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Tag: jackmccarthy

  • Five Years

    Five Years

    #jackiemac4ever

    Five years.

    That number doesn’t belong next to your name.

    You were nineteen.

    You were funny and reckless and loyal and stubborn and alive in that enormous way young men are alive when they still believe there is an endless supply of tomorrow.

    You should be 24 now.

    There should be more photographs.
    More bad decisions.
    More stories I haven’t heard yet.

    More Jack and Dad concerts, UFC Events, and more “I love you, Jackie—“I love you too, Dad”
    More people who know you who haven’t even met you yet.

    Instead, there is this strange arithmetic the world expects us to accept:

    September 25, 2021.

    Five years.

    As though time has anything to do with it.

    I don’t want today to be about how Jack died.

    I want it to be about the fact that Jack lived.

    He walked into rooms.
    He made people laugh.
    He pissed people off.
    He loved.
    He fought.
    He had plans.
    He had terrible ideas.
    He had good ones.

    He had magical energy, if you knew him, you know.

    He was somebody’s friend.
    Somebody’s teammate.
    Samantha’s brother.
    Kathy’s son.
    My son.

    He was here.

    He was HERE.

    And nineteen years of a human life should never be reduced to the worst few minutes of it.

    So I won’t give those minutes any more of him today.

    I’ll just say this:

    I remember everything.

    Including the name of the person who put that poison in his hands.

    But that name doesn’t belong here.

    This space belongs to Jack.

    It always will.

    Jack McCarthy
    March 16, 2002 — September 25, 2021

    Still loved.
    Still spoken.
    Still here in every way that matters.

    #jackiemac4ever

  • Tailored by Damage

    What’s the oldest things you’re wearing today?

    We earn what’s worn.

    What’s the oldest thing I’m wearing today?

    Not the boots.
    Not the jacket.
    Not the watch pretending time means anything.

    It’s the uneasy stomach.
    The golf ball lodged in the throat.
    The cracked heart stitched together with bad sleep, caffeine and whatever people call “moving on.”

    Those are old.
    Ancient, really.

    Hand-tailored over years by loss, disappointment, memory, guilt, love and the quiet observations you never talk about out loud because everyone else is busy performing wellness like it’s an Olympic sport.

    I wear old conversations that never ended properly.
    Old funerals.
    Old versions of myself I buried but still hear scratching around under the floorboards at 2 a.m.

    None of it was designed by me.

    It was made for me.

    By every slammed door.
    Every hospital hallway.
    Every “I’m fine” that wasn’t.
    Every moment you realized the world keeps spinning with horrifying confidence no matter what it takes from you.

    That’s the oldest thing I’m wearing today.

    And somehow, against all logic, it still fits.

  • I Almost Tattooed Rage on My Face

    I Almost Tattooed Rage on My Face

    What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?

    I Almost Tattooed Rage on My Face

    (For Jack & James)

    I almost did it.

    Sat there long enough to picture it—

    ink crawling out from the corners of my eyes

    like something that refused to stay buried.

    Not decorative.

    Not symbolic.

    A warning.

    The kind of thing that says,

    don’t get too close unless you mean it.

    I told myself it would be honest.

    That it would save time.

    No small talk.

    No pretending.

    You’d see me—

    or at least the version of me

    I thought was still in charge.

    The one who keeps score.

    The one who remembers everything.

    The one who could burn it all down

    and call it justice.

    I thought about wearing it

    where no one could ignore it.

    Right there.

    Across the face.

    So I wouldn’t have to explain

    why my voice goes quiet

    when people say things like

    “everything happens for a reason.”

    So I wouldn’t have to pretend

    I don’t still feel it—

    that split-second flash

    where the world narrows

    and something ancient in me

    steps forward.

    I almost gave that version of me a name.

    A uniform.

    A permanent place to live.

    But then I realized something—

    I’ve already worn it.

    Not in ink.

    In glances.

    In silence.

    In the way I left rooms

    without saying goodbye.

