My Writings

Pretty much what this page consists of is things I've written that don't qualify as poetry in most realms of thought. Some are monologues, some are stories, some are rants and some are uncatagorizeable (non-categoral? without category?). But that's how it is.

Forest of Thought
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Wanna know my deepest thoughts?
I sit here inside my own mind and I know that I am truly alone. I look around in this darkness that envelops my every movement, every thought, every emotion.
On all sides, I am surrounded by this forest of thought. It is cold here. I can see my breath. The night is blue and dark all around me and off in the distance in every direction, there are lights. Fading, dancing, getting closer, further away. I recognize each light as a person who shares my life, a pathway I have tried to follow. Perhaps a path I may follow in the future.
I can hear voices. Close to me, but still, very distant. Distant, and yet, I hear them as well as if I am right next to the source.
But I don't know which way to turn. I sit down on the wet earth and for the moment, I am free of troubles and cares. The lights continue to dance and sparkle.
There are no stars, no light other than those that dance.
One light glimmers brighter than the others. Who is it? I rise from the damp seat I had taken only moments ago. The light fades. I missed that chance. Too many times have I sat and missed the light. So I head towards one that is familiar to me. Yet now, it is strange to me. So I stop and lean against a tree for a while.
I'm tired of running in circles.
It rains here all the time.
My body aches for sustenance.
My hands ache.
My lungs ache from the air I suck in on every breath, and the air is stained by my own exhaling.
It's too cold here.
I began to wonder if I ever would leave this tormentuous world that I have fallen into. I turned every moment into a search for a way out. Every possible out I could have, I sought. And sought with a passion I had only known years before, when I reached one of my lights.
That passion is what drives me now. I race towards one light, hoping that I will catch up to it. It is for not. I reach the moment where I am about to be there, basking within the glow of the light itself and there sits a gorge beneath me. An endless pit that I cannot jump across.
The light is there, almost mocking me from the other side of the abyss at my feet. So I push over a thought tree to make a bridge. I get to the other side and I realize I am not on the other side at all, but back where I had begun in the first place.
So I sit and cry for a moment. I look towards the sky again. Still no stars. I love stars.
I can hear her voice in the darkness. I turn towards it and see the light coming towards me. I can feel the warmth of the light as it hits my face. I close my eyes to soak in all the warmth. I am radiant and warm and then I open my eyes again.
The light is gone. I am cold once more. I scream at the sky. My voice is empty in the chill air. Why did she disappear again? She was here. I could feel her warmth. So now I am even colder than before. Colder because I remember the warmth so well.
Now I rise from the earth. My outline on the earth is dry, so long have I sat there. So many lights on the horizon that it looks like sunrise in every direction. It is warmer now, because I have let the memory slip from me for now.
The lights are all diminishing, more like sunset than sunrise now. The sounds from each of them quiet. I am slipping from thought. All memories slip from me for a moment. For that moment, I am truly in darkness. Then I see one light that hasn't gone away entirely. I start towards it. Slowly at first, then ever quickening my pace until I am at a dead run. What could this light be?
What person is still with me when I have reached such a point? I run on for hours, always towards that one light. I fall and get up again. I run around trees and bushes and come to a wall. I know the light is on the other side. I run along the wall until I get to the abyss again. I have to turn around and go the other way. I run along the wall again, now on my left. I tire of running, yet I continue running. This may yet be my way out. this may yet be my escape. I have to know, so I don't even slow down.
My body burns with a fire that I have not felt in years. It is the fire of that passion I felt then. I remember her and imagine that it is her on the other side of this wall. I reach the abyss again. I had forgotten; An island without water to surround it.
I lean against the wall, almost panting from my run. I weep openly now. I know it has to be my escape just on the other side. So I walk back into the woods to look for a way to get over the wall. Or through it.
What is the purpose of this wall? Is it something I created? Is it something that she created? If I'm in my own mind, why can't I just get rid of it? Why can't I imagine it away? And then it hits me, no lights in this section of the forest because this is my inner mind. The place I go to be totally alone. But that is what I am. Totally alone. Alone and cold.
I have to let down my guard. Let her into my inner mind. I have to let her inside of me. I can't hide anything from her. Then the wall would disappear.
But it's too cold here for anyone else. I know that I am truly alone.

