It’s here! Just released . ..

Watering the Lawn Before a Storm

The new collection of short stories by David Domske now available for sale at http://www.amazon.com or by visiting https://www.createspace.com/3830231.

An easy read of humorous short stories about the many peculiar things that human beings think, say, and do – all exemplifying “the story of life and what happens in it”.

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Struggling writers who drink too much need money for booze!

He sat at the bar. He was unknown to all of the wait staff, bartenders, and fellow patrons. This did not concern him. His only concern was that he had a bomb duct-taped to his body, and he was still unsure if he should detonate the bomb in this place on this night.

He lit a Pall Mall cigarette.

“There is no smoking in here, sir,” said the bartender, a blonde beauty of thirty-two years.

“Very well,” he replied. He butted out the cigarette on the open palm of his right hand and continued to pull gulps from the pint glass in front of him.

“Is that a cape you’re wearing?” asked an aging beauty to his right.

“Why yes,” he replied. “Yes, it is a cape.”

“I have never seen a man in a cape before. Well, not in real life anyway.”

“What kind of life was it?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if not in real life, than I would only have to assume that it was some other form of life. What form of life was it?”

“I just meant in the movies,” she replied.

“I see.”

“So, where did you get it?”

“What?”

“The cape. Where did you get the cape?”

“My friend made it for me. I had to pay her, but she did it. And just in time for great cape weather.”

“I suppose it is great cape weather,” she replied.

He turned and smiled at her, knowing that she knew he was correct. It was in fact great cape weather.

“Be careful,” she said. “I’m not so sure others in this place will find the cape to be as opportunistic of an outer garment.”

“Well, I suppose not everyone can be as understanding as you. And as beautiful.”

She blushed. Her aging face now looked as young as it may have when she was twenty years of age and engaging in her first flirtatious encounter.

“You’re sweet, but you know you are,” she said.

“Why don’t we cease this nonsense and escape into the night together?” he asked. “We can go to your place. Have any wine?”

“Actually, yes I do.”

“Red or white?” he asked.

“Both.”

“Very well. Bartender! My tab please.”

The bartender approached and looked at him.

“It’s four dollars,” said the bartender.

He laid a five on the bar and slid the bill towards her.

“Please break the dollar change,” he said.

He turned back to the aging beauty to his right.

“Let’s take your car. Mine is filled with a variety of items.”

“Okay,” she replied.

He took the four quarters change from the bartender, counted it, and sat two of the quarters back on the bar. He pocketed the other two quarters, stood from his seat, and placed his hand on the aging beauty’s shoulder.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Okay,” she replied. 

He would not be blowing up this establishment on this night. He would not be detonating the bomb at all. He was going to drink both red and white wine with an aging beauty, which if he muttered the right words to, was just as pretty as any twenty year old.    

My twenties were spent mostly sitting in bars.  The hours on top of hours merely adding up to days stacked on top of days.  I drank dark beers and smoked filtered cigarettes and pissed and moaned over the song selections of the other patrons filling out the death seats in the dark and smoky room. 

Conversations of the mindless man were exulted, and it seemed to me that the more a man spoke, the more other men listened.  But what was really being said?  As far as I could tell, nothing - though it seemed as if men claimed victory by speaking countless words on meaningless ideas.  Some men talked of other men’s follies, of their own drunken rampages, of womanly conquests, of boring dead-end jobs, of nagging women, but no man talked of ideas or the ways to lift a man’s soul. 

I suppose we cannot blame people, as it seems most evident that the teachings of this world rely heavily upon the television set, the newspaper, the newscast, our education system, and the church.  We are born with our eyes closed and they remain closed, with our ears doing all of the learning.  We learn with closed eyes and merely listen to the things they tell us.  And what’s scariest is that we believe them.  We believe them as if there were no other explanation, as if there were no other means to extract information from this life. 

