You don't truly appreciate life.
All the joys and sorrows
that come along with it.

Until you have done all you could
to comfort someone you care for .

While you stand helplessly watching the one you love
as they struggle to hold onto to this thing we call life .

I'm a documented failure
according to their thick,
dog eared records.

My inability to remember their lessons
or go along with their beliefs.
All stored away in a dusty locked
file cabinet that
I"ll never be able to see.

It's easy to label the young
for the young depend on the old
for knowledge.

How can I be such a failure
when all they ever taught me
was lies.

They made it difficult to hear
a man speak of his heart.

It was the world as it truly is that set this free.
It let me in while breaking me out.
It saved me.
It showed me.
It allowed me to be.

Those Greats before me
how I long to one day be.

I don't need a Master .
How many more out there like me.

I cry when I write .
That's when my mind allows me to see.

Drop down ,take a knee.
There's water all around us .
Its above us.
And bellow us.
Its almost all of you.
And its almost all of me.

It wasn't hard to walk away.
It was the history that made me want to stay.

I never believed in what their books had to say.
If everything is a Lie then somewhere
there must be truth.

Beneath the Firmament that's where I'll stay.
Worry more about what your heart tries to say.

They make it uncomfortable to hear what it is
a mans heart has got to say.

She offered me *******.
I took the balloon from her hand instead.

Music radiating like warm shockwaves across the desert.
Found a spot next to a speaker, the bass wore over me like swells across the sea.
I took in the gas and exhaled kind of fast.

Sat back and closed my eyes and rode the waves throughout the halls of my memory.
There's a bass speaker banging against my back  and my chin has found its home against my chest.

Kids  don't do it for any other reason besides cuz its there.
There'll be a fight tonight in a narrow dirt alley with bee hives in the trees.

A slim gorgeous hand with silver rings on the thumbs pulls me from the ground and leads me toward the stairs.
Flip top cans and short dog bottles filled the empty hands of all those we passed.

I came here for a reason.
I can't remember what it was.

Too much to drink  and too many young beauties to settle for just one.

They teach the children how to share until they're old enough to buy and sell their own shares.

She offered me ******* then corrected me and said
"No this is Speed."
Again I passed on the Go and took a  balloon from inbetween her manicured fingertips.

She watched me as I put the open end toward my dry lips.
Then she popped my balloon with
a pink painted
,pointed finger nail.

"Those were mine *******."
Then she turned and walked away.

It came around again
for we are at the center
of our everything.

And the center never
moves.

It burns through natural clouds
and unnatural lines in our sky.

Over the Eastern mountains
and scorched hillsides.

Made its way
across a deadly
California desert.
Over a  mysterious ,
***** blondes bare
freckled shoulder.

Through the track homes
and the cheap motels.
Between  a beautiful ******
open legs and runny nylons.

Past the clerk asleep in the  hotel lobby.
Past the stolen car
outside.
Across the cluttered
room and
passed a dark alley way.

Up the main street
of some nowhere type of town.
Across the freeway and the blood stain.
Past the curbside motive candles.

Above the glass like surface
of the morning ,dead calm sea.
Through the fisherman's hopeful heart.
And the starlets dying flame.

Over the pages of my
favorite book ,
my favorite line.
"Run to me,Come to me'

Through my
half empty ***** bottle.
Bounced its way off the cracked
goodluck mirror  and  caught
me straight in the eye.

That first blinding ray
shines its way through the ages
to great you each and every  morning .

The first sign
that you've made it.
Still healthy enough to
gracefully waste another beautiful
Southern California day.

Have you gone where I've been?

Took the time to walk through the treasures of your mind,
like a gypsy in a junkyard.

Seen the tears and still indulged,
Smelled the blood and
made sure it wasn't your own.
Had it all and gave it away.

Do you close your eyes and
see images of the best of times.
Only to awake to the horror that is this.

Are you consoled in knowing
that she drinks with the GODS
as you battle with the believers.

Are you ready for the illusion to end?
Is there a method to your punishment?

Walk beside all of this,
Hand in injured hand
with all of this.

Do you feel that tingling
as you create me?

I've been here the whole time.
You were never alone.

This is why you are here,
this is why you have suffered.
This is what they need to see.

If not for you, do it for me.

They kept the inner city high
and the suburbs well
protected.

The cops all called  the
kids by their street name.
The kids called all the
cops Officer Bacon.


Runaways gravitate toward
the center of the city.
It was passing through the outskirts that
often got them killed.