to be honest / jul 2026

To be honest Lord, brother, you know how to make this month a long, drawn out performance. This is pure, unfiltered abuse of the open mic. The woman’s singing her song and the audience is only captive because everybody knows the next guy, but right now, it’s the woman starting her tight five again. Keep it unrelenting, and know the rhythm of the verse, and I’ll be taken by the spoken word. I’m telling the jokes, and I’m watching the film play back to me. The noise comes back, each time around, stuttering at its inception, then playing through again. I hear the embarrassment, and rewatch the shame. I try to breathe it out, but my lungs don’t work as they used to. I become the plaything of temptation’s guiding hands, like the last rat to fall for the trick, only wishing to gorge. By now, you have to know that the cardboard box is going to fall, and you’re going to get caught in the darkness. You sought to live true to yourself, and you got yourself killed by the weight of a shadow. It’s alright though. It’s only July. 
 

        And Lord, tell you what, in your Jesus-skin, there’s the itch that you know I can’t scratch. In July, there’s a stinging discomfort, nestled in the layers of your skin, summoning sweat and attention. At least, it starts that way, then grows to become something consuming, tearing. July is the filth coming off in the shower. I look at the water, and you think, that was me? I carried this with me? I lived that life? In July, dear Lord, I lick the inside of your palms, and grow to adore the taste of your sweat. In July, I take two injuries: one, a great bruise to the shin, creating the impression of necrosis, or uncompressable violence. The other, interior, thereby invisible. Still, I tried to run on it, for little communal or personal or spiritual gain. I still apologise when the ball lands poorly, or when the pass falls through. These are not my mistakes I’m apologising for, but something stupider, a covering of the insecurities with a twice used plaster. The bruise stopped hurting but I would take time to prod at it as the swelling turned to purple. The strain knows to stay. I learn very little from either, but I listen to good music, and celebrate the fleshly limitations of this body. You’re hurt. Therefore, you’re hurting. Working as intended, and still,

        I learn from you Lord, that there is a pain that lingers. You hear me joke about suicide. You hear the temperature of the concern from those around me rise. I make quiet reassurances. I accept that, in the month of July, very little is let fly without scrutiny. This is the season of inspection, of making it more interesting, of telling the story from the inside looking out. You don’t have the space to operate in July, because you’re hardly able to see past your hands, nor can you walk much further than the bottom of the hill. Still, I make the pilgrimage. I am less now, growing skinny at the core, but resisting frailty for now. I eat as best as I can, and keep from obvious visceral temptations, be they carcinogenic or self-destructive. I get called pious, but despite my reiteration that sobriety dulls all into an extended, unrelenting edit of perspective, I forget who says so. Still, I’m told I look older. I’m finding the prospect of this change engaging. This is my body, as I’ve learned from you Lord. I taste my own sweat and think, did this come from me? Was I really here for all this? And cycle back home anyway, the sharpening gnaw on the inside of my thigh thins the fabric of you, your entirety, all that you are.

        You might not want to hear this, but this isn’t a prayer, per say. It’s a journal entry if there’s ever been a journal entry. It’s the eye that catches me. It’s the air that catches you. You are as alert as a tigress. You can almost taste it. I love, dearly and dangerously, when this album, or any occupant of Molina’s discography re-enters my regular listening. I used to listen to The Lioness to fall asleep, but more and more, I’m finding I want to be awake. The strain keeps me up, but I don’t feel like I’m losing sleep any more. You’ll rend me limb from limb when I’m not looking, but there’s no sentry around these parts anyway. The music is good. Æ’æ 25 og ting går bra. Nice. The injury was a setback in a schedule I made up. I’m writing more, most of all in the quieter hours of the night. I’ve got short stories coming through. Alexis suggested retelling myself short stories from memory, and I like the line of thinking. I feel freer with my writing now, and Lord I tell you, I worry I’m becoming unwell again. I worry I fear sleep for the ritual you’re offering me. I worry I’ve dismissed the sentry because I need him preoccupied. I worry this newfound awakeness, or celebration, or pause, or reflection, or joy is perverse, and I am pulling the scar open to see how deep my curiosity can take me. O how incredulosh!

