Today I found a glass bottle
Washed upon the charcoal breakers of Long Beach
Containing a message
Written by a starving man,
Marooned on a treeless island,
Lost in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
Which read quite simply

"Please,
Save yourself.

*I'm finally free."

Today I had a visit from my friend the albatross
Who sang of petty head thieves, sweaty bed-sheets, love and loss
And I scoffed
Because I 'get it'
But that doesn't make it tangible
It's just another hand for starving kids to sink their mandibles
"You animal!"
The albatross replied
"How could you be so cold?"
I told him it's a medical response to getting old
An unfortunate condition I have taught myself to weather
The day I learned to hold my ground
By plucking my own feathers

We exist within spheres
Bubbles of perception
Roughly circular ripples of both know knowns and known unkowns
And then there
Right at the edge of these spheres
Just outside the very last shred of our understanding of how the world works

Is how the world really works

I've seen it
Only briefly
And not because I'm smarter or more enlightened than anyone else
But rather because I do better drugs than most
And while my short term memory is ******
I have managed to bring back an excerpt of my journal
And it reads:


"This world is a process of conflict
A construct begat by the clashing of two equal and opposite forces
One of the forces
Is called Fate
And the other
Is called Choice
And the sum of existence consists of everything that falls in between

And the really ****** up part
Is that we already know this

But life
Has affixed us with blinders that force us to see
Everything
So much so, in fact
That a sense of 'self'
Is considered hedonism in most circles

But the soul
Does not have a default setting
Pain
Is not an illusion
And despite what you may have been told
There is no compelling evidence to suggest that there isn't another world on the other side of my mirror

The are no empty spaces
Only effects that have yet to be caused
There are no reflections on lake shores
That is merely the image of God

First there is the prep.
The roommate.
Wearing salmon colored pants.  
He has Shaggy from ****** Doo
On his left thigh.
The alcoholic.
She has a drinking problem.
She is in denial of her drinking problem.
She hangs out with the loners.
The loners.
Unkempt, unattractive and fat in all the wrong places.
The blond looks like Tom Petty.
The one with dark hair, glasses and braces
They live next door.
Living together but segregated. 
Wild cards.
All of us.

©Gambit '13

My brain is knotted to my head with ties I should unravel.
I guess it doesn’t do me any good to sit and think.
And in my dreams I’m in a boat and then the current makes it sink
and blood just pours into the ocean til I’m left with feeling weak
and these thoughts burn inside me deeper than the comfort that I seek.
It’s all a waste
and what’s the point if I would let my findings go

if it meant I’d see the outline of my sharp and brittle bones?
Clinging to every song I hear to search it for a kind of purpose
I could try to find a God to show me all this isn’t worthless.
Perhaps there was a word you said that made me keep on crawling
past the people who have told me I should focus on my calling.
Or perhaps it was a word you never stuck around to say
and I am left here on my own to try to seize these ******* days.
My mind is a machine creating thoughts that are contrived
and they can see the insincerity that’s dripping from my eyes.