I am not sure what finally opens the eyes of some men, allowing them to see for the first time in their life the many voices they have been listening to, the voices selling them shit sandwiches, the voices telling them God is great, the voices telling them to spend their money on trinkets and expensive homes, women, automobiles and the other - the voices telling them to sacrifice their time working countless hours to collect a meager ratty paycheck, while some fat-cat gets rich.    

The thing about a rat race is no matter how fast you run in the race and not matter how far you get, you are still in fact a rat.  They say a pigeon is merely a rat with wings, and perhaps we are all born a pigeon with the ability to fly above it all, though most of society would like to clip our wings and keep us flightless for their own ploy.  Society would like us to remain students of their teachings, and for the whole master plan to continue to work and the machine to roll forward, each student must not question the teachings of the church and state. 

I was hungry during these days of my twenties.  I was hungry not for food, but for food of thought.  I had consumed all of the wisdom spit out by old and aging drunks and this diet was making me sick to my stomach.  These drunks were not the enlightened drunks, spilling wisdom to uplift a man’s soul and enlighten a man’s brain, they were in fact drinking for the wrong reasons.  Their daily drinks served as a numbing process, though they seemed incapable to comprehend what they were attempting to numb. 

I must say that these drinkers had one thing correct, in that they were using the drink to escape one thing or another, which so many of us do from time to time, even using the drink as a means to celebrate.  As so many of us do not realize the celebration is because we are in fact escaping a dead life and a dead soul.  What we are lacking is the ability to recognize that when in fact most people are drinking to escape this or that, we will eventually sober up and come face to face with the sober reality of our own life, a life that only we can change. 

Why try to escape something daunting for mere hours of a day?  Why not leave it behind all together, with each days drinks becoming a new celebration of sorts.  Each day you celebrate knowing that your life is the life of a pigeon in flight, and perhaps a courier pigeon carry the message of the enlightened.

Some of us turn to religion.  In religion we find something to hold on to, though I am not sure how to grasp something that is not tangible.  Too often religion leaves us swinging our arms madly in the dark and empty air of the night without a hope to cling to. 

The idea of religion seems old, smelly and ghostly to me.  Too many offering plates have passed under my nose and I have no desire to fund a palace of judgment.  Keep the gold-coated plate with green felt for a sucker.  I give my spare dollars and change to the folks asking in the street, so that they may purchase another bottle of rot-gut wine if they should so desire.  The streetwalkers may appear dead to some, but I see more life in them than in the living bodies attending a Sunday Service.  Let the church keep their prophets and perfect–beings, the rest of us are fighting the good fight and dying when our time comes.  We’re not holding on to an imaginary shred of hope for an afterlife that takes a VIP membership to get in to.     

It can be difficult for us to see the big picture at times.  We become stuck in the daily rut of bill paying, lady-laying, food shopping and changing our clothes and our hair.  We fail to see that the world continues to spin on its axis, bringing with it new days and forward progress, yet our progress seems to be stunted by old and ever-aging ideas and beliefs in the church. 

Nietzsche first gave us the idea that “God is Dead”, and most people after hearing this immediately form an opinion of Nietzsche.  This seems to be a common element in life – too often we form opinions without giving the proper amount of attention to the idea presented to us.  Nietzsche’s remark deals nothing with an overpowering idea of the Devil winning the battle for our souls, nor does it stand to say people are now free to live in moral chaos, nor does it give merit to the idea that life in itself is meaningless, but the statement should rather arouse the idea in us that we may be stunting our own growth as humans, and poisoning the young and old minds of our time.  How are we as humans expected to grow if we are limited by the constraints of a religion?  Perhaps instead of living for an afterlife in “heaven” and living to avoid an afterlife in “hell”, we should recognize that without a promised heaven or hell, we are living in our own “heaven” or “hell” right here in our own daily lives on this planet.  Our minds should be free of the restraints, so that we may fully grasp our ability to find peace in our lives. 

Too often we leave the path of our existence up to fate, and the fate of a god.  This strikes me as a short-cut to thinking, feeling, and learning.  We are in essence either giving credit to or laying blame upon a spiritual being for our gains or shortcomings in life. 

