Jamiemccarthytv

Tag: father

  • Heavenly Invasion

    The gods—you can choose to listen or not, but you will hear me.

    God. A silence that leaves me sideways, and it makes no difference if all I get is indifference. I look up into the grey void, a guttural scream shaking the earth—

    “Where the fuck are you, you cruel bastard!”

    He pretends not to listen, like I’ve got my proverbial head in the clouds, but he knows. Knows what it’s like to lose a son. Knows the emptiness, the gut punch, the 24/7, 365-day guillotine choke around my throat.

    And if God is everywhere, like they say, then when I escape to meet Jack in a dream, that means he’s under the bed, listening. Listening to the cracks in my heart clattering onto the mattress.

    Is he sorry?

    I don’t give a damn. And I sure as hell won’t bother with a plea—I’ve been on my knees long enough.

    So, consider this a declaration. A warning.

    Grief blackened my heart, changed its beat—forever pounding out some new twisted rhythm of madness.

    My plan? To invade heaven.

    A place I once questioned, but this loss—this hole where my son should be—has me lacing up my boots, ready to stomp through those golden streets, kick down every door in the happy hunting ground until I find what he took from me.

    Is this war? Doesn’t have to be.

    But Dylan Thomas said, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night.’

    Well, fuck that.

    I won’t go quietly into anything. Not the night. Not the silence. And sure as hell not into some pearly-gated bullshit where I’m expected to nod along like a good little ghost.

    So when I come knocking, when I tear through those gates with grief as my war drum, you better be ready.

    Because I won’t leave without him.

     

  • The Church of the Ever-Righteous

    They gather in the town square, mouths full of scripture, hands empty of work.

    Every sentence is a sermon, every action a performance.

    You will believe in their goodness, they will make sure of it.

    They wear their suffering like designer clothes,

    tailored just right,

    sized for engagement,

    hemmed with validation.

    Benevolence, once a quiet thing, is now screamed through megaphones,

    echoing through algorithms,

    pinging off the glass walls of their own reflection.

    They don’t just do good—they need you to see it.

    Their kindness comes with a receipt,

    their outrage is for sale.

    They weep on cue,

    bleed on demand,

    call it a revolution,

    but it’s just another round of applause.

    They kneel in the ashes of causes they do not understand,

    building careers from the rubble,

    raising monuments to their own empathy,

    carved from the bones of whatever is trending.

    They claim to be warriors.

    But their battles are fought from ergonomic chairs,

    their weapons are hashtags,

    their victories are hollow.

    You meet them in the streets, and they are nothing.

    No light behind their eyes,

    no depth to their words,

    just echoes of whatever sells.

    And when the wind shifts,

    they shift with it,

    abandoning the wreckage,

    moving on to the next great cause,

    leaving only footprints in the dust

    and a trail of discarded convictions.

    But oh, how they glow.

    How they shine.

    How they bask in the warmth of their own virtue

    until the next fire needs fuel.

    And maybe, just maybe,

    this whole rant is its own flashing signal.

    Maybe I’ve stitched my own sermon together with rusted nails

    and tacked it to the same town square.

    Maybe my pulpit is just a little lower,

    my righteousness a little filthier.

    But at least I know I’m a sinner,

    and if I had the chance to sin again,

    I’d double down,

    call it an esoteric form of discipline,

    and light a candle for my own damnation.

  • THAT WHICH CANNOT BE EXPLAINED

    The earth shrugs, and a fault line splits a city in two.

    A rock, smooth from centuries of wind and rain, decides today is the day it falls, crushing a man who never missed Sunday mass.

    A wildfire starts in the bones of a dead tree, the wind carrying its laughter across acres of homes and history.

    Somewhere in the ocean, something ancient rolls over in its sleep, and the tides rise just enough to erase a coastline.

    No explanation. No reason. Just the universe twitching in its sleep.

    And then there are the other things. The ones written in history books with footnotes that lead nowhere.

    The bodies that vanish.

    The wars that start because someone blinked at the wrong time.

    The lone gunman that wasn’t so alone.

