Everybody arrested
in Brooklyn
since they built the courthouse
ends up in
'The Tombs."

These days if
you require medical attention
when they cuff
you in Brooklyn,
unless there is some sort of 911 style citywide emergency,
you end up in Woodlawn hospital,
a medical institution no one
would ever choose for themselves
let alone a loved one.

First,
it is filthy,
on at least three levels,
and I don't mean three stories of building,
it is much bigger than that.

I mean three levels of hypothetical cleanliness.
Three levels of dust, muck, grime, and microscopic disease.

Second,
there is the track record.
A few years back a big fat mentally ill woman,
died of Jesus knows,
right in the waiting room.

High security.
You can watch the video of the staff stepping around her corpse
on YouTube.

I spent thursday night at Woodlawn,
handcuffed to a bed rail.

It wasn't my first time ...

A songwriter Brooklynite friend, who I am sure wishes to remain unnamed, noted this morning, with Agape' love:
"Hipsters are people just like any other minority class.
You may not like them.
You may not want to eat in the same restaurant,
Or drink from the same fountain,
but you have to respect them."

There is a reason folks like his songs to the point of stealing from them.
He has a way of distilling the truth of the matter and pressing send while I'm still working on my second of 10 paragraphs.

I couldn't help but respond"
"I don't care if you are the King Of Shiam.
You can't close my computer (especially when I am uploading said songwriter's video),
move it,
and steal my seat when I go for a cigarette
without getting a reaction from me.
I don't care if you are the ******* Sultan of Swing
or President Obama's mama,
you are going to hear about what an ******* move that is."

But I shouldn't have broken that window.
At the very least it would have saved me some stitches.
It is rather unpleasant getting stitches on one writ while the other is cuffed.
"Just a pinch" when they inject the local right into your gaping wound.
"Just a pinch."
Yeah right.
Maybe if the pinching is done by an angry pregnant wolvererine.

And I definitely shouldn't have gone next door,
ordered another mojito,
and thrown that against the door as well.

I like mojito's
wasting them in such a manner
is a filthy sort of sacrilege.

From the Northwest corner I caught you trying
to hide the outline of your ambush
in the outline of the moon.

But I spied you careless, *******.
Fate is these next two moments
before I pump you full of death.

That middle moment is beyond me,
so bend your knee and confront the ****
***** Joke some call "free will."

And pretty please love me anyway.
We never could have changed places,
But I still hurt the same as you do.
I sweat and **** ashamed.
I hug my Mommy tightly,
trip,
stand up,
and still play to win the game.

"There are monsters on the building," she said in the sad song of a West Texas drawl.  She sounded like she did when she talked in her sleep.  We had paused there to examine the doorway the way people do when they know something frightening and important will happen to them on the other side.  

Somehow the banality of the details seemed at odds with the profundity of the situation:  A hot breeze taunted us with the smell of garbage.  Pigeons did their stupid strut and pecked and **** on the sidewalk.  Manhattan pedestrians slogged past through the May heat wave in a sweaty river of hurried lives, each stranger a subtle hint that perhaps our pain wasn't so profound after all.  My own rivers of perspiration seemed to drive the point home.

Molly had more than once accused me of being attracted to the dramatic, and she was right.  In response to this weakness, this juvenile habit of seeing myself as a hero in the story of my life rather than just another person in the world, the God I still half believed in seemed to be punishing me with mundane aggravation as we prepared to defy him:  crowded subways, humidity that pressed in from all sides, growing stains in my armpits.  Now that we had reached the building the half-believed God added a master stroke of lewdness.  Squatting on the threshold of our destination were a pair of gargoyles [cement artistic tradition combined with superstition] that peered down at us with obscene toothy grins.  

Molly tugged on my damp fingers, and asked again,  "Greg, why are there monster's on the building?" Her eyes seemed both accusatory and desperate for affection, but her voice was sleepy, like she was trying to pretend it was all just a dream.

"I don't know," I said.  "It doesn't matter."

It was true.  It didn't matter accept as a symbol in a story that somewhere deep in my mind I was shamefully conscious I would someday write.  Disgusting but unavoidable for the boy I was at 19, a boy who wanted to be important someday, wanted to be important by being "a writer," and didn't see how he could ever be anything else.  

"Write what you know" they say, but I was just an upper middle class white kid, nothing important had ever happened to me.  This was important.  This was life and death.  Most of me lived it but part of me watched from outside.

We went inside and found the elevator, then the waiting room.  I held her left hand while she filled out the forms with her right.  I told her I loved her, trying to say it like a transcendent spiritual truth that could make all the facts of our situation irrelevant and sweep them off somewhere they didn't matter.  

Then a nurse came and took her away.  

It offended me that despite the life and death business conducted behind the wall, the waiting room looked just like any other.  Maybe worse.  Worn out office furniture in generic shades of brown.  Stacks of magazines that looked like they had been procured second hand from some cleaner pricier office where happier people sit and smile about life while they fill out forms and wait.

I glanced around the room, careful to avoid eye contact.  There were two other men, one white one black, both looking sad and dejected, staring into space, thinking of the women in that other room I just like me I figured, wishing there was something they could do.  

I selected a magazine with half its cover missing.  Celebrities at a party.  Celebrities at the beach.  I put the magazine down.

I should be feeling more than this, I thought, and that thought seemed shameful too.

It was still a question about me.  The pathetic existential question that has always gnawed my television generation:  Why can't I just be real?  The question brought more shame.  Why are you asking these questions?  This inner monologue  ...  they are killing your son in there!  They are ripping him out of the girl you love.  Shut up and just feel!  Or don't feel, and just shut up.  

Searching myself for sadness I found again a numb disgust for being outside myself and looking in.  

I thought of praying but an image came to me of Jesus struggling to carry his cross up a hill.  He was being chased by His Father who took the form of the God of old paintings, a long white beard, muscled body, the eyes of a tyrant. God was leading an angry mob, scaring Jesus up the hill to his death, screaming at Him:  "This is what my son was meant for!  You don't have any other choice!"  It was not the sort of image I hoped prayer would inspire.

Finally I arrived at the thought I was avoiding:  Molly crying on a cold table, machines inside her, everything happening too fast.  I had asked if I could go with her and hold her hand.

"No," the nurse had said with a touch of scorn, like the question was not just dumb, but an insult to women everywhere.  Why would she let the guilty party make things worse?

A few yards away there were doctors working machines inside the womb of the only girl I had ever loved, taking the life of a child I would never know.  But even if I had wanted to stop them, which I didn't, it was too late now.  

It was the first life and death decision either of us would make, and even though I would try to console her with the idea that we had chosen life, our own lives, our own futures, right or wrong, I knew we had also chosen death for our first child. Death always brings sadness, and despite whatever happiness we might still enjoy in the years to come, this sadness would would linger with us, in some form, forever, unless we came together to conceive another child and raise it.  This is not what Jesus told me.  This is what I told him.  He listened but he didn't seem to care.  He had no time for *******.

Molly appeared in the doorway to the back rooms where I had not been allowed to go with her.  I would have liked to go with her back there.  I would have held her hand, made her know that we were doing it together, that I was equally if not more culpable in this death than her, and if that were not possible, and it probably was not, at least I could have held her hand.            

