Onin

Diane... clad in a long red dress, rouge-faced, with a pair of white sophisticated gloves covering her fragile smooth hands, those beautiful hands Andy adores so much. He holds those hands every morning as soon as he sees them beside his face. He’ll pull those hands into his groin and feel how their softness touch his bare, rough skin. How he adores her. He’ll go into parties with a picture of her if she cannot make it; if she does, she’ll always wind up being star of the night that every face he sees—man or woman—always bears a mark of jealousy, a pang in his heart and a lump in his throat. He has never been proud of anything until Diane came into his life.

Diane... clad in a long red dress, rouge-faced, highlighting her nose pointed downwards, with tiny holes in sync with her white, rubious skin and the narrow opening of her lips—the lips Danny used to love to kiss with the sweet taste of her saliva like an infant’s, with the smell of her breath gently sinking into his senses, and with the push of her tongue that always loved to play with his, like two children in a playground toying in the rain.

Diane... clad in a long red dress that amplifies the length of her legs. Those legs Andy massages in the evening after she comes from the bathroom. Sometimes, while in the bathtub, she will let him in and let him scrub those legs, gently, passionately, as if he were in love with the legs and not with the woman who possesses them. Those legs Danny used to pat when they had an argument, a pat of appeal for harmony rather than conflict. Andy loves her for her erudition and sense of maturity. Danny loved her for her blithe spirit and the childish look in her face whenever she was sad or whenever she was eating ice cream.

Diane… Andy loves the name. Danny loved each letter. Diane… Andy loves her. Danny loved her. And after eight long years, he thinks that he doesn’t love her anymore.

And yet…

DIANE: Danny? Is that you, Dan?

DANNY
Heart: She’s the only woman who calls me that.
Brain: How about your classmates in grade school? Everyone used to call you Dan.
Danny: Hi! Uh, I’m sorry but I’m having trouble recognizing faces tonight. Let me see…

DIANE: Diane.

DANNY
Heart: I think I’m gonna explode.
Brain: Say hi and just leave.
Danny: Oh, I’m sorry.

DIANE: It’s okay. How are you? It’s been a long time.

DANNY
Heart: You have no idea.
Brain: Don’t tell her what happened.
Danny: Yes. A long time.

DIANE: Hey, you’re blushing.

DANNY
Heart: I sent blood to the face, to make you see how fast I beat.
Brain: Suppression machine, initialize!
Danny: Goes silent. Flashes a weak smile.

DIANE: So, how are you? Gone speechless? Do you still write?

DANNY
Heart: Yes, I still do. As a matter of fact, I write every memory of being with you in all of my stories.
Brain: Tell her what you really do.
Danny: I’m in law school.

DIANE: Really? That’s wonderful.

DANNY
Heart: Yes. That means I’m gonna be a lawyer soon. You can marry me now; I’m finally going to be rich.
Brain: She doesn’t want that now. Leave this place at once. Study. You have an exam tomorrow.
Danny: I guess so.

DIANE: Well, that’s really wonderful. I mean, that’s really good. I’m happy for you.

Silence.

DIANE: Are you married?

DANNY
Heart: I never wanted to get married. I’ve always waited for you.
Brain: Tell her yes. She’s not really interested. Can’t you see how she loves to fool around?
Danny: No.

DIANE: I thought you are. I can see a ring around your ring finger.

DANNY
Heart: It’s the same ring.
Brain: Hide the ring and tell her it’s a college ring.
Danny (almost whispering): It’s the same ring.

DIANE: What?

DANNY
Heart: It’s the same ring I gave you on our first anniversary.
Brain: Stupid. Don’t dare say anything.
Danny: A college ring.

Smiles. Silence. Someone speaking a speech somewhere. Diane and Danny somehow are both speechless. Someone speaking a speech somewhere. Silence. Smiles.

DANNY
Heart: I missed you. Oh, God! I missed you, Dianne, my baby.
Brain: Yes I missed you… as a friend.
Danny: How about you? Are you married?

DIANE: Yes. You remember Andy?

DANNY
Heart: I don’t care about Andy. I beg you. Come with me. Leave Andy, whoever the hell he is.
Brain: Oh, yes. Andy? The stupid jerk?
Danny: Andy Reyes? Sheila’s brother?