    In the way I held onto anger

    like it was the last thing

    I had left of him.

    As if letting go of it

    would mean letting go of him.

    And that’s the lie, isn’t it?

    That rage is proof of love.

    That if I soften,

    I’ve forgotten.

    But he didn’t live like that.

    Not really.

    He fought, sure.

    He burned bright.

    But he laughed too easy

    for someone who was supposed to carry what I carry now.

    He didn’t stay in the worst moment.

    So why would I?

    I sat there thinking about that—

    about putting something permanent on my face

    to mark something

    that was never meant to be permanent.

    And for the first time,

    it felt… unnecessary.

    Like writing a headline

    for a story I’ve already outgrown.

    I don’t need to wear rage anymore

    to remember him.

    I don’t need to prove

    how far I could go

    if I stopped caring.

    Because I do care.

    That’s the whole thing.

    That’s the part I was trying to hide

    behind something sharp.

    So no—

    I didn’t get the tattoo.

    Not on my face.

    Not anywhere you can see.

    But something is there.

    Something quieter.

    Not a warning—

    a presence.

    Not stay back

    but walk with me.

    And if you look close enough—

    not at my skin,

    but at the way I move through the world now—

    you might see it.

    Not the rage.

    But what’s left

    after I finally stopped needing it

    to speak for me.

  • Gratitude (2025 Edition) By McCarthy, not Cormac, Jamie McCarthy

    Gratitude isn’t a prayer or a posture.

    It’s a scar that still throbs when the weather turns—

    a reminder you’re somehow still here

    while the world keeps finding new ways

    to set itself on fire.

    It’s outliving a son

    and carrying his brilliance like contraband

    through a year that tested everyone’s faith

    in everything.

    It’s knowing the gods are broke,

    the politicians are puppets,

    the prophets are running side hustles,

    and the news is just a fear carousel

    you didn’t buy a ticket for.

    Gratitude doesn’t live there.

    It lives in the cracked places:

    the dog who curls against you

    like she’s guarding what’s left,

    the laugh you didn’t think you had in you,

    the friend who calls before the collapse,

    the night that lets you pass without a toll.

    It lives in the chaos we survived

    and the beauty that somehow survived us.

    Keep it small.

    Keep it sharp.

    Pocket-sized and battle-ready—

    your own stitched-together compass

    for a world that keeps losing north.

    Remember:

    you’ve been broken open,

    but you’re still walking.

    You’re still dangerous.

    You’re still here.

    Mccarthy AKA FATHER SICARIO

  • THE HOUSE I GREW UP IN

    THE HOUSE I GREW UP IN

    Series: Filter Failure: Beneath the Noise

    (the crest) (dad at sea)

    Short Announcment: You never really leave the house you grew up in. It leaves pieces of itself in you.

    In the house I grew up in I found the McCarthy crest yesterday — buried in a box by the stairs, right where the house keeps its secrets.

    Same one I’ve got inked over my heart — Jackiemac4ever.

    A promise that never healed right.

    Funny thing about symbols: they start as pride and end as proof.

    Proof that somebody once stood here and mattered.

    Proof that love still bleeds through the cracks of time.

    Next to it was my father, trapped in a photograph — late thirties, early forties, somewhere between wisdom and warning.

    He’s standing on a sailboat, face tilted toward the wind, a man still convinced there’s more horizon left than storm.

    I was twenty-three when I lost him.

    Jack was nineteen when I lost him, too.

    Two men — the bookends of my life — both gone before I figured out what any of it meant.

    Mom sat in her chair, smaller now, soft around the edges, like the world’s been quietly erasing her outline.

    We talked about moving her out of the old house.

    Said it like logistics, but it felt like betrayal.

    Every wall in that place still hums with our laughter, our fights, our noise.

    Every step sounds like an echo of who we were trying to be.

    The air was thick with dust and ghosts.

    Not the kind that scare you — the kind that wait for you to understand.

    Every photo frame, a silent sermon.

