Regrets and Lesser Evils

This year will see many things. Not the least of which will be my 50th birthday. For the record, I'm really OK about it. But an anniversary such as this does bring with it a great deal of reflection and self assessment. All in all, I have to I've had a good life thus far. Even when factoring in the bad times, addictions, adversarial relationships, crises of faith and assorted injustices, somehow I find myself hovering around the half century mark adorned in a certain amount of valor and satiety as I ponder the next 70 years of my life on earth. 

I have accomplished a lot, most of which I'm either proud of or have learned valuable lessons from. I've met a lot of people, the large majority of which I love, admire and respect, the rest of whom have taught me tolerance and compassion. 

I married the love of my life and we have two astoundingly lovely children. This year will see our 20th anniversary and my little girl's sweet 16 and my baby boy's 12th. We may not have a large bank account but we have always have what we need. In January of 2011 a snowstorm of biblical proportion (at least by Atlanta, GA standards) shut down the city and we were unable to leave the house for several days. I could never have asked to be snowed in with a more lovely group of people. 

I have trod upon the boards of many stages, created lots of art and written volumes of poetry, prose, scripts and essays. I am a published writer, have run a half marathon, overcome drug addiction, had a solo art show, saved a couple of lives and walked away from more than a few battles with my head held high and hold very few regrets. 

Of these, my regrets are based in things I have done rather than things I haven't done. This, in my opinion, is by far the lesser of two evils. It is better, I think, to commit, regret, accept responsibility and ownership, atone, learn and move forward rather than sink into apathy and fear, never touching or venturing, regret and die unfulfilled and devoid of the knowledge of the experience life provides. 

The poem that follows is not based on any one person. It is a composite of many people I have known across this mosaic in progress of my life thus far.

She walked through

Times Square crying 

to me via cel phone

What 

would have happened

if we had 

dated

in school?

I always 

thought

I

wasn't pretty enough

and that you

were out

of my league

and

if I asked

you

for a date

you

would laugh

behind my back

after

declining

gracefully

but here I am

after 14 years

still

reading your poetry

in bed crying

while he sleeps

and you

touch my heart

with your words

I regret

never finding

my courage

for never 

seeing myself

as you see me

for never

so much as attempting

and for this

I have failed

before even beginning

Now

you have

talked me

off of the ledge

I 

know not what

to do with the life

I abandoned

as it sits

before me

rocking and humming

glancing and wondering

when I will see

with it's light

and dance

with it's gift

All my love always, 

Max

For Daniel and George (and me, somewhere in between).

He looks more like his grandfather with each falling away day. Generating will and confidence, his feet dance over coals and betwixt shards, arabesquing and transcending above his tentative crawling of dissolving yesterdays. 

His voice becomes clear and profound, redolent of sweet lyric alternating with rapier sarcasm as his ever widening irises drink in the world before him, brimming with flights of constant decay and eternal blessings of conception of the next potential miracle. It, like he, attempting to understand their unfolding self's.

He holds my hand less and less these days. Preferring instead the adventure of his untold story as opposed to the tales and lullabies we once shared at his bedside. I am an echo of his grandfather as he is a repercussion of me. 

We would play in the tides, galavanting upon the carpet laid before incoming white caps of great mother ocean, crashing and ebbing amid seashells, deconstructed sun beams and flashings of porpoise fins across the far away surface concealing the depths beneath of great father time.

When 

I was little

I sat 

at his

draughtsman's 

table 

He taught me

the proper use 

of the compass

and protractor

correct applications

of the slide rule

finer points

of the ruling pen

elegance inherent

in the eclipse templates

permanence

of india ink

culminating

in the alchemy

of cartography

Because

if you can map it

on paper son

you can walk

that bastard through life

and no son of a bitch

can prove you wrong

Because

I have my map

and what do you have? 

you'll say

and 

when the gap toothed 

cocksucker

stands there

stammering

and answerless

you can kick

his ass

in the goddamn ball sack

and be 

on your merry way

he said

when I sat 

on his lap

learning

to properly position

a T square

gliding a 30 degree angle

astride its horizon

ink flowing seamlessly

from the tip

of my speedball

with a grace

I would not feel again

until 

I danced ballet

on a big stage

and 

when we conceived

our children

in sweltering midnights

when I knew

my love and I

had greater plans

A map

of our biology

that pierced the veil

into

the next world

and our children

would sit

upon our laps

we

guiding their hands

stroking their hair

out

of newborn eyes

finding

blindly together

lines and patterns

from this world

to the next

No 

son of a bitch

can provide

blockade

to their transcendence

No 

time

stand

in their way. 

All my love to you and yours,

Max

3 Valentines

I wish a very happy Valentines Day to you all. These are three valentines for three amazing women. 