DIANE: I thought I would be calling you Mr. Alzheimer before this night ends. We got married a couple of years ago.

Laughter. Long pause. Lovely lass. Lonely lad. Lemony lights. Long pause. Laughter.

DIANE: He’s a good man, you know. A really god man.

DANNY
Heart: I will love you more than any good man will. I will make you happy everyday. I will bring you to your summer dreams. The dreams you told me when we were little kids. Remember that summer when we first kissed? Do you remember? Say that you remember. And that night we first made love to each other? You cried that night and I told you I would never leave you. Oh, Diane, my sweet, sweet baby. I never left. I never stopped loving you.
Brain: Shut up.
Danny: Congratulations! Well, I can see that you know how to wear make up now.

DIANE: Things change, Dan.

DANNY
Heart: I never did.
Brain: Can’t you see? She has changed. She used to hate make ups. She used to tear her mother’s AVON brochures. She has become a bitch.
Danny: Yes. Things change.

Changes. Cheers of Chivas and champagne. Carelessness. Champagne glasses collide, clash, crash. Color crimson chaser crosses his chest. Caresses. Champagne glasses collide, clash, crash. Carelessness. Cheers of Chivas and champagne. Changes.

DANNY: Are you crying?

DIANE
Heart: Dan, you were my Superman. I used to call you Superdan. You were my childhood hero, my childhood love.
Brain: No more caresses. Leave at once. Andy is waiting for you at home. You’ve got a lovely family with a beautiful baby girl. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? Your life is perfect. You’re happy.
Diane: No, it’s my mascara.

DANNY: I see.

DIANE
Heart: Don’t you recognize the perfume I’m wearing now? It’s the same I used to wear. I knew I would see you tonight. Do you remember the fragrance of our summer days with my perfume? You used to love that smell even when I was sweating. You loved that. Dan, you loved me and you love me still, don’t you? Please say it. I want to know.
Brain: Be reasonable. Don’t bring up the past. Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter to him. You don’t matter to him anymore.
Diane: I guess I have to leave.

Momentary muteness. Meaningful movements. Merry memories made. Moving away. Merry memories made. Meaningful movements muzzle. Momentary muteness.

DANNY
Heart: Please don’t leave.
Brain: Say goodbye.
Danny: I see. Take care.

DIANE
Heart: I missed you, Dan.
Brain: Say goodbye but don’t say goodnight.
Diane: Likewise.

DANNY
Heart: Please don’t leave, Diane. Can’t you see my knees are shaking? If you leave, they’ll break and my chest will explode, breaking the wholeness of me into a million pieces.
Brain: Shhh… There, there. I’m here.
Danny: Tell Andy I said hello.

DIANE
Heart: I won’t because I won’t be leaving this place without you. Make love to me again the way you did. I miss your lips in my mouth. I miss your caresses. You used to make me feel I was pretty. You loved me for what I am, didn’t you? I never changed. This make up? The hell I care about make ups and this shitty dress. Undress me. Feel the woman I used to be. Make me feel that I am still the girl you loved. Oh, Dan, I can’t leave now. Say you love me still.
Brain: Good bye.
Diane: Good bye.

DANNY
Heart: Silence.
Brain: Silence.
Danny: Good night.


Diane… Andy loves the name. Danny loved each letter. Diane… Andy loves her. Danny loved her. And after eight long years, what Danny and Diane have developed is the art of suppression.

Let me warn you now that what you are about to read is just an experiment. If you have checked your blood pressure today, make sure that it’s running slower than the usual gush of water in your faucet. I just don’t want you to bother reading this if you don’t have the guts and not waste your time with my own notes of shenanigans or trigger a heart attack with your extreme devotion to your reading habits. Don’t worry, this essay has no intention to awaken the darkest side of the deepest core of your soul and enlighten you at the same time.

If you’re going to read this insipid piece of crap, make sure that you’ve got a hell of a patience stuffed in that dreary organ of yours – brain or heart, you choose, stupid ass – because this is an experiment to make you lose your intestinal fortitude. Yes, to vex you. It may sound a bit contradicting but this piece won’t make you feel angry but I assure you, somewhere in the middle, you’re gonna lose your patience.