My Brother's Tool Shed
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And so it comes down to this. Me, sitting alone in my brother's tool shed. Sitting alone and crying. Is it too much to ask for a woman that doesn't smoke, do any drugs of any kind or drink excessively? I mean really. Is that too much to ask? So I sit here. I sit here alone and think. Why does it bother me so damn much? Everyone I know except for a few individuals has done something like it in the past or still does it. Even some of my family. I just don't understand why it bothers me so damn much.
I don't understand why she feels the need to do drugs or drink. It just doesn't make any sense to me. And I think the thing that shocked me the most is she just came right out and told me she was going to. Just sitting there on the phone and talking about what was going on the next couple of days and she just flat out says it to me.
"...and later on, I'm gonna shoot up with Joey." I mean, hello! How am I supposed to respond to that? My girlfriend tells me something like this and I'm not supposed to flip out? She said it so non-chalantly, like it happens all the time. Like it is just something that everyone does.
I have never done any drug in my entire life. I have never smoked a cigarette either. I have never actually been drunk, though I have tasted many different types of alcohol. So just how am I supposed to respond when she tells me this?
So I sit here, alone. Alone and crying in my brother's tool shed, while in the house, a big party is going on. My nephew's birthday. And yet, I am out here...crying. And so I told her I didn't approve of it, and she got all defensive. Like I was trying to run her life or something. All I said was I didn't like it, in other words... Then she tells me if she had spent the night at her other friend Kimberly's house, she probably would have done other drugs with them. And again, my only response was, "I don?t approve of that either." And so she hung up on me. After I collected myself enough to walk through the crowd of people in the front room and outside, I came to the tool shed. And so here I sit. In my brother's fucking tool shed. Crying my fucking eyes out because I can't deal with my girlfriend doing drugs. (laugh) Some fucking macho guy I am, huh? Crying alone where no one can see me. And I won't stand up to her. I'll never say anything to her about it. I'll just continue hiding my face in the "tool sheds" of life. And one day, I'll just loose it completely and kill myself or someone else or both. But for now, I will just sit here. Alone. Alone and crying. In my brother's tool shed.

Who Gives A Shit Mode
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I haven't cried in a long time. But here I am, crying. Crying because I hurt her. Because it hurts me that I hurt her. I mean, when it comes down to it, I guess she said it best; that it wasn't as big a deal to me as it was to her. To me, it was just sex. To her, it was her virginity. I mean holy shit! If only I'd known. That isn't something you just give away. That's a big step. I just assumed that she had before because she was making advances just as much as me, if not more than me. Maybe that was all in my mind.
I'm an asshole, that's what it is. I've become that which I've always swore I'd never be. But I still have enough of the old me to know this. I still know that I never intended to use her or to hurt her. I know that it physically hurts me that I've damaged her in any way. I may well have destroyed all that I loved about her by becoming my own nemesis: the average hormone-driven all-American red-blooded why-don?t-we-get-loaded-and-fuck male of society. What the hell was I thinking? Or was I thinking at all? That's the problem. There must be some switch in the human male brain that has two settings, rational and who gives a shit. Neither of them work at the same time ever so it becomes a problem when it switches over to who gives a shit. Apparently it isn?t easy to switch back to rational thought. And then when you do you sit and wonder what the hell happened that whole time that you were in the other mode.
How could I have been so stupid? I didn't think to possibly ask or some way make her mention it by bringing up the subject in a round about way or something.
(pause)
It's been so long since I've cried that the feeling is strange to me. Almost alien. But now I cry. And it feels good to cry. Because that means I care. Because that means there is still feeling in this vicious heart of mine. I will not cry tears of regret though. But rather, tears of sorrow for what could have been, and, should she accept my apology, what could be.
Because I do care a great deal for her. I care that I have caused her pain. I care that I switched over to the other mode and made things uncomfortable between us. Life was so much easier when I never had to deal with this kind of thing. But now I do have to deal with it and that's my problem, I don't want to deal with it. I want for it to have never happened in the first place. But I can't go back and change it and I don?t think that I would if given the opportunity. Because things are supposed to happen a certain way in life and if I am fated to be a stupid sex-crazed son-of-a-bitch, well, I guess I will have to deal with that. But I don't want to have to deal with it. I want to be the kind of person that doesn't have who gives a shit mode. Or at least uses it so infrequently that this sort of thing doesn't happen.

