The Open Matt Project

Bleeding Out

I honestly feel like I'm going to die. It's been almost every day feeling like this, like I'm stuck in a nightmare that I know isn't real. It's as if every moment I could wake up and start my day telling people what an incredibly fucked up dream I had. Maybe I shouldn't eat hot dogs before bed.

I read that almost everything I'm thinking and feeling is completely typical of everyone in my situation. The advice is boringly universal. Let it out. Feel your feelings. Don't call them. Keep your routines. This. Too. Will. Pass. And yes, I know. It's not my first rodeo and it won't be my last.

I'm a fool for reading her LiveJournal. How perfect is it her last few posts were about how painful it was to dump me... last year. I'm a fool for going through my photos, searching for something, some trace or hint of what went wrong.

Was it then? She looks happy. What about this time? She looks happy there also. I wonder if it was this or that or this or that or and it doesn't matter because it's all in the past. The now is this. This here.

Drained

It wasn't the first drink that killed me, brother. No sir. It wasn't the second or the third or even the bang on brotherhood that followed those first licks. It wasn't the drugs, it wasn't the disappointment, it wasn't the shotgun wedding of my flesh to street concrete. It wasn't burning the wick at both ends or cashing out my immortality. You might think after having the life wrung out of you time and and again you'd put a pen to the dots and catch quite a view but I will tell you, brother, it ain't so.

Make no mistake, I was headstrong. That's a race you start early on with an aim to be the first to lose and lose best. There wasn't a thing to be had that wasn't had snuck out of what couldn't be and I wanted all of it. The smallest bone filled with endless marrow for me, and why not? What else could there be? Books not to be read. Porn-OG-graphy. Places not to go. Things not to be touched. Things on the top shelf before top shelf changed meaning. What could be reached was grasped. What could be cracked open, broken, explored, was with consequences that could not dare to match with the private satisfactions found within. I took what I could and broke what I couldn't.

No my friend, the drink came later. A tar-baby in a bottle holding victory and defeat in one hand smiling and always the more reliable lover. There are some who say that all things are circles whose balance sheets are forever in the black, and I tell you son I've lived just shy of enough to report they are poor accountants at best and shy seers at worst. No sir, I wasn't driven to drink any more than any heart is primed to break, as desires bully and decieve all souls equally and I am no more coward nor bravo than any other son of a bitch pitching air.

As a little one, weak and ignorant and with all the blood ambition born with it, I squirmed like a lidless worm and suffered the sun on my skin with all the no complaints equipped to me. HA! can you imagine what surprise in my eye when it opened at last? What sort of damning enlightenment that was, I am glad I forget. I'm not alone! I'm not alone! I'm not alone, my brothers! What a howling with that sight, the blind leaving the blind and we are all Caliban. You cursed visons and memories, you harpies, take flight at last!

Can you remember, my friend? Can you remember that penetrating instant when all of all was no longer everything? When the intimate was instantly no longer and was replaced by the aching ecstacy of the invading other? I love you. I love you. To recall is to despair. Don't dull the pain with the drink, here, no, she is not relief but buttresses the irreplacable assault. No no, here she is your friend knife sheathed. That tic of the tocks marks you well and forevermore with shape and value unknown.

What kills is not the blade's intrusion, but it's withdrawal. A cold tamponade to clutch, to pull, to draw in as death nears the value of life. No, the heart welcomes the entry, it is the exit that drains it of life.

So what fortune it is that time slows with each drink! What fortune that the heart exhalts its own demise! Oh my poor poor fool, do you see the murder self inflicted? Another round, brother. Another round for me, another round, and put the last round into me. It is not the first drink that kills me, but the cycle that leaves me in the red.

Ellie Naturally

God it's hot out. Where to go now? Just forward, I guess, just forward and don't eye the Bay Bridge that way. Jupiter? Oh Christ, these people again.

I'm walking down California St. towards BART, alternatively fighting tears back and being washed in waves of exhausted apathy, and I see the canvassers. Pretty, earnest, young women with clipboards and backbacks and an earnest glow that may not be for sale, but is certainly on display. It feels like stomping through a flowerbed sometimes, to pass them by. I don't give myself the chance.

Time

Time is an illusion, lunchtime, doubly so. Time heals all wounds. Time time time is on my side. Time and tide waits for no man. Time to die. Time flies when you're having fun. Time's up. Time for some action. Time travel. Time is not on our side. Time til launch. Time of passing, eight twelve twenty ten, five thirty pee em. Timing is everything. Tick tock, mate.

Drunken Whinge

On the topic of alcoholism, or what I'd like to describe as "having a good time during a difficult period," I've often told others it's a sure fire sign you've crossed the rubicon when you start drinking alone. That said, having spent a number of impromptu vacations after work drinking myself directly into oblivion, that very thought has crossed my mind. What's amusing is that my deepest regret during those times is not the spiraling descent into self-inflicted destruction, but rather the thought that there is no one around to enjoy it with me.

Slaughterhouse

A sound that scars is illusion's keening bay from being snuffed with eyes locked on the true believer. Scars scarring simply new skin slipping from old to be borne dead. Dreaming dreaming waking dreams fucking in and out sides. Forgotten once or forgotten in scores are alike to remember me old friends again. Paradise awaits past. Yes it's fragmented, that is how shattered is. Dummy.