For instance, I am not sure we should be thanking Jesus Christ when we hit that game winning homerun or select the winning numbers in the daily lottery.  I doubt Jesus cares if the Yankees beat the Red Sox, or if you won West Virginia’s 12 million dollar lottery drawing.  If a god does exist, I would hope he or she would have more important things to worry about.  Perhaps, it would be easier for me to understand people that follow an organized religion if they wouldn’t say such ridiculous things on national television. 

What I do understand and realize is that from birth, we are learned on the idea of some form of dogma and throughout our lives we take for granted that it is tossed in front of us, yet all of this religious propaganda is subconsciously reaffirming in our minds that a god does in fact exist and we should believe in him or her to avoid a fiery afterlife next to a pitchfork wielding Devil. 

I am only choosing Christianity to speak of, as most of my experiences in this life - as the experiences of many Americans lives - have revolved around the life, death and afterlife of Jesus Christ.  I am not attempting to say that Jesus Christ did not at one time live, just as you and I live today.  He probably did and may or may not have been a person of high moral character that spoke eloquently and in the end struck the fancy of many people, as well as pissed off a few people.  So far, he sounds a bit like a politician, though perhaps with some high moral character. 

There is an argument that religion keeps us all in check and that without it the world would be chaos and people would have no moral grounding, leading them to robbing, killing and raping the innocent.  This seems to be a bit of a stretch and a bit exaggerated.  In fact, people rob, steal, kill and rape now, and this is supposedly with the ever-gazing powerful eye of God staring at us. 

I find it funny how scientific we are as a people, proving theories left and right and standing firmly on scientific data to direct us, yet we leave so much open to fate and the church’s interpretation of a best selling book written so many years ago. 

What I do not find funny is the emptiness that can still amount after following this book’s rules your entire life.  On this subject, my examples must come from the people I see around me.  I am not bitter on this topic from experience, as I have in many ways avoided buying into these ideas.  I have gone to church and seen the show, but I left without buying the t-shirt.  My own shirt fits just fine and though it may be soiled with the dirt of reality, real life, and real experiences, it seems a bit cleaner to me then the Christian shirt they are passing out. 

I must only speak of what I see around me, those who have not stolen or cheated their brother man, those who have not killed or raped, those who have attended weekly Sunday Services and let the “good lord” into their hearts.  I see many of them still looking around and wondering why they are not fulfilled in this life as promised.  They have done what the preachers have told them to do, yet they feel no more enlightened than they did when their journey began.  So they pray more.  And they give more to the church.  Surely, something fulfilling will come of this, though after a while when fulfillment is still not reached they are surrounded by depression, they then choose medication to do the trick.  After all, so many of us believe that the real fulfillment will come once we reach heaven, and this life is just a holding cell for the glory that will await us upon our arrival. 

In essence, what we are doing is putting all of our eggs in one basket, hoping the whole heaven thing works out for us in the end.  We are putting effort and thought into our belief in a “god” for the sake of an afterlife, which we can only have faith exists.  Again, this strikes me as a short-cut to thinking, but to attempt to sway a persons belief is difficult, if not an impossible thing to do.  I hope that their rejection of reason pays off for them in the long run.  I hope that I, only being one person and one mind, am wrong and so many others are right.  Perhaps my statements and re-hashed ideas will only fuel them on in their pursuits.  If this is the case, and I am wrong, I will gladly accept my fate in hell so that so many people can live so happily in heaven, though after my thirty-two years on this planet, I still cannot fathom, why in the world anyone would ever dream up a destination for a person’s soul called “hell”. 

To many people who will read this, I am a lost soul, running from the “truth” that has been laid out in front of me and ready for me to pick like a fruit from a tree and bite into.  To them, I am an atheist or a nihilist or even full of shit.  Once again, this seems like a short-cut to thinking, but alas, as I have stated, swimming against the current can be difficult and it is nearly impossible to change a persons beliefs.  I ask only for a bit of reasoning from the self-proclaimed chosen creatures of this fair earth. 

