Snarling Cup of Coffee    




I like to start my day with a hot cup of coffee
I pound down the coffee
First thing I do every day
as the dawning sun
Lights up my lonesome room

Yeah, but not just a simple cup of java Joe, but a ******* snarling sarcastic smarmy cup of coffee

I mean, - we are talking about an alcoholic, all speed ahead, always hot, always fresh, always there when I need it, angry, attitude talk to the hand Ztude, bad, bad assed, beats breaking, beatnik, bluesy, bitter, ******, bombs away, capitalistic, caffeinated up the ***, cinematic, communistic, Colombian grown, Costa Rican inspired, Cowabunga to the max, crazy assed, devilishly angelic, divine, divinely inspired, dyslexic, epic, extreme vetting, evil eye, expensive, ****** vision inducing, Ethiopian coffee house brewed, euphoric, freaky, freazoid, foxy, Frenched kissed, French brewed, funkified, foxy lady, graphic, GOD in my coffee, with Allah, Ganesh, Jesus, Kali, Buddha, Christians, Durga, Hindus, Mohamed, Jesus and Mo and their friend, the cosmic bar maid, Sai Babai, Shiva, Taoists,

Zoroastrians, drinking my god ****** coffee in Hell;

growling, gnarly, happy, hard as ice, Hawaian blessed, high as a kite, hippie, hip, hipster, hip hoppy, hot as hell yet strangely sweet as heaven, jazzy, jealous, Kerouac approved, kick ***, kick my ******* *** to Tuesday, kick down the doors and take no prisoners, grown in the Vietnam highlands by exVietcong, Guatemalan grown, kiss ***, illegal in every state, imported from all over the ******* world,

insane, lovely, loony, lonely, lonesome, malodorous mean old rotten, *******, nasty, narcotic, never whatever, never meh, never cold, not approved by the CIA, not approved by DHS, not approved for human consumption by the FDA, not your daddy’s sissified corporate cup of coffee, NOT DECAFE coffee, not your Denny’s truck driver weak as brown water cup of fake coffee, not your establishment friendly cup of coffee, Not your FBI coffee, Not FAKE Herbal coffee substitute, but a real cup of coffee, not your farmer brothers dinner crap, not made in America for Americans, not safe for work, not your Starbucks average expensive overpriced ****** corporate chain cup of coffee, Not pretentious, Not White House approved, not State Department safe, nuclear, Not Patriotic, operatic, Peets’s coffee approved,

paranoid, pornographic, psychotic, pontific, politically aware, rapping, rhyming, right here, right now in River city, rock and roll up the Yazoo, sad, sadistic, sarcastic, sassy, satanic, schizoid, *******, silly, ****, smarmy, smelly, smooth, snarky, snarling, stupid, stinking, sweet as honey, sweat inducing, symphonic, Trump can’t handle this coffee, vengeful, Wagnerian, wicked, with nutmeg and cinnamon swirls, with a hint of stevia, with a hint of vanilla, with a hint of ***, with a hint of whisky, with a hint of cherry, with a hint of fruit overtones, with a hint of drugs spicing up the coffee, spendific, speeding, splendid, superior accept no substitutes, survived the Vietnam war, the Iraq war, the Afghan war, the first and Second Korean war, World War 11, the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on black people, the ****** revolution,

Soulful as a summer’s night in MOTOWN- James Brown approved, TOP approved, Berkeley approved, the coffee that Jimmy Hendrix drank before he died, the coffee that Elvis drank on his last breakfast, the coffee that Barry White crooned as he drank his cup of coffee – and the coffee that made the white boy play stand up and play that funky music, the coffee that made Jonny B Goode play his guitar, and made Jonny bet the devil his soul after he drank his morning cup of righteous coffee and the coffee that make the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll, the coffee your mother warned you against drinking, the coffee that Napoleon drank when he became the Emperor of all Europe, the Coffee that Beethoven drank when he wrote the Ninth symphony, the coffee that Mozart drank as he wrote his last symphony, the coffee that Lincoln drank before he was killed, the Hemingway drank before he killed himself, the coffee that started the 60’s, and ended the 20th century,

the coffee that Lenin drank as he plotted revolution, the coffee that ****** and Stalin drank with FDR as they divided up the world after World War 11, the cup that JFK drank before he was blown away, the coffee Jerry drinks while driving in cars with random celebrities and political figures, the coffee that Jon Stewart drinks before he goes on an epic take down of some foolish politico, the cup of Arabic coffee that Sadaam drank the day he was executed, the coffee that GW and Cheney drank when they bombed Baghdad, the Indian cup of coffee that Bid Laden drank before 9-11 and just before the seals blew his *** to hell, the cup of coffee that Tiger Woods drank with his mistresses while playing a 3, 000 dollar round of golf at Sandy Lane golf course in Barbados, the last legal drug that does what drugs should do, the cup of coffee that Obama drank when he became President, Vietnamese, Vienna brew, wacky, whimsical,

Whisky Tango Foxtrot, wild, weird, wonderful, WOW, Yabba dabba doo! Yada Yada yada Zappa’s favorite cup of cosmic coffee, and Zorro’s last cup of coffee, Good to the last drop rolled into one simple cup of hot coffee   
As I pound down that first cup of coffee
And fire up my synaptic nerve endings with endless supplies
Of caffeine induced neuron enhancing chemicals

I face the dawning day with trepidation and mind-numbing fear
I turn on the TV and watch the smarmy newscasters in their perfect hair

Lying through their perfect blazing white teeth
about the great success the government is having
Following the great leader's latest pronouncements

I want to scream
and shoot the TV
and run out side

Shouting
Stop the world!
I want to get
off this ******* crazy planet"

The earth does not care a whit
about my attitude problem

It merely shrugs
and moves around the Sun
In its appointed daily run

the universe whispers
in my ear
time to drink more coffee
for an attitude adjustment

And I sit down
The madness dissipating a bit
And enjoy my second cup
Of heaven and hell
In my morning cup of Joe

Coffee Revolutions



coffee cup
Coffee led to the American Revolution<span
As patriots drank coffee
To rebel against
the aristocratic English tea

Coffee started the London Stock Market
And started the gossip mills running
Every great invention
Was fed by coffee's sweet brew
sweet allure

All the great thinkers
All the great leaders
All were enslaved
to coffee's magic

I sing my praises
Of the great
glorious coffee lady

Long may she continue
To be my sweet companion

Long may coffee continue
To rule my heart
And set my heart
on fire

Ode to Coffee



Mistress of sacred love
Sacred lady of desire

You start my day
Setting my heart on fire
With your dark delicious brew 

And throughout the day
Whenever the mean old blues come by
You chase them away

With your bittersweet ambrosial brew
Every time I inhale your witch's brew

I am filled with power, light and love
And everything is al right Jack
If only for a few fleeting minutes

I love you oh coffee goddess
In all your magical forms

In the dark coffee of the dawning day
In the sizzling coffee in the mid morning break
In the afternoon siesta break
And in the post dinner desert drink

