I wrote this piece at my condo a few years back. At the time, I was dealing with some pretty serious stuff. Self inflicted mental issues, severe addiction problems. However, somehow- in the midst of it all- I birthed some of the most creative concepts in my writing career. I'm sure at the time I thought this was horrible, as I do about 99% of my words, but I was truly a page powerhouse. As glad as I am to not be in that space anymore, I do miss this creativity. I wish I still wrote like this. Anyway, this is called


Rural Living

The smell of coffee and anxiety wakes me up daily.

Steam engine wind is my alarm.

I sit in my light house

waiting like a widow for bad news.

Its been cold the past few nights,

shivering nerves, drinking during fighting and

I can't help but wonder what happens when the storm comes.

Because usually I would find shelter,

hidden underneath blankets of drugs or

in the security of lit words left as becons for me find happiness.

But this time, I am the tornado.

I will wreck everything in my path and if you get in my way,

get curious about my destruction,

question whether or not you can figure out my power and my creation

without house, fence and car dismantling-

good luck.

I was made to break shit.

Tare down walls, smash the last thing you believed in,

the last thing you owned,

its beautiful from a distance.

Watching global art on doplar convas like

graffiti without

ever thinking of the people who called this their home.

But I am not sending 3 story buildings of bulldozer waves

to your shore,

flooding millions of homes and leaving millions homeless,

I am

in open fields.

Found only if you look,

if you search,

and if you find me, make sure

to find my eyes.

Its the one way to understand my purpose without being hurt,

dig your feet into my soul like sand and stand only for a second,

only for a moment because if you dont work with me,

and you dont move with me,

and you stay where you are...

I will end up ruining you afterwards too.

It is my purpose.

I was made to break shit.

See, I am a tornado but on other days

Im just a guy.

Unnoticable on radars, invisible to pedestrians.

Waiting for his widowed heart to come back to him,

drinking coffee in his light house.

Hoping to one day be looked at from a distance,



just dont come any closer.

babbling butt holes

Most days, I feel like I'm destined to be alone. Even though I'm not quite sure destiny is remotely real, a lot of the time I believe in that fate. I have a horrible track record. I have a horrendous amount of scarring. I'm scared. I'm walled. I'm a bitch. I'm an ass. Most of the time, I struggle to even find a faint glimpse of a good quality in myself. No wonder no one else has.

