Saturn is in
line with
Venus tonight
but, nothing's easy
when you're down.
The clowns walk
around, dressed in
yellow; fast food smiles
and cheeseburger
souls, and nothings
easy when you're down.

The dancers with poles
and sadness, that Halloween,
fires burning, childhood
perfumed dreams,
kind of sadness fills the
navy blue night.
I can't find the North star,
and the jack-lanterns lie rotting
in the streets of Nebraska
and Kansas, and the candies
all gone, and the kids wait.
And I can't find  
the deep blue shirt I bought
at Goodwill, and Billy Burroughs
is filled with worms and earth,
and Bukowski looks at Satan
and says, "what do you
mean, we're out of whiskey?"

I've never been much for the stars,
and family and Thanksgiving are
painfully overrated,
and nothing's easy when
you're down.

you know you're depressed when
the window in your room
looks better with the
blinds on
than with a clear view of the outside

"But I'm all right," he said
to himself

Beyond the thin wall
he heard wheezing breath and grunts
and moans. His roommate
was living the college life, alright.

Kid kept saying it is game that gets
you girls and not money or looks. Sure, but
it's easy to say that
when your dad just
casually drops the keys to a brand new BMW
when he visits.

Meanwhile he's been bartending for
the last eight years, since he turned twenty. Maybe
dropping out of college wasn't
the greatest of ideas. Neither
was breaking up
with the only girl who cared for him. He
knew she cared for him because
she wouldn't stop nagging him
to go back to college. Because
she wanted a life
with him. Kids even, and all that.
Well, his answer was no

and three years ago
she said no to life. Perhaps for other reasons, he
wouldn't know now and it was
no longer important. Now it
was his turn to make a choice.
He stood
ambled to the window
opened the blinds
and the window
Watched the city below
Kept watching for the rest of the night
Unblinking
Major decisions were just
not his thing