Often I feel alone
until I find myself
most at home
sitting in a dark quiet
room, or outside
beneath the moon
blowing smoke rings
around shiny coffin nails
imagining they are glowing
stars, pretending all is well
which beats the living hell
out of feeling lonely
all alone and by myself.

Sometimes just before dusk
after my black mutt’s been fed
I go down to the canebrake
and cut fishing poles for the dead
where the live oaks’ shade
is so thick it'll make you shiver
like a stonemason chiseling
dates in a graveyard by the river
before shadows of the wriggling
bait worms on rusty curved nails I
use for a hook and light in the eyes
of the fishermen begin dwindling.

There’s a 55 gallon drum
in my yard beside the deck
half full of empty bottles
black ashes from burned poems
worthless words, regrets, bad
checks, the busted up scorched
bridge of Kurt Cobain’s Martin D-18E
half finished lyrics, melted Nirvana
vinyls, suicide notes charred and scared
every-bit as sincere as when written.

I can feel the shift
into low now, one shot
one pill, one mile left
to go
I see a light on
up the hill
like most nights
trouble is
ain't nobody
home to talk to
I know
my bruh, Moon
he’s a lonely
old ****, too.

It’s a short walk from here
to Sneads Ferry Cemetery where
the bored to death are buried -
I go there every now and then
and read to them a poem by Lorca
the fortunate who died so young -
bled beneath an olive tree, a fascist
bullet to the head, no pain, I envy that
his fast demise, no boredom -
or surgeon’s knife to try to slice
away the little flowers of the grave
I would take his bullet any day -
before I’m bored, before the blade
before I claim a plot, or take up space
here in this ******* boring place.

There’s a before
                                                     then an after

                 and the in-betweens

      which is all that really matters
  after the beginning~and the ending

we’re born,                                    and we die

                   highs
have a few
                                  a whole lot of
                                                           lows

  but nothing means not a ******* thing
  if you know what I mean, you know?