Conveying the Chemical Process of Combustion which You See is Just a Metaphor which is Like Something Used as a Stand-In for a More Nebulous Something Else

Cormac is easily one of my favorite writers. The Road was one of those beautifully soul-destroying novels that coveys so much fear, grotesquerie, love, hope, and darkness that it was kind of hard to read at times.

There’s a point early on in the book that kicked me in the groin, good. After traveling with the Man and his son for a while through the ashen landscape, we get to this quick exchange:

He woke in the night and lay listening. He couldnt remember where he was. The thought made him smile. Where are we? he said.

What is it, Papa?

Nothing. We’re okay. Go to sleep.

We’re going to be okay, arent we Papa?

Yes. We are.

And nothing bad is going to happen to us.

That’s right.

Because we’re carrying the fire.

Yes. Because we’re carrying the fire.

I had to put the book down for a moment after reading that; it was a moment so precious and beautiful that it knocked me on my ass. The “carrying the fire” theme took so much weight — it came out of nowhere to hurt your heart, and it became something to hang onto through the gathering darkness. The Man’s inevitable end and the son’s uncertain future kickstarts off with him carrying the fire to another family. It helps you in your fall. The fall becomes your journey because of it’s grace.

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh God. Yes.

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…On the Brink of Becoming a Nihilistic Pose

Love is not dead,

it is merely locked in its room,

listening to The Smiths

and scrawling the word “why”

all over the walls

with a felt-tip marker.

When it is in seclusion,

it gives the impression

that it is nothing more than a myth,

like a yeti,

or the lost city of gold.

Love is real.

Love is fragile.

Love hangs on to promises

that are more likely to be broken

than kept.

Love strums its acoustic guitar,

penning over-wrought lyrics

that straddle the line

between romantic angst

and cheap, disposable pabulum.  

Love has a self-belief

that is tenuous,

always on the brink

of dissolving into a

nihilistic pose. 

Love is not dead,

it is in its room,

on the verge of becoming a skeptic.

©2011 José-Ariel Cuevas

Thoughts Arrive Like Butterflies...

I used to sleep in a bed made of the finest padding available, framed in mahogany with silk drapes cascading down between the posts. I used to sleep under a heavy down blanket that matched my pillows and both were wrapped in the same silk that wrapped my bed.  I used to sleep with women of all races and ages, our bodies intertwined as we both gently snored in the heavy, satisfied sleep of those who have just indulged in the hedonistic and lustful pleasures of the flesh.  I used to sleep indoors, where the walls of my bedroom were inside the walls of my house and I remained insulated from the cold exhaust filled air and noise of the city streets.

I used to do laundry by throwing my dirty clothes in a hamper that a service would take once a week and sort out the regular wash from the dry clean only and return it to me neatly folded and wrapped.  I used to keep my clothes in a dresser and a closet where the folded articles stayed folded in their appropriate drawers and my suits stayed finely pressed in the plastic wrap of the dry cleaners until the day of the week when I felt they deserved to be worn.

I used to shower every morning in hot water that cascaded off of my body and down the drain in the middle of my tile shower.  I used to shave every other day in order to maintain my professional appearance, yet not irritate my skin and cause unsightly discoloration or blemishes like ingrown hairs.

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Signs of Semi-Life on a Sunday

