Neil young speaks over the radio,
helpless, helpless, helpless.
something in me is ignoring the intoxication,
and rejecting relief from an untamed mind.
but the floor looks like a ceiling in here,
so i know theres enough danger
in my blood to flood the red sea.

all these many deceptions
just running gleefully through my veins.
         and i am
                 finally back
         in Lucerne.
The early morning gray that hovers
over the ambient light
settles in my stomach,
with all of the other toxins,
but that light--
that light is not strong enough to travel
the static air above the clouds where
Pilatus sits, littered with broken windmills
and snow caps in july
its peaks white with my tomorrow.
there is nothing like this wind
that will soon ******* away soon,
into a new love.
To a city that enjoys my drunken presence less,
where i might get the urge to run again,
but inevitably disappear into a collective disaster,
and into men who have fewer things to love with their eyes.

all these symphonic shifts in my pulse
as the universe chuckles
at my attempt
to be a part
of
anything
at
all.

lucerne, your hot smoke hues will
soon be missed once again
as my blood spikes with every word.

seeping in through the sidewalk cracks
hot water burns my hand
and this paper is yellowing by shadow light.
black tea slips down my throat
and a bug is stuck in the honey puddle i leave
behind.

the lights are ugly,
but i'm thinking about Pittsburgh
rolling around over hills and
housing a past lover,
always teeming with the blues
if you listen to the right places.

trapped in capital Nowhere, Ohio,
i miss the city that birthed me
and i'm never going back
to the arms of those
who have held me before,
and i dearly hope
i forget about writing this.

all these sad girls
with naked eyes
and mine, red.
hands full of
a messy mind
and more of
the same shade of
red.

laying down on the ground
in that diner
off the one street
i’m always walking around on,
putting poison in my own
coffee,
tying knots in my hair
and crying about the tomorrows.
and all of those yesterdays
yeah.
i don’t know.

athens is a dizzying place
and here i am
trying to increase the distance
between me
and here, and now.
starting with that boy
who told me
that i was too frightening
to understand— cause
i guess i’m more
and less
than i wanted to be.

or the place i live
falling in on me
while i sleep,
the sad girls with
their naked eyes
and drug addictions.
all of these things
sickening me
through the pasty
walls
i’m between
trying to hide some place
that feels safe
while my father
dies in a state
that is not this state
my mothers
paper hands
on his forehead.
her favorite color;
red.

water
freezing us to shore,
the illusion of safety
and whatever else is left out here.
my clothes on the grass,
his and hers in a tree
this drug—
so unkind to the tortured mind.
i left my brain smeared across the
common room,
with bits and pieces on my best friends cheek
while she cried for me.

i’m walking alone
and i’m tripping through
the softness of a midnight
swing,
we kept talking about
california
like it was a solution
to a problem.

i’m still quite
convinced that it is.

but like i have said before
i’m starting to really lose it
and everyone likes to tell me
that most things aren’t beautiful
and i see it less and less in the
moonshook skylights.

but my friends came over to my house
and it was late
with lots of different vices
and we sink
into our addictions,
maybe they’re not always that bad
if they mean
i can share them with the only people
to watch me shrink under the weight
of all of this ******* agony
still thinking i could paint the sky pink

cause the night time is
always illuminated
with our words that melt into
each others skin.

learning endlessly
about each others atoms
and i want to take the pain away
for whatever its worth and
carry it in my shoes,
walk to the nearest sunrise
and talk for a while longer.

in that light
white makes white go black
and those electric blue
waves of radiation
screws through the skull
hours of poison
pumping through the veins
strings grow brittle
and your will
written on my hands
like you stole something
you wanted me to have.

and i would live my life
over again
a million times
if i got to know you
when you were moved
by wind chimes
and the yellow bugs
that like the yellow flowers
would you have
loved me less if
you knew who i could be?

this whole time i’ve been
drinking salt from the ocean
and when you sleep
pressing one hand to your chest
and one to mine
to remember
you’ve got a heartbeat
that makes moves like mine does
because the blood in my veins
is your blood
and it feels like
a wild fire in my ribcage
when i look in the mirror and
see your nose and chin
and i want to die sometimes
so you don’t have to.
and to hear you laugh
every day because i know
no one laughs enough
anymore

the whole time you’ve
been teaching me
how to live
and what you’d leave
behind