off the wagon again
as feels right given the circumstance
of the burning world

i hate tuning the guitar
i am only happy when i can just pick it up and play
and however it sounds is how i am feeling

but songs like that don’t get played on the radio

---

All the money towers are unique
All in the same way and
Just money towers, after all
Let their ephemeral and illusory grandeur
Wash over you and into the sewer
And be amazed at not just the pieces and parts
But that a person would put them together
In this particular order
To make a big impressive money tower
For fools to feel small below
Or fools to feel big atop
And to carry the money up and down
Because that’s what money towers are for

---

The city is drowning in bad dreams
That any man so inclined
and with enough effort
could wipe away
Albeit the sounds of the highway are deafening
But that’s a cross we’re all born to carry
Whether or not to go outside
You can’t stop them all from dreaming or even fill their heads with butterflies
But that’s a cross we’re all born to carry
Which is the truth you’ve no choice but to face one day
Which we are all fated for
Dust in our mouth, whip to our back, the whole town gawks and jeers like in a feature film
How we carry that cross is up to us but
To be honest
It won’t matter either way
Because no one can go back in time
So you can waste your last moments debating on whether or not you like the taste of your own sweat or not
As long as it was worth something

---

I open the window and let the cold air rush in
that among many things is at least okay
i high off the smell of fall long to be intoxicated
and as the birds fly i hear all the things that are free
calling me to come out and play in the piles of
freshly fallen electric bills as the sirens wail and
the shore inches towards my toes but i am so very afraid
so i close the window
the stale air makes me sad
i wonder why i am so very afraid
and pull the blankets over my face
like i am flipping numbers around in a math equation
that will always end the same way
like a fork in the road, window open or blankets warm
matter will live each way but which will more to me
or which of me is bigger are all thoughts i have
before i go back to which is always the same
work

Running afoul of
the law of
the jungle
with a gun tucked in a belt
with a hair trigger
with a sputter and a cough

they will beat you
to death
with clubs and fists
just to teach a lesson

they will set you on fire
but for the gun and
they will tear you to shreds
but for the hair trigger

but the belt
is tight in the humid
and the sun
and it is too tight
when you draw

and the legeslators
of the jungle
call out their laws
and the cops
have come for you

and the clubs
are coming down
now

nobody wants to hear your
spoken word piece
nobody thinks your
life is interesting
you just want so badly
to say it out loud
that there’s an entire
industry designed to let you

nobody wants to read your book
or your poetry
nobody relates to or
feels excited by your words
but it’s free to
write them down
or post them or
throw them away

if you make it big
it’s not because your
stuff is good it’s
because it’s useful

yeah it’s unique…
uniquely unoriginal
and perfectly fit for the
modern narrative

your self importance
is a ringworm eating
and getting ever bigger when
ever you do and you eat
eat eat until it’s all over

and mommy will congratulate
the big baby who did nothing
but finally stop crying

you keep being right
and knowing things

you’re never wrong
or finding that out

and go about brandishing
the accomplishments
of the authors of the
books you have so
dutifully read
every word
come dripping
out of their mouths

and unless someone
says it to you
i guess you’ll never really know
anything

it’s a big wanting
without purpose and
without reason

but it’s not about you
that’s for sure
on august 9th, 2021
whatever that means

it is both highly personal
and entirely universal
like tasting loss for
the first time or
rushing back to sleep
to catch the end of a dream

and it’s about lying

because it’s a quest for self actualization
at the cost of all things

it’s a big wanting
without purpose and
without reason

but it’s not about you
that’s for sure
and all the things you should or
should not have done or wish that
never happened

it’s about the friends you made along the way
clutching their chest in a parking lot
and the diseased oak leaves drying out in the baking sun
and the consequences, of it all

you lose everyting
you love
being over-conscious
because your brain
is a million little germs
that make up a disease
that slowly eat away
at your life
a disease, being
something like your self
something in the mirror
something like acid
in your stomach
eating away
with no cure

in some ways we still live in the garden
asked to make decisions on things we don’t know about
and to accept the repercussions
then banished for following foreign thoughts and feelings

i think, as i round the corner to your house
suddenly lost and talking to myself in languages i don’t understand
i decide to stop looking for anyone and sleep on the curb
fever dreams of drug filled mansions and the ability to fly

since god won’t love me and i can’t read street signs
i decide to recoil into myself

in many ways we live in a purgatory of sorts
where happiness sits at the end of a tractor pull
and we feel different on the inside every morning
but look like day-walking zombies

i eat and shit and laugh and cry alone
even moreso when others are around me watching
thoughts of suicide-by-apathy filling my
mind and following me around in my dream-

