The bohemian youth are dancing with the moon
with the night
pressed firmly on their backs
the wind of a thousand seas
they tick like clocks until the world is broken
down at their feet
all around them they build up their anthills
only to play God with magnifying glasses
taking the train or bus
to broke or bust
with cackles echoing off the graying apartment walls
blowing out clouds of intoxication
into the night sky
just so they could call it art
they are building pianos out of old photo albums
and listening to all the songs
they have heard a million times
and yet still do not know
taking the missing pieces out of
abandoned cable boxes
and talking on phones of
styrofoam cups and string
waiting for the day to become night
to stop all of the nonsensical
jibber jabber
with ironic t shirts they found on the side of the road
shooting city crows from the air with BB guns
and eating greasy sandwich after greasy sandwich
in the early hours of morning
beer and beer and beer and disappointment
no noble cause of nobility
for the wannabe outlaw to hang on to
no titanic monolith of strictures to rebel against
just a pair of worn out sneakers
and an empty compass

The air is clear tonight
I am relaxed
overeager hooligans
are shooting fireworks
into the face of the muggy
night sky
The light summer breeze
smells like her
my head
is swimming with words
the right one always on the tip
of my tongue
the right one always out of reach
a family on the sidewalk
out front of their house
the women fat and weathered
the men unkempt and wiry
small children running around
laughing
and a disabled man sitting in the open door
of a car which blares bluegrass
and I am yet to walk the hills
where does this trail lead?
or better yet,
what does any of this mean?
blah blah blah
yaddah yaddah yaddah
tonight,
none of that matters

Take my ashtrays
and throw them in the street
where the ratty, shirtless children play,
sure
go ahead
drop my keys down storm drains
never to be seen again
when the skies all open up
and the rain pours out of them
it will be like you
showering me in your glances
from the other side of the desk
this train has no known destination
and I can’t make out the turns from drops
but I do know that we’ve been off track
for a few miles now
and that this boxcar is dark and dusty
no breathing room to light a fire
no time for the canned food
******* I am really lost
China st is closing in all around me
and I could have sworn I’ve seen these houses before
phantoms from some long lost dream
teasing the fringes of my memory
this necklace sitting on my desk
amid the ash and dust and ink and carvings
is my favorite thing I don’t own
my tongue is the frayed leash
which allows my mind to wander
off on infinite miles in every direction
My heart is a drum
sitting in the back corner
of a garage sale
and my words and my cigarettes have a lot in common
because inevitably
I just end up
blowing smoke

all the good luck in the world won't save you
from yourself
we were born as four young men
all at odds with something
we couldn't conjure a name for
a masochistic lightning bolt of self-destruction
streaking through us

the straight man
doing everything right
with a bottle of soda
which gets so shaken up
that it pops and spills over
on drunken occasions
body becoming synonymous with temple
a place of worship
with a strong love
for vicariously living the southern life

The anarchist
spelled ID ID ID ID
is getting ****** up
and thinking he ***** up
all too often
Mr. Insomniac
Mr. smoker's hack
ash stained fingers slowly yellowing
as the hot Richmond sun
turns our skin to leather
He is brave
he is impulsive
smart, but not smart enough
to figure out how to get out of his own way
some would say criminal
he would say unlucky
I would say
What's the difference?

The anomaly
much older than the few years he carries in his hand
to skip away as stones
across the pond
of awkward, confused, troubled adolescence
at home in front of a room full of people
doing stupid ****
in clever ways
making them laugh and laugh
at home locked away for countless summer days
in his bedroom talking to strangers
in some online video game
he reminds me much of myself
which is why I have always carried
the chips on his shoulders
close to my heart
because if we raise him right,
he'll be better than all of us

The OCD CEO
the creative type
with a metaphorical hippy flower in her hair
a teacher
a healer
a support beam
and a ******* basket case
gifted in the tongue with the art of embellishment
and when her kingdom comes under attack
she uses love as a shield
and guilt as a sword
she can read all the words
but only if they are jumbled
in the precisely right order
just because
"That's how it should be"

The King of Abdication
made of steel and iron
as still as a stone until
the scent of blood reaches his nostrils
so strange to see the visage in the shattered mirror
of cold, calculated, killer on the battle field of capitalism
nerdy, awkward, silent on the battle field of human relations
A rolling stone
who always rolled on back home
who taught me
that sometimes you have no other option
but to buckle down, take the hits
be a man and finish the job
as well as you can
frugality and hard work and yaddah yaddah
surprised me when he told me
"Sometimes you just need to jump,
Jumping was the best choice I ever made"

The Rebel,
highly frustrating
intelligent
confident in his lack of self-esteem
unaware of what happened in those hazy years
to lead him to reach out
to total strangers
like he was begging for a new toy
"Look what I made! Isn't it good?
Please tell me it's good.
Please tell me I'm okay."
who never liked being told
"I'm older than you, so do what I say"
so he made it his own personal mission
to do the opposite whenever he could
regardless of what it meant for him
and in his mind
he paints himself as missed genius
too intelligent to ever be happy
with the world he lives in
and in everybody else's mind
he is a whiny little kid
in need of a kick in the pants and a job
a grade A reality check
before his burning protest
leaves him stranded with no bridges
a hermit of his own making
constantly looking for that human attention