Listen. If you believe that Oprah and Arnold Schwarzenegger do not bear the same sound when they snore but their vocal cords do, you’re gonna continue reading this not because I’ll be telling you more weird, cheap gossips about pathetic who-the-hell-ever. You’re going to continue reading this because you know that I don’t have anything to say, for this is just only an experiment and that you are my stupid subject. Now if you do not agree to the statement I entered in the second sentence of this paragraph, you better start thinking that a million sluts are better than a sloth sitting there, giving up the task of rolling those eyeballs, because the earwax in your ears (oh, the ears! nice guess, moron) is thick enough to make a candle out of it. And I bet that your sluggishness in doing stuff concerning hygiene is the same attitude you have towards reading and consequently, you won’t be able to finish this and find out what this is all about.

This is an experiment, for fuck’s sake! Didn’t I tell you yet? I am not a mad scientist but I can play that role. If you have succeeded reaching this paragraph, let me say it’s an honor to annoy you. Nothing personal. If you think you are exasperated more with this seemingly freshly defecated essay rather than the things it has to say (there’s a big difference, idiot!), continue reading and finish what you started. If you believe otherwise, then STOP READING! Before you begin thinking how nonsensical it all is and blurt out something unpleasant to your mother’s ears, let me do say it first: “Fuck you, motherfucker!”

If you’re still reading, I commend you. Your BP is lower than normal. Why don’t you try eating toasted pigskins and drink cooking oil for a change? But if you were not able to make it to this sentence, don’t be an asshole saying this is all baloney. I told you that this is an experiment, you imbecile!

This is for the kind of people who will vote for Jollibee should he run for president. Hurrah! Jollibee for President! From which branch among hundreds should he come from? Just imagine who would be in his executive cabinet. And I bet, a "person" named Ronald would be thinking of joining the opposition. This is for those who will give thesaurus for an answer when asked about their favorite dinosaur. This is also for those who feel important whenever they catch flashes of smiles from a celebrity or a politician during a showbiz event or a campaign. Let me tell you, you’re not just important – you are special. Have you ever thought of enrolling at Little Lambs Montessori? It’s a school for special children, you’d probably finish grade one with flying colors. Still reading? Good.

If you’re comprehending this as an item in a newspaper, begin marveling what happened to the world. If you’re reading this from a site in the internet through your computer, I pity you… Don’t you have a change to spare buying a newspaper? I don’t mean to brag but this thing has been published in three broadsheets read by “important” people. You don’t believe so? Ask your dog.

If you finished reading this, congratulations and thank you. You think you are important now? No. You are just a stupid jerk who thought that this is an experiment because the truth is: this is all gibberish. Now fuck off.

I am a madman and a mad man. I am a male-whore. I let capitalists fuck my brain. I let them screw the right hemisphere of my cerebrum for the sake of heaps of stupid checks and damned bills that they enter into my pimp’s bank account.

I am a madman. Not doing what I’m supposed to be doing thus loathing what I do now. Abandoning the fast-paced, tiring yet, fulfilling work of producing episodes for film and television in exchange for creative boredom—sitting half of the day in front of a dumb, damned cubic, electrical machine connected to the whole wide world; thinking about cost-effective marketing strategies for different products; talking to business-minded, indifferent clients and associates for a hell of four hours; and procrastinating for the rest of the day. I know I have a choice anyway but, hell, I am a fucking madman!

I am a mad man who doesn’t belong in a madhouse. I walk down the avenue that belongs to coat-and-tie-clad humans appearing more like mascots of Microsoft, Dell or Nokia than pathetic walking machines. I don’t belong to that infernal avenue either and that makes me another kind of a madman.

Yet I am the other kind of a mad man whose job is to sell ideas every single fucking day. I am the kind of a madman who uses alcohol as distraction before succumbing to self-destruction; whose therapy is to screw women just not to get crazy with routine even though I already am because I am a madman. I am a mad man whose job is to please the world of cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, electronics, cosmetics, hardware, software anywhere; who—after nights of beer, poker and pool—wakes up in different beds in rooms from different cities that do not bear any resemblance of familiarity to my own; who goes home before the sun rises to wash and to get dressed, making my way to the next city to do the duties of a mad man.

