A Monday morning in Richmond
     is like waking up with your head
   shaking with commotion.

You pray while you take a dump.
       You end up going across the street to Starbucks,
    with three-sixty left on your credit card.

For some reason unbeknownst to you,
you feel that you're a Renaissance artist,
brought to earth to perform studies on human beings.

Little by little you realize that you're the son of God.
There's a moldy tennis ball in
your pocket labeled: God.

Rap, or is it, Rock music that pumps through your ears?
And you're not afraid anymore.
You start to notice the handwritten facade built around your surroundings.

The State Farm billboards
perched above the scaffolding.
Your nose drizzles with crimson.

Memories of the Christopher Walken Impersonator stains the keyboard.
There is no real difference between the garbage man
and your best friend, the one who supplies you with mescaline.

And the comedown feels like a Indian Monsoon.
Electrocute your senses
until you've turned numb to your baby sister Victoria.

The Toyota Avalon cruising up
the street corner with the yellow high beams
is not the white witch from The Wizard of Oz.

Trip falls.
Inhale smoke.
Speculate more.

Dirigibles in the clear, blue sky plummet down.
You listen to your parents while you're high on *****,
wondering why mom dukes looks like Johnny Depp.

Fingers tremble as you try to type out
a handwritten letter from prison.
You meant to text message your mom, "Happy Mother's Day."

And instead
you typed out to her,
"Happy Birthday Mother!"

Lows and highs permeate through your heart.
Caving in, the walls crush into each other.
That girl was married and you gave her a head start on life.

You stole your best friend's birthday money to buy M. You tell yourself everything
is going to be okay as you swivel in your leather recliner,
A ****** dollar bill jammed up your left nostril.

Long, blue rails dotting the wrinkled notebook paper,
used up from the last owner. You
can't stop coughing.

You throw up on your clothes.
And you start to think that
maybe you are ******* up and you can't stop without an intervention.

Then
you start to think,
maybe this is all in my head.

The cold wind nips at your exposed ankles.
Red sores develop on the back of your elbows.
Local pariah is far away from his hometown.

Your favorite Uncle has stage 4 lung cancer,
and you're chain smoking menthols
to ease the edge that splits your brain in half each morning.

What is struggle without the lost—
without the success on the other side of sanity?
You pop prescriptions to ward off the insects gnawing away at your eyeballs.

Gouge your intestines with a straight edged blade bought
from the dollar store.
Ode to Keroauc.

The unholy manuscript written with pen and needle.
Cool story bro.
But you have nothing, but mistakes to offer to this unjust world.

And earth continues to spin on an uneven axis.
When it comes to a point where fiction and nonfiction
        are void of speculation.

           When it comes to the point where reality and dreams coincide
and you begin to stumble
over your shoelaces that are tied.

When it comes to a point where
               your enemies and friends seem the same that is the point
when you attempt to sleep.

But sleep will always allude you, you Danny Art
          So read your poetry aloud to the unsung.
To the sleepless.

The Walkers dressed in rags approach you,
smoking on black and milds, dark rings
circling their eyelids.  

And the time of night which you so longingly search for
in the face of listening to The Dark Knight soundtrack, gives you a pulse, a sudden click that boosts you into peril.

That bloodstain drenching
the corner of your eye sweats profusely. And that's when you start to wonder:
is everything that I'm doing baked in fallacy and witchcraft?

The comedown.
The comedown.
The comedown.

You are the burden of my fellow constituents, lost in reverie,
gone in madness, forlorn from deeds,
that are too great to imagine.

Your tears mean nothing
in comparison
to the world at large.

And that's okay.
And that's okay.
And that's okay.


You begin to discover,
that you do not write poetry,
but you write greeting cards in a journal.

Or a pen and pad,
ink
and blood.

The first apartment I ever called my own
Complete with kitchen, bathroom and twin bed
No mom, no dad
But a living room with a rickety couch
And ugly blue carpets, with cigarette burns
Even though smoking wasn't allowed

They bulldozed it to the ground
It's a big parking lot now
Full of those tiny rocks
The annoying ones that get stuck in your shoes
They bulldozed my first apartment
And a few of my other firsts

Like the first time I thought I was in love
And I waited nervously
In front of the heavy, wooden door
And he came in with a mission
Because drinking and ripping bongs
Melted away any nerves he may have had

I wondered if I'd shudder when the moment finally came
If I'd get red in the face - hot from the pressure
Would my arms turn splotchy?
Would my chest turn red?
Turning me into some diseased-looking freak
As opposed to the pretty, young thing
I'd wanted him to make love to
If only I knew,
That he wouldn't notice any of that

He didn't ask me if I was sure
Like guys do in the movies
And he told me what I wanted to hear
And bent me in ways someone with no experience
Should not be bent
And the TV was on in my very first living room
The whole time - the History Channel
I listened to the low hum
You could hear it through the walls
Despite what was supposed to be
A lifelong, loving memory,
I learned about World War II

My twin bed had pink sheets with white stripes
And a pink comforter too
And the next week he forgot my 19th birthday
And I don't know what I expected
But it was OK - I said it was OK
Because I had my own apartment
And my own kitchen
That I can't ever recall cooking in
And I had my pink sheets
That didn't feel so innocent anymore

Table, chairs, fridge and freezer
I had all of that.
Frozen dinners and plastic handles of *****
Not all memories are worth remembering
Sometimes, they just get bulldozed

Constellations spoke no words at all
when they could right interfere,
some missing points to draw a line
maybe the ones I've never had.

When the day comes it's already gone,
back and forth, in the end stuck here
for reality is my thorn and my spine,
then I can't separate good from bad.

The measure of time won't be long
so it's been what until now I steered,
there isn't more than meets the eye
I'll never know myself what's inside my head.