I open all the windows at night
and let the frigid canyon wind wrap me
like a sheet

It's never cold enough,
truthfully

There's never enough justification
to sleep next to some(one)thing
warm

It lets in all the mosquitoes
and the ******* squirrels
wake me up with their
idle chatter
each and every morning
but I like it.

The comedown's most always
(never)
worth the high
(So I'm quitting stimulants
and other people)

But then I remember
that when the music
resolves
it's almost always
worth the wait

so I think
"Just one more day,
then,
just one more beer,
just one more roll of the dice-
they're bound to come up
sixes
sometime"

I could sit
here naked in front
of this typewriter
and tell you
about how I'm the wind
about how I'm a good guy (no really)
about how I'm a ******* (really)
about how i am                            (an artist)
i am                                                                              (a martyr)
i am                                                                                                           (a fool)

But frankly I can't think of anything I am
that I really believe any more.

I was born tall and thin
and pink
like a ****** steak.
I cried until I could run
and then ran
like a lunatic,
screaming peals of laughter
and destroying
without guilt
as kids do-

and still I was
skinny.

I was skinny in elementary school.
The other kids took to football
and dirt bikes.
I was still pink
like an underripe
tomato.

I grew up tall and thin
in a world for shorter
and fuller people.
With crooked teeth and
glasses.

I was skinny in middle school.
When the other kids started to build muscle
you could've played my ribs
like a xylophone.
You still could.

I grew up tall and thin
and frustrated
like a ****.
I never fit on public busses
or in the little plastic desks
at school.
My feet stuck off the end of my bed.
They still do.
I slouched and hiked my shoulders up
so as not to obstruct others'
line of sight.

I still do.

I was skinny
when I first fell in love.
What she saw in me,
I can't say.
I was tall
and thin
and crooked
but I wanted so badly,
just for once,
to be the right shape
for her.
She was rather short
and had caramel skin.
We made an odd couple.

I grew up tall and thin,
a square peg in a world of round holes.
I'm skinny today-
a pinkish wisp
with a skinny soul
tucked away behind dark sunglasses.

I was born skinny.
And I'll probably die skinny
too,
and make a tall,
thin corpse
for a much
shorter,
wider
casket.

Magpie alights on the eaves
tonguing a bitter wild berry
***** head left,
right,
decides against this spot
and relocates to a new one
out of sight.

Autumn happened today,
again.
Same as every year.
I was under the shade of the porch,
coffee in hand,
and smelt a change in the taste of the wind.
It's been at least ten degrees cooler
and I've donned the first piece of warm clothing
since April.

Magpie perches on the red wooden
fence on my right,
still gently squeezing that berry-
as if testing its ripeness.
Head ***** left,
head ***** right,
magpie flies away.

The leaves will start to turn this week.
Maybe next.
My coffee is lukewarm now,
same as the air.

Magpie sits in the yard
and carefully sets his lunch down,
prods his beak into the soil,
picks it back up,
and buries it for later.
Magpie flies away.

A rush of cold air sweeps through me.

Same as every year.

I rise and walk,
mug in hand,
back inside.

If I had back every dime I've ever frittered away foolishly,
I'd be rich
for a day.

I drove while she slept.

We were both tired,
******,
maybe a little drunk still.
I had the music turned up
to try and convince myself I was awake enough
to manage a ton of galvanized steel on fire
down the highway.
Somehow she still managed
to wrap herself around my arm
and breathe easy.

We got back to my place at the other end of town
and she curled up in my bed
and might as well have been comatose.
I lay there for a few minutes contemplating how warm she was
next to me.
I think I fell asleep smiling.

We made hurried love for the first time
just after dawn.
In honesty, I could have been better.
I should have been better-
but I have a tendency to **** these things up
when they go right.

I cooked breakfast while she sat
and told me about her family-
hash browns and eggs.
Butter in the pan, flame at medium,
stir occasionally.
Simple.
I must have been distracted,
kissing her cheek
because all the same I burnt them.