    Every object, an altar.

    When I left, I didn’t cry. Or maybe I have selective retention.

    I Didn’t say goodbye.

    Just stood in the driveway, hollowed out and human — the last McCarthy man in a story written in vanishing ink.

    But I don’t call it grief anymore.

    Grief sits still.

    This — this is participation.

    A ritual of remembering.

    A man standing in the ashes of what built him,

    saying softly to the wind,

    I’m still here.

  • EVERY WORD IS ROPE

    Some of us were dumb enough to think we were chosen. Destined for greatness. I was one of those fools.

    Then life swung for the skull—my father gone when I was just twenty-four, my son gone at nineteen. That’s the punchline. And I’m still here, scribbling like a clown juggling knives at his own funeral.

    Every line I write turns to rope. And rope’s a funny bastard—you can climb it, you can hang from it. Lifeline and noose, same damn thing.

    And here’s where I laugh at myself: I can’t stand writers who always find a way to make it about them. But don’t mistake this for that—this isn’t me making it about me. This is me making it about you, making it about me. That’s the kind of pretzel you twist into when you’ve got nothing left but your own shadow to wrestle with.

    Greatness? That’s the carrot they dangle so you’ll chase yourself into the grave. The truth is simpler: I’m under the gallows, grinning through broken teeth, laughing at my own execution, and the only reason I keep writing is because hanging myself with my own words is the one thing I’ve ever done well.

  • Council of the Damned

    How the fuck do you crawl out of rage?

    How the fuck do you scrub sadness off your teeth?

    Answer: you don’t.

    I call in the heavyweights,

    the intellectual cavalry,

    and it’s a goddamn carnival.

    Nietzsche storms the room screaming will to power,

    eyes rolling like a rabid horse.

    Aurelius is polishing his stoic turds

    while the empire burns behind him.

    Wilde wants better wallpaper.

    Twain heckles from the cheap seats.

    Thompson kicks the door in with a shotgun,

    mescaline dripping from his pores.

    Bukowski is shirtless, pissing in the corner.

    Burroughs has turned into an insect,

    clattering needles like antennae.

    Joyce is babbling in tongues that even hell won’t translate.

    Byron is dry-humping the apocalypse itself.

    Kerouac is pacing the ceiling,

    muttering go, go, go like a scratched record.

    And Hitchens—dear Christ—

    Hitchens is on fire,

    lighting one cigarette off the next,

    snarling through smoke,

    grief is a goddamn scam, don’t tithe to it.

    The walls buckle.

    The sky splits.

    Ink, blood, static, numbers—

    the whole matrix vomiting itself onto the floor.

    And me?

    I’m strapped to the chair,

    still asking the same useless question:

    how in the fuck do I get free?

    The answer is written on the walls in piss and whiskey:

    You don’t.

    You ride the rage like a dying horse,

    you suck up the sadness like sacrament,

    and you learn to make the end of the world

    sound like a song worth singing.

  • UNKILLABLE

    Fuck The Matrix and This Simulation.

    Almost Arriving

    Every time I inch toward something called normal,

    when the day almost tricks me into believing I’ve arrived,

    doom slips its hand back on my shoulder.

    I will never accept it.

    Not in this life, not in any.

    Jack is gone, they tell me,

    but I spit back the only truth I know:

    He may be gone,

    but he will never, ever, ever be forgotten.

    You will know his name.

    You will know his story.

    If I remain in this strange matrix of survival,

    it is only to keep him alive in every syllable,

    every note, every silence that dares to fill the room.

    My grief is my rebellion.

    My love, unkillable.

  • When The Jokes Stop Being Funny.

    I used to laugh at everything. Irony was my shield. Sarcasm, my second skin. But then life walked in, uninvited, and knocked the mic out of my hand.

    There was a time I could joke my way through anything.
    Grief. Guilt. Failure.
    Give me a tragedy, I’d find the punchline.
    Not because I thought it was funny—
    but because laughing meant I still had control.

