I Still Wanna Be Your Dog

*This isn't a good piece, I know. But for anyone who writes, this is how we get along. This is how we're able to live. Not everything is golden.
**"An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness."- Henry Miller

***"The best way to get over a woman is to turn her into literature."- Henry Miller
I remember the morning you said
"I think I could fall in love with you case."
I remember the nights you spend dedicating
songs to me like love struck teenagers
at the point.
I remember 6 underground,
I remember all the songs about
the west coast.
I remember how you made me feel alive,
how I no longer felt like I was
just waiting to die.
I'd stay up all night just to hear your voice at dawn.
Your tough exterior
and that east coast hardness.
And sometimes you said words so
seldom spoken they sounded
foreign as they left your lips.
And now I try to forget those three
small words that echo in my head
and in the caverns of my chest.
I'm trying to forget
that I was good at making you smile.
I'm trying to forget everything we shared.
I'm trying to forget you
compared me to your father.
I'm still working on all those plans
and promises.
Not for you, but for me.
I've never made a promise I couldn't keep.
But I'm in the same spot you found me,
Kasher still sings me to sleep.
Tomorrow night is New Year's Eve
and you'll have your choice of boys to kiss.
I'll drink my whiskey and kiss my cigarette,
but they won't kiss back.
So have a happy New Year and remember
there will always be a boy on the
west coast who is thinking about you.
Then, now, and forever.

Captains Log

I exhale these thoughts onto a page
like my last cigarette at 5 am in late October.
I see them taking form
and taking shape;
telling a story...
telling my tells.
Telling tall tales of drinking
and being unbecoming,
spilling secrets like a man
who is about to die.
But these secrets,
these stories of whales the size of ships
and mermaids whose lips
were modeled after lust,
are true.
The urban legend is that of a family;
wife...kids...domestication.
Some men dream of seeing the sun
rise over the sea,
while others dream of seeing it rise
over a white picket fence.
While other men have seen their future
in a port on a long island.
But the lighthouse always burns out
at sunset and it's time to set sail.
Every man will always want what he
doesn't have.
And for the one that has everything...
enjoy it while it lasts.

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Together we'll compose a static lullaby
in the diminished 5th somewhere
between Wagner and Massive Attack.
The skyline surrounding us will come crashing down
as I reach for your hand.
I'll examine your eyes as they
echo the shadows and glow of
a city set ablaze.
We'll share a cigarette and a kiss
and I'll always remember the taste
of gasoline and destruction on your lips.
I'll be your Mr. Grey and you can be
my Lee Holloway.

Pink

I hid behind the alcohol, humor
and cynicism
like a Knight hides behind chivalry;
like a priest hides behind a white collar.
But I've seen that look before,
that look of substance abuse
and bad decisions in your eyes.
Your lips tasted like Pall Mall's
and happy hour.
Let me be the worse decision
of the decade.
Let me crack your top ten like
a Galaga score.
Let me make a mess of those faded
pink panties he gave you two
years ago as an anniversary present
before he left for the east coast.
Straddle me in the back seat,
parked in the alley behind the bar.
Pull the back of my hair as I split you apart.
As you think of the rainy days you laid in bed
with him and listened to the Cure.
As you think of the picture you saw
of him with his new girlfriend.
Push your hips against mine as you
try and exorcise your pain through cumming.
Shudder like an epileptic,
like a shaman who is purging you
of past, present and future.
And bite into my neck as you regain your senses.
As the floodgates open and the guilt
and pain come rushing back.
I heard you throw those faded pink panties
away in the dumpster
as we went our separate ways.
We both lit a cigarette and I imagined
you shed a tear.
The click of your heels echoed
through the alley like a fading
heartbeat as you walked away.

This ain't a Agatha Christie Novel

These tiny slivers of truth
slip past the cracks.
They pry open my lips
and find their way out.
It's through these poisonous
facts that you try and piece together
who you think I am,
or maybe it's just who you want me to be.
But I've mastered this game.
It's not reverse psychology;
it's Russian roulette,
and neither of us will
leave unscathed.
I'll drop a tidbit of what's
behind the veil,
and follow it up with
a sincerely mischievous smile.
You'll follow it up by showing up
at my doorstep at last call,
glassy eyed, looking for
a good fuck and a warm bed.
After a week you'll realize you're
worse off then when you started.
You'll hate yourself for thinking of me,
and you'll hate me for being me.
For being a drunk unhandsome bastard
who presented you with a mystery
you already had the answer to.
This ain't Seven, and I ain't
Verbal Kint.
There is no lesson to be learned.
I'm a jaded human and you were
a dear caught in the headlights.
But a word to the wise;
keep it like a secret
and play it close to the vest,
cause if you give yourself away
what will you have left?