It’s semi-alive out here today,
minor hustle and bustle, but more than a usual Sunday.
The sky is overcast and grey—
with an errant raindrop or two.
I am dressed in black from head to toe,
slightly resembling and Interpol-listening undertaker.
I slink into a café for a coffee
to drink while finishing a mini-novella by Gabriel García-Márquez
(in Spanish, always in Spanish, to be faithful
towards the original language).
Reaching the end, I felt a sense of accomplishment—
due to my mind battling against a crying baby
that couldn’t be placated by her parents.
Off I go again, and the errant raindrops
are becoming more constant.
My feet (and liver) guild me
to my usual watering hole
(where everybody kind of know my name).
Settled in, I place an order—
a pint of Anchor Steam and a shot of Herradura añejo.
Tonight, success tastes like aged tequila.
There was the usual mixture
of power-drinking punks and dead-enders.
A couple soon enters the establishment
and sit to my immediate left.
He gets a Newcastle, she gets a Corona.
Twenty minutes into their round,
her male companion excuses himself
and goes into the bathroom.
“If I wasn’t here with my man,
I would be all up on you,”
said the woman to my left,
in a hushed tone, looking towards the restrooms.
She looked not a day over thirty-five,
with the skin tone of a Latina, or an ethnic white.
Her skin showed some slight wear—
a mixture of time marching on and hard living.
I was slightly amused by her Corona-induced proclamation,
but I gave it as much currency
as a waitress’ casual over-usage of “sweetie” and “hon”.
I say this though she is the only woman here,
which makes her the hottest number around.
Her boyfriend comes back from the bathroom—
he looks like a gangster-turned-biker.
I go back to my Anchor Steam, gulping the last drink,
thinking of what she said.
Those words cling on to my mind like suds on a finished pint glass.
I massage the pulsating veins on my left temple
with my index and middle fingers,
aware that I look like a crude composite
character in a Fante, Bukowski or Bolaño story.
I marvel at how people go about their drinking,
with the fervor of a fatalist in his final moment.
Frantic and twitching, maybe they are trying
to out-hustle their inner-demons,
or, they are trying to stay one step ahead of death,
who must be polishing his scythe somewhere in the back.
We all have our reasons for being here,
and mine… well, it’s all a blur now.

©2010 José-Ariel Cuevas

You will never stream...

I'm sitting in this bed, lost. I have nothing except this music and the residual effects of the alcohol that I came home with. I have all of these women on my mind. The one I am with, the one that I want, the one that I think I can have, and the one that lays in my lap. At least I have this music.

I’m your passenger

So I try to dream of something else while I sit awake here in this bed I didn’t buy in this room I don’t pay for in this apartment I cant afford. Does it ever work, I wonder, all of this thinking? It never seems to, but that never seems to stop me. So I keep dreaming, in the darkness of the soul with all of the fears and phobias and trepidations that control and contain us all. She still lays silently, barely bothered by my thoughts…

did you hear your favorite song one last time

And I sit here with wrists that hurt from cuts that weren’t from suicide attempts but still so many people worry so much about the darkness that I vent...

you know that I could use somebody

So never mind the fight that I had tonight. Never mind the fights that I’ve had ever. Never mind that I beat his head into the pavement again and again and again. Never mind what I said to her tonight. I never meant a word of it, even though I meant every single fucking word.

you carry on like some kind of god

So I had a good night tonight? What of it? Should I suffer for that? The only thing we can attempt to do is enjoy this brief time we have. So you cannot tell me it’s a goddamn sin to attempt to. I will make sure my stories are worth telling, even when you don’t want to hear them. I will make sure they are all worth telling to anyone who will listen to me with their whiskey in their hands,

so maybe tomorrow

So she lays in my bed, content. She has been with me for a while now, but she still is happy when I come home. She still can’t argue much when I go out without her. She always welcomes me back. She always stays here.

these changes ain’t changing me

So I sit here with my slit wrists, that weren’t slit by suicide or any cliché or any other fucking dream you could come up with. I sit here with my cuts and scars. I sit here with my own darkness. A soldier fighting his own war.

six minutes down

So there really isn’t a statement to be made, when everything has been said. But that doesn’t mean there’s no reason to be pissed off. And when she said that everything would be ok, you believed it. You believed it all. So what the fuck are you going to say now?

you used to think that it was so easy

There really are no worries though. We imagine them in our heads, We have these fake conversations. We talk about anything and everything we can imagine. We scream about plans that seem so practical. We dream about lives that are so practical.

right where I belong, just hanging on

I drink myself to sleep.

