Rhapsody in Black

I watch from afar. You make it easy. You not only live your lives in the spotlight, you struggle and claw your way to get to the spot that makes you the most visible. It's no wonder I can sometimes barely keep from laughing. I sit among your devoted, making myself to appear as one of them. Make no mistake; I am not. They cheer for you and clamor for you and call out your names. They love you. There is no love here. Not for you.

You make yourselves out to be so strong. You're not like the others. The 'normal ones.' They're ordinary. Frail. Weak. You deserve their adulation for being so much stronger than them. Perhaps. But stronger than those who are ordinary is no great achievement. You pose and flex, you deify yourselves. They feed into it. And the more they feed you the attention you can't help but seek, the weaker they make you. The more succeptible you are when one of us comes along who can see you for who and what you are.

You aren't stars in front of an adoring crowd. You're lemmings, waiting to jump to your death in front of a bloodthirsty camera crew. You may think I'm here to save you. I'm only here to get my amusement from you before the lot of you destroy yourselves. At the end of the day, these people can have you. I'm content with watching. But not before I've had my fun. Public execution is fine, but they lack...imagination.

This is not some self-aggrandizing, egomaniacal call to arms. I have no intention and no interest in anything large scale. I'm a simple sort of man. I merely eat what's on my plate, I don't take my fork and knife to the whole buffet. I do the job in front of me, and for now that job is the ACW. I know for a fact that at least some of you in the ACW are reading this, so I feel I should tell you that whatever expectations you have of me, they are wrong.

I'm sure you've been lulled by men coming in saying they will take you over. They'll go straight to the top. Maybe I could, but there's really nothing in it for me. I'm here for fun. Not achievements, fame, accolades, or even the spirit of competition. Fun. At the expense of your idyllic little existance. You've been living in a dream. I'm here to bring you nightmares.

Happy Music for Happy People

Here Comes a Regular

The bacon is still hissing on the plate, he smiles at her through the mix of smoke from his ash tray and steam from the coffee. His regular waitress sets down the plate as she smiles back. He coughs rather loudly as she walks away to get her attention. She grins to herself; she'd been waiting for this. She hides her grin and turns back to face him. He asks what time she gets off work.

Later that night she dusts off the last table and turns off all the lights. A shadow moves across the wall in front of her. She jumps and turns around. She lets out a sigh of relief; it's him. She holds up a finger to tell him to hold on and she darts to the back. She shuts off the last of the lights and walks back to the door, keys in hand. She unlocks the door and slinks past him, deliberately brushing against his coat as she locks the door and coyly backs away from him as they walk off into the night.

The owners are puzzled by her absence the next day. She hasn't taken so much as a sick day before. They call, but no answer. They shrug it off for the time being; she's probably under the weather. The next day she isn't there. Another waitress swings by her apartment, but it's empty. They put a "help wanted sign" on the window. It takes a few weeks but eventually they take it back down.

He takes his usual table. A waitress from a different shift has it now. He cocks his head at her, making sure she notices, but says nothing except to order his food and coffee. When it arrives he asks about his regular waitress. She tells him she left, and gives her dimestore novel theory about her running off with some wealthy socialite from the city. It takes everything he has to keep himself from laughing.

Scarlet billows start to spread

Wonderful are the hellish experiences...

The Devil Made the World While God Was Sleeping

Judas always got a bad rap. People use him as a negative frame of reference. He betrayed Jesus, he sold him out for his 30 silver, and all that. I even remember once seeing a cartoon about Jesus around Christmas or Easter that portrayed Judas as a money-grubbing asshole. If ever there was a guy treated unfairly by history, it's Judas. If anything, Judas deserves as much respect as Jesus. Sure, Jesus had the higher status, but that only matters if you care about status. Which I don't.

