Brian Eckert

“The drugs!  Ditch the drugs!  He’s coming!”

When Pete doesn’t immediately comply with my frenzied request to jettison the narcotics I grab his backpack and attempt to throw it into the brackish water.

“Take it easy man,” he says, wrestling the bag away from me. “We’re gonna be fine.”

Stanton has no reaction. He silently and expressionlessly pilots the boat from his position in the back.

Seized by terror I pull my knees into my chest, bury my face between them, and tell myself that if I don’t look at the boat creeping ever closer this nightmare will somehow end. Read the rest of this entry »

When black dreams lead to blackened day, the feeling is one of betrayal:
of the self, by the self.

Unfaithful sensibilities, disloyal reality, are not tolerated here, in the Kingdom of Conniving Fleas. Don’t make me make an example of myself. 1,327 consecutive life sentences. No possibility of Nirvana.
Only conjugal visits with a Sacred Cow.

Betrayed by night, I rue the day. Cut off yesterday to spite tomorrow.
Fear (if sleep is not safe, where might refuge ever be found?) begets uncertainty;
uncertainty reveals complexity.

The complex tears man asunder.
What is simple heals him.
Even if the balm be unctuous.

No, I am not myself today.
Or perhaps I am too much myself.
I spent hours alone in an underground room, trying to prove to myself that I don’t exist, that I’m not
the Invisible Man.

Saved by the bell. Only strangers drop-in anymore.
They tell me to sign on the dotted line and I know
I was bought off long ago.

Or it could be an evangelist, asking me if I’ve read the Bible.
Some say the Good Book is just astrology. Just the other day a man saw Jesus in a pile of windshield bird shit.
He always looks handsome in pictures.
Nowadays he’d be just another hipster,
working at a sushi restaurant
writing a bad memoir.

Poor neighborhoods, like this one, tend to have a high concentration of churches. On Sundays I like to take a long walk. Every few blocks there’s a church from which pours snippets of voices, organ music, clapping hands, stomping feet. I’ve never been a churchgoer, but I imagine what would happen if I opened a door mid-service and settled into a pew in the back. I think of what it would be like to lose myself completely in the preacher’s voice, the crowd’s movements, the high ceilings, the stained glass. To be a believer, just for an hour. I will slip out the door quickly when the service is over and walk home wrapped in a strange calm, in spite of the reinstatement of my disbelief.

Yes, I prepare to say to the True Believer at the door, I have heard the words of Christ.
No, I do not follow them.
But please talk of them…speak friend!
I will become lost in the roll of your voice,
you purring cat!
Your certainty gives me hope that someday
I may too be sure of something.

There is no man with a bible
wielded like a shotgun
at my door.

A slightly-less-than-middle-aged Mexican man stands there.
Hey man. I’m lukeing for Pancho man. A leetle guy. He says heez leeving at this address man.

Pancho doesn’t live here amigo.

Ok man. Thanks man. I’ll check the other houses.

Wait, amigo, I say.
Do you have a minute?
I’d like to talk to you about the message of
Jesus Christ, our lord and savior.

This poem appeared in Red Fez

I.

Went West

with dust of haunted dreams

in my blood

stopped just short of where

white caps crash against the sky

In Denver,

just to get away

because I have to get away from something,

just to kill some time

because I have to kill something.

Pioneers came West to below where

white caps crash against the sky

cuz the grass was greener

Pioneers still coming, like me,

cuz the sky is bigger,

the sky is so goddamned big

you swear you can see clear through to

Home

or wherever.

That something

we want to run back to

when the sky gets smaller,

the grass isn’t greener. Read the rest of this entry »

“$400, all you can drink,” says a young Taiwanese man standing in front of a Thai restaurant in downtown Kenting.

I mull over the proposition—not a bad one, considering that three drinks could easily cost that much. Seth, however, saves me any further deliberation by paying $800 for the two of us.

