It takes a sinner to make a saint, that’s how it started for me. I laid low the first few hours of the night, breathing in ether and manifestations of every child, adult and kid willing to speak while on the spot. The tall lanky kid on the fence sitting just over the ocean as if he were as mighty as the sea spoke diligently of revolution and “the new scene”. I couldn’t take much more of that and gleefully folded myself into bed. My bed consisted of a backpack for pillow and gas station bathroom walls for shelter. The new ideas and dreams of my surroundings were great, really great; it was saddening to see them die so fast and knowing before even while they burned and screamed “HEAR ME OUT” they were destined to death. Like any person who walks the earth or was convinced being born was a good idea, we are all destined for madness. The idea of dying seems like a made up story when you are nine years old sitting next to your father in the car and listening to him explain that someday he will die, because everyone does. It seems made up when you are woken up by a call “He’s alive but barely, cars wrecked, better get here quick”. Then the celebration of life they have after the life has long left the body. We should really celebrate our lives while we are alive! No ones here to dream or brag of death, the only reason one would **** themselves is to escape the pain of situation they decide they can no longer handle. Handle it, escape it, there is escape in many things. I chain smoke like a chainsaw, always one cigarette after another as the blade continuously revolves one after another to cut through its purpose. I dream long dreams of trains, girls, the south which I no longer dislike and my place here as a son, a brother, a friend and lover. The music I hear is marvelous and alluring. The love I’ve loved is divine and sweet. The ideas I’ve had are irrational and witless. The fires I’ve started are abiding and ageless. The nights I’ve cried are brief and temporary, while all the beauty I’ve seen is constant and everlasting.

Someday  will be cold, dead and stiff as my joints dry and stick.
Underground is nowhere to rest, burning up leaves your bones a mess.
Ocean current, out to sea, That is just not me.
Preserved in ***** for all to see? Maybe you but not for thee.
John Wayne is frozen for years to come,when he thaws, his life still done.   Decaying for years in all these ways,  we all forget we have our day.

I remember all things good and bad you left before shivering cold in a cell like all lost children beaten down by this life. This life that brought you joy and sleep, a sleep you have become petrified of and never can  rest here.  A smile that burns like gasoline into the minds of all men or women with a watchful eye. The laugh you hear in a bar and remember years later. This life brought you horrible crimes that you may, or may not have committed. Standing in front of humanity with one eye shut and the other pointed away, away from all that disgust in society as you were shown. Not all things bad, in fact many things here are good, you know that. The ever frothing lips of the hangmen, he to shall hang in the stomachs of all mankind and all love. The coming of night that brings hopeful chances of bar beauties or highs. One night the three of us were fortunate enough to each **** the night with some women we had found in Hampton. Trains pass by everyday with imaginative faces propped up against the windows, imitating their longing to have unique minds and ideas. You pass by on trains with out a glance, you can not **** a dead man, you never noticed the excitement from your ideas.

         Now I see oceans of faces screaming in decay, they're screaming the songs of victory, victory over this life. The rhythm of ten thousand slaves walking in harmony to the grave with no sympathy. Well past midnight hours you wait for heavenly Valerie to walk past your door and weep, and wearing nothing but her love for you around her neck shouting for you to come, shouting your name. Long before this you lay face down boiling saliva out from around your lips onto the carpet, dying for the chance to return to a  warm afternoon in march or may. You were revived and back home soon after. The cancer in all our eyes, the pain we all felt must stay a burden, never relief from this calamity. Ah yes success and pleasure were not for you then.
    
         I sat writing stories to no avail, never starting with a plot only developing one later. This was how life was written. No reason to expect anything else here, boredom brings excitement then to catastrophe. You held me through most, continuing your amphetamines I only wait for your thundering red heart to give up, give in. Then there will be many nights spent sobbing with regret, explanations to your mother and family and lovers long past. The idea that youth dies before the body should never be, should never be mourning for your ignorance, I spent most of this night writing, not so much of you but to you. I spent all of my money gambling and smoked most of my cigarettes. I went to the door and took in a breath of fresh air, I went to my bed and laid uncomfortable unable to sleep or dream of years before when I slept easy.