    The flag that was still  there, an anti-gravity, star bangled banner still waving. 

    The numbers that don’t add up, the footage that disappears, the coincidences that stack too neatly to be random but too scattered to be anything else.

    We shake our fists at the sky, but the sky never bothers to look down.

    And then there’s this—the real question, the only one that matters to me. 

    Jack.

    Why Jack?

    Not the dealer, not the smug piece of shit pushing poison for profit.

    Not the ones who make money off of death while dressed in white coats.

    Not the fucking grinning death merchants in boardrooms, approving a new batch of slow, quiet execution.

    But Jack?

    Why him? Why that night?

    Why that second, that breath, that choice?

    The tectonic plates shift and ask questions but they don’t answer.

    The fire roars, but it doesn’t explain.

    The rock doesn’t whisper a reason as it falls.

    I wake up every day, expecting the answer to be written on the ceiling, in the cracks in the paint, in the coffee, in the way the wind moves the leaves.

    Anything.

    I don’t even need it to be the full answer. Just a hint. 

    But all I get is silence.

    And silence is the loudest fucking thing in the world.

    But, somehow today I am temporarily at peace, it may not be the answer, but fuck, at least it’s not another question. 

  • Last Man Standing

    I walk into a bar.

    Not a “mixology lounge,”

    not a “craft cocktail experience,”

    just a bar.

    A place where the stools wobble

    and the whiskey doesn’t need a citrus garnish or an approval rating.

    I take a seat.

    The bartender nods.

    He knows.

    I don’t ask for a menu.

    Don’t scan a QR code.

    I say “club soda and cranberry, neat,”

    because I’m here to rehydrate,

    not curate an experience.

    To my left, a guy swirls a drink

    that looks like it was made in a science lab.

    A woman to my right stares at her phone, checking for notifications that will never make her happy.

    The TV plays a fight.

    Real men bleed on the screen.

    No one apologizes for it.

    I exhale.

    “You good?” the bartender asks.

    “Better now.”

    Outside this bar,

    the world is drenched in apologies.

    Men say “sorry” before they speak.

    Before they order a steak.

    Before they hold a door open.

    Before they exist.

    They bend over backwards, twist themselves into apologetic pretzels just to prove they’re not like the bad ones.

    They’re “safe.”

    They’re “allies.”

    They’re “good men.”

    And in doing so, they’ve traded self-respect for a participation trophy in male guilt. And, potentially given the obvious away, these men aren’t trustworthy. Shakespeare would tell you same.  

    I refuse to participate in the virtue game. Maybe it’s better to let them know you are recovering.  Healing the guilt that comes with being masculine. Some would call it barbarism, I call it, science. 

    A woman sits next to me.

    “You alone?” she asks.

    “No, I came with my emotional support group.

    We just broke for snacks.”

    She smirks.

    A real one.

    Not a “haha, I hate you but you’re paying” kind of smirk.

    A flicker of genuine intrigue.

    She orders a drink.

    A real one.

    Not a “pink nonsense in a mason jar.”

    Not a “statement piece for Instagram.”

    I raise an eyebrow.

    “What, no oat milk?”

    She laughs.

    I laugh.

    And for a moment,

    we exist in a world before the noise.

    Before men became house-trained.

    Before attraction was a liability.

    Before everything we said

    needed a disclaimer.

    A world where men led,

    women challenged,

    and neither needed a corporate webinar to explain the difference.

    Outside, the world keeps spinning.

    The New Age Man is still waiting

    for permission to be masculine.

    The Diversity Committee is still

    conducting witch trials in the break room. And the Virtue Hustlers are still selling rebellion at a markup.

    Last man standing

    But me?

    I finish my drink,

    tip my bartender,

    and walk out into the night,

    unapologetic.

