Maladjusted to the sounds, the fury and the rage.

“Hello.”

The doors wing wide open and you can hear the faint background music of a symphony of strings, manifested in this imagination by the sound of the coursing wind. The percussive strikes of the shutters banging against the window echo through the house and through memory. Natural theft, plagiarized from a dream. Electric humming and water falling through pipelines. Burning oil lamps and writing romance novels in the dark.

The hammer falls. Staccato. Short and sweet but with enough impact to make you weak in the knees and to tear your heart to pieces. Stale cigarette smoke mixed with a hint of lovers and the trail they leave behind. Documents. This feels more like a scene from a nightmare than from a screenplay. You’ve got your leitmotif. You’re accurately represented in a psychotically-induced court of law.

These things tug at your strings as if you’re a marionette: vices of yours that in daylight are underlying but in the still of the night shout at you, calling you a coward and a thief and a liar and a fool. Who are you? Just listen for your song as you begin your descent. You lay in bed alongside parasites and symbiotes. You’re carefully assembled for one purpose: self-destruction by any means necessary. Yet, how do you feel?

Is your heart full? I mean, REALLY full. By that I don’t infer to filling yourself with cheap whisky that makes you whisper songs to the tune of an old television show while you’re in bed with the lights off and the blinds shut so that the moonlight doesn’t break you from unconsciousness. Whispering thoughts of madness. When the sun rises in the morning you will never know its warmth and glory when the day is birthed. No… but your tune will play none the less, drawing closer in its stages to completion. The epic ending. That tornado that whisks you up off your feet and removes you from reality and places you into a fantastical world.

Hysteria at its finest.

The Homesick Traveling Salesman.

Walking around these suburban neighborhoods.
I've got my white button down on and a striped tie.
My shoes are completely covered in blood. How exciting?
I've got my name tag that says who I am, but somehow
When I look at it I feel unfamiliar. It's like looking
Into a mirror one day and realizing that years have passed,
And you're just a shell, shadow of your former self.
Still, I've got my expensive briefcase with the metal fasteners.

What am I selling to these people? What do I have left?
My eyes, my ears and my nose for those who wish to be beautiful.
My liver, my lungs, my guts for those who've never had them.
My heart, my brain, my throat will go to the highest bidder.

And as I tear myself limb from limb for these people,
Feeling so much pain just to forget my failures I collapse
On the front porch of an elderly woman's house. Bloodloss.
Who am I anymore? And what the hell is my purpose? Anyone?

Please?

Do I have a soul? And if I do am I going to hell to burn
And to rot amongst all of these sorry lunatics who gave it all,
Everything for their torment. For their ideas whey they weren't
Conforming to the widely accepted views of society? Am I dead?

Just because I'd never lust for the pornos and the sluts.
Just because I'd rather die than let my memory fade.
Just because I have so much hope in a world that has none.
Just because I love with everything that I possibly could.

I wake up on the porch of this woman's house,
And the maggots have already started gnawing at my flesh.
I ask her to take a gun and just ease my pain,
But no. I change my mind, pick myself up with my briefcase

And I walk.
Down the street.
To the next house.
And for what?

Because I am an artist, and that is what I do.