Melancholy Mania. [June 30-July 1, 2021.]

[June 30, 2021. 11:58Pm.]

I think I’ll give it a go for an hour, at least half an hour. Okay. I think I can do that. 

Should I smoke first? Yeah, maybe? Okay. Okay. Then begin. [tomorrow just hit today. July 1.]

What am I writing and why? And maybe this will answer other questions. Scribble and see.

Cigarette break. [12:03AM.]

I think I’m in a constant state of mild panic. PTSD? They say such things. Does this make sense to anyone else? This makes me anxious.

What are some goals for this piece of writing? Do you have any? Have you given this any thought?

I envision this as some sort of analyst's couch, psychoanalyzing myself. A confessional. You’re my priest. I need to say: EVERYTHING! If in this I say NOTHING it’s because I have NOTHING to say. Do I have ANYTHING to say?

I want to show myself where my head is at in this moment. I want you to see all that went through my mind at midnight. Take a photo so you’ll remember tomorrow.

I’ve taken: Risperdal, 6mg. Lamictal, 300mg. Gabapentin, 100mg. I don’t know if I’ll sleep.

Drinking caffeinated water. Energy enhanced water. Hydrating. Cranked. Crunked. 

[12:22Am.]

I seem to be writing around my life. My experience doesn't matter enough, it isn't interesting.

Do I edit this later? First thought, best thought?

I’ve been working on a larger project, something that could be some sort of book, maybe? What this project is...Listen:

Stinky Edwards helped me end my Sober Summer. He hooked me up with his homegrown, Gorilla Glue. SMOKE UP.

Faded.

[12:30Am.]

I envision this as an epistolary piece of autofictional autobiography. Manic memoir. Everything’s written late at night. Brutally honest, maybe even boring and banal. I’ll try to show you what mania means.

Showing you my thoughts, writing them down the way I think them. Unedited? For some reason I think you’ll be interested in what I have to say, that you’ll want to read my thoughts. That my thinking will be interesting enough for you to keep on reading. That I’m talented enough to give a dull-life meaning.

I’m writing this autobiography out of boredom, to literally pass the time, and I know if I weren’t writing time would not pass at all. I’m also hoping that writing will provide me with a bandage for my hurt nerves. 

Will this memoir ease my anxiety? Forty Three minutes have passed. Time flies.

I am against interpretation. Everything is meaningless. Does this even matter? Pointless.

No thought was put into this.

BOUNCE. Huh?

Man Of The Year: ScHoolboy Q.

I make meals from these verbs.

I want to capture my mind while high. I want to keep this Diary until I run out of Stinky’s Stash. See what my stoned and muddled mind looks like. I need to understand. 

Am I always anxious? I don’t feel anxious right now. But most of the day I am. 

I’m having dinner with mom tomorrow [the narrator does not want to discuss his mommy issues]. After dinner, 6Pm, I have a personnel committee meeting. I probably won’t write tomorrow.

And now I’m anxious. Will writing save me? I’m no longer prescribed Benzos, two ODs, really three. 

Is that intriguing enough to keep you reading? 

Will this writing sooth my anxiety the way Ativan used to? 

I sit. I suffer.

Melancholy itself often acts as a bittersweet potion and muse, adding a tincture of sadness and wistfulness to the creative process. And so, being young [the narrator is only young at heart] and dipt in folly I fell in love with melancholy [the narrator is often depressed, does most of his writing while feeling blue]. [also: not my words.]

Do I have fleas? I itch.

I wonder what sort of mood I’m in. I am no judge of moods, can’t read them and never know what my own is. I guess I’ll scribble and see, smoke cigarettes and find out. WRITE, write now.

Is melancholy a muse, a bittersweet potion [prose potion?], a tincture of sadness in the creative process. Am I in love with melancholy?

At one point in life I felt I had to be depressed in order to write, sadness and poetry. Naïve? 

Do I still believe that, or am I just always depressed when I write? Depressed and manic. Yeah. That’s what I think. Mixed mood. Manic melancholy. Sad mornings. Hypomanic midnights. 

[1:23Am. Nipsey Hussle: Hussle & Motivate.]

I think tonight I might just let myself be manic. 

