It is the fault of a firefighter for putting your desires out. The blame of a cop for ruining the smile. The town itself for letting these figures in.

You were burning, happy and alone. The stereo played something in the back round that reminded you of a loss, a loss you must not recover from. The improbable odds of winning that war with mourning. Keep looking at the clock, it never stops.

You wrapped yourself in the blanket on the cold, damp cement floor and noticed the paint peeling off the walls seemed to morph if you stared long enough. It was jail, it was honest. It wasn't the lowest of places but it sure wasn't your desire.

These ******* broke you, only laughing at the shattering of hearts and swearing they were needed for your sake and mine. I guess its always been coming that way, down the line, down the lost direction so many pointed in.

I am now lost with out the chaos, without the dignity of knowing you or I, will be ok in the claws of the madness they call "order". You never needed anyone but yourself. You never needed. you never. You, burning and buried.

November 28th. Been up for 16 hours. Time to lay in bed and do it again tomorrow. Do what? "it" that might mean a drink or a job or a confession. Each day is different. "You are lucky to wake up" said an old man working a train somewhere in North Carolina.

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 don't remember sleeping but I remember you.
I never forgot breathing but I forgot where you were,
I boldly eased outside, obvious to watching eyes.
I made fur coats for pillows and cried.

Too much. To wild for this place. Comfort with me until the end and I still sat there, like a little boy, confused and blind, while your body gave its last twitch or spasm. Lindsey helped me put you on the blanket they so thoughtfully put on the floor for you? For us? I don't know but it wasn't peaceful or calm. My heart raged with anger and feeling of betrayal. Those feelings exist still. I'm no good I decided twice, I walked you to it. The end, but just a beginning of my sorrow I cry driving sometimes and will walk into a store all glassy and red eyed, sobbing. I feel you are ok. I guess that is all anyone wants. I just hoped you'd be great. Not to me, but in your head. I lost

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.

Alas a final touch! Its strange laying for hours waiting for solitude, for your exit.  Of course the time has been reveled in and oh the apprize! But somehow I disesteem your warm arm over me. It can be so hard. Always hard to really love when you just want to be alone. Its so hard to be alone at night and the wind is blowing or the snow is gathering on the outside of your sill. It can be hard. Although I like you here, I find pleasure in your goings a while after your comings. It can be so hard to love.

There is a distant cliff. I can see it coming and its not going away.
There is a chance of going to the edge and there is a chance of turning away.
Once to the edge and once turning. It ended the same.

What a sorry feeling it is to give away trust when you have a choice.
It does not matter
It is just everything.
It is just your life.
Its just this little thing like a hang nail or a splinter or a small burn.
It is you electric bill in the winter when you have the money but the lights outside are to bright and you curse the ******* eddison or tesla.

It is just your life. It is.
You want nothing but the good things and you cant even be good.
You want something. You just haven't figured it out that you needed more than you wanted.
Sleep well now, its time and its earned.
it is last call. it is just your life to spend

I feel my heart palpitating. I put on some music and sit back.
There was a different time and place where I would keep it together but I've decided I no longer would like that.
I know no physical comfort. The comfort that keeps me alive comes in small little pressed pieces of dust.
Sleeping late, waking up to a distant sound of a lawnmower and I am back in my 6 year old bed. Happy.

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.

Three times I know of you escaped
I'm here now and won't let you go, not without fighting
not without me knowing you know WE are fighting.

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

skin cancer and death are different. I only hate one of them.
hours of *** and no ******, I am only sad of one.
Sweetness and phone calls and ghost telephones.
what am I trying to call?

I don't know. I know that whatever soul or force answers I can talk.
I can chat all night. I too will suffer all these things and when I'm in the ether of heaven I will answer the phone. I will explain nothing, I will say to go, go on and pretend it lasts forever. If not you go on towards an ending. Maybe there is none. I know, do you?

Worn out shoes that hurt, no money to resolve the issue. Find a pill or a drink or a friend or a field or the ocean or a bad habbit to soothe thy foot. Thy, there , then. it is all ****** babe. fast food, cigarettes, western medicine, drink or gasoline. The ******* figured out how to get paid and get away with it. It, what is that........its you.

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.

Angels, smoke rising up. Alcohol like a wave crashing inside you. Sometimes you get lonely, but there is usually a reason. Look for angels, have a drink. Take care of yourself

My sweet boy, you've kept me up late some nights.
How beautifully warm you felt all curled up.
Now gone, I have many reason to write.
I'm caught walking and dreaming of you pup.

No words have I, to describe your belly.
A pitter and patter of gentle light.
Still alone I can't help but fill a cup
I've become derelict, aflame with spite!

A drink or two never hurt you my love.
I smell your scent in the walls of my home
You are a living angel from above.
what softly and tender love you have shown.

While whiskey warms my laughing, aching heart.
You are right here A freshly sharpened dart.

We only have so many days and words.
To count them all may take all of our time.
Keep and carry your heart like sheep in herds.
For your heart reveals your love and your crimes.

Chase my heart, my words, in ten syllables.
To carry with us the weight of all grief
Burn my past, null my mind, I’m miserable
Try finding home or some sort of relief.

How should I say that I’d like to go young
People are saving to live past their pain.
When all love is gone and all songs been sung
Let’s meet in heaven and sip nice champagne.

Now off with my head as the sky turns black,
This time here we spent can never come back.

Lost looking prints in snow by gray day.
Ice in boot and cold face, trudging towards child like ideas.
hammer on hip for no particular reason, maybe needed.
It's cold now and the fun is frozen if not gone.
Keep looking at those tracks. Look at the prints behind.
they are never coming back.

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

well the ocean it was honest, said Im guilty of taking some lifes, but I hold more here than you could hear some have never seen the light

my wife well she was sober, said she couldnt find the time so she left  seemed scared with some other guy but I smiled and waved goodbye

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.