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Angry Cat Productions, Broken Arrow, OK (2025)

12/12/2024

TANTALUS

years down the show
we somehow put on the road
a carnival of corpses
turning on the corrupt carousel
bent on the belief of a better tomorrow

these missives pour out of a polaroid
as the artist sings me yet another song
both profound and profane
every single day finds me losing all over again
almost numb to this serenade of sorrow

her smile plays in my mind
like every single episode of day of a life
turning pages and thoughts of ages
dissolve into just dust
dirt and millions of paper cut hurts
but I refuse any and all forms of solace

I must face the hell inside of me
remember even the darkest moments
for in them like the diamonds of destiny
the scenes that push me forward to valhalla
and to that I lift this mourning filled chalice

12/12/24
(C) Darin Mecher - Angry Cat Productions / Portals Infinity

11/14/2024

Journal Entry - 11/14/24

I was reading this article online this morning about a promoter responding to backlash that has occurred from his decision to put Sleep Token as a headliner of a festival next year. As is often the case of online backlash, there were a number of trolls upset by this decision for a multitude of reasons, none that really relate to the reality and responsibility of the promoter. The main gist is that they wanted “legacy” artists to headline. Artists like Metallica, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. The promoter, to his credit, explained that Sleep Token is currently selling out arenas and is immensely popular to a younger group of people who love them. He also mentioned that, at one time, he gave a chance to bands like Slipknot, Bad Omens and Bring Me the Horizon. He says it is Sleep Token’s time. I agree.

But there is a bigger issue here. One that I have been intimately familiar with of late. It is like a bad Gen X joke. The joke goes - Radio in 1975 had awesome acts like Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones and Journey. Radio in 1985 had awesome acts like Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones and Journey. Radio in 1995 had . . . Radio in 2005 had . . .

The Boomer stranglehold on “classic” rock and subsequent musical movements adopted by my own generation, Generation X has a literal chokehold on radio, the idea of what constitutes “good music” and this idea of nostalgia over new. After all - all nostalgia was once “new”. Now don’t get me wrong here. I like Fleetwood Mac. Rumours is one of the greatest rock albums of all time. I love Pink Floyd. I have such great memories of listening to The Wall as a teenager. And listening to it last week. It is also one of the greatest rock albums of all time. I listened to so much Black Sabbath, Ozzy and Judas Priest on the bus to school thanks to the stoners and their boombox that I knew all the songs and yet never bought any of the music and, quite frankly, hated it as a youth. I was listening to The Police, The Smiths, The Cure and Depeche Mode. It is all great stuff. Good to listen to. But music did not end in the 90s. Nirvana was not the last great band. I hear my peers - unfortunately meaning those in their 60s, 50s and 40s talking about the “death” of popular music. They despise anything new. They don’t understand it. They don’t listen. They don’t want to know. They are stuck, most of them, in some mythological “golden age of pop” which, for them, is the decade of roughly 1985-1995. Some of us older GenXers love music from 1975-1985.

The “death” of popular music. But upon the death of my dear wife, I was suddenly open to anything and everything to heal the person size wound I had experienced and had no idea that the day’s popular music, yes, music coming out in 2023, was healing me. It was speaking to me. I was relating. I wanted to hear more. And I was thrust into the center of one of the great battles of the “culture wars”. I had friends who looked at my newfound addictions with disgust. As if suddenly buying vinyl from the likes of Melanie Martinez, Jazmin Bean, Charlie XCX, Sleep Token, Bad Omens, Sabrina Carpenter and - God Forbid - Taylor Swift, was akin to falling into a death spiral of fentanyl and black tar he**in addiction. I was left behind. And, to my surprise, happily. I have discovered so much great music and so much creativity and so much “pushing of the envelope” that I can safely say that I believe we are in a pop music renaissance. I have found, in my life experience, that pop culture thrives during episodes of conservatism and far right politics. Not only do we get great music that is a rebellion and resistance to societal established “norms”, but horror movies also thrive. And we are seeing that in real time, right now. 2024 has been the greatest year in the horror / thriller genre in decades. It gives me hope.

