BUDDHA

I love the cold. It makes me bold. I slip two fingers into your fold. Only you I wish to hold. After you, God discarded the mold. In your arms I am no longer old. To you my soul I've sold. Be discreet I am told.

  If the sky is the limit for humanity in general, then diving into the black hole is the limit for a confessional writer. To be self-flagellating and masochistic, you must be brave and bold. Or maybe you are fooling yourself? You are on a kamikaze mission and you want to take down as many as possible before you self-destruct. As a journalist and an author, I am bound by court orders to refrain from discussing certain political and personal issues. I could be stripped of my pension, fined thousands and sent to prison. So much for free speech. So much for telling the real story. So much for writing my autobiography. For a writer of such little fame, my pen has been the sword that I have used on myself as I have dealt with the repercussions of my swash-buckling prose both at work and at home. As an unedited journalist and author, I can say that I have broken most of the rules. There are few sacred cows that I haven't milked. But it has cost me. It has cost me three families for start...

For god's sake don't marry a writer, but goddamn it don't marry a painter either. The first will pierce you with his words, but the second will turn his brushes into swords.

Wine and dine,  and then mine  someone fine.

Imagining women whom I have loved filled with other men's sperm has  made me unforgiving. And the reason I am groping in the darkness on a diurnal basis is because imagining these decadent couplings haunts me 24/7.

Will Brownsville escape its ignominious reputation as one of the most impoverished and ignorant cities in the United States? Will the few continue to prosper at the expense of the many who will be sentenced to wallow in misery? Will the exploding population spread like a cancer and turn this once tropical paradise into a wasteland of cheap housing and pot-hole streets? Will the blind lead the blind off the banks of the Rio Grande into its polluted and poisonous waters? Will the powerful Mexican-Americans like "Panocha," "Sucio" and "The Turd" treat their powerless brothers and sisters worse than the white masters treated their slaves before the Civil War? Will Brownsville promote the living museum that is downtown or will the economic development corporation repeat fast failures by subsidizing Muskrat and his minions with millions of taxpayer dollars? Will the county judge, mayor and the rest of the zombies finally die or are they destined to haunt Brownsv...

My father was born 100 years ago today. He was born January 13, 1925. Even though he was a great man, there will be no parades remembering him. No flags will fly at half-staff. No newspaper will regale him in spite of all the contributions he made to his family and country. He passed away more than twelve years ago. I pay my respects to him and my mother daily. Their photos sit on my mantle over the fireplace. His memory is burned deep into my soul. Donald Trump or Elon Musk or Eddie Lucio couldn't hold a candle to him. He never sought power. He believed in people. He had one pet peeve. He never liked being call "the old man." He couldn't look at yellow photographs without his eyes watering. He was everything that was "good" about a human being. I wish I were one-tenth the man he was in his long life:

You ask me if I'm alright?  How can anyone be alright, David, when the malignant tumor that is Trump metastasizes throughout the country now that he will be president even in the blue states? He is a malevolent cancer, but at least that piece of rat shit proves a convenient scapegoat for all my troubles.  I will never be alright. The person I most loved squeezed the life out of me. The person I most adored buried me. I have nightmares every night. No amount of pills and cough syrup bestow upon me peaceful rest.  I perceive nothing but a future of death and destruction. At present, I am suffering from sciatica. How many more illnesses and diseases await me before I reach the end of the line as Johnny Cash might sing? I am already experiencing the brutal truth that pleasure is nothing more than the absence of pain.  I could go on and on I reside in such a deep and dark hole. However, there are  enough good moments that serve as beacons of light in my endless night...

J ack O' Connell, the great self-published novelist, grinds out his existence. He has no illusions or delusions. He is in his eighth decade as he slowly meanders to the end. He has no complaints. If you ask him about his life, he will tell you that it has been good. He says that those who gather downtown to throw his ashes into a gutter on a rainy day, as he has jokingly suggested, will agree that his was a life well-lived if not well-examined. "Doc" Stein has only known him for a few years, but they became immediate friends when they met by chance at a downtown bar. "Doc" hadn't seen him lately. "Doc" had been in the enchanting city of Florianopolis, Brazil, for the last six months learning Portuguese, but last weekend he walked into the Boqueron to drink wine and chat with his favorite bartender Andrea when to his delight Jack was seated at the bar flirting with her. "Doc" had learned in their short time together that they shared many o...

