Virus



These fucken shoulders sting like a nail in the foot.  Lower back mangled like a bush of thorns, and twisted like my knuckles from the walls I have punched.....fuck.  Fuck is right, fuck explains it all.  Fuck is the cap that releases the pressure from our heads. The word fuck makes sense in a sport that makes none.  Legs heavy like the demons I carry. Regret is worse than a missed lift....while sadness seems to overpower the highs. A virus of some sort has spread to so many, leaving the light shadowed out, and sleep never to be the same. A virus that lifts the soul....but breaks the body.  A virus that makes us live, before it kills.  A virus that spreads faster than the sting up your neck when slept on wrong from a brutal day of training.  A morning of coffee is shared with the bug of weightlifting, while the double-edged sword kills the dragon leaving scars on ours palms.  This is weightlifting.

My eyes lay red for the dark turns me black.  You and I lay at rest in a gym where bars and plates spend their last days.  A graveyard of once strong, has now fallen to the dust of dark and cold, stuck with no spin, and bent from slams of the past.  The glory days of so many find peace within the place they found life.  A soul so proud while knees click like crying children.  Echoes of "what ifs" rain about the hollow gym.  For bars and weights don't take up too much space, while the feeling of unfinished drapes from above.  Here I have this paper called freedom that lays in front of me.  Freedom paper to escape and travel, run away to a sandy beach, swim in an ocean I can call home, while fine dinners and wine sooth my body.  Success has opened a door for much more.  The light so bright as signs point for my escape.  No more pain.....no more struggle.....no more days filled of missed lifts and let downs.  No more bad days.  The sun awaits as a new life calls.  I look behind me as the lighted door gets closer to my pale white face.  The gym so cold and dark, so empty and unforgiving.  The same gym that broke my brother's neck.  The same gym that bombed me out, split my head open, out casted past friends and family, beat me, pulled me from school and sheltered me from society.  The new strong bars are telling me to leave!  Spitting at my ankles, as the fresh colored weights laugh at my numbers....telling me how weak and disgusting I am.  This gym is not my home, but my prison.  I have one life.....only one.....and I have spent half of it here......alone......in the dark.  Why? Fuck. The outside seems so nice.  The temptation warms my skin.  A new life awaits.  A new life I know nothing about.  The outside world seems big, and more unforgiving than this gym.  The sun burns more than the dark.  Even though half the weightlifting world hates me.....I still call them family.  I still feel at home under their ridicule, along with the ones who fight side by side with me, and you the reader.....will you be out there in the sun?  An answer of a broken pipe from the ceiling above drips down against one of the wooden platforms over....and over...and over again, with the best response you could of ever given me.  A response of no......no we will not, we will die in this gym......we will fight in this gym......no we will not surrender to the pleasures that so many speak upon.  For hell is our home and the dark is our shelter. 

A warm breeze from outside enters through the door that sprays half my face with light, as the gym covers the other half with dark.  A breeze that swept the dust off the top of the bars that lay broken.  The graveyard as I call it, where one day I will lie, we will lie, buried in this gym for others to step over and for dust to multiply.  The dusty bars have never left, in a way they are still fighting with their presence as they lie with more strength then when they lived.  Still in the gym to show lifters that this sport is a never ending story.....a never ending journey.   My red eyes turn black, as the veins in my skin turn purple.  My body starts to shake as my lips turn dry.  A gym that once was blacker than night, has given me sight.  I could see better than before as the black stayed night.  It has happened once again just like 8 years ago........I have been infected by the virus called the Weightlifting Bug.  I slowly walked to the door that smelled of salt water and sounds of baseball games.  I took my pale hand and shut the door until the last bit of light suffocated.  I lit a match to burn the paper of freedom in front of me.  A new life piled high and tall cracked and burned, casting shadows that flickered wall to wall, of myself.....and others who have now come out from their resting bench.   I choose to stay with these bars of broke.  I stay with these plates of bent.  I choose the dark. I choose the family that brought me in from the outside.  I choose strong.  I choose better.  I choose PR's and bars.  I choose to be great and follow my heart.  I choose pain and discomfort.  I choose broken bodies and tears of red.  I choose you. I choose to put my head down and keep fighting day in and day out.  Some will leave...some will stay.....but just like these broken bars......I am here until the death.   

Skeletons 2016