    Humor was my armor.
    If I could reduce it to a one-liner,
    I didn’t have to feel it.
    I just had to deliver it.

    But eventually, the jokes stopped landing.
    Not because they weren’t clever.
    But because the pain got louder than the laugh track in my head.

    You can’t joke your way out of a child’s funeral.
    You can’t riff your way around a hollow chair at the dinner table.
    And you can’t meme your way back to who you were before everything shattered.

    There’s a point—
    when irony stops being a coping mechanism
    and starts becoming a coffin.

    It’s not edgy.
    It’s not cool.
    It’s just another way to keep people from getting too close.

    And I’ve had to reckon with that.
    Because while I was busy being the emotionally unavailable Bukowski of the grieving dads club,
    I was also bleeding underneath the punchlines.

    So now?
    Now I still laugh.
    But not to deflect.
    I laugh because some shit is absurd and crying all the time doesn’t pay the bills.
    But I’ve also learned to sit in the silence after the joke.
    To let it echo.
    To let the truth behind it hang heavy.

    And if you’ve felt that—
    if your jokes are starting to sound like pleas for help wrapped in wit—
    just know this:

    You’re not weak.
    You’re waking up.

    You don’t have to be the strong one.
    You don’t have to be the funny one.
    You just have to be real—even when it’s raw and ugly and doesn’t trend.

    That’s it for now.
    Laugh when you can.
    Cry when you need.
    Bleed in front of people who’ve earned the right to see it.
    And if the joke stops being funny?
    That’s your cue to finally speak the truth.

  • BOY, STILL

    Don’t think i’ll ever not be one

    even when the back goes before the mind and i’m in aisle 9 arguing with a teenager about fiber supplements and suddenly crying because they don’t carry dad.

    I was a boy when dad looked at me, rope in hand, the knot a mess of looped embarrassment,

    and said,

    “boy, you’re not very salty, are you?”

    and i swear to god,

    i’ve been trying to earn that salt ever since.

    So call me boy.

    Boy when i’m on the floor, face down and sobbing for jack— my boy, my riot, my soft middle finger to the universe that left too early,

    like a drumbeat with no downstroke.

    Now i walk around with a ghost in my shoe and no idea how to dance anymore.

    Call me boy when i get stuck in the same daydream where jack is on some interstellar skateboard, wearing a crown made of mixtapes and unspoken apologies.

    He tosses me a beer that tastes like everything we never got to say, and says, “Don’t get too heavy, dad. this ain’t heaven, it’s just the white room in waiting”.

    so we just sit there,

    talking shit,

    swapping memories like baseball cards—

    me, the failed magician,

    Jack, the vanished trick.

    Call me boy, with a body never sacred, just a frame for grief to hang its coat on, a joke with a punchline i forgot halfway through.

    Call me boy whose grief has a sense of humor that knocks before entering and always farts when leaving.

    Call me boy

    when i weep at dog movies

    but not funerals.

    Call me boy

    when i stare too long at the moon

    like it’s my missing report card

    and then wonder,

    did we really land there?

    Boy like a lawnmower that only works in reverse.

    Boy like a sandwich made of spite and peanut butter.

    Boy like someone who thought stoic meant quiet rage earns trophies only for men.

    I’m all the boys

    who said, i got this

    then promptly didn’t.

    Who held screwdrivers like they were bones from animals they never learned to kill.

    I am not very salty but i am trying.

    maybe i became man too early,

    Maybe i went boy again too late.

    Or, maybe this is just the rot you earn when you outlive both ends of the line.

    And when death comes,

    i hope it’s weird.

    I hope it shows up in a bathrobe,

    smoking a cigar shaped like my childhood.

    I hope dad’s there—

    leaning against a celestial pier,

    watching me tie one last knot,

    and he says,

    still not salty, but boy, at least you’re funny.

    And when they bury me,

    call me boy one last time.

    Make it a joke.

    Make it sting.

    Make it true.