Keeping Me Company...

I still miss you and think about you all the time, whoever you are. I am still here alone, and sometimes, every day, I fall in love with someone new. It happens, sometimes several times a day.

I think about the imaginations of all these other people and the worlds they have inside their heads. These days, things just feel bone dry to me. I'm lucky to think of character names. I want to create something beautiful again on a fantastic scale. I don't know what else I can write again, sometimes. I think about the art of Michael Whelan, the prose of Jonathan Carroll, the pure innocent love of Dickens, and I know there are worlds in there.

I wonder what the truths are these days. Maybe I muse too much. My quiet solace, my time here with no one else but me and the words to keep me company. Do I think I will actually experience love at first sight? That she'll have everything I dream, compatibility, something vital in common--another shade--and something will happen and we'll talk and see we were made for each other? How many fantasies, how many worlds of pretend can I live in? Maybe I should do fantasy dreams come true instead of darker tales, but really, they are all kind of the same, aren't they? I like to mix and match. I cannot talk to every girl I fall in love with, and why must you all be so beautiful to me anyway? What a killer beauty can be! You have faults, too. I know that. It's what I want to accept about you, but you aren't listening, or you simply don't care. There's more material out there for you to gain, I know. I guess I was just looking for someone with a little more depth to their personality.

I interpret my real world here in this chaos, my over-thinking, over-dreaming. Demon shadows. Haunting every hand I long to hold. Usually it's just something in your eyes, I see, a familiarity, like you're speaking to me through telepathy, telling me it's okay to talk to you. A smile here and there. I wonder what would happen if I acted on them. But I need your help. I can't go into it alone. I need you to encourage me, give me something to live by. Hope for. Get excited about. Jesus, I'm just another lonely man in here! Can't you see that? I know this softness inside me, this sensitivity, this lonely pain I feel is very real with you near. You think I like it that way? Why do you think I medicated my dreams for so long, a haze I'm still trying to pull myself out of? A person can only handle so much, and I feel what you do, too, is the funny thing. It's twice the pain. My scars make all my dreams a reality, but that's not poetry either. It's just another unlucky line, another way to express my sadness--more acute. I keep telling myself that something good will come of all this--experience makes the artist, makes the writer, makes the man, and without pain, what would I write about? You're making progress, I tell myself, and it's sometimes scary to me, that I'm so open, so willing to lay my guts out here for all to see--to do with as they please, judge and criticize harshly. I could care less about you, is the thing. How's that for apathy? Only that you see in this, a reflection, and maybe then we'll have something to fucking talk about.

There are ladies of traumatizing memory--how horrible a person I see you now, the worst I could see, worse than my worst memory. Any demon I've created pales by comparison by the light of you--or should I say the 'lack thereof.' How do you justify such vile, empty, selfish behavior--evil--other than evil? Your needs at the expense of everyone else? Has the world taught you nothing? Are you still blaming your actions on the past, because of what mommy and daddy did to you? Disillusioned. Mad. I thought I knew. But evil is nothing compared to you. You take the cake, baby. You proved me wrong.

Luckily, I know there's something beautiful in all this--and it has nothing to do with you. I have the power here to immortalize you in the wasted, dying light of hatred and pain. You are known for hurt alone and nothing else. I guess if that's good enough for you, what you aspire to be, then your work here is done. There's no need for you anymore. How sad, really. To aspire to nothing more than what everyone longs to forget? I thought we had transcended to so much more, advancement, evolution. May you be happy in the soulless, loveless life you have chosen, Ebenezer Scrooge. My, what a ponderous chain!

I guess the sadness comes with expectation and disappointment, because you try to be honest and sincere--for no other reason than because it's the right thing to do. There's nothing wrong with focusing on the right thing to do. It has a role, too. Can you hear me?

I've been embracing vision, art, prose, stylists, beauty, and expression, which is why we're here now. Sometimes, it gets harder to reach deep down. All the time, I try to go a little further. No remorse. I do not repent. I've paid my dues. It's time for something more.

The energy spent on love is, ironically, filled with nothing but heartache. I'm not as young as I used to be, and I keep thinking this is a crucial element. My dreams, however, are still. And sometimes, I still like to take the time to write to you (the one I dream about) in passing. In thoughts. Whenever I see a couple strolling hand in hand, and I wonder sometimes if I've ever really loved anyone at all. After all, the older you get, the more the definition changes.

I've been writing stories about you again, who I think you are, letters penned...because you are the opposite of everything I've ever been with, the most supportive and unconditional girl, and I try to reach out to you with ink, thinking there's magic in those words that will one day make you real, another refection--if you will. But I know there is no such thing as the perfect girl. I'm not that naive. Perfect for me? And me for you? That's a different possibility, maybe.

We don't care that we're poor. We are richer than we ever dreamed because we are who we are. After all, who else can make us laugh and smile like you and me? Every eye I see, every smile turned to me, brings you a little more to life, if only for a day. Do you accept my proposal? Or maybe it's a challenge? Just another fantasy, too, writers, poets, painters, musicians. We all have our ideas and thoughts on what it could be. Worlds in here. If only for pretend, something to write about, to keep me company before I fall in love again tomorrow or tonight--before I go to bed. I'll go turn on the t.v now. Maybe I'll catch a glimpse of you then.