  • HOPE IS A LIAR

    footsteps in the hall
    a trick of the tired mind
    hope is a liar

    #jackiemac4ever

  • HELL IN THE CRACKS

    Life splits in two the second you lose a child. There’s before and there’s after. Before was seven hours and nineteen minutes in a dark theater, the entire Nolan, Batman trilogy in a single sitting and you grinning at me through a mouthful of Sour Patch Kids, teeth glowing like a jack-o’-lantern in the dim light. It was frozen Coke dripping down your wrist because you held the cup too tight during the fight scenes. It was Whittaker and Romero 2, the roar of Chicago, the way you practically floated when Dana White grabbed you for a picture—your grin telling me, This is it. You’re doing it right. It was those goddamn short films, half-baked ideas and duct-taped props, where we didn’t care if they were good because it was us making them. Father and son, building something real out of nothing.

    And then came after. That call. That fucking call. In some dead Indiana parking lot that stank of piss and stale cigarettes, the sky too blank, too indifferent. The words didn’t make sense, not at first. I just stood there, the phone slipping from my hand, staring at the cracks in the pavement as if my soul was spilling through every jagged line. And then, smashing my forehead over and over on that torn concrete until the blood seeped into the cracks, following my soul into the void. That was the moment I learned what real hell is. It’s not fire or pitchforks or devils; it’s standing in the middle of nowhere knowing the only thing that mattered is gone. It’s remembering the grin you gave me in that theater and knowing I’ll never see it again. It’s the torture of memory—every golden moment tipped with barbs now, gutting me every time I dare to look back.

    And then there’s him. The dealer. The worthless, bottom-feeding coward who handed you that poisoned pill—a devil in a hoodie, trading death for pocket change. I see his face in my dreams, over and over again. I imagine all the ways I could make him bleed, suffer, break. My hands on his throat, squeezing until one of his eyes pops out and he’s gasping for air while I laugh and squeeze harder, just enough for him to feel what he’s taken from me. I want him to feel it—the endless, searing agony of a father who’s lost his son. I imagine cutting his fingers off with his own wire cutters so he can never hand over another fentanyl-laced counterfeit pill, leaving him as useless as the soul he sold long ago.

     

    But then comes the letdown. Sanity slipping back in, a bitter taste of restraint that almost feels like defeat. Because vengeance is useless. It won’t bring you back. It won’t undo the call, or the parking lot, or the crack in my soul that will never close. And yet, the thought of him walking free, dealing death to someone else’s kid, keeps me up at night. That rage is the only fire I’ve got left, the only thing keeping the void from swallowing me whole.

     

    So I rage. I dream of blood. And I write it all down because it’s the only way to survive another day in purgatory. This is the after. It’s torture. It’s rage. It’s love twisted into something unrecognizable. It’s the weight of what could’ve been, dragging me toward the grave. And still, I wake up every day wishing, screaming, dreaming for a world where you were still here.

     

    Read by James McCarthy

  • Ghosts in a cheap room

    Ghosts in a cheap room


    my old man was tough but I wouldn’t call him a bastard,
    rough hands, stentorian voice,
    but it was those eyes, they were odd in a beautiful yet chilling way , the way he’d stare right
    through me, like he already knew the end.
    he checked out early, left me holding the bag—
    a kid too young to know the game was rigged.
    I got older, meaner, learned to drink it down,
    fill the empty spaces with smoke and bad decisions,
    but nothing ever took root, just ashes in a cheap ashtray.
    then my boy, Jack
    all bright-eyed, all promise and fire, went cold at nineteen.
    like he was never even here.
    one day laughing, the next day gone,
    As if the most beautiful ghost ever decided to punch my gut and keep walking.
    so now it’s just me, an old man stuck between
    some past that’s long dead and a future that’s already given up.
    they talk about the Father, the Son, and some Holy Ghost—
    but what do they know about ghosts?
    all I got are dead men’s whispers
    and shadows that follow me from room to room.
    maybe I’m the ghost now,
    some sober, leftover thing, wandering between bad memories and worse nights,
    waiting for that final bell to ring me out.
    but until then, I’ll keep dreaming of drinking
    the cheap whiskey that almost drown me,
    chewing the lousy cigarettes I cannot light
    and telling those ghosts to fuck off—
    because it’s all just a bad joke , a hit—
    and I am the punchline.