I find myself coming off like a hopeless romantic quite a lot. The fact of the matter is that I sort of am. Sort of. Yeah, I appreciate true relationships and lasting ones and I wouldn't mind to have a girlfriend who I'm committed to to come home to. Yeah. But to be honest, I almost want a failure. I almost want something that is completely wrong for me. I'm not looking every where for 'the one' or even 5th runner up. Right now, I'm just looking for someone to connect with. And if it ends up spiraling into a huge shit explosion and ruining my heart for x amount of months and dragging a new suit case behind me into the next relationship, so be it. I hate being looked at as someone who is too fucking serious. 'Oh, hes cute but he'll pull feelings and I'm not ready for that and he's too good of a guy and he's a gentleman and bla bla bla, I'll just go for his friend'. I'm sick of that. So what, I'm not the typical dude who's going to grab you or one of your drunk friends at a bar and take them home and smash them out and leave the next morning. So what, I'm not going to put you on bull shit and forget your name and treat you like a pair of boxers. Isn't that a good thing? I've been seriously questioning my character these past few months and its really starting to make me wonder if the definition of 'good' even exists any more. Does it? Or has it become so completely perverted that everything is flipped upside down and backwards and now people are just confused entirely so they run home and fuck like headless chicken. I sit back and I watch guys pull girls and usually I find myself asking why. Why the fuck is this twat muffin even close to a girl with that bull shit? Oh thats right, because it fucking works. HORSE SHIT ANTICS WORK WITH GIRLS. Sorry, I hate to generalize. Let me rephrase. Girls, you like ass holes. And guys know this. So they treat you this way. Wonder why you dont end up with a real man? Because you dont want that. You want ass holes. You want a dude who is going to string you along and make you feel unimportant. You want that because ultimately, you can't have that. If you see a dude talking to 13 other females and all of sudden hes on your nuts, yeah, you're going to talk shit while smiling to your girls about 'omg, that dude is such an asshole' but the second he gives you more attention, bam, lets get out of here. And then you give him your number the next morning, you leave and check your phone for hours hoping this dude from last night, who doesn't remember your name from the other 13 girls he talked to, is going to text you and confess his undying love for you and tell you to come over so he can cook dinner for you and watch fucking Dear John- when in reality, you know damn well he doesn't give a shit. Thats it. Thats the key. Devalue the girl until they realize the only value they have is in between texting you and laying in your bed and that my friends is maybe, at most, 45 minutes of sloppy dancing and gum covered cigarette breath. Awesome. And here I am, watching all of this, looking at these god damn babbling butt holes wondering, what ever happened to quality? What ever happened to the virtues, the trustworthy, the respectable, the good? Has it all disappeared? Or have we become so blinded by billboards and movies and unreal that everything we want is completely unattainable so we constantly settle for less than. Someone being less than anything isn't okay. Less than nice. Less than fun. Less then good. See, good is like a mediocre, fifty percent bar. Its not great. Its not horrible. Its just good. Its acceptable. If you ever find yourself saying, oh well he's not that good or oh he doesn't treat me that good, and then follow it up with a BUT, you better check your self. This is not okay. Compromising your definition of good is infectious and I see it everywhere. It lingers in the air around last call and about 90 percent of everyone's level of good lowers exponentially. And the next morning, they end up laying next to their most recent regret. This is not okay. This is an epidemic people and if you continue to perpetuate this decline as being acceptable, you suck. You just suck. Period.

However, something is going to come out of me questioning my character. I feel it. I've been feeling it since my last heart break and it doesn't feel right. It feels like I'm just going to begin to subscribe to this disease and not care. Yeah , I might feel phony. Yeah, I might end up feeling compromised and dirty and more lost. But I keep asking myself how much longer I can deal with being single and I'm pretty sure I was sick of it months ago. I'm lonely. I'm young. I'm a guy. Its either I conform or keep fighting the good fight and to be honest, I'm tired and defeated and I'm about ready to throw in the fuckin towel....


Agh, story of my life....

the art of losing everything

I didn't want to write this. Really, I didn't. I've sincerely been trying my hardest to drive my emotions as far away from the deep end as possible these past few months but some days, I still sink. Some where deep inside my self reliant, defiant, fuck you mentality is still a glimmer of healthy and that's what brought me back to the page today. This is my band aid. This is me coping. This is me trying my hardest.


I lost my ring on Thursday. Its not an engagement ring or a family heirloom or anything that has any significant monetary value. Its simply a ring. One that I had bought in Colorado Springs in 2007 and every day since, I've been wearing it on my right index finger. I bought a few rings actually. At one point, I had enough to fill up an entire hand. But things get misplaced and forgotten and stuck in couch crevasses and taken by ex girlfriends so after all those years, this was the only one I had left. I spent five years of my life with this little article of memory on my hand and as I was leaving the locker room Thursday after class, I realized I had completely lost it. I sat there for a minute, trying to retrace my steps. Did it fall out of my locker when I grabbed my clothes? Did I put it in my pocket before I went in the pool? Did someone take it? I spent a good hour asking life guards and staff members if anyone had turned it in. I paced up and down the isle of lockers scanning the ground like a metal detector hoping that maybe, just maybe I had missed it the other 12 times. But after all that searching I came up empty handed. I can't help but think that its still somewhere in my back pack or in a pocket I didnt check but ultimately, I've had to come to terms with the fact that its gone.

