Walter Crede

I stared at the blank white sheet that had been tucked and smoothed over my little mattress, fresh and clean as it is before me, as it always is after six o’clock.  It made me wonder how many more, clean, white sheets I would lie on before this is over.  This past week I have thought about my life and its beauty…or lack thereof.  No children, no wife, just nurses: They desire to give me “peace and comfort” with little pills and glasses of water.  Still, I do not even truly possess that.  Only memories of what I have seen and done.  Now I have to mentally remind myself to take my medication, to make sure that I have checked off every little feat left on my “to do” list.  Seems depressing, but…it is not.  It is satisfying to say the least.  I am Walter Crede.  Whatever little else may be left within me, well, I can only say that I expect to give it all away.  I can not use it once I am dead.  I can not save it for myself.


Calling Cadence

By

Walter Crede

         If I could, I would write my life away.  Write it away in a small space on plain white sheets of paper such as this; pure and lined, long and quiet.  It is always the spaces in between the lines that we long to fill, even though we see them as already full.  They are filled with emptiness.  Empty spaces of beauty are lovers, but of course, not ever will one always find in them life.  This day, the days of my age, say absolutely nothing with a severity and a pitch that seems to intensify by the decade! 
I am a walking contradiction; I am thankful to be alive, yet disappointed by the life that I have always lived.  I appreciate what is worthwhile, even though with the same breath that I praise it I neglect it also.  There is no happy medium to life, nor fanciful religions or spiritual meditations that procure epiphanies or releases.  There is no “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs”; no species supersedes another with any of the truest ulterior motives.  Men are just as inferior to each other as a palmetto bug is to a lizard. There is only one motive, only one instinct to fulfill.  It is the carnal instinct to survive.  No pleasure is taken from deriving life!  Pleasure is gained when satisfying the need to thrive sates one!  If I believe in survival, does it matter what I do with my life as long as it carries on that instinct?  For humans, belief is an instinct.
Little children take pleasure in folly and ignorance, all the while caressing their mother’s knee for reassurance.  It all reverts back to Voltaire’s satire, Candide and what was referred to as “the universal order”.  It propitiates for itself.  Control is just a fallacy we enjoy playing Ping-Pong with. Back and forth, back and forth; where does fault truly lie?  Not on my side of the net…I am not here to lose, I am here to survive. 
Nothing I say feels right, anything I do feels done.  I am like my opposite sex and verse myself as a story that takes up its own acquired space for its own acquired reason—nothing more.  It is all that I have ever truly felt, what always seems to so precariously fall back to me.  It is the opposite of what I hope…
Tomorrow will not bring a day we do not expect; one no longer hopes for what is expected, one no longer believes in what is hope.  A man can write a whole book about hope but all he will end up doing is repeating his self.  A woman could write a book about expectations, yet all she will inevitably do is write about hope.  Repression.  Repression is like having a discussion about a sickness you cannot recall having.  It is a form of dismissal towards what cannot conform to you.  Repercussions on the other hand, are reprisals which validate what you yourself have conformed to.  I have made an oath to myself…a dangerous one that will follow me wherever I go!  I repress love for the opposite sex.  It has never, nor will it ever conform to me.  The repercussion of this repression is the repression of the reprisal that validates what I conform myself to…that which is the repression…I dismiss what does not conform; I dislodge what will break off.  For this, I am better…I am stronger…I am selfish…I am survival.  There is no vindication for heartache—there never has been!  A King beheads his queen because any rights he has for doing as such are vindicated: Though I asked myself once while drunk, what queen has ever beheaded her king?


Earth and Light, the fate of Blood and Wind: Life and coke, Love and creed—it is the ways which (blow) render women to babies and blood, men to heather and silk.  The smells, which define our station, define our senses, define our sex—remind our loins to love and hate, gird our heart with breath and strength.  It is what and why we passively call ourselves alive; all to remind us that life will be gone and we will have been used, been spent for nothing.  Even the breath of babies brings little to last but for carbon monoxide.  One to the other, they are spent, used, and dependent one upon the other.  Connected to life by air, breath, leaf, and [cock] bodily fluids that also spread death.  And one wonders why we question destiny, scoff at fate, ridicule hope and question love!  I have been presented with evidence that these things are scab-like gestures that itch to be picked away!  Hope deferred was said to make a heart sick…I have yet but to wretch.  Denial, now well, denial is thus another story.



