and devoured my brain while their claws dug into my eyes to keep themselves steady. Everybody wanting more, my muscles fatiguing under the burden and no Roman soldiers to compel another to shoulder the carry; and worse, I did it sober. Well, sober for me. All obligations obliged I would have a couple beers before bed.

          Did I mention I did it sober, crawled across the finish line where, whether first place or last, you reach your day off and I’m just too tired to do more then lay beside the layer of that line, still sober. Creatively I am even more spent, the only rhyme I could spill all week was:

          Run, jump, burn and hump

          Squat over a tall building

          And take a dump

I said it over and over like a mantra wishing I were schizophrenic so the world wouldn’t be real.
          Oh god why am I still sober? I have a refrigerator full of beer, no obligations, nowhere to steer, yet I’m sitting in bed propped up by pillows; an aging oak or a weeping willow? A far cry from the guy who just two hours ago finished a two hour weightlifting routine; now I just want to cocoon in this room, fetal and chanting, “there is no spoon” and rest from the rape of human interaction.
          Full Frontal Assault is the name of the play and the teacher put me in the lead role because I’m the best looking kid in the class or is it because I’m always front and center, hands folded on the desk, eager for approval?
          Oh god why am I still sober?! Have I forgotten how to drink until the functions of functionalism are on the brink? If you don’t salivate when ice clinks then you don’t know dependency. Writing is a tendency and every writer knows that writing is a waste of words and yet I vomit with my pen trying to win one more minute of sobriety. I never knew a person could drink so much water or look in the mirror and see eyes that are clear, or shiver in the searing heat.
          Why won’t I just get up and get a beer? I mean I never thought this day would come, as always I am unable to dodge the cum that is landing on my face in this hellish and harried pace and doing it without a numbing agent that facilitates a facsimile of a dissociative personality disorder. Let me cross the border, call me crazy and lock me up, solitary confinement, far from this journey of a thousand little cuts.
          There is a liquor store right down the street and I still have feet. I could walk in acting like nothing has a hold on me; ask for a bottle of anything and down it before I’m even out their front door. Why do I suddenly want so much more?! When the weariness of the waves that cascade like a violent angry monster never go out with the tide? In plain sight I hide with no one knowing on the inside I am nowhere near sober.
          I don’t meditate on beaches or confront your callousness; I cry and hide inside a bottle. Some men shave and shower before they venture forth, I prepare for the day in a completely different way, until recently that is.
          Rover red Rover won’t you come over and give a poor dog a bone and just once, if it’s not too much to ask, I’d like to be west of the setting sun.

***