Perhaps what Nietzsche meant was this is the beginning of the end of God as we know it, and as the world turns over time, we will begin to see the belief die out and man begin living for his own greater good, growing, accepting the fate of this fair earth on himself and not passing the blame or praise on to a God. 

This is not a revolution of the soul that can or will transpire over night.  The world will continue spinning for a long time, and the idea of god will live on for centuries, and although the idea has withstood time, all things must die, and the idea of god will perish as well, and before long, “God is Dead” and the guilty feelings associated with being a Christian will die as well. 

Do not measure yourself in the eyes of a flawless being.  There is no hope for any sort of mental or spiritual achievement in that.  Do not allow a god to be the idea by which you measure your pain.  Use your ability to reason to guide you and allow yourself to adjust to new conditions and discoveries.  Faith need not be a motto, nor so cliché.  God may be a historical process that we travel through, and like most history, it somehow repeats itself until we finally are able to learn its lessons and move forward as a people.      

Of the phrase “church and state”, which is the lesser of the two evils?  I cannot be sure.  And by “state” let us include governments and laws.  I think we can all agree that the Constitution of the United States was written a few years ago, well, actually quite a few years ago.  I shouldn’t have to go on and explain this point, but I will for the sake of writing the obvious.  Things have changed, life has continued on and this world is not the same world when the Constitution was written, yet we cling to the words that our leaders of the time wrote, only changing minuet details with tiny amendments here and there to appease the masses when an idea is so outdated that a progressive thinking government official (wait, is that a oxy-moron???) notices that a small coo may erupt on their hands if a few words are not shuffled around - though all they are really doing is keeping the masses at bay.  Their goal is to keep us smiling at the television set and thinking that we are in control of our lives.  The masses seem to be content this way.  This is no secret.  Lennon said it best, “Keep them doped with sex, religion and tv”.  Chompsky goes into great lengths on it as well in many of his writings, and it does seem to work well.  Doesn’t it?  

We are instruments of our government.  When they tell us we are to go to war and kill another man, we go, or they send us.  We give our own lives for their decree of what makes a nation “free”.  They tell us when times are good and when times are bad, but strangely enough, no one from government seems to be experiencing the bad.  They allow us to experience the bad, and basically their role is to inform us that it is in fact bad.  Thanks for the clarification. 

They tell us when our safety is at risk and when it is necessary to come together as one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  I am not so sure who they believe they are including in the “all” portion of that statement. 

They make so many decisions for us that I wonder if we are free men at all?  I wonder if I am a man first, or a subject in their hierarchy first?  I would like to believe that I am a man first, and as a man, I am not subject to being an instrument or pawn in their game.  Though in order to live in this country, as any other, you must pay taxes to them, live under their control, and follow the laws they pass.  I do not feel comfortable allowing another person to have so much control over my own life.  Focus on yourself and allow me to focus on myself.  The world will keep spinning.   

Again, this all seems to be holding back forward human progress – these aging ideas that are still tossed about haphazardly and we buy into it.  Rather, we buy into the shit-sandwich we are being sold and concern ourselves more with who is dancing this evening on “Dancing With The Stars” and forget about the harassment of the law enforcement in our rearview mirrors and the higher paychecks government officials receive, as well as the lack of health coverage for citizens of our country.  We seemingly forget about the homeless freezing in the cold, the sick unable to afford health care, the poor struggling to make ends meet, the elderly alone in their homes wanting to give up and die versus face another lonely day, the Priest raping young boys, and the soldiers dying for our governments pride in a war that unfortunately most Americans forget is still being fought.  Isn’t it strange that none of our top news stories on the evening news ever mention the war?    

I find it amusing in political debates that nothing is ever really said, and that the coverage of these debates and candidates during the primaries and even presidential elections, does not focus on exactly what each candidate is promoting.  What I find even more amusing is that we (the public) allow this to continue and have for years.  I suppose it is good enough for us as long as the candidates are talking, who cares what they are not saying.    

