Dear John by Juliana Vargas (First posted Myspace Blog December 2007)

****Disclaimer: The characters depicted here are a composite of several different people and experiences. Any likeness to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental. ****

For Lizzie, with love.


Dear John,

I can still remember the day I first laid my eyes upon you. You weren't that special. Maybe you possessed one or two special qualities. Beautiful eyes, mouth with lips begging to be kissed. Maybe it was your hands, so large and strong or your legs so lean and long.

I mean, there really was not one special thing. We spoke for an hour or ten minutes or a month and it was over that span of time that your soul called to mine. I broke down, defenses weakened by the silky sound of your voice, the look in your eyes or was it your beautiful mind. I don't really recall, it was something though. Something about you.

Maybe it was the way you kissed me that first day, or was it night. Was it your humor or was it the silly fight we had over shaved legs. Maybe it was about what bottle of wine to buy for our first night together. I can never really remember.

I just know it's all a blur, the way you made my brain just spin and my body ache. The way your voice sounded so sweet in my ear, breathless with wanting. "This is mine". How can I ever forget you saying that? And it was, all yours for the taking. Sweet and aching body and heart and soul.

The feel of our flesh twisted around one another. The wrap of your legs as we wrestled on sheets of luxurious cotton, or maybe it was silk, or were we on the floor of your apartment that first time? I don't care. I just remember your hands wrapped in my hair and the smell of your breath breathing life into my helpless mouth. Helpless to stop you, helpless to say no to anything you asked of me.

You asked me to come when I was so far away and I spent all day and night and week planning out the fine details of our reunions, or sometimes you would just show up in the middle of the night. No, I remember, you just asked me to stay with you forever. I did, for a year or two or five or ten worth of forevers. It was better and worse than I had ever imagined.

I drowned every day in your eyes so brown, or were they blue or green. I think they were just the color of my dreams of you and I together. Your lovemaking made me light as a feather and I floated through every moment, unaware. So terribly unaware.

Then one night you called, or did you come, or was I already there. All I know is you were so very, very far gone. Not the man I loved at all, but some shrieking, capering, cocaine snorting fool. My love took a blow that first night, but I joined right in with you, because I wanted to be whatever, whoever, wherever you were.

The habits, the fighting and the sadness just weighed heavier on my heart. Much heavier than the way I felt without you. I cried for you. Missed your beautiful soul, your sweet, breathless kisses and your stunning mind. It was drowning in wine, beer, weed or coke. Maybe it was all of the above. Sometimes the ugliness would surface, surely and swiftly, all on it's own, without any help at all. And I wanted to not be alone, not with you and not without.

Then one day, it was over. I left or I begged you to stay, maybe we just finally faded away. I do know you had found another lover. I seem to recall she was already there for awhile by the time we ended. Most likely there was more than one. Was she a mistress in a bottle or in your bed? I believe she was your wife at home and having your babies, it was I who was the mistress instead. All I know now is that I made a mistake. Falling for you the way I did, head over fucking heels. Red ones, they were just the color you liked.

Maybe I still love you, maybe I still don't care that you were bad for me all along. I just never saw it. I don't have time for regrets, but yet, here they are. I sometimes cry, in the shower, in my bed or in my car. I mourn the you I had, the you I loved and lost. Yet somehow, I know, we are better for our love and better for the loss.

Ripping Scabs by Juliana Vargas (First posted Myspace Blog March 2008)

Glossy sheen of pristine contentment


Like Alice before Rabbit Holes and Cheshire Cats

The Queen screams "Off with her head!"

I want to pick open the hidden wounds

Fucked up childhood scars

Ripping off my scabs and exposing years of poor parenting

Cerebral brutality

Sexuality overexposed like a bad mental snapshot

And the beat goes on

I pick, pry, rip and bleed

From every hole in my soul

It fucking hurts so bad my brain is in shock

Survival mode means eating my own misery

Little Deaths by Juliana Vargas (First posted Myspace Blog February 2008)

Press the breath from my body


Lay me, depleted

Spent

Lifeless

On display

An unholy viewing

Lined up at the casket

A procession of the faceless

The faithless

I see with dead eyes

Cannot speak my anger

I watch them shuffle past

Mourning the many

Little deaths

Offering my soul

One piece at a time

Like communion

Screams by Juliana Vargas (First posted on Myspace Blog March 2008)

Screams


Piercing the darkness of night

They wake me from my sleep

Like only the darkest night terrors can

I pinch myself and hide under my bed

Sliding on the wooden boards



I sit in your sunny kitchen and recount the memories

You pat my hand and pass me the sugar

Trying to make my bitter memories go down a little easier

"It never happened"

"You always did suffer from terrible nightmares"



You smile

But your eyes are dead

Shattered windows

On the soul that I hope will burn in hell

They tell the truths of our life together



You with your uncontrollable rage

Me with my uncontrollable anxiety



I wrung my hands

When what I really wanted

Was to your wring the truth from your wretched throat

The Seduction of Me by Juliana Vargas

"Good sex starts in the head and not in the bed."

She said this as she grasped me in the palm of her tiny child-like hand.

The sex was definitely starting there.

I could feel the blood rush from my brain.

Something akin to bathwater down the drain.

Grasping her tiny hips, I rolled her to her back,

Yet never loosening her grip, she used her other hand to

give my ass a resounding smack.

I had allowed this temptress, this cyber goddess

to overrun my days.

With her wanton ways, she kept me in a perpetual state

of turmoil and arousal.

It wasn't love, yet somehow

I loved her.

Perhaps it was the feel of her small, firm breasts .

Pressed into my chest, they burned a hole through

to my heart.

I said silent prayers every day,

wishing away

the hours till I could hold her again

The love we made was hate.

Passion this fierce could be nothing less,

unless

it really was love.

Burning more fiercly than the kind that poets write of,

a flesh and bone eating desire

She set my nerve-endings on fire.

Then all at once

she was gone.

Forever gone.

And my passion lived on

like a gut-wrenching disease.

She never said good-bye.

But again, she had never said hi.

Just sauntered into my life

Overran my limbs,

my bed.

Crawled into my head.

And now she is hostage there,

a prisoner.

And yet, I am the one who is forever captive.

The Price We Pay

I read a story once about black market weapons sales from Italy and into Iraq.

The story was written in a way that was meant to elicit shock and horror,  

but when the streets are red and the sky is black and the reality is reduced to marching characters in black and white print, who can feel the emotions anymore?

Is it shocking to know that alternate avenues of bloodletting are always an option in a world where people are dying, and crying, and lying in the dirt like refuse waiting for pickup?



Where a mother's tears mean nothing, not even a sidenote on news page?



Is it shocking to know that others see a monetary opportunity in death and annihalation?

There is no shame in bloodmoney

No glory in death


No victory in war


We all lose, die, cry and become history.
Social commentary is nothing more than words to fill space on empty airwaves. A tool to generate big dollars.

Opinions are vocal posturings by people sleeping safely in their beds.

There is a reality taking place in the home of a family tonight.

And someone is being paid in a pound of flesh.

While one mother sleeps with her child wrapped safely in her arms, another will get the news that her's was blown into unrecognizable spray on a foreign roadside.

All because someone wanted to line their greedy pockets. All because Allah, Blackwater, politicians, and weapons manufacturers needed to fatten their bottom line.

So they started a war that no one can win.

And we all pay the price in losses with no pricetag.

 If you have to ask the cost, you can't afford it.