The charge grants us unlimited access to a limited drink menu offering gin and tonics, rum and cokes, screwdrivers, and draft beer. The cocktails are certain to be watered down and the beer topped off with ice, but all you can drink is still all you can drink. Read the rest of this entry »

“San ping sake,” I tell the server. Three bottles of sake.

When she returns a few minutes later with the fresh pitchers of warm rice wine I pour shots for myself and my friends. Sitting directly to my right is a young Californian who’s been in Beijing for just under a week. I toast to him on this evening, one that marks both his first night out in the city and his first sake experience.

At the table next to ours a group of local men wearing the green jerseys of the local soccer club are also imbibing sake. I make eye contact with one of them.

“Sake feichang hao,” I say. Sake is very good.

With this simple statement the red-faced Chinese man and his equally crimson companions acknowledge the group of foreigners with a chorus of “hellos” and offer to fill our glasses. With cups brimming, my new Chinese friend clinks his sake vessel to mine and says, “ganbei,” which translates to “empty the cup.” All of us drain our glasses and continue to “ganbei” for the better part of an hour.

By the end of the aggressive drinking session the China newbie is grinning a happy drunken grin and surveying the loud, smoky restaurant with a look of awe. We pay our bill—a ridiculously cheap 150 Yuan (around $25) per person for three hours of all you can eat and drink—and spill out into the night, chatting and laughing our way to the next spot, a Western style bar teeming with dolled up Chinese girls.

We find seats among a group of them at a back corner table. Somebody pulls out a hash joint and it makes its way around. Drunk, stoned, and cozied up to a sexy young local, the newb leans into my ear and says, “Man, is this a pretty typical night out?”

I tell him that it is. What I don’t tell him is that he is now one of the Lost Boys of China. Read the rest of this entry »

I live in a studio loft in Taichung, Taiwan.
But I’ve lived in many places
in many ways.
Oh, how I’ve lived.

I’ve lived in Alaska, in the Great North Woods, in the Great Plains, in the shadow of the Rockies
in North America, in Europe, in Asia, in Africa
in the city, in the country
in houses, in apartments, in motels, in tents
in prisons of my own construction
in defiance
in denial
in fear
in the arms of a woman
in willful ignorance
in the past
in order to forget what it means not to live.

I’ve lived through more than 30 years
through good times and bad
through broken hearts and broken bones and broken dreams and broken teeth and broken homes and broken promises and broken silences and broken records.

I’ve lived under big skies, under small skies, under skies that flash and boom, under skies filled with millions-of-years-old light
under duress
under stress
under arrest
under false pretenses
under pressure
under the influence
under the weight of my father’s expectations
under the watchful eye of my mother
under posters of sports heroes and rock stars
under the impression that Santa Claus was real
under God, indivisible, for liberty and justice for all.

I’ve lived for myself
for others
for the moment
for the future
for days and days and days not knowing what I wanted
for that day when all of the shit would just stop
for long enough to know that living is an end in itself
for too short a period of time to even pretend that I know much of anything.

I’ve lived with family
with friends
with strangers
with my head in the clouds
with the smell of sex on me
with last night’s clothes still on
with a sense of purpose
with a sense of dread
with a sense of entitlement
with a sense that I didn’t deserve anything good for myself
with a bitter heart
with false expectations
with regret
with the misbelief that Jesus died for my sins
with more questions than answers
with a body not of my own making
with the entire knowledge of mankind at my fingertips
with the feeling that I wasn’t actually living my life.

I’ve lived without a place of my own
without a dime to my name
without a purpose
without a God
without limits
without anyone I really cared about
without lifting a finger
without a care in the world
without answers
without giving a fuck
without a good pair of sunglasses
without a reason to go to bed
without contracting an STD
without knowing how long I would live for
without hesitating to maim and kill and destroy
without a love that was my own
without a reason to keep living
without knowing why, exactly, it hurt so goddamned much.

I’ve lived.
Oh, how I’ve lived.