I love you my coffee mistress
You are my refuge
From this horrid world

And you are my secret lover
Never disappoint me, ever
I've never had a bad cup
Of that I can be sure

Even the dismal coffee
Served at Denny's at 3 am
Is still sweet loving coffee

Even the farmer brother's diner coffee
Excites me and gets me going
Asking for another cup of divine delight

Coffee always is there
It is always on and piping hot
With hidden dark secrets
Swirling in its liquid essence

Coffee is my last vice
My only legal vice left

Coffee does not cheat on me
It is always faithful, always true
It does not turn on its friends

And all it asks in return
Is that you come back
Cup after cup after cup

A good cup of coffee
Is a little bit of heaven
In a cup of dark liquid hell

Coffee is like a drug
But a good drug that does what is should
And never complains

It does not get grouchy
It does not hurt you

It does not make you crazy
But allows the muse to come out
And play with it

Coffee led to the American Revolution
As patriots drank coffee
To rebel against the aristocratic English tea

Coffee started the London Stock market
And started the gossips mills running

Every great invention
Was fed by coffee's sweet brew
sweet allure

All the great thinkers
All the great leaders
All were enslaved to coffee's magic

Yeah
I sing my praises
Of the great glorious coffee lady

Long may she continue
To be my sweat companion

Long may coffee continue
To rule my heart
And set my heart on fire

I love thee
Mistress coffee
And sometimes I think
You love me too

No More Coffee Blues








I love coffee
Always have

And coffee has loved me back
But lately I have soured on her
Soured on the whole coffee scene

On the harshness
of the morning brew
And the promises it makes

As I sip of its nectar
Drawn into its lair

Drinking drop by drop
As the caffeine takes over

Rewriting my every nerve
Turning me into a slave
For its perverted pleasure

Yes I love coffee
But I am afraid

Coffee is a harsh mistress
Demanding so much of me

Promising the sun
And delivering the moon

As I drink her swill
Deepening under her influence

I have the coffee blues
Can’t live without her
Can’t live with her

I try
But tea does not cut it
Not really

***** does not do it
At least not in the morning

Yoga is not enough of a buzz
Nor is the runner’s high

And I am afraid deadly afraid of *******
And speed and drugs and energy drinks

And so I remain a slave to coffee
My only legal drug

As I sip another
and fall under
her seductive spread

Once more failing my resolve
To skip coffee for that day
That morning that moment

I shall never be free of her spell
Ever and she knows it
As she beckons me
Every morning with her intoxicating smell

And I come to her
and drink her brew

And become her slave
again and again

Coffee Ya Du





must drink coffee
have every day
the morning dawns
drinking my coffee as I yawn

Morning cup of coffee 



every morning
I drink my coffee
as I contemplate 
the dawning day

watching the news anchors
blather on and on
drinking my coffee
thinking of life

and my coffee
consumes me
overwhelms me
and at time controls me

after all coffee is a drug
and I am her slave
from time to time

Drinking Coffee in the Morning



in the morning
dangerous mood
felling deranged
watching the news

trigger warning
you are ******* dude
end of the world
the end times come

I drink coffee
in the morning



Coffee *** Killed





His wife has banned my use
by my owner
says he makes too much
of a mess when he uses me

it is not his fault
I want to say
but being a coffee ***
can not speak

and so I am abandoned
thrown out into the trash

and feel very sad
for my owner

who was my friend
he liked me

he keep me going
and I did my job

providing him
with fresh coffee

doing my coffee *** duty
and now it is over

Drinking My Coffee


drinking coffee

drinking my coffee
early in the cool morning
thinking life is fine

everything will be okay
after I drink my coffee

morning coffee



morning coffee

dawning sun 











coffee MGur Poem


coffee

I pray to the coffee gods
every cup of coffee
is like a sacrament to me

I pray as I drink my coffee
that it will fill me
with wisdom

and find peace
with my coffee

as I drink
my devotion

Hot coffee


cup of coffee


take coffee with you
Hot hot coffee, makes my day -

Must drink My daily coffee, as the morning dawns - 

With out my morning coffee

in me,  I feel nothing at all -

Electrified Hot Coffee



coffee is the drug of choice
nothing else will do it
as I drink coffee
Electrified
Hot Coffee

Hot Coffee and Cake


coffee
coffee is the drug of choice
electrified circuits
as I drink coffee
coffee and cake



Coffee Patina



coffee
hot coffee
hot Hellish Heaven
Essence of coffee

Everyone talks about depression as if they know it.  

But what they don’t know is that depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway,

it’s feeling the blood dripping down your skin and having the sick thought of  “Oh, look how beautiful the red is” (they always say red is my color).

Depression is lying on your bed for hours on end, salt tracks lining your face like the scars on your ankles, staring at your ceiling tracing patterns in the paint and accepting death in life with this hole in your chest because death is a reward, an escape from this pain you deserve to feel.

Depression is writing sick poetry on skin and publishing it with scars, cutting on ankles, not wrists because you’re scared you’ll get in trouble but you so desperately need to be seen, and never are.

Depression is writing the word “alone” and seeing the word “home”, accepting the pain like a gift because you deserve it.

Depression is admitting suicidal thoughts to paper and not to people, and loving the broken things, hoping to tie them together, thinking maybe things will get better, but knowing that’s just wishful thinking.

Depression is hearing your mother call you monster and disgusting through the too-thin walls of your door when she thinks you can’t hear, and then telling you to your face that you have no right to cry, as if sadness is a privilege and you’re so pathetic that you don’t deserve it.

Depression is shutting yourself up in your room and hearing your family laughing downstairs because you feel like you can’t be a part of them and learning at a young age to love family always but that family isn’t always love

Depression is wanting to take love and your heart and break them into tiny little pieces and throw them into waves, to throw them away

Depression is a foot when the shoe hasn’t been broken in yet, is you when you haven’t broken life in, is seeing happy people and thinking they all look the same, like the front covers of magazines with smiles reaching their eyes when yours can’t.

Depression is wishing you could package your smiles into tiny little piles and hand them to people more deserving of them because you know you’re wasting them with half-assed lines of “I’m fine”

Depression is having to view your past as if it wasn’t yours, because to accept it as reality is to accept finality of your life through suicide.

Depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway and when you close the door out of fear it keeps pounding, possessive, ******, and when you open the door out of anger you shout, “I’M SCARED” to thin air but your voice comes out as a whisper.

.              Part One               .

