Nevada

They’re all the same to me now – running in one long distant memory of how I thought I wanted things to be – all of it empty now – even as recent as this year – I waited in this old haunted house – high above the ocean – this house painted a grim dusty white – who knows what lives in here or what lived in here – memories of parties and outdoor barbecues – pieces of it falling off down into the ocean every winter evening – the wind blows chips of paint all over the driveway and forms a pile of pale white and orange leaves  every fall – and here I sit waiting for the mail to arrive – waiting for letters that were never sent in the first place – waiting for something to break in a good way or a bad way – waiting out storms huddles in a dark corner – there is no furniture anywhere in this house and it almost feels like there never has been – ghosts and spiders lurk in the empty closets ready to haunt my brain if I even attempt to go to sleep – I can’t sleep and never have been able to sleep here – at night a light outside keeps me awake – high on a mountain a tower with lights on it – this mysterious tower that sits there proud in the day – at night it becomes a nightmare – a giant steel gargoyle that forces my eyes open – they come and haunt me though – every last one of them and their tired conversations and gossip – do they all know each other – it would appear so – they have all learned from the same playbook – none of them loyal to one another – when I am far from here I’ll forget about it all – the same and the same -  sometimes I catch myself trying to remember who told me something – days spent absorbing teenaged philosophies and twenty-something ideas about how shit is – they have no idea – some nights I just want to say ‘go fuck yourself’ to all of it and – oh well. 

Virginia

Creepy late night dreams can only keep me up so long – there are no ghosts or devils walking around in here – only made up stories to keep me awake – to give myself excuses to scare myself – I need a white room – a black room – nothing on the walls – no internet access – no toys – cacophonous music with no melody – no memories of  “oh man her eyes kill me” to keep me from the task at hand – no running arguments in my head – wherever I can pry focus from under the foot of my horribly designed brain I’ll take it – half of the time it only shows up for an hour at a time and then disguises itself as rage and anger and bad prose designed to confuse women from twenty seven years ago – (they’re not reading anyway) – when I get myself set on a goal though – a specific big goal – I can make all of this disappear – focus can easily become something else – fueled by conversations with weaklings and people I’m not going to end up caring about in a year anyway – humoring my way through a million shallow conversations -  this task – leaving this awful place and never returning – has given me enough to do for five people – I feel liberated and ready this time though – without anything else in the way I could make it happen before the days turn grey and cold again – right now though – nothing is happening here – feeling like a ghost with no home right now – no real connection to anyone or anything here – no ongoing dialog or close knit gathering of ideas – weekends blending into each other like they always have – playing this never ending waiting game – coming up from the depths of a however many months long whine festival – I feel like a pussy – I’ll go like one as well – sneak out the back door – hide for the rest of whenever – remove my rear view mirror - drive as fast as I possibly can 

Colorado

(5/?/11 – Trying to maintain without the luxury of closure is making things more and more difficult)

Spending random weekend nights walking around book stores and coming home and coming up with ideas in my head of how things should be – I don’t have to be doing this here – it’s cold and people are colder here – if I put things into action without anyone knowing – I can slip out the back door easy – I can make it by the next sunset  - this place and everything I know about it is tired and hundreds of years old – yet again though – I don’t belong to anything or anyone here – there is no sort of inspiration here – there is nothing but sadness desperation and a longing to just be left alone – I walk around on edge now – snapping at every third person who asks me a stupid question – I think back though – fucking in hotels and relishing in mountains and bright blue oceans – sure it will be different this time

I’m not bitter when they tell me of the restaurants and Radiohead concerts these dudes take them to - I’m not worried about what I need to do - it all sounds like a nightmare - courtships and checking your phone and inbox every fifteen minutes - at this point I’ll never get out of this blue without some sort of permanent damage though - these long days and longer routines I have myself involved in are eternal – I get this fire burning inside me – a hatred – a leave me alone please everything you talk about is incorrect – they try to impress or make a better joke and it falls flat – I try not to worry too much about it – trying to imagine a point in time when I can be covered in sunlight all day and covering pages and pages with words that make sense – this tries to keep me going – it’s the same tired old five hundred words I don’t even need to say though – surrounded by nothing all day – the rope is slowly becoming shorter and shorter – I feel myself ready to jump