1. Sweet Angel,

I wish I could have hugged you when you were a child, I would whisper from the future to you what you now know and of the peaceful warrior you would become. 

Your compassion is insurmountable, armor untarnished and free of affectation, your eyes inherited from the wizened and war torn heros who are since relieved of duty and in graceful repose, your palms are a stereo-print of mine. 

Dear lady, your footpaths will lead you to Valhalla, your hair dancing in the breeze untangling the sadistic arrogance that attempted unsuccessfully to beat the magic out of you. I have cried an aeon of oceans for you and what you have conquered since before we knew each other in this life. It was not until we finally met that I came to the see the eternity of how much I missed you and how much I love you.

2. Sweet Bear, 

We unfold our future to manifest my promise. To be the best prince I can be despite my chinks, to love you beyond our humanity. If I could find you on a dark night of the soul predating our history, I would tell you that I will always be here, no matter the fleeting moments and dark imaginings of anger or regret. Because for all the disasters that may befall, you and I have been blessed with what so many have forgotten they possess or ever learn to acquire.  As it has been tattooed on my skin 'The greatest of these is Love' and wear it because of what your presence in my life has taught me. 

I love you and wish for your company in Heaven. 

3. Little Girlie, 

You granted me my greatest wish; the chance to be a father. For all of the diapers and sleepless nights, it is nothing compared to what you have endured from me as I learn each day, sometimes clumsily finding my next foot steps, of how to be the dad I want to be. 

You are becoming someone who I am humbled to have fathered. You amaze me each day with your art, humor and kindness. Yours is an undeterred spirit you have yet to discover and I am in awe as I watch you find your wings and venture every day a bit higher and beyond these walls of trees and ceiling of sky than you dared to go the day before.

I thank God for not to have to wish in futility for a time before our lives together when I could have told you the beautiful soul you are and the gift of your breath upon my shoulder as I hug you and say 'I love you sweetheart. Sweet dreams.'

All my love, always and forever, your brother, your husband and your dad.

Max     

The Furnace Wherein I Became a Diamond

Heroin was the most deliciously evil vagina I ever kissed. Sweet throes and rushings of fog and mist. Corpulent tides of bliss washing over my bedraggled corpse. We danced only once during the halcyon days of my misspent youth. I snorted her thinking she was cocaine, animal tranquilizer or something equally innocuous. I felt a rush of fear as if someone demon had injected acid into my psyche. Wrapped in the depths of her blankets, I was terrified I had fallen into a pit of whose depths I would never extricate myself from.  

I was a prisoner in her bed. She convulsed and squirmed, grinding her hips on my face, suffocating me with her multiple orgasms. For hours it seemed I was unable to move from the hypnotic poppy induced rape. A helpless victim waiting for the business end of her concealed dagger to lodge between my ribs and bullet from her twisted leperus boyfriend hiding in the closet to make double damn sure this latest fool was spent and deceased. 

When I emerged from paralysis and fitful dreamtime, she had already put on her clothes, sprayed perfume on her cunt and left a calling card at the foot of my bed. I was astounded not to be dead, terrified of how much I loved her torture and how I would in a heartbeat give my life to have her kill me again. 

I never invited that bitch back into my bedroom again.

Shine

The furnace wherein

I became a diamond

became littered with 

shedded skins

of the torturous me

inverse sadist

who found consolation

in the smell of burnt flesh

thirst quenched by bloodlettings

from invited rape

provoking nocturnal emissions

I possessed the grace and shame

to extract these delights

only from myself

the self-medicating patient

I gave freely to my darkened self

circumambulating windershins and deosil

poison around my heart, life and brainstem

preparing the fuse lighting 

for a grand alchemic display

of suicidal fireworks

concocting a cauldron of bile

duct taped with nails 

shot from my eyes

splinters of my mind

with a kiss of bone shards

I’d show those bastards

how bright I can fucking shine

igniting the sky

with a cascade of damnation

raining iron and fools gold

down upon their shriveled heads

no one to save them 

or me

from this wrath

except me

When the day came

to take an axe to the furnace

the bomb finally exploded

in silence 

as I gazed into a mirror

while in the throes of LSD

the infant was birthed

releasing the corpse

I had been carrying

Peter Pan died that night

and Tinkerbell

could not have been happier

because I finally killed the fiend

who threated to smash the mirror

that I crawled out of

to prevent the infection

of the sky 

above the world

that so richly deserved 

to be unpoisoned

when the boy 

would lie upon the grass

that first springtime

gazing above asking

why

God 

why?

To this day I still don't know how I made my way out of that terrible patch of shit. Miracles happen.

All my love always,

Max