January
I wake up in a hungover haze that seems
Irrevocably unending. All the places I threw up,
That stiffness in my neck, the emptiness in my love;
There is too much to feel
So I feel numbness
And I feel remnants
Of ***** in my throat, only manifested fully
When my friends and I make fortune cookies,
Singing along to songs that we’re hearing for the first time
Amidst the chaos of exploding poinsettia plants and nascent tattoos,
All of which litter your mom’s otherwise bare counter.
I don’t make much mention, in my fortune cookies,
Of that girl who still leaves me hungover;
I fill them instead with cruel jokes
That send me cackling
Until my dehydrated headaches pass into

February
When I’m moonlit tipsy stumbling
Through a campus-wide coniferous forest in Washington State
With two strangers that I soberly think
Might be my future.
We arrive at the clear polluted waters
Of the Puget Sound, our boots all
Sinking into deep-mud as we walk past broken bits of shells
To low tide.
Even as the full moon sinks and I realize
That those two strangers can never be my future
(That Athens, Ohio is my future)
I still walk forward
Into the Puget Sound
Knowing that the water will stay with me
In my lungs, on my skin,
In my mind, and although I don’t tell a single person, I fear,
So rightly,
That the water from the Puget Sound,
Set to perpetually accumulate in my lungs,
Will one day come to drown me.
Even as I cry to my mom in our kitchen,
Relieved from that seemingly endless indecision
I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised
By the choice I’ve made, I’m not surprised
By the fears I still have, all that surprises me
About any of this
Is the immediacy with which
My conclusion’s future culmination begins, as I begin
And continue
While always feeling like I’m concluding,
An infinite

March
In spirals, spirals, spirals, leaving trails
In subconscious sands, someone paints
Blue spirals on my body, and when
I drive back to Lake Erie later,
To retrieve abandoned items and moments,
The road looks much different.
Less swirly, less threatening at first, and when we get there
We eat pineapple/onion pizza on my ****** cottage’s front porch,
Just barely shielded from the snow, and just barely
Shielded from one another. And even those
Slim shields between us begin to fall
When we stand on our melting Lake Erie.
Because the whole world
Calls to us.
The sky screams, the wind explodes,
The thin layer of water above ice rushes
Blissfully, almost hallucinogenically, towards you and towards I
And I am howling
Into the face of it all,
Fearing nothing—not even
The absence of that girl’s palm in mine
Or the water from the Puget Sound
Or the cold of the air
That is tearing at my scalp; that is tearing
At my whole being and

April
Is best described by a rampage
Home from a campsite
That I only ever saw
Drunkenly, in the dark, and under the pressure
Of Allan Ginsberg’s poetry and an ultimately failed ****.
On that rampage we steal tombstones,
We steal memories for ourselves,
And we steal crass glances
With crass jokes that sound sort of
Like the crass fortune cookies which somehow
Never went bad.
Someone notes during that drive
That the air is getting warmer
With regularity now,
And while I somehow can’t bring myself to cry when my cousin is shot to death,
I have to struggle to hold back tears
In our high school’s only classroom when you tell me
That you’re quitting that play we signed up for together.
I guess it’s cuz I’m concerned—
Cuz I’m deeply
Deeply
Deeply concerned—
That it’s a lack of dedication
To me, to what we do together, to everything
That will prevent my rampage from concluding quietly
Amidst the smells of Indian food and the soft light
In your future dorm room
Where I will hug you
And where I

May
Finally
Let all the tears
Flow freely.
I guess it’s the unnecessary intensity
Of this collective celebratory anticipation
That preemptively reveals to me
That the moment of walking across a stage
To receive my high-school diploma
Won’t be quite as transformative as I’d hoped it might be,
And when I make out with that girl who still has me hungover
In the bed at my dad’s house where I lost my virginity
Almost exactly one year prior, I realize that in fact,
I’m still marching the same march, and
Both magic moments of idealized transformation in that bed
Were just as illusory.
Somehow though
Your no longer nascent tattoos have not yet faded
And I can’t help but worry,
(As sweat pours from my forehead and drenches these bedsheets;
As my finger nestles itself tiredly between the folds of her ******)
That I have, and in

June
When all my anticipation is realized,
People clap in the audience despite the fact
That it’s the same stream of sweat
That’s trickling down along my spine
To reach my ***.
I stare into the spotlight
For just a moment, amidst those stale applause
And in my squint, I think briefly
That none of it ******* mattered. I mean,
Despite this perspiration, I’m
Dehydrated. Hungover. I guess
Drinking more alcohol
Isn’t the best way to get over it, but I can think of nothing else,
So even when I acknowledge
That all my attempts have not even been half-assed,
But, like, one-quarter-assed
The only resolve I find is in distraction, in
******* my other ex-girlfriend instead
And not until that distant

July
When I’m ascending through Never Sink,
Does my head finally
Feel clear, yes,
In that glowing blue pit
Of bioluminescence,
I feel the whole world slow to a stop,
Embrace my body with its taproots
And whisper
Playfully and
In a child’s voice,
“You are the whole world” and I know that I
Am the whole world.
I breathe heavily, the only sound for miles around,
And for a moment I feel that the Puget Sound,
Along with everything else that is so ******,
Has fallen away.
For it is not my body
That is climbing on-rope through the stars and galaxies of this great sinkhole
But my mind,
But my soul,
Because Never Sink
Is not a landscape
But a mind-scape,
A soul-scape,
And it is one which is never dark
Thanks to the blue lights of soulful- (not bio-) luminescence—
A glow that is strong enough to see
Finally
A singularity
In the form of an unlocked lock,
Appearing with grace upon my driveway
After I return home
From ******* my other ex-girlfriend
For the last time.
It is only when I stop the car,
Open the door,
And hold that unlocked lock in my hand that I realize the extent to which
I am being
Un-defined.
The ethereal being in Never Sink’s soul-scape,
Alone in the blue grace of the night,
With nothing in my breath.
The thought is terrifying.
So in

August
On the night of my eighteenth birthday,
The girl I’m hung over and I
Send magical, sparkling lanterns into the sky
With a wish so brilliantly bright and simultaneous
That even I am able dismiss the slurring drunk words spoken next to us—
“Here’s hopin’ that you two get married some day”—
As superfluous.

.                Part Two               .

The winds above Lake Erie carry me,
Along with that lantern, into the foreignness
Which Never Sink foreshadowed.
But with the lantern as my very being
And the Puget Sound in my every breath,
Athens, Ohio does not become my soul-scape;
Even its gorgeous autumnal rolling hills
Are just land-scape, and I don’t know
Whether things would have been different
Had I not walked into that stranger’s party
For that terrible beer
On one of my first nights there, but regardless in

September
I walk up endless hills and stairs daily
To get around this hellhole where the only genuine people I’ve yet found
Were prepared to leave from day one, like I
Wasn’t. I wasn’t preparing for that at all, but the Puget Sound,
Lingers like phlegm in my lungs and distorts my regular refrain
Of “I can be happy here, I can be happy here,” keeping it
From ever loosing its hypothetical but eventually forcing it
To loose its conclusion:
I can be…
I can be…
I can be anything that I want to be and I am still here,
Sitting on the top terrace of this weird-assed biker bar with some girl
I just met, with some guy
Who seems cool, but in both cases
I drink one too many Blue Moon’s because I know
That neither of these people
Will ever loose their hypotheticals and will only ever
Loose their conclusions.
Gazing upwards towards the stars in the fading summer,
I try to ignore the physicality of all that’s around me,
But the alcohol churns in my stomach like violent waves, like in

