The words just aren't there. They're fake. Automatic. Not anything I want to say. More often than not, I'll just tear myself to pieces before I ever say how I really feel. I'm waiting for something amazing to happen or to get hit by a bus. Or maybe both.

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The stands are all over town and the air is still and waiting for fire and smoke, but everyone decided to stay inside.

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This little kid used to lie in bed at night and round off infinity. He did it because he knew that in 12 hours, he'd be getting punched and kicked and thrown to the ground and all he wanted to do was cry, but he'd be damned if he'd let those fuckers see him cry. He'd just pretend. He was a wrestler, he was an actor, he was a super hero. He wasn't him. And he grew up and he never really stopped pretending, always letting an exaggeration get bigger and bigger. It was the only way he knew to get by, to be honest. Because he learned how to stare a fist right in his face and how to roll with it and how to fall the right way and how to laugh about it. Pain became really the only person who never let him down.

Sometimes, the little kid thought aliens were coming. This frightened him to the point where he could not sleep. He'd wake up his whole family screaming and shaking. But the truth was, he subverted his fears. He worried about nuclear war. Or the sun going cold. He stopped caring about his face being pushed into asphalt. It all became a game. So when he got old, the fact that his body was nothing but a bag that held his brain was not lost on him. He started finding new and better ways to tear it apart, all because, well, it was all he knew.

The boy who couldn't say how he felt became the man who didn't want anyone to know. And there have not really been all that many people who have seen him cry. He despises that. He hates when people get to know him. He doesn't even tell people his birthday. Because at the heart of it all, he wanted love but figured that if he told anyone, they'd just kick him in the teeth again. So he just got to liking it.

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Even a dog covered in poop is much better than most people. That's my opinion, anyway.

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They painted the day, really, so that the colors took on brushstrokes and sweeps. You could just lie back and be happy.

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Most people only use Polaroids for pornography now. Well, except her. She uses hers to take pictures of roadkill.

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You can see the fireworks from the other side of town. They don't look as bright or as pretty or make you feel as patriotic or special inside. You just see the faint glimmers through the treetops and the distant echo of their booming thunder. You don't feel the brightness flash in your face or smell the cordite. You just sit and watch and wait for the applause but it never comes.

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Times have gotten so tough, he went back on his word. He'd start cutting his own grass again. And man, what a tragedy.

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I used to worry about dying and now I look forward to it. I wonder how it will happen, when it will happen. My lack of survival instinct makes this a daily to do list item. Today, possibly die. Maybe that's fatalistic. Probably. Yeah, it's totally fatalistic.

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My burger went well with the boom boom boom of the lanes crashing above. All night was a wet dull thud. I imagine that on Saturdays, there's a lot of dancing. The bass is accentuated by the slam crash bang up above.

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I don't want to leave a mess behind. I don't want anyone to clean me up. I don't want to be a smear or a streak or matter on the windshield. I just want to be gone.

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This building is failure.
This road is failure.
This evening is failure.

I drive past and I try and avoid and I always end up back here.

I made the wrong choice and chose the wrong path and here I am.

I have ended back here.

I hate this neon. I hate this storefront. I hate this fucking road.

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In this week, there have been many talks.

Of these talks, I can name around a hundred.

Out of the hundred, I'd say one or two of these talks was worth having.

I have to have another one of these talks tomorrow.

And I fear I will have to have at least one or two hard talks soon enough.

I would like to not talk to anyone, ever, about anything.

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It's funny to be that guy, when I was that guy, now I'm that guy somewhere else. I don't want to be any guy. I just want to sleep.

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I woke up and someone was lying in my bed. I thought it was me, but then I realized that I had not fallen asleep as much as I'd woken up stuck between the many realities that I have to keep track of. Fuck. I hate when this happens.

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My dog sits without a leash on the cool porch and we watch cars go by. He hates buses. I wonder why sometimes. I think a bus killed his dad. Me, I sit here with a laptop and an iced tea and wonder what the weekend will hold for me. I hope it holds absolutely nothing. A huge chunk of a lack of decision making. I have made enough decisions this week to choke a normal man. I have given up on people. I have almost lost the place that I live in and still could. I realized that I made a mistake professionally that I am going to have to do my best to kiss ass, sell out and suck dick to survive so that I can fulfill my promise of being an absolute bum and leaving this shithole town and everyone in it behind in 2 years. So really, when you think about part b and part c, I don't know why I was so upset about the house, in retrospect. I mean, if your dream is to be Dr. David Bruce Banner without the turning green and killing people part, and only the part where you, you know, wander the Americas and have adventures and change people's lives, you know, that part, having a house seems to be pretty much a hold-you-back from this dream. But you know, I'm a fucking contradiction. So I sit in meetings and dream about keeping my little $85,000 house and at night, I throw up and go to bed as soon as I get home and try and do enough stuff so that my stomach is a little bit better and I try and make art and I try and stick to my plan, because I swear to fucking God, I will never be caught unawares without a plan of my own ever again. And that brings us all to now, dear reader. The slowly growing dusk of a Friday night, completely sure of my aloneness, save for a screaming cat who is begging to be outside and a dog sleeping on the porch and this iced tea that I paid to fucking much for and the true knowledge that the only person you can trust is the one inside your head (and even that dude, they're fucking crazy, too, keep an eye on them). It's a precarious place to be. Both happy to be free for a bit, sad that freedom doesn't last forever and certain that somewhere, somehow, the life that you always wanted could happen at any minute, but nah, you're too fucking cynical for that. They say all writers are liars. I say all writers are fucking drunks. I can prove that hypothesis if you'd like to buy me a drink.