But I was not allowed back there.  She went through it alone with strangers all around her speaking in professionally sensitive tones.
      
I put down the magazine and went to her.  Her face was blotchy, and there was still dampness in her eyes.  She had been crying for awhile and she was crying still.  A nurse's hand was on her shoulder.
      
"She was very brave,"  the nurse said, like Molly was a four year old who had just made it through her first hair cut without squirming.
      
"Will she be okay?"
      
"Yes, but now you need to take her home so she can rest."
      
The nurse disappeared.  I held Molly, and kissed her forehead, and told her how much I loved her and always would.  She did not speak and her body felt lifeless in my arms.  I led her back to the elevator and then out into the Manhattan bustle.  The humid heat had reached its most brutal hour, and I began to sweat immediately as we walked towards the subway.
      
We passed a deli.  I asked if she was hungry and she nodded.  I went inside and used the little money I had to buy a sandwich and two bottles of juice and we found a bench in the shade and sat there to eat.  She ate a little and drank some of her juice and then finally
spoke.
      
"It was a spot."
      
"What?"
      
"It was a spot.  They showed me.  It was a little black spot on a screen."
      
"It's okay, Molly  It's going to be okay," I lied.
      
"It was my little girl, but she was just a spot.  They showed me and then they took her away forever."
      
"I love you.  I love you so much."  It was true and all I could think to say and it didn't help much.
      
I brought her downtown to the financial district where I was staying that Summer in an NYU dorm with a friend from High School.  We were there to take film classes together.  Our parent's had allowed us to spend extra on the best housing, and the dorm we stayed in was actually an apartment on the 14th floor of a building with a doorman across from South Street Seaport.  It had a kitchen, high ceilings, and huge windows with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge, and even a
separate bedroom.  Fortunately Rick had allowed me the private room so he could have the larger one with the view and the television, so there was a place for Molly and I to go behind a locked door and lay down.

We got in the little bed together and curled into a combined fetal position.  I kissed the back of her neck and she took my hand and placed it on her pelvis where I could feel the bandage rustling under her sweatpants.
      
"Can you feel it?"
      
"Everything will be all right," I almost said, but it felt like garbage on the tip of my tongue and I had not yet grown used to lying except to myself.

I hadn't known there would be a bandage.

"Yes.  I can feel it,"  I said.  This, at least, I knew was true.

I lay there with her like that with my hand where our child had
grown for a few weeks and we fell asleep.

When I awoke, the room was gray with dusk, and Molly was snoring peacefully.  I got out of the bed carefully without disturbing her, sat at my desk, and opened my favorite drawer.  There was my small purple glass pipe, and a little baggy stuffed with the high quality marijuana that in my experience, you can only find in New York City, the Pacific Northwest and American Colleges.  I filled the pipe, lit it, and pulled hard, holding it in as long as I could and then coughing intentionally on the exhale for the fullest effect.  I repeated the process until the bag was nearly empty, lit a cigarette, and sat at the desk with my feet up, looking back and forth from the
high rise across the street to the young woman in my bed, contemplating life and love and God and the future.  

In that moment, high as I was on the drug and the city and the relief of having made it through the day, it truly did seem that everything would be all right.

I had taken to writing poetry a few months before, and I found a
piece of paper and began to write another:

God sat in the abortion clinic waiting room
while they killed his only son.
"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
"I don't know.  It seemed like the right thing to do."
      
I thought I had the beginnings of a very good poem.  I hoped maybe, someday, somehow my poetry might change the way people thought about things.  I was young and stupid and ****** and my mind was about to crack open completely and let forth a torrent of strangeness.

I was very sad.

-2001

fightingcopsnaked.blogspot.com
brickdumbsublime.blog­spot.com

SON:  (looking over her shoulder at the screen)  "When you 'like' something its like you're in a group conversation and in your mind you approve of something.  You know like when you like what somebody said but you just nod.  The 'like' click is like a little nod but now you know everyone can see.  Zuckerberg is a genius.  He intellectualized group social dynamics and stuck it up on a computer screen."

MOM:  (annoyed) "But why do these people want to be friends with me?  I don't even know them."

SON:  "The computer knows they're friends of friends ..."

MOM:  "Well that's creepy.  That's not right."

SON:  "They're not trying to sell you insurance, Mom."

MOM:  "There is something wrong about this.  I feel it in my bones."

The SON rolls his eyes, but then reconsiders and makes a little face like she might be right.  Then he continues to peer over her shoulder at the laptop screen.  He loves her.

THE END

Brown hair
The rare type that cascades soft.
Perky chest,
Smile like a warm wave.
Little back pack and a purse too.
She’s on the move.

Tight jeans,
Fitted shirt,
But the kind of eyes,
You could make love to in the dirt.

Should have tried a line,
Instead I stepped out for a smoke.
Spying her from the frame,
Then up,
She strolls into frame.

She smiles at me.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” she smiles.
She strolls.
“I’m disappointed you’re leaving.” I announce with strange authority.
“Do you work here?” She really wants to know.
“No.” I grin.
She smiles at me the smile of an excited dolphin,
Turns away,
And walks on.

I stare at her ***,
And wonder if there might be
A loving
Omniscient
All powerful
God
After all.

Because the cost of a soul is the price of a moment.

Because time had no beginning, but ends at forever, hanging helpless from the corner of the sphere.

Because the light will still find your brain, hidden at dead dark midnight, tickle your eyelids, and dance in a place you don’t dare mention by name.

Because darker is biggest and most beautiful, and the light men stood as the last link in the chain, the whip in the right hand of god.

Because the blood on the meter is a narcotic brew of Pacific, Atlantic, and flaming Arctic waters, set ablaze by giants who lived in the age of wine.

Because the sound of a tree falling in an empty forest rings out once, but is heard in two ways.

Because the wind cries the song of the living.

Because the sun sets and the moon rises.

Because the river water is cool.

Because the cost of a moment is the price of a soul.

Because.

Because the light from a tired sun shines off the moon onto lovers and the lonely alike.

Because love pumps through your body red and alive and you try to ride the beam.

Because your soul is a blade forged in questions of life and death, scarred by the blades of others, and passed down forever.

Because the way she looks in tight jeans is an ache that will always stretch on, the sublime torture of it, the ecstasy of skin on skin, the sweet safety of holding a sleeping girl.

Because sadness is a raindrop, inevitable, falling from the heavens unbidden and spreading its wings to fly.

Because the man in the arena hacks, spits, and stands in the dust and motions madly for another round.

Because night surrenders each morning, and there will, thank God, be coffee, and work to do and people to talk to.

Because the cool breeze on your face as the sun rises over the ocean.

Because wolves hunt and **** by instinct, and dogs can seem to smile.

Because the road goes past the horizon and you can feel it in your groin.

Because silence cannot be heard while we are still alive.

Because her smile.

Because the child.

Because the wild.

Because the next question.

Because the day.

If your mind is in the right place,
a wound that keeps dripping is just an annoyance.

Blood on my lips because I opened the beer bottle lighter style
with a cheap blue steal knife
that mistakenly snapped off the glass with the cap
and left edges that are sharper than they look.