I am a madman getting madder each day – finding myself as another salesman competing with the rest of the mad men, getting commercially depressed when I do not sell and, worst of all, hating every single hour of being a mad man but needing to be one.

Is it for the money? Hell, the fucking television pays me triple the sum of what I get now. The perks? The hell I care for perks! I am a madman and I love doing what I abhor the most and that is to do the job of a mad man.

I am mad and, as a man, I like being one like I am loving being a madman and a mad man now.

---
"Mad Men" is a slang term coined in the fifties for advertisers working on Madison Avenue.

iv

i did.
you did.
we did, didn’t we?

i watched
you watch
the stars
falling on my watch.

i wrote
you, wrote
right down the road.

i won
you, won
a little wan,
we were one,
the shadow of my sun.


v

i do
you, do
not i?

i part,
you part,
we’re apart,
yet moving as one.

how can i alter your ego,
my alter ego
if i’m bound to be gone
like the way we began
a long time ago…

when
i caught
you caught
in the middle of
catch-twenty-two
mocking the mocking-
bird that flew?

and you cried,
“i want to rest, oh,
my mind needs to rest!…”


vi

(i will,
you will,
we’ll both get well
as well).

…and you cried
as you cry now
the tears you longed to cry.

and i will cry
(won’t i?) and whisper
to crying lot of forty-nine,
“you may rest now,
take your mind to rest,
never mind the rest!”

and will howl
at the others,
“i’ll slaughter
you, slaughterers
inside the slaughter-
house number five!”

now you see
the talking me,
talking like
i talk to my hand
in this literal paradox
of literary parody
(balderdash!)

squint a little
and you’ll see
i lost the numbers
i, ii, and iii,
and that you and i
were never
we.

i could hearken

your sesquipedalian

allocution

and you

 

excogitated that i was

supercalifragilisticexpialidociously impressed?

your semanteme may have succeeded

 

reaching my

amygdalae

 

but not the ephemeral mnemonic epitheliums

in my cerebrum.

your lamprophony

didn’t even succor

that i had to ratiocinate. (all i had

perceived were preposterous                                galimatias).

and who bestowed you the apostolicity to           ultracrepidate

how i inaniloquently expatiated my                       repugnance

 

on your eupeptic limerance,

like you could

achieve            pogonotrophy

in two               days as when today

was the             nudiustertian?

 

your

floccinaucinihilipilification

made you a                                  nihilarian,

like an alimenting bee

that,

instead of glorified, uglified a florigelium

engraved in the lamenting                     

escutcheon

as if it were

 

some kind of a phallocentrism

 

 

but which

was not

and never

would be.

'tis a song of rock 'n' roll,
sounds like a crap of rap
to the tune of fuck 'n' fall,
in the melody of antimony
and psychedelic parody,
used as placebo
like crystals of naphthalene
mistaken for methamphetamine
that won't let you die,
but can make you fly
instead,
to a place that resembles
your deathbed
buried deep inside your head
to the abyss of your desires
flashing in vivid images
where you can be free
from the monochrome,
cupidity,
social hierarchy,
agony,
ebony
and, yeah, from the stupid ivory.

you'll never have to question
the orgasmic sensation.
just make a pleasurable bellow
of schadenfreude,
in the name of sigmund freud,
over the rotting shadows
of the hypocrites' superstitious
addiction to their devotion
to a crucified deity,
kick a jewish ass
or assassinate a mormon.
so what if they call you a moron?
just say, "to hell with your religion
and your irreverent mediocrity!" 

there are privations...
no more,
another two-minute heartbreak?
nevermore.
because in here,
you can be rubious-blithe
buying your own world
where when
the white elephant
declares another war,
you are free to
withdraw all your stocks,
from the fucking nasdaq,
make a gamble in a race track.
when you fail,
use fuck
as a prozac
to ease the pain.
in here you’ll remain…
just don’t ever lose
the color in you
may it be carmine in hue. 

this is the remedy,
the antagony between
monarchy and anarchy,
and the pathetic obsession
of a society full
of contradictions,
illusions,
and megalomaniac delusions,
betraying your moral liberty
from hypocrisy.
a prodigal bourgeois
is what now you can be,
leaving the shades of gray,
living vividly.
don't bother asking
any question like:
"superman, why don't you save the world today?"
who's john galt anyway?
just put your LEG
before the END
so you can make yourself a
LEGEND
and sing this
hymn of the antagonistic prodigy.