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I'd leave here, but no city will make me happy. I'd say that I'd be someone brand new once my feet were off the plane. I'd change my name, cut my hair, wear contacts and a tie, lose a bunch of weight, shave off my beard and never answer to the name Sam again but everything eventually would end up just like it is now, the same story, a new sequel, told by a lesser cast. That's life. A continual serial tale told the same time over and over again until you either get sick of it and shoot yourself in the fucking head or die. Well, that's a lie. You die both ways. There should maybe be another way. Maybe there is. Maybe my life is a continual battle against suicide and death. Maybe it'd be easier if that was just one enemy, you know? It's hard enough to fucking battle death. We don't need to go adding deaths derivative sidekick henchmen suicide to the mix while we are at it. Jesus, the odds against death are like, you know, 1 to 1, so it seems. I can logically win any bet where I say, I bet I die. I guess suicide isn't as tough as death, because I could bet that I won't kill myself and logically if I keep my shit together (but at what cost haw haw haw) then I will win that bet. Again, I win both ways, because if I die or kill myself, I will be dead and unable to pay you. And if we had a deal and I have to pay you posthumously from what I can only imagine is a Swiss bank account, then I will be dead and unable to enjoy material possessions, so the joke is on you, person still alive, stuck in your morality-less woe is me, oh look, a dead Sam's money made me happy. Well, I'm dead. And you won't get to read weird ass shit like this any more. You won your bet, but like I said before, at what cost? At this point, I will jump from the darkest part of your house, this all having been a practical joke that I've played on you. But then you fall down the steps and die, and it's my fault, and I feel so bad that I kill myself. And then you jump up and laugh and say, haw haw haw that was just a dummy, I have been alive all along. Now I have your money all over again! And my ghost will scream NOOOOOO! as the camera pulls back and yes, finally, folks, the fucking joke is on me.

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all of life's treasures, remind me that houses are just made of wood

There was a small sliver of a house that never existed that I chiseled out with my keys and gave away once, long ago. I found it again, it was in a pile of dust and dirt and destined for the refill litter bin with the poetry filled empty coke cans. It never was, so it didn't matter, not to anyone, except me, but I'm good at rewriting continuity within my own mind.

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I can remember a much more innocent time when all I needed to make me happy was a video game. Bills, student loans, women, job woes...I knew none of this. All I knew was the shiny quarter sliding down the slot and the cathode tube embracing me. I can remember so much of that era...arcades come and gone, games that are forgotten (or best forgotten) and Pac-Man. For a few years, everybody loved Pac-Man. It was a simple game compared to the HALO that we have now. Who can imagine being so captivated by a moving mouth eating pellets and being chased and chasing ghosts?

Ellwood City, my hometown, had one upscale arcade and three dirty, smelly dens of ill repute that were the Mos Eisley of my small origins.They were the bridge arcade, which basically sat on the 5th Street Bridge, where dope kids and burnouts swung their drunken legs over the bridge. Of course, my dad was the art teacher, so all of these kids loved my father. So, I was treated quite nicely by this rough crowd and even allowed on the machines that they monopolized. The second was the poolhall, buried in a basement and I went there once, with my grandfather, who was about the only member of my family who was hardassed enough to take me along. I begged for years until he gave in and took me and to tell the truth, it wasn't what it made out to be. It was kind of boring. The third was the Newsstand, which is the only arcade left in my depressing birthplace. And it was there, after a night of fine dining with my parents at the Gilded Cage, in 1982, that I first saw her.

Ms. Pac-Man. Now, how cool was that? My mom took me to arcades all the time, never playing, but now she was hooked. I remember the excitement when Atari released Pac-man for the famous Atari VCS (or 2600 or Sears Telegame). With baited breath, we laid down our $50 and sat in a restaurant in little Rochester, PA called the Hilltop, infused with red light and dreaming of what was to come. We hurried home as fast as we could. We all agreed to do our homework and chores and then reconvene to play Pac-Man until bedtime. I couldn't wait...to see the little yellow mouth cut across my screen, to beat those ghosts, to use my patterns to beat the game in the comfort of my own home.

We plugged it in and we realized the sad truth. Pac-Man was ruddy brown, the sounds were wrong and everything was horizontal where it should be vertical. We tried to justify the game. We tried to wish it better. We wished that it was the real thing when it was painfully obvious how poor it was. We convinced ourselves that it wasn't really all that bad.

Looking back, I realize that this was the first time I had ever been truly disappointed. Whatever childish innocence I had was thrown to the dogs and now, I was full of cynicism. I wish I had never bought that fucking game.

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I waited and waited for the words to come and they didn't. I sat there faced with the blank screen and I wanted to share my thoughts guerilla love style and there is nothing inside that has anything left to say. Because being the words is a waste of time.

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