The Fallout of "Fast" Eddie Felson and Sarah Packard

It's 5 am on the west coast.
I remember when you used to get mad
at me because I never slept.
You'd be starting work and my messages
would greet you like the rising sun.
Those days I loved you more than
I ever loved myself.
And don't you know that I'd trade
away every day for the rest of my life
just to have one morning where
I'd wake up in your arms with
my back against your chest and you whispering in my ear.
But now you have another lover by your side,
and I feel like a bummed cigarette.
You got your fix, took a few hits
and then threw me away.
Funny thing is I know,
and you never even had to tell me.
He swept you off your feet,
was probably everything I could never be.
I know I told you as long as you were happy,
I'd be happy, even if it wasn't with me.
But now I'm just being selfish.
I know I lost you now and forever,
and a piece of me wishes you're happy,
but I'm not.
Every woman will fall short in your comparison.
All these mixtapes do is remind me of you.
You were all I ever wanted and now I know
you're keeping his cold hands company,
you're keeping his bed warm.
Do you ever think of me?
Do you ever wish he was me?
I'm slowly dwindling down to an end.
Don't bother with me,
I don't need a friend
all I need are my bad habits to see me through.
And I know I'll always love you,
but at some point I have to let go.
I guess this is what it feels like to let go.

Terry and Edie

I never got to see your smile at dawn
or the reflection of the sun as it rose
in your eyes.
I never got to smell the sweetness
of your hair
or feel your soft skin against mine.
I fell for a stranger,
yet it felt like I'd always known you.
I close my eyes and I could picture
your smile even before I knew it.
The second we met I knew it was you,
like our marriage had been arranged in the stars.
But you called it a fantasy,
said we were just kidding ourselves,
but I know you felt something too.
Were you just scared?
Were you scared that you found what you've
always wanted in me?
Were you scared of the struggle we'd have to
go through to make things work?
Were you scared I'd go out for smokes
one day and never come back?
But I think about you every day.
I think about what it would be like to
wake up with you in my arms.
I think of what could have been.
If it makes you feel better
I'll say I've moved on.
But the truth is a piece of me
will always be waiting for you.
We were one in the same
and you were once in a lifetime.
Twenty years from now
I'll put on a record or catch
On The Waterfront on TV,
or my daughter will ask me to
watch The Wizard of Oz with her
and I'll think of you.
I'll think of the girl
"Eyes Like Emerald City"
was written for.
I'll wonder;
I'll remember;
I'll wish Lilly was ours.
Ten years from now
I'll be sitting on an empty beach
on a cold December evening with
another woman and I'll think of
meeting you in Montauk.
Two years from now I'll be
in the Pacific Northwest
I'll think of the rain, of our sailboat,
of you sketching while I write.
I'll whisper to myself
"They're all for you dear,
I'll write the album of the year."
In three weeks when the clock
strikes midnight and we ring in the new year
I'll think of you and the kiss your promised
me.

This December Night

Tonight the world has
caught up with me,
life has caught up with me,
death has caught up with me,
my sins have caught up with me,
I've caught up with me.
Like some great predator
they smelled my wounds
and stalked me;
hunted me down.
I've forgotten what it's
like to be eaten alive;
to go mad.
I know what it felt like
to be Caesar on the Ides of March.
I know what it was like
for Ryan when he wrote Love is Hell.
I know what it was like
for Ian on that day in May.
Maybe you'll know what it was
like to be me on that night in December.

Former Glory

Miguel and I stumble out of the Cha Cha Lounge,

each one of us with a cigarette on out lip.
We stumble into the winter night
fumbling to put our coats on,
fumbling for a light,
fumbling through our young lives.
We move through the cities dark streets
from dive bar to dive bar,
raping and pillaging like
two of Genghis Kahn's rejects,
like Butch and Sundnce.
Every night we're gunned down
by last call,
by sunrise,
by the emerging world.
What normies don't understand is,
who we are in this drunken darkness,
is who we really are.
The darkness brings out the savage in me,
in us,
and most of all in this city.
The whiskey blocks out the bad,
but it brings out the worse.
These words are hardly a confessional,
no,
they are the bitter honesty
of two men who have forgotten
what it's like to not be broken,
of two men who are looking for a former glory.