(9/15/2000 -You put me here, I swear to fucking god you put me here. Listen, let’s try and start from the beginning. Well, no let’s not, you won’t allow that. In fact you won’t allow a word in edge wise here. You won’t let me get you a drink of water to clean your dirty soul out. You won’t allow me to do anything to you at this point. So long to the days of cheerios and stares out the car window. It’s been turned around now. It’s not the same, it’s never going to be the same. I stop. I stop everything, and now I go from town to town checking the mailboxes of housewives and thieves. These girls come up to me with a little display case that has a bunch of wedding rings in it, they tell me to pick one out for them. I pick out the ring, the best one I can see in that little leather case. I hand it to one of the girls and she says to me “this isn’t good enough for me, neither are you” and walks away. Ha! Sound familiar? Not really true but. I can’t picture what the hell you look like. When I see you from time to time you are someone else, regardless of what’s happened on the street and in the swimming pool, you are someone else. Forget your hair, forget your body, forget your clothes, you look at me differently. You don’t look at anyone like you used to. You certainly won’t give me a dime to call a taxi home that’s for sure. I bet at some point I will kick myself for not being more persistent with you. For not writing a book about you, for not taking drives off of canyons for you. I’ll regret that I didn’t take you to the edge of my head with me. I’ll regret that I ever kissed you. I’ll tell you that. I’ll tell you it was the worst night of my life. I am going to tell you that the next time I see you. I’m going to just tell you straight up that kissing you was not on my agenda. I woke up and next thing I know I’m thrown into this world of parties and bad rockabilly music and dumb drinks and even dumber shoes. I still remember where everything in that room is. I still remember where my feet landed on the floor the first time I got up. I looked at my feet to see if I could stand up. I looked to see if I would fall over. Little boys and cocaine addicts tremble, but you sort of made me tremble. Just a little bit. I get up, I get down and I turn back around again, and poof your gone. Just like that. In a cloud of perfume and menthol cigarette smoke, in a cloud of rum oxygen and conversations I get lifted certain times of the day. This fact makes me not really regret that I ever kissed you, it does however make me want to strangle Mick Jagger some nights. It makes me want to throw ashtrays against the wall. It makes me look at guys with pierced tongues and eyebrows and all of that and want to throw a hammer at them.I put these new girls to sleep at midnight. I put you to sleep when I go to sleep. You stay up with me, you out stay me every night. You don't come up for air. Relentlessly plowing through my dreams at night. Fuck that I can’t listen to your rules anymore. You fill me up from time to time, yeah. Not all the time. It’s a short and sweet time of the year right now. It’s none of what you thought it was. All along I played with that yo-yo, hoping you would follow it with your eyes enough to become a target. A target for me to throw my issues at. Like the paperboy in the morning. I’ll whip something at your screen door baby. I’ll whip my issues at your door, and you can send whoever is your pet dog at the time to go and get it for you)

