Promises to the End

The day after Christmas I walk outside and shivers shoot down my spine.
I haven't shaved in days. Nor have I left the warmth of my house. And it's cold out. I pull my jacket closer.
Outside it's dusk, the sun is setting, brilliant, orange. Getting colder. But it's not that fact that it's the end of December that gives me goosebumps. No, global warming's got that taken care of. I shake with the fact that after the peace of Christmas the war starts up again. My personal war. I'm sorry that it had to break for two days, to tell you the truth. Gave me a taste of freedom. Now what? The shots start back up, the offensive resumes. Engrained in me is the seige mentallity again, the one that I've built up to win this war. And win at any cost.
But I'm tired. Of all of it, this battle, this fight. It doesn't need to be, I tell myself. I should just submit.
"Submit? And then what?"
Lose. The losers life isn't the hard life. You're out of the play-offs and on vacation. The easy life. Sure, no glory, but sleep. And sleep is so hard to come by. But I've committed myself. And as I walk out the shiver ripples through me. The ghost of the past that is about to reap havoc on me once again. The ghost of the future that is about to pick off my emotions one by one until I break. Then the ghost of the present: panic, chaos.
I'm running the vanguard, hard and straight and with the same force that a thousand Zenidine Zidanes or Genghis Khans have. Sheer, absolout, fervor.
But the days are colder and will get colder. Where's the global warming in my life?
I still can't get away from my past, no, not after everything. The dreams are starting up again, more lucid, again. And my destiny is ever present. It's a hard thing to realize, that you've been destined for something and must fulfill it. It's something you can't let go. Me? My destiny is not letting go.
I made a promise years ago.
"If you give me the power, I will use it for you."
The hero? The villian?
I'll be both, and the ghosts will let me know that.
"If you give me the power, I WILL use it for you."
I wonder if whatever ghosts are left up there still remember.

Fuck You Chris Miles

Ringing in my ear and it's all I can here, a voice on the other end hell bent on telling me that I need to go to a place that she calls hell.
On the other end I'm listening as freezing cold air sweeps through my hair and I shiver but don't care because my jacket is already buttoned tight and I know I can't do anything about it.
"Fuck you, Chris Miles," she says. "Go to hell."
And I think about telling her that I've been there a few times and if she's interested in me telling her about it, then she'll have to shut up and listen.
She's mad. Something I said. But, nothing that I did. She tells me she's mad about what I "did,"
and that gets me thinking.
"You don't care, you can't care," And the Devil is screaming into the receiver telling me to go to hell. I laugh, out of irony, at all the times she sent me there herself.
But the "not caring" part seems to strike a cord with me as I switch the phone into my other hand in the cold night and stick the former one in my pocket.
Why wouldn't I care, I think as she keeps rattling on about something that she claims to know more about in the world then me but has yet to tell me what exactly that something is. How can I not care?
"What have you ever done to care?"
And hell, why is she telling me to voluntarily go to hell when I did it before, and didn't like it.
"You can't care."
I hear her say that again and I think that the conversation is dying because she's getting redundant, but at the same time it, again, stings me because, really, I do care and have gone to hell before and she should know that before she offers up both topics.
"When was it?" I mutter under my breath as she's still talking, and start thinking about that time I cared for a second.
And I remember that I was in my room, lying on my bed in mid-afternoon, a warm afternoon, tired as hell, starring at my plain white ceiling waiting for a man I needed to interview to call me. My phone was on my chest and I figured that I would feel it if it rang so I closed my eyes and drifted into sleep where I came to a world that I had blocked out for the longest time.
You see, a few weeks earlier, prior to this memory there had been a plane crash- tragedy, 50-something dead, horrible, right after take off- and I had helped cover the story...Basically writing an obituary. I wonder if she's ever written an obituary, doubt she has.
Well, I called the family and the friends and the other people that wanted to talk and they talked about the crash and their love ones I was writing about and they cried and they painted a picture of the dead people that made me want to cry too...You know, "always smiling, had a dog, just bought a new CD and called me the night before to tell me about it, talked to him the other day and was just thinking about him when I heard he was dead," that stuff. I mean, I wonder what happened to the dog because I never quite found that out. I think I cared there.
Anyways, so I fall asleep, deep sleep, and I dream and in my dream there is a plane and it is half buried in the ground and burning. Inside I hear the screams. Burning. If voices could burn because that's what they were doing, the voices were burning, and screaming, and, in my dream I just stood there until the screams woke me up and I ripped my brain from unconsciousness and was awake again, sweating, the screams still echoing in my ears.
I cared there and went to hell.
"Fuck you Chris Miles, fuck everything you do," she says.
And I say I'm sorry she's mad at me.
"But I do care," I say.
That should never be an issue, I think as I shrug on through the cold.

Midnight's late reminder

"End it all."
I think we were on the same level last night.
Maybe that's why it made so much sense.
Lately it feels like I've fell into the ocean without the luxary of a life vest.
No coast guard, may I remind you.
Like I'm left behind.
But it was smooth when we talked.
Fluid, calm, not a tidal wave.
Maybe its psycological.
Maybe paranormal.
Abnormal either way.
What did you say:
"Lets go to China, I'll take you."
"I've never been to China."
"Neither have I."
"Sure."
"Just like that?"
"Why not."
"Can't be that easy."
"Do you ever just want to swim away?"
"All the time."
"Too bad we're land-locked."
"Too bad."
"But there are lakes."
Something like that, snappy.
At midnight I think the realization that I wasn't suppossed to be there clicked in. Well, only breifly. It was a good feeling, though, being there, in that mental state of mind.
Like I had figured it out.
Thats when I understood who I was: A man bent on some distant driving goal that he couldn't explain but that pulled him in with the force of a tractor beam. I couldn't be derailed. At midnight I realized I was a maniac. Nuts. And i realized that when the sun came up i would be alright again; smart, sharp and searching, just with things on my mind. Right now I had nothing on my mind. Jekell and Hyde. Thats me.
The searching part is why I want to be a swimmer. At night, though, its all about the darkness that fills your head, the nothing.
Right then I was reminded that I wanted to get away but didn't know how.
"China would be nice right now."