It felt like an omen.

We ate what we could salvage
and then I drove her home.

I want to lay with you,
roots grown together,
tired from the day
in a bed of clover
under mother moon
with nowhere to be.
The leaves would begin to fall,
eventually,
blanketing us from autumn's bitter cold
and the scorns of obligation.
I want to drink you through my nose,
your primrose perfume twinged
with subtle notes of leaf litter.

And when the whim to rise finally
lifted us
the grass beneath would be matted
and combed
in the shape of yin and yang.

Yellow
fissuring undulations
breaking through
inky navy-
street lights casting reflections on
the lake out the window.

Flecks of neon
marking locations
where the party is still raging,
where people are still
chasing the world of delirium
and ***,
breaking over distant trees.

This is the place where America's
rich come to die
after a lifetime
of toil
chasing the American dream.
And I suppose that means the American dream
is here in Florida,
where sweat never dries
and mosquitoes never sleep,
where retired bankers
and ******* dealers
can finally get their slice of the pie-
separated from the suburbs by twelve foot tall hedges
and automatic gates.

The young don't care here-
they're too preoccupied
with The Chase
and neither do the Old-
because they're tired out
from a lifetime of being young.

This is the place
where America comes
to roll over
and spend its final hours
alone,
bitter,
and wealthy,
taking naps in the sun-
having more than earned

a little rest.

Sweetly stomach-sick
again.
Plummeting back into
my puzzle-piece niche
among more notes in the same key.
We’re a messy chord,
played by masterful,
but drunken hands
on a piano
wavering on the brink
of broken intonation.
Just close enough to make
you want to sing
along
and hold the right notes in your throat
bring the decibels up
to a thrum,
vibrating in my chest that
calms down the sick
in my belly.

It feels good-
in the most nerve-wracking way
to look at you looking at me
like that again.

At the end of the day
when even the dogs guarding beloved families
sleep soundly in the cool grass-
When the hurly-burly's done,
when the battle's lost
and won,
and the parks fill up with long shadows
the cars roll into the drives-
When the dinner bells chime
and the homeless
and ragged
look up to the stars-
for hope?
for clarity?
for something to do?

When the work can wait til morning
and the sleeping dogs lie still-
and the children play games
and chase fireflies-
When the lights come on
and the sun goes out-

When we finally accept
that nothing lasts
and tomorrow will come.

I am here, risen up
from dust
and I sit in the sand
beneath the mangroves
as fruits fall around me
thudding softly in the
strewn leaves.

We sit here,
where I am,
these fruits
and these insects
and small reptiles,
watching the clouds roll in from the east,
where the ocean sprawls,
lavishing the beach with delicate hands
under the phosphorescent moon.

We all sit here,
the fruits,
insects,
reptiles,
the ocean,
and I-

We watch dense clouds roll in
as distant flashes of light
and gongs of thunder
grow more frequent-

we sit-
we watch-
and we wait-

for the rain.

Maybe it's just the drugs fading,
but tonight I feel hollow.
And maybe it's just the feeling of coming home,
but right now I feel stuck.

Stuck on the simple sensation
of a warm body adjacent
as the night is erased and
a new dawn awakes us.

I laugh often, but I'm hardly ever
amused
mostly I just like to make people feel funny
when they are.
I sigh often because I'm hardly ever not tired,
tired of waking with hopes floating on hot air balloons
only to be set back down with the dipping of the evening sun.

And maybe it's just the ringing in my ears,
but everything is much too quiet right now.
Maybe it's just that the blinds are drawn,
but it is
so dark
in this room.

The wind is always blowing here.
It rushes down out of the canyon
to the east
like a cavalcade of rhinoceroses.
The cyclists
struggle against it
the pedestrians
have to lean into it
the motorists
spend two dollars and ninety cents extra
each time they gas up
to compensate for it.
The trees on the eastern edge of the cemetery
are bowed-
to the west-
and their leaves don’t fall
they’re ejected
like screaming pilots from flaming cockpits
at wonky angles
until they crash into the grave markers below them.
And the headstones are all weathered
prematurely,
names and dates and histories
erased

while below,
wrinkled shells dressed in sunday suits
sit in metal boxes
pretending
that some shred of them
will last forever.