I find myself doing this a lot. Searching for remedial parts of myself like they are still relevant or even matter at all but at the end of the day, its just a fucking ring. Its just a phrase or a spoiled friendship or a city you've lived in for far too long. Some times, things just get lost. They fall out of our lifes and never come back and usually, its better that way. I dont know what it is about the simplicity of that, but I cant seem to ever be okay with it. I constantly revisit parts of my past, whether its calling up ex girlfriends because I'm lonely or listening to Trick Daddy reminiscing on 7th grade. Deep down, I know why I dont like loss. I know its because I've lost the one person I've needed the most. The one person who held me at birth and then got lost shortly after. So when days like this come around where another part of me gets donated to memory and lost in all physical sense, I myself feel lost. I feel naked and hateful and I want to rip my teeth out and curse the world for being unfair but all that comes out of it is this. Just one more day of feeling like I've lost a little more of myself.

One thing I've gotten really good at is coping. No matter what the issue is, I can cope. That doesn't mean its always healthy. Some times, I will blatantly avoid any healthy outlet and just get fucked up. But its coping. Its just that right now, I'm not too sure where I am in life. Or more so, what I want out of it. I'm lost on how to cope with that... I wake up every day knowing that today is going to be similar to yesterday and usually yesterday sucked. Hard. And so I tend to find myself in an endless cycle of cope. It doesn't stop. Its just repeating itself like Ground Hogs day and I feel like I'm at the part where Bill Murray is driving cars off cliffs and jumping in front of garbage trucks. Some days, I feel like I'd be okay with that. Others, I just feel like thats ridiculous.

I've lost a lot already in life and I know thats typical for most. Its going to keep happening. A friend of mine once wrote " Everything we gain, we lose"... and I couldn't say it any better. It's just a hard proverb to swallow. So as my hand feels bare and my thumb caresses the side of my hand where the ring used to be, I'm going to try my hardest to forget. Just let go Tim. Fucking let go.

Anyway, I didn't want to write this.

Bringing in 2012 with a new poem

Art is a process.
It's not a two step thing,
a class and an exam,
a question and an answer.
There is no beginning or end.
So thats why I like to think of it as a seed.
See, in the spring
we dig little holes and place little particles of
life that will return itself back to us
or
continue to grow up big and strong.
There is no destiny for most sprouting plants.
There is no map to plot out the height or
the amount of branches it will have or
to even know where it will be in 20 years.
So when I hear professors and professionals talking
about the perfection in Michelangelo's strokes and how
pristine the Sistine Chapel's ceiling is and
how
no one can ever emulate or recreate the beauty etched
into the finger tips of his angels,

I always wonder if they know.

If they know
that art

is never finished.
It is simply a work in progress.
See, even Michelangelo felt unsatisfied.
He started over so many times that the initial piece of work
was never what it turned out to be.
To us,
that is beauty.
To us,
that is meaning.
To us that is a story and
so many of us walk through life thinking
ours isn't even comparable.
Even bearable.
Even the first leaf on a tree in mid April
but recently
I've understood that him and me have more in common than you think.

See, I used to be an addict.
I used to paint my days using finger tips crusted with
the residue of yesterdays heroin,
left traces of morphine in every word that splattered against
sympathetic ear drums and with them,
the scars of watching a loved one erase themselves.
Stenciling what was left of me into seeds that I'd be planting
for 6 years of my life
and by the time I turned 23,
I was surrounded by forests.
Covered by red woods too tall to see over,
to chop down,
and some just tall enough to keep others from seeing me
at all.
But one day
I put down my paint brushes.
I laid down on my scaffolding and looked up at the art work
I had been massacring and decided


it was finally time to start over.
See, I am a work in progress.
I am built from botched blue prints and bad choices,
from narcotics that put most users under ground but I

I refuse to replant that decision.
And even though I haven't pick up another pill,
or gone back to inserting dirty dollar bills into my nose,
some days

I still drink myself to sleep.
I still smoke away my anxiety and
caffeinate my mornings because
theres never really an end.
There is no map to plot out where I will be in 20 years,
or how many branches I'll loose along the way.
All there's left is this process,
this constant beginning and to me
this is beauty.
This is meaning.
This is my story and even though most might look at me as an addict,

I just see Michelangelo.

