I don't know what I'm doing.
I don't know what I'm doing and
I am starting to wonder
if I've done anything
at
all.

Where would I even rather
be?

There was a girl I knew before,
she took more drugs than I did
she danced to loud music
and she never slept alone.

Now,
bathed in quiet sunlight,
she makes flower bouquets in her kitchen
while listening to Joni Mitchell.

Take from that what you will.

There are no memorials in times of peace.

There doesn't seem to be enough room in here
for myself and anyone else.
I'm in the corners and I'm in the cupboards
and I lie horizontally across the floor.

I step over myself when I pass between rooms and
I'm forever waiting for me to finish before I can
begin.

But I've had long talks and
(even) longer walks with
myself
and myself and I have gotten rather close over the years
and
these days
I would recommend myself highly
should I
ever
ask.

When I met you
you were so wonderfully young.

I couldn't believe that
so much body and ass
could somehow fit in a twenty-one year old frame,
it was like you weren't the final product of sex
but rather the spitting image of it.

When I pulled you into the bathroom and spun you around
I had never seen anyone go down on it that quickly before,
like you were starving
and you hadn't been so delightfully fed
in
months.

They don't make enough soap to wash all of you off,
but baby,
you're still the best
I ever
had.

But these things really happened and I don't know how to shut them out.

The rain falls on hillsborough
on the stone and cement.
The rain falls on fayetteville
over the awnings and the doorways.
The rain falls on wilmington
as you drag in more smoke
lost and romantic
waiting for the bars to open.

There is nowhere to go when
nowhere is home.
Cast out by former friends reformed
sometimes rightly so
sometimes not.
Gaunt from hunger,
needing for sleep,
mumbling about angels and
dreaming of sex.

There is no sense of gravity known to the falling
until the bottom comes into view.

Then in March
they'll collect your bones,
sending whatever is left of you

North.

I am almost out of memories
watching the stitches we wove into our hands and clothing
unravel.

My friends are dead and the world is often cruel.

The times and I were often dishonest
trying to fight our darkness and what we really were:

fleeting.