Ah, god, that makes me anxious to think about. 

What if I can’t control it? I have a busy day tomorrow/today, work, doctor appointment, dinner, meeting. 

But. But. But. Do I say: FUCK IT!?! 

Let’s write for half an hour and see how we feel at 2Am. 

Okay. But I get to drink caffeine. 

Okay. 

I get to smoke cigarettes. 

Okay. But within reason. 

Now my face is numb, anxious. 

Do I dare? 

This will be fun, trust me.

[1:36Am.]

Why should I go manic? 

I feel I write better when my thoughts are fast and I’m cranked on caffeine. ZANG!

I’ve been drinking energy drinks, Reign, three of them, 300mg of caffeine/can. I’m too afraid that if I tried speed I’d be an addict. I like to go fast. Be mildly manic. But I’m a pussy and stick with caffeine and Ritalin [20mg]. 

I feel like I’m more creative when I’m high. Feel like the words flow better. We all float down a muddy stream of consciousness. I feel like my thoughts are sharper when I’m cranked on caffeine and mildly stoned [the narrator knows this is a fallacy]. 

Mania feels like freedom, escape. Feel like I could do anything, everything. Can finish a novel in a night. I feel like I need to be cranked in order to write, like I can’t think otherwise. Write any other way. This could be true. This could be false. Can it be both? Maybe?

[1:51Am.]

Face is numb, is this anxiety? A stroke? A brain aneurysm? Neurosis. 

Could this even be called writing? This is just typing. BLAH. BLAH! BLAH. You agree, yes? Ok.

I feel like I’d read a story like this.

I never know what my mood is because I don't want to admit that my medications are fallible. I want to believe the Wellbutrin keeps the melancholy away, but I believe I’m always a little depressed. I want to believe the Gabapentin keeps the anxiety from killing me. But I think these pills just kind of work. I think these pills have robbed me of a full life, they’ve done as much good as bad.

My eye tingles, stroke? Is this anxiety? I think so? Hmmm.

I’m trying to crank up, but I think the weed’s too strong. Slowed down, gunky. 

Wouldn’t I rather be manic, not depressed, speed, not weed, at least not until it’s bedtime. I’ll try that tomorrow and see how I feel. I’ll compare notes. What do I know?

Took two hits, got stoned again. Am I being too honest?

What if mom and dad read this? Sorry, mom. Sorry, dad. 

I said I’d tell the truth. This is my truth. I know you’d rather not hear it. [the narrator is wringing his hands with worry.]

I think the combination of caffeine and weed made my eyes bleed. [the poor man’s speedball.]

[2:18Am.]

300mg of caffeine. Two cigarettes. Puff. puff. Pass. The sums don’t add up at all. 

I think I’m losing my drive, my get up and go.

If they laugh, then fuck ‘em all. 

I don’t know what to do, NOPE!

I’ve written nearly five pages, and now I’ve run out of shit to say.

Read? Let’s look at book highlights. See if there’s any inspiration. Autoportrait. Index Cards.

Okay. Be back? [2:28Am.]

[2:36Am.]

I am not ill. Solitude helps me be consistent. I am not ill. Honestly? I thought I’d be dead by now. 

I sometimes feel like an imposter without even knowing why, as if a shadow falls over me and I can’t get rid of it. 

I’m going to describe my life precisely, this will take longer than having lived it.  

I’m bad at love. 

The book I’m reading mentions never regretting a decision, but regretting having not made one. I wish I could make a decision. I know I’ll die with regret. 

Will I be dead soon?

I’m feeling dazed. Slightly confused. 

I think I need to start winding down. Read for a little while before bed. But part of me is saying, FUCK IT!!! It’s 2:46Am, why not stay up all night? Write all night. Listening to Mahler and reading all night. 

Better Off (dying). [2:53Am.]

Listening to Ghostemane & Clams Casino. Am I too old for this shit, emo trap rap?

I can’t feel my face. I won’t STOP. blood leaking out my laptop. [or some such shit. IDGAF.] can’t STOP/won’t STOP. 

Yeah I think I might. STOP? I’ll be dead by dawn. 

