Hello old friend
I want nothing to do with you
But here I am searching you out

Hello old friend
I thought you left so long ago,
But here you are, crying

It must be a dream
Brain letting off stream
Sanity flowing down stream

Southbound or bust
By rubber or rust
Getting nowhere on trust

I’ll crawl if I have to, not even fuss
Turned mean as a rattlesnake,
Heart choked out on dust

Why do I keep coming to these places?
Attempting to siphon something into this void
Vicarious joy, vicarious hope, still dream of the rope
Can't cope with this anymore, the wound is forever sore
I'm getting sick of trying, lying to myself a bit more
**** your good health, choke on your worthless wealth
Burn down another Newport, the tenth or twelfth

A shot of whiskey for the rain
A shot of whiskey for the pain
My efforts to stay insane
Let's take one for the rain

Burning down another menthol smoke
Pulled from packs like ***** jokes
Learning that it's all or broke
Flick away that **** and croak

All to be said was spoke
Between us in the end
But something brings back memories
Which I cannot defend, that send me

To places gone,
How does one
Swim back up
Stream?

Seventy eight cents accelerated into a slapped palm
A nod between us to prepare this nickle dime handoff
Passenger in this body behind a wheel
Slave to yellow white blurs on blacktop
Can't stop thinking I should drive up all the roads I drove down,
Manic around town, sporting a frown
Like a clown with mismatched shoes
Filling blank space with blues and *****
No cruise control to pull me down this road
Foot bears the load, frame bent Ford
By the grace of the Lord still breathing
No longer careening down unfamiliar paths  
Not the last laugh
But close

Voices overlapping
Drinks spilling
Cigarettes smoked
Eyes cast down
Looking into nothing
Bottom of a glass speaking in tongues
Words cut rough on broken glass
Plastic cups melting on your lips
Pop the filter, **** the poison
Repeat
They're mixing up the bones
I hear them clacking between cracking old fingers
Sitting on the edge of joy
Trying to **** up some piece of it like a campfires warmth
Lost on the edges of this cold light,
spectating skotototrophically
Digesting this dark light into a cancerous liver
A dying heart
A screaming spleen
A voice alienated by foolish freewill
Selfish and final
Silent and screaming
Wind and ice breaking all the cedars, bowing their souls into the creek
Cracked limestone coffin, burning away our limbs and bodies
The bones keep spinning, the lies keep blending into begonias and bar tabs

Crown Royal in a Coke can, warm rain fills the midnight blackness
Sitting on the flight deck among the tie-downs, staring into the wake
Something inside me says to jump, blind and mindless, deep into this Indian ocean


Rifles in a pile, triple canopy and palm groves
A beach made of trash
I stand in this screaming greenery, something inside me says to walk
Lose myself in this impenetrable, howling green


I wake to myself walking and talking, who was here in this body before me?
People speaking to a flipped mask
Words hollow as reeds in the snow
Something inside me writhes at this restlessness, beckons my head beneath the waves

The night they killed Osama bin Laden,
we drank the bottles down to the shards
We screamed
We pushed all the sand off the third deck
We racked every bolt in our soul
We shed every piece of body armor
We spat into the face of this childhood stupidity
War movies and old men talking
Watching the whole world fall down
Why did I find myself such a fool,
to carry a rifle for nothing