Nights Like These

It's nights like these
that I"m in the mood to get high and
watch a certain film.

I'd done it once before.

It was the first time I saw
the thing.
She told me I HAD to see it!

Well she was right about its caliber.

But I wasn't right about hers.

She ran off with an actor
to Venice or the Amalfi Coast
or wherever it is that
actors abscond to.

I can't say that I blame her
I was as nice to her as I was
to the redhaired kid I used to punch out
at the bus stop everyday
after school.



...I never hit her or anything
don't go thinking that,
but I wasn't very nice all the same.

Still...

I mean she could have at least sent
a postcard from the coast
telling me it was over.

I am sure they make a greeting card for that nowadays.


You know what?

I think I will go ahead and watch that film.

After all she was right about its caliber.

I miss:

long talks
your porch.

Probably Just A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

I'm exhausted and
the lady downstairs is smoking on the porch again
and it blows its stink into my room
invading my breath.

If I wasn't so lazy
I would go out onto the balcony and
spit through the slats
washing her
and her butt
and stench
into oblivion.

I'm still worn from two days
of drinking and drugs
and real life seems like a distant memory
unbearable.

Three hours until work
or slavery
however you choose to view it
and I can't bear the thought
of their stupid faces
peering up from behind lists of food
not even worth a taste or a dump.

Happy Saturday.
Unhappy life.

6:00 am

It was about this time when I ran out of drugs
and the frightening onset of what would become
possibly my worst day ever began.

I writhed in agony and nausea
for a full twenty four until the sleeping pills stole
me away to a twelve hour sleep.

I have never hated myself more or what I could become.

And I realized that a lot of what I have written up until this point
is garbage.

We try to sound so eloquent
when in reality we are just
wasting ink.

I am done trying to impress you.

"No One...Just Someone I Used To Know"

I still think of her.

Not in a way that
form, or scent, or warmth are missed
but in a way that nostalgia consumes
the soul.

It and she float in and out like
a hummingbird, swing, or summer breeze.
There one moment
and the next
removed.

I hear a music and I picture us on
porches,
late at night speaking
of our deepest artfulness
and imagined eloquence.

I sit here and smile now
because our ideas
were so big and our abilities
small.

But we dreamed like children.
We loved like animals.
We gave like mothers
and we died like martyrs.

She lives on a farm now
with goats I believe.

With dreams only hers
there among the hills, goats, and grace
with love for someone new.


I still think of her at times

here among the ocean, gulls, and nostalgia.

It Has Certainly Been Some Time

Funny how the feet
walk miles of earth
in circles so tight.

I am giving up the water
for the mountain.

The sand and sun
for the hill.

I wonder what I'll find there.

If it be they, he, she, we,
or isolation dense and delicious.

Another episode.
Another chapter.

A different brush.
A familiar palette.

Last night I sat in similar surroundings
with warm hearts,
Glassware, silver,
and smiling eyes.

I was home.

I left one year ago
to find that place
and when I returned
it had been there all along.

It was here.
It was us.