If that’s the case I should write until my pen gives out from under me. But do I have anything to say? 

Not really. 

[3:48Am.]

The book I’m reading says something about: when you’re happy, you’re afraid to die, when you’re unhappy, you’re afraid of not dying. NAH! I’m always afraid of dying, mainly because I’m afraid there might actually be a Hell and I’m going to burn when I die. I’m always thinking about dying with an unfinished life. Feeling undone. Regretting, retreating, static life. I don’t want to die, but I know I will be dead soon. I don’t want to die, might happen tonight. I’m afraid. 

I feel like as long as I have something to say, if I can keep talking, I’ll be able to put Death off. Survive and stay alive. I just got to keep writing, don’t sleep. You may not live much longer. You have to keep writing this story, stay alive, stay alive. Please don’t die.

Now I’m anxious. Scared. Numb face, pressure behind my eye. Can’t focus my eyes. Face tingles. How can I keep this anxiety away? Okay. Beginning now, no more weed. None today. Only caffeine and Ritalin and nicotine. First Ritalin at 4:36Am. 

I woke up this morning, and I knew I was going to have a good day, maybe. Who knows what could happen? Shit could hit the fan. Bad Mojo. I got a funny feeling. Just jinxed my day. Now I’ll definitely die. Would that be so bad? Depends. Is the afterlife a Southern Baptist? Or a Liberal Lutheran? That’s what scares me, I’m too afraid of a literal Hell. 

This is making me anxious, morning anxiety, the four o’clock hour hypochondria. [4:14Am.]

I hope this writing wraps my hurt nerves in swaddling clothes, and golden gauze. I need help. Benzodiazepines. I miss Ativan and Klonopin and Xanax bars, could use one now. I might go to sleep.

Cigarette break. 

I’ve wound myself up. I think I'm anxious because I wrote too much about anxiety. This may drive me mad. 

Should I push it and see if I have something to write about? YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!

Eye twitches, blurs. I need to sober up. Four hours before work.

Feeling like my head’s a broken baby doll, too delicate. 

Jesus! Why do I whine so much? FUCK! This is melodramatic bullshit! Shhh. Breathe.

[4:29.]

In seven minutes: Methylphenidate, 10mg. 

Six minutes. Face twitches, head tingles. This is scary. I got to lighten up. 

Dipt in folly, I make love to melancholy. 

I want to write about writing, maybe that could be fun. Maybe that would help me relax, loosen up the knot in my chest.

I feel detached. Going to take...3 minutes, pop these pills: Ritalin, 10Mg. Buspar, 30mg. Wellbutrin, 450mg. Gabapentin, 200mg.

One minute, pop pills. Wait. 

tick/tock. Wait. wait. Wait. Alarm wails.

Glass of water [caffeinated] to wash those pills down. Will they help end this attack of anxiety? 

A pain in my left cheek. Nothing’s going to change my world.

Breathe. Breathe. Take a deep breath. Think, thoughts meander.

I am going to try to make a decision and try to stick to it. I will do this a few sentences from now.

Would you be interested in reading some lazy bastard’s diary, interested in the journal of some dude living in a rural, Southern Baptist, factory town? Would you read about some dude whose parents voted for Trump twice, Bush x 4. Regan, twice. McCain. Romney? I think Dad voted for Ford in ‘76 and Mom in 1980 voted for Regan a week or two before birthing me. I came into this world a Republican. And then I fell in love with books, and I read all the time, I became a Democrat. I’m the lone liberal in my family, all aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, brother and sister in law are dirty Republicans.

I feel like I’m saying the same shit every night. I think today’s sober experiment will be a worthwhile trial and test, will I maintain? 

The Man in the Moon just peeked from behind a cloud, he winked and said, Be well, dear brother. Birds are tweeting in the trees, and locusts croak, cows moo in the distance. The sky is turning on. I smoke one more cigarette and say good night to Mister Moon. I say good morning to the Sinister Sun. Leprous light begins to shine, faint for now at 5:06 in the morning. Crack of dawning, now I’m moaning, wash the coal from my eye. Get up and go.

I can feel the pills come on. Anxiety is, scale of 1-10…1 is terrible…10 stellar. I say 5, going down. 

