A constant struggle
Between rebellion
And undying allegiance
Accusation of either
Cheapens your system
There must be ulterior ways
To align with

Alliances and Medicine

"Have you ever seen a band that didn't play an encore?", Coyote says barely even asking. I had just met Coyote two hours earlier outside this cafe on the corner when he approached me to bum a cigarette. He said his birth name was Ben but people called him Coyote, like the pelt he wore on the back of his jacket. Along with that he sported a thick mustache, large glasses, a cowboy hat and boots. All of this looking extremely weathered as if he wore this personality every day. He, his friend Huck, and I sat at a table in the corner where he would hit the keys of his typewriter, not violently but like he meant it, taking breaks to talk of farming across the country and taoism. "I sort of feel like I'm ripping off Bukowski when I write, except for the fact that I'm not drunk.", I say off hand after reading aloud a poem I'd written the day before. "Not yet, right?", Coyote says pulling out a little brown vial with a crude hand made label and a dropper. "What's that?", I say honestly intrigued. "Grain alcohol that is taken and infused with the original elements it came from and then distilled again. For every drop, it's gone through the process four times." I am honestly interested now, which is rare for me. "So what do I do with this?", I ask looking quizzically at the dropper. Coyote sees my uncertainty and hesitation and takes the dropper, dispensing it's brown liquid directly into his mouth. After seeing no ill effects, I do the same and instantly feel a warmth coming over me from no more than five drops of the bitter liquid.
"-what I'm saying is my family is german and before world war two it took a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread. Would've been nice to know someone with grain. Would've been nice to know how to make bread.", I hear Coyote say as I become aware once again. "Oh. Yeah man."

The scars

Barely visible at most given moments
But sure stand out in the cold
This winter needs to end
I need this winter to end

You never see tables
Made or intended
For one person
Its always an empty chair
Sitting across from me
Taunting me

I glance up from my notebook and coffee cup
For the tenth time
Catching the girl seated facing me
At the next table over
Looking at me
Realizing she has been caught
She abashedly resumes sketching in her notebook
I just hope she gets my eyelashes right

I see the days ahead
Longing for the times I write love poems
Once more
Convinced I will meet a woman
As fucked up as myself
Once more
Until I wreck my hopeless vessel on the siren's rocks
Once more
I will continue robbing the sane of their sanity
Turning girls into women who cannot trust
Once more

Trying to sleep sober
For me
Is like trying to eat with chop sticks
It can be done
But it takes forever
And is extremely frustrating

Consume
Until the last drop
Consume
Until it burns no more
Consume
Until I can no longer
Consume
Until I am comatose

When vodka starts to taste like water
When closing one eye is necessary
When water tastes heavenly
When pain no longer touches me
My mind is prepared

The day after creation God took a look around
He whispered to himself I can do this
But just as soon as we had broken ground
He declared his first shot a miss
I would have rather he taken the way of Plath
Instead of drowning his wayward offspring
With the first of many a bloody bath
If you're the only one left of course you're king

My hands grip the bottle
Like the pilot holds the throttle
Gaining everything while losing it all
Like when men took the first fall

When God struck Paul with blindness
I see this story got misconstrued
It's just a metaphor for close mindedness
With which God has cursed you too
There is no reason for the sympathetic cries
Even if he had given his only son
I hardly see how it applies
Since he was back before the week begun

Madness thickens
Slowly
Over
Time
Like blood
No escape as the voices surround me
Chasing me to the depths of my mind
Cornering me
Never ceasing
I do not completely resent them
In these times
Of self exile

Huddled together
With faces facing down
Leather bound books
At the ready
Thanking their God
But he was never here
By claiming God answered
Them
They are claiming that he chose to ignore
Those gone unanswered
A starving black child
With Xylophone ribs
A group of warriors
Spilling blood for his glory
A trembling family
Huddled in the crawl space

The Stage Goes Black

I saw a musical and at the end, before the curtain fell, the actors took a final bow.
Accepting recognition for the tale told.
The music played, summing up their journey they'd just completed.
The curtain fell and the stage went black.
I cannot tell the final toll of my tale, for I do not know.
But when you spot me taking a bow, expect the curtain to follow.

