I'm Sorry.

We were riding.
The sun was
high, so were we.
I looked
back, entering
the palmed tree lane.
Sweat glistened off
her and the water.
Ducks, a mother,
five babies, walked by.
I pointed, she saw and
laughed, in delight.
I gave chase, hoping
to catch one, so that
she could hold it,
soft, young, beautiful,
in her hands.
Into the bushes, they fled
but I, fast and fleet,
swollen with love and
pride; they were not
fast enough.
Up the small slope
the last two ducklings
zigged and zagged.
But in the rush,
as I lunging towards
the one ahead of it,
panicked, it moved,
as reaching for its
brother, I stepped,
just the wrong way.
There was no crunch.
No feeling at all.
Just the way time slows...
It wasn't moving, I picked
it up. Alive in my hands
but hurt. Bad.
I remember her voice behind
me just as the mother
lunged out of the bushes
to attack.
"Don't touch it!"
But to late, later than
she was able to see.
I gently tossed the duckling
back, as the mother
lunged again.
It landed, in a heap, and
didn't move.
I backed up, terror gripping
me as I prayed, silently, Get
Up! Please! I'm sorry! Don't
let her see what
I have done! It rose, with
difficulty. It would soon
die, the damage to great for
its impossibly small body;
in another blink
it was gone, into the bushes,
with its family.
I stood, guilty sunken heart
breaking. She came nearer,
I smiled, dead inside, broken
as her innocent, naive, laughter
behind me asked, "If you touch
them, won't the mom not
take them back?"
But some things
you just can't
take back.

I am the drunken tirade
of a lonely hearted man;
I am the the bastard child
of whiskey smoke and sex.
I am the unremembered dream;
I am the unsung song;
I am the torn to pieces part
of a love that has long gone.

I am the sandy dusty boots;
the broken leather's creak;
I am the fading ember of a cigarette
flicked into the street.

I am the bottom of an empty glass;
the panties left behind;
I am the dirty powdered mirror
the morning after lines.

I am the broken typewriter key;
the ribbon out of ink.
I am the discord of a five string guitar,
where the one-eyed rat is King.

I am the Fisher, I am the fallen,
I am the fallow field.
I am the silty river bottom
where the blind bloated catfish feels.

I am the unmarked soldier's grave;
the hero left behind.
I am the click of an empty barrel
behind enemy lines.

I am the rejected marble,
I am the diamond's flaw,
I am the rising smoke that wafts
past the body after a draw.

I am the raven's rising caw;
the timber wolf's midnight bay.
I am the fear that haunts men's hearts
and stalks beside their graves.

I am moiling worm at night;
I am the undertaker's light;
I am the wailing widow's spite.
When you fall, I am the unseen height.

In your ointment, I am the rotting fly;
I am the splinter in your neighbor's eye;
Upon your lips I am every lie;
I am your empty stomach's cry.

I am the first stone thrown;
I am the sacrificed son;
I am the wish you should be careful of
and your regret once the deed is done.

I am the eye, I am the tooth,
I am the coveted bride;
I am the river runneth red;
and the golden calf you hide.

I am the slouching beast that creeps;
I am the riddle and the Sphinx;
I am the whip and the master's drum;
I am the binding chain and the scorching sun.

I am the cotton and the field;
I am tobacco's leaf and the poppy's yield;
I am the ship and the selling block;
I am the raping soldier's cock.

I am the diamond, I am the mine;
the infected blanket and the railroad line;
I am the fallout and the spreading sore;
the prison guard and the jail-house door.

I am the branch, I am the noose,
I am the guillotine;
I am the salty sponge and leather straps;
I am electricity;
the blindfold and the firing squad;
full syringe and open child-proof caps;
I am the razor's edge,
and the ambulance driver's lapse;
I am the oil soaked rags and
the accidental match;
the spoiled smoke detector and
the oven door unlatched;
I am the slick shower floor and
the left out drying mat;
I am the rotten brake-line and
the surgeons unsterilized hand;
I am the forgotten land mine and
I am the wasted land;
the armor's chink;
the broken knife;
the broken condom and
the reaper's scythe.