(?/?/?? - Funny how time flies and they all fly away from me. They take off like pigeons. Rats with wings. They show up for a minute or two, think they got to know me, and fly away into the wind. No looking back or anything. There are no apologies. They come by the house now and again, and make believe they care, I make believe I care, and we go our separate ways. It bothers me that I put effort into things and they just sort of linger around collecting dust. It bothers me that I am not happy with all of this. There really is no reason to be happy about it. You were had honey bunch. Sipping coffee late at night waiting for the efforts to be rewarded with at least a phone call, or some sort of poem on a napkin. Any sign of anything would help out big time here with me. I don’t want to go backwards. There are people I want to hurt now. There are people from last week I want to hurt. There are people from the movie that I want to hurt. I have a few allies in this war I’m waging right now. We have secret meetings disguised as dinner dates. We look like the couple of the moment, while we plot revenge and fun things like that. She meets me for a drink and we make it back to my house. I lend her books, tell her a quick story about “this one night in Chicago a while back”, give her a peck on the cheek, and the phone doesn’t ring for fifteen weeks. The phone rings with people selling sneakers disguised as literature and shiny photography. We meet again, she never read the books I leant her, and we go our separate ways again. The next meeting of the secret ninja society will be on October 11th 2011, at the parking lot of the restaurant we always meet at. The same parking space and everything. We shall meet there, and there we will finally get to the bottom of this. The plan will be under way, and we can sit back and watch it happen. You and I, we’ll go back to the beach one more time and talk about old families, and sports and cheerleaders, and vegetarians, and Reagan. Why it always bothers me that you come around like Halley’s Comet is beyond me. You rarely have many words to say, and when you do, it’s sugar and fire all wrapped into one big kiss. You bring out the kid in me, I swear to god you do. But you ain’t going to fully understand what I have for a plan. You’re not going to help me whatsoever. It makes it weak when you add your two cents. I’ll do all the work, you watch. I got involved with this girl Diane a long time ago. The most beautiful girl you could ever imagine to see in your whole entire life. We became fast friends, and I eventually developed the biggest crush in the world on her. She was completely crazy. Her mother had died, and she lived in the attic of her aunt's house. No boys allowed. I found letters from her a while back. All sorts of shit about birds flying around her room in the middle of the night, and her mother coming in the room after she had died. I remember every once in a while she would just disappear. Weeks at a time. She would just not answer the phone. I want to see her now. I was so into her. Yikes. I’d pay one hundred dollars just to see her once and hang out. Dreadlocks and babies are all I know about her as of 8 years ago. I would be able to make more apologies if I was given the time. I never have time to apologize though. I have plenty of time to dwell on things though. I have plenty of time to hang out and watch the river flow by me for a few hours. I have no time to sit down over a cup of tea, and discuss wrongdoings. I created a clone recently that I want to show people. I created a secret ninja out of thin air. I wanted him to be just like me. Bored, lonely, misunderstood, and all of that fun stuff. I hang out with the clone all the time and he tells his friends about me, I don’t mention a word of it to anyone though. Nobody believes you when you talk that kind of game. They don’t believe in magic like that. You can make anything. You can do all sorts of things when you keep your mind to it. Pin the mind to the wheel. Pin your tail on the honkey. I enjoy my new friend. If nobody else does, well, fuck them.  There’s no way I can think back to the summer. Nights of high doubt. Nights of guilt. No I just can’t stay here tonight. Nights of feeling like a stranger. Feeling like a loser. A husband and a friend. Honest, and to the point, but a complete liar as well. Drive and use gasoline to get something you think you really need. Try it some time. Know exactly what it is you’re doing without regard to other peoples’ feelings. See how it makes you feel. Be the one who hurts others for self gain and doesn’t think about the consequences, or karma. A fake and a liar for five hours a night. I can’t get on the floor. I need to crawl across the floor. Let’s take a ride to the beach you and I. You never won my attention. But I won your's somehow. I look back and punch myself in the face for all of that. This is really what I look like, but this isn’t what I feel like. I swear to god I didn’t want to get it out of me with you. I miss you now. I kicked myself in the head last week thinking about you. Thanks for sending the karma back to me though. I deserve the games played with me now. I deserve whatever happens now. Do I really deserve this over and over though? I mean it wasn’t that long. You always initiated it. You always started it. Not saying a word to me. I knew the minute I met you that I was going to hell. I knew the minute I met you exactly what you would say to me. I knew all about you and your life. You told me in vague sentences about boys and girls and kisses and roses. I gave you ten minutes, you gave me hours, and what did I do? I took advantage of that, and now look at me. I haven’t had enough yet. I haven’t felt alive like this in a long time. Dear, I will never lie again.)