 It’s strange, the writing at night. Why would letting my brain saturate itself let me become more indulged to play with my own concept of what a story can be? There are still sticking points, despite the consistent outputs. The night-air hasn’t helped with is the domain of the last paragraph. I sorta get it. Hey, we’ve all got work in the morning. We can figure it out later. The words are coming, and the stories are undergoing different stages of editorial placement. Too, shortly after the bruise, there was the conference. Though the lack of a PhD made nailing down what I was doing, or who I was, or why I was there a process of speaking through my own truncated sense of inadequacy, I felt real. People listened. I prayed I wasn’t abusing the space. I was stacked with this needling worry. I cycled up the hills. I saw death realised as I cycled back. I knew it would be quick, there.  I got a meeting organised with a potential supervisor, instead. I’m reading now, before drafting a proposal.

        Still, Lord, I ran too much, and to the long time viewers at home, who know the words to this one, I wore myself out. The same audience will know my ignorant, deterministic and absolutist ideals about burnout. I am immune to That Sorta Stuff -- but I am vulnerable to the collateral. I’ll get tired, and I’ll not wanna bother, and regardless of how much the wear and tear is showing, I’ll shift the blame onto some other external force. A lot of my friction with ‘burnout’, regardless of how much downward force it applies, is its framing. I don’t accept that being burned out is the fault of an employer, or a repetitious modality of work. Instead, burnout, and therein the injury can only come from the mistreatment of my own body and mind. I’m not burned out. I’m not the ever-tempting cigarette. I am injured. It is doubling the time it takes to walk anywhere. Unless I run, I’m straightening my left leg before putting weight on it. Six to eight weeks recovery time. Nowhere to go, anyway. Nobody to blame but myself. 

        The second injury brings on a sickening. Baseball bat to the gut. I begin to see men differently. The sickening between violence and want. It’s silly, but under the sun-burned mirror of July, just for a second there, I thought I could learn resilience. This is something that is broken into you, by the way. Resilience is a fancy word for do gooders. You only know you’re out when your body won’t let you get back up again. Still, you get a feel for moving on to the next thing. We took a cheap, impulsive trip to London to see The Ambassadors. The galleries were well populated, and busy with school kids. None of us get sick. We picnic in the sun. The journey feels indulgent, and cheap, and thereby luxurious. I am struck, and I am struck, and I am struck again. I want to spend the rest of my life bumming around the museums of the world. 

        I cannot describe the Rothko paintings, but know that I must write to the same effect. I must hold you, and hold you entirely. This is what there is, and I want you to listen. 

         So, Lord, I hear for the music. I am drawn into the way the lyrics are felt in the mouth, expelled from the body, put outwards towards the world. Good lord. I've got to grow bigger than life inside this world. I always thought I would kill myself. I take full advantage of every man I meet. For I am an engine and I'm holding on. I know I'm decomposin', I'm decomposin' how I want. They are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever. 

        The injury is not charming, the wound is not beautiful, and the salt isn’t worth the burn. All of it is embarrassing, as is the history of July. There’s more music too, by the way. There’s so much more music that I want to invite you to and find yourself in. I’d give you a list, or an image, or a link, but what’s the point? You’re not here for the sound, you’re never here for the noise, but you’re here because the woman-thing is saying her name, and telling you to hear her. I pray you know better than that. I pray you learn that the sound is all sourced from the same well, so draw from it. If you are poisoned, then I am poisoned too. The universe doesn’t love you, but you are getting back up anyway. You’re breathing through your nose, because breathing through the mouth puts you in a state of panic. You’re probably malnourished. I’m nothing and I have nothing. Lastly, dear Lord, please only betray yourself for amazing, destroying reasons.