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.

Graffiti Art

"Just a man trying to hold it together while falling apart"

Midnight. Drunk. Weary from a day of not working, watching the sun rise and crest and set and make its way around again.
Should be writing my thesis.
Should be working on a rough draft of Dorothy closing arguments in the murder of Miss Gulch.
Should be asleep.
Should be sober.
Life stretches behind and in front of me as a series of should's:
Should have gone for a run,
Should have bought more cigarettes.
Should have drank enough that I'd be hovering face first over some toilet, my own or another's, praying for death or the oblivion of sleep.
Should have gotten high.
Should have filed for unemployment a week ago.
Should be looking for a job.
Should stop sleeping around.
Should leave the country.
Should have worn a condom.

Parallel, but equal in both length and girth, are the penetrating shouldn'ts:
Shouldn't have finished off half a liter of scotch.
Shouldn't have smoked a pack of cigarettes.
Shouldn't have gotten high.
Shouldn't have spent a weekend running with no sunscreen.
Shouldn't have spent that extra day away from home after a week of not seeing the inside of my apartment.
Shouldn't have spent an entire day watching tv shows and streaming movies.
Shouldn't have lied on government paperwork.
Shouldn't see a friends ex.
Shouldn't of unloaded the last of the Vicodin.
Shouldn't feel sorry for myself.

Should and shouldn't; I am a series of ties between these steel girders. On a bullet train called the present as these tracks race ahead and behind me across the west's wild cityscape of SoCal.

Another unemployed writer whittling away his time with a bottle and a blog; the stuff dreams are made of. A slice of humble, a la mode, from this fucked up american pie. If it wasn't for narcissism, then I would truly be lost.

But another day dicking around, wrapping myself in the warm post-coital blanket of self infatuation while vainly avoiding the inevitable encounter with the wet spot of reality. Hiding under the covers of any mind-bending mood-altering substance I can get my hands on to keep the monsters of feeling that hide in every dark nook, corner and cranny of the English muffin that is my unconscious waiting for the sheets to slip.

Monsters, wet spots; should, shouldn't. Flying down the line at 180 miles-per-hour each moment and decision and action and in-action a blur recognized in its glimmer on the horizon or in reminiscing about how I got on this god-damned train in the first place. A series of cherished regrets, all those experienced and all those still anticipated.
Should have finished my Master's.
Shouldn't have cheated.
Shouldn't have gone to jail.
Should have finished my cover letter.
Should have brushed my teeth.
Shouldn't have more coffee.
Should have washed off the shame.
Should use spell check.
Shouldn't write.

But you smile like a happy ass or cry till you die of dehydration. Fucking and punching or getting beaten and fucked. Wet spots and monsters. Scotch and cigarettes. Should and shouldn't. Story of my life.
"If you remember nothing else about me remember that I smiled"

I wait.
For what, what slouching beast towards Bethlehem slinks?
The burning blue sky of winter on a hot empty day on the coast,
Its oppressive expansiveness pushes down on the homes, hearths, and houses.
Alternating from coffee, to beer, to scotch, to cigarettes, and back to coffee...
Recognition, connection, false hopes;
we don't believe in soulmates, and we wait for them, like Santa.
Just as real.
Dream jobs, lottery tickets, death;
and endless list of future pursuits: travel, money, love...
Always in the tomorrow that will come once the sky has been burnt and blackened by the day;
tomorrow will be better.
Different.
But there are no differences in days or months or people.
No tomorrow; no soulmate; no Santa.
Just seconds and minutes marching in an endless line;
carried for the first nine months in a darkened train
we arrive, stripped, assigned, pretending that Belzec is the Balkans.

An easy metaphor; in an apartment, the air a sultry sink, it would be shame if there was any to be had. If you could still feel shame.
But we are born into shame. The rank mix of sweat and drugs and depression and desperation and dreams. Dreams like so many empty condom wrappers scattered on the floor; multitudes, hidden in wastebaskets, under beds, tucked away at the last minute... the unborn future sitting next to us, rotting in a haze of spermicidal gel in a garbage can under that selfsame sun as us. Whose condom are we in? We, the slowly coagulating present?
Our only freedom comes in desolation of our dreams, in our sacrifice of ourselves beneath that empty sky. No trumpet's blow will pull the scales off your eyes. We are blinded by birth. We are Abraham and Issac on that hillside, and there is no god. Just the same empty dead blue sky, the color of a corpses lips, above.

It won't care.
Scream, cry, rage; it will remain. The sacrifice is one of perception, just like the jailhouse, the stoic argument of virtue; easy on the agropolis steps, different in the lion's den.
Because there is no virtue.
But there are lions.

Creation and destruction are fantasies. Action; political, social, economic... movement is no more an anwser than stillness as the slightest blink, like a butterflies wing; your truck breaks down two weeks later. Unrelated?

We surround ourselves with each our own fog, hoping that cruel light of the world outside will not penetrate. Substances, hopes, dreams, plans, a future. Tomorrow.
A haze we hide ourselves in, hiding ourselves from the world, the world from us...
but the day burns on.
Born into Borges lottery. A complexity we can't understand, an absurdity that extends beyond laughter. Fatalism, nihilism... we march in step, aware or not. Each pace bringing us closer and farther from the cataclysm of the duel of the present. Turn, and you find, through the fog, that you face yourself. Look closer, and you see the fog is you; you are nothing; you face nothing; there is nothing. Gasping and bleeding, a shot rings out; your gun, your life, cold and flaccid against your hip.

A woman dies in the throes of passion, her safe word left unspoken or unheard. A senator assassinated. A person explodes. 10,000 people a year die from earthquakes. Markets bull and boar and collapse and stagnate in loose 10 and 20 year cycles. A DUI checkpoint. A bottle of scotch. Organic salad covered in the later runoff of bacteria from a neighboring factory farm. Hospital bills piling up from falling down with no one around to sue. Bounced checks from work; accounting errors that your bank and bills don't understand or care about. Cancer. Heart disease. Stroke. High blood pressure; high BAC's; just being high; to drunk, to sober, to alive, too filled with words to take action. Too many actions taken without words. Too many empty words used to justify actions, too many words used for inaction.
Too many words.
Too many tomorrows.
Listen close enough, and through the fog, you can hear the unsteady march of multitudes...
empty echoes beneath the winter sun.

Expression depression;
Writing empty blind words
like lonely thoughts and feelings.

Like waiting inside a car with
no gas and a broken heater
on the side of a busy highway.

Like a full bowl from your favorite
box of cereal on a Sunday morning
and an empty bottle of milk.

Like singing your heart out
to an empty room on a sinking
ship with no life-raft.

Like a log sitting in a fireplace
with no kindling and a
busted chimney flue.

Like a fresh blank canvas
sitting next to a bottle of wine,
and no brushes.

Like holding a much needed
cigarette outside a bar
with no matches.

Like a perfectly brewed pot
of premium roasted coffee
and an empty box of sugar.

Like a long walk on a
cold windy night to the store
while your wallet sits at home.

Like two candles burning over
a freshly made five-course dinner when
your partner calls working late.

Like a poem sitting on a
forgotten page, waiting words,
unseen. Unsung. Unknown.

Like a person;
like a poem-
like me.