This Beach

Halfway through every tired conversation and I’m out - on the beach - at the top of a hill looking over the water - sitting on some bench  - escapism every fifteen minutes - I make jokes about how uncomfortable it all really is here - really though - I am somewhere else completely - this existence here - a failure waiting to happen - no fun in the sun to be had - losing inspiration and anything remotely creative as the days tick by -I sleep even less now - in bed by 2:00, awake at 4:30 - back to sleep sporadically for a couple of hours - listen to myself drive myself crazy all morning - driving to a routine - driving home to a routine - no sign of escape in sight - i made a horrible mistake not growing up five months ago - some days and nights I truly need to be left alone though

(10/19/10 - When I think of how angry she has made me it saddens me. Thinking about how happy we were when we met and that general way we talked to each other and talk to each other when we are in “normal” times. To go from that to the way we are now, which is just on the edge, ready to strangle each other and kill each other at any moment is shitty. Not where I wanted to ever get with her. She makes me just angry as hell. I go to sleep angry over and over with her. There were nights I wasn’t going to bed like that for a little while. At the very least  I can try and exhaust myself into sleeping every night now. I can get myself into and out of situations real easy.)

The way the November sun hit her hair was like gold - why are you talking to me - I fuck things up all the time though - I don’t follow through with them - a series of ideas and things to think about - ended - never realized until later- hmm, this would be what I would tell my therapist if I had one - that sounds like a waste of time and energy though doesn’t it?

(10/15/10 - These intense vivid memories of things her and I did, good ones and bad ones. I can remember her face but I can’t remember what it’s like to hold her in my arms. The relationship based on words and photographs. How odd. I wonder how to turn this into a story that isn’t necessarily mean or anything, but how hard I can fall with just that little part of a relationship there. Seeing each other for a year and not making it whole for long enough. I can remember all the hellos and goodbyes in airports and parking lots of hotels. Some of them after intense fights. I never had these kinds of fights with anyone before. )

Feeling suspicious and watching some people - feeling like I know motives and feelings before they happen now - weak - I stand looking clueless around - I see the clues though - disgusted even more now - knowing all of these close people lie and lie to each other - i mean granted I do too - so what’s the big deal really?

(7/31/10 - Turning into a cliche every twelve minutes of my life. Daily angst filled rants swirling around in my head.)

It’s nice to not have to answer the phone - it’s nice to not have to tell anyone about your day - it’s nice all of this - kind of just show up and talk - you get this nice circle of friends - spend some one on time with a few of them here and there - pretty girls - interesting conversations and dark eyes - any other decade and you’d be falling all over yourself - writing ill-advised notes to women who barely want to even hug you - writing horrible journal entries by hand - good God

(4/7/10 - Back in Massachusetts now. Living at home and after three nights I feel like I am ready to explode. I need to get out  and soon. She is going to come here in May to visit. The whole thing is getting weirder now, but I am just kind of going with it.)




Yeah right

Hawaii

These routines and calls out for attention are not just that – Who cares about a clueless party of thieves anyway – at this point everything written out and photographed for me to see – it’s almost like I took some brief trip – now back to whatever level of hell you call this – New England – with baseball games already being played as black skinny fingers longing to be full of green point at the sky still – while the air is still always white and misty – they walk around with fifteen different chips on their shoulders about nothing and everyone – people telling me I am making a mistake – people trying to give me even half a reason to experience slippery roads and chimneys spewing out adorable Christmas smoke one more time – not knowing me – have you ever listened to anything I said – I see groups imploding again – people working against people – doing the same shady business transactions they’ve been doing all along – blind men – blind women – I plant seeds in brains and dump water – I’ll soon be far away and only read about what blossomed out of it – wondering who else will be let down and if I even care at this point – things and stuff and places and people are older now – I have nothing new to offer here and this place has nothing to offer me – I’ve exhausted all the things that can get me high here – I’ve got nothing to lose or win now aside from a severe case of sanity – one more night without a small space to call mine is enough to push me – one more “yeah I’ll give you a call” followed by silence is enough – one more “wait, what?” is enough – really though there is nothing going on here – everything - and nothing all at once

People Magazine's Top 23 Sexiest Women

23.  A million awful blues songs could have been wrapped around her neck like an albatross. She thinks everyone is in love with her, I see right through her though; her eyes have no color.