I feel good about staying sober today. 

Will art spring from anxiety? Poetry from melancholy? Manic prose? I hope something comes from this mixed mood. That will only happen if I shape, structure, revise, rework, edit this grandly delusional diary. 

Neighbor rises and readies for a day in the factory, as a secretary, a nurse, a teacher, a boss, a janitor, a bank clerk. Only a lowly janitor [me] who dreams of being a poet would willingly live in Old Town, the poor part of 65536 [MO]. 

I come inside. I put on a Meat Puppets record: No Joke. [track #two: Nothing. 6:26]

I dream of being a writer. I’ve published one chapbook of prose poems, Carcinogenic Sunshine. I still have copies left, DM me. I’m working on an additional three chapbooks. Maybe four, the fourth needs revision. But I’m onto the next one. Is this the newest chapbook? Could be. But I only have one publishing outlet for this bullshit, in the end I’ll end up having to self-publish. 

Does this work? Is this a worthy story? Am I too much of a backward, hackneyed hillbilly who fancies himself a poet, can I actually write a good book, something decent that isn't self-indulgent navel gazing? Selfish solipsism? I am too uneducated, am I allowed to write a book without an MFA? I have no clue. I write in a vacuum. The only writers I know live on the internet, and I haven’t met any of them IRL. My IRL friends, my old buddies, basically have abandoned me. Stinky Edwards still visits, but Jeff, whose mom lives here in 65536, has never visited me at home. My new IRL friends are the IRL writers I know who live on the internet. Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll meet one of them in real life. 

How unreal is my internet life? I think I’m more honest on the internet than I am in real life, maybe the internet is my IRL? 

Am I too stoned to think? Gunky thoughts filling up the pages. Does any of this nacreous narrative make sense? Nothing? Really? I guess you gave up a while ago, right? Send word if you’re still with me.

I’m ending this entry here. 

This may be dumb, but I’m wide awake and still having fun. Should I come down from this cloud?

The decision has been made, finally. I told you I would decide something. I decided I am going to put this entry on the blog. There will be a quick and sloppy edit job. And then up it goes, posted for a certain type of human who wants to know what I think all day and all night. Posted to: The Metafictional Mustache!

Are you still awake, are you reading this? [5:50Am. END OF ENTRY!]

 

It Could Be Worse, Right? [august 18]

 [August 18, 2021.]

I should be working on the chapbook I’m supposed to be writing, but the thing is I don’t feel like I have anything to write about, nothing to say. At least nothing interesting or worth writing about. I don’t know what to do.

My mood’s been mixed lately. Both manic and depressed, up and down, a mixed episode and it’s terribly uncomfortable. I’m not sleeping well and I’m barely functional in the mornings. Daytime depression. Midnight mania. I’m burning out and fading away. 

[10:53Pm.]

This is the thing: I feel like I’m writing around the story I should be telling. Distracting myself with these manic diary entries and my poor poetics.

Here’s the thing [Bullet With Butterfly Wings is playing]: I was born with a rare condition called Bladder Exstrophy, which means my bladder was on the outside of my body when I was born and my hips weren’t fused together. Exstrophy means turned inside out. 

Three weeks after birth I had surgery to put my bladder back inside of me, and I was in traction for several months, something like six months [I think], while my hips glued themselves together. 

This condition has influenced almost every aspect of my life, it has made me the man I am today, for better or worse. I don’t think I’ve let myself fully feel the pain that Bladder Exstrophy has caused me. I know I need to process the trauma that my defect has caused and I feel like I need to write it all down. But I’m not sure if I can, even though I want to. I feel an obligation to share my story, especially if my pain can help someone with the same rare condition. But I can’t find the right words, I don’t know how to begin. I need to write about it, tell the story. I don’t know if I can.

[11:12Pm.]

Here’s something else: At 26, after having had surgery to repair my bladder and revise my stoma [a hole in my belly that I catheterize through], I experienced my fist full blown bout of mania. My first manic attack, ending with psychosis and grand delusions. This, for some reason, feels easier to write about, easier to write about than my bladder. But, again, I don’t think I’ve fully felt the pain manic depression has caused. It broke up my marriage and led to addiction. It changed my life forever. I’ve written a chapbook about this aspect of my life, about this episode and it should be coming out in October with Between Shadows Press. I hope. So I won’t say too much. 

