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wokeuptiedup
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Country: United States
State: Illinois
Metro: Chicago
Gender: Male
Interests: Not eating animals. eating lots of minerals. polaroids. fat dogs with little heads. juice boxes. Recycling. always. Feeding the hungry, not my habit. poetry, photography, mashed potato sculpting. shamelessly bitching about my gift of life here. meowing. Thai kickboxing, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. play a little guitar-but its only a little good. work work school school play play play.
Expertise: give me a chance to shine, and i'll blind the world.
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
2/21/2003
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| New angel tattoo:
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b142/wokeuptiedup/8c99358d.jpg
New(ish) portrait tattoo:
HERE
I disable comments on it, though thank you to those who did already.
I just...think they're fitting memorials considering who my brother
was, and that they should speak for themselves. | | |
| Sam (5/31/78-5/21/2005)
Rest in Peace
In some of my writing I have painted my brother to look like the victim of an awful disease. This is not the case. He was a strong, courageous, loving person who just so happened to have a terrible illness. He passed away on Saturday and my world is completely upside down. Sam is my best friend, my big brother, and a father figure to me.
He was the bravest person i've ever known. Never once in the two years since his cancer diagnoses has he said "why me?" never once did he sit and feel sorry for himself. Although the doctors told him that his type of brain tumor would take him in around 3 years, he never ever once believed them. He never gave up hope, even until his dying day. He taught me so much about strength of will, strength of character, and strength of heart.
If there are any dark times in my life, like there is now, I know that if i could just muster an ounce of the courage my brother had, i'll be able to get through anything.
There were almost 200 people at his wake, people telling stories of how he touched their lives: how he'd remembered and called to wish them 'happy anniversary' on the day after his brain surgery, how he taught Robert a lot about life during a 30 minute car ride to get his chemo, how he kept Michelle from killing herself when her son passed away.
My brother was a force of nature. In the first 24 years he lived his life however he wanted and did whatever he wanted. In the last 2 years of his life, he may not have been able to live exactly how he wanted, but he loved immensely, and the people he touched will have that forever. He was a punk rocker in the truest form, a wonderful tattoo artist, an extremely talented punk rock DJ. He was also a kind, loving, loyal friend who left his mark, not just on our skin, but in our hearts.
We buried him just like he'd have wanted. Clad in his combat boots and his Ramones shirt, with a tattoo machine in his hand. We played all his favorite bands, people brought posters to put up, we had pictures of the tattoos he'd done, banners of paintings his friends made of him with a little angel body looking down from a cloud, but still looking tough as hell with his mohawk, his boots, and all his ink.
I love my brother, Sam. I'm going to miss him forever, and I don't know if it'll get easier. If he's in heaven tattooing Jesus, i'll see him soon. And i'll bring a six pack. | | |
| The rain
its a lovely lady
shaking her hips.
With a forked tongue full of free
associations or
sexual innuendos.
With
a sense of clarity amid her hazy
sea of droplets or
a sense of charity
to starving farmers,
thirsty animals.
Our lady might come to you quietly
to trace her name in your palm
and trickle away
(like lovers past).
She dies like all of us
some times slowly
others, abruptly;
leaving behind
puddles in which we can see our
own reflections
in the memory of her.
Just like us.
Leaving behind
worms and odors but
sometimes a rainbow. | | |
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Late Summer 2003
My 22nd birthday.
I'd
spent 6 weeks in the hospital by then. I wasn't a patient, but I slept
in a bedside chair watching him sleep most nights. I didn’t know what
to do with myself. I went home to shower every couple days, I wore the
same jeans and hoodie for weeks, comfort was king. I smelled bad, my
hair stood up, and my eyes hollow and outlined by years that hadn’t yet
belonged to me.
I
had a love affair with Kurt Vonnegut that summer. I hadn't the time for
one with a woman and at that point I couldn’t even remember last having
an erection. It rained a lot and the puddles were filthy, smelly. I
would sneak out and sit in the park across the street, looking at the
pigeons and trying to lose myself in his books. I tried to imagine a
world unaccompanied by blue and red lights and that awful wailing. I
was learning to look the other way when death was around. I learned to
stick to the sidelines to stave of insanity.
I learned that chemotherapy is the ugliest word I'd ever heard.
I
saw men breathing blood like dragons fire in radiation clinics on the
basement floor (I think they keep the worst situations in the basement,
away from the pleased as punch publics eyes as they visit Jimmy who is
getting his tonsils removed). The screams of childrens whose muscles
had been frittered away by chemical cures would burn through the walls.
At first they'd make you jump, they would make the hairs on your neck
raise with enough electricity to power a city block. The screams would
make you sit upright in your chair and lose place in your book,
shifting your legs to try to regain some sense of balance that is
nonexistant. Sensitive screams at the slightest pokes, at their own
mothers touches. The most chilling part is the way you get used to
them. While you continued feeling sorry for these children, you just
wished that they'd keep it to themselves, keep the screaming down
because you've heard it a million times before. Through them I
learned that the pain I'll face in my life (like life itself, I
thought) is nothing more than a passing inconvenience. The peel of
a bandage.
Disgusting
fat women would share stories with a smile in waiting room
chairs. Flipping through Cosmo and chatting about weather and
politics and the daily things that happened in the outside world; as if
there was no such thing as death and dismemberment and crying children
and parents in pain and anguish. Everything repulsive in the world was
hidden in these walls. I wanted to kick up my chair and pluck
those magazines from their fat fingers. I wanted to push them into
a wall and scream to them, spittle flying forth from my lips. I wanted
them to realize, like I did, what was going on in here, what these
people, what my brother, were going through. That all the gawdy jewelry
and inconvenient rainy days don't make a lick of difference (that
nothing did). I wanted them to stop living their high lives and
succumb to my sorrow. I wanted them to come down from their Michigan Avenue coops and wallow in what was the true way of the world.
But
I smiled at them politely and looked away. Because what I wanted most
was to be indistinguishable, to get through these days without a peep.
I wanted to be a shadow, leaned high against a wall, meeting no ones
gaze.
It wasn't until later that I realized I was wrong. | | |
| I love finals, i love the ability to test myself, to test what i've learned. I also want to punch finals in their stupid fucking faces.
on
Sleeping silently next to you after making
Love
or
alternate sessions (when
we just talk, and it's all the more intimate):
we are like roses
together
leaning this way or that
leaning towards ~happy~
trying to lean away from
>sad<
but withering
in a sorry sillside pot
where the sun has laid its sweet caress
and damaged us to death.
i think you're withering the other way; sometimes.
A mini miracle:
defying time
with your childlike eyes
If the sun set sideways
(N to S)
we'd be in the same hour
and i wouldn't feel so alone:
slowly dying like a flower
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