Jamiemccarthytv

Tag: #selflove

  • 🎙️ Ode to Miscast Men

    (Response to misinformed feminist poet)

    Not every shoulder in an airport is a declaration of war.
    Some are just men…
    half-awake,
    burning their tongues on bad coffee,
    late for gate C17,
    thinking about rent,
    or their kid’s soccer game.
    But someone writes a poem,
    and suddenly he’s the businessman —
    the villain.
    The sting without the bee.

    Not every man who said, “I don’t believe in labels,”
    was dodging a leash.
    Some just hated boxes,
    the way words lock living things inside.
    Some of them loved harder without a label
    than others did with rings.
    But nobody writes poems about those men.

    He said he liked her hair another way.
    Maybe it reminded him of his mother,
    the woman who read him bedtime stories
    when the world was falling apart.
    But in the poem, he’s a chauvinist.
    No cross-examination allowed.

    There were men who fixed the leak at midnight.
    Men who held doors,
    held breaths,
    held their tempers while the world baited them.
    But they got folded into the punchline.
    Another “boy” in a list of wrongs.
    Their quiet was mistaken for guilt.
    Their hesitation, for harm.

    Some said “period sex is gross”
    because no one ever taught them otherwise.
    They weren’t gagging at her.
    They were gagging on their fathers’ silence.

    The one who didn’t say I love you fast enough?
    He wasn’t a monster.
    He was terrified.
    Not of love —
    of being written into someone else’s vengeance poem.
    He was standing at the ledge of his heart,
    waiting for a language that wasn’t a trap.

    Not every man who walked away was running.
    Some just got tired
    of opening their mouths
    and hearing the same labels echo back:
    chauvinist.
    toxic.
    boy.
    Their stories were pre-written.
    Their names replaced with archetypes.

    This isn’t some rehab for men.
    This is an ode to the mislabeled.
    The men who walked gently through a world
    that kept calling them wolves,
    even as they were the ones
    building the fences.

    They weren’t saints.
    But they weren’t the villains in your receipts, either.
    They were just men.
    Complicated.
    Flawed.
    Human.
    And maybe,
    just maybe,
    worth a verse of their own

  • Where I Buried the Brine and the Bruises

    Born pickled
    a bundle of brine,
    spit out with the pigs,
    stepped on, tossed aside,
    buried under the muddy rugs—
    the carpet chorus muffled,
    rolled up and stained with the slap of hands,
    wet dirt naming me sinner,
    naming me fool,
    while the silence screamed back.

    Junk on my hands
    but my fists stayed open—
    bound wrists,
    tight-rope veins walking the thin edge of despair,
    slippery slopes greased by whispers,
    shadows hoarding truths
    behind my spine.

    I dreamed of the bottom of the bag—
    hiding in burlap shadows,
    draped over my shoulder,
    the sack of sorrow dragged uphill.
    The sun was a dagger,
    its glare split my skull,
    its fire pushed me to the peak
    where the earth yawned open.

    And I fell.

    Down through the dirt,
    down to the roots
    that never asked forgiveness,
    that held the mud and called it life.

    I planted my name there,
    deep in the soil.
    The weeds forgave me.

    I sprouted new hands,
    climbed the hill backward—
    not to escape
    but to meet the sunrise
    and the bruised boy
    I’d left behind.

    I held his face in my palms.
    I said, “We are here now.”
    And he disappeared
    into the light.

  • The Beast in Seat 23A

    35,000 ft up, 42 drinks down.

    Let me set the stage: an airplane, five hours from Detroit to Los Angeles. A goddamn tin can full of sleep-deprived zombies and corporate swine, all clutching their pretzels and plastic cups like sacred relics. And me—drenched in sweat, reeking of stale, cheap scotch, tearing through little airline bottles like a lunatic on death row.

    This wasn’t just drinking. No, this was a high-octane bender at 35,000 feet—a desperate attempt to defy the laws of physics and sanity. By hour three, the flight attendants were avoiding eye contact. By hour four, I was mumbling incoherent nonsense about the death of civility in America and demanding more ice. By the time we landed at LAX, I was less of a man and more of a biological weapon—a one-man disaster staggering off the plane with murder in my eyes and a thirst that could drown a small village.

    Straight to the airport bar. The bartender looked at me like I’d just crawled out of the La Brea Tar Pits, but I waved a twenty at him and demanded a double. This was the routine, the sacred ritual: land, drink, repeat. The cities changed, the bars changed, but the mission was always the same—annihilation, pure and simple.

