Because the sun is coming up, and I still haven’t slept,
They call me crazy. But I’m not, I promise you
-Not in a destructive way. I hope that’s alright.
And I can’t see the technicolor clouds from my window,
But maybe that’s for the best. I’d only be identifying
Images of you floating by in the shape shifting aurora.
False dawn passes, its greyish-blue hue
And fresh scent of rain giving me a second,
Third, fourth (and so on) wind, almost as much as the caffeine.
And I waited all night to talk to you,
But you never came. You said you would, though
It was silly of me to think that you would show;
That’s me: silly. But you like me that way.
And with my words failing on a pendulum locket,
Copping like they’re coping with the treasonist panic,
Backstabbing, hair-grabbing, pinching; biting; mother-spiting.
Falling through with mad devices, a lost prolific parody of
Gasping fools, so desperately grasping to the notion of an ending
That they insist is only the beginning to something greater.
I put a sign up in my window: Prozac and papal blessing- 2 bucks a pop.

I hold in my hands
The beginning of a poem.
The beginning,
Or perhaps the very end of a loose string.
Eyeing me.
Asking me,
You,
Who sit behind the desk,
You.
Do you forever wish to maintain this?

Do you never wish
To sit below?
Above?
In front of?
Inside?

That’s stupid,
I say,
You can’t sit inside a desk.
It’d have to be industrial-
Sized.
And they don’t make those,
They don’t.

The string hasn’t moved.
It simply says-
‘I’m not joking.’

---

‘Do you wish to meet your heroes,
beggars, fools, enemies, lovers, and
every walk of human who walk
forever in the in-between?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you wish to know
life
and death
instantaneously,
contemporaneously,
with solemnity,
with contempt,
and know
every moment and feeling
inbetween?’

‘Yes.’

‘You shall know little else.’

‘Do you
wish to wish
wish to want
want to wish
and so on
and so forth?’
The string asks me tirelessly.

‘Simply put,
I am always wanting.
I am always at fault.
I am never wrong
But I am never right
Either.’

‘You know this
and little else.

Live both in
This world
And outside it.
View this place as it were never meant to be.
Like you,
It waiting to see
And be seen.

Like me,
It is a string.
It is nothing,
And yet to pull
Means everything

You have been summoned to task.
I have been left here to
Ask you:
Will you do it?’

The string has not moved
But my hands are shaking.

‘No,’
I say,
‘Yes.’

Eyes welded shut.
Have you heard the sound or felt the burn of a cigarette being extinguished on your skin?
Have you ever compared pain to pain?
Emotional vs physical.
No winner ever declared though that is what makes it beautiful, and ugly.
We praise beauty on the outside and ugly on the inside.
Sharing the left over love for ugly on the outside and beauty on the inside.
That is why sad songs journey through my heart and out my brain.
They are simply experiencing the emptiness that remains in such a full world.
A full world full of fools.
The emotional killed the physical as we continue to perish to a point of no return.
It can heal with time, though just like burns that turn to scars on your skin, emotional scars never fully leave.
That is the point of this poem.
To remind you of the burn, that sang for a scar, in order to appreciate the rain.
That laughing and crying spare no difference, and I love that we are all fucked up.
For indeed, in some way, we are all fucked up.
Though fear not the unknown, for that is everything, and nothing.
A beauty all can access to make emptiness feel at home.

it’s not the same when you touch her chest with your breath
what her heart hears is off key and she compares it to the best
bedtime story she’s ever heard
the kind where she becomes little red riding hood herself
with a basket of goods
that everybody wants
but she doesn’t want to fuck any of them
because she already knows that it’s the same as a sunny day but with too much wind
or one of those green suckers with a big bug inside of it

“fuck off,” she says to all the wolves and all the pigs and all the fools
they still come at her like a family of bonobos come in a day
it’s hard to run away from something that is happening to you all the fucking time
it gets you sick with a hook,

the short moments it stops happening, all you want is to run and find it
because attention is softer than loneliness
even if it is as sad as an addict tearing off couch cushions, in search of half a dime bag

- but as soon as she stopped looking for a face with eyes to love her
she took a dip in the forest, heard the birds
felt the pine needles on her bare feet bottoms,
sang like Snow White
and found herself an old lumberjack, building a house
it dawned on her that all the wolves and all the pigs and all the fools,
looked real fucking gross

The thing about
        drinking,
at least for me
                              is to get to that blissful, buzzed state
where colors are better,
       the cheap whiskey in my dirty cup
is suddenly
                   poured from the finest casks
of a looser Bacchus.
Then there are those sirens,
               painted like indecisive chameleons
beneath
                    those chaotic exploding lights
green, sapphire, electric crimson
                                showering us, and we're all wet with it.
My tongue is honey,
             my teeth flashing out in the spastic
               polychrome
       half-lights.
Eyes wolf-like
       staring into theirs all sex-magnetic.
She presses against me
                                           and I whisper something sweet
and she falls into it
   like a daydream
                           or a fever
The whiskey and the gin gild my throat
     and I feel like a fucking prince.
                                                             ­  Then another shot. Another drink.

And I feel it all
            slip
                  ing
away.

So I drink and I drink and I drink
      trying to get it back
            until those colorful light bulb flashes
          all blend into some horrible, disorderly
painter's palette.
                 Those beautiful
                                              sirens
no longer singing,
                                          have all turned their backs on me.
So I become
                   choleric.

This bar is ugly,
    this whiskey cheap,
       these people fools.

And I start to hate it all, I tell myself
                                   But I know, deep within the

maelstrom of alcohol and bile,

                                                             ­         I hated it all from the start.

Novice, heed my diction—
The learned, the schooled, the politic,
Are but fools with conviction.

Well its three o'clock in the morning,
And I'm on the streets again.
Bought me some cigarettes,
I think I'll try and meet some new friends.

Good evening America,
I think I'll buy another round.
I've been high for three days straight,
I don't feel like coming down.

Girl, I like the way you move,
Why can't we dance all night?
You got that New Orleans thing groovin',
You must admit, it does feel right.

     But sally said, "What do you know about my love life?
     "What do you know about when I'm not around?
     "What do you know about my love life?"
     I said, "C'mon girl, what could possibly go wrong?"

Girl, you know I'm gonna live forever,
I don't care if its against the rules.
I will buy me a spaceship,
Pack it full of fools.

Look out Sally,
You better duck your pretty head.
That man ain't coming back,
I do believe that he is dead.

C'mon Sally,
Why don't we slip away.
All we need is some way
We could change the whole world some day.

Now its four o'clock in the morning,
And I'm on the streets again.
Bought me some cigarettes,
I think I'll try and meet some new friends.

Good evening America,
I think I'll buy another round.
I've been high for three days straight,
I don't feel like coming down.

Hey Girl!  Girl, hey.
Hey hey ...

- 2009