Making My Own Fight Club

Margaret Middlebrooks Draft 3 Making My Own Fight Club There is something horribly wrong and beautiful about punching someone in the face. Maybe its that cliché of the skin on skin, bone on bone, knuckle to knuckle feeling. The electricity and power that builds up in your fist and is suddenly sent, hurdling off into another person’s orbit. Whatever the reason, it’s a primal craving that humans, animals, have had since the beginning of time. I know there is never a ‘good’ reason to hit someone. Its, in an ideal society, unacceptable but it still goes on, most just turning a blind eye. I believe that we all want that sort of violence, a sort of harsh physicality to shake up and bring some chaos into our ordered life’s. It’s human nature. If we remembered that then there would be less violence in the world. I’ve never considered myself a fighter. Sure, I’m pretty rebellious when it comes to authority but its more verbal than anything else. I could think about hitting someone all the time, but never actually go through with it. I even told myself that. But then middle school happened. Middle school age is a rough time on everyone. Everything changes, it feels like, for no reason at all. It changes so fast that I hardly had time to catch up. So I got angry at the world. I needed to lash out. Everything was bottled up inside of me; all that anger and fear. It was only a matter of time before I would explode. There was a kid who used to jeer at me and point and laugh. One day, he got really close to me on my walk home. Back then, I considered twenty feet away ‘too close.’ He was laughing and calling me a cutter, seeing that I had marks on my arms. I remember turning to him, slowly, glaring in his face. At this point, my hand had magically turned into a fist and it ‘accidently’ went flying straight into his jaw. He fell to the ground, bleeding. His blood was on my hand. He called me a few names and ran away, never to bother me again. I remember going home to an empty house that day. My mom was out of town. I sat on the couch the rest of the day, looking at this other person’s blood in grim fascination of what I had just done. It felt like Fight Club. I was Jack’s Smirking Revenge. And what’s the first rule about Fight Club? You don’t talk about it. I didn’t. I never said anything about. I never said how good it felt. I just washed my hands and went on with my day. Looking back on it now, I regret it. I wish I knew where he was now. I’d tell him I was sorry and explain to him that “You’ve met me at a very strange time in my life.”

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We're close. Like best friends. I'm tired. Its one AM. I wonder if he's here. Or if he thinks about me as much as I do.
The story teller.
I saw him when I was born... for a moment. I almost met Death... almost.
He saved me, I think. Or so I believe.
Someone told me today he was, at one point and perhaps and I hope still in love with me.
I cannont tell. I haven't seen him in a month.
I am called The Moon. I am only now just starting to believe them.
Its a lovely thought... for someone to be in love with the moon, or an embodiment of the moon anyway.
I write him letters sometimes and leave them at my window...
I don't know why.
I hope he comes back again soon.
The last time he left I waited seven years.

I watch the moon, or maybe a reflection of myself.
I cannot be... that beautiful...

Something is pulling me into a dream...

Happy Birthday I'm Sorry For Your Loss

It was December 30th, 2009. The familiar, always out-of-tune chimes of Happy Birthday filled the room. The notes, if you could call them notes, bounced off walls. I was fifteen and, fairly happy because all I could think about was “I’m going to be done with middle school!” I was surrounded by my friends and family. Each and every one of them wishing me happiness.
At the same time, practically on the other side of the world, Rowland S. Howard died. “So what?” you may ask. I would have asked myself that, too, if I knew who he was back then.
Two weeks ago, Monday February 27th 2012. The day had gone, more or less, like it was supposed to. I kept my head up as high as any head could go with that little sleep. I did what I had to do, and went home. I was laying on the cool gray sheets of my bed staring out the window. I had the radio on. The songs played one after the other. I watched the clock tick in time with some punk song I really liked at the time, bored of it all. Then another song came on.
“I’ve been contemplating suicide,
Though it doesn’t really suit my style,
So I think I’ll just act bored instead,
And contain the blood I would have shed. “

In that moment my head popped up like a hungry meerkat from the hole that was my mundane life. That voice was singing out to me, telling me to come closer, telling me to find it. So naturally, I did what I always do during a time of exploration and discovery. I read.
I read how he wrote the song I had just heard, “Shivers”, when he was only seventeen. And how he toured with Nick Cave and The Birthday Party all over the world but above all, I read that he died on December 30th, 2009.
My entire fifteenth birthday flashed before my eyes again. Everyone was there, everything was normal expect for the fact, I saw Rowland Howard standing outside the window looking in. He seemed so far away and yet, so close. He smiled that silly, smokers teeth crooked half smile and waved. I guess that’s how the dead say Happy Birthday.
After learning when he died, I realized that every moment that we have means something. Everything that we do, in joy and in sorrow, is important because most of us aren’t sure when our it’s our time. Howard made me realize that better than anyone could.
So, thank you Rowland. Thank you for the music and the sudden realizations
This post was published in the spring edition of a literary magazine at my high school called Elan.

I'm not really sure what to title this. In fact, this post is lucky if it gets a title. I'm going out of town tomorrow. I don't know why I'm telling you. My brother is going to be a doctor in marine science and my sister just got accepted into the PHD for public health. So, yay for them. I guess I just wanted to brag a little. See you around I guess.

I've never wanted to be around someone or something as much as I have them. this group of people. These, things i view as one thing. Parts making a whole. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. And I don't even care right now because it just doesn't matter, in the end. We all die anyway. So no matter how far anyone goes, we all end up the same. Right now the thing I want and feel that I need is far away... really far away. I'm caught in this web of going back and forth and doing this and doing that when I just want to scream to the rest of the world "Hey. I'm done." and then lay down and sleep for a million and so on years but I can't. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I can't stop. I have work to do.

Bird Soul

Barren rock, Snow as wild as his hair, The Quest For Knowledge In Frozen Earth. He seeks not the voice of man to guide him, But the calling of the wilderness. It gnaws inside of his rib cage, And his heart, Like a pack of infinate Northern birds. Swooping, Diving, Pecking at bone, Sending bird calls to the brain. They caw and coo for him to tear at the fabric of his fake furs, And expose skin to ice, Expose birds to sky. His soul birds are screaming to the wild, And his body is tired, Seen as useless, He doesn’t need it anymore. So he opens his shirt, And lets the birds out.

Under The Moon

I have walked in the light of the moon, To expose myself to dreams, I lost myself in his starry gaze. And then we danced. On glittering roads of sand and stardust, We danced by the light of Her Grace. By the light of truth, By the light of the moon. Our bodies turned, Twisted, And then became one. A burning flame of love and desire, Like a forest fire. We walk the moon road as lovers, Him and I. We waltzed and walk under the light of hopes and lovers and truth, We waltzed and walked in the light of the moon.