So, back to the original thought. Sleep Token is a fantastic band. All the albums and all the songs and all the shows are simply immaculate. Emotional. Authentic. Creative. The whole aesthetic is so detail oriented and so artistically talented that I still can’t believe that in an age of media saturation, we are finding new and exciting things to say and see. But the people still want Journey? I mean, Journey is good. Metallica is good. All the “legacy” bands are good. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to survive this long. But I have seen them. I would love to see them again. But don’t others deserve a chance? A seat at the table? A soap box? And therein lies the real issue here. New Blood. Stagnation. The way of human nature. I saw it in Rockabilly and Punk subculture. You become “established” and then you turn your nose up to “new blood”. Not understanding that culture is to be passed on. New arrivals to the culture are to be nurtured. Loved. Encouraged. Not turned away. Or the culture DIES. What are we going to do? Just watch holograms of Journey and Metallica in the future? I don’t mean to be mean, but have you seen the latest footage of Frankie Valli doing a Las Vegas residency and still singing “Sherry” at the age of 90? He looks positively animatronic. I don’t want to diss him or his fans. If he truly wants to be on stage at 90 singing songs from 1962 and people are still seeing him and enjoying him - Great! But isn’t there room for more artists? More songs? Something new? After all, some of the things coming out now will be “classic” and “legacy” in 30 to 40 years. After I am gone.

If you don’t understand the correlations - let me spell it out. Without new blood, culture dies. You have to have new car builders and people getting into the music to keep Rockabilly vibrant. You have to have new goths and new punks and new emo kids to keep those cultures alive. You have to have immigrants to keep the country strong. Otherwise, it dies. What we are seeing all around us is the death throes of the Boomer Generation. They are not going quietly. Hell, we just elected the oldest one to lead our country in the biggest flop of a reality tv show the world has ever seen - in my opinion. But what happens after they are gone? Do you really expect Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha to simply continue to purchase Dark Side of the Moon without adding their own artists? Their own creativity? Their own take on this “greatest experiment”? The kids are the FUTURE. I am a proponent of their FUTURE. My feeling is that I am here to encourage them and give them some advice from life experience, not strict rules and oppressive directives. The younger generations deserve our best, not our worst. They deserve good music. From the past, present and future. They deserve to find their own way. To discover their own truths. To make their own mistakes.

By the way, Sleep Token is not everyone’s cup of tea. But I love a good dose daily just like my coffee. And I will listen to Dark Side of the Moon on my 1975 turntable and hifi. And I will TikTok about my love for Melanie Martinez and one of the greatest albums that has ever been created - Portals. It all belongs and it all connects. Don’t you get that? It is my opinion that humanity will not evolve until we learn the lesson: We thrive on our differences and unique perspectives - not on some unyielding concept of what constitutes “right”.

10/20/2024

She Said

There's nothing to becoming
something
you wish would change back
to a former presence
resistance
to the horrific body horror
of aging

one time there were hallucinations
at the bottom of a glass
live music and dead grass
underfoot as you laughed
no matter the fears
I found your scent
and conversation
most engaging

I carried your shoes once
as we walked along the beach
nirvana just out of reach
but I kept on strolling
rolling with the flow
of all the words and tastes
you submitted so kindly
to me

now just whispers and just coffee
can't bear to hit a spirit or two
who the hell knew
that we all go through this
and yet it surprises and attacks
eating some inside out
as I sit on the patio
sitting in the sun where you used to be

Darin Mecher
(C) 2024 Angry Cat Productions

10/18/2024

Journal Entry: 10/18/24

Knowing someone. Knowing them. All of them. This is something that the average person cannot fathom. The concept of "soulmate" is paraded about as some kind of high end exclusive bag or luxury car that the everyman can have - if you just look hard enough. If you just believe. But that isn't how it really works. A "soulmate" is simply another human being. A human being that reciprocates curiosity, love and attention. For no other reason than something intangible "clicks". I didn't know on that fateful day in 1987, when I simply was a boy, standing in front of a girl, asking her if she wanted to go to the movies; was the beginning of a lifetime. We shared everything. We gave our all and knew it was messy. Human beings are messy. To outsiders - a 35 year marriage full of love and tenderness seems like perfection. There is nothing perfect about it. Not in the trenches. You have to work together. You have to compromise. You have to overlook. You have to embrace honesty - even when it hurts. It is living in the moment. A tender touch. The way you look at her. The way she looks at you. As if the universe doesn't matter as much as each other. In fact, the two of you are the universe and you have the ability to create new universes. Tiny universes that grow up and then they find their "soulmate". Maybe. Or they lone wolf it. Life is full of many different "truths". There isn't just one "heaven". There are a million "heavens". In her eyes. I saw them. Each and every fu***ng time I looked into her eyes. Every time I saw her smile. Every time she whispered in my ear. Knowing someone is more than s*x. More than holding hands. More than taking care of them when you know they are going to die and you are going to lose everything you fought for and everything you loved. Can we be real here? Your religion falls apart in these moments. Your deity cannot fathom the depths of what you are willing to do or say or the courage you muster to simply drive to the hospital. This is where the "soul" and the "mate" meet. And those memories. Maybe god is in the memories. Maybe god is in the sudden triggers. Maybe god is in the grief. Maybe god is in the resurrection and the new friends and the new possibilities and that gentle breeze that you know is her. Wanting the best and the most for you. Even in death. These are the emails I can't send. These are the texts left on read. My journal is so much a part of me that I send it out. Into the ether. A memory. In the past. Just like that.