22. I walk in and look for you across the room. Who knows if you even remember what I look like? Who knows if you have ever seen me? You ignored me again yesterday. You took advantage of your eyes and looked at me for a half a second today though. You took advantage of me. No phone number. No little note stuck on my car windshield. Another day you don’t know I exist goes by. I go home and look forward to you, and you go home and wonder why nobody talks to you.

21. My only real memory of her now is her tongue. Her only memory of me is my saying “no, bad idea” The last time I saw her I was this close to her. “This close” I said to myself. Leaving her in the bushes behind a hamburger joint would have been a good idea. Her friends would have killed me though. I remember her lovely tongue though. How funny the same tongue that spewed so much garbage was responsible for an enjoyable late night meeting such as that one. I sometimes wish I had wings to fly away from girls like that. Quickly fly away.

20. I think she has green eyes. You know what they say about the ones with green eyes.


19. I turned out the lights for the fifth time and opened the drapes an inch. That prostitute was still out there on the balcony. I think she saw me. Beautiful black woman. I waited for her to walk by the room again. She walked by looking around at windows. It looked like she looked right at me, she looked right through me though. I heard her cough walking down the balcony and back towards me. Just as she was about to walk by my room, I opened the door and made believe I was going to get something out of my car. We exchanged hellos and she asked me where I was from. I invited her in to smoke a joint. We put the television on, and lay on my bed while Charles Mingus plucked away in the background. She wasn’t a prostitute. She was a dancer from across the street, she was supposed to meet a friend there, and ended up stoned on my bed, not thinking anything about money. I told her I enjoyed her city, and was surprised there weren’t more cowboy hats around. I was pretty stoned when I told her she could stay in the room for as long as she wanted; I was a night owl. She responded with a kiss on my cheek, and left.


18. The ones I am truly in love with. I never think about them much, they are just sitting there in the back of my head for good.


17. It took him three or four tries, but he finally asked out that girl from accounting. She made him feel like jelly when he caught little glimpses of her. She made him develop a stutter in front of xerox machines. She couldn’t look at him, so he thought she was “probably a bitch”. He finally took her out though. One evening in the fall he took her to dinner, and for a ride in his car. They talked about music and boyfriends and girlfriends. He realized one thing. She was better off a ghost. She was better off as a mystery. Shrouded in manilla folders and paperwork, and paper clips and water coolers. The best thing about his date was that walk of hers. She had this walk about her that was one of the main selling points about her. Some sort of perfect balance of confidence and insecurity wrapped up in some mysterious costume of short skirts and dark eye liner. Walking to his car he realized he was in love with how she walked. She did this cute little strut. That was all he wanted. He didn’t want to kiss her. He didn’t want to see her naked. He didn’t want to know about her experience living in the city with roommates from hell. He didn’t want to take off his clothes in front of her. He wanted to watch her walk.


16. So I guess I was fooled then. I guess I was fooled, but in a fun polite kind of way. You sort of knew what you were doing. Holding this fresh orange carrot in front of my face, only to reveal a yam. Holding a stack of hundred dollar bills in front of my face. Holding yourself hostage for me would be the best thing you could do. I think the bus will go by that route. I think we can pick you up when ever you get yourself ready. So before we do get this bus in third gear, what is it exactly that you needed to tell me? Why should I believe you are who you say you are? For all I know, you could be the enemy. Your hair color is incorrect. You’re taking a look to see me and I see you every couple of days. With a quick brush of your hand you could probably knock me over I feel so fucking light around you. You could easily take the steering wheel and drive us to Vegas to put all the money down on one game. One game of chance we would play together. Split the money immediately, so as not to cause any future friction. Take out some sort of insurance policy for my life so you don’t shoot me in the temple. Now that I think about it, there is no need for me to date women who are taller than me.


