( ) and " "

I am considering what to do here.

I sometimes get nauseous about this whole thing
about these words being so immortal somewhere.

My letters to the editor.

I really only write in this to talk to you.

Even though we will probably never "talk" again
at least not in the conventional sense of the term.
It has always just been a way to tell someone...anyone
that I don't and never will feel quite "normal." (at least in the conventional sense of the term)

However I feel that this is all becoming:
What I Got Addicted To On My Summer Vacation.

I have been doing drugs.
In a middle class white-boy way but nonetheless.
It has been enough to concern me and I feel like it is
tainting any sort of artistic merit that this whole thing
initially
possessed.

I read you every day.
I respect what it has become and
your writing has gotten exponentially
"better."
I laugh at how I believe that you and I may be
in similar
fields.

I think that if I said things such as
SEO and
PageRank
you might nod in
solidarity.

Thank you for listening all this time.
When I came back from New York I
was pretty shattered.
It really did help to know that
someone saw me.
That even though I was probably being superbly
dramatic
by other individual's standards
someone saw it and may have wished me
well.

I go in and out of literary consciousness on here.

The truth is that
I am getting older.
I have stopped talking to most people,
I try my hardest but I get overwhelmed and
self-destruct.
I am a born leader but I was born with so much
fear.
I see where I have done wrong and
why I did it.
I see where I have done right and
try to repeat it.
I am standing out because I can't blend in.
My potential frightens me. (Narcissism.)
But I can't keep hiding.
I can't keep holding everyone else to impossible standards when
I don't impose them on
myself.

I often wish that
you would see what I have become
but who I was is such a darkness
and it would merely kill the
light.

Maybe one day you'll hear of me.
Maybe one day they all will.

Until then,
I will be the crack
underneath
the
door.

After four months of black
and dark
I am starting to see a light.

I have battled terrifying ghosts
and demons.
Pain does not begin to describe what
I've faced.

We are always
-always
-always
just this side of
madness.

If it weren't for a good set of
parents I
would not be alive to tell
this tale.

No matter how tempting,

never give up.

One day at a
time.

We set fire to our futures
And throw our children to flame.
Death is our comfort
And
Friend.

Hi Mom

You know,
one gets to thinking
when you haven't showered for going on three solids and
you are craning your neck in the rearview
trying to dryshave the whiskers you were too fucked up to see that morning
and its so hot that the dogs all piss vapors
and you swear that every person out there would shit their brains
if the bottom fell out
and you swore you wouldn't curse but every aspect of shit is completely fucked
and your officemate can kiss your ass because
you used to be able to afford what he is eating
but no thanks to your cock and people who literally measure their moments in cock
you have ended up a shithole under a fuckbomb.

Enjoy your Friday.

A quick one for the early girl.

It's oh so quiet.

Shhhh. Shhhhh.

Never perfect.
Seen worse.

She is a trick and a trip
but
I think I may have gotten her
under
control.

Now she only comes if I call.
Never unannounced never
by
surprise.

She is here but
she is going home
soon.

Goodnight you complicated
catastrophe.

Police Report Not Included.

One time in the city I
fell asleep drunkenly on
the uptown
1.

When the dual tones
of the closing door woke me,
I disembarked to find
a hot Bronx
summer
night.

Tonight my neighborhood sounded similar,
boisterous and sinister.
So I came inside to
write.

Last week I was robbed again
on the outskirts of
R, NC.

It is the second time since
I've been back in
the South.

And as my assailant ran
cackling into the night I
chalked up another win
for unintentional philanthropy.

He probably got pretty high out there.

Count it.



And so I sang with a smile.

I'm So Pretty When I'm Honest.

I get high to forget.
I get low to sleep.
Christine called tonight and
her little voice was music.
I spat on the ground as I smoked.
I watched t.v.
There were so many streets in Manhattan.
Wine is easy drinking.
I was alone and alone and
I was happy.
I want to be sober.
I am scared that I won't.
Life gets heavy.
The past is a bitter taste
in my
mouth.

I am alive

...if barely.

The other night I held a stranger
close to my body on a downtown hotel bed.

I told her I was high
"on proximity"
it was true.
We both confessed that
it had been a long time
since we had been so close
to
anyone.

But it was only proximity.
I ate and her body shook gratefully,
beautifully,
and uncontrollably.
I stood,
tucked in my shirt,
and told her to
stay
in touch.

A jet plane landed in San Francisco.
She is gone now
and I don't
miss her.

C'est la vie.
And so it goes.
These are the days of
our
lives.

Not tonight.