[11:22Pm.] 

There’s a piece of me that feels like shit could be a lot worse. Worse things could’ve happened to me and sometimes I feel like my pain and trauma isn’t valid. It’s just life, everyone suffers. Some people suffer more than me and their pain is greater than mine. And to write about it, writing about it now, is just whining and bitching and nobody needs that, right? It's not as bad as it could be, so why write about it, why even think about it? I ignore the pain and hope it goes away. I know I should process it all. I know I need to tell a story about it. I’m in weekly therapy because of it and my psychologist and I are working through it all. But who gives a shit? Who needs to read about the “pain” of a middle aged SWM, there’s already enough of those stories, right? What makes mine special. I feel nothing does.

Fuck! Here I am whining and griping and bitching and moaning and groaning. Ignore this.

[11:36Pm.] 

I distract myself with my manic Diary, with this stupid blog and I write around the real story, around the pain of life. I don’t know if I will ever let myself feel it all completely. My mom and dad always told me life could be worse, that I should be grateful that I’m not in a wheelchair, etc. They always invalidate my feelings and my anger. I don’t know if I have the emotional tools to deal with the trauma, the pain. Therapy helps. I don’t know if I’ll ever tell the full story, but this outburst has helped relieve some of the brain bile that was building up in my haggard head. I feel a little better and I might even be able to sleep soon. I sure hope so. 

END! [11:45Pm.]

Past Tense: An Update (June 28).

[June 28, 2021/4:32Pm.]

An afternoon boredom leads to afternoon anxiety, which forces me to pull out the Pen and scribble in this notebook. [my Pen is a proper noun.]

I’m writing this autobiography to literally pass the time, doing it out of boredom, and I seriously doubt time would pass otherwise. But I hope that the result will supply me with a salve for my hurt nerves.

I am nervous and neurotic. Nicotine neurosis. I’m at a loss for words. What should I say?

Muddled memory, manic mind. I’m trying to remember, recall, and write something that is mildly interesting. Ruminating and trying to recreate a compelling and climactic memory to write down on the pulp page. 

What would make for good reading? I can’t remember anything. My memory’s a blank space, a hole in my head. I close my eyes and try to think, remember, recall. What do I see? Scribble and scribble and find out.

I never know what’s on my mind until I see it written down on the page. Huh?

My hands are shaking. I feel edgy, and not in a good way. Raw and exposed. I’m a hurt nerve right now.

Untangling the thought thread. Watch the nacreous notions float from the hole in the back of my head. 

I need a cigarette. Bought a fresh pack of Decade discount cigarettes. All I want to do is sit on my porch, listening to the radio and chain smoking cheap cigarettes [$2.91/pack]. Get cranked and crunked on caffeine, write the evening off.

I don’t know anything about anyone but myself, and that’s fucking boring. Dismally dull. 

[5:11Pm.]

I write. WRITE. WRITE! Thoughts spilled across the floor. I really need to clean it up in here, straighten up and get organized. It’s such a fucking mess. 

[5:16Pm. ScHoolboy Q on the stereo’s shitty speakers.]

Bounce my brain to the beat. Smoking something for my nerves, my sixth cigarette. Hands are still shaking, too much caffeine? Probably. 

In about ten minutes I’m going to call Mom. I don’t know why I call my Mom every night, probably because of some Oedipal bullshit. Mommy issues. K— [x-wife] always complained that I’m such a mama's boy. Am I? Maybe. I could probably spend the next few hours psychoanalyzing my Oedipus Complex, but why would I want to? I’d probably learn a few things about myself that I’d rather not know, deep down secrets I’m too afraid to face. Better leave this alone, let sleeping dogs lie. 

Hands trembling, jitter-jangled and shook. 

Collard Greens: feat. Kendrick Lamar. I turn the stereo up. Take two Ritalin, 20mg. Brain drugs. Getting speedy. 

Alright, let me blow this bitch. Pop my top, tip my mitt, spill the contents of my brain. SCRIBBLE. SCRIBBLE. SCRIBBLE. 