No streetlight penetrating the double-paned glass from the outside tonight,
just a faint flicker, faltering
in the hollow of my chest
to illuminate the room.

Dim shadows cast are drawn with
menacing cartoon faces-
they laugh animatedly.

There is
so little light
when you are alone-
sometimes.

Gilded, sickly yellow
glowing from a smattering of phosphorescent streetlamps
under homogenous grey skies,
which have finally started to sprinkle rain, after a day's worth of deliberation.
A late night songbird gives one feeble attempt at melody in the distance
and then is silent.
Tip-taps
of droplets
sent from heaven above
as they clatter against plastic car hoods-

to have travelled so many miles, just to terminate there. What grief.

the faint whoosh of engines still on the highway.
People running home,
or running from home,

I can only imagine.

It's grey, but it's
warm
and the people almost all smile and
wave
as you pass, even the
kids.

Early afternoon,
and the street's still dry,
the clouds are too lazy to drop
their payloads down on your head.

It's a bad part of town,
or at least it looks that way.
*****,
a little worn-down
rubbed smooth about the edges
and rusting at the seams.
But you're an outsider,
you don't live here
and maybe this part of town isn't bad-
not worse than any other part anyway.

The clouds are grey overhead-
but it's warm-
and the people are nice-
and they almost always
smile and
wave
as you walk by.

Silent street
punctuated by a single stag
stalk-still
against the asphalt all around
ten points
facing up at the firmament
fixed frame
the steam on easy breath
pools, puddles.

Noble beast-

neither needs nor heeds my blessings.

To ride these rivers of light onward forever, screaming infinite curses to destinations and endings-
We shall never die-
Until the undertow finally ***** us, resisting with all our might, into the abyss of aeons and darkness-
That darkness is unknown, but not necessarily black,
As much as I know, at least.

To run on forever until my legs are ground down to pulp beneath me, and then drag myself on with ****** fingers mangled against the world's mottled asphalt
Until old age or blood loss takes me
And removes the "I"
From my existence.

To forge forward immortal
'til proven otherwise.

I live alone here.
here is my island
where no man has set foot
but me
and if you’re reading this it means
you found a bottle
and this was inside it.
You see, I have what I
need,
water, fish, and coconuts
the weather is fine,
I lie naked in the sun each and every day,
but I am alone, and dead to all the world.
The only comfort in which I can partake
is these notes-
some of them letters to family and friends whom I’ll never see again
some are descriptions of faces or trees or sunsets I’ve seen
some are just thoughts I want to give to the world
before I eventually die here.
I hope you’re reading this-
because if you are,
it means I didn’t wither in silence
to be washed over by waves
or blown away
in a storm.
You, the reader of this note,
have validated my existence
by confirming that I ever existed at all

and for that I thank you.

I'm a little surprised
It took til now to realize
That I'm a little more than a
Little attracted to crazy.
Maybe crazy isn't the right word
That spark of divine madness-
The muse incarnate.
Sometimes they look very similar
And it takes months to figure out the difference,
In your case I think I just called it close enough.

Crazy beats boring, I suppose.
It overcomplicates things, that's for sure.

I don't know what love is any more
Because I've now discovered that one day you can be in love
And the next day find yourself the cuckolded brunt of a very brutal existential joke.
At any rate, that drug-fueled madness we shared, trying to fix each other so desperately,
Trying to feel something so impetuously,
Whether that was intimacy or just validation,
Collapsed. Go figure.

Madness at its finest,
And it left chaos in its wake.
For me at least. You seemed alright.
And I use the word "alright" very loosely there.

The dark of my night is without contrast.
It is impending,
Heavy,
And it blankets and submerges
Like dreamless sleep.