I sipped anyway,
and now my top lip is bleeding like a geyser
but it doesn't hurt.

The only problem is someone else might see it and think I'm weird.
Which is the same **** problem as always,
except usually I don't actually bleed.

I caught you with your dark side peeking past your pleats,
I saw it like a clear sky, when the mist cooks off the streets.
The unfinished irrigation I left drying hard upon your face -
It smells of history.  Kindness is always born of a disgrace.

The internet hides us safe behind crowds of young minds,
A book of faces desiring something proven by the times.
A page to write our names on, photos of our shared birth,
Kindness rising from the street, proving what she's worth.

Candy for our generation is smooth stones of sense of self,
A tumbling togetherness, in natural rivers of joy and wealth.
Mood like sunset destiny sinking among knife blade peeks,
That cut you without warning, and smile while you bleed.

The prisons house the strangers you know from crazy nights,
They don't remember you, they simply dream of better lights.
The half empty charger hungers, and shifts from foot to foot,
Eyes of hope blink for wind.  On the wall the news is good.




"A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa."

"People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people - and that social norm is just something that has evolved over time."

                -Mark Zuckerberg

Buddy you are moving way too fast
Its a happy New Years Eve
           But Sometimes the grass is greener, the wine is sweeter, on the other side of the hill.


Turn your socks inside out like a Brody
Its time to find Jack Straw...

The secret to a Wild Man's heart
Is to Bribe him with your food.

I learned what Paul Simon meant when he said he blew that room away
I learned what J.D. Salinger lied when he said he would do it anyway

Bruce Springsteen said to Terry Gross every Rock'N'Roll song means one thing:
"Pull your pants down."
Huh!

I'm going down Crazy Janey,
you're gonna dance in my darkness,
then I'm going racing in your streets.

We'll take my '69 Chevy to Atlantic City
I'm gonna find that big dude from LA.
I heard what happened when you two went away to the same College.
I'm gonna make that little boy pay.

I'll roll his broke body across the state line
all the way to Philly,
turn around walk back into Jersey
like Brando on the moon.

Wake up the next morning,
punch the clock on time,
at my hometown factory.

Down by the cold black river
me and my old man still hold the line.
We still cut quality steel in the U.S.A,
under smokestacks that kiss the sky.

Then me and Dad go home
and wash up, drink some cold ones,
He tells the same old stories
while I drink my fill.

I say goodbye wander the highway in the night,
But my spirit stays blinded in Janey's legs,
and in her Crazy light.

A dog broke from her leash and bled out on an unfriendly neighbor's lawn.

An old man masturbated in the rain.

A little girl made a story from the shapes of clouds.

Food rotted.
Water dripped.
Ice Inched.

Electricity prevailed.

I was alone, but not too lonely.  
You were strong, but that was only
When your brothers were around.  

Brand new, seemed like something better.
Pretty scars, eyes like leather.
So much different than we’d seen.

We made love with a choking hand.
We stayed drunk on a million plans.
We were running out of time.  
                      
      Even the cruel get worse than they deserve.
      Even the cruel get worse than they deserve.
      Even the cruel get worse than they deserve,
      But baby, you deserve to have it all  

I was sweating through fiberglass.
I got a feeling in my hands
I’d be apologizing to my dreams.

Tripping slow, spit in the glass,
Blood on the pillows, falling fast,
Choking on a nickle in the dark.  

Laughing happy with manic moon,
Melted glass in a broken spoon.
We were the spirit of the times.

     Even the cruel get worse than they deserve ... etc.

I bent down on a blizzard day
To find out what was in my way.
It was you, you were praying to nothing at all  

I lit a candle to the ghost of magazines.
I burned down a ******* with kerosine.
I was wondering why I felt so bored.  

I woke up on the rooftop.
I was making sure there were no cops,
Alone, but not too lonley, staring down at the street.

Irritable.
A tree worked by weather.
Future growth a clown's myth,
like all recorded men.

The lie.
Pregnant present's daughter.
Boxes bark square questions at
round chemical bonds.

Reflection.
Blind from a glass table.
Solutions with assumptions itch
echoes of ticking time.

The hidden.
Frustration peers permanent.
Sightline from locked rooftop to
rain curled hair styles.

God is in the mud,
not in the stars above.

God is not real,
But in things you feel.

God is not dead,
Neither is your head.

God is not love,
Just something further up.

Let Him stay there,
leave Him be,
He likes it in the mud.

His Nickname Was Justice

He walked down from the mountain
After they had won the war.
His friends sang of machine guns
But his soul stretched out for more.

He dreamed of a dry season
While the blood came raining down.
So he gathered all the white men
And stood up above the crowd.

He said, "You could be the Judge of me,
I'll be your your fool.
Look down upon you softly,
while my people rule."

He said "you could be the judge of me, I'll be your fool." He stood sweating in the sunshine, his muscle was an outline, that could cast a shadow of vengeance across the land. But he said "I will was your feet now, and I will turn the other cheek until we are eye to eye.

His nickname was Justice
Because he walked the line,
And shared among his enemies
The finest South African wine.

His nickname was Justice
Because he rose and stood,
For the wisdom of children
And the gift of womanhood.

He saw his light come shining
From the West down to the East
He said, "Any day now
We all shall be released."

I don't know how it started, I don't know what it means.
But somebody on the radio said the World is about to end, it seems
that they got Jesus locked up at Area 51.
All the sattelites fell to the ground, there is no Chosen One.

I don't know how it started, I don't know what it means.
But something that was inside is now bursting outside through the seams.
But I believe, tonight, we'll all be getting high.
Because I believe in you girl, you could dance until we all fly.

I don't know how it started, or if it will ever end.
But I know that whatever ends, just begins again.
My left hand's on the steering wheel, girl my right hand's in your jeans.
If we drove all night, we could make it to the sea.

We'll be laughing, ha ha ha ha, ha ha hey!
We'll be laughing at the sound as Heaven and Hell collide
Yes, we'll be laughing, ha ha ha ha, Ha Ha Hey!

We built this city, on a funky groove,
And we woke up the next morning in our birthday suits.
Took one look at each other and started to move,
The whole world was on fire girl but your body was so cool.

I don't know how it started, or if it will ever end.
But we all woke up this morning to a rising sun again.
And I believe, tonight, the stars will shine above.
Because I believe in you, girl, and a little thing we still call love.

Well Jesus, he broke out, of Area 51
With a full jug of pruno wine,  and an empty Tommy gun.
He said: "Boys, you could try and shoot me, or just join in the fun!"
"You wanna follow me  I'll be on the highway, heading west towards the sun ..."

Ill be laughing, ha ha ha ha, ha ha hey!
We'll be laughing at the sound as Heaven and Hell collide
Yes, we'll be laughing, ha ha ha ha, Ha Ha Hey!

Inspired by the late British soldier, activist, and explorer Henry Worsley …

I wish for the ice.
Wish for it endless.
Blue and black and white and gleaming.
Hard ice sparkling under a cold distant Sun
that rises and falls for me,
for you.

