The Portable Henry Rollins

by Henry Rollins

  Forcing definition from this diseased confusion

  Life is an insult

  So fuck it

  I’m taking it down the cinder trail

  And I don’t want to hear about

  What you think you stand for

  Because it’s nothing

  Furniture, boxes, bonfires, lists

  A cast of renters

  The embrace, the kiss, the long look

  Falls to the floor on death row

  Life is an embarrassment

  Some things are too embarrassing

  I could never tell you

  I could never tell anyone

  How much I think about you

  How it scares me

  Every morning as insomnia’s grip loosens

  I stare at your picture

  I think of your painful shyness

  Your ravaged self-opinion

  Your incredible beauty

  How drawn I am to you

  You are the reason I don’t want to die all the time

  When I am with you life is worth living

  Time away from you is strange and full of pain

  When I look into your eyes

  I can see how life has savaged you

  It’s ok if you fall

  I will be there to catch you

  Anyone who would want to hurt you

  Would have to kill me to do it

  I will never be able to pound words into lines

  To match the velocity of your presence

  I will never let you know how much you hurt me

  No, I will never tell you

  The last few months have sent me into myself

  It’s not easy to forget you

  Time is healing me

  I keep my feelings to myself, it helps

  I don’t understand you or your kind

  I end up getting myself messed up

  I can’t take any more beatings like this

  In dead hours

  Sitting in my room

  Face in my right hand

  Music playing

  Thinking about him

  His hands in your hair

  The scent of your skin

  Making his eyes close

  Your breath on his neck

  As she becomes

  Away

  I watch myself try to hold on to her

  I have never known a pain like this

  When you go insane there will be nothing

  When you go insane there will be no one

  Nothing to hold you

  No one to love you

  No one to talk to you

  But it won’t matter

  It won’t matter if the walls are gray

  Or that time is hollow and lonely

  And passes whistling and hissing like wind through high weeds

  I’m laughing and shrugging all the way to death

  I’ve never known a moment of real life

  Watch me as I run mindlessly and directionlessly

  Forward

  If I thought it would help

  I would stay with you for as long as it took

  I would show you something different

  That I was telling you the truth the whole time

  As it is right now

  I have taken all I can

  Your shallowness has thrown me into a deep hole

  It would be better for me to hate you I know

  But I can’t

  I try but I keep thinking of you sitting alone

  Seeing yourself as pieces of broken glass on the floor

  Your inverted rage is hard to be around

  Good luck

  My loneliness is so large it has outgrown me

  It walks beside me, a wasteland that keeps in step

  Sometimes our shoulders touch

  It feels like teeth sinking into my flesh

  A new and strange stretch of desert opens before me

  If you want to hurt them and their children not yet born

  Tell them the truth always

  When you meet them

  Stare deep into their eyes

  Take those who wish to dominate you

  Turn the game around and play it on them

  Don’t spare them a thing

  Make sure you tell them about the blood and the pain

  They can say what they want

  You will trigger all their responses

  It’s all blood and death from here

  You won’t be kept waiting long

  To take a step into this vast emptying desert

  This lit-up hope-filled expanse

  This space that reduces us to the truth

  To embrace this life-extinguishing process

  To constantly fuck with death

  To live through this slaughter without killing yourself first

  Here is dot dot dot

  For me it’s the ever-widening shadows

  A silence that steadily increases in volume

  Separation from myself

  So that I walk alongside my body

  I hear their voices like wind in high grass

  Darkness is rushing forward

  If I could I would melt into your arms

  I would fall like ten dead languages

  I would not front

  I would not lie to you

  I don’t think I could lie anymore

  I have grown too old for such youthful pursuits

  I want to love someone before I die

  Hurry

  It won’t be long now

  All we do is eat sleep and worry about the rent

  Somewhere there is real life

  And those who live it

  What about the rest

  Paralyzed by television and police choke holds

  Alas

  Life widens and grows distant

  The loneliness that the world generates

  We keep it going all night long

  Waiting for a dull moment, or a lot of dull moments

  To sneak away from the pain

  During these unmoving silent nights I feel its crushing wheel

  Is there anyone in the world who I can know?