                  A pain through your aching legs went forth into the ground. Not all is bad and the continuance of random women in your bed, powders dissolved into your blood, smoke drawn down into your lungs, gas pedals pushed to the floor, alcohol soaking your liver, and memories of a lonely sidewalk in Florida will keep you in this life as a hero of my words.

    Part 2


A compass you laid in my hand, to help me home, always concerned with your friends. I see you now, drinking water from streams in wilderness untouched but by you to survive. Whiskey dried up around the curve of your chin, ***** to ease the days and nights of this life. You have survived 5 stepfathers and one father, a family even you can no longer come to terms with. No heavenly Jenny to tend to your wounds anymore. Fatigued and weary you lay on my doorstep, no sleep with out angelic drink to bring you back down. The clouds above your head never really rain or bring forth storm, not in my stories. The stench of your body as you sleep on the floor laid out like blankets by a mother to her child. A small cut on your wrist filed with ink, a reminder of long past agony that always returns before you can escape it. The sweetness you have left between many a girls thighs, the pain you carry alone, I know, I know.
              
               You thumbed to southern states to make a new home, what home have you made that keeps you in comfort and ease? This goes deeper than alcohol that your liver is always at war with. More so than your mouth that has betrayed your mind and spit out  words you can never take back so you say them again and again. White linen, clean sheets and a clean shave, perfumes and colognes, what are these things? The answer is in your fingers, you have overcome a typical drunk or ***, you may drink all day, you may never find a home but you can not and will not be these things. You are your home, its in the depths of your stomach. West called you but you never came, you never followed a single thing, you went alone and not scared of the fate we all will suffer, not concerned with the poisons or lie or the war in which we all fight just on a simple walk to the store, or to buy a pack of cigarettes. Victorious, lay on my floor! Sleep on my steps! **** for your dinner and lay your seed in her! The most immortal sin you could create would be to leave us with out some kin to look after when you go on that long walk you never come back from. The heights by which we stand while standing next to you, the current we fight swimming through rivers, this all goes back to you! I take my jacket off and put a shot of makers to my mouth, my throat warms and my legs weaken, This life, this pain, this woman, this death, it all grows distant now. You stand while roots of it grow around your feet clinging to your legs to climb closer to your chest and forever take you into its grasp. Just burning any feeling, any memory away, you just keep creating memories for the world who may never take notice of its children like you who make laughter from tears and adventure from stale nights.

          Benjamin, let fall your impression on this sand, let yourself become ash to soon, let not us down but going and going to the end of all this minced horrific times, let not night keep a shadow on your face, let not the world forget these things you did.


Part 3.

You miss your mother! The picture waits right next to your bed. The fire you started with nothing but a bottle of cough syrup and a few dollars is burning my mind and hands till they all blister and come back as a scar that feels ******* to the touch. Driving 94 miles an hour from New Jersey  on interstate 95 over heaves and cracks till they broke the suspension, no care must get home must get home to safe bed with espestis floor and many cigarette burns on the sheets. The shower is running, the heat is barely working. This is no poverty or lack of responsibility its just home. Paint my picture a thousand times and hand it to me from your window with a pipe , its getting warmer the longer we speak. Why not, why not anymore road in America or late night convenience store hang out to pick up women and fresh air. Lay down your guard, leave your problems in that bed and come run through the wicker with us.