The cast is in place
the audience are taking their seats
but this isn't a play
not a comedy, tragedy
not a hope
nobody knows how it is all going to end
but like fair weather NASCAR fans
they are just there for the crashes

Warning:
To all involved
Tomorrow D-day comes
Move out from bunkers
Retreat to the family unit
Time has ran out of breath
And is panting on the sidelines
She wasn't a dime piece
Slightly better than a nickel
And my choices scar her thighs
My memories
Already miss her taste
That I never knew
She was always there
On inebriated nights
When the stars tried to call me home
And I
Will never forget her

I dropped out of school after my first semester of freshmen year. My parents had just gotten a divorce. I was in a state of perpetual, adolescent, hopeless confusion.
I've always loved stories. Fiction or nonfiction didn't matter. Just as long as it blew my mind. I, like so many before me, was going to be a writer. Not just any writer either. No, I was going to be part, Hemingway, part Kerouac, part bukowski, and part Thompson.
The decision was made. I only had one problem: I couldn't tell anybody my plans. I am a privately educated kid from England. My path was laid out before me. Hard work to college to minimal success to family life to riches I never knew existed. So I wrote up a fake class schedule. For some reason it contained multiple French classes... I don't know either.
So every week day I would "go to class". Which meant I was walking to the Bowe street starbucks with a pen, a journal, and a laptop. I wrote so much terrible poetry that year you could replace me with any teenage girl suffering from rejection and self-conscious body issues. But you know what? I put the ******* hours in. After a while I found something which I could pretend was my style. I started getting emails from strangers telling me how good my poetry was. I got a lot if reads - 100,000 before I knew it. My head was so big I had a hard time fitting through doors.
Have you ever got so high you forgot your own name? I have. The *** helped me ignore the constant whirring of anxious thinking. The drink helped me shed my politically correct layers of defense. The validation from my poetry ensured my needy feet would never touch the ground. My pride told me everything was fine. Better than fine.
So I started writing less and less. Started staying in more and more. *** fueled day dream benders became a regular thing. Icarus had never came so close to a fake sun.
People started to notice. Aggravating talks about my potential and intelligence. Horrendous awkward dinners with my family. My mum used to tell everybody that I was writing a novel. I didn't have the heart to say I was lucky to get one poem on paper everyday.
Friends stayed distant. Girls came briefly and left as quick as their legs could take them. I became a ghost, haunting the streets of Richmond with bohemian declarations of... "True freedom." Life had lost it's luster. My control was slipping.
The story I would like to tell is that I won. Conquered cultural wilds to paint myself a noble individual. But none of that happened. This isn't a story of my success as a voice of a generation. This is not a story of redemption. This is a story about a confused kid who gave into the temptations of spontaneous decisions. A kid who needed help and advice but was too proud to know how to ask. This is the story of coming to the brink, and not caring if you fall.
So where am I now? I'm back in school, dealing with feeling like I have severely underachieved. I am waiting tables for people I could care less about. I am catching up with my Friends and peers who have already surpassed me. But I am alive. I am still writing. I am here to tell you that life punches in no pattern. Haymakers come with jabs, and the bell always seems to far away. You don't beat life, not even on a technicality. You just give everything you can to try and go the distance.

Horatio Alger is whispering his stories in my sleeping ear
painting me as a lowly street urchin
who conquers adversities and moral wildernesses
with only my wit, determination, and guts
and he is painting me as a phoenix of the new world
rising from ashes of banality and
the naturalized familial trappings of my past
a dirt road in the socioeconomic desert
carved out with care by the hands of forefathers I will never know
but Mr. Alger died a long while ago
and the sun inevitably rises
shattering the stained glass story of my rags turned riches
now the big men upstairs
jot me down as numbers on a chart
of consumption trends of millennials
Go to college
they say
make something of yourself
they say
you are all too entitled
they say
What went wrong
they say without a hint of contradiction
I am not equipped to say if the story of humanity
is a cycle or a downwards spiral
I am not equipped to say
that it is the job of every generation
to ensure that they clear the debris
from the path of their progeny
but I say it anyway
everybody want’s a trophy
because we were raised to believe that
everybody deserves a trophy
In the same breath they expect us
to take the puritanical mantle of the breadwinner
the frayed saddle of the noble western outlaw
the lethally honed sword of the entrepreneur
the martyr making cross of the socially conscious family man
and then wonder why we so willingly
give ourselves over to the currents
of apathy and passivity and masochistic narcissism
giving us guns and bullets with no idea how to shoot them
so instead we turn them into sculptures of modern art
and scream to the empty heavens
for just a hint of recognition
I can’t decide if history will forget us
or memorize the lyrics of our collective heart beats
but I have decided
to wake up from my American Dream
have decided
to forge my own reality