I Fight against but welcome Wind.
Wish to be a Good Man standing, walking,
cold, hungry, miserable but feeling that burn,
that burn of the existence of my destiny for Survival,
because I know better now that Survival is the capitalization of "god."
I ponder my place in Evolution, and feel in my chest the sad presence of a lonesome Ghost,
Feel that out there somewhere is a point where light and life are frozen,
but melting in Sunlight into sweet fresh water I wish to drink.

To walk further then further then beyond my conception of "Further",
navigating into the lethal helicopter-less void.
Legs aching then swaying then robotic they swing,
a perfect instrument of Man's will to freedom
but still simply humble rambling limbs.

I wish for the ice.
Wish for it endless.
Blue and black and white and gleaming.
Hard ice sparkling under a cold distant Sun
that rises and falls for me,
for you.

I Fight against but welcome Wind.
Wish to be a Good Man standing, walking,
cold, hungry, miserable but feeling that burn,
that burn of the existence of my destiny for Survival,
because I know better now that Survival is the capitalization of "god."
I ponder my place in Evolution, and feel in my chest the sad presence of a lonesome Ghost,
Feel that out there somewhere is a point where light and life are frozen,
but melting in Sunlight into sweet fresh water I wish to drink.

To walk further then further then beyond my conception of "Further",
navigating into the lethal helicopter-less void.
Legs aching then swaying then robotic they swing,
a perfect instrument of Man's will to freedom
but still simply humble rambling limbs.

This is my small history, and I realize why men
rarely make history alone:
The loneliness is unbearable,
but I bear it alone in this endless land of cold empty canvas.

To be so alone and close to death is to know it no longer matters if you are human.

To know nothing beyond the dark howling night and the strange redness amongst the stars Tonight.
To welcome the light but not care.
To push to keep moving anyway, slipping, stepping, determined with the sole goal of moving forward regardless of fire, or food, or how the bird flies.

In the Wind
I hear the band playing.
I feel my eyes weeping.
I feel my feet leaping.

Skipping forward, "progress not perfection," but remembering too much sweating is deadly once you stop moving it can freeze your sweaty ***** solid, gotta to be careful, but always moving.

My God, to scan the sun on the horizon
see the young women on the beach in bikinis,
but to move your legs with them.

To dance with hallucinations.
To live as a victim,
but be the crime.

To be nimble and quick and sing to God's children.
To be righteous and strong in the winds of God's vengeance.

No song other than a dream of tomorrow's music.
Nothing to visualize or interpret.
No more worries for Death or Life.

No "Being"
just transparent,
Endless,
beginningless.
A line never drawn.
An infinite negative number without digits or decimals or logic or rhyme.

You can't fix your broken past but still the Wind moves you,
or so the naked ex-lover moans as she writes,
unseen in the green growing tall grass.
She hides but she beckons.

The jail cell door swings open with a unoiled hospital sound,
open to a world I must recreate on my own from another place.
That **** symphony of a thousand clicking locks keeps playing bad blues,
I must start playing with that Band, and jam the music slowly into a form I can reconcile with my Heart.

Elsewhere the Wind breaks the sad old trees and they fall and break the houses and break the people in them and the people break my concentration.

The tornado holds no sympathy but only releases it to the news channels.
Its an odd weapon,
a brutality,
a misdemeanor of the Divine.

Life is Suffering,
its Chaos,
its more meat for the animals,
it's the frailty of old age and
its the helplessness of newborn youth.
Its Beauty, and carnage, and ******, and work, and Love
and paying taxes.

And the stars pierce the midnight and find me,
they glance and they smile and they talk.

They say:
"You be grateful, young Man.
You walk."

                                                                  - March 2019, Siesta Key, FL

I took of my shoes,
And then I took off my socks.
The driveway hurt under winter white feet, and the pounds I have put on
but the pain spoke of deliverance.
I felt delivered.
Dropped off like a beaten up brown box,
To this place, this time, this driveway, under this sun in this solar system, in this country, at this time.

My feet smelled like creeping death,
But my soul stretched.
God smiled.
The city yawned.
The people marched.
Kitty ate her breakfast.
Grass grew.
Cars glimmered, moved.

I found beer cheap,
And the sun revealed itself as the father of the clouds,
There all along watching.

The highway called me by another man's name,
But I went anyway.

I moved my right foot to the right peddle,
and swung the wheel left.

Once you have believed you are the Messiah
There is nowhere else to go but down.

I've been handcuffed to enough hospital
Bed rails, to know this much is likely true.

George Washington died taking his own pulse.
"Tis' well," he said, before shutting his own eyes.

Tolstoy left his life to follow Jesus, and died at
The train station, chased by and chasing ghosts.

Jesus died an artist, nailed to his canvas, hung
In the thirsty sun to cast a shadow on the world.

Imagine the lunatic pride to believe your own pain
Could pay every debt that ever was or would be.

Remember the genius of an artist with the talent
To see history, end it, and set the future ablaze.

the head hurts
the eyeballs swell
the vision finds its purchase
on a hairy helpless animal
that quivers on the treble
note of a string.

The music is for us now,
don't you know?

The music is for us
to tremble and pull
inside  ...  deep in the groin
deep in your life
under the pile
above the bird
left of the river
right there where you're looking
under the lies
beneath your attitude
above what is frozen
but under the sun.

Beyond what you heard of,
just in time for the show.

Kindness rules Toronto,
they've institutionalized it here.
They've printed it on signs.
Socialism always breeds that slight smell of sweat spent
by the orderlies as the patients finally took over the asylum.
Victory tastes good
but the taste left over is
somehow seasoned with regret.
Full moons symbolize something similar for everyone,
something longed for,
the reach and stretch of inevitable death,
The regret of infinite moments
that might have been
if only,
the shame of an identity worn once and discarded,
The crying of the lambs
echos inside a collective mind.

and I, like everyone, f**ked into existence
riding on the guilty **** of my elders
for whom my fate replaces

and I, like everyone, created in that ***** zone
of guilt and lust and floating downstream
constructed of taste and smell, of color

and I, like everyone, was chosen from that smoky crowd
among the legs, hair, and anger
chosen from them like a bright shining star

and I, like everyone, fell from my chair
to a lovely lonely bed of stale desire
of forgotten names and a hidden voice

- 1999

Addiction is the Great Deceiver,
Depression is The Liar,
Self-pity is The Trixter,
Who cuts your Soul with wires.

Let me be Grace.

Let me climb beyond me towards the blue,
Rung after naked rung and look down
Before I arrive at the sun soaked ledge
To reach for my brother’s stretched,
Bird pecked, and bloodied human palm.

Stand at her door knocking,
Let her do all the talking.
Break the fire on the ice,
Refuse the dragon’s vice.

Girl, let me be Grace.

Let me breathe and run through the cornfield
Naked in the light of a gently dying moon,
Slide like snow on a windshield moving down
The highway with State Troopers in pursuit.

He stands on strong legs.
He kneels then he begs,
Making love like a slow dance,
He can even though he can’t.

Pray, let me be Grace.

Let me die.
Let me cry.
Let me fly and
Feel her soothing.

I want to know.
I want to grow.
I just want it to slow.
But I'm grooving.

I want to be me.
I want to be free,
But I’m bouncing my knee.

Forget it.  We're Grooving.

Let me be the wind on my own back.
Let me lead my enemy on an attack.