have you noticed the beauty of the sunset?
every heart in its eyes seems to be the saddest.
so please paint my world like a summer day,
let the kid in me go out and play, stay,
i say...

i will find some light and not see you set,
illuminate my view, discard the silhouette.
there'll be no cliché of teardrops falling,
no more dreams and whims to keep me sleeping
cause...

i'm gonna follow the road to the sunlight,
until the moon shines down on me.
i'm gonna run just to see you shining,
and turn this darkness into spring.

i walked on the moon, in a trance you danced,
our footprints flickered in the dust, i glanced.
now there's just a lonely pair in the lunar crust,
you fell like a star and vanished in a rush,
i must...

leave the streets that house my agony,
this pledge i pen on a slab of an ivory,
never to return to the past of obscurity,
just drive my way back to the melody
and...

i'm gonna follow the road to the sunlight,
until the moon shines down on me.
i'm gonna run just to see you shining,
and turn this darkness into spring.

and if this road leads me to the heavens,
over and over i'd be an angel fallen.

Life
?
!
...
Death
           Life?

When it seems that everything

I’ve done in my life is wrong,

I know that loving you

is the only thing that’s right,

and I am vindicated.

 

I may not be a good man,

not even the ideal guy,

but I can give the greatest love for you,

a love meant only for you,

and I am vindicated.

 

I am vindicated

after all the trials,

you save me when you hold me,

ignite fire when the world is cold.

Keep me in your arms tight

and never let me go

‘cause there’s no place

for my soul to dwell in

but in your heart

then I am a vindicated soul.

 

I am a felon of love,

a convict of passion and desire,

locked up in a cell of hopelessness,

but when I look into your eyes, I feel impunity,

and I am vindicated.

 

And if the universe finds me guilty for loving you,

let your heart be my prison

the only place where I’d feel free,

and I am vindicated.

 

There’s a place where prisoners fall,

a solitary confinement, they call.

And in my mind and in my heart,

that place is your soul,

your beautiful soul,

there I know I am

vindicated.

come,
join the dance
to the beat
of the pouring rain,
and admire the moon
as the sun departs.

don't think
you're hallucinating
with the view
you're about
to see.

because between
sleep and awakening,
i bring to you
something
beyond heaven
could ever yield.

forget about
loving,
abandon breathing,
give up
on dreaming
come
and take a rest.

a lullaby
will be sang
for the weary lark
so that in its ascent
bliss
will come
to nest.

seeds of hope,
wasted yesterday
will be sowed
in the dry lands
of the heart and soul.

despite this night,
a new morning light
will begin to ignite,
for in darkness,
fireflies
can also be seen.

 

city lights,

bright night

i wish you'd dream

of me in summer.

stalagmites,

stalactites,

i hope you'd keep me

in your wonder.

with the heavenly stars

and planets' might,

i wish you'd hold me

in slumber.

unreachable goal,

unbearable soul,

for your beauty

i will always ponder

forever after ever...

a drowsy pair of eyes with a hyperactive imagination won't make me go to bed. worse, it feels like i'm on a transient space between sober and slumber with a tummy full of beer and a mind full of tomfooleries.

i wasn't like this. it might be the nicotine in my veins or probably the caffeine in my brain...

normally, i'd play online poker to the wee hours then couch on my bed and spare enough time to read a chapter or two of a book i was reading. but now, with this apparent insomnia,  i feel like i want to be a jerk in the poker room, drink my coffee bitter than stainless steel and smoke a cigarette which is not even my brand (and so i curse the menthol and the freaking closed nearby store and wonder why i didn't think about buying a pack at 7-11 awhile ago. i was not that stupid either but, hell, my bladder betrayed me so i had to rush because, as stupid that i am (just for tonight i hope) i didn't consider relieving myself from pathetic, pink urinals and depressing, uninhabited fast-food chains' cans on my way home.

