Jamiemccarthytv

Tag: darkness

  • Reoccurring Dream on Jupiter Beach

    The dream hits like a cheap shot after last call, every night, same damn thing. There he is, the poor bastard, standing on the edge of nothing, staring at the horizon where the sea meets the sky. It’s calm, too calm, like the silence before a bar fight. And then, out of nowhere, it comes—a tidal wave a mile high, a wall of watery doom.

    This isn’t some Hollywood disaster flick. No, this wave is real, raw, unfiltered. It rises with the fury of every unpaid bill, every broken promise, every lonely night spent in the bottom of a bottle. It’s the weight of existence, the crushing force of life’s relentless bullshit.

    The man, he doesn’t run. There’s no point. He stands there, rooted to the spot, like a drunk pinned by a cop’s flashlight. He knows what’s coming, knows he can’t escape it. It’s not about courage; it’s about acceptance. He’s staring down the barrel of inevitability, eyes wide open, heart pounding like a bum’s fist on a midnight diner counter.

    The wave looms, casting a shadow that swallows the sun. It roars, the sound of a million lost dreams and forgotten loves. It’s beautiful, in a way, this monstrous, all-consuming force. There’s a terrible beauty in surrender, in the recognition that fighting is futile. The wave crashes, and for a moment, everything is chaos, a swirling, suffocating mess of saltwater and despair.

    But then, there’s a strange peace. The man is engulfed, yes, but in that drowning, there’s release. No more running, no more struggling. Just the cold embrace of the inevitable. It’s over, and in the end, maybe that’s all anyone can hope for—a moment of clarity in the madness, a brief respite in the endless tide of life’s absurdity.

    Life’s a wave, kids. You can’t outrun it. You just stand there, take the hit, and hope to hell you find some meaning in the drowning.

  • Posthumously Me

    I spent nights of violence

    wrestling with demons,

    scribbling truths on napkins,

    each word a battle

    lost and won.

    The world slept

    my mind never woke

    but always awake

    the weight of existence and the absurdity of it all gave me that heavy chest

    But they never noticed,

    never cared,

    while I was here.

    I was just another voice in the din,

    a face in the crowd, but now that I’m gone,

    they sing my praises,

    laud my genius,

    hold my words like sacred relics.

    Dissect my verses, analyze my syntax,

    and claim to know the depths of my soul.

    Teach my pain in classrooms,

    quote my anguish at parties,

    a chorus of misunderstanding.

    Totally mistaking the grit and the grime,

    and the blood on the page as something I didn’t love, because it couldn’t hurt me.

    For fuck’s sake, I spent my days chasing shadows,

    grappling with the mundane,

    tied to the grindstone

    a cigarette in hand and the bottle of my solace close to empty.

    And the world oblivious and indifferent to their misinformed applause.

    Maybe the despair wasn’t so quiet, I did write with the ink of my own blood

    Screamy paper and deaf tone dreams, was all it was

    I never heard them just as they never saw me

    It’s only when I was gone, the chair was empty,

    and the light had faded,

    they came to notice me

    the brilliance in the mess,

    the truth in the madness.

    Pouring over my every word

    like holy scripture,

    seeking meaning in the chaos.

    They say my name with an unfamiliar reverence

    toast to my genius and tortured soul.

    They find beauty in the pain,

    wisdom in my godawful ramblings,

    calling me a prophet of the damned, a seer of the sordid.

    Holy fuck, are they misguided.

    It’s the cruel joke God plays on us

    for it’s not until the silence settles, and dust on the pen gets blown through the paper with the echoes of my last breath, they finally hear it.

    But they only see the surface, at best

    the pretty lies they tell themselves,

    and wrap my chaos in neat little boxes,

    polish the rough edges,

    making me a saint

    when I was always a sinner at best.

    And there it is,

    clear as a living day,

    they praise me but get it all wrong.

    They don’t know the man behind the prose

    the heart that was black and blue

    or the life that bled into those lines.

    They didn’t know me then and they cannot know me now, son.

    In death, I am god

    but not in the way that matters.

    They see the legend,

    but miss a man stumbling through the dark,

    trying to make sense of nonsense,

    searching for a spark in the ashes

    while laughing his ass off the entire ride.

  • Anything goes in Wayne County

    Anything goes in Wayne County

    ◦ Wayne County Circuit Court, Detroit, Michigan.

    If a criminal wants to commit a crime and get away with it, Wayne County Circuit Court in Detroit is the place to be. Take Aron Miranda, a 24-year-old who sold counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl, resulting in the death of a Birmingham boy. Miranda was also caught with 11 illegal firearms, cocaine, fentanyl, and a mass of pills he sold mainly through Snapchat.