15. Hey hey mama, gonna make you throw up. Hey hey mama, gonna make you burn gonna make you throw up.

14. She ain’t really the devil, she just talks like that. I look into her eyes, and I see big dark red valleys. Fire and blood, and red and steam and demons and fire and red and blood and valleys full of demons and steam and smoke and fire and red and her eyes and blood and the valley the demons the red blood in the valley the smoke coming out of the demon. She comes to me every night. She comes to me and tells me which of my hands is the “devil hand”. I am to not use this hand until I am instructed to do so. I will obey her and her army of demons.

13. Your favorite Van Halen songs

12. Sloped on the stiff motel bed I flipped through five horrible local television channels and turned the sound off. It took me about ten minutes, but I did it: I dialed her number. I knew it was a bad idea. I knew a big reason why the trip was such a success. I needed to get away, and I needed to be away from her, for her benefit more than mine. I had given her a letter before I left, written in my favorite font and everything. I should have left it alone though, but I called her. The conversation was as lonely as the parking lot of the motel I was in. I looked at the map and checked off when I would be able to call her again. Halfway between Knoxville and Chapel Hill.

11. We drove around in my car all night sometimes. Talking about music, books, film, boys, girls, all that good stuff. I do better around women. I have way more women friends than guy ones. Men are boring. This is what men talk about when they are together with other men: computer equipment/video games, sports, the internet. Her and I though, we would talk all sorts of shit. Divorce, our sex lives, our families, everything. We could open up. I can’t picture ever talking with her about computers or anything like that. It’s like a special event when I hang out with her. Nowadays, it’s rare, and good when I do. Someday I wonder if we’ll talk about our wives and husbands.


10. Big fat Debbie dancing with a Michelob bottle in a garage lip-synching the AC/DC song “You Shook Me All Night Long”


9. Her and I woke up one morning and decided to make breakfast. I hadn’t cooked for her in quite a while. I loved Sunday mornings with her. The winter mornings, looking out at the back yard, and the snow and trees and bare clothesline. She came over to me as I inhaled the steam coming off the hot coffee, and put her arms around my neck. The next Sunday I was in my own bed until three in the afternoon, while she fed the birds with a new pair of shoes.


8. I was a shithead to her husband back when we were young and dumb and teenaged. Years later, in my 40’s his wife is sending me pictures of her body parts and plans to meet up for coffee in the afternoon while he's off at work. Wow they all do lie don’t they?


7. I only hired her so I could look at her all day.


6. She wanted to be like her mother. She told herself that alcoholism, and addictive personality was hereditary. What she failed to realize was that she was just weak. She didn’t learn any lessons from watching mommy crying in the kitchen all night. Remember those nights lying in bed listening to the faint sounds of your mother crying in the kitchen? They would get louder and louder. Your little ten year old sister didn’t know what was wrong with mommy. Your father did the right thing, tried to get her help once. It didn’t work once, so he left. Smart man. You can’t count on the alcoholics. It’s a disease or something like that. If mommy gets it, you get it. You watched what it did to mommy in the kitchen. Now you sit in some dark bar waiting for that one guy to take you home and fill you up like the daddy you never had.


5. She held me down with her arms and kissed me like nobody had ever kissed me before. The worst kiss of my life. The worst lay of my life, she. I can picture her face right now. Way too interested. Please, don’t say my name when I do this to you, I want to get home in time for Letterman, and I don’t need anymore guilt than I already have.