anyway, enough of the crap... i neither want to write about anything anyway nor this is another catcher in the rye kind of story. i just feel like writing and ostensibly, with a tiny spark of hope that doing such will somehow help me forget about the book i had finished writing and for the seemingly another book i have to begin writing on account of my zippy brain sadistically maneuvering my hands to type for the meantime. i don't care about typing the story, the ideas will flow over anyway... it is the stupid protagonist's brain which i have to get into and the other characters i have to immerse with and if you only know what helluva brain they have, you'd understand why i almost forgot that i am sane, that i am human, and to tell you the truth, i almost forgot that i am alive.

just now, i am losing the game from a stupid, conceited son of a b*tch in the poker room and with an empty cup of coffee and my final stick of menthol (which still makes me wish that there's a fairy godmother or a genie around so i could ask for a stick of non-menthol filter), i better start logging off and get back to my wife waiting on the bed... her name is "the master and margarita" (yeah right, my wife is a book and she's not the only one... there are shelves of them and they are all my wives... the real world is my mistress.)

forget about the title. hopefully i'm gonna tell something about it some other day because my cerebellum is already betraying my senses and putting me on the verge of having epistaxis.


to my editor, pardon me for the typo, grammatical and sentence fragment errors, blame it on the alcohol.
to the jerk in the poker room, well, the room is yours, take my phony money and brag about your faggot-jewish ass to those pathetic-looking posers.
to my last stick of cigarette, i hate to say this but, "despite your menthol taste, you blew me away."
to the empty cup where i took orgasmic sips of organic coffee, you can now compare your life to me for we are now both empty.
to my blood streaming through my veins, have more patience before you burst out through my nose and make a damn cliched metaphor turn into a literal running joke.

there is no winning in whining so i better shut the f*ck up and end this rigmarole.

you never heard me speak, barely saw me fly,
i walked along with snoopy, thus you never saw me cry.
my logic is erratic, i could wind up telling you a lie,
i am such a miserable bird so today i decide to die.

one day i played hockey on my birdbath during the cold winter,
i felt very sad that i longed for a mom's hug, so warm and tender.
snoopy was so kind that he joined me in search for my mother,
but our feet led us to a carnival where the crowd made me feel warmer.

when snoopy was the head beagle, i became his secretary,
when he played golf, i became his pathetic little caddie.
when we played football, he hit my head and called me a sissy,
then he began to read and stopped playing with me and my frail body.

i've never been famous like tweety and the big bird from sesame street,
so what's left of me is my snout that doesn't even look like a beak.
how i wish before i die i could have at least two front teeth,
which i would exchange for my idle wings and these fragile feet.

so this serves as my last will and testament before i kill myself,
i turnover my nest and birdbath to my secret friend who is an elf.
i won't think of speaking with charlie because for me, he is deaf,
hoping that my best bud is happy with his stupid books in a shelf.

farewell to you, my friend, snoopy and to your practical jokes,
you'll never see my neck again which you used to shake till i choked.
to the flying birds i envy, mostly to superman with an inviolable cloak,
today i'll fly with you without a beak-bleed, but with a bottle of coke.

I have been sitting here as soon as I woke up, playing poker online (a past-time that seemingly developed into a habit and a habit drawn from boredom) on different tables, in different rooms, with different hosts, different jerks, different posers, and indifferent dealers. Now I’m still awake, alive but not so enthusiastic. I’m tired but I can’t shut my brain’s power-switch off. And I decide to play my last hand of the night.

I forget, it's already dawning.

Is this insomnia leading me to amnesia? Definitely to anemia but hopefully not to schizophrenia – such paranoia I can’t endure.

Apparently, there is another episode of sleeplessness I have to deal with. Should the angry sound of the sharp globules of rain thwacking the roof like a madman be the one to blame? Or mainly owing to caffeine making love to my cell membranes after taking my sixty-seventh sip of black coffee since the precise moment Tuesday kissed Wednesday goodnight up to this scorching time of the sun’s tyranny? Or probably an addiction? To poker? Or to sleeplessness? Or is it another rendezvous with my imaginary friends I only meet on the back of my mind?

With cheap Chippy chips for breakfast paired with another cup of coffee… I even managed to make fun of the pun in the snack I devour and the chips I use for betting.

