Tags: about | anniversary | Think Magazine

Alexander Joseph Barber was a contributor to Think Magazine, a good friend and passed away at the tender age of 30 of heart failure. His passing means he will be sadly missed by us all. Here was his last submission to Think, his thoughts on 50 issues...

When you find your tragic raggedy soul staggering in circles like a plastic wrapper caught in the wind from the traffic and the novelty of the whole thing wore clean off ages ago and all you know is that every face you see reminds of the way you tell yourself you're supposed to be and you pray to be fast with your mask whenever they ask how's it going because they can all see your stuffing showing through the seams of your rags and your dream sags more and more each day and it's all you can do to get out of the way of the tram about to run you down because you took yourself for some noble jester but you figure out you're just a drunk and a clown lost in the shade of the turdbox parade with nothing to offer and everything to take and you want to defend something but nothing's sacred not even you as you burn at the stake and there's really nothing much left to break of your eggshell heart and it all comes apart and people are there to take pictures and figure out a way to distort it and true love found you and you had to abort it cause you knew you didn't deserve it and you try to find solace but you can't afford it because you're too shot to behave enough to slave enough to save enough to convince yourself you're worth a damn thing besides the songs you sing about your lack of mental health to people who are your friends only because they protect you from the truth of yourself while you're dying of a thirst the booze can't quench and there's only time between you and the bum on the bench and you're sick in the head lying in a bed that ain't yours listening to the doors close in the throes of a dream you can't wake up from because it ain't a dream it's your life and it's passing you by and you've lost the urge to try and change things and all you can do is cry about the fires you let die and you're desperate with want to explain why you're insane but who's gonna listen when they're busy kissin' someone who's got their sh*t together with better feathers and redder leather and you get this crazy idea like you can write it all out for people to see and in so doing somehow purge yourself of the need to bleed and the greed to be noticed and reputable and something more than the eyesore in the mirror that's so stricken with fear all it can do is act like you. And then one day when you ain't lookin', someone comes along humming a different song and you catch their drift and you thank the gods you were that swift and you're amazed to find yourself stuttin' across one of the bridges you figured you burned and you're filling in the blanks of lessons you can't believe you've never learned and your good-time you were sure you'd lost comes flying back and it makes you stop and think and say hey oh my god, holy sh*t, f*ckin' A, how could it be this good if it was never that way and where would any of these words be if it wasn't for the efforts of Keith Kirchner or Jeffree Benet?

And I don't know because I ain't God but I bet you can find 'em both in the Grand Canyon at sundown.

P. S. I think of a wall that stood for 50 months, full of graffiti. I could've done so much more than b*tch.