On the Beach One Day (While Not Actually at the Beach)
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Tormented, I sit here. Wondering where it will go in the end. Wondering when it will end. the pain, the frustration of it all. So I sit back in my own sad thoughts and mesh with the things around me. My body sinks into the sand I lay upon. For a moment, my thoughts turn to nothing but the thought of all my pain disappearing. I close my eyes and dream. In my dreams I see myself. Laying on this very beach. But my body floats just above the ground. And then it starts to travel out to sea. I race to an unseen destination, ever faster as the day wears on. I'm headed west out over the ocean, to a place I've never been. In my dreams I am going there. A tropical island or a tourist trap. Hawaii, maybe. Having never been there, I am not exactly sure if this is where I am or not. No one around me is aware of my presence here. It must be Hawaii. So many Hawaiian shirts and grass skirts and tourists and surfers. Where else is like that? Probably plenty of places.
Suddenly, someone calls out my name. I open my eyes. I'm back where I had started in the first place, with the voice still lingering in my ears. I look around, to see that I am alone here on this beach. Who could it have been that saw me, though I was dreaming? No one knows me that well. could they have been calling out to someone that just happened to have the same name as me? Oh well.
I lay back down and close my eyes once more. My thoughts race back to that beach in Hawaii. Now I'm standing on the beach and everyone is aware of me being there. Every face is someone I know, but they all seem like strangers to me and to each other. And now someone touches my shoulder. So real is it that I awake once more, only to be alone on this beach again.
Chills run the length of my spine.
I lay down once again and close my eyes. I?m facing a girl I?ve known for so long now. Was she the one that shouted out my name? Was she the one who touched my shoulder? I'm reeling with an intensity that I haven?t felt for years. I reach out my hand to her and she fades away. I'm on that beach alone suddenly. And I try to wake myself up, but it won't let me go just yet. Then I do awaken and find that the light is diminishing. So I head back to camp for the night.
Then, in my tent, I hear voices all night long. All in my head, though I lay there awake. Voices from the past, voices from the present, voices from the future. All melding into a collective sound. Eventually it lulls me to sleep, though it rends my mind to fragments of its former self.
Morning comes and I awake. I open my tent and breathe in the fresh sunrise. Ah, the smell of sunrise. It warms me from head to toe, except for my spine, which remains chilled from the twisted dreaming that held me in a tight grasp all through the dark hours of the night.
I build a fire and stoke it so that it glows brightly, even in the morning sun. Soon, I'll have some hot chocolate and sit on the beach again. I'll soak up the day in thoughts of the westerly world, of Hawaii and girls, of voices that drown out even the loudest of the waves.
I'll hum Incubus songs and think of people I need to talk to. The ocean does look like a thousand diamonds strewn across a blue blanket. I wish you were here, my friends. If only to see how glorious the ocean is on a day like today. If it weren?t for the fears I hold, I'd swim out past the breakers and leave all the world behind me, to live amongst the waves and dance with the mermaids and sea beasts for a while. What a life that would be. And how happy you would find me if you came across me today.
So I sip my cocoa and daydream about life. Past, present, and future. And for the moment, I am happy.