Tonight death, you shall not claim me.
Though I be not sober
I
am
clean.

Though the bottle is full
and my flesh shakes with longing
thou shalt not
claim
me.

Sober for 0
clean for 5.

At the edge of understanding
of the populous at large
lies the darkness
of substance
and
death.

Tonight,
death shall not claim
me.

Your henchmen have
been removed from
my
weakness.

Death,
you foul demon
of night.
You find not
harbour
here.

I fight the war but
tonight
I win
the
battle.

In the morning:
clean for 6
sober
for
0.

You know,
I always thought that addiction
would be much more profound
than this.

But it isn't.

It is trivial and profane.
It is self-deluding and
you don't really have it together
regardless of how often that you claim,
"Well,
this is the last time."

I always thought that this slavery
to late night clandestine meetings
was somehow prophetic and
the tattoo
of the starving and struggling
artist.

If the former is true then
call me:
Van
Gogh.

I waited at the corner of Cap and Hunt today
in the elusive Carolina heat.
On the sidewalk two meth-heads,
dirty from days of digging in the dirt
for change,
started arguing about something I
couldn't
decipher.

She was screaming at him as
he shuffled in his dust cloud toward
a dead end I was thankful
to know nothing
about.

He stands on that corner in the morning.
He holds up a cardboard sign that says
Lost my job -
Please help.

This is my second run in with these types
in the past month.
Times getting desperate.

I shouldn't judge.
I haven't written a sober word in
a month.

That makes me either
a genius or
a waste
of
time.

Remember that time
I wept as she sang?

My Face: The Face of Death

"I know that it is freezing but I think we have to walk
I keep waving at the taxis; they keep turning their lights off
But Julie knows a party at some actor's west side loft
Supplies are endless in the evening; by the morning they'll be gone.

When everything is lonely I can be my own best friend
I get a coffee and the paper; have my own conversations
With the sidewalk and the pigeons and my window reflection
The mask I polish in the evening, by the morning looks like shit.

And I know you have a heavy heart; I can feel it when we kiss
So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out trying to lift it
But me I'm not a gamble you can count on me to split
The love I sell you in the evening, by the morning won't exist.

You're looking skinny like a model with your eyes all painted black
You just keep going to the bathroom always say you'll be right back
Well it takes one to know one, kid, I think you've got it bad
But what's so easy in the evening, by the morning is such a drag.

I've got a flask inside my pocket we can share it on the train
If you promise to stay conscious I will try and do the same
We might die from medication, but we sure killed all the pain
But what was normal in the evening, by the morning seems insane.

And I'm not sure what the trouble was that started all of this
The reasons all have run away but the feeling never did
It's not something I would recommend, but it is one way to live
Cause what is simple in the moonlight, by the morning never is
What's so simple in the moonlight, now is so complicated
What's so simple in the moonlight, so simple in the moonlight"
FIN//

Vignette IV

This morning I thought about how
once again "Lua" is the truest song
ever
written.

The past two weeks have been a spiral
into the familiar
(and all too real)
darkness that is always on
the tip of
our
tongues.

My goals have been moderately realized.
My hands have been idle and
what I have been persistently running from
has shown itself
again.

We are all always
just this side
of
madness.

These Thoughts Come To Us In Quiet.

Ambient light makes my night sky
rose hue resplendent.

I am here.

If nothing else
I
am
here.

Alone is so subjective when
someone has known that
you exist.
You become somewhere
they can't take you
away.

I have heard some of the most beautiful words
spoken
sung
whispered in the dark.

I have seen childish eyes,
wide with admiration,
peering through wild mane and
(reaching my hand across a sea of silk)
brushed the offender
from its porcelain
captive.

When breath is warm against my cheek I
fail to believe
that this history shall not
itself repeat.

Tonight
with a sky the color of virgin flesh
I feel a twinge
of
hope and
the prospect of
mercy.

One Day We'll Die Love and They'll Bury Us At Sea

It had been awhile since I could be found walking
the sandy side streets of Carolina Beach.
I had lived in the sleepy suburbs of Wilmington, North Carolina
for a single cycle of seasons in 2010.

The living was good and the pace was slow
but being a city boy born and a city boy bred I
abandoned the sand and
traded in the ocean for a sea of
concrete.

However,
I loaded up the Jeep yesterday
and made the modest drive to
a place I once called
home.

I was embraced there with the most open of arms and
as I stood silent in the unseasonably cold night air
I heard the ocean breathing rhythmically in time
out in the dark
distance.

I was deeply moved by the sound.

