The devil stands beneath us
In a cold orchestra hall
All dressed up for the winter
Even though its early fall
She's either laughing or she's crying
Which it is I do not know
But she wields it through her fingertips
Unto her cherry wood cello

I like that girl in the cutoff jean jacket
who always goes out with intent to make a racket
All that tribal black light paint
that you'd think would look cliche
until you see how well it illuminates her face

I want someone who still makes me feel young
Who isn't in a hurry to be all grown up
She's not afraid to say yes
to rock a neon headdress
and she always thought it cool to stretch her flesh

She rocks the shutter shades down in her V-neck
All summer long she's on the festie trek
She likes her wooden spiral plugs
her pieces shaped like bugs
and her most favorite thing is to give free hugs

From Triple Rock back to The Cabooze
Electric Forests and Bonaroos
She doesn't think that she'll ever grow old
with music, friends and stories to be told
Hemp and glass are her silver and gold




However, I am not quite like you
I'm just biding my time with this rowdy crew

I haven't yet committed to keeping my youth
and that's why my skin's still clear of tattoos

The longest lasting scars, forever proof:
You were once wild and young but afraid to face the truth

We're outsiders, you and I
The Periphery
Watching everybody else
Pretending we're just like them
But knowing we're not

The best we can hope for
Is to find a place where we don't have to pretend

It's a shame really,
Under different circumstances
I think we could've been great friends

Maggie won't stop watching Charlie Bartlett,
she claims she was Kat Dennings in another life.
I try to dissect her lack of compassion
with a cheap bottle of red merlot wine.



She says:

'I ride a ******* fixed gear.
I'd rather drive a car.
And although you'd never know
I self-inflicted this here scar.
Why do you like Stephen King?
Do you know what I'm thinking?
...
Anxiety really mellows a woman out.'

Her mind is like a whirlwind.
I don't know where to begin.
Should I ask about her fears
about her tears
or why she's so thin?
She's watching Netflix again
and I can't pretend
to understand the kind of man
that she wished I am.



She breaks the silence:

'I lie to strangers too much.
I'm afraid to be touched
or mistaken for someone
who's too much of a lush.
I feel I'm far too shy
and I don't know why.
...
Introspection really seems to calm me down.'

So we sit on the couch
just watching tv.
I think a calm and understanding
is all that she needs.
And when someone talks,
no matter how it seems,
sometimes a listener
is the best thing that you can be.

When did you earn the right to feel anything,
anything but wonder when it comes to me?
When did I lose the privilege of trust?
Around the same time I found wanderlust.

He came to us
dressed to the knives
and peeled our flesh away
with fingers like nines.
The poor, dumb and useless
bank on oblivious,
and you just stand there:
******* oblivion.

A lioness
A lying mess
A lioness
A lying mess

******.

Contempt.

Content.

I bought a ticket to Seattle.
Yeah, I tried to get away.
But this forgotten state of mind
has your hands on me.

I swim up the mountains
and climb through the ocean
Not a secret was sold
before the notion
The language of bodies
speaks so well
Not even the soul
questions itself

We look for Satan with the same intensity
that my mom and dad looked for God.

In retrospect
my parents were always pushing me to expand my consciousness
by huffing glue or gasoline
or chewing peyote buttons.
Simply because they'd done their time,
wasted their teen years
lolling in the muddy fields of Vermont
and the salt flats of Nevada,
naked except for rainbow face paints
and a thick coating of sweaty filth,
their heads festooned
with fifty pounds of fetid dreadlocks,
teeming with crab lice
and pretending to find enlightenment...
That does NOT mean I have to make the same mistake.

Sorry, Satan,
once again I've said the G-word.

Without breaking stride,
Leonard nods and points
to indicate the former deities of now-defunct cultures,
now warehoused in the underworld.
Among them: Benoth,
a god of the Babylonians;
Dagon,
an idol of the Philistines;
Astarte,
goddess of the Sidonians;
Tartak,
the god of the Hevites.

My suspicion
is that my parents treasure their sordid recollection
of episodes at Woodstock and Burning Man
not because those pastimes led to wisdom,
but because such folly
was inseparable from a period of their lives
when they were young
and unburdened by obligation;
they had free time, muscle tone,
and their futures still looked like a great, grand adventure.
Furthermore,
both my mother and father had been free of social status
and therefore had nothing to lose by cavorting ****,
their swollen genitals smeared with muck.

Thus,
because they had ingested drugs and flirted with brain damage,
they insisted I should do likewise.
I was forever opening my boxed lunch at school
to discover a cheese sandwich,
a carton of apple juice,
carrot sticks,
and a five-hundred-milligram Percocet.
Tucked within my Christmas stocking
--not that we celebrated Christmas--
would be three oranges,
a sugar mouse, a harmonica,
and quaaludes.
In my Easter basket
--not that we called the event Easter--
instead of jelly beans,
I'd find lumps of hashish.
Would that I could forget the scene at my twelfth birthday party
where I flailed at a piñata,
wielding a broomstick in front of my peers
and their respective
former-hippie, former-rasta,
former-anarchist throwback parents.
The moment the colorful papier-mâché burst,
instead of Tootsie Rolls or Hershey's Kisses,
everyone present
was showered with Vicodins,
Darvons, Percodans,
amyl nitrate ampoules,
LSD stamps,
and assorted barbiturates.
The now wealthy,
now-middle-aged parents
were ecstatic,
while my little friends and I couldn't help
but feel a tad bit cheated.

That,
and it doesn't take a brain surgeon to understand
that very few twelve-year-olds
would actually enjoy attending
a clothing-optional birthday party.

Some of the most gruesome images in Hell
seem downright laughable
when compared to seeing an entire generation of adults
stripped **** and wrestling on the floor,
grasping and panting in frantic competition
for a scattered handful of codeine capsules.