Let me love
Let me learn.
Let my soul
Be Reborn.

Make me live.
Make me give.

**** my words and
Silence my will.

Please let me be Grace.

God is Beauty.
We are here.

My heart swings forward
across the line.
The doors lock behind me.
Now there is no choice but blue skies or rain.

Then I wonder what heart "means."
I wonder why the sky is blue,
and why things bother to grow at all.

But "growth" continues its bored stretch,
irregardless of my inability to understand it,
and I have better things to think about now.

I have her.

Her and that little grin that grabs hold of the corner of her mouth
then turns toward me and opens.

She knows that I lied,
before I do.

She makes me feel like a little boy that ****** his brand new shorts,
and a man that's found a woman I know

I will love,
whether I want to
or not.

I still sweat in my sleep, and grunt when I move.
But she is there sometimes now (when schedules provide).

When I wake in the night,
a boy that thinks he's a man
just because I'm not afraid of the dark.

And the light breaks through the bull,
that electric touch,
"The Spark,"
she knows it in her deepest sleep,
her deepest dreams,
as they bend my own dreams into,
a new future.

I touch her where she is covered in my paint splattered sweat pants
and her arms open to hug me
before she wakes.

I feel the love like a child,
like it was always there
like it just might always will be.

Like God has spoken, but we cut him off 'cause we already knew.

We will **** and we will laugh like we have and like the others,
but there is something else in this.

She will change me.
I know this.
Into what, I truly do not know.

Our planet spins and circles.
Wars begin and end.
Multitudes suffer.
Microchips shrink at an exponential rate.
American politics deteriorate, dwindling down Democracy to a joke.
The Giants lose.
My money runs out.
My leg hurts.
The fridge is empty.
The house is burning.
The fabric of our reality is splitting in two, and in three minutes this world will end and we all will die unremembered.

I don't give a ****.
I love her.

Love fights.
It breathes, it crawls, it hurts, it flees, it stands, it falls, it swings, it misses, it falls again.
It stands to swing again.
It does not walk,
or take its time.
It knows no time.
It hurts, it bleeds, it needs, it sees.
Love runs.

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

No one knows anything,
if everyone is anything like me.

Memories are riddles with solutions
drowned in lies we used to tell ourselves,
bobbing under and above the surface
of lies we tell ourselves now.

Still, there are things to say,
and I say them like everyone.

"No one knows anything,"
is not one of these things.
Why ruin a sun setting on water
while we struggle to bob along?

The darkness of drowning blankets
shared dreams with held hands.

Somehow the life guard's chair
stands a sturdy right angle in sand.
His paycheck arrives by mail.
He buys his girl a ring.

Tides are predicted, and research
arrives in ships that rarely sink.

"Turn back the pages of history,
and see the men who have shaped the destiny of the world. Security was never theirs,
but they lived rather than existed,"
said Hunter S. Thompson
at age 17,

before he became The Duke,
and shaved off a leg in Doonsbury cartoons,
before he rapped the sharp corner of his shot glass,
so too many times,
on the inch thick enamel,
of the Woody Creek Tavern bar top,
and waited until closing time
to begin blowing lines,
out of the divets he'd made.

The people clapping,
the moon attacking,
the red bone blood of America pumping past his eyes.


After he died, everyone there had a Hunter story:

Hunter shot his hot girl assistant in the *** by mistake,
but he felt like **** about it.

Hunter had a dozen red cheeked lasses he skied with,
but he never messed with them.

Hunter showed up in a Cadillac convertible packed with
strippers dressed burlesque.

But it was hard to tell just exactly what he was up to with
the strippers, the peacocks,
or anything else.

Alot of the stories had ****** implications,
but what they mostly implied
was he was cool about it.
He didn't write any of those stories.

Despite all evidence to the contrary he liked his privacy,
and what peace he found in rare quiet.
And he made **** sure they'd shoot his ashes
out of a ******* canon when he died.

The canon is still there.
So are the peacocks.

"Turn back the pages of history,
and see the men who have shaped the destiny of the world. Security was never theirs,
but they lived rather than existed,"
said Hunter S. Thompson
at age 17,

before he became The Duke,
and shaved off a leg in Doonsbury cartoons,
before he rapped the sharp corner of his shot glass,
so too many times,
on the inch thick enamel,
of the Woody Creek Tavern bar top,
and waited until closing time
to begin blowing lines,
out of the divets he'd made.

The people clapping,
the moon attacking,
the red bone blood of America pumping past his eyes.


After he died, everyone there had a Hunter story:

Hunter shot his hot girl assistant in the *** by mistake,
but he felt like **** about it.

Hunter had a dozen red cheeked lasses he skied with,
but he never messed with them.

Hunter showed up in a Cadillac convertible packed with
strippers dressed burlesque.

But it was hard to tell just exactly what he was up to with
the strippers, the peacocks,
or anything else.

Alot of the stories had ****** implications,
but what they mostly implied
was he was cool about it.
He didn't write any of those stories.

Despite all evidence to the contrary he liked his privacy,
and what peace he found in rare quiet.
And he made **** sure they'd shoot his ashes
out of a ******* canon when he died.

The canon is still there.
So are the peacocks.

Your back is almost broken.
Your mind is almost taken.
Your *** is just a token
Of the hearts you've broken
On the day you kneel down.

You used to know the clean cool water
As it drove itself around the bend.
But you forgot the notes from father
His will found you talking without end.

Find the silence frozen in you mind,
The half-song that was your pride.
Feel the stomps of boots on soil.
That's our rythm, and the sign its time to move.

You feel the hands of thunder reaching out to touch
The lightning you forgot was still hidden in your groin.
Everything else you know doesn't matter that much.
Lets find our masks and guns and go find the coins
That only we know were ours, but still belong to us.

You will know the answer to the riddle in her cries.

You will remember every word you ever heard.

You will finally know why you did the things you did.

You will agree with all the reasons why she left.

You will see there's no wrong, but only right.

You will see the ***** dreams she dreams at night.

You are the ****** and the *****.

You are the guard at your master's gate.

You'll hear the the secret that you feared.

The music of the game of masks.

You'll know the end has come and gone.

The sound of lightning when it comes around.

On the day you kneel down.

I found a new saloon last night,
Pointed out an empty stool.
The old man just nodded,
I sat down and kept my cool.

I tried to keep my words short.
I wasn’t sitting next to no fool.
I drank my beer, made him laugh,
then asked for some advice.
I asked how he kept walking,
in his darkest lonely nights.

He said “I don’t know, and I ain’t been told,
but I say it each **** day,
If your gonna be an outlaw Son,
You better learn to make it pay…”

How does the debt effect the economy now?

What would Jesus do? 

He would intentionally get some folks to execute him in the one of the most painful ways imaginable.  What can you do like Jesus would do?

Jesus walked into the desert without food or water for forty days and forty nights.  Would you do that? 

When he was out there Jesus thought God was talking to him but it was really Satan pretending to be God.  Jesus figured this out by letting go of his pride completely and being willing to suffer through unspeakable to sacrifice himself for Mankind.  Could you do that?

Is Satan talking to you right now?

Do you feel a little angry?

Are *** and violence connected in our genes?