What else should I write?

[5:36Pm. r-Cali: A$AP Rocky.]

Mixed episode/hypomanic. Brain burns, drowning in flames. 

I got to take as much from this ebullient mood as I can. 

The lonely stoner frees his mind at night. He’s all alone. 

I’m a fragmented man. It all falls apart. A million little pieces lying on the ground. 

SMOKE!!! Neurotic nicotine. 

Whoa, whoa! Slow down, breathe. 

Trust me, it’s going to be okay. 

Leprous light, the carcinogenic sunshine. It’s hot out here, sweat on my lip. All I want to do is smoke, chain smoke. 

I feel like writing poetry. Scribbling down my manic memoir. Jot it down, write it out, write it down on the pulp pages of this spiral bound diary. 

I feel like there’s so much to say. 

I feel like I’m saying NOTHING. 

I feel like I’m saying EVERYTHING. 

Too much sound and fury, empty words. Senseless sentences. Artless. Manic gibberish, rambling and nonsensical. 

Eh, FUCK THAT!!!

Fragments fall, raining down. Raindrops keep falling on my head. It’s broken, spilled apart. Disjointed. UGH!

[5:50Pm. Money Trees: feat. Jay Rock.]

I smoke one more Decade. Cheap cigarettes and chlorine skies. Not a cloud up above. The Sun smiles. Bird tweets in the trees, a Red Robin. 

Mixed-episode. Up & Down & Up again, moods moving like waves. Morning melancholy, six o’clock soliloquies. Awake until 2:13Am and asleep until 1Pm. I’m not fully awake until 5Pm, and then I’m manic and ready to write until dawn. 

Don’t go to sleep, stay awake. I’ll brew a cup of coffee for your head. 

SMOKE. SMOKE. SMOKE. A chain of cheap cigarettes. 

Here I am, sitting stone on the front porch. 

I need someone to talk to. 

Feeling all alone, lonely and this Diary is the only person I know who will listen to me. 

I trust the Diary. She won’t talk behind my back. 

She knows I need to get this shit out of my head. 

She understands. 

She won’t judge me. 

She just listens when I need to speak. 

SMOKE! SMOKE. SMOKE!!! One more cigarette before I go back inside. 

Muddobbers buzz me, making me nervous. Do they sting? They look menacing and mean. 

What else should I write? I don’t have to write. But I still think I need to. Need to write and save myself from suicidal boredom, overwhelming ennui. Scribble a salve for this anxiety. 

Breathe. Inhale. Exhale through your nose. Breathe. Deep breath. Relax. 

WRITE! Flow. Peel open your head and let poems fly out. 

I keep smoking. DAMN!!!

[JPEGMAFIA: 1539 N. Calvert.]

Minutes measured in cigarette butts…8 butts have been burned off the clock. 

My lungs are angry with me, coughing. Still smoking. Can’t QUIT! Won’t QUIT! 

Fuck the place up. 

This is definitely a mixed-episode. Evening hypomania. What should I do about this?

[6:17Pm.]

Methylphenidate. Took two. I hope these pills pump up my bewildered brain, ZANG!

What kind of story am I trying to tell? What sort of life is this? Who are you? 

Evening existential crisis. Who am I, and what’s my place in the world? What am I supposed to be, what should I do? Do I keep writing? Will I ever figure out what I’m after? Dig? Who will I be at the end of this narrative? Who am I as I write this sentence?

I do not know. To thine ownself be true.

I want to know. Thou canst be false to any man. 

[6:31Pm. In This House: feat. Gucci Mane.]

I swear this is my last cigarette. My muddled mind is putting pressure on my tongue. Stuttered speech. 

My brain is a broken toy. It’s been played with too much, it’s worn out and old. Time to put these childish things away. Back in the box, put away and forgotten. Huh?

Follow the bouncing blue ball. 

I work for a non-profit. Project 360 Youth Services. I’m the janitor, a volunteer youth mentor and I serve on Project 360’s Board of Directors. Been doing this for almost six years. I’m burnt out, bummed. I no longer take joy in any of this. But at least I’m involved in something, otherwise I'd be totally isolated and become a hermetic hermit. It gets me out of the house, and I get paid $240/month. 

