Jamiemccarthytv

Tag: writing

  • 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.

  • Hellfire in the Golden State

    Hellfire in the Golden State

    The state is burning again, and this time, it’s not just the trees. No, my friend, California has slipped its tenuous grasp on sanity, plunged headfirst into a Dantean nightmare with flames licking at the edges of every gilded promise. The land of milk and honey is now a charred wasteland of smog-choked skies and people stumbling through ash like extras in a post-apocalyptic snuff film.

    I pretend to light a cigarette—an act of rebellion or stupidity, depending on your perspective— starring at the horizon. The sun was a malevolent orange orb, veiled in toxic haze, casting a sickly glow over the melting suburbs. Somewhere in the hills, tech billionaires were watching their mansions turn to soot while clutching useless NFTs like talismans against the inferno. You could almost hear them scream, “Alexa, stop the fire!”

    Noah Berger/AP Photo

    This is California, where dreams are sold on credit and reality comes with a steep interest rate. A state that promises paradise but delivers apocalypse on demand. The fires, they say, are “natural.” A cleansing force, a rebalancing of ecosystems disrupted by decades of greed-fueled sprawl. But there’s nothing natural about it. Not when every acre of forest carries the weight of broken treaties and corporate negligence, not when every scorched town is a monument to the hollow promises of progress.

    The politicians, of course, are useless. Flaccid marionettes jerking off to the rhythm of kick drum, campaign dollars thudding into their off shore accounts, offering “thoughts and prayers” while fiddling with climate policies designed to appease both Greenpeace and ExxonMobil. It’s a delicate dance of double-speak and outright cowardice, and it would almost be funny if it weren’t so goddamned tragic.

    And the people? Christ, the people. Desperate and dazed, fleeing in Teslas with their organic soy candles and artisan kombucha tucked under their arms. Some fight the flames with garden hoses, others sit in traffic and weep, their cars packed with photo albums, pets, and the eerie realization that nothing they own is worth saving.

    The sky above turns darker, almost biblical, and the smell of burning pine mixed with the acrid stench of melted plastic and singed dreams. Beautiful in a grotesque way, like watching a great empire crumble under the weight of its own hubris.

    California will rise from this, of course. It always does. But what it rises into—that’s the real story. A phoenix or a chimera? A shining beacon of resilience or a festering hub of denial? Place your bets, folks, because the odds are as volatile as the stock market when the grid goes down.

    As for me, I’ll keep chomping Nicorette and documenting, because someone needs to remember this madness. Someone needs to remind the survivors that the fires didn’t start in the forests—they started in our heads, in our hearts, in the searing heat of human ambition unchecked.

    This is not the end of California. But it might be the beginning of something worse.

  • Hope’s Cackle

    Hope, the trickster born from pure FUCKERY

    It teases from the shadows,

    just out of reach, like the last barstool

    in a crowded dive.

    You spend a lifetime

    kicking holes in paper-thin promises,

    sipping bitterness like its Château Lafite Rothschild

    Doubting people, the world,

    yourself most of all—

    a skeptic’s creed tattooed on your eyelids 

    And yet, there it is—

    a glimmer, faint as a dying streetlamp,

    just enough to warm your frostbitten heart.

    The sun rises, and for once

    it doesn’t look like a cruel joke.

    You think, maybe,

    just maybe, the bastard wasn’t lying this time.

    But that’s when they come—

    angels, devils, who knows the difference anymore?

    Their wings flutter like melting clock hands,

    their smiles sharp as broken dreams in 4k

    They don’t ask permission.

    They never do.

    “Time to go,” they say,

    A one-way ticket to paradise

    or maybe just the next bar over.

    And you laugh, because

    what else can you do?

    Hope—

    that beautiful, deceitful son of a bitch—

    waited until your bags were packed

    for a journey you never asked for.

    A lifetime spent doubting,

    and the only thing you’re sure of

    is the punchline.