So I think that perhaps I might…just once…be at the beginning.  I heard that a man once lived beyond his means and by doing so, he gave his life!  He brought all the damnation of time down upon himself because he believed that perhaps he was immune to it all because he no longer could see anything but that with which he fought with…that which he fought for.  The meandering of life’s little trivialities, the pursuit of the love of his enemies—the ones who fought with—what seemed to be all their strength, to brush petals of love along with their razors of defiance and ignorant instability against his smooth skin…. Perhaps I should say it another way.  They raged against the beauty of his soul because of their own inferiority complexes.  They brought havoc, destruction, and even a gulf of tears upon the shore of one life that stood in opposition to theirs.  Why?  It was not their way.  Like the dictation against difference, the superiority that inferiority is prelude to; it all must intertwine with one another to create one sensual, altruistic feeling of the senses, one within the gut that is not only heard but felt as well: The nausea of conscious.  Precocious isn’t it? 
         I must say though that in my one hand, I feed the sickness, and with the other, I encourage its hunger.  My hands are not idle.  They are both one to another apart but busy by connection.  We’ve heard that the hand that feeds is the hand that kills; well the problem I see in that is this: why should the very same hand that kills also feed when there are two hands to begin with?  It is like the science of technology; the birth of creation stems from the continuance of failure.




Measure
By
Walter Crede

         The measure of red wine in a claret glass brings nothing but the amount that was within; I know because I measured it.  I measure myself now.  I measure for myself the amounts I dare, neither care to consume, but the quantity with which I choose to return it.  I measure as a broken man measures the weights of his nickels and dimes, as a common man measures his common earnings; as the single mother unconsciously counts her dollars; Not for lack of spending—no…for want of it.  When there is nothing but fresh salt and silt, powers deny you the pleasure to drink.  I acknowledge my measure as one acknowledges clouds accountable for rain. The peace of a tranquil evening lit with scents that flicker even as the touch of a familiar hand or the sweet kiss of a lover or child produces itself for an account of measure…So do I measure the quiet acknowledgment of life: Of the life that is mine. 
         Tom Wesselman accented his order for his life, driven by the colours red, white and blue.  He defined his meanings of life through sex and brought color and symbolism to it.  Yet I ask myself.  How does one find what is their order for what is their life?  Is it in the mirror of the mind, the chocolate within foiled paper; Directory assistance maybe?  This, which would be the inner element of that, is undeniably apart from the outer existence…correct?  Perhaps it is when a woman makes room for the awareness of her stench within, or the crudeness that plays inside the mind of a man?  When a man sees his flesh bleed as a woman, when the life of flesh bleeds while burning, is order found then?  No.  Order is found within chaos.  For only then may one find the slaphappy sense of dawning which coagulates together in whirlwind-like fashion within the placenta of reasoning.  Regardless of how long it takes—that is inevitably pressed upon the shoulders of the individual.  Yes, I know, dear.  And I ask you to make sense of it, don’t I?  Perhaps it’s the morphine?


GOD! This taste is so awful in my mouth!  I dream sometimes that it’s punishment for myself.  It’s the recourse for my insufficiencies, the bitter memories… the metallic bile of all the many sun-risen mornings that I took for granted; those I hated with a vengeance.  The stupid slippers nonchalantly stuck near the edge of the toilet bowl while the door frame that never jammed hung quietly still on it’s hinges, allocating the sunlight and shower steam of the early morning into my nostrils.  I wish that I could recall it all back.  Like a man that picks up the telephone to ask for a refund once he finds out that his 3-D glasses aren’t working the way he pictured they would.  Where the hell are the red and blue three-dimensional images of fucking Rocky and Bullwinkle!  That’s what I’d like to know.