As I age, less than five years from eighty and that's over-the-hill any way you cut it, I feel like I'm imploding. I imagine that I am the Wicked Witch of the West melting into a puddle after Dorothy has doused her in water. I am slowly withering on the vine. There is some bloom remaining, but it is fading fast.  I look at the shrunken people my age and they have no color. Hunched over, they shuffle from place to place. From their hair to their skin, everything is gray. They have stepped across the threshold. Youth is a forgotten past if these elderly individuals haven't already lost their memories. These are not the golden years. Our first four decades could easily qualify as the golden years. We've been reduced to tin at best.  Remember the Tin Man before Dorothy oiled him? That's my body when I rise in the morning. I'm jealous of the Cowardly Lion. At least he could give a false impression with his roar. Like the Scarecrow, I have shown that I have no heart. ...

Without delving into the details because there are none as this work slowly takes shape in my mind, Death Worms is about a plague that sweeps the land as millions of infectious worms are crawling into people's beds at night and nestling in their brains. The hero, a doctor, discovers a medical solution to the infestation, but a corrupt government led by Trump will not allow him to implement his plan because the politicians are in bed with the pharmaceutical firms that will lose billions if this medication beats them to the punch.

Sitting in a folding chair on my balcony overlooking this wonder, I wrote a note to a dear friend: " The air is thick with death, I have finally escaped my nightmarish sleep. This April I will have resided in Brownsville 50 years. During these five decades the city has become filled with ghosts. I only pray that I pass before any of my three sons meet their inevitable fates. I'm sorry to start your week on such a dark note, but sometimes the cosmos rubs your face in the dust to which we'll return." I have learned enough from my Zen studies that there is only the moment. As I peer across the resaca at the college campus in the distance, this is the moment that I embrace each morning sipping a cup of coffee. I return to Mother Nature. We are children of something much bigger than ourselves and we must strive to be one with that breath-taking force. I have lived in many places in Brownsville. I've inhabited a dozen edifices downtown. I once rented an abandoned office...

I am in the middle of my ninth year retired from the BISD. I earn botana money from my scriptures on my blog and Facebook, but I  haven't worked a day during this period. I noticed that a convenience store five minutes from my domicile was advertising for a cashier. I inquired about the position with the owner. He offered me a fair sum of money, but it required me working Monday through Saturday from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. I accepted his offer and trained Friday and Saturday. I have been drinking too much lately. Combined with the two milligrams of Xanax I take every day to deal with reality and relax my body, the two have resulted in several falls in recent months. Last Wednesday I was in a bar and the next thing I knew I was waking up the following morning. One ear was caked in blood, my upper lip was cut and my neck ached. I have had a headache that hasn't abated. It hits me in cycles. "You're going to kill yourself if you continue abusing yourself in this matter," s...

On our daughter's head you swore to never lie and if you shared another's bed our daughter was sure to die. But you lied and lied and lied, except our child did not die. I'm the one who's dead.

I was riding my bike in the dark as I neared the corner. There had been an accident and someone was yelling, "He's dead! He's dead." As I neared the crowd I looked and there was a body curled up in the fetal position. It was me! I kept pedaling. There were two men approaching the scene. They didn't seem to notice me. I continued cycling in a dazed state. A lone woman passed and she gave no indication that I had almost clipped her. Next, I found myself at a gathering. It was daytime. I kept trying to talk to different persons, but I was invisible to them. The feeling of frustration was overwhelming. It occurred to me that I didn't exist. I straggled in an alternative reality. I was deceased. As I was awakening, fantastic figures were emerging in the background. In this inchoate phantasmagoria I felt I could communicate with them. It occurred to me that they were dead, but it wasn't a dreadful encounter. As social as the living were, I began to feel that the...

I considered our friendship the first step on our path to love. Friendship is superficial but safe. Love in profound but dangerous. I am a roughneck and I will not stop until I have drilled you to such depths that you are gushing oil. Instead of red or white or yellow, your sheets will be black.

If I seem pessimistic, I'm dealing with a hangover: In joy, there is suffering. I have no second thoughts about last night's excesses. I've done my best to reduce the suffering by drinking plenty of liquids, combining pain killers and tranquilizers, and sleeping. Like the anonymous artist that I am, I record my thoughts during my waking moments. As I've repeated on countless occasions over innumerable glasses of beer, bottles of wine and shots of tequila, bad experiences inspire some of my best poetry. I don't know if today will be one of those transcendent instances, but no writing is bad writing. Not everyone would agree with this assertion. Sometimes it's better to stop while you're ahead. Man and woman were God's last two creations. Maybe he ran out of good material. Both have failed him. These pathetic creatures claim that God wouldn't exist if they didn't exist. Whatever. The little decent material he held in his hands, he fashioned into ma...

