A buddy of mine
Hes gotten into some real bad ways
You'd never know it by looking at him
He seems nice
Put together
Smells like Irish Spring
Packs his own lunch
Keeps a girlfriend around enough to call her a girlfriend

We grew up together
He taught me about a lot of things
In my innocence and subsequently
My stupidity
His views were always skewed
But they were pure
He just said what he thought
We consummated our friendship by ramming our bikes into each others shins
Until someone bled

Eventually, like most people
He took on a nasty habit
Of regurgitating other peoples opinions

The girlfriend that he keeps around
He got drunk on new years
And passed out on the couch
And woke up in such a rage
That he smashed most of the furniture in his apartment
And bit her on the hand

He never told anyone what he was so mad about
He just pleaded with the cops not to take him to jail again
Last time he was there he was so hammered
That he masturbated in the corner of the holding cell
While screaming about fascist pigs
I think the cops were relieved when she didn't press charges

He also thought that she was ******* her brother at one point
He was completely convinced by a few misinterpreted words
And cried so much at work that they had to send him home
Turns out it was completely fabricated  

Like his mother
He feeds into baseless paranoia
It's eating away at his brain like a fungus
Branching out into sticky webs and toadstools
Choking off the few emerald vines of sanity he has left
Until the ends turn brittle and snap like matchsticks

I feel bad that I ignore most of his texts and calls
But I don't think that friends should try to use you
The way that a panicked airline crash survivor attempts to use their seat cushion
When they're navigating flaming wreckage
In the middle of the ocean

That said
Sometimes I still see the person I used to know
His doll eyes soften and the cataracts of self conviction clear
And it's like watching someone crawl out of a bomb shelter
And see the sun for the first time in years

But then
Half a fifth of liquor is missing
And he's ranting nonsensically
Peeling the paint with his breath
And I do my best to laugh along until I can slip out the door

On my way home
With the windows down and the sunroof open
With the cool air rushing around me
I usually realize how I could have been dealt the same hand he was
And I stare up at the hole punched stars
Until the car drifts onto the gravel covered shoulder
And the rumble strip makes my tires groan

Randy was a roach
Of the american cockroach variety
He was a deep brown and had a sickly shine
To his wings and antennae
And he studied both of us
From a perch in our suitcase
In my girlfriend's East Harlem apartment
In the early hours of a sunday morning

"**** it! Get it out of the suitcase!"
My girlfriend yelled
Flailing her arms
As Randy reclined on our valuables
His antennae twitching

As in most crisis
I hesitated
And Randy burrowed into the suitcase
Past the underwear, collard shirts, and sunscreen

I dug in a frenzy
Rending my girlfriend's meticulous packing plan
And scattering clothes about
All in the name of meaningless destruction

But I couldn't find Randy
"He's probably in the collar of one of your shirts, or in a pair of my shoes"
My girlfriend speculated
And I started shaking the clothes wildly about the room
Wanting more than anything to extinguish Randy's life
To sterilize our newfound stowaways presence
But I never found him
And Randy boarded the plane with us to ***** Cana

While our plane painted dizzying contrails over the ocean
We speculated about Randy's
Most likely devious activities
"I bet he's eating the granola bars under my bikinis"
"I bet there is more than one in there"
"Maybe he's dead?"
"I bet he's laying eggs"
We both pondered over the fact that Randy could be Rhonda
And that we would open the suitcase to a scattering of near microscopic progeny
And we clutched each other in the cold, recycled air of the cabin

When we got to the room
Past all the tin shacks and open air bars
Where the locals sat in plastic lawn chairs
Staring at the tourist shuttles
That carted pale skin behind tinted windows
To decadently decorated rooms where the towels were folded into swans
We opened the bag to see if Randy
Had surfaced, died, or multiplied

But Randy was no where to be seen , a phantom
We unpacked everything under the utmost scrutiny
Not trusting any of the items we had packed so lovingly and repacked
Shaking cover ups and tee shirts like the wind shakes the leaves in autumn
But he never presented himself
And we saw none of his foul brood
We even unzipped the lining
But Randy had simply vanished
Evaporating into the humid, tropical air

I like to think that Randy is somewhere on the island still
That he has impregnated or has been impregnated
That he spends his days under the intense sun
And cottony wisps of clouds
Sipping Presidente
Sitting under an umbrella made of dried palm fronds
Happy to be away from the honking horns and crowded subways
Just like we were

There was a particularly nasty looking garden spider
Crawling up the cracked molding of my window
Not that he looked particularly nasty compared to other spiders
In fact, up close, spiders are one of the wisest looking creatures that exist

But I don't have eight eyes like the garden spider
So I can't see that without the help of a camera lens
So to me, he just looked
Nasty

Buzzing from behind my curtain
A particularly nasty looking yellow jacket
Landed next to the spider
I didn't need a camera lens
Close up or far away
Some things are just
Evil

The spider must have sensed this too
With a leap
He grappled the wasp
And they tumbled
Buzzing
To my uneven hardwood floor
Landing with a small
Distinct plink

And I stood over them
While they tussled

As I have stood over a million things

Watching with glazed indifference
While creatures purer in their existence than I
Fought for their lives

I could see that the spider was doing poorly
The yellow jacket was giving it to him in the abdomen
Jamming his stinger in and pulling it out and jamming it in again
Until the spider started leaking white and green
And started fighting less and less

The yellow jacket
Smugly victorious
Save one crippled wing
Started to putter away
But I brought a rolled up newspaper down on the both of them
Like a pillar falling from the front of some great Roman temple
When the Gauls sacked it