The whole basis of Christianity is what they did to Jesus. The religion as a whole, whether Roman-Catholic, Arian, Protestant, et cetera, was built around his sacrifice. It’s supposed to be the greatest sacrifice ever made for humanity. He died on the cross for our sins. Then, 2 days later, not 3 unless they used a different calendar, he rose from the dead. Huge miracle, that. He rose from the dead, had the holes in his hands, hung around to show people he was back, and then ascended to heaven.And that’s where it gets me. Let’s assume that Jesus was who Christianity says he was. He wasn’t just ignorant to what he was, he knew who and what he was. The son of God. And, as such, he knew what was going to happen to him, he knew he was gonna get crucified, he was gonna die at the hands of those he was trying to save. It’s all very sad. But…then he goes to heaven. For eternity. And he knew this, too. This…this is where I start having problems with it. Because the whole dread surrounding death, for every human no matter how devout, is that ultimate uncertainty. We can believe what will happen after we die, but you never know. Jesus knew. He didn’t have that little bit of doubt that every human throughout existence has had. He didn’t have the issue with death that we all have. Not only that, but he knew he was going to heaven. He made his sacrifice with full, doubtless knowledge that he was going to get the reward of all rewards when he was done. Now, who wouldn’t go through 12 hours of blinding torture if you knew THAT was headed your way? Greatest sacrifice ever made? Maybe. But maybe not.

Then…we also have Judas. Judas is supposedly the ultimate sinner. He betrayed Jesus, and was indirectly responsible for his ultimate demise. Yeah, so? That means he was also indirectly responsible for the central event of the whole of Christianity. Had Judas not done what he did, it’s possible that there would be no crucifixion. Not of Jesus at least. He was part of the plan because he was needed; both for God’s plan and that of Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin. And, if you go by certain unearthed texts of the bible, not only did he play a vital and central role in the creation of Christianity, he did so at the behest of Jesus himself. Hell, even if you only go by the bible, Judas was nigh his right hand man. So Judas does what has to be done. Then, out of pure unabashed grief and regret, he hangs himself. Sure, a probably hell-worthy trespass, but so is murder, and Moses went to heaven. Judas, if you read into ANY Christian mythology, is at the lowest most torturous spot in Hell. For, basically, doing what had to be done. For doing God’s will. Because God sent Jesus to be crucified. Judas did what had to be done, played a more active role in the crucifixion than even Jesus himself who just sat there and took punishment and alleged betrayal, and got punished for it. The ultimate punishment. Now there’s some loss for you. So, really, didn’t Judas make just as big a sacrifice towards Christianity as Jesus? He did what God wanted him to do and got sent to Hell for it. Jesus did the same thing and gets an eternity of ultimate bliss.

The question becomes, what makes a sacrifice? I think there has to be a certain sense of loss. Jesus lost nothing. Yeah, he died, but he didn’t have that stigma about death, why should he care about dying. Yeah, he was tortured, but all life is suffering. He died and went to heaven. He died for our sins, but he ultimately lost nothing. And if there’s no loss, is there really a sacrifice? Why is it that Jesus gets praise and deification (in the less literal sense) and glory when Judas is the one who lost everything? I can only assume that the people who looked back on the situation and wrote about it never felt loss a day in their life. Sure, you could say that one could be rewarded for their sacrifice, and Jesus' glory and hallelujas are his reward, but isn't a sacrifice greater if there is no reward? Who's the more altruistic person, the one who turns in the wallet for the reward money or the one who does it because it's the right thing to do? Who deserves more praise? You do something for the greater good, that's all that matters. Jesus did this, but so did Judas. If nothing else, it puts them on equal ground, because at the end of the day, those actions toward something better and bigger than any of us are all that matter. Even if what has to be done is something horrible.

Cast a long shadow on the ground.

something went wrong

Growing up there was this dirt road a few blocks from my house. It went about a half a mile into the woods and led to a big farm house. The first time I saw it, it was already burned out. Whisps of soot jutted out from the shattered remains of the windows and clung to the outside walls. Entire sections of the exterior were missing. The door was off of its hinges, lying in splinters on the floor. Baseball sized dents littered the outer-side of it. Some of them were still stained red from the blood.


I don't know who it was that lived there back when the house was inhabitable. I know it was a family, that they had a kid. There was a child's bedroom. An infant; the crib was left behind, tipped over and broken. The few bits of the wall that were there and weren't charred black had the remnants of the nursery wallpaper. Drawers were flung open, tiny clothes strewn about. The toybox was half-emptied.