October
How I rock like tides between the shores
Of two continents, of two
Acid trips.
One, on the floor of my dorm room, staring at my ceiling
In an attempt to make patterns
Out of patternless white paint, all the while holding hands
With that guy who seems cool, who has been dancing
In and out of hypothetical.
And the other acid trip with you,
Who somehow in the face of everything
Became one of my only certainties.
You, with whom I stood on Lake Erie
Howling into the wind in an unrealized epiphany.
An epiphany
That is now realized
Because the beers on that top terrace didn’t matter.
The white speckles on my dorm room ceiling during that first acid trip
Didn’t matter.
Hell, that girl I am in love with
Didn’t (doesn’t, can’t, won’t) matter.
What matters to me,
As I’m dressed in drag on Halloween,
Lying in your dorm room that smells of Indian food
With 120 dollars of drug money in my pocket,
Is what’s ultimately present. Right there.
Right here. But then, lying there, the time
Clicks over into

November
And at two in the morning it becomes
One in the morning.
I don’t know which of those hours wasn’t real
But when I hug you and cry in the soft light
It is a moment too brief.
It is a moment from which I am pulled straight
Into a hotel bed halfway to New York City,
Where I lie with that girl who I guess I’m in love with
And I’m kissing her, and I realize
That blue spirals still linger on my body, but when she groans,
So softly
That “we shouldn’t be doing this”
I pause before saying “I know,”
And in that pause, my pixelated, televised, and falsified image of reality
Briefly turns to fuzzy grey static, its finite infinity like the trance
Of meat on a rotisserie; I’m waiting
For this turkey to cook
In my friend’s mom’s home—funny
Because I’m still a vegetarian
Who sometimes likes to think of himself, in quest for definition,
As a vegan, but man
I’m beyond definition, I’m beyond anything,
I’m beyond even my darkest imaginings of myself, so when I get wasted
At a 2am that doesn’t click back on Thanksgiving morning,
I have a slice of that ******* turkey,
Cuz the vegan chili my friend and I made at school was good and all,
But I had to bike through freezing rain to get the peppers
And even though I’m starting to feel
Like I’ve found a few people who I can take in with permanence
Nothing feels more like permanence
Than this home-cooked meal
Of turkey and cranberries and sweet potatoes at a granite counter
Where, on January 1st when the ball dropped,
We all took shots, leaving me drunk, stumbling
And eventually
Hungover.
And of course in

December
I’m still
Hung over it all.
Part one, part two,
The futility of that division is so obvious now.
It’s the same poem, same sentence,
And when two not-so-new-anymore friends and I sit on a rooftop in Athens
With a bunch of still so-new I-guess-friends
Right before exam week,
Right before this emotionally excruciating semester comes to a close,
Right before I prepare to head home,
I realize that even though this place
Hasn’t quite become home yet,
My ‘home’ isn’t really at home now either.
I am without a bed in which I feel comfortable,
Without a body next to which my whole life makes sense,
And I am driving to go swing dancing—
An activity I can’t believe I’m still trying to like—
When I finally tell her that I’m in love with her:
Words that don’t matter despite
How much they do. Ultimately,
To me, to her, it’s just
A quick red-light phrase
And this poem is, without too many layers of resonance,
Not even addressed to her,
But to that girl with whom I stood on Lake Erie,
Howling into the wind,
Imagining part two but preparing
For part three, so
With that lantern still floating skyward, “here’s hopin’ that”—
                                         (No. No. No. Start over.)
Here’s hoping that
At midnight
On this New Year’s Eve,
When the ball drops and when we all take shots,
Perhaps around that same granite counter-top,
These clocks
Won’t click back again.
These spirals
Will fade.

I’m sick of hearing my life’s a haiku.
I’m into magic, love, and other sorts of things that are typically voodoo.
I’m half ***** from a half assed absent African baby boomer brat.
I’m half white trash.
Here’s a well formed of dried tears turned into something to sooth my canine teeth.
It tastes like Moonshine.
I can’t swim anymore, so I’m here drowning in a concrete pool.
Always, I look for the hell in you.

I sharpen my boot knife for ****** assault protection.
The first swipes for the plus 200,000 in counting.
The seconds for the 66 percent underreported.
The lasts for me,
the 29 percent victims aged 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, and 12.

We have a higher rate of risking everything.
For depression x3.
For committing suicide x4.
For post traumatic stress disorder x6.
For alcohol abuse x13.
For drug abuse x26.

You all think I’m crazy,
I’m not.

I sometimes get called
stupid, ugly, *****, and thot.

I’m in pain, in sorrow.
I can’t help it.
He did it.
No one can undo it.
What do we do about it?

I wont scream, I won't cry.

I’ll ask how he’s doing with glitter and tears in the corner of my eye.
And after he's done molesting me,
"Want to go grab some coffee or tea?"
Personally, I like the cafe down the street.
They sell good brunch with amazing croissants.

And after this is over,
I’d ask him how it was while he turned me over.

She sits across from me sipping and slurping her fat free french vanilla.
While I'm pacing myself with cappuccino imitation.

"All I'm saying is, that if he starts calling me baby, I might wanna keep him!"

She says it with that cajoling tone.
But I can notice the glimmer in her eyes that tells me she longs for that.
That sweet pet name that would mean she's special to him, in her mind...

I never could get comfortable around those things...pet names.
Cutesy little endearments reserved for a child's affection.

What is wrong with me?

She's vibrating with unmasked giddiness, glancing at her phone.
They've been dating for only months but she is lost in him.

Him.
With his once a week date nights
and clean shaven face
and joking interaction with her friends.  

She's full of soft embrace and warm affection and vulnerable interest.
Wanting never looked so form fitting on a person.
Like a cup waiting for a refill...

"If you want, I could see if his friend is up for dinner next week? You know it's been months for you..."

I hope she doesn't choke on her millionth slurp with the glare of indignation leveled at her cherub-like face.

"Ah thanks, but no thanks." races out of my mouth before I even hesitate to pretend to consider her obvious proposal.

How is it that easy to just offer companionship like that? Do I give off a "desperate for love" vibe?
And what the hell makes her think I can't find someone on my own **** time?

"Okay, okay. It's just...I hate seeing you alone. Don't you want to not be alone anymore?"

I know she loves me but those kind of questions from her caring heart, make me contemplate knocking her in the head.

My alone-ness she says.
My singular existence.

I'd laugh at her if I didn't know it would hurt her feelings.
To disregard her feeble attempts at pairing me up with whatever half-assed man candy she could sway my way.

I'm staring at the ring left from my coffee,
wondering if I should just give in this one time for her,
for me,
for the over used batteries at home.

"I'm not lonely you know. I just, haven't felt that connection yet."

Looking pitifully back at me she wonders aloud, "You're always waiting on that connection but have you ever felt it before? I mean, how do you know it's even real, that body, mind, spirit...magnet pull you believe so fiercely?"

It's the first time I've given her a genuine smile today as I tell her yes I have felt it before.
Briefly...
Bitter sweetly...

I just never got his last name.

It might have been years ago but I can still recall with clarity that electric tornado that seemed to have surrounded us.

