Mr. Albert, take two.
If you met a man, who just by his very existence, called into question everything you believe in about life, death, and the afterlife, how would you react? That is the premise of my latest book, Mr. Albert.
Whomever he meets, has to reevaluate their whole philosophy. It is a good thing that Mr. Albert doesn’t know the answers either, or that would make life too easy.
Available November 02.2023. This wild and weird book is available at my website, www.afwinter.com, or Amazon.
Mr. Albert
Mr. Albert, my latest book, will be released on November 2nd, All Soul’s Day.
Mr. Albert, a dead man condemned to exist amongst the living, goes on a quest with a mortal, Santo, to find a forgotten love, only to realize that some memories should remain buried.
Mr. Albert (91000 words) is part detective novel, part love story, and part horror. The writing style easily moves from comedy and drama to absurdism and surrealism keeping the reader off balanced but thoroughly involved in the plot. The story starts out in a small town on the Jersey shore and then moves to Savannah before ending up in The Georgia State Hospital, an abandoned insane asylum in Milledgeville, Ga.
Please consider buying a copy of this wonderfully weird book.
It can be purchased on Amazon or through my website at: http://www.afwinter.com/mr.-albert.html
A Pebble
The other day
I thought about a statue of a muse,
I had seen once in Killarney.
I think she was in front of a train station or a mall.
The statue, a symbol of creativity, seemed out of place
In her present surroundings.
*
Her indifferent eyes gazed upon three plaques,
Each with the name of a famous local poet.
The writers gladly sacrificed their lives for a moment or two of her divine inspiration.
The poets now, have all but been forgotten.
The statue now, is covered with pigeon droppings.
*
I think of the muse that once heightened my world,
So that even a pebble on a broken road,
Would sing to me of hidden wonders in each miraculous moment.
*
I think of the muse who left me
For a brighter star.
(Because that is what muses do.)
*
And now a pebble
Is just another pebble.
And a leaf is just a leaf.
And all my words have devolved
Into random letters,
In downwarding spirals
Which have long ago lost their meaning.
Mr. Anthony
Dear Mr. Anthony,
I am happy you have such a popular song and that you have spoken out about both the right and the left weaponizing it. That is the problem with art. People see what they want to see in it. But your song does play into the alt-rights playbook because it is so full of falsehoods and misdirections. Here are a few that I noticed.
‘Cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end
‘Cause of rich men north of Richmond
Of the ten states that receive the least amount of money from federal taxes, eight of them are blue states. Of the ten states that receive the most from the federal government, seven of them are red states. Isn’t it clear that red states get more tax money from the federal government, so why are you complaining about taxes? The top eight get around thirty percent more than they put in. If I got twenty or thirty percent on my investment, I’d be very happy.
I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away
You worked for a papermill that was not owned by the federal government. I think you must look at the owners of the mill to blame someone for the low wages you received. There are people in Washington who want to raise the minimum wage, but there are others who feel that would be bad for business. I think you could figure out which political party wants what.
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do
Sorry, Mr. Anthony, you gave up all your privacy willingly when you bought your new smartphone. It tracks everywhere you go, everywhere you look, everything you buy. It can listen in on all your conversations, and video everything you do. Those rich men from North of Richmond have cell phones too!
When those damn liberals in Washington want more regulations on businesses, it is to protect the most vulnerable. The people who want to stop regulation are those millionaires you are singing about. Throw away your cell phone and they will get a lot less information on you. But that isn’t convenient, is it?
I wish politicians would look out for miners
And not just minors on an island somewhere
I love it when powerful companies act like they are the victims and get the rest of us to buy into that nonsense. Need I remind you that when coal mining companies came to town, they threw many people off of the land their families farmed for generations, paid workers in fake money keeping them impoverished, and just hired others when their workers got respiratory diseases? Miners at the turn of the twentieth century lived “like sheep in shambles.” Unions helped the workers, but you probably dislike them as well.
There are significant environmental impacts associated with coal mining. It could require the removal of massive amounts of topsoil, leading to erosion, loss of habitat, and pollution. Coal mining causes acid mine drainage, which causes heavy metals to dissolve and seep into ground and surface water.
So rich companies move into an area, throw people out of their homes, enslave others, and destroy the environment, and that is who you feel the need to protect. If I had to choose between mining companies and minors, I would choose minors every time.
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat
And the obese milkin’ welfare
For a while, I worked for the state of Maine, giving food stamps to needy families. It was generally acknowledged that about five percent of the recipients were scamming the system. But would you, Mr. Anthony, deny help to ninety-five honest Americans who need to get over a rough patch, because there are five people taking advantage of the system? You prayed to the Lord, what would Jesus do on that one?
