Don’t Go

The thinker is often punished for thinking.

Anxiety had me up early this morning. Megan took the day off. I went downstairs, made coffee, ignored my chest, thought about my chest, picked up the living room where Gavin stores all of his toys, vacuumed, started the dish washer, did 131 jumping jacks, stretched, and indoor walked for 30 fucking minutes.

Anxiety has no schedule. I try and manage it by putting it back into its place by staying busy and thinking. I try not to think because that’s the problem. So half my plan is solid nearly all the time. All joking aside, I haven’t dealt with this serious of an anxiety attack in a long, long while. Megan took the day off for a follow up appointment with the doctor. When I found Megan bleeding to death on the bathroom floor I was flat lined emotionally. I have been for weeks. Unfortunately emotion has a way of unfolding itself if you’ve kept it hidden.

So I’m vacuuming this morning and I’m indoor walking and I’m drinking my coffee and I’m thinking when I realized what’s really the root of this particular anxiety attack. I’m going to miss Megan. She leaves on Sunday morning. Super Bowl Sunday Morning. We are both football fans. Football Sunday is a big family day for us. She’s leaving in the morning and will be gone until the following Sunday. Megan works her ass off and has created an amazing career and at times, needs to be gone. Gavin sometimes walks to the door and tries to open the door asking for Mommy. Try that one on for size knowing he nearly lost her for ever.

 

Matt

Time Goes On

Short Story
Written by -M. Taggart

 

‘She was 83. She had three more days. They told her that. We had just left the cancer center.’

It was cold. We stood next to the dumpster. I heard squirrels.

‘Yeaaah, She told me one thing. Only one thing during our drive from the cancer center to her home.’

The squirrels rattled on. Uncaring.

I raised my head with understanding. Trying not to look at any one of the squirrels.

‘I remember it like it was yesterday. I tell you. Don’t blink. I know you watch your son all day. I see you with him and how busy you are. But don’t blink. It’ll all be over. Time just goes by and I’m a lot older than you. I look at my hands and I don’t know who’s hands they are.’

He used the word just. Where are the squirrels.

‘My mother said, “It happens so fast.” And that’s all she said. For the entire drive. She knew she was gone. I guess after someone know’s they are gone there’s not much to say.’

‘Time is a funny thing.’ I said, ‘It’s not real. We created it to fit out personalities. When you rock your infant, who has a double ear infection and croup with a fever while he’s screaming for an hour, you pray to God to help him feel less pain. That time is standing still. That time you’ll remember and it’ll never stop. No. Time to me is a funny thing. Light is not straight. You know this.’

The men next to the dumpster laughed.

‘So anyway, Matt, my mother was dying and I was driving her back from the clinic. She had only three days left on this Earth.’

***

-M. Taggart
copyright 2018

 

North Woods

I’m giving myself a mulligan.

We rode in my GMC. It’s a truck. We smoked cigars. A lot of them. Some of them were small and some were big. Like the mountains we were driving in. It’s easy to become lost in the North Woods. There are hundreds of miles of wilderness. No lights. You can drive and drive and see nothing but forest and Moose. I capitalized that for fun. Sometimes we would stop and have a beer. We’d get out of the truck and someone might say, “It is time for a beer?” None of us would look at the time.

I love those old roads. The dust. The freedom. I smash my mind thinking I know what real freedom is and how it’ll ruin this writing now but I’ll write it anyway. Freedom is being debt free. That means all debt. And to shed mental debt is the most difficult kind. So, when I drive the old roads, and pull over for the massive logging trucks, and we whistle to the old Golden Road, I am as free as I’m going to be in that moment.

Cheers. I like this one much more.

I snapped this fucker. I like it. 

 

 

Odd Walking Thoughts – Beyond Thought

The boy climbed out of his window and onto the large tree and quickly made his way to the ground. He ran to the woods. He needed to sit on his rock overlooking the river. He pushed his small frame as hard and fast as it could carry him. The words were rimming in circles within his mind and now gathering pace toward the tip of his tongue. Not yet. Not yet! You will only speak them first once. Finally, his rock in view, an overwhelming feeling of joy perched in his chest; he reached the top of his rock and lay on his back to catch his breath. Sitting up, viewing the river, he spoke the words which were brimming in circles within his mind and pushing their way to the tip of his tongue- No one had given these words to him and he had never heard anything like them. He opened his mouth, ready to watch them fly, “Can memories live beyond thought?” The tiny hairs stood on his arms. A leaf fluttered slightly more north from the smallest push of air. The leaf landed nearly silently into the river. Having changed the world.

-M. Taggart
copyright 2018

Thought Drop

Like a thought filled with air belief is a window that only you can see through.
-M. Taggart

Odd Walking Thoughts

I’m the type of guy that will stuff my brain inside as not to let it show. When push comes to shove I stand on a bloody face with my boot on a head reciting a poem mixed between Emily Dickinson and Charles Bukowski knowing no one will understand why I created blood. And fuck them all.

-M. Taggart

poem-

Sometimes I confuse reality
with anxiety and comfort
while I shake my own hand

-M. Taggart
copyright 2018

My Closet – Poem

A Poem
Written by -M. Taggart
1/21/18
For years I opened my closet door to see nothing
but my own jackets, sweatshirts, boots, shoes, crap.
Eventually my closet and I didn’t get along.
Why bother opening a thing that gives back
only the same memory with no hope of progression.
My boots became more worn. My jackets changed
positions and eventually those too become useless to me.
Five years into being a hard core bachelor
-nothing could control me. Not a thing,
except for my fucking closet.
I specifically remember opening my brother’s closet
during a family event. It was the twins birthday.
I was among the last to leave. I had ruffled their hair,
told them I loved them- they ran off into another room
and I opened their closet door to find my jacket.
This was my brother’s home and my brother’s life.
In his closet hung children’s jackets. Some of which
had little ears. And on the back of the closet door
hung shoe and boot holders and in the holders were
little shoes and little boots. I wanted to cry. I wanted
to do more than cry but instead I closed the door and
walked out of my brother’s house and got into my truck.
I shut the door, turned the radio on, and drove. I drove
through farmland and shut the damn music off because I
never listen to music and it was nothing more than a mask
for having looked into another closet that was not a closet
at all, but a life. A home. A real home. I had my four walls
and my closet that I didn’t get along with waiting for me.
-Now though..I sit here thinking of that asshole closet of mine
and about how somehow, someway, it’s still there. And now
It’s the one who is alone because I am no longer alone and haven’t
been for a long, long while. Even before I met Megan. Something
happened. Something that propelled my being into what I was
meant to be, to live, to see. And now when I open my closet, it isn’t
my old boots. It’s life. It’s beautiful life. Megan’s fluffy jacket’s that
I couldn’t possibly understand how to wear, it’s her boots that I couldn’t
possibly walk in, it’s her smile hiding in the hood of her jacket, I open
my closet now and I see my son’s winter jacket puffing out at me, begging
me to put it on him. I see tiny little ears. I see little boots. And little shoes.
This is my closet, and this is my most favorite closet that I have ever had.

-M. Taggart

three lines – poem

I can smell your thoughts
As they forecast your movements-
Come, we’ll find yourself soon

-M. Taggart

poem- spliced

We rocked in a padded room
holding a single piece of fabric
which was so perfectly fine
that it wasn’t allowed to be-
It frayed and spliced
into millions of splintered ends
leaving us blank and empty-
The door to our padded room opened-
We stopped rocking
knowing it was now over-
The one thought was gone.

-M. Taggart
copyright 2018