Thursday, March 27, 2008

Mad Laughs and Clown Hats
The room is cold but I’m not aware
I’m falling down a mole hole and having tea on the way
I don’t bother to look around
Everywhere clowns in top hats laughing
All the way down it’s so bright it might as well be dark
At the end salted seas of rabid teeth wait
The room is cold, but I’m not here
I’ve been talked to but I can’t find to understand
If I’m sick I don’t know it
If I’m in love I don’t feel it
If I crossed the line and I’m here
Which is there, I bid you farewell
It makes no difference to me
Come out and play
Regain your faith
Come a little farther to see some pain
Don’t be scared of top hats and mad laughs
Feeling what you imagine tastes like grapes
Through the looking glass and maybe back
With help or not
The room is cold but I don’t care
I’m lost in darkness so bright I’ve lost my eyes
I’ve burned to stone and melted into fire
No one finds a use for me
I close my eyes as the clowns sing lullabies of the grave
When I wake they will laugh again
I will still be falling
I will still not be here
And I will have some tea

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The story of a drunk told through a couple of songs 4

(Long Long Long…By George Harrison)

In the haze of the vodka, and the perfectly still apartment Aramis sat alone on his couch. His apartment looking pathetic, a perfect reflection on his life. This is all that ever became of the money he spent on the booze. A drunken haze, not knowing what is real and what is not.
The White Album by the Beatles, it was a way to travel to a time he didn’t live in but believed he knew what it was all about. Stale music to sooth his soul. It was hell to be in this place, just when alcohol gets you numb you understand that you don’t want to be numb. The room seems far away and through his mind he can make out the words sung by George Harrison. It’s such a soft song but yet it hurts so much. A lost love found again, but the fact that it was lost for so long makes the mood become overwhelm by sadness. He looks at his at his apartment as a reflection of his life.

A rummy? Every kid dreams of living like this.

In his mind he can see pictures of the old country, family that he has, looking at him with sincerity. Looking at him with compassion. He opens his eyes and it seems that from the curtins he can see someone staring at him with somewhat disgust. His head wobbles and it dosent look like he is going to make it off this couch not right now anyway and certainly not on his own. It seems like it has been 12:44 in the am for a long time. Things are going so slow. Aramis doesnt remember this song being so long, despite the name it has. It was alright though he liked it.
His eyes close once again. The life in the old country comes to him in flashes of a childhood. Two parents that had all the right intentions of making a family in the traditional sense. Something went wrong with the plan, and now he was cursed. He tries to open his eyes and sees a little boy in front of him there in the apartment, looking at him with icy eyes of wonder. He looks so familiar. His breathing has slowed down considerably. He opens his eyes and there is no boy. He must be dozing off. The boy was never there, he thinks, as he looks on, the face is back at the curtains.
Someone is fighting outside. The yelling is getting awful loud but he is unmoved. Aramis can’t move his body, its way too heavy. To anyone else this would be alarming, but he had been here before. Many times he had been here. He wanted so bad not to be drunk, but to be a child again and be in the arms of his mother, warm and safe. He missed the loving touch of a mothers hand. He missed all the things he was denied. A family, the ability to love, a life. The boy is back and between the curtiains he sees a face turning into blood but he can’t be afraid. It’s too tiring. The face is melting into blood slush and he can hear the pounding on the window. Some one is really fighting outside.

He wasn't joking when he said that he wasnt going to get up by himself from this couch. Things have gone too far. He wasnt expecting this when he signed on, but it was in the contract.

Now Aramis had his eyes closed and they werent opening yet he could see himself laying on the couch. He was in front of himself looking, and next to him the little boy who now was crying. He didnt wimper but the tears would not stop flowing. A splash of blood on the window between the curtians and the pounding was now on the door. Then there he was looking from the couch again at the little boy looking at him. His eyes shifted and he saw his older brother sitting indian style next to the coffee table looking down at some CDs. On the coffee table the gun sat. Aramis wanted to move, but couldnt. The boy staring at him. His eyes filled with sadness. The boy looked down at the Aramis’ side. The vomit was yellow and all over the couch. There was a bottle of pills open and bunch of blue pills spilled on the couch with the vomit, some on the floor. His brother now was still, sitting there Indian style looking at the floor with his head bowed. Then the blood started to flow out of his mouth. It wouldn’t stop. He could hear the sirens now, and the pounding at the door finally broke. He slumped over with the dead weight and closed his eyes laying on the vomit. In his right hand the phone with no dial tone.
The guitars crescendo and the sirens end the song.

The story of a drunk told through a couple of songs 3

(Babylon…Don Mclean version)

(The banjo starts to play in his head, the song is Babylon the Don Mclean version off the American Pie album.)