New Year

First off, Happy New Year. I'm sure you've been told enough for it to not resonate even a little bit but I figured I'd branch out and tell you anyway. Its going to be a good year. I feel it in my stomach. That has to mean something.

Tonight was exactly what a New Years Eve should be. It was spontaneous. It was new. It was something I've always wished for the balls to do but never nutted up to try.

I had to work tonight. I know, it was some bullshit. It was 7 hours of constant dishes and nonstop disappointment. With a 3 hour buffet, and a numerous amount of dick headed comments, I just had a hunch that tonight I was going to quit. I told myself before hand that I was going to go in to work knowing that I was going to leave jobless. I just knew it. Maybe because the damn place wasn't paying me what they told me they would. Maybe it was because I didn't want to work till 4 on a holiday for less than I was promised to be payed. Who knows. But either way, I knew tonight I was going to have to make some decisions that were going to directly effect my financial well being, as well as my character.

At around 11, I told the other dish washer that if they let him go any time soon, I was going to walk out. I hear things like this a lot. People threatening to stick up for themselves and fail to follow through or just acting hard for the sake of saving face. But after the employment I've had with this company, I wasn't blowing hot air. This time, my words were solid. They were printed into the destiny that would become 2012 and I knew, deep down, that I would fucking walk out when I damn well felt like it and no one was going to stop me. I sat down to have a cigarette.

' This is some bull shit. I'm about to start drinking, my back is killing me.'

' Yeah, I dont blame you man.'

' I have a deuce in my back pack. I'm just going to start right now and say fuck it.'

I went inside and quickly got my beer. I didn't care at this point. It was 11 and I had plans at 10 and now I was sitting in desolate, filthy kitchen with 3 hours worth of dishes to do. If I was going to stick this out, I was going to do it hammered or at least drinking. This was no way to bring in a New Year.

Right then, two girls stammered into the kitten. Lace, black dresses. High heels, no taller than 5'4 with ridiculous legs and obviously drunk. They smiled at me.

' Hi!'

'... Hi... you'

The bath rooms were stacked with a line out the door so they had come into the kitchen to use ours. I'm sure their looks helped. They opened the door and I turned my head.

' Hey... your sexy'

'...Thanks...'

I laughed. That kind of caught me off guard seeing how I was wearing grimy ass clothes, a chefs coat and 3 aprons. However, I wasn't going to question that. It definitely made me feel good.

About 10 minutes later, they stumbled into the kitchen again to use the bathroom.

'Sexy dishwasher!' they said.

' Ha... hi again.'

'Your way too sexy to be doing dishes back here tonight.'

'Yeah, you should be , like, doing dished naked.'

'Or at least with your shirt off'

' Oh.. should I?'

'Yeah, definitely.'

I'm not too good with compliments. I wish I was. I wish I would have lifted my shirt up or done something macho but instead, I acted really naive and coy. As they walked out of the kitchen, I realized that I really should not be in there. It was 11:45. Everyone who I'm friends with was 15 yards away from me, with drinks in their hands, dressed all nice and enjoying the bars. This wasn't how I was going to bring in a new year. This was how I spent the past two months of my life but not tonight. I took my aprons off and told the other dish washer that I was going to take a break.

'Man, fuck this. I'm done. I'm going to take like an hour break and I'll be back at 12:30. If Scott says shit, just tell him I'm out front. I'll come help you out afterward I guess.'

I hurried to the back, changed my clothes and sprayed an enormous amount of axe to smell better than dish water and made my way back to the bars. On the way out, the two girls were there grabbing champagne and shots for each other.

'Sexy dishwasher! Here, take one.'