  I am tired of knowing myself so well

  I am immune

  Too exhausted to notice

  Too paranoid to sleep or wonder for too long

  Too self-abused and withdrawn to help myself

  Real life doesn’t come close to this

  Love heals scars love left

  We’re all hypocrites

  Searching desperately

  Before our ability to attract

  Takes too much effort to use

  Or disappears much to our horror

  We die trying to impress each other

  I’d rather be respected by a bolt of lightning

  I like my world

  Right now it’s all I can stand

  Get too close and they’ll take you to the bottom

  They fuck me up

  I go to the store and I have to listen

  It’s a nonstop tragedy

  The night is here though

  No gunshots

  I wish the sun would take a vacation

  Leave me in darkness for a while

  Let me heal

  Let me try to figure out why I’m fucked up

  I’m obsessed with documentation

  I must record every drop

  I have good equipment

  I don’t miss much

  It’s a sickness

  An obsession with contempt for life

  We all need a sickness to live

  A way to show our fear of death

  I’ve got hours of conversation trapped

  Pages of words in lockdown

  Video on double life

  Doing forever

  Don’t end up in this place

  It’s all important and meaningless

  Depression drives a car into my back

  It gets worse with time


  Sometimes I can barely speak

  The phone is almost impossible

  I tried talking to a woman tonight

  In the first thirty seconds I wanted to get away

  Tour starts in a few days

  Start the tour or kill me

  At this point I’d take either one

  Don’t come close

  I’ll hurt you

  It’s all I know how to do

  I can’t translate the pain into words

  That don’t cause pain

  Don’t tell me you love me

  You’ll make me think of my mother

  And 1,000 broken windows

  Years of knotted screams into the bed

  So much hate it would break your ribs

  I put the miles through my eyes

  I slam silence into my brain

  Anything to get away

  Walk away from me as fast as you can

  Never speak of me or to me again

  It’s too late

  For all that

  Death is the only shadow on my road

  Men hugged him

  Women asked him to come home with them

  The money rolled in

  He was so lonely it was pathetic

  If they knew how he lived they would laugh

  Sometimes he saw it all as punishment

  Never escaping the humiliating inferno of his parents

  The parents are gone now

  Now he gets paid to humiliate himself

  He constantly disgusts himself

  In the name of telling the truth

  Loneliness and alienation choke him

  He tells people to stay alive

  He tells himself to die

  I live behind a wall of scar tissue

  Scare tissue

  Scarce issue

  I don’t like to think of myself

  I like lifting those weights though

  I like the feeling of pain

  Nothing else

  I am rescued from my mind

  The nights are painful again

  I can’t do anything with that kind of pain

  It’s bad

  Behind the wall of scar tissue

  Hemmed in tight

  I don’t want them to know me

  I tell them everything so there will be nothing left

  That’s the part I’ll keep for myself

  I figure the deeper I get into the pain

  The better I’ll be at dealing with it

  That’s how bad I hate this shit

  100 women left me tonight

  I didn’t take it too well

  I kicked myself for letting it matter

  I kicked myself for letting it go so far

  I lost myself in the shuffle

  Now the room is cold

  All of a sudden it’s Saturday night

  There’s no magic

  Too dangerous to go outside

  No shit

  I pride myself on being the loneliest man on earth

  Damn

  December 19, 1991

  Part of my life ended

  My best friend was murdered

  On my front porch

  He never hurt anyone

  The man who shot him in his face

  Never knew his name

  I am still alive

  Sort of

  From now on

  My life is totally fucked and without purpose

  Without inspiration

  A mask that I will die wearing

  After dark I wait for something horrible to happen

  I figure I’ll have people shooting at me for the rest of my life

  Like a drama in installments

  Nightmares delivered to my door

  Darkness comes and I wait for more horror

  I figure we’ll be friends for life

  I’m swimming in an animal bag

  Everything smells like meat

  Everyone is a killer

  I look at all of them now

  I search out their eyes

  I let them know that I’ll kill them back

  They take one look and they know I mean it

  I lock the door behind me

  Everything that moves begs me to attack it

  I know how people are now

  They take your money

  Break your heart

  Or try to kill you

  Now I walk the streets like a secret animal

  Some of them know

  But not all of them

  The one who fucks with me

  Will lose his throat

  He’ll have no idea what he’s fucking with

  I live on the outskirts of humanity