    Miranda’s arrest was made by Birmingham police since the victim was from Oakland County—Detroit police were not involved. Birmingham handed Miranda over with all the evidence needed for a conviction. Yet, in a predictable turn, Wayne County dropped the ball. Despite the overwhelming evidence and serious charges, Miranda received a minor personal bond and no tether. The expectation that he would voluntarily return for his court date was naive, given his criminal background.

    Now, Miranda is a fugitive. Some believe he fled the country; others think he’s still in Detroit, continuing his criminal activities. There’s little confidence in Wayne County’s efforts to apprehend him. If you’re a criminal looking for a safe haven, Detroit seems ideal. You can sell drugs, kill people, and even if caught, walk away scot-free.

    In a city where law enforcement appears ineffective, what’s stopping criminals from flocking here? In Detroit, it seems, the line between criminal and free citizen is blurred by a justice system that fails to enforce the law.

    You don’t have to have much of an imagination to envision how vigilante’s are born……

  • Resilience

    Resilience

    I was just a piece of paper on a desk,

    blank and waiting for the ink-scars to dry

    A gust knocked me off, I spiraled, fell,

    landed on a Bukowski poem and stories of office kissing chaos.

    The cleaning crew even dumped us,

    Inside recycling bins we met The Rum Diary,

    Hunter’s ghosts mixed with mine.

    In the back of a truck,

    we joined a thousand paper lives,

    half-written notes, guilty pleasure receipts,

    paper planes from Dublin to Detroit.

    Felt the muscle of existence,

    The grit, grind and weight of every story,

    whipping fear into submission.

    The journey from umbilical cord

    to last breath.

    Transforming tears and touch, and every spill of coffee into a worn and tarnished work of art, never quite complete.

    In every recycled pile of randomness

    we found connection,

    Bukowski’s brutal honesty,

    Hunter’s wild search for meaning,

    mundane records, whimsical flights,

    proof we were here.

    Pieces of a puzzle called, resilience.

    To become resilient is to embrace the ride,

    see beyond the immediate storm,

    reflect on the scars and whispers of wisdom.

    To find out enlightenment is a space between fragility and strength

    No more than a ball cap, flipped and worn.

    Mental callus doesn’t come in a day.

    It’s born from trials, falls, and the muddled reflections in midnight whiskey.

    Staggering but eventually standing firm amid life’s gusts,

    knowing each fall is a rise, a rebirth.

    Among the papers, I learned

    the art of turning fragility into armor.

    Shaping the journey of imperfection and somehow arriving totally unfazed.

    Happy I ignored the doubters from 30 years ago that are now all dead.

    Resilience—

    is becoming

    Evolving from a drifting scrap into a grounded whole.

    Through time, experience, reflection,

    we find our place, our strength, yes. our resilience.

  • A Father’s Grit

    A Father’s Grit

    A Father’s Grit

    A father sits in a dimly lit room, cradling his grief, his heart a museum of memories.
    Conundrum portraits hang on walls, opposite sides of the room.
    He sits all too sober, wrestling demons of vengeance and angels of virtue, in a dry and colorless world of absence and abstinence, wishing for whiskey, but those days are long gone. Today, an empty glass of sorrow is casting shadows he calls good company.
    Thinking of the son, gone too soon, a story that ended mid-sentence, left him bereft with a deafening silence, unable to utter the words, choked by the excruciating lump in his throat.
    He tries to fight back with all he can muster but nothing’s as painful as the smoldering ashes of acceptance he’s left to swallow. Once happy go lucky, now lucky to catch a glimpse of happy, he looks up at the sky, doesn’t see blue, just black clouds and broken hearts that he hopes will cover up the retaliatory bomb shot he’d like to take on the Cholo who took Jack’s life.
    There’s no romance in this kind of pain, no poetic justice waiting at the end of a barrel, just a half-broken father, a fighter with a heavyweight heart, each day looking dead-eyed into the sorrow glass memories—yes, they bring tear drops, some days an ocean of sadness, others, enough to set the universe on fire.
    Dad, being from the old school, tries to hold it in, fighting the ache in his chest. Thinking of Jack, how they used to fight, side by side, in garages and rings, where blood and sweat were nuances of beautiful frames on the canvas. Now the fights are quieter, lonelier, punchy memories that jab back sharper than any right hook. There’s an art in being knocked down for the count and getting back up, but this one leaves dad sideways, like the pieces of Jack’s work that still hang on the wall, only they leave dad eternally face down, Jack’s pencil sketch interpretation of McDonagh’s movie, Locke, still dad’s favorite as he too, now driving alone, utters the same final words, “Fuck Chicago,” apropos, as he wallows through his internal prison, which, on a good day he calls, “An ode to all art and war left behind.”
    Holding an Irish rock in his hand, looking into the hag stone hole he paints in tricolor, hoping to find the answers. His brush strokes are now uppercuts, heavy, angry, and desperate. There’s no victory in this fight, no heavenly intervention, just a man, his clenched fists, and his ghosts. He stares into the bottom of his empty glass of sorrow, the boy’s face always looking back. Every day he wakes is another bell rung, another round, face to face with fate, and a middle finger from the gods he refuses to embrace. Heaves the stone through the glass he watches it shatter all over the room, walking over broken shards it occurs to Jack’s old man, he knows he no longer believes in much, but he does believe in this: the fight goes on, even if all he’s fighting is himself.

