An orphan turned
the footpaths for home
In the belly of empty streets.
I decided to fill the emptiness
But suddenly
The pavement gulped the outpourings of air.
Thinking of silent-movie companions
Laughing exquisitely
at the aloneness
of my plodding dissection.

It's funny that you work in a place I escape to drink to
I'm just here for the burgers and sun maybe a beer or two
Sitting day dreaming absentmindedly when you walk up to me

And when I turn the first thing I see is your infectious smile
And then your looking at me with those sparkling eyes too
Why not make it a hat trick and start talking with that sweet sexy cool accent?
Oh what was it I wanted to order? I forget can you give me a minute?

It never crossed my mind that I had any consequence
I was just happy to take the smiles and my day dreams home in silence
But on the receipt you had a name for me aside from the bill of forty ones
I think it's the sweetest thing a girls done lately to call me "Nicedude1"

-Azrael Always James
© Copyright 2013

Nobody is thinking of me
Not them or he or she
Why would they
What can I be
I'm nothing but a thinker
Makes me a sinker
With everyone's mood
No one wants
Me around
That's why I'm at the lost and found
He throws me out
So why shouldn't you
Its exactly what you'll do
So please just go
Leave me alone in this room
Leave me alone to my doom
Where I sit in my thoughts
And stare at the knots
Tangling my feelings
And bruises on my heart
From all the beatings.
I think
You drink
Leave me alone
Just go home.

there’s a boy with a black jacket and green eyes jumping into your car
and he asks you to buy him a cupcake so you do
and he hasn’t told you his name and you haven’t told him that you stole this car
he follows you home and crawls into your bed
he tells you what his name is but you think he’s lying

so you let him tuck up to your body and tighten his arms around your shoulders
when you wake up he’s still there and it’s still dark outside
so he takes your hands and pulls you outside
you drink something that makes you feel numb
and you still haven’t told him that you stole that car
and he hasn’t paid you back for the cupcake so you sit in silence

and then you go to bed again and he’s there
when you wake up there’s a warmth pressed on top of you and hair in your face
he’s still there and you’re still not sure what his real name is
he says he has to leave soon and his voice is weak
and well, you don’t want him to leave

so one day you wake up and it’s been snowing all night
and it’s freezing and he’s not there
it takes weeks and weeks and you wondered if you dreamed him up
and you want to know why he got in your car
and why you let him get close to you
you still can’t stop thinking even when the world’s asleep

but then its 3 am and you just got to sleep and something crashes through your window
so its him, and he’s soaking wet from the rainstorm outside
he crawls into your bed and you say ‘took your time’
and you can feel him smile into your neck and he whispers so only you can hear him
‘i went away but then i remember you and i came running back’

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.

Got home from the hospital late last night
Still can't seem to find my appetite
I can't seem to sit still
There's a hole that I don't know how to fill
I've listened to my ipod non stop
Headphones so loud I feel my ears are gonna pop
The dice will fall as they may
But at the end of the day
I know that they were always loaded
I feel like my life has always been encoded
Protected by a cipher I could never completely break
I never truly understood what was at stake
Until that day last week
When you and I were hanging by the creek
We were laughing and tossing rocks
Just relaxing having good long talks
When my vision started to go hazy
and I know this is crazy
But i knew then that I was dying
And you started crying
I felt a sharp tightening in my chest
I lost consciousness as the attack progressed
I woke up in my hospital bed
The doctors told me that I should be dead
They used phrases like "suffered major cardiac event"
I asked what that meant
I told me that I had a heart attack
I was immediately taken aback
I was only seventeen
This was almost something that was unseen
Arrhythmia was the name of the disease
They said it was easy to manage with medicine and their expertise
But now I can no longer rest
Knowing that I have ticking time bomb in my chest

Whenever you're feeling down.
You just need a clown.
to release you from frown.
living in this wicked town.
to mask your loneliness,
to free up your heavy bones.
mesmerize you in pure bliss,
in his talkative humorous tones.
to tickle your thoughts,
and pass through your worries.
to make you feel at home,
inhibitions will be buried.
with this magical tricks
the medicinal antics.
talents he mastered and shared
jokes you found candid.
never a single dull moment,
a clown is all you need.
happiness that a friend, acquaintance,
or lover can never give

Treasury Casino, 3:03 am. Monday morning.