I started out feeling a lot older than I should.  Twenty five years old and felt ugly and out of shape. No convincing me the cigarettes and anti anxiety pills had anything to do with it. I remember not so long ago when I was young, I could have swept any girl off her feet, had a good time with nothing at hand to use as conversation. Precisely delivering every word out of my mouth like a surgeon with a scalpel. I would drive pretty girls to the mountains; roll around in fields to grin wide eyed at their thighs. I was young. Complete with friends I grew up with who lived down the street, I honestly felt like I didn’t belong, if they were swimming I was drowning, if they were strong I was weak; when they were sleeping I stayed up shaking. Anyways everyone experiences some sort of solitude growing up. I met a young beautiful girl one night in the street, while she was walking by I said hello and she asked “what do you do around here?” I quickly answered “look for people like you.” It was a cool summer night when I had convinced her the next day to meet me down the street from the hotel her family was staying in. The Colony hotel, complete luxury and high life. Her name was Lilly. She had a strong British accent and I immediately loved her. We were standing on the porch of the Nonantum Hotel . People walking by checking in and out. We sat in the wicker chairs for 4 hours talking about life as if we had lived many lives before. I was seventeen, she was nineteen.  She told me to stand up and when I did she pushed her body against mine and we both pushed up to the post that ran up to the roof. She looked at me and swore to me I had to promise no matter how long, any matter of time pass, I find her so we can spend the rest of our lives arm in arm. She then leaned in and kissed me till I couldn’t breathe. Long passionate and full of emotion, she meant every poke with her tongue and curl of her lips. An older lady walked by and said loud enough for us to hear, “it must be nice to be young.” She had forgotten and I felt like we belonged in the movies as two lovers in a dramatic ending where the women cried in theatres and the men consoled their own heartbreak. We kissed for a while longer, and then I walked her up the street back to the hotel. She was gone, I’d never see her again, nor do I have any plans to find her now. I had the best part of my youth robbed as we all do, and I don’t think I could love her now the way I was sure I could love her then.

The Sea and its salt were in my eyes, snow fell around me and perished in the ocean as I was supposed to as a sailor in 1897 but an arm held me there above where I could breathe and see, 98 miles an hour north on interstate 95 and look ahead 10 feet a stopped car, cut right and behold the exit I was directed to take, but this exit kept me still breathing My heart beats to the pulse of anxiety which is the eternal pulse of fear and suffering, Buddhist sit under a tree find enlightenment but the rhythm of life is to fast to enlighten thee, the current of electricity is to slow to catch up. So there you were standing on an old railroad switch station high above the tracks, whiskey shaking as the train came fast, This particular afternoon meant absolutely nothing to me then, I traded dignity to profit using the word absolutely more times than I care to count, profit I did but at what cost? I spent it all on horses or tables, drove through Lowell and then Worcester, then into Connecticut but was I really important then? Or  should I count the losses and weigh them as gains? Not now little bird, you will just break my heart again, little bird you will just run off again with something new and pathetic, little bird just jump out your window and fly to the pavement below, no one will notice but me, not the ones you chose after or in between.

I just keep falling in love with her all the time. The air seems new like in an early may evening. That feeling you get of comfort and refreshment of breathing in deep and almost tasting it. An old porch door swinging open over beaten and worn down boards, comfort and clarity of a familiar place and time. So how should I specify my love in words? Impossible, words are just that, words. My intention is not to tell her but show her. My intention is to love her not own her, my intention is to kiss her not hurt her, my intention is to need her not incarcerate her, my intention is to whisper all these lovely things into her ear. I could certainly be drunk in emotion, I could certainly be wrong in my trust of her, but what is love with out emotion, what is love without trust, what am I without her? I am myself, a slightly out of step odd man with great aspirations, but what I am with her is complete. The night of great design, the day of accomplishment, the sleep of insomniacs, the lunch of a begger, the time of summer in the warm maine coast.

I think the interview went well he said
I lost my keys though, where are they?
Another night with my legs curled to my arms.
Canadian whiskey is good until Makers 46 hits your lips.

I wait for an hour, I wait for a couple more.
The horse track was not good to me today, I spent my last ten dollars on a favorite to show, he neither shown nor shined. nothing but cigarettes.  Oh the ache, oh the routine.

I was walking through the night, it cleared around me, darkness were clouds. I stepped up to cobblestone and dreamt a dream of sea and salt. I dreamt a dream of sea and salt.

Pass fires, rage like bulls.
Fight storms, cursing like sailors.
Leave home, thrilling Las Vegas.

Bet the farm on it.

Drive cattle, find patterns around you.
Drink long, burn down the yard.
Talk out loud, remember, I'll always love you.

