The Open Matt Project

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.

Posted by Matt at August 24, 2010 10:38 PM