As much as I try, I can't shake it.

Every try to walk away from something you love? How about someone you love? Do you love yourself? Every try walking away from yourself? It's like taking your own heart and ripping it out of your chest, only to chuck it in the dust and then piss on it while laughing at the moon.

The mangler just belched and now I can smell the coils burning. Fuck it. I'll fix it in the morning... right after I fix my 6 am goodnight Jim Beam and diet Doctor Pepper. Some things never let you down.

This god forsaken script will be the end of me. But, as much as I laughingly pretend I have any willpower left, I try to tell myself -- just get to the end of it! This could be something real in your life. This could be a moment of change. But "getting to the end" is like asking a dying man in the desert to crawl across cactus to lick the edges of some fluttering mirage that keeps slipping backwards towards the horizon as the clickity-clack of hungry scorpions closes in all around.

The scab on my index finger fell off on my desk earlier. I screamed and slapped at it, thinking it was an insect and then when it wouldn't move I pushed it around the desk with the empty tampon applicator my sometime "girlfriend" left on the floor. After realizing it was a part of me, my own flesh, dried and now hardened against the ravages of the world, I decided to eat it. The crust on the edges was fine, like beef jerky but earthy. But in the center was a big piece of soft tissue -- my own blood and skin -- and it snapped back in my teeth as I tried to tear it free. The thick bubbling foam of burbon and diet DP came up in my throat which I spit out, somewhat irrationally as I was already eating my own scabs. What next, I thought? What next?

That's the question that's been dancing around the window of my brain like a fariy in sand dusted cowboy boots. How to end it all. How to finish what has been started.

I hope Pandora had it easier.