Summer blue sky, it goes on even after us.
Rusty old fence, stand tall after years of neglect.
We are the feeling of calm right before sleep, the echoes bouncing off mountains, the second you push the gas pedal to the floor.
We are losers playing a winning game, thief’s working for an honest days pay, lovers that have gone away.
Forest burns then reaches the desert, it can burn no more. Children screaming from a first scraped knee, polio shot, a slap from their drunken father.
No certain thing lasts forever, no thing is certain.
Right from the ground a tree comes growing, through a branch the buds come out, between two legs we all come, this is certain. Believe everything you ever hear.

It was just after the sun went down, the river ran a marathon under the bridge, the tracks went on into infinite places of old time America revived kicking, screaming as tears ran down her face. The heroes of the country have all laid down their arms, they have all laid down to sleep, or die. The women and wives of all that are laying down are tending to the sick and the sleepy. We are all sleepy, we are all just running like one life is more important than another. I jumped on the rails and balanced myself for a few seconds falling off and feeling failure. We have all cried, we have all wept at dreams on drugs with frail minds. The mind is never dull and the youth of this old place keep it tender. Tender minds and hearts, kind old words and rivers run like this with no time for friends, just ducks, just fish, just branches leaning in, just rock, just tears of the earth, just memories  of the sky, silence from the overgrowing ferns. We to have no time but for love, for hate, for laughing and crying and screaming and sighing.
From atop the old oak tree the wind composes songs sung by sweet tender leaves, I think of you then and cry, We all think of our loves, our loves that dissolved or drowned in the river, or burned to hot and overtook the furnace of the soul. The love oh sweet man, oh sweet woman when did we hurt such beautiful innocent things. Small child wakes to his father, he never asks why, daughter feels best with assurance from her mother, she needs no reasoning . Since the gargling of all mankind choking on all blunder and careless word spilt out over a drink, a smoke, a curious conversation, a head down on the bar 86d dead to the night.
    Rather hysterical minds and kindred hearts always lose the crowd. Rather live in happiness than wealth of greed and disease. Rewarding oneself of amphetamines and alcohol. Deserving of great loves and conflict we are. AI it is all meant and not mistaken.

Oh mankind lead but not dictate, oh mankind drop your bombs somewhere else! Its the end! The end of all men and the end of all children. The weak are striving and the children have all grown up. Cut away your chains, cut away the scars left on bruised wrist.. Oh lady of patience and all Saints help us, believe in man and love. I saw a man die in Boston right there on the ground, covered in his ****** waste and blinded by humility of dying in public. Old man, the dying is done, you were set forth to be free, no public sadness hurt people, makes them humble, makes them live, you old man are now a saint. You have died, right in front on a stage built by you or him or her. The crowd never likes to miss a tragedy from a safe seat. This crowd, forgets, we all die, we all become humbled, we all have no say in saintly demise that so many others have taken before us and left nothing but wonder with tears. You saint old man, you loved in life and will be loved as a corpse, love does not die with you, it dies a hundred years after. Please forgive our saint, our hero, our compassionate martyr, he has dropped in front of many to keep many scared of our day. There is no need to be scared, no need for sadness upon your own soul and picture you so elegantly painted of yourself. He dies, she dies, they die, we all must leave.
      
       So now the fields are overflowing with dew and the field mouse is drinking with a small mouth. The wind is now blowing through factory s and boxcars. The songs of glee and doom are still sung, poor innocent mouse, poor hobo in windy boxcar, yes we do attain enlightenment through our bad days, yes we do learn love on rainy days. Love tracks you down and finds you, you need not search for it.

half drunkard and awkward and weight I have felt,
the last of it all I am sure not been dealt,
the ocean was singing, the sky was amazed,
the bottle I drank from sped up my decay.

To lions and birds, to sheep struck in herds,
the balling of children seems to still go unheard.
Though resting our heads while our minds run and hide,
to beautiful women my eyes still abide,
abide and forgiven by time

The if is an uncertain description of what may be not what already is. Woodshine here alone although cars are full. Taking medications to keep  sanity because they told me I was insane but then I really did go insane. Woodshine through windows and doors all the nights.  Never a word that rhymes in time describing a delerious encounter with the moon. No great line here. Woodshine at darkness of day  through crisp fall cool air. Im no longer crazy or maybe not aware of what really is. Woodshined all through the house and even in the night.

Sky burning, explosion all around. War for money, war for possesion.