They handed me a glass and took a shot with me. I smiled. Being that it was loud and completely awesome these two sexy ass chicks were talking to me like that, I simply took the shot and went on through out the bar looking for my friends without thinking twice about the opportunity that just fell into my lap. I guess I'm that guy. I'll regret it tomorrow.

I searched for my boys for a minute. It took a while to find all of them but after the ball dropped and I randomly spent the last seconds of 2011 on a cluttered dance floor with some black dude with my hand in the air screaming, I stumbled across them. They were all dressed in ties and fucking vests and weird random fancy accessories that I just didn't have the time for, or the care. I looked fine. That was good enough.

We drank and talked to aimless amounts of strange people. It was beginning to look a lot like every other night out except with 3000 more people and less interacting. I made my way back to the kitchen to see how much work still had to be done.


'Tim!? Are you here?'

' Uh... yeah, I'm going to clock back in why?'

'Your done man.'

'What do you mean I'm done, like I'm fired?'

' Yup'

'... Okay, right on.'

I said bye to the people that mattered to me and continued on with my night. Eventually, the night came to an end and there we were, stranded at a bar with past co workers and people who I met through someone who I met and we had to find a ride home through all of the haze and nonsense.


We made our way to the parking lot across from the bars. Standing there between some cars were two guys. One, scrawny with glasses and a 2003 Tommy Hilfiger polo and the other, about 6'1 wearing some long sleeve stripped shirt. They said Happy New Year but afterward, called all three of us faggots. My boy stopped and looked at them, asking them what they said. I stopped and turned around.

'You heard me, I called you guys faggots.'

'Oh really? We're faggots huh? Better watch your god damn mouth,' my boy said.

We were with this one chick, who I didn't know but one of my friends did. She came rushed in.

'You guys are better than this! Stop. Lets go.'

I looked at the curb, pointing out the cop car and said,

'Dude, were in front of cops you dick head. The fuck is wrong with you?'

He looked over at us and said,

'Good thing you got that bitch with you to protect you from getting hurt. All that big talk for little guys, we'll fuck you up.'

Mind you, were all pretty small. My boy is my height, maybe a little taller and my other friend is maybe 5'9. However, were all fighters. Tall or not, we know what to do with our hands. And this girl who he called a bitch wasn't just some girl. She was my friends girl. Not just some chick we were with, but his girl. She turned around from trying to stop us and started stepping towards the dudes talking shit.

'Oh, I'm a bitch!?'

Out of no where, my friend popped out from behind me and stuck the dude in the throat. Kind of an awkward punch. Mainly because he was drunk but also because he hit him in the bottom of the jaw. Then, my boy stepped up and hit him in the face. The guy fell. The guy in the glasses stood there against a car and just watched as I jumped on the guys back and began to choke him. He through me off. Right then, a bouncer from the bar across the street ran over and punched my boy in the face. Then a cop came. I picked up my back pack, put my coat over my head and walked the other way.

I'm not going to lie, we jumped him. It was totally unfair but at the same time, he should not have been talking to us like that. Especially if he didn't know if his friend would back him up or not. Small or not, you dont ever talk shit to 3 people. Never. It just never ends up right.

Anyway, we got back home safe. I have some scratches on my hands, elbow and shoulder and my boy is going to have quite the shiner but all in all, it was a good night. I did something most dont have the guts to do. I stood up for myself, in both situations. I walked out on a job that wasn't paying me what they promised. I backed up my word and my boys. I got in a fight after years of not fighting. Even though most of this sounds delinquent, it still felt good to do something I'm not comfortable with. A lot of people can walk through life complacent with getting bitched at and talked down to and not respected. A lot of people can walk around thinking they can't defend themselves if they need to or more so, wouldn't if they had to. I did both. I stood up. I said fuck you. And I acted, instead of talked.


This is a new me. This is a new year. This is my new voice. Bring it on 2012. I'm ready.