4. I emerge from the lake and walk up the sand and dirt. I walk towards the cabin we rented. They are all in there, the three other couples. Playing cards, smoking cigarettes, and drinking beer. It’s noon on a Sunday. The cabin is filled with crazies. The crazies laugh and joke. My date is sitting on the couch with some sort of exotic drink between her legs. I walk over and tell her that we need to go out to the lake. I found something in the lake. She says she will join me later in the afternoon. I make my way back out to the lake and float around on a raft. I fall asleep and wake up on the other side of the lake. There is a cabin that looks similar to the one I was staying at. There are people inside playing cards, smoking cigarettes, and drinking beer. It’s one in the afternoon on a Sunday. There is a woman sitting on the couch with an exotic drink between her legs. I tell her she should join me in the lake. We go to the lake and I show her what I found. Solitude. I show her this, and tell her to go back to her mediocre life in the cabin.


3. I am not going to entertain any of the ideas she throws at me. She wasted me. Years ago I met her in a subway station. I am not taking her drugs she offers. The drugs she offers are lips and knowledge of Swedish films that ruins any amount of pride I may have in my open mind.


2. The last eleven waitresses I have had


1. Dreams and nightmares are not occupied with her and her amazing hair anymore.

New Mexico

Maybe I need a woman around to make me less crazy – one that will make me go one way and one way only – instead of going up and down every few hours – a drug for me to ingest – I wonder what those real drugs do to people – I can’t think of ever doing them – seems like you stay on them forever and you’re still crazy anyway – a woman with a nice straight head on her shoulders – one who doesn’t care about shallow things like most women I know – one who doesn’t lie constantly – one who isn’t insecure – I’m just kidding – with good weather comes better moods they say – April showers bring May flowers and all of that – April is almost over it seems – every week now, flying by like so many memories of miles logged – like when you forget where you are and how fast you’re going – Zen and the art of not driving like some asshole in the North East – blurry white and blue and green and all the colors marijuana can bring out for you with a plate of iced cold water and cigarettes – dizzy from loud music  - happy you are nowhere to be found – maps hidden in the trunk – internet and phone access your twelfth priority – memories of pussy you ate three years ago now a distant memory – the idea of someone in the passenger seat sounds like the worst idea possible so you keep this all to yourself – talk about it constantly like an old guy talking about different cops he knew back in “my day when a man was a man” – at night though, when you are flat and everything is a straight line and there is nothing but black and warm air flying through your vehicle – the sound of whatever your sixteen favorite songs that day are at top volume playing over and over – how great it would be to share – I can never figure out if I want to share those moments with someone or just experience them myself and then talk about them. 

Wisconsin

No secret messages ever reach me now – I hit myself over the head with a trillion ideas without any kind of focus – all of these dreams, scattered and quite the mess – my communication skills are at an all time low – this happens every – well this happens every few days – I give up and give in to whatever – I can spend time with certain people and be content and eternal – I can spend time and not be able to make any eye contact because it pains me to think of how wrong it is – I can spend time with women and only women I desire – they all see through me – there is a closeness I feel to some people I don’t get with anyone else – I tell them everything – I don’t tell any men anything now – I  forget e-mails happen and can’t tell what day it is – late at night though when everyone is sleeping off their headaches  and their “fuck that day sucked” – when the women I want to span time with are having some empty experience far away – I sit here and make up stories about the east coast and how horrible it is – it really is – when I leave here for good – sooner than later as planned – I can’t make it back this time – sirens and muses – fuck them all – I can't let them drag me away – I have so many things to do and none can be done here – none of the stations come in here – that sound you hear in between radio stations – men and women speaking some language underneath a blanket of black and white dots – I hear that and it keeps me up all night – I think of her voice and her eyes and her laugh and her smile and it’s fresh in my head as it should be – it’s none of my business though – we’re like family – everyone knows but me – everyone knows but her – a useless batch of ideas inside me that will never happen – why I ever tell anyone anything is beyond me – they all lie and fill each other with worse stories – the men all want to fuck the women and the women all want to make pretend they don’t see a thing – we all know – I watch and listen and read all about it – it’s on the front page of my inbox every three days – more obvious than last time – I see it – whoever doesn’t see it, well they just don’t want to – each time I make less sense the better off I’ll be – I don’t want them knowing anything about me at this point – none of them – watch them as they change into their summer clothes – watch them as they think the winter is over – you can see the ice cold grey winter surrounding every one of them – white, cold and emotionless – good luck with that. 