We had only been gifted ten hours together but it left a mark on me for over fourteen years.
His face is definitely matured I imagine and his body shaped differently.
But I'll never mistake those sea green eyes, haloed by dusty blue cloud rings.  

The only boy who has ever made me want to get lost and never be found.

"Well...good luck with that. But until mystery man crashes back into your life, for god's sake live a little huh!"

She means well I'm sure but like an eager pup I just tsk at her goofily plastered expression and finish off the grainy remains of my only afternoon delight. She's in a hurry to make her "honey bunny" a homemade dinner anyway so it's not hard to cut things short on our weekly coffee shop vent session.

She's floating out the door before I even get my coat above my elbows but I can't feel offended.
Mulling over the uncomfortable idea of boring interaction with another stranger I decide to grab one more drink for the ride home.

Alone.

Oh, wonderful...now she's planted that seed.

Shaking it off, I order my vice and move benignly to wait and resolve to not think about anything related to that anymore either.

"Seems outrageous they charge so much for imitation don't you think?"

The question's asked to me but I pretend I can't hear it. A guy hitting on me today is not what I want to deal with.

And he seems to be standing right behind me
making goosebumps scatter across my neck.

He tries again, "So I guess you like buying bottom of the barrel cappuccino?"

This time I've gotten a little itchy from his voice and want him to just stop in his tracks.
So I turn to tell him where, in fact, he can go...

But I'm the one stopped short and a bit flabbergasted.

No way do things happen to me like this.

Those coincidental, lucky, fated things...

I almost wish I was a liar right now with the things I just spilled to my loyally, encouraging friend.
Because there is no way the universe would be this cruel.

Finally I exhale and word *****,

"They're the only place that taste just like the ones at my grandmas' house every summer when I was a girl. I waited a long time to find that connection again, even if it is just coffee..."

The smirking face and broad shoulders that greet me aren't the cause of my temporary delirium.
Not even the wild hair and black rimmed glasses.

It's the sea green, haloed dusty blue eyes centering all the rest that shallow my breaths

Of all the places.....

Like a falling satin sheet his face morphs into a query riddled expression.

I hear the barista call out a name and he reluctantly steps away, never taking his eyes off mine whispering,

"I'll...be right back. Don't move...please?"

I'm nodding like an awkward parrot and he turns to grab his imitation coffee.
The same kind I'm waiting on.
And I start smiling after a second.

Not because of the similar drink order, which could be anyone...

But because of something I haven't known until this moment for over fourteen years.
All thanks to fate, or destiny...
Or perhaps the oblivious barista.

His last name...


*© NDHK

My my, what a special little snowflake.

Why did you choose to be this way?

You chose to be different, you chose to rebel.
No binary for me!

You chose the grief, the pain.
You chose this abuse, bruised by
the verbal ferociousness, forged by physical fallacies
To be thrown out of bathrooms
because doing your business in the bathroom is abysmal.
You chose to be derided by decisive discrimination.
You chose to be murdered by misconceptions,
***** by ridiculous requirements.
You chose to be beaten, assaulted.
You chose the words I weave to weaken your will.
You chose the sacred sermons I spit at you.

You chose to be
What I find disgusting, despicable
because you chose to be what you aren't,
but I realize what I really regard you to be.

My my, what a special little bigot.

You think I chose to be this way?

You think
I chose the injuring, injustice,
the jester, the joke
the target, tortured,
This pain, my poison,
the prey, praying,
the sinner of sins so bittersweet,
So I could be "special"?

Special isn't a sacrifice of physical self
Nor the gunshots and gruesome grief
Nor even the crass comfort of a half-assed comrade.
You think I CHOSE this,
and you didn't choose
to spit and spew your sour speeches
to disperse your disgust in discrimination
to integrate your ignorance into my existence.
Or did you not choose
to deal the abuse
by your hand
yourself?

My special little bigot,
You live as you are.

So be it, if I am so "special", the special little snowflake.
Yes, we are the little snowflakes that your palm's presence melts away,
And you're that burning persistence of life
Blocking with your own self our slow, wistful descent,
As if it were futility and not of your own will.

If I am the snowflake, you are the fire.

.
                            A hard-on
                        doesn't  count
                      as personal  gro
                     wth.If  you  want
            ­         to  hear  the  pitte
                       r - patter of littl
                       e feet,  I'll put s
                       hoes on my cat.
                       This isn't an off
                       ice , it's hell wit
                       h florescent lig
                       hting.How do I
                       set a lazer prin
                       ter to stun? I m
                       ajored in Libera
                       l arts. Will that
                       be for here or t
                       o go? Too many
                       freaks, not eno
                       ugh circuses.  I
                       have a comput
                       er, a ******* a
                       nd pizza delive
                       ry .Why should
                       I leave the hou
      se? Stress is wh   en you wake up scr
eaming and you re    alize you  haven't  fal
*** asleep yet. I like  dogs  too .  Let's  exch
  ange recipes.  And   yo u r      c r y b a b y        
    whiny- assed   o      pinion      is?      Al 
      low me to intro       duce my selves.

There wasn't a lot
I could do for you
With the distance and everything else
I couldn't give you much
Only some small piece of myself
And the image of my body bare
For you to keep
I would like to think the fantasy I spun
Helped you in some way
I know it probably didn't
And it was foolish nonetheless to play a game of falsity
The reality of us sunk in too deeply
Too quickly
And all at once
Our future,
There was none
I forget that in reference
I didn't have the time to care
So I stopped all at once
I'm sorry for that
I hope I broke your heart enough
For you to be able to write a song about it
Maybe melody and lyrics
With some semblance of us in them
I hope wherever you are
You are getting closer to happy
I hope you still think of me.
I know you do.

I'm running 7:25 splits. Eight miles in. I haven't got stuck at an intersection. Not that I ever do. Runners got the right-of-way. And like my buddy Randy Run 'N Gun would say, I'm zen. Very ******* zen. Used to be a walker. Not no more. Not after the heart attack. No, siree, I'm a runner. A good runner. Lost 45 pounds. I did. I did. I stick to the left side of the road. So I can see the guilt in the drivers' eyes as they pass by. They're thinking, there's an old man out there taking care of hisself. I should be taking care of myself.

And they should. They really should.

But what's exercise to the people in this town? A walk down the block to Loaf 'N Jug for a Snickers, that's what. Or if you're a rich *****, it's twenty minutes on a Stairmaster three times a week. And I have to wonder if they're really doing it for them, you know?

I'm on the way back to the house. I peel off 30th, cutting across four lanes of traffic. Head into Garden of the Gods park. I do this so people get the right idea of the city. When I was a tourist here, I thought to myself, why's everybody all lumpy-assed and tied to children. Made a promise to myself. Told myself, when you move out there, you're going to be the trophy. So, I run through the red rocks and insert myself, mid-stride, into all those family photos. That way, when they get home, they'll point at their pictures and say, everyone in Colorado is so fit.

Now I'm getting close to the spot. It happened about a mile--mile and a half into the Snake Trail over by that 30-foot tall rock that looks a bit like Lyndon Johnson. I was a tourist and a walker then. Not no more. Not ever again.