It was a song that I hadn't heard in years yet
somehow I still knew the melody.
I was again at the edge of existence and once more it seemed
as if the water had been with me
all along.
The waves were my fathers and
if I gave myself willingly to the deep I
would be home again and
at peace with my
Creator.

I reached into my pocket and began to type out a message to Stephanie.

(Somewhat abridged)
"...I am at the ocean.
I hear God in the ocean.
I wanted to share that."

...
Travel reminds us that we are alright on our own.
That we evolve,
and we age,
and we hopefully
improve.

We are part of something greater.
You and I and us together.

Listening to the water lap at the shoreline
as we count down our blessed and
numbered
days.

Vignette V

Lately my patience
has been riding the razor's edge
of
thin.

Behind the wheel I wear
warpaint.

I get into struggles
of will with
someone on
a daily
basis.

The cocktail mix of
seventeen hour days,
lack of sleep,
and a ruthless drive to hustle
is making me
slightly
unpleasant.

Here is how the world really looks
underneath all of that rat race and
Maybelline:

You are a human being on a lush and vibrant planet.
Your only non-negotiable is
that you must work the land in order to
eat.

Otherwise -
you are free to learn,
free to discover,
and free to commune
with those
like you.

Your career isn't real
and your forty hour work week is
a mild form
of
slavery.

However the times are not a-changing
tomorrow begins anew.
I hope to break seventy hours
this week.

See you then.

I Have Enveloped Myself

I have enveloped myself in art.


Like a suckling child I
cling to it.
I have returned to my roots.
I retreat from the clinical carbon copies of
popular culture.
I embrace the esoteric and
find euphoria in
the
unique.

I go it alone.
I sit in halls, theaters, and
auditoriums with
with no one.
A sea of humanity
yet a single
I.

Without distractions the
movement of limbs,
precision of play,
and spoken words
wash over me.
I breathe in the work I,
I vomit applause.

Life is so very tactile and
I want to touch it where
it hurts and
heals.

I suggest you do
the
same.

My grandmother died today.

My mother called to say,
"She passed away."
I thought about the poetry of that -
a wisp of smoke,
a dandelion in the breeze.

Death is as constant and relentless
as life.
Whether it be living or dying
it is unending
and unforgiving.
The one thing left
that we haven't managed
to
cheat.

We are not immortal.

Today death collected its due
and they took her flesh
to the furnace
by wagon.
Where she became once again
what man is born from
and hopelessly destined to
return.

In the passing I
solemnly nod to her memory
and say,
"Soon so too shall I,
soon so too shall
I."

When you become a man
you learn
that a man is not so easily
forgiven.

They stop ignoring
your slip-ups and little
mistakes.

When you are young
the world lets you
get away with
frivolity.

There is
freedom still.
Weekends and summer evenings
light and airy,
conversations on the hoods of
cars.

But then,
when grown,
the texture of life hardens
and everything is suddenly so
serious.

The line is suddenly so thin
between breadlines
and
jail cells.

If you let it slip -
let them see you sweat
even just for a minute -
they'll eat you alive
kid.

Mark said the other day that
people are just trying momentarily
to escape their
miserable
little
lives.

The bars are full every weekend
and so too are the cubicles
every Monday
morning.

Our decisions used to be just
experiments
but now the wrong one can
steal the food from
a baby's
mouth.

It is at this point that you are left
wondering aloud
asking,

"What is this all about then?
What are we to do with this newfound knowledge
and understanding?"

The girls, the cars and
the friends
are all gone and
its just you.
Creating a tiny existence
in an expansive universe.

We used to dream.

These days I would just kill
for a decent night of
sleep.

But sleep yields no crops and
crops keep
the collectors
from
calling.

Extra Extra

I go through fits,
periods where I
hate everything written on
this infernal
screen.

Other times I see it and
I think,
"Why,
I do believe the old boy
might have said a thing
or two."

Here recently
I simply feel like a whining
poor excuse for
a very poor man's
Bukowski.

Ripping off the old man
in style and
subject matter.

Well there you have it,
an update for the Facebook generation.

At this time:
I have two jobs that often amount to
16 hour days,
a final semester of online schooling,
and a ten dollar per day
organic juice habit.

Lightly peppered with:
Once per week Russian tutoring,
trying to spend more time with my family,
hitting the gym regularly and
singing for a buck or two.

All in all
I couldn't be
happier.

I'll remember this one

fondly.

I got a call the other day.

She phoned me screaming about
her power bill.

It was too high and
I had to answer
for it.