10/11/2024

Journal entry - 10/10/24:

It is quite weird rediscovering yourself. Evolving and becoming. If you had told me exactly where I am now and how I feel back in January of 2023, I would not have been able to even comprehend the journey that would have led me here. And I am still on this journey. I am still on this adventure. I am still becoming and evolving. To be honest, I didn’t think about where I might end up at that time, I was merely trying to survive and just get through each day. I was in shock. I was lost. It is something else when you have half of yourself literally torn away. Suddenly my life was completely changed. My world was completely devastated. All I had been and all I had lived for was gone. Just gone. She was never again going to laugh or smile at me. She was never again going to walk through the door. Or visit me at work. Or call me. Or text me. I was never going to find her on the patio smoking and drinking and basking in the sun. I was never again going to hold her. Cuddle her. Make love to her. I was never going to have any more late night conversations about our future, the kids’ future or where we intended to go in our older years. No more feminine things. No more woman’s perspective. No more bouncing ideas. No more support. No more reciprocated love. No more intimacy. It had all been eradicated. Salvaged and turned into a eulogy. A celebration of life. Legalities. And then . . . nothing. I was in the VOID. Caught in the void.

And now there is today. 21 months and some days later. I am listening to Melanie Martinez and the song that is on right now is, appropriately, “Void”. I am sipping one of my favorite drinks - a Starbucks Mocha Cold Brew Espresso. I am writing in my journal and simultaneously keeping tabs on my out of control TikTok account that is now sitting at 5,600 followers and has activity each and every time I open it. Young “earthlings” call me “famous”. As if. I am just a man. I am just surviving. I am living. I am determined to just be who I am and to just love what I love and go where I want to go. I don’t care if I am weird. Unusual. I don’t care if I don’t make sense. I just want to live. I just want comfort and joy. Those two words were so important back in the beginning of this grief journey. Comfort and joy. My mantra. I am still searching for those things. I am still filling my life with those things. The music is so important to me. The artist literally saved my life even though she will never know me, never meet me and has no idea. Doesn’t matter. She saved my life. Her music and the other alternative pop I listen to fills my life with that missing feminine energy I so crave. My addiction. I am a man who needs a woman. A companion. Someone to love, protect and adore. At 56 and with no real ambitions to replace my wonderful wife, I simply fill in the void with the music and the female artists I have come to love and for whom I share my love to the outside world. I don’t care if people understand or not. I understand the psychology of it all. I understand why Portals means so much to me and why it was so perfect and so on time for my life’s journey. It is still magical. Every time I listen to it. It means the world to me and it has helped me to build my world and my life again. To live again.

06/12/2024

In Her Yellow Dress

memories like faded polaroids
festering inside the dark recesses of my mind
escaping void after void and responding to stimuli
another pop up another swipe up
and then I see her once again

in her yellow dress

never know the feelings that reincarnate
until they slap you straight in the face
like that smile of doom at the end of Pearl
just wishing that circumstances hadn't changed
hadn't broken the pipe leaking sin

me simply left to clean up the mess

all the secrets are across the lawn
like some kind of serial killer garage sale
grab bags and that indignate torn up couch
that we once laughed and frolicked on
deep into one of those personal party nights

when she wore that yellow dress

the magazines are just a series of high end adverts
television shows are movies and movies are dead
no content so script just emotions and screams of the past
pouring out of the plague faucets of rafah

who am I to complain about this distress?

this morning she was out there drawing a picture
the sun was just beginning to rise
her hair the color of my tunnel vision
and then I was fearful and I was a moth to the flame

of her in her yellow dress

Darin Mecher
(C) 2024 Angry Cat Productions

Morning rituals are the stuff of legend for the neuro spicy lords such as myself. Everything happens in an order that, once displaced, causes a ripple effect akin to the fall of the Roman Empire.