I do not have ideas or a remarkable plan for change.  Sorry, I am not an idea guy.  What I am is a set of open eyes and open ears that does not turn on my television (nor own a television) to be mind-numbed by meaningless programs in an attempt to forget the death rattle of others less fortunate in the world.  I would recommend that you do the same.  Form your own opinions and do not allow someone thirty years your senior to tell you how you should be living your life.  Anything less is a short-cut to thinking.    

Out of all of the women I have had sex with, only two have cried immediately before or immediately after sleeping with me, and I do not believe that I had anything to do with either of their reasons for crying. 

The first was a rather tall blonde.  She and I had met while doing whatever it is that people do for eight hours during the day.  After she had quit doing this thing that we both did, it was decided that the two of us would meet for a drink.  And so we did.  We met and drank a few beers at a bar.  Afterwards, we ended up at my place and I ended up inside her.  The sex didn’t last long, as I probably didn’t have enough to drink to make it last very long, and the whole situation was lacking passion, as she wasn’t a good kisser. 

It’s a difficult thing trying to “make a woman” who is a bad kisser.  You continually get turned off when your lips lock, though you resume your erection when the gal’s wetness starts sliding up and down on your manhood.  It’s back and forth and the whole situation makes you a bit agitated. 

After we “made it”, she began crying.  She was recently divorced and believed in God.  I believe it was one of these two reasons that led her to tears, not my performance. 

I have never been divorced, nor have I ever felt guilty in the eyes of God, but apparently it can be rough.  In one case, you are forced to live with another human being and you have a piece of paper that hangs over your head saying that you are supposed to be together for a long, long time.  People have witnessed this marriage and have a lot of faith that the two of you are living happily ever after.  Seems like a lot of pressure for no good reason. 

In the other case, attempting to measure yourself against what people believe to be the perfect being, a.k.a. God, can be quite difficult as well.  I have yet to encounter a perfect person, religious or not.  This too seems like a lot of unnecessary pressure.  It’s no wonder everybody’s hair eventually turns gray and falls out.

I wasn’t quite sure what to say after this gal began crying.  I think I wanted another beer, but thought better of it as she was a nice girl.  And so, I lay there next to her and stared at the rotating ceiling fan above the bed and wished that I were still at the bar and hacking it up with the boys.  I also began counting my blessings that I was not married, divorced or attending weekly Sunday Services. 

I never slept with her again.  Not that she didn’t feel good, cause she did, and I’m not sure that I have ever felt a woman that didn’t feel good, but rather it was too much pressure.  What if she cried again?  What if she tried to convert me to Christianity?  What if she wanted to talk about her divorce?  What if she wanted me to teach her how to properly kiss?  No, no, this was no place for me to go again, warm insides or not.  

The next lady was a little different.  She cried prior to us having sex.  Once again, I believe that I had nothing to do with her reason for the sudden burst of tears.  She was drunk and a bit “off” in the mind if you catch my drift.  I believe she was crying over a past lover that had died a few years earlier. 

As she sat on the brick pavers outside my home weeping into her hands, she continued to pull gulps from a bottle of red wine.  I sat smoking a cigarette, not muttering a sound.  I wasn’t quite sure what to say, although I wanted to ask her to pass me the bottle so I could also enjoy a drink of the delicious wine.  Eventually, she drunkenly broke the bottle of red wine on my steps and proceeded to climb onto my lap and lift up her skirt and unbuckle my pants.  Tears were still flowing down her cheeks as she placed my stiff manhood inside her warm insides as we had sex under a star-lit sky. 

I didn’t feel as bad about the second girl crying.  Perhaps it was because the tears had started flowing before we had had sex.  Sex just seemed more natural once the tears were streaming down her soft cheeks – like a nympho who needs sex even if it’s with a homeless person.  (P.S. I wasn’t homeless at the time).  I ended up sleeping with the second gal again, though she didn’t cry the following time and I almost wished that she had, as the sex was not as passionate as the first time.  I then devised a “master plan” to attempt to sleep with her a third time, but first attempt to make her cry before we started fucking, if only to see if I could stir up the passion of the first night.  Unfortunately, we never ended up sleeping with each other again and I was never able to test my theory of passion caused by mournful tears. 