I had told her that
I was cold
one night in late Jan,
and my villainous ways
apparently cost her
the world.

I listened and
took a bite of a banana.

Outside gas went up
4 cents and
The pope resigned as
the heavens ignited
over
Russia.

One hundred and forty dollars
were charged and
one selfish woman
made me
laugh.


In other news,
I dialed up Stephanie
just now.
I haven't heard her voice in
months,
maybe almost a year,
but when she said that first hello I
felt ok.

I remembered the F train and
47-50th streets
Rockefeller Center.

Family isn't always blood.

That kid saved me once.
Gentle hands and an ear
can bring you back
from the edge
sometimes.

I love you too Steph.

Goodnight.

It is difficult...

I suppose that I could stop there,

but I've grown to understand.

As years wear on I watch my
roots grow older as
time passes and
I see reflections of who
I will be and
am.

I am a sensitive soul
and often very intense and
easy to
offend.

I get unreasonably angry
and unfathomably
sad.

Don't be surprised if I
take things too personally
but,
my apologies,
I feel it all hard
in a cumbersome
soul.

I never stop caring,
far past expiration,
because with some people I
literally fall
hopelessly in
love.
(In more ways than one
not all love is
flesh
pressed on
flesh.)

This is what causes solitude,
and distance
and periods of
hiding
misunderstanding
and unfounded
shame.

The smell of a summer night is
something I wish that
I could write down and
send express post paid
to people who
have seen me
cry.

But you see,
most people don't think like this.

They are ducks and
time is water on their backs
and we don't understand each other
at all.

If smoke brought not cancer
and wine mayhem,
then you would find me somewhere
years in the past
sitting at a table
outside a tiny, shed of a two-bed
with a dreamlike company
and
wide-eyed wonder
at what tomorrow
might
bring.




For the ghosts

I can hear them upstairs.
I can hear them
moan
scream
ohdaddyyes!

Men at work.
Passion in action.
Caution:
wet
floor.

We pair up eventually.

"I can't take it anymore,
walk with me.
I have a space
fill it
up.

I want to roll off
and walk naked toward
the fridge.
I need a turkey sandwich.
I work up a hunger
after putting in
some pumps and
thrusts.

I am all
that is
man."

They're up there
working away.

The joy of roommates
and
neighbors.

I have mixed emotions.
Good for them and
what they've
found.

I've been there too,
I've made this
noise.

Yet somehow,
sitting at my keyboard it all seems
just the slightest bit
profane.

You just get it done.

I used to stare up at the stars
outside of E-Level dormitories
and wonder what really was the meaning
of
life.

You just get it done.

You fumble for "snooze" on your tiny mobile companion
and let the blood rush to your ankles
and hazily find your way
upstairs.

You just get it done.

After the shower routine
its dressing and then
blindly feeling along the top shelf for
some sort of
sustenance.

Then you drop your box on wheels
into the ocean of the other wheeled boxes
and you feel the bravado of machinery beneath you and
claim your inch of asphalt greedily
among the other
mobile animals.

Then after several outbursts
you arrive at the office
and settle in for a full
eight.

You just get it done.

Then you stand and bid farewell
and leave to go
to the next
one.

You dance like a monkey,
and smile and suggest,
and clear and serve,
and fake it till you make it.
All the while just watching
as they eat awkwardly on
a very first
date.

You just get it done.

Then you deposit your blood money
at the teller machine around the corner
and trace your footsteps back
home.
Where you sit down and study extraneous subjects or
узнать некоторые дополнительные русский язык
until your body is dry
and sleep storms the gates.

Then you lie down alone
for the 376th time in a row
and drift absently into
darkness.

You just get it done.

Shoulder the weight
and
walk.

There is tragedy
and there is
triumph.

Chart your life with
ups and downs,
blessings amidst sorrows
and bruises
and scars.

Catalog what you've been through
and tip the Creator
with the brim of your hat.
You've been a live one kid,
you've seen some scenes
but you've still got that
babyface
don'tya?

No one tells you how it is.
No one tells you that its all
flat.
Time passes linearly and you
never move
but choose.
You choose what comes next
or what doesn't.
One day you wake up and
you're older.
Not old,
but older.
You've been doing this for awhile and
you've got nothing much
to show for it.

Or do you?

Will anyone care when you die?
We're all dust
but we think we're so special.
Standing on elevators in silence
and avoiding each other's desperate
gaze.

We're dying on the outside
and on the inside,
pleading within our heads,

"YES!
We are here
and we have
been given a
voice!
We start at 0.
We are the
same."

But are we forgiven?

