My Name is Bud, and I'm an Addict

I wrote this back in July, but didn't post it. Here you go.

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Hi, my name is Bud, and I’m an addict.

On this date in 1998, I had my first hit of “Her.” Like some RomCom cliché, I saw her across a smoky back yard at an anniversary party. It was lust at first sight. And, when I got close enough to look in her eyes, I was in love.

We were so different – think Dharma and Greg – and yet meshed so well. She inspired so many words, and left me speechless. She filled my spirit even as she took away my breath. It was, I thought, what love was supposed to feel like.

Sadly, unlike in Hollywood, the boy didn’t get the girl. The boy got hurt over and over. He’d (in a manner of speaking) lose the girl, she’d go away for a while – sometimes years – and he would make strides toward healing. But again and again she’d return, and he’d fall under her spell once more. The boy is, admittedly, not very bright.

There were too many days when I didn’t care if I woke up in the morning. And, despite a fairly impressive collection of writing (quantity, if not quality) inspired by my first muse, I still wake up depressed that I have to drag myself through another day.

A few months ago, with the unwitting help of her latest boyfriend, I got clean. Of course, clean is a relative term. Like any addict, I know I’ll never be free of temptation. The danger of relapse lurks everywhere; in scores of songs and movies; in a thousand memories, and even in the words dripping from my own pen.

I’m better than I was, but I am still damaged. I am a junkie, and “Her” is my drug.

“I thought I knew what love was. What did I know? Those days are gone forever. I should just let ‘em go.”

After

By Bud Koenemund

A 100-word story

(TRIGGER WARNING: This story includes domestic/sexual abuse.)

  He always apologized after; “I’m sorry” dripping off his tongue as he gently cradled her in his arms; fingers gliding over her damp skin; caressing as if healing. The names he’d called her dissolving in the dark.

  In the morning, he’d be tender; kissing her; saying “I love you” before leaving for work, and his shame would burn off like fog in the sunshine. Showering washed away the smell of him, the taste, the…residue. This time, the pain, her bruises – already ugly yellow-brown – would fade forever. She watched his car turn the corner before she dared to breathe.

Healing

For New York City - December 2001

A multi-ethnic mass of humanity
on the street; scurrying, bumping, jostling
without even a mumbled apology.
Bodies rushing everywhere; and nowhere.
People from around the world; here now
the artists and the crackpots,
the addicts and their crack-pipes,
and half-naked cowboys in Times Square.

Visitors craning their necks, looking skyward,
walking slowly along the broad sidewalks
taking countless pictures of the Big City;
holding hands tightly as if it will swallow them up!
They take in the fantasy-like glimmering
beauty filled with blazing neon signs
hiding the dark reality underneath
with their glowing sensuality.

I feel so perfectly at home here
in this place of bold, black strokes
and colorful, wildly psychedelic metaphors
here at the crossroads of the universe;
where even the wildest of dreams
can come amazingly true.
A place where I can find myself
and become lost in the crowd.

The power of this city radiates
up and down the wide Avenues of legend,
across the Streets of lore,
and through every building in between.
No place in the world can compare
to all of its glitz and glamour,
or to the always exciting hint of danger
hiding just under the surface.

The real strength of this great city
rests not in its buildings, but in its people!
It lies in their diversity and their character,
in their determination and their resolve!
It is the weird, and the wonderfully strange,
as well as the everyday normal people
that make this city what it is.
I love this City!

Once Upon a Time...

For "Her."

Let’s sit and write a sonnet together,
Just you and I. I’ll pour some drinks and play
Songs that still remind me, while you whisper
Words which linger in my ears. I’ll obey
Your charge wistfully, quickening the quill
To flagellate my soul in equal parts
Healing and torture, as grief beyond will
Suffocates the love that once filled my heart;
Anon we’ll return to the past; a time
I knew, even then, was but a broken
Fairy tale, and at the bell’s midnight chime
I am left a knight without his maiden.
I'll fill this page with things I long to say,
For your magic oft’ fades ere light of day.