I know now that both women most likely used me – each trying to achieve something that I was unable to provide.  I am okay with this.  I know that women cry and I know that women have sex, and that it is possible for them to do both within a matter of seconds and it may occur with anyone who is in the general vicinity.  This gives me hope for the future and a world filled with emotionally distraught women.  I also have a new interest for the funerals I will attend as I grow older. 

I am still not married, I still do not hold stock in any form of religion and I still believe that both are too much pressure.  I hope to keep my brown hair as long as possible.  I hope that the emotionally distraught and mournful women of the world are impressed by my colorful, full head of hair as I grow older and as I offer them a shoulder or a penis to cry on.          

I can remember sitting at a small wooden table drinking cheap pink wine out of a large glass jug listening to Billy Joel sing “New York State Of Mind” from the stereo.  I was 21 years old.  I had no idea of life as it really is.  I had yet to have my heart broken, I had yet to sleep with more than two hands worth of women.  My heart was is love and I was waiting for my love to come home from work.  I was unemployed, but as the good man of the house I had gone out and gotten some wine for my love, as well as a carton of cigarettes. 

            It was Florida.  The year was 2001.  This woman and I were living in a shitty dump of a collection of apartments in Titusville.  Our neighbors were liable at any moment to rob us of everything and anything they thought we might have.  One certain neighbor was not able to leave his apartment for the fear he would be shot by rival drug dealers.  This certain neighbor would nod his head at me as he stood outside his door while wearing his robe at 3pm in the afternoon.  I wasn’t sure if the nod was of approval or if he secretly had plans for me. 

My lady and I had moved from Pennsylvania not knowing what the world had in store for us.  We had moved with our dreams in our pockets and had arrived in Florida and laid our dreams out before us on her comfortable bedspread.  We had moved trying to reach the ocean.  We had moved trying to reach new beginnings.  We had moved trying to secure our place amongst the “proper folk” of society.  I suppose we fell short of everything we had set out for.

            We were smokers, both of us smoking much too much for our young lungs – both cigarettes and grass.  We had been so young, naïve and in love.  We set our love on a peddle-stool as so many young lovers had before us, only to have the sun come burning through the windows and show our tiny apartment love for what it really was. 

            I cared for her and she for me.  There were touches of brilliance.  There were touches of a possible long lasting relationship.  There was enough to eat, but barely meat on the bone.  I ate her cabbage soup because I loved her.  I put up with her running out of our apartment screaming and crying for her mother because I loved her.  I walked on glass because I loved her and I vowed to remove her from the shitty situation we were in.  I am sure there were many things that she dealt with of my own accord, but let her tell her own story - she used to dream of writing, maybe one day she will. 

            Eventually we moved from the tiny apartment in the shitty neighborhood and found ourselves finally beachside.  Our dreams seemed as if they were coming true, but life was not finished with us - life still had other plans in store for us.  Things were how they were and situations became more difficult.  I will spare details here, because I feel she is a new person, just as I am a new person.  We have both taken a holiday from our original lives and flown across the oceans of our minds - she with husband and child, and me with this bottle of wine and this Billy Joel to remind me of how far we all come as human beings. 

Do I feel bad?  I suppose not.  I suppose I am still not in a “New York State of Mind”, but perhaps I never really was.  Perhaps I just enjoyed sitting, drinking, thinking and starring out a window while pulling gulps from a bottle of red. 

The wine these days is a bit better and my thoughts are a bit clearer, but the feeling still stays the same.  I suppose we all are forever longing for something, whether a new state of mind or a better bottle of wine. 