In Vice, I Thrust Myself

Sometimes, I feel more obscure
than an indie snob’s entire iTunes library.
Like the ever-fading flyer
(of a band that broke up
three days after the advertised date)
taped on a paint-chipped wall,
I stand, hidden by the white noise
of (seemingly) perfectly-sculpted strangers;
of the boundless aura of my friends;
of the jukebox that never plays my songs.
(There seems to be more Ed Hardy aficionados here;
glass of Red Bull and vodka in one hand,
and a mirror to appreciate themselves in the other.)
Aside from my second shot of whiskey,
the only sensation I am feeling
is the vibrating timbre of my phone.
Nothing to get excited about, though,
it was my cell phone provider reminding me
that a payment is due by week’s end.
It is just another random evening
and I am indulging in my vice, in the hopes
that it will lead to a pleasure
beyond my fondness of the drink.
Time to order another round
and to see how the evening will progress.

©2009 José-Ariel Cuevas

ragesong

Look at the machine I loved!
How I rushed to destroy it!
Where did my love go wrong?

The girl I desired!
And then pushed away!
Where did my love go wrong?

Look at the arms that served me well!
I repaid them with scars!
Where did my love go wrong?

The home I desired!
Turned upside-down!
Where did my love go wrong?

Awkward Teenage Years or Halcyon Days

The beer in the glass goes counter-clockwise
as I swirl and swirl it some more.
I scratch the side of the pint glass,
peeling the imaginary label
off of the Guinness I am drinking.
My mind drifts past the shiftless drifters
drinking cans of Olympia and cheap scotch
and the tattooed Camel Wides-smoking indie rock priestess.
It goes further back, back into time,
and without stopping anywhere,
my mind drifts back.
Putting away the beer and stepping out for a cigarette,
I begin to wonder if my awkward teenage years
were also my halcyon days.

©2009 José-Ariel Cuevas

A Marginal Sort Outside of the Margins

I am that piece of creased paper
that drifts between your liberal guilt
and conservative reaction.
Drifting like a vagabond
with no purpose or aim,
other than to drift forward, sideways
and onward once again.
The man pushing the cart
full of smashed cans
has direction.
The woman standing at the corner,
waving a cardboard arrow
is giving directions.
Me, I walk around the long city blocks,
staring at the sun like a newly-freed convict
getting a whiff of smog-tinged freedom.
There are decisions to be made,
but all I see are rhetorical roundabouts,
and the end is the beginning.
There’s an end-times preacher
convulsing at the sight of two homosexuals
holding hands.
I smear a ketchup packet (that I somehow have)
in the center of my hands
and ran-a-shrieking across him…
screaming, “bloody miracle!”
Walking around the bend,
I see a flock of Pigeons,
and I start to think of how people
love to pigeon-hole one and all.
I start to think even further back,
at the times that both my Mexican-American--
and East Side credentials--
were called into question.
To be a full tribesman of one or the other,
there are certain catalogs one must subscribe to,
otherwise you are white-washed—
a marginal sort outside of the margins.
I might be white-washed,
but they are the ones living life
like the Man’s perception
of what it is to be a stock-footage minority.

©2009 José-Ariel Cuevas

And so it goes...

He died in a hotel room.
An empty bottle of strength and an untouched bag of cocaine.
There just wasn't any fight left in him.
There wasn't much to him at all, most any man could hold his weight.

There were a dozen unchecked messages on his phone.
At least thirty more online.
But he knew that to check them was to live.
Too strong to live and too weak to die.
The one he wanted simply wasn't there.

You could call him selfish like I did.
You could call him brave or afraid or insane.
I did.

The newspapers ran his obituary on the page where it counts.
His funeral went on without incident.
His ashes: they went into that old apple orchard where his grandfather once stood.

His father never really stood up again.
The old man just faded out in front of the television.
His mother never forgave him.
Even after the cancer ate her breath.
His brother never spoke of him again, although his fame was far greater.

There was someone who never forgot him.
Never stopped loving him.
It wasn't me, I went back to work with bills to pay and a wife waiting at home.
Our child is beautiful.