I fathom ghosts in dark bars.
Tortured flickers in old neon,
whose tribulations,
frozen in the heyday,
of their soda pop,
jukebox glory,
are lost,
in the clutter of human extemporanea.

Figurative vestiges,
from an era of nuclear optimism,
that have been reduced,
to dime store novelty.

As cloaked and unrealized,
as the distillation,
of alcoholic dreams,
alchemical vespers,
paying wistful homage.

A tribute,
from inside this rat-**** procession,
of technologically greed,
which has wrought the shelving,
of blue collar heroism,
the extinction of the unsung.

It is in this,
that the neon finds its muse,
and labors on.
And the numbing of aspiration continues,
Prescribed on tap,
for those who seek to thwart,
the stampede of the fittest.

And at that junction,
where they are forced to yield
to imminent refugeeism,
They find one another,
misspoken and assumed,
momentarily relieved to cohabitate,

Where the beer is cold,
and the juke box is still,
A welcomed friend.

And the good times,
just roll,
and roll,
and roll.

It'll be twenty years this spring.
Twenty.
I can still remember those red lockers,
and the cadgy way you took my appraisal.

I was so innocent then,
for all my ennui and dark eyeliner.
So young and untried.

Though we were only a year apart,
you had lived entire lifetimes
in the gap between us.

You offered me a taste,
and I devoured.
A ravenous thing,
I consumed every gleaming,
disjointed moment
in that bright world.

I was an experience ******,
and you were my dealer,
my fix,
Doling out paradigms,
in neat white lines.

They called it a hole,
but it never felt like that to me.
Each hit was a journey,
And we travelled everywhere.

I was a glitter bug,
sashaying in platform heels,
you were a fresh faced candy necklace,
in a tank top and wide leg jeans.
Together we ruled the night.

We were fast and irreverent,
Trademarked by our frenetic maneuvering.
Free as the changing wind.

We were raging toward the dawn,
We were getting lit up like Christmas,
We were being kicked out of clubs,
And having dinner with the literature.

We were building blanket forts,
and breaking hearts.
We were breathing sound.

We were discovering the Multiverse,
and burning it
the
****
down!

We were two rarefied souls,
barreling toward oblivion,
laying it bare,
laying waste.

Discovering infinity,
Discovering ourselves.

Those were heady days,
and if I think about them long enough,
I can still get high on the flashback,

The swirl of fog through laser beams,
warm camphorous kisses
from loveable strangers,
Those deep beats...

If I close my eyes long enough,
I am transported
to a dark room somewhere...
A crumpled mess of girl,
you and I sloppily intertwined,
venturing ever elsewhere....

Two desperately seeking souls,
paired adventurers,
finding beauty in chaos,
in the unknown,
in heartache,
in everything.

Knowing that whatever we learned,
we learned in kind,
and that knowledge was ripe for the picking.

That everything is an offer,
an opportunity,
a lesson...

If one can just open herself,
to interpret the vibrations.

Sometimes,
the sound of your snoring,
makes me want to run you through,
with a knife.

That atonal rasping and gagging,
penetrates every board,
every beam,
until this old house vibrates with it.

My rage is palpable,
a living,
pulsating thing,
It thrums alongside your ragged breath,

Dueling frequencies of dischord,
Your tortured sleep,
and my tortured nerves,
inexorably linked,

You choke yourself awake long enough,
to look through me,
Emit a vaporous moan,
and turn over.

I like it better when you're working,
and I'm more perfectly alone.

Give a person a platform,
and he will speak,
as if he has been called upon,
to reimagine the Gettysburg Address,
Plato's Symposiym,
The Sermon on the Mount,

As if his voice,
and more importantly his VOICE,
were the first,
last,
and only.

Give a person information,
and she will use it learn,
precisely all that she intended to learn,
according to precisely the correct agenda,
Choosing facts like accesories,
artfully selected reinforce the image.

Give opinion power,
and it will bulldog its way around reason,
and usurp logic with its echo.

The telephone game.

The telephone game.

Give emotion a foothold,
on the mountain of knowledge,
and it will erode etched stone,
into dust,
drifting motes of once-facts.

Give humanity a sense of importance,
and it will pontificate itself
into righteous extinction.

Give society freedom,
And it will see it abolished,
in the name of good cause...

In the name of justice...

Whatever that is.

Who am I?
Crack of dawn,
fresh spill,
Fifteen demands before coffee?

Who am I?
Sport utility,
Front facing,
Five point harness?

Who am I?
grey roots,
saddlebags
tattered unmentionables?

What is this?
Ground hog week,
triple speak,
automatic deduction?

Whence comes this paper trail?
Condensing us into forms,
Sorting us into audits,
assesing penalties?

What happened to 5am?
Frozen in time?
Slow dawn creeping,
into a still-frame prescience?

What happened to days in bed?
Long hours in my head?
To ideas unfiltered,
and consecrated ground?

What happend to glitter clouds,
And living out loud?
To boundaries shattered,
and reality questioning itself?

Where do I find my heartfire?
Art and desire?
The uncharted,
now the lost...

Where is my life lust?
That signature passion,
for this domestic pursuit?
My sense of adventue?

Why is youth so visceral in its wake?
Am I a hollogram to the present,
that I exist in this backdraft,
of moments passed?

How am I consistent to the deadline,
but find myself so unready?
How is progress such a burden?
Why is nostalgia so heavy?

All things must come to an end,
they say.
This place already feels hollow
without you.
A hall of echoes.
I miss you,
even as you linger.
I am capsised,
by this primal urge,
Once abandoned,
nearly forgotten,
reborn in your irreverent grace.
I discover myself marooned.
Cast out.
A Castaway,
on this island you sacnctioned,.
It is only what I am owed,
The inevitability,
of my own privateering.
Machinations of unreliable pursuit...
My imagination,
as ever,
running away with itself.
You were a landfall,
of sorts.
Painting yourself an unlikely comrade,
silently synching oars,
navigating parallel waters.
Finding purchase (purpose?)
on the cruel waters
of this devious digital sea.
Would haves,
cresting as could haves,
breaking into should haves,
spilling,
anticlimactically,
onto indifferent shores.
A filmy release,
A ghost froth,
delivering its spent intention,
unto shifting sands,
etching itself but briefly,
before its memory is consumed,
and ferried off,
by the relentless gravitation of the tides,
by the eternal gravity of time.