            I still smoke too many cigarettes.  I believe she may have quit.  I have no family, but I believe she has a family to love.  I still drink wine.  I am sure she probably does the same, and it would reason to believe that there is still a song that evokes a memory to her that makes her think of living in that tiny apartment so many years ago that brings her a sense of satisfaction at the fact that she has come so far in life.  I hope so.  I do.  If not, what are we living these lives for?   

Sometimes you can smell the paint on the sides of buildings

The exhaust of cars miles away

The dead fish rotting on the beaches of the ocean.

The wind runs at you and shoves your hair back

Trees wave and fan their branches over your head

The ghosts of all of your dead friends float in the air.

You will sleep well on this night

The world is tired of being more than it is

And so are you.

Sometimes I have trouble looking at my father sitting across the table from me

Cancer is growing inside his body

We talk; it’s simple talk

We have learned to enjoy each others company and these simple conversations

I wonder if he is scared of the death looming in his near future

I want to ask him, but I am scared of the death looming in his near future

I don’t want to frighten him with my own fears

I sit across from him and I do not ask questions of his fear of death

Instead we talk of simple things and life continues on

We both know that we only have so many days to talk of simple things

We both know that we only have so many days to pretend that life is what it was

We talk about the dog and how she seemingly smiles when she is happy

We talk about the weather; we both enjoy the warmth of the sun and the sound of the rain

We talk about going to the store; neither one of us enjoys grocery shopping

Simple conversations may go unnoticed by some

Simple conversations do not go unnoticed by my father and I

I have an old friend

He suffers daily

He feels he has failed at what society feels is important 

The perfect career

Owning a large home and boat

Planting delicate kisses on the cheek of an angel each night before bed

He drinks and feels sorry for himself

He attempts to pull down the curtain on the stage before the first act has even begun

He hopes the audience will react 

I suppose there are times when you get mud on your boots

It’s heavy and it’s thick

Mud like that never seems to come off no matter how hard you stomp your feet

I enjoy it when Bach moves very fast then purposely stutters and plays very slowly

I enjoy a purposely-good fuck-up now and again

And so, I live life and take specific time out of the ordinary day to not think before I act

So goes the game of living life

Fast and slow

Reasoning and forgetting

Inhaling and exhaling

Drinking and swallowing

My heart beats and then pauses

I continue on 

A woman with a baby in a carriage trudges by

She smiles at her infant

Life created

Selfishly.

Do not allow anyone to tell you otherwise

Do not allow your grief to overcome you for living your life

I doubt you asked to be born

Coming out of the womb is selfish

You want out

Your mother wants you out

She wants to see what she’s created

She wants the pain of childbirth to end

She wants less of a belly

Dad wants rough sex again

“We gave you life!” they say

No, once again you acted selfishly like we all do -

You wanted a child because it would complete you

Or if it was an accident, you chose to not use protection

You wanted the feeling of warm flesh in warm flesh

You did what you wanted

Now I do what I want

Thankful I am for being alive

Though I seemingly only wait around to die

Just as you will subconsciously wait around to die

Just as we all will wait around to die

Just as we will all be selfish (some not so subconsciously)

And we will all forget the reasons we are blessed

So goes the game of living life

Fast and slow

Warm flesh in warm flesh

Selfishness creating selfishness

Reasoning and forgetting

A heart beats and then pauses

And we all fall down forgetting the reasons we are blessed

The birds always seem to awake early

Perhaps they seek the worm

I am always drunk by this time

I stand outside taking a beer piss, and listen to their songs

They sing of new life in the morning light to come

They sing of strong nests they have built and grown to love

They sing of their sons and daughters flying high in the sky

I finish, zip up, and head back indoors

One last gulp, one last drag

One last poem to end the night

One last thought for this day

It may be my last

It may be my last bad thought

It may be my last good thought

Tomorrow the birds will be singing again

It will be 5:34am

The songs will reach up to the heavens

I may not be here

This may have been my last thought

But the birds will still sing

Even if these birds die, other birds will sing in their place

I wonder if I am so lucky