Musings of JR Simmang

You're graceful all around, drinking in the soul of me. I cannot help but stare, sometimes at the back of your head, because that's all I can see of you. And that, sometimes, is enough.

It was an odd fog this morning, cresting like a wave in the silence of the night upon the broken shores of Deadman's Hollow. I belong to the sea, he said, his windows rolled down, as if sending an invitation to the pallid blanket over the city. The Road, he thinks, is a narrow strip of suicide, never changing, and gritty. There is no more here than a constant expanse to an endless arrow. The scenery starts looking the same. At least it shares this with the sea, around you is nothing but water and you think you could drown in the constant reflection of salty tide. There is unidirectionality, a oneness of everything. It's a battle of wits to convince yourself that the age you race toward is also what propels you forward, every bump in the road is a new wrinkle... But it pains him to think this as his wheels do all the work. In the ocean, he thinks, he'd put in his miles on his hands. The salt-air burning scars into his face. The sun bea...

In response to a WD prompt: In the right light, his hair almost cast a shadow. "Well, seeing as how I don't have a choice in the matter, I suppose I'll have to go with eyesight." He, Dr Manne, had me strapped to a cold, sterile, surgical steel operating table. I didn't remember how I got there. "Eyesight? Typical." "That's the one I want dulled." "Oh. Interesting. Willingly blind." He was stooped over a table, his shoulders hunched with anticipation. I was catching mainly the echo off the plain white walls. "I want you to enhance my sixth sense." I heard a clang and what sounded like the rapid rearranging of metal pieces of a metal tray. When he spoke, his voice came out in starts and stops. "The sixth sense?" he sputtered. "That's what I said. I want you to enhance my sixth sense." He laughed, slowly at first, with the gurgle building steam in the pit of his stomach, then reached a Vesuvian expl...

Good day, folks. Today's post is of a different direction. It's the first of several that are going to go into detail about what I am going to do to get fit and GoRuck/Highland Games strong. Several of you already know that I am both gluten- and dairy- free. It's biological. However, having to exlude these things from my diet has had an immense effect on my physique and metabolism. I am no longer sluggish, my focus has improved, I sleep better, and fat has had a hard time sticking around my midsection. Workouts feel more effective, as my endurance has also increased. Wheat is a killer. Dairy comes from a cow. Anyways, my stats are this: I am 5' 9.5" and barely kicking 150 lbs. My one rep max deadlift is 110. I can squat my body weight. My bench is 90. I'm not that great. But, I've started a new regimen, and I'm going to start tracking now. Yesterday, my workout was this: 1.5 mile run/warm-up 5 rounds of 30 feet suitcase carry, heaviest weight (60...

Day 5 He didn't sleep last night. He was driven by heat and his dreams caused his body to ache and twist. It's probably better this way. No one wants to sleep with a man who cannot seem to separate the sheets from his indecipherable memories. He awoke that morning to an incandescent sheen on his windows and a knock on the door. It was a Monday. He put on his clothes thinking that today would be the final day to say good bye, but he wasn't sure he was ready to release her body heat to the curtains and windows. He wasn't sure he was ready to get rid of the last little drops of sweat and her lingering perfume still impermeating his bed linens. He pulled on his pants and found a letter on the stoop. It was penned in illumination. It was penned in loops. It was in the hand of a woman.

On the Fourth Day He’s feeling like he should shave. It’s been since that night and it is way past 5 o’clock. His eyes are red and crusted over, presumably from crying, though he promised himself a long time ago that he would no longer allow his eyes to water. He thinks a lot about his mother right now, her kind, warm embrace and comforting words had soothed him before. They could do the same thing now. He needed to hear he was a good man with a good and patient heart so that he could learn to live on when the one part of him that pines still will become just another part of him. He wishes he could see her again. To remember her face. He went back to the bar the night before only to find the same beefeater that found him first. He didn’t feel much like being reacquainted, so he sat and watched as other couples camped and flirted. Helena. Helena, my love.

Three days from then he is back to the bottom of the hill, reminding himself of Sisyphus as he pushes his Ford out of his driveway and into the street. He was in the mall when he got under the notes of her perfume. He had trouble recognizing it at first. It was almost painful digging through the back of his mind, unearthing something that should have been buried and left undisturbed. He found out is was Chanel No. 5. It’s a common fragrance, he says. But, I don’t have a girlfriend. The lady with the perfume bottle blushed, and he thinks he could ask her back to his place later, but his mouth wouldn’t move and he stood there stupidly. What was it about Helena? Was it the brunette hair she left behind on the pillow? Was it the way she cradled his head after the sex they shared? Was it the way she sung “Fly me to the Moon” in the shower after they both got sweaty and out of breath? Or was it that he was finally feeling something. He pushed his Ford o...