What's even worse than
someone having writer's block
someone that complains

The sleet comes down one miniscule piece at a time, just as it was doing this morning as I left for work. Due to the temperature I can no longer differentiate between the smoke I am breathing and steam. In times like these I think of all the professional help that I've had that told me to find inner strength and not to rely on anything else for happiness. I hated all those therapists the most. The only therapist I ever liked was this fifty year old woman who listened to slayer and led a group therapy session in the out patient program I attended. Thinking of that program reminds me of the woman that worked there who got me to believe in God for a few months. I do not remember her name, but I can remember what she looked like and what she sounded like and that 44 ounce mug she always had. She was the nurse at the program, whom I had to see every morning to give a breathalyzer test and every friday for a drug test. When I told her how much Klonopin and alcohol I had taken two weeks prior she said to me, "I'm glad I got a chance to meet you, because God wanted you alive for a reason." I wanted to believe that so badly. She never tried telling what to believe, she was just nice to me every morning as I waited to blow a zero on the test. One conversation with her comes to mind readily.
"So you suffer from depression?"
"Yes."
"It's a bitch ain't it?"

A man on the street spotted me smoking and approached me saying,
"You're too young to be smoking cigarettes, what's your mother think of this?"
"Actually sir, I'm twenty years old."
"Oh, my mistake. You look much younger. What's the secret?"
I looked him in the eyes located beneath the brim of his hat and said,
"Completely disregard Death and Death will disregard you."
"What the hell is that supposed to...."
I heard him say as I walked into the street without looking either way.

I've worn a mask made to resemble faith
I've first hand felt prejudice for my disbelief
My bitterness does not come from thin air

I constantly think of the pain I left back in Illinois
That has followed me north
Because of this I hate being inside of my head these past few months
That’s why I take every chance I have to escape it
Like one takes the Metra train to escape to Chicago for an afternoon
you don’t care that it’s shitty
It’s cheap and it gets you there for a while

Making eyes at someone across the room
She's still wearing a coat
Although she's been here a while
Ready to go at a moments notice
This raises the urgency to go talk to her
Implying I even have the guts to do so
My cowardice saves me from certain embarrassment
As she is joined by a young man
Wearing tennis shoes

My boss
is quite a character
when a customer comes in
she is ready to give them
the world
with a smile
always asking what they know
making them laugh
when they leave
her voice changes
so that when taunts them
it sounds real
I came into work this morning
she said
"What do you know today, Riley?"
and we laughed as I told her
What I knew

In the back of all our minds we believe things will get better
That was never a part of the deal

Squeeze the accelerator gently but firmly
Like how one may strangle a lover
Fear sets in like mold may set into a house
Discreetly at first but then it Blitzkriegs
I search my rearview for authority
But there is nothing
Including the Godless sky

Walking out of the cafe with blank pages in my moleskine, I admitted defeat as I lit a cigarette. Once you find something that works for you and you get into a routine the ideas will soon begin to stop coming. Looking up I saw a somewhat over weight man in Green Bay Packers memorabilia just as he sees me and gets this look on his face like he had just found the last piece of cake in the ice box.
"AAH YOU LIKE TO SMOKE"
"What?"
"SMOKE"
"What about it?"
"YOU GOT AN EXTRA SMOKE?"
"Oh, yeah no problem."
I hand this odd man a cigarette without hesitating, and expecting nothing in return. Whenever anyone asks me to bum a cigarette I always give them one, always expecting nothing back from them. I do this so that if I ever need to ask a stranger to help me get my fix I do not feel guilty when doing so. I do not believe in karma, just like I do not believe in a God, but I do believe that what comes around God damned goes around.
"AH thanks man, here let me give you a couple books of matches."
"Nah that's fine, don't worry about it."
"No no, I've got a ton of them. Here."
"Thanks."

The pretty perfectionist girls have learned their lessons and learned their lies well over time. Maturing like a fine wine. Despite this I consistently choose the cheap bottle, leaving that nice merlot wondering on her shelf "What's wrong with me?"

The collective crazed consciousness
residing in this room reminds me
absolutely of absent aspirations

A thing about
moving to a
new area
is that you soon
begin to see
doppelgangers
of all your friends
you left back home

Life or the world in general tries to correct itself and when that fails at least return things to how they once were, like a turtle or an hourglass flipped upside down. We are stuck in the current of the whirlpools of our own tendencies and destinies, always returning to where we were but just a little closer to the end.

Once when I was an angry boy; I read Bukowski, wrote hateful poems, dreamt of wandering the Earth, longed for violence. My disgust gave me something solid to hold on to, a stance to take, something to claim.

When I became a young man; I read Kerouac, wrote love poems, dreamt of traveling the Earth with her, longed for commitment. My cynicism was overpowered with learning how to love and more importantly how to trust.

When I became a fool; I read suicide notes, I wrote nothing, I dreamt of dying, I longed for an end.

But then I became a man and Bukowski is back on my shelf next to the bottle of wine. I want to wear my shoes ragged on the plains of our Earth. I want to be read about one day in some highschool students text book and have them not give a shit about my work. I want to always have a place to call home but be able to enjoy where I am at. I am happy but I'm still working on improving.