The pictures are something that stuck in my mind. The bedroom floor was littered with them. Some in tact, most of them at least partially burned. The biggest pile was next to the bed. Next to the bottle. There were some that were torn in half. Polaroids that were crumpled. You can't tear Polaroids. Not by hand. The pictures were the thing I went back to most when I went to the house. Everything seemed frantic; the child's clothes, the rotted and charred food lying on the floor in front of the refridgerator, the luggage with half of it missing, but the pictures... the pictures looked unhurried.

The first time I went there, nothing sunk in. "What a cool burned out house" thought a young, immature version of me. Every time I went back, though, the details began to stand out. I kept going back, and for a while I never told anybody where I was going. I was just another kid running around the neighborhood, off on summer vacation or spring break. I don't know why I never told anybody, why I thought I had to keep it a secret. But I did. It was a secret. And it was mine. It wasn't until I was older, and by absences were more conspicuous, that I told them about the house. And that was when I asked what exactly happened.

The question got cautious glances between my parents. They didn't say. But by then they didn't have to. The "who"s and "why"s were irrelevant to me. The house told me more than enough. Everything about the house said it was build by hand. The framed pictures, the child's bedroom, the bedroom with the bed big enough for two, but not big enough for them to be very far apart, the patch out back that must have been a garden, and a hundred other details said that it was an idyllic home. And the clothes and toys and things strewn from the front door to the gravel driveway like branches after a storm said that something went wrong.

I only went to the house once more after I talked to my parents about the house. I spent the better part of the day there, but as I walked toward the door I didn't feel anything compelling me to stay, or to come back. As I walked out the door and carefully descended the porch stairs, now completely falling apart, I noticed something that hadn't yet caught my eye. One of the child's shoes was there on the ground in front of the bottom step. I crouched down, reaching out to touch it, but I didn't. I just walked away. A few years ago I heard they were going to tear it down.

Dylan said it best.

Things are crashing down
She's all too tight
In my neighborhood
She cried both day and night
I know it because it was there

It's a milestone
But she's down on her luck
And the day makes her lonely
But to make it hard to buck, now and then

I believe that she'd stop him
If she would start to care
I believe that she'd look upon
His side that used to care
And I'd go by the Lord
Anywhere she's on my way
But I don't belong there

No I don't belong to her
I don't belong to any body
She's my Christ-forsaken angel
But she don't hear me cry
She's a lone-hearted mystic
And she can't carry on
When I'm there, she's all right
But she's not when I'm gone

Heaven knows that the answer
She don't calling no one
She's the way, forsaken beauty
For she's mine, for the one
And I lost her, hesitation
By temptation as it runs
But she don't holler me
But I'm not there, I'm gone

Now I'll cry tonight
Like I cried the night before
And I'm knees on the hassle
But I'll dream about the door
It's so long, she's forsaken
By her faith, worse to tell
It don't have contonation
She smiles, fare thee well

Now when I treat to leave 'er
I was born to love her
But she knows that the kingdom awaits
So high above her
And I run a better race
But it's not too fast still
But I don't perceive her
I'm not there, I'm gone

Well it's all about diffusion
And I cry for her veil
I don't need anybody now
Beside me to tell
And it's all affirmation
I receive but it's not
She's a lone-hearted beauty
But she don't like a spot
And she calls

Yeah, she's gone like the rain
Below the shining yesterday
But now she's home beside me
And I'd like her here to stay
She's a lone, forsaken beauty
And it don't trust anyone
And I wish I was beside her
But I'm not there, I'm gone

Well, it's too hard to stay here
And I don't want to leave
It's so bad, for so few
See, but she's a heart too hard to need
It's alone, it's a crime
The way she mauls me around
But she don't fall to hate me
But tears are gone, a painted clown

Yes, I believe that it's rightful
Oh, I believe it in my mind
I've been told like I said one night before
Carry on the cryin'
And the sole gypsy told her
Like I said, carry on
I wish I was there to help her
But I'm not there, I'm gone