Casino bars shut at  3:00 am in QLD.


I missed a place to sleep by 9 minutes.
My timing is impeccable.

2 hours to kill until the last train home.

An older man in a slate suit enters stage right.
Crosses.
Disappears.
Reenters stage left with  brass buttons
lit up like embers.

The 9 network wants me to buy
stonedine frying pans.
And warns me about harmful gasses that have killed household budgies.

I wish I was more interesting.

You havent lived
until you've seen a man blow a pancake
off a frying pan.
Onto a plate.

----

3:12 am.

Late night bar personnel work in silence
cleaning beer nozzles and coffee machines.
They wander in and out of the scene under sophisticated lighting.

I wonder what to do about you, and what I'm feeling.
What our  hold on each other is and when (if) the sword of Damocles will fall.
Is this truly tragedy to which we are destined?
I shudder to think.
And for this am I classed by the title
"coward"
or
"lover"?

----

3:20 am - Existentialism strikes a vicious blow. No coup de grace.

The blackjack dealer on the $15  table has a gorgeous face that makes me wonder how her body feels on a post coital morning. Satisfied and relaxed, taut through anticipation of further pleasure?
Straight raven tresses frame a heart shaped face that peers over the ridge of a white collared shirt, sprouting from beneath a black vest, tight at the elbows.
She deals with deft machine-gun efficiency. Not all bullets hit their mark here.

Her back curves with natural elegance down to a tight, young ass. The shape of  it magnified by the black business pants writes itself as a factory on my mind. Light hands would fit well there, one on each cheek, her mouth open seductively, trading  tastes and sensations.

There is a dying rose in my lapel.
It's sad.
I contemplate leaving it somewhere poetic but  cant think of a place.
The thorns are still sharp.

----

3:45 am

The only place where time is invincible
is a place  where it is hidden.
Casino's are such a place.
Here time cannot be killed.
Yet I have smuggled it in.

Saturate and brimming of my hometown Boston,
of its sunshine Marathon peoples and the terrorist bomb images,
my heart fracture rend.

On the third day—a resurrection of all my sadnesses
came to me, feeling fresh born to fruition,
and so this grew.

It grew and then through my tears coming,
I stood to witness two loving sparrows on a window branch.

My sadness at some abeyance, studying and curious
I was of her--all akimbo shivers and rock-in-roll, of him--
a flying feathered stone, rolling from branch to branch
and coming temporarily home, repeatedly.

Circles flying within moving circles!

Did something better happen
with the last jiggle of her branch?

Did you see that? Science said
what they were doing—they finished.

(But what to believe of Science?
She calls their loving--mating rather).

Now to tell you—the sequencing was this:
when I was full knocked down into my grieving,
and I hardly had the strength to go on,
a Beatles song flew in and gently pierced my heart,
singing to my ear: Why don't we just do it in the road...
no one will be watching us...why, why don't we do it

O, Spring Life of Sparrow surprises!
The open road, that budding tree,
any new notion is something grand!

How do I say now? That you two
were helpful, your innocence
forever abiding?

Fly off Sparrows, forever prayer!
I speak this with my love.

Had a home, left when it caught ablaze
shed a tear of disbelief when I came back
to see ashes animate
the place where my heart did lay
distorted pixilation of a familiar face
best response is a blank stare when where you’ve grown to belong
is a pile of unidentifiable mess

Had a home, and maybe it was a mistake
that I left the stove top on
and the kerosene lamp next to a box of road flares
perhaps I shouldn’t have flooded the place with gasoline
or, maybe it would have been wise
if you had struck the match for your vanilla scent candle
somewhere else
No, I'd never wish for that