The dark of my night is all-encompassing.
It wants to make me like it.
To fade me into static
And overwhelm me.

The dark of my night is without answer
Resonating echoes breaking like waves along my rib bones
Reverberating in the hollow cavity of my skull
Rattling the rice-grain small bones of my inner ear.

The dark of my night is haunting.
It sleeps and dreams of me,
Awake,
And pawing my way through it
With eyes closed.
It hides in still pools underground
In swaths of twilight fog
In places still untouched by the human gaze.

The dark of my night is motionless
And mute
And numb.

"poetry's dead,"
he wrote.

See "Laws of Physics"

1. You will have a body.
2. You will have a mind.
3. You can do whatever you want with either.
4. You will hurt.
5. You will feel joy.
6. Love is not guaranteed, though it is a possibility.
7. You do not owe anyone anything. Although, (see rule 8), people may decide you do.
8. Some people will be more powerful than you. This can mean influence, size, weapons, or intelligence.
9. There are no laws (excepting the Laws of Physics). Although, (see rule 8), people may decide there are.
10. You will not have time to see it all.
11. You cannot choose to whom, or where, you are born.
12. You will die.
13. Any prospective afterlife will not be revealed until after the time of death.

These are the rules. They are entirely non-negotiable. Should you find them agreeable, you are welcome to experience life and all it has to offer. Life is non-refundable. Life cannot be re-sold. Life is without material value.

To proceed, please sign here-


X__________

I rattle on like the wind if you let me
I make a million plans a minute
To go a million places
And **** a million women.
I spin silken sterling yarn with my silver tongue
But I can't do much else.
Not too surprisingly, plenty of people don't care for me.
And for a while I was among them-
The product of an overanalytical mind and a policy of no-******* cynical honesty (or maybe honest cynicism), I suppose.

However, on my good days I know it to be true, that I
Can't change them, can't change me.
Why try?

I was built
To fly by the seat of my pants
And try to use my best judgement-
Though I'm probably going to lose my mind
And all my money
And friends
In the process.

We'll see.

The road stretches infinitely onward,
To the bitter end-

God knows I'll get there someday.

The night's cold.
Cigarette smoke's silken silhouette
on the steam trail
off my breath.
Defiantly shivering-
no, I will finish it
the cherry- red
down to the last futile drag
and me,
the only living thing
in earshot, breathing on
and godsbedamned
I sit
despite winter's frigid grip
just like snoop dog said-
smoke til the last hit
but I fired and missed
and there's something I missed here
though the air is all clear
and I can't hear anything
but a heartbeat-
beat-
beat-
under the empty stars
I penned these few bars
to keep my hands warm
to make the blood flow-
everything's hallowed and hollow
especially me.

We seek love because in love we are validated in our perfect flaws and exactitude of malformation and in love we are given reason not to hate ourselves for the things we see are wrong but cannot change even if we spent a millenia in an instant or infinite instants in eternity struggling to shake off the shackles of our humanity which is both our captor and liberator in this,
life,
yes we recognize its importance in allowing us to be but we spend the congregation of moments we are given in that holy being damning it, for it also makes us imperfect and in our imperfections is the capacity to do harm unto the world which we love so much,
and so,
we equate these imperfections with evil and seek to expunge them with all our might of will and all our cleverness of wit and all our screaming and pounding and passion of
soul,
but it is all in vain for these things which we despise so greatly are joined at the sutures with our very being and hence have many good but troubled lambs of the internal apocalypse chosen to end that being for sake of ending that malformation, though they know this is wrong, but it is the only solution in trying to remove the weight of one’s existence and hence the weight of existence from one’s mind and so they sleep easily,
unbreathing,
unknowing,
and having completely cleansed the burden of themselves from this immaculate and gorgeous universe which they love so, but they are also
unloved.

And it is in love that we are validated, both in our perfect flaws and exactitude of malformation,
it is in love that our weight on the world is not lifted, no, but counterbalanced and nullified,
and in that way,
we are set free.