Letter to Her
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You say who I fell in love with was an idea. Who I originally fell in love with was not an idea. It was a person. My friend. Someone that I feel that I could love forever. If that person does not exist anymore, that is a terrible loss. However, you do exist still. Perhaps I don't know the way the world around me works, but I know that a part of that person I fell in love with is still here.
I act. I know that each and every character you play becomes part of you. You bring part of that character with you for the rest of your life. Now and then that character rears its head and you see that and feel that again. You look around and the world has changed so much. But you can count on that character still being part of you. Part of who you were, part of who you are, and part of who you will be. Nothing can change that. Aside from brain damage and total memory loss... The point is that some part of that person, idea or not, that I fell in love with is still here. You may have changed drastically but I know that there is still that person somewhere inside of you.
You say we don't know each other anymore. Why is that? You've been avoiding me for so long, how could we possibly know each other anymore? So I wonder what I did wrong. What you did wrong. What we did wrong. Why don't we just start over? Why can't we get back together as friends and start over?
You say you can't hang out with me until I feel differently about you. You said if you were to say to me that you wanted to be with me forever or if you were to try to kiss me that I would embrace that. Who wouldn't embrace that? Wouldn't that be a contradiction? I know that if I were to say that I wanted to be with someone forever, that I would mean it. I wouldn't say it otherwise. I would also want the other person to embrace that. Sure I have kissed people without feeling anything before, but to kiss someone and mean it, I would hope that the other person would embrace it. That the other person would love it.
I've tried for a long while to understand why you hide from me like you do. I have come to the conclusion that I will probably never know. Not unless you tell me. I thought maybe you were scared, maybe you were angry, maybe it made you sad to be around me, maybe you didn?t know what your true feelings were or that you were unsure of mine, but none of the answers I came up with seemed to fit. Not all the way, at least.
So I sit here and wonder what it will be like if and when I see you again. I want so much to see you again. To hear your voice, to be near you. I suppose that feeling will pass.
Who am I kidding? The feeling will never pass. But maybe I'll get used to feeling that way and somehow get over the person I fell in love with. When that happens, I'd love to fall in love with someone new. Someone, perhaps, like you. Like the person you are now.

Give Me More
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I sat there, staring at the wall for a while. Not noticing the chaos behind me in the schoolyard. I didn't care what was happening. I couldn't hear what was going on. I felt something brush past my head, bringing me back into reality. I turned around and saw the darkness descending upon us. It fed like a rampaging wave from the ocean. Everything in its path was sucked into nothingness. But I stood there, without fear. I watched as the cloud took each child before me. I showed no emotion. Not even when it took my favorite teacher. And the cloud surrounded me and my wall. And then it took my wall from me. A voice came from somewhere deep inside the cloud. "Nathan," it said, "why don't you fear me?" My reply was simply, "why should I fear emptiness? What is there to fear in that? If I am empty, I have no memories, feel no loss, no pain, no emotion whatsoever. There isn't really any good or bad to that." "But your life, and the things you have seen and experienced; you would feel no loss at losing those things?" the cloud murmured. "If I am in nothingness, I would feel no loss. Not for those things, not for anything." The cloud was silent for a long while and even slowed its violent churning for a moment, as if in thought. "There is not a victory in making everyone feel the nothing that I have felt for all my existence," the cloud said, "and now that I know that, I suppose I have no point in continuing with creating nothing." "Then you have become your own hated enemy, an existence." I explained to the swirling mass around me. " You exist, as I can see you before me, and you feel emotion, for you have felt anger, victory and now, loss. You cannot fade away, for you will exist even when nothing else does. You ARE nothing, yet nothing is something after all." With this, the cloud dissapated and went elsewhere to mull this new life over. As it left, one final statement floated from its bellowing voice. "Anything I feel makes me exist, love, hate, joy, pain. You have made me see this and I thank you." I smiled and walked across the empty playground to the swings. Today I destroyed my fears. Today I conquered nothingness.