Cha Cha Lounge (Kasandra)

Red flood lights
a disco ball
a photo booth.
This is silverlake.
The tragically hip.
Dive bars with cheep beer.
We come here night after night
looking for nihilism,
looking for pussy.
I come here looking for stories
and to get drunk cheaply.
I come here to honor Bukowski.
I come here looking for truth.
We live in this archaic jungle
and if you're not from here you'd
never understand.
It's like living in England when
The Clash wrote "London Calling."
We are the damned.
We are broke and fiending,
so 'Drink up Johnny'
and fuck the lonely girl at the end of the bar.
You're the scum of the earth
but God damn does it feel good
to be down and out,
young and poor.
We're not looking for love or acceptance,
we're not looking to be saved,
we're looking for life;
for the American dream,
for more than we were promised.
I'm looking to commit a few sins.
I'm looking for a good nights sleep.
I'm looking for trouble.
I'm looking for pussy.
I'm looking for Hunter S. Thompson.
I'm looking for my future in a dirty gutter
cause sometimes that's all
this city offers,
sometimes that's all we have left,
and sometimes we like it that way.

All Wraped Up Being 19

I remember my youth like a sin.
I remember when I found my home
in a bar, drunk by noon.
I remember a few faces,
a few names,
a few stories.
Us regulars were the people
life forgot,
time forgot,
we forgot.
We were broke,
and we decide it was better
to stay that way.
It hurts less.
We were no longer fragile,
just cold and callus.
They'd see me writing:
"Hey kid, why do you always have
your head buried in a notebook
and not in some young pussy?"
Truth is I age in dog years
and I was a dirty old man
before I was legally old enough to drink.
I'd hit the wall and was spiraling
like blood down the drain.
But it didn't matter.
How much can you know about
yourself if you've never gone crazy?
I was too smart for the word then,
too smart to pray,
too stupid to ask for help or give in.
My alter was a long wrap around bar
and my sacrament was consumed
daily, and some nights it was
thrown up in an alley twenty feet away.
I was drunk on youthful apathy
but god damn was I alive.
Each generation has a defining moment.
Elvis the pelvis, Woodstock,
CBGB's circa '73...
Mine was a dive bar at the turn of the century.
The human mind has one
common flaw, it glorifies mediocrity.
But there was no glory there.
There was just whiskey,
old crooners on the juke,
and misery.
We were the broken people that
we'd forgotten about.
And that's the way we liked it.

Lost Throughts With Loose Ends

We sleep surrounded by static,
trying to make it through.
At the end of the day all I have
are my vices and someone I don't
recognize staring at me.
For all it's worth at least nihilism
isn't boring,
then again it's not much of a life either.
With each day that passes it hurts
less but I miss you more.
I still think of everything,
and I still feel the same.
With each day that passes
I feel I'm loosing a little piece
of my humanity.
Disconnect.
Emergency Exit.
Fortress of Solitude.
I'm waiting for the day
that no one will be able
to rip me to shreds;
to dismantle this atomic bomb.
Perhaps I'm being punished,
cosmically,
or perhaps shit just happens
and I expect too much from life,
from people.
I have to get up and keep going.
Life is just trial and error.
Wisdom doesn't come with age.
All age brings is the unwillingness
to be vulnerable,
we no longer put ourselves out there.
We say, fuck it.
Like a bigot set in his ways.
Consider these lost thoughts with loose ends.

Designer Prescriptions

"She was disarming"
I kick around these quiet thoughts
and dwell on these empty words.
I don't hate you.
I never have.
I never will.
But you wrote me off
like a cheap fan who wanted an autograph.
Said you were happy alone.
But we both know you're not.
You, like all the rest;
just didn't want me.
So dance the night away with
Tony Manero and take your pills.
Tell yourself you're happy alone
but I loved you.
"You were gonna be my Judy Garland,
we were gonna share your tin man heart."
Now I'm just standing in the rain
with wilted flowers and the knowledge
that I"ll never see you,
and your happily ever after
is right around the corner.
I gave her my heart and she
didn't even give me a pen.
I wasn't in it to kill time
or for the thrill of victory.
I was in it cause
"Something happens and
I'm head over heels, ah don't take my heart
don't break my heart, don't throw it away."
But you did just that.
Now it's at my feet
in a million pieces, like a cheap vase,
like Mike TV over our heads.
Except no one is here to put it back together.
So pour some whiskey over it and let it mend.
Maybe someone will have better luck
with it than I have.