There's a stretch of blacktop that cuts Snake Trail in two. I can't remember the name of the road. I think it's named after some preacher who got cholera, lost his faith, regained his faith in the end. One of those touching trajectories. Those stories always sound like a lot of fluffy *******, if you ask me.

Cars are backed up on Wishy-Washy Preacher Road. There's a crowd of people gathered in the middle. I look at my running watch. I don't like this. This is the kind of unplanned circumstance that skews your splits. Then your run time makes you feel like a lumpy-***, and that ain't me. Not no more.

I start pushing through the crowd. There's a lot of whispering and a lot of little kids all snotty and teary-eyed. And it's all just frustrating, because I feel like I'm cutting through molasses. I look at my running watch. I reach the center of the crowd.

A mule deer had been runover--well, halfway. The stupid beast still uses his front legs, dragging his crumpled and ****** backside along in a mad circle. A screechy whimper comes out in intervals like beeping hospital machinery. He's so scared, some middle-aged woman with a kid to each hip, says. A longbeard, beergut hippie starts into a prayer,

Gods of the natural world, gods of the sweet animal kingdom,
we ask that you wrap this wounded beacon of your light
into your warm embrace. May you replace his great pain
with the great comfort of your cool breezes, with the great
comfort of your warm sun, with the great comfort of fresh water.

I unzip my running belt. It's not a ***** pack. I pull out my NAA Guardian .32 automatic. It's not a woman's weapon. See, Randy Run 'N Gun, got his name because he invented this kind of running. I respect him for it. Got nothing but respect for that man. See, a fella has to be prepared at all times. There are mountain lions. There are bears. And perhaps worst of all are all these ******* mule deers. They ain't even scared of people. They stop and wait for you to feed them, blocking the sidewalk when I run, skewing my splits.

These hippies ain't going to do ****. They're taking photos with their cellulars and saying theologically vague prayers. And all these tourists are watching. So I walk right up to the mule deer. Someone behind me breathes in so hard, it's like she vacuumed all the sound. Pop. Pop. The beast stops its beeping. Legs twitch. Legs stop twitching. I'm the only one with courage enough to grant a mercy ****.

It's all about doing. Right? That's what the heart attack taught me. Before the heart attack, I thought about being a runner. The rhythm of it, the mechanical discipline appealed to me. Liked the idea of doing a marathon or the sound of it.  I was walking in Garden of the Gods. Noticed the LBJ rock, said to myself, Holy hell that looks like Lyndon Johnson. I heard these quick steps coming from behind me. I thought some potstentch, beergut hippie was going stab me. Felt like the gears at the center of me came off their handle. The right side of me just wasn't there anymore. As I fell I saw it was only a runner.

I reach the Lyndon Johnson rock. I'm eleven miles in. My splits have averaged to 7:43. ******* deer. The ground is lower at the spot where I had the heart attack. Why? Because I dug a hole there, that's why. The old me, the walking me, the tourist me lies dead in that hole. As I pass by, I spit it the ditch as I always do. Good riddance. Yep. Yep.

The trail finally turns downward. A little more oxygen in Ute Valley. Randy Run 'N Gun he calls moments like this, Runner's Reward. And I like that. Nature's okay. The cedars, the meadows, rivers -- all that **** -- is just fine. But what I like about running is the metaphor. See all the hippies, all the tourists they live their lives in a constant state of reward. They think, I'm alive, so I'll smoke this ***. They think, I'm alive, so I'll take ******* pictures of everything. But runners, runners know that you don't deserve life. It's a gift to be earned. So you work your *** off. Mile after mile. A reward for me is a valley. The reward doesn't last long, just long enough for me to catch my breath, you know?

I exit the valley. I pick up the pace. Try to make up for earlier delay. I cross Flying W Ranch Road. I hear metal-scraping-metal. And I'm hit.

I'm in the air. I'm sliding. I'm bouncing. My knees and elbows are hot. I blink.

A woman in a bright pink tank top and yoga pants stands over me. Stay in the car, Jacob, she shouts. Oh my god, oh my god.

I tell her runners have the right-of-way. But she doesn't respond. I say, Lady help me up, you're ******* up my splits. But she doesn't respond to that. She repeats over and over, You're going to be okay. Your'e going to be okay. Just keep looking at me.

I turn my head. The display on my watch is cracked. I can't read my splits average. My head is a ton of bricks. My elbows and knees are hot.

Jacob, stop, the woman says.

Her boy stands over me, taking pictures with his cellular.

Depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway,

Blood dripping down your skin and having the sick thought of  “Oh, look how beautiful the red is”

(everyone always says red is my color).

Depression is writing sick poetry on skin and publishing it with scars, cutting on ankles, not wrists because you’re scared you’ll get in trouble but you so desperately need to be seen, and never are.

Depression is accepting ruin in life with this hole in your chest because death is a reward, an escape from this pain you deserve to feel.

It is writing the word “alone” and seeing the word “home”, accepting the torment like a gift because you’ve earned it.

Depression is admitting suicidal thoughts to paper and not to people, and loving the broken things, hoping to tie them together, thinking maybe things will get better, but knowing that’s just wishful thinking because

Depression is tying yourself together with the severed nerves in your heart;

It is rope, it is ribbon, it is thread, it is DNA;

It is hearing your mother call you monster and disgusting through the too-thin walls of your door when she thinks you can’t hear,

And depression is sadness being a privilege you’re too pathetic to have.

It is a hug, a freezing touch, a reminder that
Depression is being birthed a lie.

And it is shutting yourself behind that wooden doorway
And hearing your family laugh like cackling hyenas,
Eating at your self esteem like softened prey
And learning at a young age to love family always but that family isn’t always love because

Depression is family.

It is an unfurnished home,
An empty frame,
A foot when the shoe hasn’t been broken in yet,
you when life hasn't been broken in yet,
Seeing happy people and thinking they all look the same, like the front covers of magazines with grins reaching their eyes while yours can’t, and wishing you could package your smiles into tiny little piles and hand them to people more deserving of them because you know you’re wasting them with half-assed lines of “I’m fine”

Depression is having to view your past as if it wasn’t yours, because to accept it as reality is to accept finality of your life through suicide.

It is the note masked inside of a poem,
Envisioning pills as if they were peace,

Depression is the last stanza,
It is the audience,
It is this microphone,
It is me standing in a room full of strangers
And for the first time finally feeling like I'm being heard.

Depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway that keeps pounding, possessive, ******, but when you open the door out of anger and shout “I’M SCARED” to thin air, your voice comes out as a whisper.

And silently, the figure replies;  
“I know your favorite color.”

On the curvy shoulder of my (i want to say, girl but
know that offends her) presently both of us red-eyed
looking so un-real on this back-assed country
road with only shoes for transporting
a long way from being home
smiling all the while
hitting it again
smoke arounds her green red eyes slitted
baby, I cry, as we  walk again,
Are you  my girl?
She keeps walking.