Do the stars have souls that burn?

What terrors haunt your dreams at night?

Is your love enough to save you?

What is the first thing you remember.

For what principle would you fight?

Would Jesus dig Rock-n-Roll?

Can you really know what is a lie?

Will it be sunny again tomorrow?

Will I make it through the night?

Can you feel my kisses softly up inside your soul?

Since when does might make right?

so ****** in the face of it
at the end of it, your perception
on the nose of it
this feeling in my nose
this tingling wall
this numby crunchy face on my face that blocks out the light and the truth and the life .... that's how it feels .... sorta
how crazy does that read?
i'll bet it reads ugly.
i'll bet it reads sick.
it should because its a description of drugs crazy people, ie. people like me take to try to feel less crazy
they make your ******* face feel like it jumped rebellious,
eyes, ears, nose, throat, turned traitor.

Escitalopram
Buproin
Nuvigil
Lithium Carbonate
Quetiapine
Abilify
Risperdone
Harpoon IPA
Johnnie Walker Red Label blended scotch whiskey

it seems there can come a certain special kind of time in a man's life,
when he can feel weird and lonely enough
to type a few words
and call it poem.
******* Bukowski.
this is his legacy.  the possibility to do what I'm doing right now.
without that disgusting, self-centered fool
I never would have thought to try and write these weird feelings I'm feeling.

a little attention,
that's what strokes this need.
a few incidental internet readers,
to read this strangely pointless pontification
on the bits of sadness that are me.

i wish i could find an open field
and lay back comfortable
in the crisp cold air
and feel the stars shoot through me
my heart pounding in the dirt
and waiting for *** or sun or wolves or rain
or anything else you might call "love."

i wish for more death
or more life
I can't stay here.

so ****** in the face of it
at the end of it, your perception
on the nose of it
this feeling in my nose
this tingling wall
this numby crunchy face on my face that blocks out the light and the truth and the life .... that's how it feels .... sorta
how crazy does that read?
i'll bet it reads ugly.
i'll bet it reads sick.
it should because its a description of drugs crazy people, ie. people like me take to try to feel less crazy
they make your ******* face feel like it jumped rebellious,
eyes, ears, nose, throat, turned traitor.

Escitalopram
Buproin
Nuvigil
Lithium Carbonate
Quetiapine
Abilify
Risperdone
Harpoon IPA
Johnnie Walker Red Label blended scotch whiskey

it seems there can come a certain special kind of time in a man's life,
when he can feel weird and lonely enough
to type a few words
and call it poem.
******* Bukowski.
this is his legacy.  the possibility to do what I'm doing right now.
without that disgusting, self-centered fool
I never would have thought to try and write these weird feelings I'm feeling.

a little attention,
that's what strokes this need.
a few incidental internet readers,
to read this strangely pointless pontification
on the bits of sadness that are me.

i wish i could find an open field
and lay back comfortable
in the crisp cold air
and feel the stars shoot through me
my heart pounding in the dirt
and waiting for *** or sun or wolves or rain
or anything else you might call "love."

i wish for more death
or more life
I can't stay here.

Good Morning.
From the battles and chains,
the feel of sand under toe,
walking the beach like a champion,
feeling the cinema of your life,
pumping in your heart,
the thrill of destiny floats,
through your lunges like a smoke.

Got to
have my coffee,
Smoke a cigarette,
A lot of marijuana,
Find and charge the phone,
The laptop,
The condition of modern man is to always be charging,
always looking for a plug.

More coffee,
More cigarettes,
More ****,
Find a song to start the day,
Turn it loud on the headphones,
So I don’t wake the world…

More coffee,
More cigarettes,
More ****,

7:27 am
I was up at 4:30 today the third day of Fall,
Searching in the dark for an extension chord,
To run to my car,
So I can read the papers on my laptop,
And contemplate world ******* while the world sleeps.

More coffee,
More ****,
And that last hit felt good in that special way,
Undeniable euphoria
It always feels good but sometimes
There is this other feeling
A numbing of the brain that opens
A portal to a feeling
That triggers a knowledge of a knowledge.
Sweet blessed ****, let it simmer,

My new world is almost real.

There is only so much Love in your life
it leaves and returns
in new shapes sizes and souls

a finite amount
in your strength to return
elastic
unkind

Pain, sweat, remorse, and glory
are four corners of a compass
that only point the wrong direction.

The secret is in the cool breeze
the ice on your burned face,
morning sunlight on shivering morning skin.

Sweet relief in the river,
The knowing embrace of endless night ...
Still the wrong direction.

The best way is no direction,
but a person,
a lover,
to find their smile,
and smile back,
and float on.

Outside
The wrath
Turns the night
Slowly backwards.

She pumps and gushes
A heart like the river
Like black ice
Cracking
Blue steel.

The hounds of vice
Screaming salty,
Swinging wooden
Narrative.

Free Will is a ***** and a half.

But ***** ain't free, he costs and costs, and jaws you, gnaws you, spits out your bones, retargets, redodges, zooms in, looms thin, steals a hat from a child outside a movie theater and vanishes around the corner, through the alley, under the chainlink where the filthy mutt from the movie dug his way to freedom Steve McQueen style.

But the dog's name is not *****, and she would prefer you call her a ***** then whistle.  It doesn't make any difference to her what you call her, but she knows whistling your sexuality at strangers in the street is bad for your mental health, worse for your dignity.

She will stare you down, swipe left, steal your money from the begger, and brag She left you dead in the street next to the twin corpse of the ice cream man that won't stop ringing his bell.

If you are too lazy to make coffee in the morning the nightmares will follow you all day, headache throbbing like a hammer on memories like nails.

On the morning of the day little baby Jesus decided to ease up on the whipping you were at the Portuguese diner out by the highway on the toilet listening to the rain drops gather rhythm on the rooftop, thinking about the idea of mathematical randomness, wondering if perfect beats like Ringo Star or clocks exist in "nature." I mean not man made.  You know what I mean.

Inventing Bukowski is also fun.  He loved to write about his *****: "The best of the beer *****/ hot, wet, steaming, and glorious ..."  What a role model.

The thing with J. C.  is he is just one of three people, none of whom yet exist.

Humanity is still basically crawling around in the forest waiting for the Aliens take the time to drop by and share a few tips.  Maybe more than a few.

"Your eyes look wild," she says with tired concern.
It must be true, but it can't be helped.

My thoughts feel feral,
gnawing at themselves like a confused animal
with a wounded foot.

In your dream this morning you were running late,
fumbling with leather straps of equipment
that used to fit you better.

You heard their voices through the walls.
Sounds without form.
Your friends are skating on fresh ice.

Lonely, hungry, bleeding in the brush
the feral does not wish for company.
He does not remember he is alone.

But cold skin wishes for sun,
empty bellies whisper of food,
thirst does not ask, but orders a drink.
Your next breath is not a choice.

Life does not always find a way,
but Death does,
like water finding the end of every crack.

What Life finds it steals from Death,
and plays with like a toy,
until the toy becomes the player.

In the final analysis
I want folks to think I'm a good guy.

It is a child's dream,
But
It is better than being a bad guy.

