excerpt from: "Bullets For Babylon"

Part l

Why? That’s the big question. How to answer it?
Am I going to start this with some confession about how unfair this world has been to me? How I’ve been hard done by? That Lady Luck is a bitch? I could. And maybe I should. But I don’t want to begin on some down note. ‘Cos that’s not who I am. I’m a realist. I deal in reality.
I’m suppose to turn 19 next month. What a thought! I wonder what the ratio is of people who have turned 19 to those who have not made it that far? I plan on changing the numbers.
My kid brother’s a cripple. No reason really. Just a bad roll of the dice. We were all running, jumping, diving, off of Red Rock into the quarry pond. Free falling feet, head, ass and belly first. Thrills & kicks, y’know. Nothing out of the ordinary. We must have all done it at least a couple of hundred times each over the years. And out of all of it, Robbie was the one to do it... well wrong.
It was the sound that tipped us off. And it was sorta strange ‘cos somehow instinctively, collectively, we all knew. In different stages we went and looked over the edge. No thought of the circumstances. Just a curiosity, really.
Now, when you jump and hit the water you go down about 20-25 feet and it’s 4-5 seconds before you re-surface. But not with Robbie. He sank. And maybe, just maybe, if I had of known then what the outcome was going to be I would have left him. Left him to be whole.
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...and fuck it. Really & in an absolute way. ‘Cos I’m not wrong in these thoughts. There has to be a cleansing of sorts. A washing away of the shit & scum. A cull of sorts... a human cull. To remove the rotten, the turning, the venal. And someway or other I realize I am the light. I am the way.
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internecine love... the only kind I ever lived. And to what end? The fruition of all my desires. How much better could it be? Rosaly, o you lovely bitch, my heart is yours but I get to keep my puritan brain. These bullets are like a love letter, sweet, pure and deadly to its cause. O, Rosaly, you are all that I will miss. How could one so fucked up be so beautiful?
* * *
These days feel so confining. Everything pushing down on me. And I wonder why? I am not in need of much. Sure a car would be nice. But in the same moment I haven’t worked for a car so it’s kinda moot to think that I should have one really. I have this feeling of not being able to move, to do anything that it would not be the same, perhaps w/ a different view but still the same gnawing feeling. The gnawing of nothingness. I have an idea, a plan that I want to put into effect. It is grand. It will be earth moving. I think I may be a little afraid. There are things that will unfold as this journal goes on. It won’t take long. Maybe a week or two. I’ll do my best to get it done right and in a way that is both efficient & expedient. I’ve been in the army cadets for years now. They taught me about discipline, planning and achieving the objective. “My men didn’t cheat. They adapted, they improvised and they overcame.” Hamburger Hill and the Clinter, or somthing like that.
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