My friend and I talk about it
Neighborhood got decimated this year
One after another the corners of community are gone
We touch the elder memories
as one might touch a head in blessing
as loved ones pass

We linger longest over John

Found dead after ten hot days
by other-worldly hazmat crew
flanked by cruisers
with their special, yellow truck
and zipper bags

...found 'im
glasses folded neatly on the night stand
in his jammies
all tucked into bed

No one thought it strange
that strange young guy would die
already decomposing in his head
Lost
among his personal effects
his fleet of rusting cars
and half-assed projects
Deck tacked to garage
his herds of “pets”

Easy to pretend he wasn't really there
between jail stints or some imagined threat or theft
of crap
haunted by the shadows of his persecutors
caught in motion lights
and cameras' blinding evidence of
jungle-jumble and malfunctioning alarms
going off in the wind
Everyone's out to get his stuff
We could dismiss him--

mostly
sorta

...except for times
he mowed his grass at night
or hand-built “the lunatic tower”
just for mom
from scavenged scraps and
hammered hours
power-sawed
through the housing codes
and horror
of the neighbors...
...Such a special spectacle...

******* crazy-- John!

He was enough for one day at a time
like when

he flung that threatening bolder
on bilco doors
for percussive effect

"Get off my ******' property!”
(not using his “inside voice")
“Next time, that'll be your head!!

He announces his intent
to not get mad, behave himself
to call the cops on me instead
Fake-dialing
While his mother screams in dread
“John is off his meds!”

My phone is set to speed dial
911
__

“How did we miss this?
How did we not miss him those quiet days?”

How we miss him now
How quiet

It was supposed to be
The dawn of a new age;
A new set of dialogue
On a more balanced stage
With better lines for
The actors to deliver.
It was supposed to start in
The sixties and last forever.

We didn’t really know for sure
What this Aquarius stuff was
But it seemed to us to be
A metaphysical enough cause,
To change the way we acted
And to shout down the rest;
To face the demagogues
Then put them to the test.

We stopped wearing uniforms
That said we went along
With the hard-assed leaders.
We put a lot of it in our songs.
We called them what they were
Greedy warmongering ******.
We protested and picketed
And promised so much more.

We spoke out loudly on TV
And in crowds in the streets
That we were through will genocide
And would not accept defeat.
We cried out that our government
Had assumed the role of villain
And was murdering for no reason
Not just men, but even children.

But, we let it all die down;
We let the government slide
On investigating the truth
And keeping the truth inside
A carefully chosen batch of
Criminals in public office.
We let them go on making war
And making money off us.

We let them cheat and lie
And re-write acceptable laws
To support their bloodthirstiness
And we gave up on our cause.
Maybe all that protesting gave
All our marching feet limps.
Or maybe it’s because all along
We were just a bunch of wimps.

Everyone talks about depression as if they know it.  
But what they don’t know
is that depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway,
it’s feeling the blood dripping down your skin and having the sick thought of
“Oh, look how beautiful the red is”
Depression is lying on your bed for hours on end,
salt tracks lining your face like the scars on your ankles,
staring at your ceiling
tracing patterns in the paint and accepting death in life with this hole in your chest
because death is a reward,
an escape from this pain you deserve to feel.
Depression is writing sick poetry on skin and publishing it with scars,
cutting on ankles,
not wrists
because you’re scared you’ll get in trouble
but you so desperately need to be seen,
and never are.
Depression is writing the word “alone”
and seeing the word
“home”,
accepting the pain like a gift because you deserve it.
Depression is admitting suicidal thoughts to paper and not to people,
and loving the broken things,
hoping to tie them together,
thinking maybe things will get better,
but knowing that’s just wishful thinking.
Depression is hearing your mother call you monster and disgusting
through the too-thin walls of your door
when she thinks you can’t hear,
and then telling you to your face that you have no right to cry,
as if sadness is a privilege and you’re so pathetic that you don’t deserve it.
Depression is shutting yourself up in your room
and hearing your family laughing downstairs
because you feel like you can’t be a part of them
and learning at a young age to love family always
but that family isn’t always love
Depression is wanting to take
love and your heart
and break them into tiny little pieces and throw them into waves,
to throw them away
Depression is a foot when the shoe hasn’t been broken in yet,
is when you haven’t broken life in,
is seeing happy people and thinking they all look the same,
like the front covers of magazines
with smiles reaching their eyes when yours can’t.
Depression is wishing you could package your smiles
into tiny little piles and hand them to people more deserving of them
because you know you’re wasting them with half-assed lines of
“I’m fine.”
Depression is having to view your past
as if it wasn’t yours.
Depression is a hooded figure standing just outside
of a wooden doorway
and when you close the door out of fear
it keeps pounding,
possessive,
******,
and when you open the door out of anger you shout,
“I’M SCARED”
to thin air
but your voice comes out as a whisper.

i probably fell in love with you
the moment you asked if you could have
one of my menthol Marlboros
it's too bad
the closest i'll ever get to you was
the moment you lit your cigarette
off of mine, inches away
from my face
it's too bad
i wouldn't let you get closer
even if you tried
it's too bad
she gets to call you hers
it's too bad
i'll probably never see you again anyway.

Have you known the winter days?
Late February falls like frigid snow
Merciless undertow
Of evergreen and alpenglow
And grey ground pavement walking
Like Grocery shopping
and weak chai tea
Moonlengths from all family
And surrounded like strawbury temptation,
Late night lamp light contemplation
And drowsy-dampened mornings
Grey glaze of diluted boring
Spattered over every orifice
Charcoal eyes, platonic kiss.
Pull your bow to shoot and miss
Tell me all this is is what it is
And I will tell you, “okay”
(but you know this isn’t what I wanted)

Hide the roadsigns
Blur the guidelines
This is how I love you

Have you known the winter days?
Late February fell like fire on hell
And shook me from my sleep
Ashes cover snow-banked heaps of rubble
I slice my wrist on the sharpened stubble
Of your half-assed beard
(this is how I bleed my dear)
This is how I bear my soul
******* smile
And dominoes
Carnation cults
And buried bones
(This is how I build your throne)

Hide the gravestones
Burn the rainbows
This is how I love you.

And have you known the winter days?
Late February fallen like Lucifer to the underworld
We both knew I wasn’t altogether that typeof girl
But we pretended anyways
Alcoholic halo haze
And foreign intervention
Of somewhat insidious intention
And the legitimate logistical question
That defined our discourse on fear
(this is how I think my dear)
This is how I speak my mind
All that grey
Those missing roadsigns
Smoke and soot and
Blurry guidelines
And Gravestones gone
And rainbows ash
(and we are never coming back)

This.
This is how I love you.