I've taken a lot of dumps
on people who might have potentially cared
what happened to my
ungrateful carcass.
How quick we are to judge and
how quick I was to condemn.

Tonight I think of ghosts gone by
and I think that I might actually enjoy
sitting across from them at a table
and closing the divide
but how wide these chasms are
who knows?

Last night I had a dream that I traveled back
to '04 and I warned them all.
I warned them not to make mistakes
as, if unchanged,
the stories were going to end badly.

And they were all alive,
Josh
most of
all.

There is tragedy
and there is triumph.

Today has brought the latter.

A second chance to
be something
and someone
a little more.

But I see where I've been
in the mirror every morning
and the ink never fades,
sin lingers on my shoulders.

And there too are my constant eyes and soul,
and every name likewise
on my
lips.

Прощай навсегда мои бесконечные сожаления

You quit me exactly one year ago today.

I planned to write you an epic letter
full of bile,
finger-pointing,
and
blame.

But I think that is enough now.

Thoughts of you every day for a year
full of grief, anger, and shame
are enough to warrant the final end
of what was affectionately known as
"us".

I sent you a terribly sad and desperate letter
the day I boarded that final
flight home.

I should have truly sent only this:

"You were the worst mistake I have ever made,
but thank you for teaching me
to never to let it happen
again."

Cheers Alice, have yourself a life...


...be it nice or otherwise.

And now: silence profound.

It all started and now ends like this:

Relapse.

I've found
That the cleanliness of one's immediate living area
is usually in direct proportion to
the overall state of their current
affairs.

Well this morning I was up to my wrists in my own
sick,
cleaning up what appeared to be
the ejected remnants
of an order of late night nachos
and some unidentifiable
braised pork product.

I, the hypocrite on high.

You do the best that you can
but you are so deeply flawed.
Underneath every human's
smiles, waves hello,
and hearty handshake with back slap
is an unfathomably profound
sadness.
This nagging sense of incomplete.
Even when the going is good
we find a way to inwardly say
"It isn't enough,"
and so we subconsciously self destruct
to somehow make the outside
resemble
the inside.

Pardon my pork postpartum
but there have been days when
I've liked myself a heck of a lot
more.

There are nights.
There are nights when its finally
quiet.
No lights, no camera,
no action of any kind.
There's no one calling,
no one knocks anymore anyway,
and its just you
rattling like old bones
in a hollow halfway
house.

Tonight is one of those nights.

It's just me.

It is just me and
no you.
No you for
almost a full
365.
I haven't fought a battle
since then
and I'm out of practice
in the art of angry words
and dramatic
exits.

Tonight.
Tonight there is only me and
I sleep peacefully
alone.

Vignette IV

As this bum ankle heals
and the gearbox starts kicking again
I never thought I would be so overjoyed
at the promise of
two
shoes.

Back on track
JACK
let's try this again. Life plans for your grillpiece
adventure
beckons.

A new year for action.

The laurels will not be rested
and by this time next time
our hero will triumph.

Lovingly yours.
-AK
(Dictated but not read)

Turn it up.

Alliterati.

Tiptoeing towards daylight
A mid evening madman
stands sullen in the silence
of streetlights.

Donning a mask of revelry
and a figure of much speech
while emptying the coffers
into the hands of
hangmen.

Do these moments,
being enigmatic in their purposefulness,
enhance the journey?
Or is the storyline
aimless and
alarmingly
arbitrary?

Are these shadows
friend
or fiery foe
who by their very existence
bring forth
terror
where once
peace was
planted?

It seems time will tell,
as it heals all wounds
and waits for no man
alongside
tide.

Until then we wait
as beasts low in dust
without rain,
repast,
or
repose.

Solid and Solitary

A New Year.
Bang.
Boom.

A good start
I would say.
sober,
solid, and
solitary.

But today I'm feeling kind of
foul.

I'd be lying if
I said that staying in
wasn't easy.
I have no one left man.
I've ditched just about every
back-alley buddy
that I could be found dragging
along with.

A tragic fact:

I've got a thousand mouths to drink with
but no hands to
hold.

I've very few bastions
left standing out there.
If I fell over
walking down the road and
became chow
for crows and strays I
would only know a handful
who would know
the difference.

Now listen,
I'm not searching for pity pal.
I'm just trying to tell
a story.

So as all of humanity
clinks glasses
and auld lang synes
in a great refrain,
I've got plenty
of nothin'.

I promised myself this year,
that come next first of Jan
I would be new.
New path,
new relations,
new love.

And I always strive to keep
my
word.