When the bad outweighs the good,
the good are all gone or dead;
when a shadows stalks
the halls of mens hearts,
and sleep a synonym for dread;
when the guilty run free and wild;
when innocence doth fade;
the hazy hallows of fantasy
become where gallows are made.

In the absence of any eternal,
the fallen have become lost gods;
babylon the dessicated capital
swallowed by sweltering suns.
A moan the only breeze,
death rattles the only wind;
brackish tears the only rain
to fill the barren wells and fields.

Against the waking nightmare walked
as much a man as shade.
Trudging, dust envelopes him
as he stumbles upon the plains.
Cheeks dark sunken hollows,
lips cracked and coated white,
eyes a weary bloodshot hue
without color or light.
With a pulse of mostly whiskey,
each rattling gasp death and smoke,
skin a too-tight leather holding
together a bag of bones.

He stares unblinking and unseeing;
behind him, no footsteps last.
He follows no road or trail beyond
the distant glimmer of broken glass.
Around him the carrion-searchers circle;
rabid and wild stalking beasts bay;
the creak of each weary shuffled step
the only sound he makes.

babylon beats his heart,
babylon the wasted land;
the drums of human skin are sounded
with the sun-bleached femurs of men.
the salty tears are his alone,
the weep a lost memory, forgotten shame,
the barren fields of his loins quiver,
he is the shifting soulless plains.

f*ck'd

Fuck these winds of women and whiskey and weed that whirl around me like dervishes;
Fuck this sober societies discrimination of functional alcoholics and day drinking morning drivers;
Fuck the warring camps of consumption and anarchy that grip my desires for love and freedom and turn them on each other;
Fuck the demands to have a phone, have a mailbox, have a dog, have responsibility, have maturity, have goals, have dreams, have hope, have god, have family, have friends, have love, have appreciation, have respect, have a heart, have a nice day;
Well what if it's not a nice day.
What f today is a terrible horrible no good very bad fucking day?
What if today is just another same shit different shovel kind of take a flying fuck at a rolling donut sorta red headed stepchild of tuesday and thurs-fucking-day?
Forget yesterday. Tomorrow hasn't come yet. Live in the moment. Live in the now. Be in the zone. Find your zen. Find a way to unify all million little fictional piece inside you into some all-or-fucking-nothing resemblance of an "identity"; god, the devil, ra, nirvana, nothing, everything, the force, politics, narcissism, work, play, children, television, sports, money, love, drugs, dope, depression; just change! The anwser is that grass-is-always-fucking-greener easy. Happiness is in whatever you are not, spotlight offstage, its name always before, taking, overtaking, yours.
Fake it till you make it. Fake/real; procreation and masturbation, love and lust, blood and family, real food and processed, living and really living... so, are you really living? Are you really feeling? Is this your authentic self? Is this the real you? Is this the real life? Is this just a dream? Is there no day but today? Have you been all you can be? Have you just done it? Have you obeyed your thirst? Have you had your MTV? Did you eat your wheaties? Is a diamond really forever? Is this till death do us part in anything but paperwork and emotional wreckage? Have you found jesus? Have you been born again? Have you thrived? Is this your brain on drugs? Do you D.A.R.E.? Does money make the world go around? Did you have your break today?
Just another...
2,000 situps...
13 bottles of scotch...
5 ounces of weed...
16 eighteen-year-old-hookers (or 18 sixteen years old)...
3 hits of acid...
512 pull-up...
483 protein smoothies...
3 jobs...
2 careers...
4 marriages...
and 63 marathons...
Till I'm happy.
Miserable.
The same.
Older.
More immature.
Richer.
Poorer.
Dead.
Already.
Or just
maybe
finally
learning to live.