  • Mediocrity (Ignore Everything I Wrote)

    Mediocrity

    Embrace the futile pursuit of some obscure designer lingerie called Agent Provocateur because, obviously, the key to reviving a relationship is to awaken the lifeless corpse that’s been hiding under the covers for far too long.

    Lavish yourself with Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and the overt indulgent, creepy pedophiles at Balenziaga because materialism cures all existential despair, right? Oh, and don’t forget that iPhone 15 that never leaves the clutches of your carpal tunnel-afflicted hands, a sheer masterpiece of exploitation, crafted by modern-day sorcerer children in a sauna they call an office somewhere in a COVID-infested Chinese cellar.
    Stick it nonchalantly into your coat pocket, ignoring empathy and instead celebrating the evolution of a digitally connected sixth finger that you might as well shove up your ass before the whole shit house goes nuclear.
    Of course, we mustn’t neglect the holy trinity of social media: TikTok, SNAPCHAT, and Instagram – the ultimate trifecta of meaningless validation. Spew the vile yet mundane nothingness of your existence, writing paragraph upon paragraph in excruciating detail because nothing says ‘I’m alive’ like sharing your breakfast choices, bowel movements, and Cinnabon recipes, even if it means ignoring the glaring truth that no one gives a fuck.
    And, while you’re scrolling through the virtual assembly line of wall to wall shit, stalk ex-flames, comparing their train wrecks to your dumpster fire while subconsciously hoping for any flicker of validation.
    Get a tattoo that reads “personal privacy is for losers” as you realize all of humanity is just an Excel sheet of cold data… then get on Snapchat in hopes of squashing that mountain of anxiety growing in your chest, only to score some cheap, counterfeit Xanax made by a slimy Sinaloa cartel terrorist who’s loaded it with enough Fentanyl to wipe out an entire sorority.
    And then, in an act of pure disassociation and impulse, embrace your inner stand-up comedian, by joking about sensitive topics you scream out-loud in overcrowded elevators, “not a single fucking life matters, so why not get the abortion, or don’t, have that tax write off and let the baby change its gender when she turns four”
    Hope you get canceled because nothing’s funnier than human suffering with no hope of redemption.
    Reinvent historical events, or better yet, pretend they never happened, especially if they don’t fit the lie of your twisted narrative.
    Embrace losing yourself in the maze of a 9-to-5 cubicle farm that slowly crushes the soul from those hipster sneakers you once bought for 12 dollars at a flea market. All while telling yourself, ‘see, I’m not shallow .’
    And pass this legacy of despair down to your children because suffering is a family heirloom, after all.
    Cherish your unfulfilled promises as they gather dust alongside the mantel of participation trophies and shattered dreams.
    Bask in the glow of your own repeated failures like a moth drawn to the same broken lightbulb.
    Observe the déjà vu of history because originality is overrated, and everything new is just something old and forgotten.
    Embrace that you’re merely, at best, below average, hide your tears with a smile, kiss your loved ones goodbye, one disappointment at a time.
    Fade away into obscurity, bit by bit, until you’re nothing but a distant memory to your own mother.
    Fall in love with this joke, this depressing carnival of life, and embrace every last ounce of mediocrity straight to the grave.

  • Unconscious and Entitled

    Unconscious and Entitled

    In a dimly lit room, with the flicker of a single, dying light bulb overhead and the hum of the city’s night leaking through the cracked window, there it sits—the essence of a world spoiled to its very core, marinated in its self-entitled glory. It’s an American tradition, not the kind bound by the pages of history books or celebrated with fireworks, but the kind you see in the glazed eyes of the too-many, wandering through their days like kings of a forgotten kingdom, unaware of the ground beneath them or the sky above.

    The streets are filled with the sounds of their discontent, a chorus so constant it blends into the backdrop of daily life. “The wifi’s too slow,” they cry, in cafes where the coffee beans have traveled further than their complaints ever will. “There’s nothing good on Netflix”, they moan, flipping through a thousand channels on their flat screens that glow like false moons in their too-big houses. They drive cars that could feed families for months, to jobs they say suck the soul from their bones, not pausing to think of those who sift through bones for a meal.