  • Silence is the killer when you look the other way. (How virtuous)

    the newsreaders smirk behind the desk,

    their teeth polished white,

    their words unpolished and dull.

    the world’s on fire,

    but no one wants to say where the match came from.

    they shuffle papers,

    nod solemnly at the camera,

    and move on.

    next story.

    young girls with broken eyes walk streets that don’t care for them,

    their stories—

    torn, gutted, and stitched with silence.

    a thousand screams swallowed by a fear

    greater than justice,

    greater than truth—

    the fear of being called a name.

    racist. islamophobe.

    Or phrases like Resident Alien.

    they weigh heavier than the suffering of the small,

    the forgotten,

    the torn apart.

    the rapists walk free because the culture has grown soft,

    too soft to call evil by its name.

    and isn’t that convenient?

    for them, I mean.

    they know the game.

    play your cards right—

    and the good people will look the other way.

    good people.

    they don’t want to seem bad,

    don’t want to upset the order,

    don’t want to be labeled.

    better to let the girl bleed in a corner

    than risk being impolite.

    virtue signaling is the new religion.

    you wave the right flag,

    tweet the right slogan,

    kneel at the right altar—

    and you’re forgiven.

    it doesn’t matter what’s behind it:

    indifference,

    ignorance,

    or worse.

    the mask is enough.

    but what about the girls?

    the ones they pretend to care about?

    their bodies are battlegrounds

    for a war no one wants to admit is happening.

    the press won’t write it,

    the cops won’t fight it,

    and the priests of tolerance preach

    their sermons of silence.

    it’s a goddamn joke.

    we scream about progress,

    about justice,

    but only in the ways that won’t cost us anything.

    and the victims pile up in the shadows.

    this world isn’t just ass-backwards—

    it’s in full throttle reverse

    marching proudly backwards into oblivion

    while the banners of virtue flap overhead.

    but you can’t eat banners.

    you can’t heal wounds with hashtags.

    and you sure as hell can’t hide the blood forever.

    eventually,

    the truth crawls out of the dark.

    it always does.

    the question is:

    will anyone be left to give a damn when it does?

    (Remember when the U.K stood for something?)

  • 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.

  • Tightrope Act 101 

    I’ve spent my life on a tightrope,

    no safety net, no audience,

    just a dizzying abyss waiting below.

    The extremes tug at my ankles like rabid dogs—

    one side screaming “Perfection!”

    while the other whispers,

    “Why bother?”

    It’s not balance I seek, not really.

    Balance is for the zen masters,

    the kale-eating crowd with too much free time.

    No, I’m just trying not to fall,

    to not let gravity win.

    One misstep,

    and I’m back to licking the dirt.

    I sway between hunger and apathy,

    between the bottle and the book,

    between the lover who stays

    and the one who only pretends to.

    The rope wobbles like my convictions,

    weak promises I make

    at 2 a.m. and break by dawn.

    Some mornings, the rope feels too tight,

    cutting into my feet and bleeding regret.

    Other times, it’s slack,

    a lazy threat, daring me to jump.

    But I keep walking,

    not because I’m brave,

    but because standing still

    feels worse than the fall.

    And maybe that’s the trick.

    It’s not about balance;

    it’s about motion,

    the forward stumble,

    the glorious, awkward shuffle

    that keeps me alive. 

    Subconscious Voice: (what a fucking bore)

  • Gratitude

    Gratitude

    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.

  • The Fine Print on Freedom

    Don’t Hang Your Joy on a Ballot Box

    never let the outcome of an election
    decide your whiskey pour or your morning scowl.
    one single vote’s a pebble in a canyon –
    we toss it down, watch it fall,
    hear no echo.

    they told us about checks and balances,
    a seesaw for suits
    to keep the beast tame,
    but some checks
    they roll overseas,
    a deposit here, a hand there,
    tucked safe and sound in the Alps,
    in the vaults with no names.

    meanwhile, the talking heads tell you
    to pick a side, pick a tribe,
    pick a face from a screen,
    and let it roll you like a cheap cigarette.

    so don’t get all unhinged if your horse didn’t come in,
    don’t hang your happiness
    on a bought-and-sold dream.

  • The Green Tablet

    The green tablet.

