I kept my
blood shot eyes
securely hidden behind
my day killing shades
as I took long careful steps
over the flatend headstones.

I looked to the shadowed
areas of the hillside
graveyard,
soon found refuge beneath
a sorrow slumped eucalyptus.
I pulled the pint from
my pocket and took a pull,
then planted myself
down along side the dead.

The whirling Santa Anas brought
forth the aroma of the
marigolds,and dandelions that
had been left for the departed.

I concentrated on the pint,
I thought hard about my
decision to stop
chasing the dream and devote
it all to chasing the Dragon.

It hurt at first when I awoke
to the fact that my dreams
were not my own.
And this life and all it includes
was as false as the Gods we pray to.

I was surrounded by the dead
but the dead paid me no mind.
The dead were too busy being dead
to do anything else but lay there
within the earth in silence.

A memory invaded my thoughts
like a raiding army hungry for
wine and flesh.
The times before all of this,
the times when I felt the need
to be seen with the crowds.
The times when I followed
the flow of the fools and applauded
with them all,
bought gifts with them all
and celebrated a false celebration,
all in time and step  
with the fools.

That memory of me
when I was less then I am now,
following the fools ,
just as blind as they remain on this
very day.
As part of the crowd
I made no impact on it all.
I stood not
apart but Within.
Engulfed and smothered with lies.
I became too much like the
other guy and his best friend.
The smiling head on the television,
and the digitized voice on the radio.
I thought not on my own but
as one with the machine.

All of that person is gone now,
dead and hopefully buried
just as these fading bones
who now surrounded me.
These silenced spirits who
are the only crowd I wish to join.

Its a lonely travel that I've turned
to,it didn't take much to walk away
from it all once I awoke to this.
I left my shadow behind,
and threw their goals away
as I took on the
task of casting flames
upon the serpent.

I never knew how wrong I was
until that veil of television and
radio,material wealth and
religion was pulled sternly from
my mind.
I found my comfort
among the dead whose silent
cheers applaud me.

They know now as they lay
deep and dead
that all of it was a lie.
Their lives were never lived,
their decisions not their own.

I went at the bottle
and played host to death.
And I wondered
were they the winners,
the lucky ones who had found
a way out of this place
where death looms over head
and the struggle to go
on living is a war fought everyday.
This place where good men are
falsely accused and artist are brushed aside,
where sports are king and the lies
are told as truths.

I find my days are clearer
living on this side of the coin,
but easier they'll never be.

I have awoke to this.
To this and all of the lies
that have come from this.

Once you have awoke to this
theres  no going back to sleep.