scatterbrained.I have not written anything down in a long time, undoubtedly why I have felt slightly aloof; as if a door has been closed on a room full of reminders and I've forgotten my way around the room-so I resort to just leaning against the wall; letting pretty things pass before my eyes without knowing what to do. A room filled with the very post it notes with directions home, to keep myself from walking into somebody else's bedroom and drunkenliy climbing into bed only to wake someone in a panic and realize I was in the wrong part of town.

Words to keep myself from tripping over my shoes when plagued with some strange and bad case of the prison sickness that comes from roaming 'round this concrete jungle gym full of familiar faces that can never stay far enough away for longer than a day. I wish to think about what it means to have freedom, to be free, the research is only in the beginning stages..for now I merely articulate the symptoms of a youung man feeling sick with some ailment when he's laying in his bed; looking around at walls that have only gotten closer and less meaningful over the past two years. My chestplate feels like the door to the cage of ribs that surround my heart today. Some shadow has been sliding my meals under the door for me for longer than I've been aware; 'How long was I out for?' I wonder; awoken on a shiver with a stale taste on my tongue and an anxiousness that too much time has passed without my even knowing...

There is no mistaking this scent that sticks to my skin everywhere I go; the rotten stench of a man whose spent all of his time trapped like a dirty rat; a smell that sticks to me even after I shower..others can't smell it like I can for it brews from within, its a paranoid stench that lingers in my bones, the world I've breathed in and held deep within me...but in time these eyes of mine start to show the gleam of somebody staring off into the distance; the classic look of prison sickness that stares straight through another's soul as if it weren't a human standing before my eyes. Just a body filled with bones waitin' on time to die. I stroll the sidewalks and cross city lines, like some starving French soldier on a German train watching sweeping planes swoosh by, my body feels giddy from the hum of the ride but I see the blurry sights through sunken eyes and with a hopeless heart; filled with an awareness that I'm on my way to a labour camp; the scenery looks so damn pretty, but what the hell does it mean to the man who hasn't eaten in weeks whose on his way to a loveless place, even further away from the picture of the pretty face placed in his pocket watch.

It's in my power to wake. To blink. To focus my eyes on the passing schoolyard full of waving children without filling my soul with melancholy at the thought of what I've come to think of growing up; the hope of a child, as depressing as that of an ape whose born into the zoo....for there is an innate belief upon birth for all of God's creatures that the world grants wishes; the joy in the baby monkey gets stolen by the beedy eyes of tourists and the flash of the camera from those too ignorant to abide by the signs posted on the doors of their prison window; the baby swings on the swing and runs around all day, slowly he slows down his play over time, while the eyes of the mother sing a thousand sad songs, with lyrics of defeat and a tragic acceptance that there will never be anything more than this, not even for the one she loves...while popcorn eating kids and glazed eyes of drunk parents watch on with smiles-the kind who haven't forgotten how to smile yet and the kind of those who've finally realized that the only way to make sense of anything was to stop trying to make sense of everything; just start swaying softly in the breeze of a self induced coma that's eases the pain of watching our lives turn from kissing pretties to seeing toilet bowls full of blood after every time they take ....,now i stop what i was on. For none of this rambling on will get me closer to feeling free.

Freedom. Those who dare to rebel, how can we do so without changing the way we live outwardly, can I still be a free man in this society? I ask of you to answer me....can I be the overman and only be him within me; while in line at the bank, to get money to pay my bills.....while in line for the bathroom, to find a quiet little corner for me to take my pills..... This feeling of confinement stands before me like the sight of a million soldiers in a line along a shoreline who insist on making me tread water for a lifetime. But how long do i accept what life they've granted me? And, what are my options? I can see what lies beyond them, a mountain, a river, a row of beautfil birds singing songs of longing to be taken in arm by something stranger than the kind of man that devotes his life to standing in a line just to say no to some other man. Their songs echoes across the water at night, we bounce calls off the sky to one another, but there is a way to break through the line...perhaps it is much simpler than I have always assumed, a way without words...but words were always what made sense to me. So with words I build my weapons when nobodies watching and make plans of an escape from this ocean of deep blue water that turns black at night..but the stars are pretty out here, and I start to get used to staying awake only to remain lonely.....and in these moments when I smile to myself, I am free, for I have let go of the hope of ever having another person see what i see...for out here in the ocean, it's only me, I do not think of God, I do not need him to see what I see to feel alive either. This sky is mine I say to myself with a smile and for a second I am completely free, and so to is the mother of the monkey in the moments when she was watches her baby swing from articial tree to artificial tree....not so in the same way at all...only in the momentariness of the feeling of peace despite.... Humbled by the stars, I laugh at the soldiers standing along the shoreline, for nothing on land in the world of time and man has ever meant anything. Out here eternity is everything, and then I allow my lungs to breathe the sea air as deep as I can breathe, for this air is mine and all mine, at least so long as I have it still have the strength within me to take a deep breath. In solitary confinement without hope of release, I learn to accept the constant sight of the walls around me...but why? These walls can be broken down. I need to not adress all the particular reasons I feel confined, for they are all always in my mind in the form of some daunting presence, a wave of the finger at every unfulfilled wish within me, a shh for every scream, a knock on the knuckles for dreaming to do all that you could do, but you would never dare to, so long as these walls promise to surround you. Freedom; a matter of strapping on your shoes and taking what's available to you, regardless of what others are telling you. The subtleties that plague me; i turn my back on the pen, and the disease starts to become me-my skin more permeable than ever to the stream of shit talk and other's ways of walking the walk. None of it matters, for freedom has always been mine, so how can I get rid of this irritating kink at the base of my spine...how can I remove these walls once again from around my mind...articulate, reflect, forget what others don't get, for they never will get a lot of things. That's their burden, that's their curse, it isn't mine. I've got no time. The old man and my drunk uncle taught me how to play poker when I was just a kid. There are certain things you never do when at the table...the etiquette of the game always struck me as silly, and too concerned with remaining gentlemanly..paradoxically occuring during the time when men let their shackles off, a momentary chopping of their strings that keep them attached to women they only loved for a day and mortgages and sons and daughters. "Keep your cards tucked close so no-one else at the table can see." Only a rookie or a dumb drunk would ever slip their elbow off the corner of the table just enough to allow for someone else to look over their shoulder...or an obnoxious drunk to just tell everybody what he's got by flippin' his cards over intentionally just to prove that in some small context he could still make a scene....I was always too young to drink, but old enough to understand the rules...'was always'...bit of a contradiction ain't it....Keep your cards tucked close to your chest. Soon the sun will shine upon the shoreline so bright that a breif moment will present itself for you to make your escape-don't ask for more time, for time is always the one in control-just roll along until the moment is right, for freedom lies on the inside anyway, and silence is strength.