    All my life I stumbled, staggered like a drunk at closing time, reaching for something, anything. I’d been told to find meaning in the sermons of men, the wisdom of books, the clink of coins in a beggar’s cup

    it was all more of a junkie’s dream. The kind of thing you’d find slipped in between the folds of the Interzone, tucked inside the sweaty palm of some two-bit dealer with half his face gone, nodding off in the alley. I wasn’t looking for it, not really. But it found me. They always find you.

    Years spent in the static haze, the off-channel white noise of existence. I moved through life like a virus spreads—covert, unnoticed, but always present, always creeping. Everything felt slippery, synthetic. The streets, the people. All part of a bad signal, fuzzing in and out of view. I tried to decode it, cracked open veins and heads alike, trying to read the messages in the blood and the circuitry. It all led nowhere. Circling the drain.

    Then the tablet. Green. The color of rot, the color of new life. One third of the tricolor draped along the walls of the long, hollow corridor of time, reverberating with the somber hymns of Irish proverbs, and maybe, just maybe, carrying enough luck to turn pessimism into hope. Sort of like a coin toss, only with a tablet. I didn’t so much find it, it found me, pressed itself into my hand, throbbing like some living thing. Organic. Synthetic. All of the above. I swallowed it without thinking.

    And then the world folded in on itself, a collapsing wave. Time ceased to have meaning, space unraveled into dimensions I didn’t believe  existed—places where gravity was just another bad trip, a suggestion instead of a rule. The walls of the room bent, melted, reformed. Faces flickered, sliding in and out of their skulls. Bureaucrats with insect eyes and needle fingers. All the usual suspects.

    The tablet wasn’t knowledge. It was beyond knowledge. It was access, a key to a hidden layer of reality, a frequency just out of reach unless you knew where to tune the vibrations. And there it was—the whole system laid bare. The machinery behind the facade. The puppet strings of control, the invisible hands pulling us all in circles.

    The thing I’d been looking for in gutters and bars, in the eyes of strangers and the bottom of empty bottles. Turns out, it was the very thing that made me stop searching.

    I don’t remember what was written on it. Maybe there was nothing. Maybe it was just the act of finding it that mattered. That green tablet wasn’t salvation, not in the way they sell it in churches or schools. It was just a reminder that the world, the one I had spent years fighting, didn’t give a damn. It never would. And finally, I no longer needed it. 

    I wasn’t stumbling anymore. My new found saunter suggested confidence, not arrogance—just the ease of a man who knew the system and could slip through its cracks unnoticed, the few eyes that caught me probably green with envy. But I always looked past them, through their lost souls, and left a simple inscription on their softened brains…

    “You want out? There is no out.’”

  • Uncivil Savages

    Uncivil Savages

     

    Here we are, a nation of uncivil savages.  

    Bumping into walls, knocking over the furniture, 

    blind to the fact that the room we’re in 

    isn’t even ours. 

     

    Identity? What a joke. 

    It’s a mess of recycled sound bites and half-truths, 

    spun out like the web of a spider high on bad dope. 

    George Orwell’s laughing his ass off in the back, 

    maybe sipping whiskey, shaking his head. 

     

    It’s not the left. It’s not the right. 

    It’s just jabs and crosses, a nice little show. 

    The real damage, the real kill, 

    comes with the headkick you never see, 

    brought to you by your friendly neighborhood 

    Weapons of Mass Distraction.

     Flying elephants, underground donkeys— 

    who gives a damn? 

    We’re all shopping at the same supersized mall 

    jacked up on steroids, neon lights buzzing overhead, 

    propaganda posters hanging like cheap art 

    next to racks of aborted dreams. 

     And what are we doing? 

    800 million eyes, glued to glowing screens, 

    watching, waiting, scrolling past the snakes 

    slithering under the walls. 

     They’re coming for the kids first, 

    turning them into slaves. 

    Then they’ll poison the rest of us, 

    and we’ll call it anxiety, 

    pop a pill and go back to pretending 

    we’re free.

    So tell me—is this what freedom looks like?