It is a hard days lesson half-learned
quickly if not quietly
in the bold sunshine

drink deep your spirit
it is your only hope
if that is what you call a
one legged man kicking you
when you are down

I say that cold spirit
is a liquid prison
that rules from the inside

but you do what you must
I will only sit and judge
like some half-assed imitation of Saint Peter

Who knows
if I like the show
I may open the gates
of my self made heaven
and let you and your one-legged
friend kick yourselves in

wouldn't that be a sight
for blurry sore eyes to see
(I don't know)
I just sit and judge
left or right I must
place you from me

For I am a half-assed saint
with a one legged man and a stranger
inside my self-made heaven

They are dancing the two step now
(only the one legged man needs to dance twice as fast)
one man two the other four
the odd timed rhythm distracting me
and leaving my lesson half-learned

I’m not quite sure, yet everything I do
appears to me as being viciously half-assed
yet sincere.
I write this mid-winter [I guess?] on the RTA
with twenty dollars on me and I don’t want to know
in the bank, with cold feet, both literally and metaphorically.
The future looks decent from a distance in bar light.
As I feign some resemblance of being classy and
collect more sodium on my footwear,
I ponder the passing of an officer who flashed a light
to look at me in the dark on my way from home.
It makes me glad I speak English, where there
are such hard, sharp and unsympathetic undertones
to phrases like, “*******”.
It’s dark on the way through Cleveland.
Try to stay warm.

My Sweet Spaceman
where are you now?
Trying to see between
those little glows
that speckle the sky;
similar to those
no longer in your eyes?
I just want to see
the world in which you're lost,
so take me please,
I'll pay the cost;
I'm sure it's less
than the price I pay
for the half-assed smile
you gave today;
I miss you babe,
it's been too long,
so let me save you
from this wrong,
because believe me when I say
I'm alone in this crowded room
while you run around the moon.

*And you said you never wanted to be an astronaut

Why?
It's a painful memory that appears to be settling in for life rather than preparing to leave,
It's been heard by countless millions, and none of them can understand how it sounds to me,
I haven’t been as happy since hearing it as I was when I heard it,
It's symbolic of the most significant turning point in my life to date,
The lyrics are so perfectly foreshadowing of a problem that I couldn't fathom that I’d have,
It has a stronger connection to memory than any other song,
It represents the perpetual unhappiness that I refuse to believe controls me.
I'm unhappy.

Where?
A car that I haven’t seen in years,
On a street I barely saw enough of,
In a town I wish I could visit again.
A happier place that I can see but can never return to,
Personified by a face that's disappeared from here.
Somewhere I miss, yet somewhere I hate;
Somewhere that needed the version of me that died in that very place;
A cemetery.

When?
Happier times;
A collection of moments which are infinite from within,
Yet minute from without.
A time when I could define myself,
Through the vice of another person;
Albeit vicariously, it was the last time
I was able to define myself.
I was everything; I was the world.
And then the world ended.
Happier times that I can't and won't return to.

What?
A song;
A memory;
A beautiful beat,
In a story that nobody's telling.
A soundtrack to a movie nobody wants to see,
A composition that will fall on deaf ears;
Yet still be heard by the world at large, call it irony.
Something nobody can take away from me;
Despite how tenaciously I've tried to get rid of it.
A succession of noises that would be meaningless to me,
Were it not for the memory.
The memory.

Who?
She, I, and the drivers of some road in Georgia;
Drivers that didn't notice then and don't notice now.
She, driving, demonstrating, performing;
Has driven on, failing to notice.
Me, her, and the songwriter, I suppose;
Me, a person I don't know,
Replaced by a person I can't.
The songwriter, collecting her checks and trophies,
Probably not a **** to give about the troubles
Of some ******* who heard her song.
Us, a concept foreign to me;
Unbeknownst then, well studied now;
Still as foreign as that state,
That city,
That road,
That car,
That place that I can revisit,
But never go back;
Her.

The Song?
Because I'm unhappy;
In a cemetery,
During happier times that I can't and won't return to;
A memory
With her.
I need more words.

Words
Nevermind, I'll find someone like you.
I wish nothing but the best for you.
Don't forget me, I beg.
I remember you said:
Sometimes it lasts in love,
But sometimes it hurts instead.

But that's not right.
I won't find someone like you;
There was no you.
I wish anything but the best for you;
You selfish child.
Please forget me;
I'm nothing worth remembering.
I've forgotten everything you said.
It rarely, if ever, lasts in love.
It always hurts.
Laughable,
The things I tell myself to bandage
A wound that doesn't appear.
The clichés I give meaning to are

******* pitiful.
Just about two years and counting.
Two psychiatrists,
Two half-assed ******* suicide attempts,
Dozens of classes,
Legions of friends,
A handful of people so much like you that they'd failed to notice there is no you,
And you're still talking about this
Pile of ****.
Who's talking about it?
Me? You?
Nobody.
It's white noise;
Habituation at play.
A memory not worth remembering.
Three years of piano lessons,
The lines of my scripts,
The best films throughout history,
Even the Eagles game from last week is

Worth remembering
This,
This moment in time occupied by just another pop song,
Time spent with a person no longer there,
Family member after family member, anecdote after anecdote,
Things not to say or do in front of her hulking ******* of a brother,
Approval of people I wound up discarding.
What now?

I need more words.

Where were we?
Fresh year, fresh start, and the Eagles were still a winning team○;
A dorm, a drunken haze, a bed, a city unparalleled;
Untested grounds for a young idiot
Like me. She certainly did
And wasn't afraid to show it.
Independence, experience, maturity,
And a stunning mutual lack thereof.
Problems, buried like the worst ******* time capsule ever.
Happiness (unsustainable)
Love (attachment)
Future ()
A candle burning down to its last wax can’t relight,
And a pile of wax won't help me see in the dark.

But who needs candles anyway?
I'm better off without candles,
Playing with fire can get me burnt.
And besides, lightbulbs are brighter and more efficient.
I’ll install lightbulbs all over the apartment,
Once I can figure out how to turn the power back on.
Oh, there aren't power lines running to this apartment.
(sure wish I had a candle right about now)
Maybe the light from this cigarette will help.
And I could sure use a cigarette right now
Because they’re playing that song again.
Surely I can find some better music than this.
This station seems nice, let's see what she can offer.
They're playing that song again.
Over and over again.
Is it just me, or are they always playing that song?
It's always that song, no matter what.
It's all I ever hear.
Pop radio sure is terrible these days, right?
Sure is.
Can't walk down the street to class without hearing

That ******* ******* song.*

(
Nobody else is hearing it.
I'm the one singing it.
My life's a ******* joke, isn't it?
)

○The Philadelphia Eagles were 10-6 in 2010, 8-8 in 2011, and 4-12 last year. And during the ‘still friends’ period, we watched the division rival Giants win the Super Bowl together. I ******* hated it.

it was suggested
that there be no nexus
between texas and your pal-
omino - tagging the alamo, **?

en el barrio, yo(u)-
and your gringa  homecoming
queen in tight-assed jeans
-running with ms-13?

-playing twister with your hipster
sisters misters smith & wesson
oiled up and and ready to go
- new mexico?

i found you in tres piedras
at a place called ortega's
eating huevos rancheros
- shooting jose cuervo?

-muthafucka mara salvatruchas
in a red camaro and two bruthas
on a burro with bow and arrows
-stole your palomino?

-they shoot horses
don't they?

riding the black el camino
-on the blue mesa.

r ~ 9/30/14