06/05/2024

The Rotting

pouring out picture frames
covered in years of dirt
cracked with misuse and regret

searching the softer death
of simple smiles full of the froth of loneliness
this is the best scam, the greatest ponzi put on yet

no more grief brain pans full of images
black bile and the promise of nothing but loss
pain and the constant nagging of the binge watched tv

that hand seared like a fresh rack of beef
slowly smelling of the sheets and forgotten laundry
a few posts and then ghosted to the point of no more presence

of me

there's this picture you took when I wasn't looking
you see the man you know now
I see the man that has risen from the ashes of an eternal end

just staying under the covers and just ignoring the calls
the texts the mail the knocks on the door that no longer come
and here I am praying again to remember how to make a friend

I just stare at this image and I just pretend that time is a lie
I just try to eat and remember to sleep and then I walk around
the parking lot and know that you can't tell . . . no you surely can't tell

I am here rotting in hell.

Darin Mecher 6/5/24
(C) Angry Cat Productions

I saw this guy doing a TikTok from a closet full of his dead wife's clothes. I had been there. I saw him cry and wonder if he could go on. I had been there. I met some new people when I visited New Orleans and one woman lost her husband at a too young age. I had been there. But where the hell am I now? No idea. Just going to watch Pearl and pretend that things are A O K.

05/09/2024

I Know How to be Crazy Everyday

That first shared cup of coffee
was both the most bitter and something sweet
I oftentimes try to remember the conversation
if it made any sense and how it became
instantly incomplete

I know we talked music and books
and I tried to cover all the bases and angles true
you asked what it was like as if I were Colonel Brandon
and you were Marianne Dashwood
Losing a soulmate? I inquired
No, being in love for so long you replied
what was it like when it was all brand new?

Something in me like this grasping at my demons
confessing to myself like an inebriated priest
ground rules, contingencies and boundaries erected
simultaneously depositing deficit yet somehow I am increased

this age difference yet so much to talk about and enjoy
this baggage that is sometimes the weight of the world and
the tickle of a feather
this drawer of old missives amid a stack of unpaid concerns
yet you keep saying that we are enjoying very fine weather

devoid of awkwardness and there is this daring to hope
not quite a secret but definitely not a broadcast
to go over the airwaves tonight
cryptic as I can be but the containment is breached
I sometimes think I am hitting super critical and am radiating
from this hand in mine, this smile returned
and a million wrongs continuing to equate to a single right

Darin Mecher
(c) 2024 Angry Cat Productions
5/9/24

So I was out getting donuts. Not for my grandson, as per usual, but now for something new and something different. I couldn't help but sing along to Melanie in my car and then there was that guilt, that ever present guilt. I shouldn't be happy. I know she would want me happy, but it still feels like betrayal. I don't know how I can be everything all at once, but there it is.

Yummy Bismark. My favorite.

05/08/2024

Odyssey

I am going to be fu***ng honest here
like Bond to Vesper
we had all the time in the world
but no one ever expects
the end to be oh so near

I fear

this man, he is becoming
the mirror tells me so
leaving messages on read
voicemails deleted and emails ignored
and they call this a journey
but this is actually a sinking canoe I don't want to row

just so you know

the bravest thing I have ever done
is to continue on
without you
the man I am getting to know now
without you
it is me and he is a man I now see
and I rebuilt dreams and destinations
even when I wanted to die
die and go home

to you

oh, to be with you

again

(c) 2024 Darin Mecher
Angry Cat Productions
5/8/24

This morning was collages, coffee and contemplations of the kind that don't really have an end game. I have been decorating and expressing myself in multi media conconctions that are only beautiful to me.

01/31/2024

risen

put the car in park
no collision warnings
looking for some spark
but only gathering cold mornings

fumes of frustration
flames of morbid regret
generating male menstruation
a billion questions sans answers yet

clearly poundings of a tightened chest
standing on a monolith of lost last breath
headaches and this vivid fever quest
the slowly dripping acid of taste of death

push the media button once press it twice
playlist to the nth degree
thoughts breaking through the void this destructive device
no one to judge me . . . but me

the door closes and the room grows dark
like fungus killing all vestige of light
in the back of the brain some meandering spark
another sleepless night to a morning faked bright

blood pressure risen on the third day
sinking drowning underneath an abyss of grief
the voices that are me that are they
no gods present to deliver one pound of flesh relief

yet I am resurrected

anyway

Darin Mecher
1/31/24

the deconstructed mind discovers that all the lies have seeds of truth and that the lies are comfortable and easy to live with what isn't easy to live with is that all the answered prayers and the leading of god and the angels you talk to and confide in are you just you there is only you in the void gotta escape the void i hate who I used to be but that song damn that song resurrected me