Where was I going with this? What am I saying?

We’re a grant based organization. We received a NAP Grant today. This grant will hire three full time employees and one part time position. The thought crossed my mind: Should I apply for the part time position? I could use the $$$. But do I want to work twenty hour weeks? This is something to think about. But I think: NOPE!!! Not really. I don’t think I’m capable of doing that type of job for twenty hours a week. Working with at-risk and homeless youth. Kids who cut. Suicidal sixteen year old kids. Teens with drug problems. Fucked up kids. I’ve been doing that for too long, and now I think it is time to begin withdrawing, moving on. I don’t have the patience, I’ve run out of empathy. Even for a paycheck, I just don’t think I want to do it, don’t think I can do the job. There’s not enough pay, I’d lose my mind. I think I’m retiring. 

But I’ll keep on being the lowly janitor. I’ll keep on serving as the Secretary of the Board of Directors. I’ll keep signing checks. But I just don’t think I can handle working with the kids anymore. I just can’t relate. I don’t know when I lost it, but the joy is gone from the job. I don’t need the $$$ that bad. I can make do without it. A paycheck won’t make up for my lost sanity. NAH! I think I’ll pass this time. Not that they, Project 360, would’ve hired me. I probably would’ve been passed over anyways. BLAH! BLAH. BLAH!

What will I do now that I’m retired? Your guess is as good as mine.

[7:13Pm. Yankee and the Brave (ep.4): Run the Jewels.]

I’m stoned. Manic. I’m the poor man’s version of Henry Miller. [grandly delusional.]

Henry Miller was, I think, 39 going on 40 when he published and wrote Tropic of Cancer. He got a late start. 

Didn’t Bukowski wait until he was 35? 

Poetry came late in life. 

I’m just finding my voice. 

But I take comfort in knowing not everyone begins in their twenties. Not all of us are young geniuses. I’m a late bloomer. 

I’m just getting to know myself. 

I’m trying to become a man. Going to grow up. 

Bloom. 

[7:26Pm. Can’t Tell Me Nothin’.]

What do I do? Act more stupidly. 

Time for an anxiety attack. Panic. Time to have a breakdown, fall to pieces. My nerves hurt, ache. $$$ is screaming in my ear. Money talks, only poor people listen. That's all I can hear.

Suck it up, bro. Man up! Don’t be such a pussy. Quit freaking out. Get your shit straight. Pull yourself together and get over it!

I’ve had too much caffeine. Jitter-jangled and shook. Cranked and crunked. Do something with this nervous, anxious energy. Put yourself to use. Do something. Should I smoke a cigarette? Hmmm?

Melancholia in the mornings. Down and out at 8:08Am. Bummed before I even get out of bed. Deeply depressed before I’ve even brush my teeth. Lethargic, slow. I can hardly get out of bed. Today I called in to work, didn’t feel well. Slept until 1Pm. Woke. Ablutions. Physical therapy at 2:45Pm. And here I am at 7:36Pm, mildly manic and anxious. Taste my thoughts. If it’s too nasty, spit it back at me. 

Hypomanic hypergraphia. My Pen is screaming. He says: NOTHING.

By 8 o’clock in the evening I’m wound up, ready to write all night. Explore my neurosis. Psychoanalysis myself on the pulp page. The Pen’s my shrink. He tells me what my thoughts mean, explains the symbolism. He explains the plot, interprets the metaphors. What does any of this mean? Scribble and see.

[7:41Pm. Ride Wit Me: T.I.]

I think I need a cigarette. Can’t think. Post Malone.

[7:45Pm. rockstar: feat. 21 Savage.]

Feeling like a Popstar. Smoking cigarettes, seems like that’s all I do. Cancer. The odds are good. Death and dying. SMOKE!!!

[7:47Pm. Willie Burke Sherwood.]

Watch as I burst into flames. [‘Till I Collapse.] 

My mind is a blown out, flat, tire. 

My thoughts are sporadic. Spastic. 

Can’t shut my mouth. 

I’m going to write until my legs fall out from under me. 