    This great American spoilage, it’s not just in the things they have but in the air they breathe, taken for granted like the last cigarette in a pack, smoked without thought or care for where the next might come from. It’s in the way they view the world, through lenses tinted with convenience, unable to see the beauty in struggle, or the strength it takes to simply survive in places where the ground is harder, the water scarcer, and the sky a luxury afforded only to the dreamers.

    They throw words like “hardship” and “struggle” into conversations like loose change, not knowing the weight of those coins in pockets other than their own. They speak of rights as if they were the only ones to have them, blind to the fact that for some, rights are not a given without a battle fought every day.

    And yet, amidst this spoiled landscape, there are those who see, truly see, the absurdity of it all. They’re the ones that nod to one another in passing, those who understand that to appreciate the light, you must also know the dark. But they are the whispers in a storm of shouts, the flickers of truth in a sea of contented ignorance.

    So here’s to the spoiled, the entitled, the blissfully unaware—may you one day find the beauty in a single blade of grass, the wealth in a shared meal, the fortune in a breath of air without having to experience some godawful tragedy in order to gain perspective.

    Until then, the world waits, not so patiently, for you to regain consciousness and see the value of looking passed your sixth finger, which is now a mobile device, a screen serving as a detour to personal hell. We’re anxious for you to wake up and see that while the American Dream may have always been a nightmare, there’s so much still out there, sprawled out like a roadmap of a million smiley faces, waiting to be titillated , waiting to be traveled and truly seen.

  • Navigating Grief And Creativity

    Navigating Grief And Creativity

    THE EDGE

    In the chaotic and often unforgiving realm of life, where creativity intersects with the raw edges of grief, I’ve found myself adrift in a sea of unimaginable loss. The sudden departure of Jack, my vibrant 19-year-old son, whose potential was extinguished by a sinister and lethal counterfeit pill, has left me grappling with a reality so cruel, it not only threatens to consume my every moment but worse, anyone who might happen to cross me. This tragedy, born from a moment of youthful anxiety and a fatal trust in the shadows of social media, has forced me into a daily confrontation with sorrow so profound, it challenges the essence of my existence.

    How does one navigate the professional world when every morning begins with a brutal reminder of what has been lost? How do I muster the strength to engage with my creative passions when my heart is besieged by despair? The answer, paradoxically, lies in the wisdom imparted to me by my father, a lesson in the delicate balance of care and detachment: “Sometimes you have to care enough to know not to care too much.” This philosophy, akin to stoicism or perhaps a form of self-preservation, has become my mantra, allowing me to don a mask and cape, not as a disguise, but as armor against the vulnerabilities that threaten to undermine my resolve.

    My work, in the aftermath of Jack’s untimely death, has transformed. Not because the pain has fueled my creativity, but because in the face of absolute loss, fear and stress have lost their grip on me. There is a certain liberation in confronting the worst that life can offer; what once seemed like insurmountable pressures now pales in comparison to the weight of my grief. It is not delusion but a profound shift in perspective that guides me. In this state of heightened clarity, I immerse myself in the creative process, channeling my energies with unfettered focus, dedicating a full 120% of myself to the task at hand.

    Yet, this intense dedication to my craft is not without its counterbalance. Each day concludes with a ritualistic shedding of the day’s emotional armor. I retreat to the gym, where I spend hours channeling my anguish into physical exertion, a therapeutic release that allows me to confront the next day with renewed strength.

    This cycle of creativity and catharsis has become my lifeline, a means of navigating the treacherous waters of grief while clinging to the remnants of passion that define my existence. It isn’t just about me that I write this, it is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, a reminder that even in our most vulnerable moments, we are capable of extraordinary feats.

    Influenced by the grit of William Burroughs, the spirit of Hunter S Thompson, and the heart of Rocky Balboa or David Goggins, I own the mental zoo in my head and that’s how I show up. And, it is this raw vulnerability and a poignant embrace of life’s absurdities, I share this journey. It is a narrative steeped in pain but underscored by a fierce determination to persevere, to create amidst the ruins of loss, and to find meaning in the act of survival. This is not just my story, but a reflection of the universal struggle to find light in the darkest of times, to transform sorrow into something profoundly beautiful and powerful. So, if you find yourself frazzled in your own thoughts, most likely steeped in doubt or nagging worry, you can flip the script and change the movie in your mind by simply looking inward for a moment, digging deep for some gratitude, like the 19 amazing years I did get with Jack, then take a deep breath and put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Go. Go.