So, even though my eyes burn, my sight is a blur and my legs are numbing even as we speak, I’d like to think that perhaps I still might have something to say, well…something that I could say to you, sweet one.  I know that you must believe within the deepest part of your heart that I’ve forgotten about you, but I swear as high as the heavens have touched me, I have never forgotten your face!  That evening, and I must tell you this, I truly was there with you!  I remember that you were crying.  You were so unhappy and I was so very still.  Thankfully the room was dim and my tears were hid, though unfortunately now I see what a sad peculiarity I was.  You precious thing…how you would have hated me if you truly new what thoughts pervaded my sight; what emotions prohibited my rationale.  I was useless.  I couldn’t even hold you.  It’s so hard and I hate myself now.  I can’t even forget when, —JESUS… I just can’t forget!


SUICIDE
By
Walter Crede

         Jenny has parted my hair this morning with one of my many black, plastic, clone combs, and speckled my white stubble cheeks and sagging throat with that hideous Brute aftershave Ramona purchased for me last Christmas.
Ramona Kobaleski has since retired from her position here at Entmoore Manor.  No one knows why but I am under the distinct impression that she found me absolutely revolting and of an unlovable character because of it.  My usually vitriolic disposition became a casual manner of loathing towards the dear Ramona Kobaleski, one which I could not suffer myself to cover.  She was horribly obese so that whenever she came in a huffing and a puffing in my face, checking my blood pressure and heart rate, I could never quite quell the urge to insult first, gag later.  Something like: “So how’s that cow taste today, Ramona?” or “For the life of me, I don’t know how in God’s name you carry yourself around all day!”  Her responses to my dyspeptic talk were limited and usually consisted of mumbles of some such nonsense or other.  So I’m sure that I didn’t help the matter at all when she came in one morning to take my vitals.  I knew that she was at the end of her shift so I purposefully decided to waylay her just for shits and giggles.  Besides, my ass was still chapped about the time her sausage fingers inserted my catheter; I figured she was starving too.
I began by asking her for help to the bathroom, to which she dutifully obliged.  Once I reached the door I stopped, shuffled from side to side a bit, then turned around and made my way back to my overgrown crib, images of four hundred pound babies wrestling each other for tits make me grimace.
Once situated, I asked her to hand me my Sunday paper.  As she does so, I reached across to the bedside table and grabbed a tiny scrape of paper I saved especially for her.  As she hands me the paper, I hand her the coupon; Dunkin Donuts.  Buy six get six free. 
“Here dear; just remember to breathe while you chew.”
Her eyes never flinched.  No snorts, remarks, or tears; fatty didn’t even say thank you.  She just took the coupon and walked the hell out.  The very next day, I found out Ramona Kobaleski no longer worked here at Entmoore Manor.  Marita boobs-a-bunch Garcia managed to accurately use the English language well enough for me to understand that a peculiar happenstance had taken place the night before.  As her face narrowed, deepening the consternated wrinkles of a nitwit, her magnified liguidy eyeballs stared at me the entire time she spoke.  I wanted to throw my piss pot at her.  I managed to gather that Ramona had turned in her letter of resignation the very morning she quit.  Apparently, Entmoore Manor’s notorious nut, David Meeks—the nocturnal imbecile that he is—decided to wander down to B Hall.  Ramona eventually found him in a broom closet sitting on top of an old radiator, naked as a jay bird, singing some 60’s bullshit by Elvis, “It’s Now or Never.”
I looked at Marita boobs-a-lot and said, “Guess the Oreo factory couldn’t hack it.  Thought she was hot cookies, but she ain’t nothing but burnt dough.”  My laughter—to me—turns into a dry, holler-hack as I rolled to my side, feeling the starchy sheet and the all too short, hope-you-freeze-and-die-fucker blanket.  I press the morphine button and fart.



Thomas Hardy said, “I look into my glass and view my wasting skin.” I’m sixty-seven years old. I’m dying.  I hate my father, I detest the memory of my mother and I wish to God I could forget life was ever good; back when I had my youth, when I wrote articles for papers and fashioned your best words from my thoughts; in my mind, I had everything no one wanted.  I am Walter Crede.  I am love, I am hate; I am everything, I am nothing.  What I say, no one hears.  What I write, no one ever reads; what I’ve shown you, you’ve already forgot.