But first I’m going to take a short break. I gotta breathe. 

My head’s too full, too loud. Static in the attic. 

Sometimes I fear I forget to think. And it breaks my heart. I sigh. Hmmm?

Sing-a-long. Hum a tune. We’re off pitch and out of tune. I sing, scream. 

Life’s just like, 1 2 3. Yeah. Yeah. 

[8:58Pm.]

I’m too high right now. Should I be this honest, should I expurgate? Self-censor. Shut my mouth. I don’t have to say it ALL. 

So. I’m listening to a Merge Records CD sampler: MRG 20 Yrs: 2009 promotional sampler. I ripped the CD out of some magazine that didn’t sell, I ripped this out of a magazine when I was a Borders Books employee, still living in 65807. I worked in the café: a Seattle’s Best Café. I hated that job, and during down time we had to strip magazine covers to send back the unsold issues. I think I got this CD out of a Paste magazine. Circa: 2009-2011. I was high on coffee all the time! I was manically making it through the day, and up all night taking Klonopin and chain smoking cigarettes, and trying to make poetry out of the night. 

I tried and failed to make the night into a poem. I think? I know during that manic blur of a couple rocky years I wrote a collection of poetry. 

It was the first version of Carcinogenic Sunshine [v.1.0]. Written during a manic month in June, a year before my divorce and overdose. The Klonopin blues, the black coffee binge. Marijuana midnights. I stayed awake for five days, all day and all night. I was writing poetry. I filled a couple of notebooks with my paranoid and poetic thoughts. I do not know what the fate of that first version of Carcinogenic Sunshine was. My [x] wife kept it, I don’t know why. She always hated my poetry, my prose. She thought it was just derivative Jack Duloz. A cheap version of Kerouac. I’ll admit that most of it was [it can be argued that this is too] cheap imitation. I still would’ve liked to have kept those poems, that collection, what happened to that spiral bound notebook. It’s probably trash by now. K— threw it away, why wouldn’t she?

In February of 2020, 3 months after I turned forty, the second edition of Carcinogenic Sunshine was published. Between Shadows Press was putting it out into the world. I found out from Tohm on a cold, 0 degrees outside, very fucking cold, day when I had run out of propane. I was nearly asleep and shivering when I got Tohm’s message. I warmed up. I was excited. I was 40 years old, and I was finally comfortable enough in my skin to put out my poems. I was finally going to publish. 

In October of 2020, seven months into a self imposed quarantine, I was convinced I would die before my fortieth birthday. I was convinced I wouldn’t see Halloween. Expire at 39, six years older than Christ and not ready to die. I was driving the ladies at work batshit bonkers with my sullenness, my death paranoia. November 17 rolled around and I turned forty and I had lived, and so I stayed up all night and wrote prose poems in a graph paper notebook. I was grandly delusional and full of poetry. I was ready to begin sending my words into the world. I wanted to see what would happen if I shared myself, wholly and fully, vulnerable and exposed. 

I was a forty year old, hackneyed Poet, and I was finally going to have a chapbook published by a cool press. It only took twenty years to work up the nerve. It took a divorce to have the confidence to publish. It took heartbreak to become a Poet. Poetry springs out of pain. Is that a naïve thought? A cliched and childish notion of the tortured genius. It don’t mean nothing at all. I’m still idealistic, I believe in the Divine Madness of the Poet. 

I write. I’m hypomanic and hypergraphic. My Pen won’t shut-up. Can’t STOP! Won’t STOP! I scribble and scribble and write and write.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word became a Sentence, and the Sentence became a Paragraph and the Paragraph turns into a Page and the Page turns into a Chapter, Chapter turns into a Novel. Does the Novel get read? Does anyone see this Book? Are you reading right now?

I’ll never know. I won’t remember. 

I doubt you'll see this sentence. Publish, or perish? 

DOUBT. DOUBT. DOUBT!!!

Do I believe in me? I don’t believe in anything.  What do I believe? Are these Words to your liking? Do you like what you read? 

I WORRY. wringing my hands. I pace the floor. 

I’ve got the heebie-jeebies. What have I revealed to you tonight? 

Will you read this, validate my fragile ego? 

I begin again.