I leaned in close
enough to smell
the rubber of the hoses
now keeping him alive.

For the second time in my
life I was at a loss for words.

I rested my hand ontop of his own
and said,
"God is Real, Please Remember me."

The machine was now silent
as a families worth of tears
fell to the floor.

No more Pain.

I sat out front
on the large
concrete steps
and allowed my mind
to slip just to
see how it felt.

The occupants of
the Mad house
sat and moved
about around me.
Some held intense
conversations
with the air and
with all that wasn't
there.
Others picked at
scabs or picked
inside of noses.
Their polluted
minds wondered about
everything
except why I was
there.

A guy in furry
slippers and a women's
hat decided I was
there to give out cigarettes.
His face froze with
confusion and horror
when I told him
that I didn't smoke.
Another guy
danced on the sidewalk
in wide dramatic circles
to the music in his
head .
His eyes were
closed and his zipper
was down.

I stared across Beacon st.
along with some of the  Mad
and watched two winos
as they sat on a bench
in their park.
They each drank out of
***** paper bags,
an occasional
mumble exchanged.

The scavenging gulls
stood sentry
as the pigeons
picked at the
ground around
them.

I looked past the winos
through the palm fronds
and the eucalyptus.
A hulk of a container
ship slowly made
it's way along the
harbors main channel.
I thought about the
history of this place.

Where once sat a
library,a place to
seek out and to learn.
Now sits two winos
with their own
kind of knowledge.
And what was once a
YWCA a place for
recreation and youth.
Now serves as housing for
those whose minds have
wondered too far.
Those who dance on
Beacon st.,
alone.
To no ones music
but their own.

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.