Sometimes you just run into a wall. Particularly with age. You know what I mean? Nothing seems to make sense, but as long as you have your health and your wealth, you continue crawling forward. (What remains of your health and wealth!) There is an ephemeral hope as long as these two pillars keep the roof from collapsing on your head. But what is that hope? You pray that the good will triumph over the bad, in your life, in everyone's life. Of course, there is no escaping the end. And the end is never pleasant, neither for yourself nor for others. I thank the fates that I am not Trump nor one of his ignorant followers. His overweening ego and his pursuit of gold reveal a pathetic individual. His orange face is disgusting although his faithful fanatics believe he is the Sun God and worship this grifter whose character is nothing short of cringe. And all the riches? He can't take them with him. He's almost eighty years old. He's cooked except Melania doesn't consider hi...

It was a night of blood. From the graves rose the rotting bodies. They had defied the laws of nature. As a part of their punishment, they were ordered to collect the living beings who had deceived as they had deceived. They took no prisoners. There was not a white sheet anywhere that wasn't covered in blood. The innocents closed their eyes in horror. They never knew that their fathers or their mothers or their husbands or their wives or their children were capable of such heinous behavior. They averted glancing behind them, so they wouldn't be turned into salt. From Sodom and Gomorrah they ran and never looked back at those loved ones whose hearts had been ripped out of them. I was one of the few condemned to pay for his transgression who managed to escape, but as I live my life on the fringes, I am covered with scars and I have wounds that never stop bleeding. I would have been better off if I had been slaughtered like all the rest, but unlike the others who had delivered them...

I'm paging through my notebook where I jot down ideas. Did I have a profound moment or insight that I put to paper before going to bed.  Shit! There's nothing.  My teeth are grinding. My lips are pressed tightly together. I'm staring at the screen like a tiger scanning the horizon for prey.  I remember Hawk's words he imparted to me one late Sunday afternoon on the deck at Cobbleheads: "As a out-of-tune guitarist with a half-ass voice, only the blues can save you, bro."  Thursday night I opened at El Hueso with this tune that I dedicated to Hawk: "I woke up this morning. It was just another day. I woke up this morning. It was just another day. I didn't know if I was coming or going. I've seem to have lost my way.  "I rolled myself a fat one. I've put my faith in dope. I rolled myself a fat one. I've put my faith in dope. And by the time I was done, I was feeling a little hope.  "I don't think I'll die today, but who knows...

He looked down from the heavens and saw the discord among the eggs and the hams and the sausages and the beans. On the other side of the border he saw the same discord entre los huevos y los jamones y los chorizos y los frijoles. How can I bring these disparate foods together as he wrapped himself in his blankets and weathered the cold from his great heights. He thought and thought and thought and as he tightened his sheets around him, the answer arrived served on a platter. I'll create the flour tortilla. And we'll all be one. Since that fateful day the flour tortilla has brought together many edibles, which have all contributed to harmonious mornings --along with a fresh cup of coffee-- and is the only way to start a day.

With part of my penis lopped off and the remainder in a dormant state,  I continue down my wayward path, a few steps forward, a few steps back, most times staggering side to side, often times falling flat on my face, awakening, alone, covered in mud, but the sky takes pity (Or is it mocking me?) (Or is it God weeping over another failed experiment?) and it starts to rain and slowly struggling to my feet I stumble onward, but I ask myself if I've become disoriented and if I'm retracing my steps, unsure if I'm headed to where I began although I know enough about the absurdity and futility of my existence that there is really no difference between the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning when darkness engulfs everything and there is no light, only the incomprehensible urge to keep moving because death is waiting patiently to embrace me in its cold arms, warmth a pipe dream to keep me putting one foot in front of the other, the only option unless I want ...

Mexico is a tragedy. Matamoros is a nightmare. It's a dirty, rotten shame. I came from Mexico to Brownsville, so I would have quick access south, but those days are long-gone.

I crossed the bridge last Wednesday night to buy pharmaceuticals at Garcia's. Though I have decent insurance, many prescriptions require a doctor's appointment. It's cheaper just to cross the bridge. It's always been cheaper to just cross the bridge. Unfortunately, life has become cheap in Matamoros and Mexico. At Garcia's I ran into banker a friend and two of his sons. They were on the dining side eating and drinking well. I joined them. They were a convivial trio and in true South Texas fashion they covered my bill. "Gracias." My buddy related that for the first time in a decade he had crossed the previous week and the visit had unleashed a plethora of memories. Unlike many of the women in our lives, Matamoros has always been a faithful lover. She has never let her man down. "Is it me or do Tecates taste better on this side of the river?" he posed. "Tecates not only taste better, but they are colder," I replied. The next morning I ref...

No! Don't say it's so. It's been more than a decade. The bluebonnets have withered. The little boy has become a man. He's gone to seek his fortune. And his dad? He's left with the photos. I can only shake my head. Where did the time go? I have no answers. In fact, I have no questions. I do my best to accept and just move on. But those beautiful flowers and that beautiful boy. Life is never the same. It changes every day. God have mercy on my soul.