The brightest
star
isn't in the sky.

You fill your Marlboro blacks
with marijuana and sing off key
all the way through the songs
on 90.1FM.

We turn onto the highway and I
manually
roll down the window and put my head
into the breeze and pray something stops me.
My hair too full of Murray's and American Crew
to really shift in the wind, even as it beats my
eyes shut.

Tell me about your obsessions with blood.
The kid in the back seat can't play guitar,
and the Béla Bartók inspired cacophony
in the gutters of my soul
assure me, "Yeah, it's so ******* easy to be
a 'good person', and maybe you can't
sleep some nights
or
repress anything, everything,
but the hardest smiles are reserved
for those who don't want and maybe
cannot be saved anymore."

Turn off the highways, avenues, streets,
roads, parking lots, radios, lights and minds.
My mother swears to me that Christ said,
"the last shall come first and...",
so I aim for rock bottom and
let the real drummers take a break.
Sink into ceilings and headphones and
products and senses and relish it
with tears in my eyes.

We make our blood toxic to predators
&
we don't fear hurting the people we love,
because we don't love anyone, really.

The brightest star isn't even in the sky,
but not everything that shines reeks of beauty
or significance, or glamor, or assurance, or hope.
Everything could be ******* perfect.
[It excels in mediocrity.]