Two Days Later and it’s all coming back to him now. He thinks he remembers her name a shallow pond, or something like that, where the water is just deep enough to drown but not deep enough to worry yourself with ever waking up. Does she remember his? After all, it was the day of love, and they just so happened to be in the same place at the same time. The thirteenth, not a Friday, but may as well have been, was not a great day for him. He was on the receiving end of a Dear John note, washed in perfume and stinking of infidelity. Plus, his name wasn’t John. Relationships, he thinks to himself, are no picnic. There is no red and white checkered sheet. No wine hidden in a cute wicker basket that touches the cheese and bread just so much. But, was this a relationship in the first place? He looked down into his coffee sitting on the red and white checkered plastic table cloth of the diner and breathed a deep sigh. It was just a night of revelry and me ...

This is the first in a series since V-Day. The Day After love is no longer mentioned, while the black coffee swishes and swashes in the bottom of his mug. The pure white sheets that once contained her heat were now cold as their color. She was gone. They met in a library. She was pre-med. Both of them intended to be gone before the other got there, but the best laid plans of mice and men were usually paved on the road to hell and they met. First, it was wistful, pleasantries exchanged like the book sleeves on their paper- backs soon on the sheets and mixing into a collage of flesh. They breathed each other nights, they wouldn’t breathe at all. There wasn’t any time. He knew, though, all along the windows would open and she would fly out like they always do. Her day came today; he breath stale on his tongue as he took his first sip of coffee. Happy fuckin’ Valentine’s Day, he said through bootblack teeth and rubber stamp tongue. She’s gone.

I just want to say this poem is not about my current relationship. This is an official disclaimer. V/Z/Dooms-Day If the rose be truly red, then it would drip drip drip with the blood of the unfortunate passer by. Its thorns, tiny lancets, twist and turn and bleed out the heart. It’s never solitary, this. Where you find one, you find hundreds, each equally capable of splitting your fragile flesh. If violets truly be blue, then they are made of ice, fractured and shattering. They seep in through the nose, for every deep enchantment brings your heart that much closer to stopping. If sugar be sweet, then your teeth will rot straight out your head. Your pearly whites will gather on the ground, soaking in the pure, pitiful sounds of your wailing. And you. You. You wretched, horrible, rose bed. I must water you daily, prune you nightly, and try to not get stung by your needle. You are like the violet, frozen and blue. You rot my teeth to the gum. ...

I am not beast, he said clawing at the ancient sky, under which he has found himself suffocated and extinguished. When was it that the darkened expanse, fitted behind the sun, became an anchor and the sun itself became a portal to a turgid world of reckoning? Does a beast, eyes red and soaking, teeth yellow and bared, dare think these thought? It had been a long time since he had felt pain. It had been a long time since he had seen his own blood flow into the time-carved rivulets in the ground below and gather into small puddles under his feet. He couldn't remember how long he had sat on his throne. His memories faded to smoke faster than the fire had been built, and he was laying face up into a scrying glass. He had taken the throne, gladly, upon murmurings of discontent. It had been easy, he thought, and he thought it again, and even smiled at this thought that he had been the one to puncture the delicate tapestry of long-established forma...

It’s a revolution they speak of, but the hem of his robes continue to stay an inch above the ground. They always will, he thinks, so long as the ground beneath him stays beneath him, solid and sound and tied to the spinning world. It’s been a hard battle, he knows, but these halls have stood and stayed when the walls were burning white and ashen, embers resound- ing echoes of screams and Hail Mary full of grace. This, he thinks, as his robes swish and sway bounding off the cobblestones down and through and around the myriad halls, is not the Crusades. This is the death of martyrs and saints. He falters, tries to catch his breath, and leans heavily on a bust of a man slain years ago in a fit of misunderstanding. Power, he knows, lies in the hands of they who seek to destroy that which amounts to be a square peg for a round hole. He can feel the first of many stinging saline worries gently trace a path from his eyes to his chin. His feet keep moving him awa...

I have found myself at a crossroads, sandwiched between folds of cloth and yards of flesh. Do I gently tug or do I begin to disappear? A silly thing, flesh. They say it is the greatest organ, and when pressed so rightly, when stroked so tightly, it does sound a homily, glancing the narthex and singing its praises to God. God. God what I want to do to you under the yards of flesh. I want to practice ingenuity. I want to stitch and sew myself to you. I want to become that which is filling this void between us just so that I may inch that much closer. And closer still. I can feel your breath on my breath. I can see your eyes in my eyes. This distance is driving me mad. SPEAK ALREADY! I am ready to listen. I am ready to listen with my calloused fingers, which stand crossed at the lower of your back, and wishing, God, wishing there were some way I could feel more of you at once! Can we just get on with it? I stand/ sit/ puddle, suspended from your fingertips, waiting and wishing for thi...