when something is lodged in your airways
you can’t breath even if you try

dax the cat wants to go outside
although maybe she doesn’t know what
awaits for her there

so i make the decision for her, that it
is safer for her to stay with me

but i don’t know if she really knows
and i don’t know if she would agree with
my decision even if she did know

but the language we speak to eachother doesn’t cover much
and she’s a very smart cat, so sometimes i wonder

i wish i could tell her that if i let her out
i can’t be held responsible for what happens
and i can’t be timely when letting her back inside

she’d not be able to come and go as she pleased
and the city has laws against this kind of arrangement

but when i look at her eyes
i know
she knows
and i know
she wants to
go anyway

to be honest, i know it for certain

a cat wants to roll in the grass
and eat bugs and small game
and bathe in the sun all day

“tis better to have loved and
lost than never to have loved
at all”

and maybe it’s selfish to keep her locked inside
with wooden floors, and air conditioning
and a strict regimen of nutritionally viable chow
and even my love is not enough

it’s chess against myself but i don’t even want to play
and it’s bringing me to tears
win or lose, i don’t understand what i am saying
and i can stop talking or stop listening
and i can take bong rips until my eyes water
for a different reason
and take solace in the fact that

i decide to get up
because i’m hungry

and i move my feet
to get to the kitchen

and get a bag of chips
to make the hunger stop

but i have not yet understood a thing about it
and it’s not their fault that they can’t understand
i don’t even speak my own language

Stasis doesn’t stop time
and as the clock tied
to the bomb inside your
skull wound nearer
to the double-zero,
we were all out playing
parlor tricks on porches
for our friends
in open air
in case some other illness
were to wander through
and kill us to a man

But maybe
it’s a roulette wheel
and the double-zero
is just the space
you put all your money on
as the dice bounce
over and over again
but slower and slower, now
as the stasis sets in
and brings things
nearly to a halt

perhaps we’ll watch them
spinning in nothingness
a fraction of a fraction
of a degree at a time
with baited breath
still just guessing
where they’ll land

and things may slow
to an almost infinite still

but stasis doesn’t stop time
so maybe now
you’re just borrowing
against the house

parched and dope sick in kansas
cutting through the bramble
haven’t i been here before?
i mean, everything looks the same
guess i aint goin nowhere

another zombified mother’s son
no clouds in the sky
just eagles flying round
or maybe they are vultures
or military jets

a consistent abundance of nothing
a prison of your own decisions
where other places are just stories
you think about as you drift off
into sleep

I was king of the broad strokes
he said to me as he leaned back
in the worn and dusty recliner
that was stuffed in the corner
between plumes of cigarette smoke
and a half built chevy 305
but it was always good enough, you know?

in those days, he told me,
it wasn’t so hard to just get by
with a toolbox and some elbow grease
why I bought this place just four years
after dropping out of my junior class
but I can’t hardly keep my car insured
without a trip to the boys on Cork street

but I’m old now and that’s all there is
he said ashing in to an empty glass
I can’t work like I used to
and I sure as shit can’t go to school
but I still got this place, he shrugged
and I guess I’ll at least be able to eat
until the social security runs out

king bug makes no decree
his royalty remains unseen
and only challenger, gluttony
his tiny army always flees
but if alive and well he be
a constant state of victory

One day you’ll have nothing to say
Or no one to say it to

I held the broken glass to my eye
in the dimming winter sunlight
examining the chipped edges
like a jeweler a gemstone
as the wind fluttered from the distance
bringing a bare chill from the north
until I looked at you
and told you it was perfect
and I tucked it in my pocket
to be forgotten by the following afternoon

We stood in rapture on a dew-soaked lawn
in a chill that was early for the season
and you were lit up in that little park
with bright lights on every side
guitar and voice electrified
crooning out hymnals of your own design
while for just a few short moments
all those gathered found themselves
at home again

and I cried in that summer dark
swaying behind line after line
of friends and loves and neighbors
as your voice rang loud enough
to cover the sound of passing cars
while I laughed and smiled
while you shivered and sweat
and if that wasn’t home for you
I hope you find your home one day
for just a few short moments
too

it is good to feel you
are treated as a child
when you are one

but wouldn’t you
rather just die,
than be one forever?

i imagine

you crawl out into the forest
under the grey clouds, not so bad
but it gets blacker, colder
hostile like the vacuum of space

whether to make peace and die
or turn back to the crib
it’s always been up to you.

the ouroboros represents
money which is a lie
that feeds itself but
the depiction should be of
a white snake,
with a conquistador
hat