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.)

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

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. 

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. 

She'll Laugh

It’s perfectly okay to forget about places and people and things you did

I could worry myself to sleep like the best of them

Nowadays I just fall asleep empty with not a care in the world

No wondering if I pissed one or five people off

No wondering when I might get the courage up to leave everything and everyone alone

I really want to do it all again, try it again

Sooner than I think I will

This place

This area of the country

This state

This life right now

There are no rewards

There is contentment

I never “can’t wait to get up tomorrow” anymore

Like a machine here though

I do it every day

Everything I thought was back here isn’t here at all

Everything and everyone is the same

Cold, selfish, uninterested in anything I am interested in

It’s like everything here moved ahead (backwards?) while I was gone

I have no desire to catch up really

This New England place, it’s incorrect

I have nothing in common with it

Lying and saying “I’m a New England person” sounds good

Looks okay on paper I guess

When I think of steel, sunlight and blank skies though

I feel like myself all over again

I guess you can be wrong a few times in a row before you get it right

-------------------

She comes to me every few weeks - I remember how in love with her I can get - I remember how in love with her deep eyes I can be - Her laugh and hands and smile - I can never have that ever really - every few weeks though I return

Golden

I feel like I am constantly blue because my feelings are all ghosts now

There’s nothing deep happening at all

A guy who goes to work and has some people around from time to time

At this point I’ll never really get that much closer

I don’t need to really

All of the people I talk to regularly are women

Even just being friends with women you see how emotional they are

They all cry constantly

All they ever fucking do is cry

Listening to what is important to them

I ignore and wonder if that one John Coltrane album is in that one box or on that one shelf

At the end of the day though

Listening to a woman talk is easier than listening to men talk

Since I came back here I feel like I write the same sentences over and over. Even though “everything is going great”, at the end of the night it really isn’t. Here I am like so many warm nights under palm trees and whatever the song of the week was at that time. I listen to all of those songs now. Valentine’s Day I spent listening to the soundtrack of a snake of a road trip along the brighter ocean from however many Septembers ago that was. Now at work there is a calendar hung near me with a picture of that rock we stopped at just north of Malibu. To say I miss things is wrong. I’m disappointed in everything, myself included. Some nights, well most nights I realize I’ll never have those feelings for anyone ever again. Not that intense as they were leading up to the first night we spent together. I meet women or talk to them and don’t have anything her and I initially had. Apparently it wasn’t as real to her I guess. Pretty sure she is way far gone now. Pretty much done looking for anything like that and am never going to settle. Telling myself what to do sounds like a better option in the long run anyway, who wants to become one of these dudes attached at the hip to some chick all day every day at this point?

I feel something inside

Like way down deep

Something unsatisfied

Like I want a cigarette

Or to get high

Drunk

I can't take any of that seriously

I barely sleep maybe it could help?

At the end of the night I fall asleep

I rest easy not tossing and turning

Weeping about eyes and hair

It's the waking in the middle of the night

I need to go somewhere

Do something different