Slowly, indubitably, my life turns into a pathetic, lame game of poker. With the jack and the king of diamonds on my hand, I wait for my turn, dealing with archfiends disguised as ordinary human beings, hoping that the flop can eventually save me, wishing that the dealer possesses clairvoyance to read my card and bestow some clemency on my vanishing heap of chips.

Everybody called deliberately except for the guy sitting next to me. He bets a grand. Can it possibly be that this idiot foe of mine is bluffing me? Should I call or raise the bet? How much? Should I fold? What if the flop shows a winning streak? Should I go all in? To turn my accusations of bluff a mock towards me?

Then there goes the flop… the deuce of hearts, the ace and the ten of diamonds.

I want to sleep neither because I need to nor I’m weary. I just want to go to bed and have a last-play syndrome in my imagination where I will be able to control the flop, the turn and the river. Where I will be able to manage my mind to alter my cards into a perfect hand of luck – a full house, with an ace high or a royal flush. But before I do, I want to make it big or lose it all. I think of the ‘now’ versus the ‘never.’ So I’m betting all in.

Then the turn: the stupid seven of spades draws in.

What lurks behind this mystery? A messy mill of misery? Another twist of fate that will test my faith? Like rhythms that never rhyme, I set my brain free plunging into a space between sanity and lunacy, wondering, wandering, searching for the river that will save me.

Stricken with anxiety over anticipation bearing the feeling that resembles dejection, I bet, I curse…

And I conquer.

The river saves me - a queen.

Or so I assume...

Playing poker online... I am a good pretender, a competent bluffer but such skill is manifested physically. How could I ever show it online without the other players seeing me and without me looking at them in the eyes? Because just now, I am busted despite having a decent straight to ace. The jerk bettor beside me has a flush. The queen of the river belongs to the kingdom of hearts and it pinches the organ in my body that resonates its last name.

There's a light of little luck but there's also a black hole of mercy. In the world of poker, sometimes, it's not all about strategy. Nevertheless, I don't think I've got any of those. Never in my life that I will play this game for real. Maybe for fun but I don't think that gambling is in my blood. Even my luck can attest to that. When that time comes, I'm gonna use Chippy chips as chips and make this past-time a tasty game in reality.

here they come again, haunting me, making me uneasy, troubling me, preventing me to sleep. they are incessantly talking, despite my already closed eyes, they appear like ambiguous images of different beasts, some even managed to appear angelic. i can hear their tiny voices aloud, i can see their vague images unimpeded. and they won't just stop...

i am definitely sure that this is not an apparent prelude to delusions which could lead to a  mental pathology for i am still undoubtedly aware of the absolute and relative distinctions between what is real and what is not. yet, the voices are there - their images look like mine when i look in the mirror but as i squint, i subsequently see that the reflections never bear my own. they are haunting me like mummified Egyptian rulers, like kings of ancient thrones, like deities of neverwheres and like creatures of the middle-earth.

does this phenomenon underpin from the guilt of this tale i am about to write? or just, as induced by my fantasy, a mere manifestation of bearing the curse that goes with the gift of having a wild, wide, overly dynamic imagination? or could it be just my brain entertaining the overwhelming, mind-fucking thought of making the Vatican grounds shake when the faithfuls come to read this manuscript i am writing which also makes me pen this post with the hope that sharing this pathetic episode will eventually help me succumb to slumber? anyway, the Vatican thing is pretty far-fetched so i am going to stick to my second conclusion.

the fiend won't even yield. he has the loudest voice among them all. he gives me the shivers and at the same time, a lump in my throat. what thrills me the most is that he is someone you may find literally vicious and beastly, but in my tale, he has a soft-spot in the ragged corners of his heart for he is someone like me: a victim of something beyond reason can ever explain, beyond faith can endure and beyond fantasy can ever fathom.

in this another sleepless night, this dominating fiend is my friend. he talks to me and i listen to him. his narration becomes my tale thus this tale i write... and i start in ten, nine, eight... i don't want to wait. i will write until he finally allows me to fall asleep and there we will continue with our brainstorming.

i might consider some psychiatric aid but not until i'm done because this is the best time to type his words - raw, fresh and while he is sitting beside me in the flesh.


don't worry about me, when this is all over, i will sneak out and find my way back to sanity.