Dead Man

Dead Man, Dead Man, Dead Man
Shuffle your feet across dirty linoleum and through murky visions of past and future
Carry yourself from room to room like a wounded and frightened solider who doesn't know why He's out here dying so far from home
Dead Man. Dead Man. Dead Man.
Have you no last words?
Silent and dumbstruck
Thinking a million miles a minute and producing no thoughts
Any wisdom is lost without words
Dead. Man. Dead. Man. Dead. Man.
Your lifeless eyes see only death and horrors
Dead Man,
Your soul is a candle freshly snuffed out
Leaving only smoke to linger

Animalistic

Crimson life glistens in the night on lunar white teeth
A hunter's eyes reflect beauty and destruction fixed over his prey
Praying for a release
A Wolf with blood soaked jaws and writhing body beneath
Spread eagle beneath a full moon in time for her moons blood
Animalistic cries and movements
Then

Nothing

Stillness in the dark
Rapid change
Hard to soft dark to light
Death to life
Heaving chests and the drip drip drip
Blood running down a savage chin
Rain running down a limestone lord

Desolation

The Illinois countryside passes by outside the window slightly faster than the posted speed limit. Cornfields stretch farther than you’d care to look, oceans of green stalks with small towns nestled in them like their own Atlantis sunken in poverty and ignorance. It’s warm outside and I sit in the passenger seat chain-smoking cheap red cigarettes while my friend drives. He gingerly packs a glass pipe with ground up plant matter while keeping a watchful eye on the road. We have no destination in mind, just a course plotted for happiness and we’re not pulling over until we find it.

“Do you want to hit this?” He asks.

“No thanks, I can’t. You mind if I have some of these beers though?”

“They’re warm, but go for it Man.”

"Thanks."

Drinking with a purpose that isn’t enjoyment while spouting poetry from books and crumpled paper scattered about the floor of the car and throwing empty cans out the window.

The demands of  “Another drink!” yelled above the sound of The Gaslight Anthem on the radio are matched only by the requests of “Another poem!” and the literary litterers drive on until dusk and until other minimum wage workers with minimum wage jobs and expensive tastes finish their shifts.

They join them on their journey, a search for anything that isn’t what’s right in front of them.

Walking through the streets of suburbia after dusk, it’s springtime in America and flags fly proudly outside of houses with floodlights illuminating them to keep their fear at bay. Carrying Styrofoam cups of gas station soda mixed with cheap whiskey, we put one foot in front of the other on yellow and white lines with no planned destination besides a state of separation of mind and body.

We are the children of a post-nuclear family (Sure my parents are happily married, but not to each other) wandering in a capitalist wasteland. The darkness covers our sins from watchful eyes and absent Gods. Tail lights and stop signs. Just try to act natural for one minute, because everyone’s attention is on us (Just like it fucking should be).

A “No thanks, I’m just looking around” attitude coupled with wandering and glazed eyes.

Finally our cheap Styrofoam reservoirs weigh next to nothing and laughter fills the empty streets. No longer adults with responsibilities or tomorrow to worry about but children racing the midnight train down by the tracks, knowing we’ll never win this battle but still trying our damndest.

An amphetamine heart will never rest and a whiskey soul will always thirst.

Providence

Trapped in a thoughtless night, I drag my body ablaze through empty streets and alleys past packed bars and clubs. Window shopping for a good time in the 21st century. The streets may have been paved with gold but they're littered with used condoms and empty beer bottles like bread crumbs to foreign beds in apartments rented by people with no names.
Fingernails diggining into the cracks in the sidewalk, pulling yourself up a drunken cliff wall.

Or staring into a mirror made of polished steel and bolted to the concrete, going over every event leading up to being in this bathroom with the shower on hot hot hot and a towel shoved into the gaps of the door. Breathe your life away into the hospital ventilation system like it's your last breath. A final word is never screamed but always mumbled or choked on. Let me out.

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.