Looking out this double-paned plate glass window into the gray frigidity and red-leaved bitterness of October in one of the last wild and still-untamed bastions of freedom in the west at the mountains thinking about how even they are moving, my darling, and how the spaces in between them are growing just like the space in between the sun and the earth and the space between all the galaxies all at once and the space between the spaces between the world and I and soon I’ll just be floating all by my lonesome in some swirling pool of- not air, no, not even air, just nothingness and watching everything float away like disappearing city limits from the tailgate of a truck on cruise control zipping across the badlands and maybe you’ll be there but going the opposite way and there’ll be nothing to do but watch it all go, go, go, til it’s
gone, gone, gone

When it's October 12th-
When it's a sunny Sunday afternoon
In the fall
When you're curled up in your comfiest sweater
Next to a purring cat curled up in his
And you sit in front of the bay windows of your home
Watching the clouds and cars and wind roll by
Carrying burning yellow leaves
In the updrafts.

When you want something,
but you don't know what.
Maybe it's a want to want,
misplaced in hopes of filling
the ever-present void in you.
Maybe it's happiness.

Maybe it's as close as you'll ever get.

Either way,
Maybe it's enough.

When you want something,
but you don't know what.
Maybe it's a want to want,
misplaced in hopes of filling
the ever-present void in you.
Maybe it's happiness.

Maybe it's as close as you'll ever get.

The talent is what we wake up with
And it has got nothing to do with
Being good,
Because everyone has at least some
Ability to do something
In the beginning.

The soul we all have
It's just a question first,
Of volume, second,
Of whether or not we lose it and third,
Of how well we interpret it.
It's the grit
In the battle-cry
It's the blood
On our fingers as we work the neck
Of some great instrument,
Playing on despite the insignificant pain,
With wet strings.
It's the vibration
In shaky muscles clenched
In complete and utter control
To hold a pose for a moment,
And flow into the next.

Skill's the hardest.
And it's got nothing to do
With perfection.
Perfection's an antiquated lie-
No, skill's greater, more intangible
Skill is turning typos into plot movements
And a missed note into a syncopated part of the beat
And each stumble
Into part of the dance.
Skill's in improvisation
Because error is unavoidable.
And when computers and amateurs err,
They freeze up and break down.

A skilled artist knows better-
Knows the mistakes are all just part
Of the grand scheme,
More a product of divine inspiration
Than anything we could have
Meant to do.

There is something magical
in the whirring
of a midday laundromat.
A cessation of pride,
maybe.
People all dressed in sweatpants
the air full of detergent smell
and the sound of coins clicking
against great tumblers
as they go round
and round
and round
and round...

The people smile back,
no use pretending superiority here.
Whistlers twitter on, folding towels and socks into neat, organized piles.
The children are well behaved,
their hands full of potato chips
given by their parents as a pittance for their patience.
The patient patrons
ponder on,
their empty hands crumpling receipts.
This, with the crunching of chips
and the distant whistle
over the percussion of clicking
coins clattering
in a dryer
compose an unintentional opera,

an ode to humility.

Humility's honorable honesty heals humanity's hubris.

Noisy trucks pass outside the floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows,
Where the hot air wreaks its violence
and men make their ways

in spite.

The clouds are on fire-
puffs of vapor burning umber, leaving dark trails of ash in the east.

The watery sky takes no notice.

to be a stone worn smooth in the bed of a river rushing to parts unknown, save for the banks and bits of cattail being dragged downstream by a million hungry hands, broken up into the smallest constituent parts by a million groping mouths and spit back out into mother ocean's wide accepting embrace and stirred into a stew of bones and various creatures picking them clean, many of which know not the existence of anything above the surface save for warmth and light, like the embryo turning fetus which also swims in a sea of nourishment, also cradled in mother ocean's loving arms, also perfectly content to feel the light of the outside from a distance until, in time, when the descendants of the same coalition of cells that once made up the body of that fetus breaks back down to atoms, flesh feeding new cattails and a million tenacious sets of teeth, slowly washes back into a rushing river where I sit,
a stone worn smooth,

                                                        ­                       watching it all.