  I am scarred for the rest of my time here

  That’s all it is to me

  Time left here

  Time spent walking the city filth

  Breathing in and out and keeping my teeth sharp

  Waiting for something horrible to happen again

  Every slow dance took my breath away

  Pinned my heart to the wall

  I believed every slow song

  I was intoxicated by the smell and the movement

  Every one of them broke my heart a little

  Now there’s nothing but wise bitterness

  Fatigue from seeing the whole thing

  The pool of blood in the dirt

  The end of real time has begun

  It’s all legendary from here

  The detectives went through my house for hours

  I was at the pig station

  I didn’t know until later

  They went through the food in the kitchen

  I got back to the house and all kinds of shit was turned over

  My best friend’s blood was all over the front walk

  They’re looking for something to bust us for

  The pieces of shit even went through the attic

  They were curious as to why I had so many tapes

  He talks to me and makes me think he’s my friend

  I look at him and know he thinks I’m scum

  If I give these pieces of shit the time of day then they win

  You know

  There’s so many pieces of shit in the world

  It’s amazing anyone gets by

  The pigs asked if me and Joe were faggots

  They were so relieved when they found out we weren’t

  Fuck you pig

  Like I have to prove myself to you

  I can’t think of a more fucked-up situation

  I have to talk to these shitheads all the time now

  They still ask other people about me

  Like I might have been up to something

  I’m some kind of suspect?

  Nah, but you sure are some kind of pig

  Joe you should have seen the tabloids talk about you

  They really love the fact

  That your father was married to the bitch in Charlie’s Angels

  They talk about her sorrow

  How you two were so close

  Like you hung out all the time

  How you were 29 and in Black Flag

  One of your father’s piece-of-shit friends was lying

  Talking a lot of shit

  You looked great in the Enquirer

  Good pictures of you and whatever the fuck her name is

  I saw her at your wake

  I wanted to spit on her

  Your father had it at Gazarri’s

  All his AA friends were there

  After all these fake-ass people who didn’t know you

  Had spoken and congratulated themselves on their acting

  And talked a lot of shit about god and AA

  Your father stood at the end of a line

  So people could come up and talk to him

  Your mother didn’t know anyone there

  She just stood to the side

  With her husband and your stepsister

  They weren’t
used to the Hollywood sickness

  It was gross

  After that we went and looked at your body

  Your father didn’t go

  He didn’t go to your funeral either

  Don’t know why

  Maybe because there would be too many people

  Too busy with their own grief

  To compliment him on his

  I miss you man

  I look at pictures of you and I can’t take it

  Yesterday I wanted to crawl inside the pictures and be with you

  I have been thinking a lot of dying myself lately

  Life is pretty boring without you around

  I have to tell you Joe

  I did it all for you

  I was hoping that if I went out there and did something good

  You would see that you could do something magnificent

  Like I told you the night before you died

  You have such a great talent

  It’s because you didn’t lie I admire that truth

  You will inspire me for what’s left of my life

  I see now that it might not be all that long

  That piece of shit took you out

  In less time than it takes to turn off a light

  When I was looking at you on that gurney

  That bullet hole in the side of your head

  All filled in with mortician’s clay

  All the powder burns on your face

  What courage you have to be dead like that

  This thing that we all fear the most

  And there you are pulling it off like it’s nothing

  You even had a slight smirk on your face

  But you were cold and you smelled like formaldehyde

  It was so hard to leave that room with you in it

  It took me three times I think

  I kept coming back to say something else to you

  It never seemed to be enough

  It will never be enough

  Please come visit me in a dream soon

  I miss you so much

  My good friend

  1992 is a couple of hours away

  I’m staying in someone’s house

  I am almost 31

  All my stuff is in storage

  I am single and plan on staying that way

  To appeal to the more tender nature of a woman

  Is a total waste of my time

  What a joke

  Meanest damn people I ever met

  I am alone in the world and there’s no changing that

  My loneliness burns deep within

  I don’t mind because

  I am one from none

  My line has never been so clear-cut

  Death has stripped most of the words from my speech

  Talk is a disease