It's All The Same To Me.

I am
again
humbled;
by the sheer
brute force
of life.

I find myself,
tonight,
wondering,
just how much more
can be taken from me?

Honestly,
there isn't much left.
Most of what I am,
can be packed neatly
into a weathered Whitman's Sampler box;
or if compressed
with precision,
into a twelve gauge
shotgun shell.

Just what is,
the breaking point,
of a good man?
A good soul?

Fuck me,
more bad news.
But I turn into the wind,
and weather the storm.

"And when it rains here,
it rains so hard."

And then,
on top of all else,
A friend, I cherish and love,
sent me this message this morning...

"This has been VERY hard for us too.
You are not the only one affected by this.
Sucks the way things have turned out.
That is all."

That is all.
We have not spoken
or seen one another
in five months. 
And this is the message she sends me.

I wanted to get in my truck
and drive to her house,
and hook a chain to my trailer hitch,
and tear her home away from it's foundation.
I wanted to pull
all that was safe and secure,
out from under her,
and see just how she would cope
with the upheaval and disintegration
of all that she knew and loved?

That is all.

Her words,
are similar to the words
of her other half.
he to,
seemed bothered
and put out,
and inconvenienced,
by the dissolution of my love
and life.

"This has been VERY hard for us too."

I don't know what to make of this
statement.
I guess,
I should say,
I am sorry.
I am sorry,
that my life
and pain, and sorrow,
has upset you so.

"You are not the only one affected by this."

What a selfish,
and foolish statement.
I was awed,
by these words.
Am I,
should I,
feel guilty,
or worse than I already do,
because
my life
and it's awful turn,
has somehow
caused her discomfort?
The ripple effect,
of the dissolution
of my love,
has upset a great many souls.
I put myself at the top of this list.
I am the one
who wakes each morning alone.
I am the one
who paces the floor
and counts the hours.
I am the one,
out here adrift
on the black sea of tears,
alone.
How selfish of me.

"Sucks the way things have turned out."

She got this part right.
It sucks;
to use her simple
and easy way
of defining my pain and sorrow.
It sucks.
The black hole
inside of me...
The heart removed
while awake...
The soul untethered
and set adrift...
The ache of crushed bone
and spirit...
It sucks the way things have turned out.

"That is all."

That is all.
If I didn't love
and understand
my friend,
who wrote such silly words,
I would hate her.
But,
like all things
sent my way
these new days,
I just take it in,
embrace it for what it is,
and keep moving forward.
I know,
and understand,
that she didn't mean to hurt me with these words.
I know,
and understand,
that these are trying times for all involved.
But goddamn,
if you're having a hard time with all this mess,
imagine what I must be going through?
My guess is
she hasn't really given it much thought.
Because if she did
really sit down
with a glass of red wine,
next to the fire,
and imagine herself
as me,
it would
freeze her in place;
like a child
who makes it to the top
of an old steel jungle gym,
and realises
that while the view from the top is awe inspiring,
all it takes
is one not-love tap,
for a pig tailed ingenue,
and it's a rusty
and cold
pachinko trip
back down
to the blue dusty gravel below.

This is a first,
please listen...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esf6m5VnNtU

The band is Lucero.
The message
is that
of a good
broken man,
keeping the faith
and trying desperately
to just hold on.
"It's all the same to me."

It's a beautiful night
out here on the Fort.
The water is like a pane
of antique glass
framed by an obtuse
and asymmetrical frame.
And no matter
how many rocks
I throw through it's bleary visage;
it always returns back,
opaque.

That is all.