When the sun rises over the mountains,
the air is still cool,
                   meaning that by the end of the day,
                                          when the sun has crossed
                         the main ridge and gives light to
                                    the other side the air is hot
                                                             ­    and dry.
                   This means that trees growing on the
                                         northeast face of any given
                         mountains flourish, while the southwest face
                                                        is generally left barren-

              there are, however, always a few brave
                                    tufts of foliage
                         who dare to challenge the
                                                       infernal heat
                                        and survive.

                                                       ­                                      so too,
                                                            ­                        with people.

Life.

Life is, at its best and its worst, pure, unadulterated madness. The moments when we laugh and cry or we cry and laugh. The moments when we scream at the top of our lungs. The moments when we smile sadly. The moments when we collapse on the floor because it's all too much.

Love.

Love changes so much. From the first embrace of a warm body, kicking and screaming, to the last. From being loved to loving, yourself, and then loving yourself. And all of them are as different as the colors in the rainbow- gradient shades of warming light. Many things of one kind- or maybe many kinds of one thing.

But here we are. Where else would we be- no, Where else could we be? And here it all is. Just where we left it. Like coming home from vacation to find not a crumb out of place.
We are dynamically static, waves in an ocean, snowflakes in a blizzard, grains of sand in the wind-whipped dunes.

Together we hum a vibrant chord in the key of being, the vibrating thrum of bees busy at work to keep the scaffolding of what is from collapsing.

And here we all are. Here we are and everything is different but nothing has changed.

Where else could we be?

Late nights alone.
Doesn't really matter which.
Sure, I could go get laid.
but that wouldn't even begin to bandage my problems.
Sure, I could watch some girl with daddy issues ******* in a chat room.
but that wouldn't even begin to fill the void in me.
And sure, I could drink this whiskey,
and I could pass out again.
In fact, I think I just might.
In my dreams I don't have to be lonely.
I can see the curl of your hair splayed in fresh grass.
In my dreams there's no difference.
And this whiskey's just going to help me get there,

right?

That's all we ever wanted anyway, right?
To love and be loved back
to trust and be trusted
to push,
and feel some *******
RESISTANCE
for jesus christ sakes?

Or maybe not.
I'm starting to think it's just me.

It seems the world's perfectly happy
with their g strings
their foam parties
their cam girls
their sitcoms,

their pleasure.

but not mine.

That's the thing about
individuality.
If you're doing it right,
it's terribly lonely.

When I was young,
and knew nothing of death,
I remember looking from my bedroom window
into the branches of the cherry tree on the opposite side
and seeing a nest full of blue eggs,
still ripening.

I watched it all summer,
each day checking to see if the
new birds had come fully into
life.
One day, playing in the back yard,
I found their discarded shells lying on the ground,
now useless.
I remember the feeling of numinous awe
as I inspected them, knowing the little birds
were elsewhere now.
It was so simple, so effortless,
but so penetrating.

And now I have seen death
by car accidents, on nameless roads
by cancer, in hospital beds
by violence, in supermarket parking lots.
quick death and slow death
painful and painless
with grace
and without.
And now I feel fearful.
Not for myself,
but a simple, effortless
penetrating feeling.

Such is the cycle of life,
whether I am present
to watch its digression,

or not.

