Gratitude isn’t a hymn or a handshake. It’s a bruise you press to remember you survived. A quiet mutter to the chaos for sparing you—this time. It’s outliving a child but remembering the magical brilliance he brought you in just 19 years.
It’s not for the gods, the gurus, or the grifters. They’ve taken enough. Gratitude lives in the cracked things: the last drink in the bottle, the skulled wedge that hits the flag at 100mph and drops in the hole, the night that didn’t kill you.
Keep it small. Keep it sharp. Fold it in your pocket like a cheap map out of hell. And remember, you’ve been beaten but not defeated.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