01/18/2024

Slow Burn

eyelids flip open viewmaster disc of life
the dark is like an electric blanket
warm and reminiscent of lucid nightmares
brought carefully and lovingly to life
and here I am
day 383
making yet another playlist
cutting myself deeply with my novelty knife

there are clothes draped over the wicker chair
memories of men and cryptic codes
these days the ritual is stagnant
vacant
a glimmer of what there once brought intense light
coming to grips with whatever the hell this is
pushing screens and scrolling death
the world pours in like day old coffee
and the taste is familiar profound potent and not one bit fu***ng right

the tears flow like that broken pipe of promises
and I wish this all just some kind of cosmic joke
a roast from whatever deity felt this would work for anyone
anything in any universe that made any sense

but no one is laughing

blasphemous rumours and they cling to lies like prepper flies
keep up the same putrid distasteful misinformation about truth
and what it means to be human what it means to be alive
the eternal carnival full of grifters and prostitutes too intense

and no one is laughing

but I am typing and I am archiving the memories
and you are still gracing every single pixel and smiling in every jpeg
letting me know there is something eternal something infernal
and it all just blends into one giant cesspool of spanning life
it is day 383
the wind is cold and the sun is rising once again
ancient and reminding us that something means something
yet meaningless like this self inflicting novelty knife

Darin Mecher
1/18/2024

girl, you woke me again second day in a row and the grief grips like some squishmallow torture device comforting and at the same time devastating all over again and your smile is around me a blanket and a shield from the world that is beautiful evil chaotic in simplistic complexity

01/17/2024

3:33 am

running fingers through the quicksilver
of the blood running from this wound open
killing me like one giant paper cut
a result of all the junk mail coming out of my soul

there was a time that my laughter was responsive
not just an echo of someone I used to know
throwing pebbles the size of boulders at the glass
walls closing in all around my lack of self control

i can't be pretty because I am just a man
i can't remember who I was without a journal and a pen
there are things inside this flesh that no one should see
and then there are the secrets and the boundless void black

embracing me and tracing me like the pencil of that four year old
standing in the back of a 1970 dodge on the way to hell
comfort and criticism simply the same damn horse pill
shoved in and shoved down and there was a story in the attack

the seeping and the weeping of the gnashing of teeth
falling down like gentle snow from the ceiling
fans and wonderments astounded in the bliss just out of reach
yet still I get out of bed and still I go to work and attempt to live

but why can't I see the so much more that I know is just round the corner?
why can't I just hear your soft voice one more gentle time?
there are things always left unsaid and things more that could be done
yet we just sit back and hang with the smartphone the remote
and the potential of all that we could truly give

here around 3:33 am

Darin Mecher
1/17/24

girl you were here and I could sense it and the room was so dark due to those black out curtains we purchased in Vegas that crazy day when we probably should have waited but why wait little did we know time was shorter than we each could have ever imagined

01/10/2024

Screens

no more moments alone
time with my own thoughts is such a bore
just need that little fix that little joy
of curated content and so much more

though these hands full of stigmata
bleed profusely with blissful ignorance
cleansed by the truth of the Galaxy and Phone of I
I proudly state my opinionated stance

no more doubts or meddlesome facts
just crisp clean pixels of pure white light
everything makes sense and crochets my soft worldview
comfortable and created in sadomasochistic might

free from downtown and marked safe from silence
cuddled in a cacophony of influenced entertainment choice
all is packaged all is pretty and perfectly persistent
drowning out every counterpoint or dissident voice

Darin Mecher
1/10/2024

01/09/2024

Another Trip Around Sol

Repeated ad nauseum
has it really been so damn long
a year and I am still barely here
wanting, yearning to continue on with her song

I see the words as they melt from the page
I see the man I am becoming stare back in hope
stronger trying to get stronger
having reached for the childish things and put away the rope

you can still see the sympathy and the pain
others just can't quite understand
and you discover it is alright it is getting different
just remember another year doesn't necessarily lend a helping hand

music is playing in the background and the sun sets
the days are shorter and the nights are colder
still I hear her and I know that voice that is urging
there will be adventures and new memories as I grow alone and older

so another trip around sol
congratulations and ring in the new year
it's better than the last and here's to many more
just adjusting to this new reality bolted upright in each and every tear

- Darin Mecher
1/9/24

Angry Cat Productions