life is great but it moves fast.

Jack Tait sat in front of his computer and looked at an empty screen.  a can of beer to the right and Tom Waits playing in the background.  his eyes getting sleepy but his mind racing with thoughts.  racing with ideas.  his life just plain old racing.  thirty years old seemed like yesterday and now seventy years old seems so close.  speeding up.  slowing down.  living.  not living.  breathing.  psychologists.  psychiatrists.  pills.  booze.  exercise.  meditation.  Jack tried it all but nothing seemed to work on his busy mind.  busy but fragile mind.  life coming to an end for one more day.  a day closer to death.  closer to never seeing his family again.  kisses and cuddles turning to wrinkles and bad breath.  Taylor alone in bed.  Sarah alone in bed.  Jack alone on his computer but with his good friend Jack Daniels now beside him.  Love the most important thing in this world but it gets buried among flying shit and flying opinions about fucking politics and fucking food.  love lost in commuters’ dull cars and dull brains. herds of sheep in bank owned cars whizzing through construction and war zoned highways that lead the blind to the rich owners of rich corporations that bleed money and wipe their asses with the hard work and dumb brains of peasants that seem to smile but are really lonely and sad.  life whizzing by on dull highways and dull radio.  life wanting love but getting lust and getting rust.  love thy neighbour as thy love thyself is written in stone for the herds to follow but they prefer to follow Oprah and Ellen.  Trump and Hillary.  the blind always leading the blind while great thinkers such as Basquiat and Tom Waits are buried under old Playboy or Playgirl magazines.
Jack Tait looks to his right and feels his beer can.  empty.  he looks at his bottle of Jack Daniels.  empty.  he scratches his neck and tastes his breath which tastes like a rat’s ass.  Jack then wonder’s what a rat’s ass tastes like.  he ponders life and ponders what everyone has told him over the years.  most people trying to help him but “him” never wanting to help “himself”.  Jack’s eyes getting sleepier than before and they were already sleepy.  Jack thinks of his deceased Dad.  his elderly Mom.  his lonely elderly Mom.  he thinks of his brother.  his brother that he rarely sees.  he thinks of his best friends.  his many fucks.  his many dead pets.  he thinks of gravestones and he thinks of cancer.  he thinks too fucking much but then he winds down as the lights go dim.  he takes one big deep breath and then hears his daughter yell, “DADDY!!!  ARE YOU THERE???  DADDY???  I NEED YOU DADDY!!!!!!!!”  Jack Tait closes the computer and quickly stumbles upstairs to Taylor’s room.  “Are you okay Taylor?”  “Yeah Dad.  I had a nightmare.  It was so scary.  In it you died.  It felt so real.  I was so scared.  you died and it was only Mom and me left.”  “It’s okay Taylor.  I’m not going to die.  Everything is okay.”  Jack hugged Taylor tightly.  “Are you sure you won’t die Daddy?”  Jack looked at Taylor and saw her red eyes.  he hugged her tightly and said, “You have nothing to worry about Taylor.  I’m not going to die.”  And with that Taylor fell back asleep but not Jack.  He thought of his Dad saying those exact words to him forty years ago.  he thought of the excruciating pain he felt when he found out that his Dad had died.  He thought of the extreme struggles he had endured his whole life without a Dad.  without a hero.  he thought of all the other kids that lost parents.  lost friends.  but then he thought of parents who lost kids to an early and unexpected death.  he began to cry.  and cry.  and cry.  he looked down at his sleeping child and was overcome with emotion.  he could not stop crying but he didn’t want to stop crying.  the love that he had for this amazing kid was something that most people would never feel.  then the crying stopped and the mind took over again.  “One day I will not wake up and Taylor will be devastated the way that I was devastated when I lost my Dad.  Life is great but it moves fast and sometimes we forget to love.  but we need to love for love is all we really have in the end.  I will really miss Taylor when I die.”
and with that Jack turned off the bedroom light and fell asleep holding Taylor tight.  tighter than ever before.