All politics is local. You are affected more by the businesses and government in your state than those rich men north of Richmond. I am sorry that people have weaponized your song, but the nonsense you are singing about pours gasoline on the fire without offering any solutions. We all know there are things wrong with this country. Your song does nothing to help resolve the situation. The political parties want to divide us. They stay in power by pointing their fingers at each other and getting us to buy into their lies. Unfortunately, you are doing a lot of finger-pointing as well.
Doubt
I used to think that the world was a simple place. Eat the right foods. Treat everyone like you would like to be treated. Love can heal the planet. I spent my whole life struggling to believe the stories my parents told me were true. With every new disaster, I doubled down on my beliefs.
But as age and desperation became my biggest influencers, doubt crept into my mind. Maybe I didn’t eat the right mix of foods at the right time of day. That must be the reason why I am getting slower, rounder, and angrier.
Maybe some people wanted more than to be treated equally. Maybe, because they believed themselves to be better, they were. Maybe people weren’t equal, and G-d favors some more than others. Maybe I should too.
Maybe my love, or what I thought of as love, was not love at all. Maybe I never knew what love was. How could I expect true love from others when I only give false love in return?
I don’t expect love anymore. I think it was only a moral justification for lust. A man and a woman need each other to have a child. They need each other to raise a child. The sexist beliefs of thousands of years engrained in each of us through great love stories and fairy tales enslave us to a life with another person. Without the marital unit intact, the family is not strong to survive the torrents of time.
There are many variables in life, and I have not flipped to the other side. There have been many happy heterosexual couples living the dream. There are many single parents raising beautiful children. There are many homosexual couples raising beautiful children. But there is no grey in fairy tales and we teach our children falsehoods so that they are wracked with guilt if they don’t see themselves fitting into the form.
I once believed in love. I believed that love would save my marriage. It didn’t. I believed that love would bring someone else back to me. It didn’t. When my significant other no longer needed me, they left. No amount of love could keep them. Because love does not really exist.
There is nothing romantic or spiritual about the amount of dopamine running through a person’s veins when they touch another person. It is just chemicals. All our connections with other people, and the need we have to be with our people, come down to this; I want my brain to produce the happy drug. We are all love addicts.
I believe this to be the truth of the matter. But I also believe that the next time I venture out into the grey world, someone can turn my head and if I let that person, I will see colors again, for a day, a month, a year, but not for eternity. Never forever.
ghosts
ghosts are like memories from long ago,
the details have faded
you can see through them.
.
even if the memory
isn’t yours
but a part of the great unconscious
they are.
a memory.
and memories cannot hurt you
unless you believe in them.
.
momma, momma please help me
i cannot my dear
because you have been dead
going on a year
why didn’t you save me?
there are some things that even your momma can’t do.
.
a mother’s guilt
a daughter’s shame
they can’t forgive
they’re both to blame.
.
ghosts are like memories of dreams
disjointed flashes
from unrelated moments
that merge in awkward ways
to reveal unspoken truths
but we
no longer listen
to truths
whispered softly in our ears
from earlier selves
when life was a children’s rhyme
spoken in three quarter time.
love dies
02162022
.
.
in a moment,
loves dies.
what was,
a moment before,
has disappeared,
forever.
.
love does not alter
when it alteration finds,
but sometimes it does.
.
when fear
becomes truth,
and hope
is revealed
to be as brittle
as glass.
Another Unsent Text
Hi Jessie,
This is Adam,
I said my name in case
You deleted me from your contacts, again.
No judgements, life is as it is.
.
I thought of you today
As I was falling from sleep
In that place between dreams and reality.
We were lying in bed,
Facing one another.
You are your right side,
I was on my left.
We both wore t-shirts and boxers.
.
This wasn’t a sexual moment.
People tend to be more honest,
When they are in their underwear.
In the dream’s reality,
We were being honest with each other.
.
I gently brushed that lock of hair from your face
And touched your cheek.
You smiled.
I asked you where you would like to go.
You asked me what I meant.
I told you, I would take you anywhere.
And you said you didn’t want to go anywhere.
You were happy here.
.
I hope that you are happy
Where you are,
Wherever you are.
I hope that you feel your life
Is as protected
As if you were
In a warm bed
Under the covers,
On a rainy September’s morning.
Let It Die
If love’s so fragile, let it die.
Leave it by the side of the road
On a path that you will never pass again.
.
Or bury it by the bench in the park,
The one on which you held her hand
And thought the world was a magical place.
.
It is no longer magical
And even small children
Now seem angry, mean, and bitter.
.
You feel the bitterness too
Like a distant memory
Forgotten for a time
But always just around the corner.
oxrider 