I. '88 dakota

mondays still ****. granted i don't get up at the crack of dawn no more but around noon i always feel the need to leave the rest of the day behind me and take the big red monster out and go to the beach and contemplate my life for hours, so i'll reach into my tattered 35 year old prada bag for a lanyard that says "nirvana" on it (like the band, not the stage of buddhism), but then i remember that gas guzzler and i got 337 miles between us, no more, no less.

II. whidbey

on wednesdays i feel like i've shifted into an alternate universe where there are things other than evergreen trees and dirt roads, where the view when i look out the window is an interstate and dagger-like icicles that are as tall as me. maybe it started when they took down the texaco star in freeland and maybe it started the day i left, but i'm not sure if i can remember what home feels like anymore.

III. you*

i still miss you on thursdays, sometimes saturdays. i know, i thought i woulda found someone better by now too till i realized that i'd been giving myself false hope this entire time. no one will ever be you. no one's teeth will curve the same way. no one will ever love the home teams as much as you. no one will ever smile as hard when i give them my last kit-kat in a strip mall parking lot at sunset. they drink to dak prescott and spit wintergreen griz more than you ever did. i thought i would find someone better until i walked into the coldest part of heaven with some crinkled twenty dollar bills and a carharrt jacket.

*-z. vega

I want to do something,
not for you,
something for me,
something gleaming with everlasting renown.

Throughout this fraction of life,
I have grazed this objective
like a lover's fingers
tracing the profound edge's
of the starving artist's spine;
I have tasted that moment of completion
but only in the smallest dose,
like that last drop
that collects around the bottle's rim.

I cannot say this life has been mediocre,
but I yearn for the exceptional.
I'm tired of seeing lesser fools
idolized by fools more talented than them.
I'm tired of the chorus,
let me write a new verse.

And though the greatest agony I bear
is that I may never reach that fabled nirvana,
I hold close the dreams
that make believers out of fools like me.

I wish I were somewhere else
Somewhere not of the world
Somewhere peace
Somewhere love
Somewhere smiles are not false

Nirvana maybe
But the chaos here
does not permit passage

Sometimes the answer is so obvious we're blind to it..
Like asking a fish how the water feels...


"what water?"

I have slipped of tongue in mouth
and spoke of things that have caused doubt
And spoke of anger in trying ways
I've held to sentences for to many days
Peace had never found rest in my mind, or in my spine
I have held to strongly to every thing I've ever known
Because we all want memories when were old,
I know I know, the time it shows.
My past is but a story I tell day after day
Reliving old patterns and feelings in a stagnant way
I've claimed these moments my kingdom
And depression is my throne
And when you peel my skin back
The memories will be present in my bones.

My soul was ****** some time ago
But she brought it out of hell
The way her eyes looked into mine
Gave me new hope in the world and in life
Her fingers fit between mine like keys
Opening doors in myself I've never seen before
And when her lips touched mine
I found nirvana

I'm going to hold onto my birth certificate
like my mother holds onto receipts

and when I write my last rent check
addressed to whomever lives upstairs

I'll knock on the door

and when they open
I'll kindly flash them the paper
which never expires
and I'll ask
for a refund

and they'll say "No,"
"We only accept exchanges,"

and then I think I'll believe in reincarnation.