A Trying Bastard’s Lament

Somehow becoming diminished like a plump-bottom tree frog thrown high into the gilded purple sky. 

Falling down, splattered like spinach, blotted by funk, the beholder pales in comparison to the eye. 

Crying through this blessed life as it drags its curdled carcass sorely through soggy, city streets. 

Kaleidoscope beat somehow broken, shorn from the sails, poopship party aboard, listing into the pride of the fleet. 

Burnt like verdant copper slag, crawling like king snakes, slithering by children, whose maws gape with no wonder. 

We’ve been worn down into flesh addicts, scrabbling across prairie moons, whilst time renders all asunder. 

Posing in the arena, faking flaky fisticuffs, put ‘em up to the sprawl, aloft on shadowy boxcar dreams. 

A flash in the pandemic pondering, downshifting to climb up and out of heresy, staring widely into the high beams. 

An aged-old blend of bullets and beer power these dastardly illusions, turning grapes to raisins, all is crushed by the swollen sun. 

Flogging donkeys down by the harbor, roping gangs of ass together, taking part in the braying from which I am ever trying to run. 

Operation Ka-Naw-Ledge

I know that it’s my semi-permanent barrier to emotional growth.

I know that it’s my ego shield, protecting my inner-child from oblivion.

I know that when it’s gone the trauma creeps into the frame. 

 

I know that with it my mouth opens wide and obscenity splatters.

 

I know that with it, my wildness is preternatural, eyes glowing in the dark.

 

I know that my dire wolf howls when the brain bathes in the bubbles.

 

I know that I have had the best of times that I barely ever remember.

 

I know that my time skitters across the floor, my holy memories wane.

 

I know that the echoes of last night’s concert repeat in my head ad nauseum.  

 

I know that it kills my soul that I know it grabbed my family by its lapels. 

 

I know that in my photos I am emotionally absent, but surely stable. Wink-wink.

 

I know that my crying progeny chatter behind my back and hate me for it.

 

I know that music tickles me more deeply with it, my lovely, existential crutch.

 

I know that am surely convinced when those I love abandon it and walk in the light.

 

I know that without it my inner weaknesses are like a raw nerve exposed to the air. 

 

I know that disease is a strong word, but it’s likely an apropos term. 

 

I know that the bubbles break my DNA and crazily curtail corporeal longevity. 

 

I know that I feel the field of vision narrowing. Is it honestly age, or merely the bubbles?

AMBient Fits

Rolling like a billion bastard bards right down the line. 

Tequila shivers. This Human-kind of…quivers.

Mashing my potatoes hard on the shady boulevard. 

Ambitions dashed, live-leaking out of leather couches cast. 

Dumbfounded like a doe in the Molly-wood deadlights. 

Spending no time in this life to get my head right. 

Shouldering worlds of worry on trembling shoulders. 

Stagger Lee fills me with Led, then shrugs.

Queue the Mid-game marching band sound, dancing clowns drowning out screams of proles. 

Heart yearns for uncontrolled Rome burns feeding cockroach dinner bowls. 

Marley’s only solution is the dilution of this greying pollution.

The button push, football douche sugar-dom flurries. 

Heart says yes, but brains and battle brawn in no worldly hurry.

The forlorn, worn warrior cashes out Strasbourg credit in the eye of the storm.

Pair of dice. 

Gambling on global Grounation. 

Dancing on Hawaiian glass.

Something to save?

Anything selfless, kind, and pure.

Where we were you when I walked in?

Where were we when I walked in?

Why did I walk in?

After the storm, maybe all that they’ll find will be the chalk outlines of love.

Swingin' Rambles

Rusted, crusty, mossy, and blue

Hearing Waylon channel Shaver

Sweet, low-down freedom

Makes me want to come join you

Wanderlust got me itchin’

Dancing around on the farm

A canary in a coalmine

Carbon monoxide twitchin’

Shimmery shadows in my mind

See the way they play

Among the distant stars

Hoping they become aligned

Days dragging on the doldrums

Feeling Punxsutawney Phillip

Gathering foreign currency

Rubbing limes on my gums

Scurvy, shyster, bastard rats

Tumbling dice, fumbling stock

Empty shell, soup-kitchen dreams

Following far flung expats

Caverns of knowledge follow

Buried beyond golden sunsets

Color shifting spectrum horizon

Purest promises ring hollow

Heartless beast with empty head

Breaks the bars on cages

Before death comes raging

Shed these shoes of lead

Joy Strummer

Mostly, I feel ashamed about being human. Burden to burden. The burning embers turn to cinders. Lost in love's wounds that never quite seem to leave my brain and drain into my heart. "Chug-a-lug, Donna."

Walk around the block, cheat death with every step. Stairway to even the score. Stairway to nevermore. Never you mind that I am sky blind and forcibly taken with each new pair of eyes that I see. Pair of thighs wrapped in plastic. Pair of minds wrapped in magic; "Filigree apogee pedigree pillogee"...the bed breaks...

Heart throbs and broke dick destinies deserting me with each passing day. Shiver on the edge of the pool and rest in the broken glass. Crimson tendrils, rouge running, the King of Fools. King of Pain. Police sirens wail. Distant rumblings. Sheltered from the storms within. Eat the glass and let it sink to the bottom. Love swallowed with a bloody grin.   

Yon and Blither

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Looking for the person of my dreams has become nearly impossible, as it seems I have nearly ceased having dreams. The dreams I do have are empty and riddled with misappropriated fear of impending violence, and lack depth or colorful emotion. Clue me in, mind. 

People, in general, like me well enough it seems, but I don’t know if I feel how it’s supposed to feel when they do. I feel like a collection of meta-data, robotic in my emotions unless the fuzzy feeling wind of intoxicants blows over my mind, as it is wont to do from time-to-time. The weird-ling man without a plan mopes about like a lost dog. Sniffing out something worth anything to his heart and soul, he usually comes up clutching tufts of his own hair.

I was once asked, exactly at the point the collection of my emotional connection to this person didn’t pan out, the fool’s gold, the fool circle, “Who hurt you?”
Shit. She got me. Snatched my tongue from my mouth and disconnected the delicate tendrils that were beginning to grow between it, and my heart, and her.

Thanks, I guess.

I didn’t have an answer. I had a notion. Was it something to do with childhood and broken beds, broken vows? Was my sensuality torn asunder by others’ demons clawing their way out to their own destruction? Could be. Who knows?

The New Style <---All Respect to the Beastie Boys

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Learning to love yourself is hard shit when all you’ve ever felt, at best, was indifference for your corporeal and spiritual bodies. I have found that finding someone who gives a shit about you is almost useless if you don’t give a shit about yourself. I scripted my yesteryears like a psychic retelling of some shitty Lifetime movie made of plastic people that couldn’t even begin crack my emotional code. The shadows in the corners, stock characters really, blow in and out of the frame like so many shuffling ghosts. Elevation of debate, of unholy intellect, of tension became the name of the game to keep this kid from feeling his insides. The macrocosm replaced the microcosm. Inner space had been obliterated by outer space.

A quantum fear of feeling anything at all is now being squashed by the grand unified theory of love. And you know what? The shit hurts. The scars, simmering shimmery with itching madness, line the soul container, crisscrossing their painful patterns from beer to eternity. Crushing clutch. Engage transmission. Vent hostility. Smile. Pull the smile inside. Keep on grooving down the road. Leave the miles behind. Learn to live. Learn to give. The happiness is worth the hurting it may bring.