I saw the best minds of my generation caged by the fears of their parents, organized for meaninglessness, and watching too much ****.

I saw you all around me kneeling to the angry God of television, and I knelt down with you.  

I saw the flames of our shared future burning down The Church, we held hands and danced around it, spun the bottle, and finally told the truth.

I saw myself lost and lonely among you, excusing myself for a cigarette.

I saw the aisles of the shopping center as the gateways to our dreams.

I saw twelve airplanes on the horizon, the disciples of a new race.

I saw little boys and girls staring at screens learning always learning that the world isn’t real.

I saw the sun rise like ribbons to burn The Poet.  She was sad and she laid her eyes upon the rocks and let the river flow until she finally felt the wet climbing up from her knees.

I saw you Little Girl, the night you found me, and took me out into the trees.

I heard you say, “Brave Boy, this is a good day but we'll find better days than these.”

I heard a Man sing about a thousand tongues broken, a newborn baby with wild wolves around it, and a mystery *****. He asked me "how do you feel?”

I heard a lullaby at sunset about rebel soldiers on the move.

I heard The Nun shouting the slogans we are afraid to write on signs.

I heard Caesar speaking from the other side of the Rubicon.  I was late and he wasn’t pleased.

I heard the sound of A Daughter ******* to the rumble of the unswept highway, the trucks the men the steel on steel, the knife, the lime, the tequila, and two sweat wet pillows

I met The Preacher in a lab coat and a **** star that was preaching the income gap.  Both conversations were boring.

I heard The Radio play Mozart to the smell of burning wood.

I heard The Night fall down.
I met the Devil by The Lake and I laughed my *** off as he pontificated on his role in History.  We tied the rope swing on a rotten limb and swung out high above the clear blue water, let go,  and fell in deep.

I met The Martyr that is trying to **** me.  He was such a sweet old man, so wise, so kind, his hand trembled involuntarily as he squeezed off a round.

I met The Politician that represents the deepest recesses of my conscience, and he ****** me just how I like it, but just a little different every time.

I met The Warrior at sunrise, chose a weapon, and died fighting for land that would never be mine.

I met The Lover on her barstool, laughed at her jokes, typed in her number, and strolled home smiling at the strangeness of her mind.

I met The Leader under his podium where he was hiding watching shoes.  He assured me everything i could see from there was part of a larger plan.

I met The Follower on an airplane.  We shared are snacks and watched the window, and discussed the name’s of strangers we wanted to be.

I charmed a Dancing Princess, laid her out like Ophelia in the river, bought her Mom a fancy car.

I scared The Fish out of the pond with a Mardi Gras mask and a six pack of beer.  They walked out of the water and hitch hiked to the nearest theater.

I lied to The Farmer when I told him I smelled rain.

I told the truth to The Doctor.  He just shook his head and made me wait.

I interviewed The Emperor on his way home from the office.  He squinted at me through the smoke and asked what I knew about moral philosophy.

I answered The Judge’s questions.  He asked about the birds above and the blood dripping from my eye, he asked what the final equation was, and whether I wanted to die.  I remained silent.

I forgot that Life is fragile, but wasn’t made to pay the price.

I learned that sooner or later God will **** us all, but I touched **** and *** with soul.

I stole privilege from the Gods of Mercy.

I gave The Girl a flower I picked along the way.

I burned the statue, but I saved the books.

I built a slick Death Temple for the ghosts of hermits and Marines.

I danced knowing I would never remember.

I lay down determined to forget it all, and rise the next day baptized sparkling clean, a child of forgotten violence, a leader of forgotten men.

I bought the last secret, and I bought the last machine too.

I sold the secret to the enemy so I could buy their loyalty.

I saved the Old Man from himself, all his frightening well learned ways, and I carried him up the mountain, and left him warming by the fire.

I killed The Child just because he was barking at the moon.

I was an animal lost on a race track.

I felt like a little boy lost, like my world could not be yours.

I saw blood smeared on the mirror of the penthouse bathroom and I heard a child scream, the help won't be here until Tuesday, we need the number for Mr. Clean.

I saw a college girl hitch hiking up I95, she was sad about her boyfriend, but she walked and walked and found another world.

I fell in love with a *****, and she fell in love with me back, and we held hands by the River and laughed about the Sorcerer who snored in his sleep.

I ran from the apartment, found a bar with a backyard, and disappeared into the New York City night, got lost in the subway and emerged street side less whole, more lonely, more aware, less alone.

I bargained with The Queen Of Hearts, but she would not bargain back. She just took my belt and shoelaces and assigned me a number.

I sweat through my dreams so I hung my shirt to dry above the Boardwalk in the morning, as shade for passers by.  I sat down to watch them walk, feel the sadness in their eyes.

I felt the breeze bang up against my brain like ice cream on the sand.  I groaned, vomited, put on my sunglasses, and took a stutter step no one could see.

I saw a wedding dress on the Internet balanced on a beam.  The hemline was appropriate.

I saw your husband on Facebook.  I didn’t like what I saw.

I asked Darwin to guess what exactly is in my pants.  He said he had never studied human beings.

I asked Darcy what was in her glass, she said she didn’t know but I could taste.

I asked Georgie if it was such a great idea to drop acid before he played football, he grinned and shook my hand.

I told Bobby his sneaker was untied, but he said the getaway went well.

I told Jerry I’d like to soothe his soul, but he said he does all the soothing now.

I told Mickey I was on my way, tumbling like a dry cycle that rips the chord, humming like a drunken hummingbird.

I took the shortcut all the way downtown to the black end of the street, strutted shyly to the corner of the bar, ordered expensive whiskey with three cubes of ice, sipped it slyly, pulled my piece, and shot that dumb ******* in the face.

There is no Love in an empty room, just like there is no God in space.

There is only your senses, what you hide beneath, your luck, and the path you make.

Death and Salvation have always been the same, do the math and take a drink.

Whoever is coming is angry, and She is coming sooner than we think.

I hid in my car in a parking lot on a rainy afternoon, closed my eyes and thought of her, the way she thought, and moved, and laughed.

Lit a cigarette and laughed to myself, “things can’t really be this bad.”

The Sun, The Moon, The Stars, The Snake seem to be part of the same thing.

But The River answers with a song about the tricks of destiny.

Dear God, I will never bow to thee until you get on your knees for me.

My hands are rough my feet are tired my Soul is full of hatred for The Sun.

When You turn around and see nothing there you will know that I am done.

I’m pretty sure there is no more alcohol in this house, I drank it dry, but I got plans to refill the coffers of the estate in a distant land some call the future when I am old, too old to do much but write checks, sign forms, ride on spaceships of my own design, my making, a phsy phi movie, with the masters, with Nash and Sendak, with Moratta and the Spells, with Shug Knight and his dynamite, with Tu Pac the moment that last bullet struck gold ...

The boundaries of who you are, how you act, start slipping away ever so slowly.  At first you just think you are in a better mood, and maybe that’s all you are.

Did I know I was in a manic episode?  How could I not know?  How could I not look for help instead of whatever insanity I let myself travel towards? How how how .... do I sound like an Indian? Does that question offend you?

Just me in the car. It had been just me for days.  Reaching out to social media occasionally to wave my crazy flag.