    It wasn’t about fun. It wasn’t even about escape. It was about the necessary obliteration of self. The world was a strange, indifferent circus, and the only way to survive was to light yourself on fire and hope the flames kept the demons at bay.

    But here’s the thing: they never stayed gone for long. Sobriety didn’t come to me as some grand revelation—no white light, no epiphany. It came because one day, the demons won. They dragged me down into a pit so deep and dark that even Jack Daniels couldn’t light the way out. But even in my discombobulated subconscious, I knew there was another Jack far more important in my near future. And a Samantha, whose birth opened my eyes to real miracles and shone a spotlight on the skull and crossbones of every bottle, glowing like Las Vegas from space.

    Now, 24 years later, I’m sober. Clean. A goddamn Boy Scout. But I’m not stupid—I know the beast is still out there, pacing in the shadows, waiting for me to slip. And I won’t. Not now. Not ever. Even with the loss of my son Jack, the thought of diving back into the bottle just to escape that pain is as repulsive, grotesque, and cowardly as the former lush I used to be.

    If someone put a gun to my head and told me to drink, I’d laugh. I’d tell them to shoot, because a bullet is quick, but one drink? That’s a slow, deliberate execution—a drawn-out death sentence dressed up as a good time.

    Sobriety isn’t a victory parade. It’s a knife fight in a phone booth. But I’ll take that over waking up in an airport bathroom, trying to piece together what’s left of my soul.

    This isn’t an ode to sobriety, where I tear a rotator cuff giving myself a proverbial pat on the back. It’s an extended middle finger to the beast that once ruled my head. And if that’s not worth raising a glass of sparkling water to, I don’t know what is.

  • Lessons from the titans.

    Yo, I’m suffering. “Good” “stay hard, motherfuckers”

    Mental Toughness and Creativity: Lessons from the Titans

    Ah, creativity. A fickle mistress, a deceptive muse, a relentless tormentor. It demands from us everything and offers nothing but suffering in return. Yet, we plunge into its chaotic embrace, knowing full well that true brilliance is born from the depths of our agony. To understand this dance with madness, one must look to the hardened warriors of resilience: David Goggins, Jocko Willink, and the indefatigable Rocky Balboa. Imagine them not as athletes or soldiers but as artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians. Their capacity to endure, to dig deep and savor the pain, is the crucible of their greatness.

    David Goggins, a man forged in the fires of suffering, would approach creativity as he does his ultramarathons and SEAL training. His canvas is the battlefield of his mind, his brushstrokes the relentless pursuit of the impossible. Goggins would tell us that creativity is not a gift, but a grind. It is the result of thousands of hours spent honing a craft, of pushing past the point of exhaustion, of embracing the suck. His mantra, “Stay Hard,” would become the battle cry of the artist willing to bleed for their vision. Goggins teaches us that to create is to suffer, and to suffer well is to create something truly extraordinary.

    Then there’s Jocko Willink, the stoic warrior of discipline. For him, creativity is a war, a series of battles fought in the trenches of self-doubt and procrastination. Jocko’s advice is simple: get up early, show up, and do the work. He would see the blank page, the empty canvas, the silent instrument as an adversary to be conquered with relentless discipline. “Discipline equals freedom,” he preaches, and in the realm of creativity, this means mastering the basics, committing to a schedule, and attacking the process with military precision. Jocko would remind us that every masterpiece is built on a foundation of mundane, repetitive tasks executed with unwavering focus.

    And then we have Rocky Balboa, the quintessential underdog. Rocky’s story is one of grit, heart, and the indomitable human spirit. As an artist, Rocky would teach us the value of perseverance in the face of relentless failure. He would stumble, fall, and get back up, each time with a little more wisdom, a little more fire in his belly. Rocky’s motto, “It ain’t about how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward,” is a testament to the resilience required in the creative journey. His work would be raw, unpolished, but bursting with authenticity and soul. Rocky shows us that the beauty of art lies not in perfection but in the relentless pursuit of one’s passion, despite the odds.

    In the end, creativity is not a serene stroll through the park but a grueling marathon, a bloody battle, a tenacious climb up an unforgiving mountain. It’s about embracing the pain, finding joy in the struggle, and knowing that every ounce of suffering is a testament to the work we’ve put in. Goggins, Willink, and Balboa each illuminate a path through this wilderness, showing us that the true artist, the true creator, is one who revels in the suffering, who finds strength in the darkness, and who emerges, bloodied but unbowed, with a masterpiece in hand. For in the crucible of our torment, we find the purest expression of our creative selves.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.