Crushed to death
under falling leaves
Drowned
by torrential rain
scorched by sun,
and fades away,
and never speaks again

the sober simply sickening
sapping all my electricity
the waking under midday light’s
reflecting off the mirror tiles
I placed this all beneath me but
it always ******* backfires

Crushed
under a thousand falling leaves
Drowned
by a million drops of acid rain
scorched by the sun
and fades away,
and never ever speaks again

Shining black, incandescent
watermarks that line the present
and presently I can perceive
a personage, just above me
It speaks nonstop and slowly
and never ever ******* leaves

Crushed
under a thousand falling leaves
Drowned
by a million drops of acid rain
scorched by the sun
and fades away,
and never ever speaks again

crushed to death
and fades away
autumn leaves became a grave
drowned by rain
never speaks again
the undertow of passing waves

the autumn leaves became a grave
the undertow of passing waves.

liquid light
oozing over
solid sound,
gasping gas.
static singing
focal filaments,
breaking brains.
lightning licks the
devilish dervish,
knighted king, the

anointed anarchist antichrist,

now nowhere.

It's like being stuck on the same simple simile
something or other about the sunshine and your smile
waking up to a single sheet
bare feet, frozen
black coffee, scalding
Sweeping winds tousling hair just like
  someone.

What to do, what to do,
when even dreams are not a refuge?
What are you, what are you,
another smoking pile of refuse?

What's new with you?
Don't look so confused.

I'm sticking around like dead leaves in gutters
A sudden remembrance about something or other
Waking up to a single light
bare hands, sweaty
open mouth, dry
Pouring rain drenching clothes just like
  somewhere.

What to do, what to do,
when even dreams are not a refuge?
What are you, what are you,
another smoking pile of refuse?

And you haven't got a clue.
Don't be so amused.

A million tiny pinpricks
the brightness of the sun
they would blind you
if you looked right at them.

A thousand earsplitting whispers
wishing you well,
pushing you on
they would deafen you
if you hadn't already stopped hearing them.

A sea of faces
fades into black before the horizon
if you didn't know not to
acknowledge them,
you might.

Someday,
years from now I can guarantee
those million spotlights
will blind you

those thousand voices
will drown out your own

that sea of faces will look back
Confused(?)
Disgusted(?)
or worse

disinterested

Fifteen minutes is up.

I used to make believe
In the stability of unity
And unified individually

Until the knot came undone
And I hung a hairsbreadth
Above oblivion

We built up Rome in a day
And for a while it was great
But I should have known
Easy come, easy go
You're gilded and I was sold
So we glimmered like fool's gold

Just Like fool's gold

I used to make believe
You and I were lost
interchangeably and there
Was a surety in security
But gold's just rust in training
And all time's wasted waiting

But you're not waiting any more

We built up Rome in a day
And for a while it was great
But I should have known,
Easy come, easy go
You were gilded, I was sold
And we glittered like fool's gold
So it's no surprise I find
That I'm better off alone

Should have known from the start
You cried easy and came hard
You were gilded, I was sold
It was nothing but fool's gold

Out the ***** double-paned window one would first notice that it's unbearably hot.
The metal box in my window is humming a metallic symphony as it blows
cold, electric salvation into my greenish-brownish, moldy, moth-eaten room.
A white van drives down the street. I know this guy, I've seen him before.
Well, maybe not him but the van.
He's peddling poison, not the prescription ****,
but the **** that makes you need to self-medicate
with more.
Upon close inspection one may see the used ******
and two ***** needles
lying in the gutter.
Across the street, in the "yard" in front of the projects
there's kids playing tag.
At the end of the street there's a corner store where the toothless
and their pimps shout at passers by
a guy storms out the door, ticked off that he didn't win enough
quarters on the "arcade game" inside for a tall boy.
One of the pimps shouts at a girl across the street
as a coke (crack?) dealer slowly cruises by on a bike,
his flag hanging out of his back pocket so there's no
confusion
about how he affiliates himself.
The kids are running through the stream of a hose and
laughing and
laughing.
The have no idea where they are.

I get up to open the window,
trying to create some kind of breeze,
any kind of breeze.
I raise my beer to the neighbor, waving from his lawn.
As I sit back down a procession of sirens passes our street.
as they pass I hear the children laugh and somebody at the corner store shouting.
Hustling.
everybody but the kids is hustling and the sirens are wailing and it is
so
****
hot.

