They educated us in a scientific,
reasonable world
full of scientific
unreasonable lies.

Now that we are adults
we can go back and question
the things they told us as children.
And realize that they were lying to us.

We were deceived.

We live in a supernatural world
created by God.
There is a spiritual war going on.

Men act as Gods
As God stands silent and watches
as we destroy ourselves again..

There's a lot less
Heroes
still alive today.

The need becomes a clamor
somewhere deep within the
recesses of all that calls for
my attention.

The demands of living,
the drama of the morning
and stepping out into the day.

The smile I'm forced to wear
stretched wide across my disdain.
The handshakes and back slaps
that secretly cause me to cringe
at the feeling of another's flesh
coming in contact with my own.

The false friendships and the false wealth.
The great lie that is joy
and the camouflaged slavery
they are all unknowingly chained to
with links made up of loans and wants.

To coil a scarred hand around the beautiful curves of the wet bottle is to find sanctuary from the sweat and the toil from lasting another day.
There's pills or the poppy,
the slumberous narcotic sold in
bindles near the shore.

There's plenty to run to,
various versions of the need.
It reminds you how powerless you
are in the form of warm, beads of cold sweat
racing down your aching cramped up spine.

It knaws at the marrow and
tears at the last bit of will you have yet to lose.

Not every end is indeed the goal.
I wish to go on for just a little while longer.
Long enough to turn that need into an art form.
All of which is made up of magic that comes from living hard
and in secret.

Still managing to survive with this nagging,
pleading, wicked kind of need.

We weren't equals and we knew this.

He cited what reference he
could find as his answers.

I looked to memories and
hand written notes.

He couldn't believe the textbooks could all be wrong
and the professors all victims of the same lie.

I couldn't believe he didn't know
what the Firmament was
or who Admiral Byrd was.

I spoke of God and his creations.
I told him the love God had for him
was everlasting.

That's when I lost him.

Like any Genius with a high IQ
he scoffed and stopped paying attention
once the truth become too much for him.

The firmament held
true against the
rockets sent
by man.

Its always in those last hectic
days leading up to the
next celebration.
Either on the Eve of that day
or a few days before that.

At the neighborhood bar
or parked along the coast at sunset.
At their mothers same old house
or one of the liquor stores
still open at two.

You'll see that face or faces of those who
were smarter than you,
those who were braver than you.

Those who took that first chance
they had and moved as far away
from this place as they could.

Those with the same city name tattooed
in the same spot as you on
that same drunken night so long ago.

Their eyes have less anger and '
their conversation is less about
the past and more about what's
beyond this place.

Something about their faces,
their wives, their twin children or
the true concern they have in
their questions.

The grief they express at finding out
another has passed with the year.
The questions they ask that you
purposely avoid answering .

That feeling you get at still being here
like a cigar store Indian or a
'Welcome Home' sign from the
last time they were here.

There's something in them
that died in you so long ago.
Something that grew in them
that'll  never grow in you
as long as you're here.

Something they found somewhere else.
Something you've been looking for ,
something you'll never find here.

There was a
time so long ago
it's as if I was
someone else.

Back when
he was all
of what I had hoped
to become.

Throughout the years
he prospered as a
working man.
Which brought along
the burdens
of becoming a family
man.

As he fell
into the horror that
is "The Domesticated Life",
I was on the
streets doing
what I knew how.
Or surviving beneath the
long gun on a desolate
prison yard amongst
the souls that man
had condemned

As the drum roll
of the life that
is America
played itself
out like a re-run you've
seen too many times.
The working man
he had always been
began to turn
more into a drinking man.

There was nothing
romantic or
exciting about
his drinking.
Nothing good ever came
out of it.
Nothing like
when Hemingway
did it.
Or when Bukowski
took hold of
the bottle,then
mastered it.

His demise
approached like
a slow moving
swell.
Slowly gathering
up all he had
accumulated
throughout
his years
of labor.
Steadily
gathering
the momentum
needed
to fall a man.

And when that
wave of failures
and alcoholism
finally hit
the shores of
his reality.
His will had already
been weakened
and the little bit
of fight he had
left in him refused
to put up
his fists in
defense.

I bore witness
to that which has
to be far more
painful to see than
death.

I watched a man give
into the pull of insanity
as he threw it all away
without even the slightest
hint of grace.