My stomach felt like water was boiling inside it.  Angry butterflies that would not stop their painful flutter.  The fear, the agitation, anxiety I usually call it, but its more like being perpetually ...

Sometimes I realize that my personality is basically the jail house ***** of perpetual introspection

Self involvement is probably more accurate. Introspection is the dumb self grasping at explanations of evolving memories as they pile up always too fast, always out of reach, always always always then you just ******* die one day.

And that's it isn't it. Whatever else happens that will be my story.

We can never understand what it is because it keeps changing them we all eventually die and that's it.

It's pretty ******* terrifying.


It will make you hide things.

Wishing for a better past is futile
self-torture
a form of the ultimate folly:
feeling sorry for yourself.
It makes you feel pathetic.
Especially if you actually are pathetic.
If your life is a failure of your own making
In cooperation with a mental illness
Which is making me feel so sad and pathetic
I can think of little else but how pathetic I am

But my present seems futile.
There is not much in my reality that is hopeful even when I’m in a better mood.
In short, my life seems hopeless.
I don’t have a job, or a mate, and I’m not likely to find either one any time soon.
I have barely any work experience
I’m 36 years old.  
I live with my parents.
I have a bad case of bipolar disorder and a bad case of ADHD and I know that makes it unlikely I will ever be able to succeed at anything.  Of course one of the illnesses might be right now telling me things are worse than they seem.

I am suicidal but afraid to **** myself.  I wonder if I’ll ever find the desperation or the courage.  As I get older my situation seems worse and worse.  I cant seem to get myself to act to change it.  I can’t ACT.  I can’t DO.  How is this possible?  how am I like this?  How? How? How?

Writing something seems like some kind of action.
Something productive, in theory.
This is what I come up with.
Bad poetry.
Worse than usual.

Just try to write something anything
feel the keys bounce
remember what its like to say something
taste it
let it flow
let it go
what?
what can’t I let go?
what blocks?
just bounce bounce bounce
no one will read this but I need to find that hidden somber knowing inner voice
no matter how fake it is
etch it out
send it out
to the world
let it fly

There has to be something to say hasn’t there?
Write about a manic episode … how to begin? What moment to draw out?

Gotta try not o ******* all day tomorrow
Gotta try
can’t promise anything
this is who I am
I hate myself, of course
how could I not

And on and on and on
Just writing anything
writing “writing”
like Jack Nicholson in The Shining
Jack is a dull boy
Jack is a dull boy
Jack is a dull boy
God help me
but he won’t
of course not
this is a warm fuzzy version of hell
not that bad
except the self-loathing
oh God why me the self-pity
typing typing typing
It would not surprise me
if I never really wrote anything
just a total loser
jerking off all day
not working
living with my parents
watching teenagers **** on the internet
why am I like this?
How can I change myself?
I want to change myself
I really do
God help me
but he won’t
just on and on
nothing gets done
I am nothing
I want to **** myself
but I don’t have the guts
I want to die
I want to die
I say it all the time its mostly about the shame of who I am I can’t stand it it goes on and on

everything bad starts out innocently enough
rock before the roll
this is not writing I can’t write
am I just too ******?
would I write anything sober?
I live my life in a hell not quite of my making
I want to die I want to die I want to die
I want to live I want to live I want to live
type type type
****!!!!!!!
this can’t be my life
I say that over and over to myself
because it is in a way hard to believe
but here it is
at least I’m typing typing typing
simple thoughts like
I don’t like my ******* life
maybe If I could just accept it the pain would dwindle
the loathing would subside
but how can I accept this ****
at least I’m typing typing
too ******
****** dumb
too dumb to think of anything worth writing
just a self hat clusterfuck
of a brain
I want to finally die of shame
mercy please

1.
The water spills down warm then hot then cool again
And when I slide down the shower wall and find myself seated
The drain between my knees ******* down the city funk
And I examine the sidewalk blisters on the souls of my feet
I realized yes it happened again, but it is over now
And I breathe deep, then deeper, trying to feel the medicine
of oxygen, of ginger ale in my broken throat, of bourbon, of lithium.

There are things only Angels can do, but their are plenty of Angels in Brooklyn.
Avie bouncing round the safe house, a bubbly "spirit in the night."
Will Powers slowly circling the felt, speaking softly of cinema,
The atomic dogs in and out of the bathroom, the scent of Columbia circling them.
Tony in the corner whispering in ears, his eyes on the till, his hands missing his Les Paul.

I feel it again,
In my legs, in my groin, in my hands,
In lands far away,
In visions of alternative days,
In dead ocean waves,
In blood soaked caves.

I feel like Crazy Janie
Making love in the dirt.
Like a child raised in the
Spanish country side by wolves
Putting on his first clean shirt.

Now I know I'm going down, and not just because she's not around.
It's because I find myself commanding a night brigade and there's still 5 hours till sunrise.
Big man assist me please, I got turf stains from Rugby on my knees.
I got Angels around me, but they don't want to hug, they don't want to make love,
it may be time to consider, my aging face, and my overdrive pace.

So I settle for Rock And Roll.
Follow Will to his roof with Strategy Matt.
And the city was bright shining
In red, white, and blue light.
I spun slowly and widened my eyes,
a little dance on top of the world,
pumped my biceps and pecs,
I unfurled and twirled.

You can't start a fire with out a spark, girl.
You can't truly be ambitious unless you are prepared to love the whole world.

2.
Working out in the beer cooler.
If I’m gonna lift boxes for twelve
dollars an hours might as well get
exercise, might as well feel that
Trapezoid pump and bump,
Fifteen left pumps of the thirty
Pack, then thirteen rights,
Step, renegotiate my balance,
Step, feel the calf, the toes, strike a pose.

Sweat cascading, anticipating
A delivery, an emancipation
From the slow tick of clock.
Make a label, flip a bottle,
Wave your racing thoughts,
To the periphery, make a six pack.

Customers - man the register.
Make it beep, penny keep,
Penny leave, find a box,
Watch the clock, slow your
Movement speed your mind.
Bet on how many more through
the door, flip the lights and sign.

3.
The last day of a manic episode is a bad day to pick up a paycheck.
The money is like oxygen to the flame.
It can reignite the inferno, leaving you another moth dancing on tongues of fire.
Or just a slightly over weight man in his late thirties flinging darts at a machine at the Blind Rhino.

Can't go on a date in Manhattan without ending up in Brooklyn a sleepless forty-eight hours.
Can't go to South Norwalk for **** and not spend the rest on beer and pool.
The night before I got fourteen hours sleep.  It was over.

It started again.  The walking the talking the smoking the spending the joking the posing
A manic puppet on the string of his own euphoric string, a lonely space cowboy
chucking faked darts at a machine that records me.
Buy me a whiskey.  This is my America too.

I of the insane, the crazies, the water heads, the criminals, the ******,
We will all "walk like Brando into the sun."
We will rage, riot, rebel, and revolt,
And walk the highways together,
Under a relentless sun,
And keep walking at night in the cooler soft light of the moon,
and keep walking at sunrise,
Through blizzards, and golf ball hail,
We will walk through the raining of giant toads if we have to,
and life will turn into a movie,
where all the cameras belong
to us.