Delaware

This place is bleak the end of a novel always cold here and there everyone seems to want a piece of your time to talk about empty bottles left on a shelf it’s like a giant vampire as it sucks everything out of me and makes itself even more of an asshole everything and everywhere forcing me to spend weekends hiding out in the cellar coming up for air and food and music and books and film and pussy and caffeine forcing me to reevaluate where and when I want to come out. Black horns help me out on blah blah blah Friday nights like this one and the one before and the one after it. I lost out on all of my old party contacts. Grey hair and a need to just shut up for the night keeping me content and never depressed even though I seem it. I just want to get away. This place, they all need some sort of an escape method; alcohol, drugs, constant television so they don’t have to talk to each other. I want to do the complete opposite of this, sit around and listen to some stupid girl talk about this and that and everything in between. Sit around and listen to some smart chick talk about this and that and everything else. I don’t want to listen to men complain they are fat or men complain they are cold or women complain about potholes in the road or women complain about how so and so from thirty four years ago wronged them. All of them drag me down and make me talk to myself about life and how to live it. I guess I am retiring. 

Medicine For a Nightmare

Without the aid of drugs or making the eyes tired I’m kept awake by constant noise in my brain - like an echo chamber – voices of a million ideas and people from throughout the day still talking to me – memories from six years ago – conversations from last week – lines from movies I hated – women from thirty-six years ago complaining about how cold it is – standing around outside waiting to see something more exciting on the dry pavement – flat worn down cigarette butts – pebbles – plastic bottle caps – pebbles – sand – footprints – everything a cold grey color – they all stare at their feet when they talk to me – warm green eyes – warm hazel eyes – warm blue eyes – dark brown eyes that are truly the only ones I want staring at me – I can’t even look her in the eye without trembling – she is the one I would stop listening to music for – she can crush me in a second with her smile – I can’t ever – I will never know what this is about – drifting further away is going to make it all better maybe – I can make them all laugh – I can piss them off to no end – wide awake late into the night though – wondering who even gives a shit – wondering if any of them ever think of me anymore – I think of them all now – this last time though – I never felt stronger – left to feel weak and guilty like I did wrong – the echoes as I try to sleep – I wonder how drugs might help again – I hear voices and laughter – voices of people I haven’t met yet – voices of the last thirty women I wanted to fuck the shit out of – voices of the ones who are of no consequence anymore – when I am far away from here – sitting on a bench looking over the night peppered with orange freckles – a valley of dreams and where I always wanted to die – long boulevards of strangers and friends and hey look it’s open all night – like a grid – I stood up there in September one night – the beginning of what I thought was the best story I could ever write – medicine for a nightmare – a cure for an ailment that never existed in the first place – back and forth and back and forth and back and forth – whatever the case – anyone who tries to judge me now – the fire and energy from a trillion suns on everyone they’ve ever loved – I spend nights listening to nobody – an empty head full of ideas I can’t hear because of all this other static – when I get to an nice open space though – when high above me a black ceiling with billions of stars confusing me and my eyes – relaxing my eyes and pointing me in the desired direction – when I am there I’ll know I’m finally on my way home – these days silence only happens for five minutes at a time – I can’t spend another grey season in this echo chamber – the sound of a distant signal high upon a mountain lulling me to sleep – remember that?

(shhh)/Peace(ful)

At the tail end of yet another never ending ice age standing at the edge of a cliff looking towards where the sun falls out of the sky.

People sit and watch it every night.

Here though, nobody pays any attention. This is not where or how I want to spend eternity.

Cold weather and colder people

Long forgotten promises and conversations

Like spending your life waiting for something you want to happen

This time I can make it happen

Every March is like this

Every winter does this

I make better decisions when I am straight

Sober

So whatever decision I just made, it’s the only one I ever need to make

This place and everything about it, no.