Can I Get There From Here?

Breaking point.

I have a chance to rebuild an entire life. I do. But god does it take time. Nothing comes easy, and let me tell you, when you hit rock bottom you do not bounce back up. You live in ratty clothes, fucked up shoes, no account jackets and pullovers. You have to because you ain't got much else to cover your ass.

Shit. I'm low, and I know it. I wanted to be here...to tell you the truth, I wanted to be here. I felt that I did everyone wrong in my past. I destroyed so much previously that I needed forgiveness...from myself. Further, I'm not sorry that I'm here. I'm not sorry for myself. I think that the man that emerged from all of this fire, all of this shit, is a better man.

My favorite question to people is: How can a man pass through fire and emerge from the other side unscathed? The answer...he CAN'T. There is little that I can promise, little that I can do. I want to work on me. ME. I don't want to go back to the computer networking shit. I'm sick of that shit. It's as mad as the cables that we run, or the systems we manage. I'm not that man anymore.

But then the question remains: What man am I??

I am a man that is in knowledge of self. A lot of men can't make that claim. Sorry, but they can't. They are stuck in lives that they can't control, or that they've given up control of. I'm not shitting on them, lord knows, I was one before I was foolish enough to lose my job. That's right....I was a fucking fool. Too stupid to get it right, and was booted on my ass. I woke up on the streets after I was awakened in Port Authority without my duffle bag carrying all of the shit from my old life. My paperwork, photos, SHIT my shirts and slacks!! I had almost everything I ever had left, and that shit was taken from me. NOW, all I had was the clothes on my back.

Try that shit. Try it. Leave your homes, walk away from your friends and family, take everything that you deem valuable. Take....wait...stop...make a list of the TEN...shit, I'll be generous...TWENTY things that you can fit in a duffle bag and hit the streets with them. HIT IT. And then a month into homelessness...lose that shit too. LOSE IT. Then tell me I can't bitch.

Then have no place to shower, no place to groom. No place to wash your ass. No place to take a shit that's your own. Go that route for two years and tell me how that must feel. No, I'm not that man I was before. I can't be. I can't fit that mold anymore. I'm pushed too far through the extrusion die. I"m fucked up.

I know that I am a man. I know that I am capable of so much more. But now...it has to be on my terms. Now it has to deal with me. Why should I accept anything less. Why should I do anything that I don't want to do? I'm waiting right now on a bum ticker. I'm waiting on a wired life. I'm waiting and I'm taking the time to rebuild me. To put me back together. I'm not trying to do anything special. I don't want to be the flashy bullshit that I was before. I don't need the suits, the clothes, the shit. I want to be Joe normal. I want to be Stooky McBastard. I want to be free!!!!

I'm a poet now. I'm a rat shit. I write for a living. Well I fucking write...I don't make a living...big joke, huh? I don't put together shit for Thomson.... whoops... Wall Street. I'm free to do what I want to do. Which is to read poetry, to write shit, and to live a life I want to live.

I want to be a better man now. I want to stay away from my old companions until I make something of myself, but shit- that shit doesn't happen overnight. That shit takes time. A lot of time and a lot of patience, and a helluvah lot of work. I think I have it though.

I hope I have it.

I can't give up now. I just can't. I have to move forward. I just have to.

If anyone disagrees with me...stick all of your shit in a duffle bag.

And then throw it out of a window

Hallelujah

Hobobob