Retracting the paper
They had both been reduced to wet smudges
I felt bad for killing the spider
I wish I could have trapped him in cup with a card over the top
And placed him outside on a leaf in the garden
So he could rule where he was meant to

But I considered it an act of mercy
I couldn't stand to see a noble being end like that
And you should always ***** out evil
If you have an opening

I sat back on my bed
Considering it a wash
A bit of beauty for a bit of order
As it has always been

I guess my poems are a little too
Long Winded
Your interest gets blown away
In a monsoon strength gust of
Boredom

Be that as it may
I'll still scratch those bumps that
Show up on my knuckles from time to time

And I'll still keep that empty bottle of shampoo in my shower
And that translucent bar of used soap stuck to the floor
I'll step on it and pretend
That I don't notice

The clouds will gallop by
Polyps will form in my colon
My hair will gray
And so will yours
And one day
Hopefully
We'll both sit in a home
With a plastic mask strapped to our face
Long Winded
Trying to breath the air of
A changing time.

I wish that I could take the hollowness inside of me
And hold it in the palm of my hand.
I wish that I could hand it to someone
And say to them
"See, this is why I feel the way I do sometimes"
And they would nod
And everyone would feel bad
But then everyone would feel good because
They may finally understand

But what do I have to be upset about?
I've never had a real experience in my life
I waste most of my money
On video games and vinyl
And taking my girlfriend out to restaurants in the city
But I'm never strapped for cash
My bank account rarely suffers

I've never felt alive in my entire life
I spend my friday nights alone
Drinking expensive IPAs
And surfing the web

A perfectly meaningless existence

I work a full time job
And get by by telling people that there is more to me
That I'm working on something
A fantasy piece
Some poetry
"That book will be coming along any time"
When I have never written a single page

The more time you spend talking about it
The less time you actually spend doing it

I have delusions where I am rich and famous
The public grabbing for my alligator boots
My words engraved on great marble slabs in the town square

Delusions are delusions because there is no process
Instead,
The desired effect is already achieved
There are never details
Just the desired ending
Like a fairy tale

There is a point in your life
Where you should focus on the immediate

Job Searches
401 Ks
Retirement plans
Everything that makes you ******* miserable
To think about in the least

But you will always have the id
The uncooperative
You will do the things you want to do
And you will hate yourself for it

You will play Rocket League
And you will watch **** and ******* insistently
Because your girlfriend is two states away
And everyone likes you
But they like the cardboard cutout
The mutant
The heretic

There is the real you
In all its whiskey soaked glory
Behaving
As Elliot said
As the wind behaves

There is no rhyme
Or reason
To happiness
It is a spent cigarette ****
A used ******
An empty beer bottle

It is whatever makes you forget
Let it detach you
Let it separate you
Breathe disgusting, choking clouds

Understand that
No matter how many people
Or how many organizations
Or how many missed strokes you have on the keys >/0-
Or how many publishing companies
Or corporate
******* bloodsuckers
Tell you how useless you are

You are a beautiful mixed bag
Something so complicated and implicit
That you can not be defined by a single term
Take pride in that
And **** everybody else

Leave all the bloated corpses by the wayside
Take vacations
Drink good *****
Play video games until the politicians
Consider you a threat

Stop considering everyone else
And consider
Just once
Yourself

It’s a hulking tank of a car
Copper colored
The emblem on the steering wheel is dented
I punched it when I got cut off on 95
Trying to honk at the BMW that swerved into my lane
Without using a turn signal

The stereo too
The face is cracked
The glass is blemished
It ate one of my tapes
So I caught it with a solid right
And sent a spider web etching through it

The passenger’s side floor is littered with garbage
Cans, wrappers, plastic bottles, receipts, pine needles, pens and pencils
It sounds like a junkyard wind chime
When I break too quickly
And the air doesn’t work anymore
I had a guy I know
Cross some wires and tubes
So that the heat worked
I figured back sweat
Is better than frostbite

The back seat is torn to ****
I had the back tire off my mountain bike when I was driving it somewhere
And some sharp protrusion
I couldn’t even tell you what it’s called
Caught the leather seat and gave it a nice ****
And a few peppered puncture marks

It had a six CD changer in the trunk until it broke
My dad
(it was originally his car)
Got it installed when he bought it
Because he thought people would try to steal the head unit
I have no idea why

He always said it was such a nice car while he drove it
Then he handed it down to me
Now he never says much about it
He just points out all the little dings and dents
Since the last time he spared a minute to look at it

Apparently,
These kinds of things never happen to him

The people I see driving ’03 Sables on the road
Have one of three hair colors
Blue, white, and mustard yellow
I assume the yellow is supposed to be blond
And they have liver spots on their hands
And they wear big wrap around sunglasses
Like Schwarzenegger in the original Terminator

Sometimes they wave to me
And I wave back
“That guys driving my car!” they must think
But they are driving my car
I just don’t have the chance to stop and tell them

I had some high school kid
Who was learning to drive with his dad
Take a corner too quick
He smacked into the back right door
And slowly pulled over to the side of the road with his hazards on
The dad jumped out of the passenger’s side
Pouring out apologies and nervously wringing his hands
The front of their car
Looked like it had been put through a sausage grinder
My back right door
Looked like it had that morning

I shrugged
And told the nervous dad that it was cool
No one was hurt
No reason to involve insurance
I’ve never had my hand shaken so hard
He jumped in and they sped off
I smiled to myself as the kid took another corner too fast
And careened into traffic

It pulls a little to the right when I drive it now
But it still takes me home
Wherever that may be