The best part
Of wakeful life now
Is the hazy
Twenty seconds of consciousness
On either end of sleep
(When I may as well not exist).
Because in that diluted fog

I don't feel anything.

I don't feel sick
To my stomach
I don't feel
The crushing weight of reality
I don't feel good
About the good times
Or bad
About right now
I don't feel

Anything at all.

And it's wonderful.

I'm feeling
Bitter.
And all this stupid
Pretentious hippy
"Spirituality"
****
Is just getting old
Or maybe I'm just getting
Older
And I'm seeing how all these
Burnouts in tie-dye
Appear friendly
But they're not talking to you,
Just your girlfriend.

"Free love, man."

They're scumbags just like the
Scumbags in suits they hate so much
Or the rocker scumbags who are
Mysoginistic
Just like them.

This
Self-brainwashing
Is getting old and I'm getting sick of
Being lied to,
By them and by me.

the truth is nobody knows
What's going on in the universe,
No matter how much of a
Shaman
They claim to be or how much
Peyote
They smoke.
And anybody who claims to
Is
Selling
Something-
Be it glassware pendants
Or ****
Or their throbbing
*****.

This hippy ******* is a bastardization
Of an image
Of a faded picture
Of a set of ideals
Thought up fifty years ago
That only ever really worked on paper
Anyway.

For some people,
Reality is too much to bear.
For some people,
The weight of the air in their lungs
Is too heavy to hold
And for some
Just living is
too much.

Call it insanity if you want
Go ahead, cast that stone
if you want

I call it a hyper-awareness.
And maybe a mind with too
logical a view of how
Illogical
It all is and how
Tragically
Ironic life is and how
Impending
Our doom is.

I know a fair few of these.
They are mostly good, kind people
Who have too good an understanding of the words
"Infinite"
And
"Nothing"
And of the point where those two words meet.

So to my friends who want to end it
Because they see too much every day
Who can't breathe because they're
Drowning in rising water-
I hope you live long enough to find
A reason to.
Because I am confident
That like with all things,
If you persist in looking

You will succeed in finding.

Don't breathe long and slow-
don't be carried downstream by the current
of the universe-
Fight!
Thrash and writhe and wriggle with all your might.
And of zen, well...

**** zen!
We are alive that we can go against
that mighty current-
for a while.
Don't waste your time in stillness!
Don't accept!
Be loud and fast, and fly in your own direction.

There will be time to be still,
there will be time to accept,
there will be time to dissolve into homogeneity,
more than enough time.

Don't squander the opportunity
to fight,
to resist,

to live.

You asked me why I would ever want to
be with you
and I said
"Really?"
and you said
"After having gotten to know me better, and learning all the problems I have,
is it really worth the time?"

Really,
I just want you to remember that
I kiss you
even when you smoke Marlboro Blacks.
And I'd kiss you if you smoked
Cloves
or even GPC's.
And if you ever decide to quit I'll be 100% behind you
(Because honestly blacks taste awful)
(And because they're terrible anyway)--
But if not,
I'll still be happy to kiss your
cigarette lips.

Because they're still your lips-
no matter how they taste.
And because they're worth it.

Interchangeability.
affixed to loss, affixed to
     loss of limb, or
             worse.
                                              She has the
                                              wildest hair.
                                      So wild it almost makes
                                            her look tame,
                                                   by
                                comparison. and she talks
                                            of magic,
                     no,
                         she talks magic.
                                      she speaks in smoke rings
                                             and with the light of god nestled
                                                            in her bounteous hair
                   those smoke rings float up to form
       halos
                    cresting her brow

                                           shining inner light out.
                                              she is lost.
or I am lost.
       either or, but not both.
we are interchangeably lost
                        and it is not that we are less lost together,
  simply that we are together,
              and that means
                     no matter
              how
                                                      ­    l
                                                           ­                                                              o
                              s
                               ­                                                     t
       ­  we become,
    we are found.

    I
          am:
Lost in liberation
                    in victory
                    in security
                    in madness
                    in
                      her.