Aramis stood there in his drunken haze. The night was not helping his mood. He took out his Zippo and as he swayed in his drunken state he lit his cigarette. He put away the Zippo into his shirt pocket. He let out a big sigh which could not be distinguished between being drunk or a memory that haunted him, giving him no rest. He bent down and picked up the bottle of bourbon that he had picked out only an hour ago. He stood there in the dark and he looked down towards the grave marker. On the marker the name of his older brother the memory that never lets him get on with his life. The eternal sorrow, the everlasting reason to cry. He swigged back a drink of the bourbon. His face fixed on the stone with the expression of ‘what are we going to do now?’
-Why do we always come here? Do you know this person or what? The shadow behind Aramis asked and lit a cigarette. His voice was frustrated. It was obviously not his idea of a night out and having a few drinks. Who does that at a graveyard?
-You wanted to drink didn’t you? Well here have a drink and shut the fuck up. He passed his bottle to the figure behind him. We come here cause I’m fucking tired of them trendy New York wannabe bars. I’m tired of all them ass holes that go there. You know me I can’t stand fucking yuppies. The figure has taken a swig and passes back the bottle. Aramis takes the bottle and swigs it. He takes a long drag of his smoke. All of them fuckers going to the fucking bar to talk up their lives to bimbos. All of them wearing the same fucking Texas A and M cap. I’m tired of that shit. He pauses. Yeah, I know this person. He points at the marker and takes another swig.


-What this fucker doesn’t know is that this is where my brother is buried. I’m really not liking the current bar scene. The girls are good to look at and maybe take back to the apartment but its hell talking to those no brain bitches. I hate this place as well. I don’t know why I come here. I just end up here. I’m always called back here by something. I just can’t seem to forget that whole ordeal. I was young. I miss him terribly. I miss my mom as well but I can’t go to her in this state. Just like him before he ended up here. None of this was suppose to happen, but it did, and I can’t find the way out.

Life was a tedious torture for Aramis. When your fourteen you’re not wanting to go to church and be under the watch of your mother, no matter how nice of a lady she is. That’s what makes things harder, and you think your mom is nice to you so you will feel like a total ass when you do some bad shit. It’s all part of her plan to fill you with remorse for the evil stuff you do.
His brother was another story. He was 21 and he knew it. Aramis wanted desperately to live that life. Girls, nightlife, a few drinks all that stuff. Jr. High was another pain in the ass. Everyone telling you what you can’t do. Aramis really was getting scared that life was going to turn out to be a bunch of rules of things you couldn’t do.
It was one night that Aramis got to go out with one of his friends when it all went to hell. Being fourteen was hell, but it was about to get worse. When he got home he got into the shower. When he came out his mother and his then step father where putting on their shirts and making their way out the door. The words were:
-Your brother has been hurt in an accident take care of your sister.
He didn’t think much of this. A broken leg maybe. Within the next 24 hours he found himself looking at his mother in front of his brother’s casket with her face in her hands. It hurt him to see his mother like that. It hurt and scared him to look at his dead brother in the casket. He slowly began to break within. Everything that meant being fourteen didn’t matter now. This was going to be for the rest of his life and he knew that.
The older brother had been drinking for two days straight. He had made his way to his aunt’s house to where he had a key. Aramis mother would get angry when her older son would come home drunk. Her sister Oti had given Aramis’ older brother a key to the house. The house was alone when he arrived that afternoon. They say that he was way over the legal drunk limit. He placed a neatly written letter on the kitchen table and sat down on the couch which was near the stereo. He put on his favorite songs. He drank his last drinks. Some hours later he stood in the middle of the room and blew his brains out. It was almost 3 hours later when Oti came home and heard from outside the sounds of her nephew’s music. A smile came to her face that was quickly erased.
She came to the front door and saw the blood seeping out from the bottom. The bags she had in her hands fell to the ground. She opened the door and screamed when she saw her nephew on the floor with blood pouring out of his mouth. He looked as if he had tried to look for a comfortable position to sleep but didn’t quite find it. The CDs on the floor covered in blood. The booze on the coffee table neatly capped off. The gun just out of his reach on the floor also drenched in blood, his shirt covered as well.
Oti fell to the floor and stared ghastly at the scene. She crawled towards him to see if he was still with life. As soon as she touched him she saw he was cold. She picked up his head and more blood spurted out. The screams finally got the attention of the neighbors. Then the sirens came. When the paramedics pulled her away from her nephew which she loved like her own son, Aramis’ mother was on her way. Oti was drenched in blood and in shock.

-My mom had left the Catholic Church when she left the old country. She became a southern protestant Christian. I remember when they brought that box into the church that my brother had never set foot in when he was alive. All I could remember was the song that they sang. “By the waters of Babylon we lay down and wept for the, Zion.” I don’t know if they meant Zion as a land, a nation, an ideal, or what.
For me the waters have become tears mixed with booze. Tears of me, mom, Oti, my brother. All that blood and there was no life. All that and there was no answer to why he did it. There were blames between my uncles. They all blamed my mom. I didn’t. I blamed myself. I was caught up in my shitty little world, only thinking of myself and not thinking of anything else. I was complaining over bullshit, my hair, my social life, not having the clothes that I wanted. I don’t know what his problem was, but it must have been bad. Zion, or what I wept for was the idea of my older brother and having a family.
This is where I come to lay down and weep for my Zion. I have my booze, and here I weep when no one can see me. At this grave at night I weep for my Zion.

Aramis looks out towards the night and darkness, nothing there, nothing in him but a lot of booze, a void inside a void. The song ends and he throws the cigarette and makes his way towards his car. The friend in the shadows follows puffing on his smoke. Time to erase this; for the millionth time.