Muscle Memory

Nights like these don't make us who we are, so much as dismantle who we were.


Unsteady hands palm to palm with complete strangers "Thank you for your service."
The smell of cheap black coffee and cowboy killing cigarettes hover freshly over me.

A filthy mouth paired with a clean white uniform never balance the Fuck out.
The sun doesn't rise when you're at thirty thousand feet, you're just meeting it half way from home.

Your golden Messiah is nailed and hanging perfectly centered between two tanned breasts.
Plead insanity if you dare speak at all.

I could talk philosophy with any number of you or I could speak at a rock.
It's always only taken one to dance.


Hail To The Chief plays for the final time as the hand carved wooden box is lowered into the ground, a slow macabre rendition, and the First Lady made widow weeps tears of American pride. Outdated railroad tie stitching keeps a nation from just barely bursting at it's seams.
Muscle memory and dead tourists. The deceased and victimized jockey for position, using our heart strings as the reins.

"It takes more muscles to smile than it does to pull the trigger.", Said the broken Warrior to me. The broken Warrior who also said he hates his wife, but couldn't help but to SMILE as he accounted acts of killing to Me.

You may be able to soak up and release knowledge like a sponge, but I'd rather be a spring and let it trickle from me endlessly and effortlessly.

No stars. No hope.

Black sand paper like shingles scratch up my back as I lay two stories tall with cigarette in hand. The consistent list is on my mind once more. You, Her, that other one, boot camp, the remainder of my cigarette, the length of my intoxication, but the thing that strikes me most is the lack of stars on my horizon. Are they coming out for you tonight? Do they sparkle, dance, and dazzle you? Perhaps. They say what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, I can certainly attest to that. Once able to drown my sorrow with whiskey until his dreadful moans lessened and became nothing but joyful gurgles. But now a bottle and a half down, I only see strangers in arm's length.
Admiration only means anything if you agree with your soothsayers.  The one joy I've gotten from a stranger's observation was fleeting. "You have 'don't Fuck with me eyes'" I was told by a dominatrix while I was losing my mind at a crowded sex party in Chicago. She had eyes that told me Her Father hadn't given Her enough attention. After being locked up, running free sounds desirable. Boring sex. Palatable tastes are no longer regarded as valid.
I want nothing more than to be happy. What I need to be happy makes me miserable at the thought.

Past the Iris

Hunched over the green felt like a sniper, taking aim.

Stripes, Solids. Good or Evil.

It makes no difference. 

Calculated stares behind steel rimmed glasses and a handle bar mustache. 

The kind of mustache you'd picture God having. 

Pull, Push, and Release. Sunk. 

Another game, another drink.

Banter back and forth, wooden weapons in hand used to occasionally steady one's self. 

An amphetamine soul, chugging cigarette after cigarette.

Enamel grinds against enamel. 

Thousand. Yard. Stare. 

Sure, He's got the Girl.

But you've got.

You've got..

You've.. Got...

You've got something special. Man.

No, I mean it. 

Ten thousand drooping eye conversations into the morning regarding the secrets of the Universe

Cold and warm hands held until their temperatures match

Staring past the iris, into the soul

Claims of Love. Of heartbreak. Of Truth and Intention.

Anyone who has noticed my smile was definitely looking for it.

Demoralization

A generation that no longer watches pornography due to boredom

While video footage of car crashes,
Played over and over and once more in slow motion
(Twisted  metal. Pools of mixing auto and bodily fluids. Blood stained air bags. Silent onlookers.)
,Only satisfies through the teenage years

Hiding under the covers while under the influence
Running fingers over whiskey thin ribs
A prisoner idly playing with the bars on his cell

Tricks, Games, and Trains

The kids play games
Clack......Clack......Clack.
The kids get bored of suburbia and comfort and safety
Clack.....Clack.....Clack.
The kids in groups of four or five or six gather and hide behind false courage and grins
Clack....Clack....Clack.
The kids place their necks on the train tracks all together
Clack...Clack...Clack.
The kids see who can hold their skinny neck against the cold vibrating steel the longest
Clack..Clack..Clack.
The kids watch the light of the steady locomotive approach
Clack.Clack.Clack.
The kids follow the leader
ClackClackClack.
Young Men have died for less.

Memory

Under the radar is where it's most comfortable
Trouble differentiating between you making me sick
      or giving me butterflies
No true validation
Nothing behind the Money
No Justice behind the sentencing
In God we trust you'll fucking pay us back
Circulation in my body is poor, leaving my hands perpetually cold
The perfect excuse for "Hey, feel my hands. Aren't they freezing?"
Tricking my way into getting a glimpse of another's warmth

Memories are solidified by emotion
Episodes come back like getting the chills

Standing barefoot, grabbing pieces of grass with my tattooed toes, weeping gently to myself, trying to say goodbye to my Mother on that comfortable June day.

Moving back in time.

....Disbelief. Quickly followed by rage I'd not known I contained as I pounded on the steering wheel, yelling pleas and demands of Love in Your general direction. Hot tears ran down while the smell of a clove cigarette traveled out the window, A frigid newborn Winter traveling in.

Packing up and running away instead of post-coitus talk of admittance of guilt and forgiveness.

Emotion solidifies memory and my inability to cry these days assure me I'll remember and regret nothing.

Thin Air

Irony often lost on the majority while coincidence is mislabeled. Language, this tool we've created out of thin air, is constantly warping on it's own accord. Nothing is set in stone as the Mother's tears that fall on us all have shown us. Cleansing and resettling It all back to zero.