Happy Birthday

I drove out to that park that used to be ours.
It's fall now and all the leaves
have died and fallen to the ground.
There was a young couple parked,
they reminded me of us
some time ago.
I don't know what I thought
I'd find here.
In a way I just got into the car
and it felt like I was driving home,
like the car was guiding me here.
I don't know how long it's been
since we last spoke.
I think about you less,
but a piece of me still misses you.
I wish I could have been better.
I wish I didn't feel so broken and alone.
I always used some clever line
or some song to express how I felt
but now I know it wasn't genuine.
So I'm writing you this letter knowing
you'll never read it, but hoping you'll understand.
And by the way, I didn't forget,
I just didn't have the courage to tell you;
happy birthday.

Jaguar Shark

I remember the days you said
you'd get lost in my eyes.
It was like watching the ultimate
battle between good and evil.
You said I used words like weapons,
but that's how you use emotions.
I know now we weren't
allies as much as we were
just trying to defeat a common enemy.
But I saw things in you I can't explain.
Were they things I just needed to see?
Like an evangelical who sees his
messiah in a piece of toast?
The storm in my soul,
these ebbs and flows,
these trials and tribulations
have me weathered.
I am just a passenger (Ishmael).
My soul, the mad captain (Ahab).
There may be plenty
of fish in the sea,
but none like you.

My Last Fall

I saw this coming from a mile away,
I just couldn't bring myself
to brace for it's impact.
I remember my last fall,
I hid under the pretense
of certain circumstances.
Some nights I get the feeling
you were a balloon floating above it all.
I was your anchor buried
six feet under the leaves;
we were tethered together.
At night I'd dig my way up
and meet you.
You cared about me then
the way no one cares about me now.
I still think about that empty park
and the frozen grass on that
black out golf course.
I still listen to those same
songs but my drives are a lot colder now.
I tried to reach up but the leaves
have become too heavy.
And once I tried to pull your string
but you weren't attached
to it anymore.
My thoughts will always find
a way of manipulating themselves,
but these words are a permanent
reminder;
of the past present and future.

My Aim Is True

"I could really fall in love with you Case."
She prowls those city streets like a lioness;
a jungle cat on the hunt.
"A street walking cheetah with
a heart full of napalm."
She'll take you down with a graceful
precision and devour you.
I was the gazelle at the end of the bar,
who lacked the courage
of his convictions.
And she was my Alison.
But I'll walk away this fall
sipping on black coffee
and smoking cigarettes.
Eventually I'll burn away
like a dying star and forget my way back home.

If You Set It Free It Will Never Come Back To You

Looking over my shoulder,
only half listening she asked:
"Is it better to have loved and lost?
Or to have never loved at all?"
What I say won't matter,
because I don't even play the game.
Letting people in,
letting them affect you,
feelings, emotions...
these are all just inherent
character flaws we're all born with
and only a few of us grow out of.
But I've dropped my insides
and cut the anchor loose.
I'll employ this phalanx
to guard what's left of my soul.
This last grain,
this last fragment,
is mine.
I'll watch it turn to ash at dusk
and I'll bow it away like a
dandelion, like an eye lash,
like my last birthday candle.
Because the further away from me
it gets,
the better off it is.

A Leap for the Faithless

The first word is always the hardest.
It's a leap of faith into the unknown.
I've become the Pied Piper.
I will be Charon,
I will guide you through Hades.
The cover of this book
will read like a divine comedy
"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"
This is an Odyssey but I'm no Odysseus.
This is the anti-hero's journey.
This is a journey to a lost paradise.
Follow me home,
to the bars on pleasure island
where you will never be thirsty.
To the whore houses,
where you will never be alone.
To the lake of fire,
where we will sit on it's shore
and smoke cigarettes.
This is the journey of the damned.
Is it in you?
Can you take that first step?
Take a vacation into desperation,
I welcome you.

Eyes Like Emerald City+

They say home is where the heart is,
my home is in your embrace;
in the shining green eyes
that light up brighter than Emerald City.
I'll wait forever for you to come home
to me.
Rod Serling came
to me last night in a dream and said
you were the one for me.
He said somewhere down low,
where we've buried our hurt,
and with what little love we had left;
we found each other.
I was wandering around in the darkness;
a candle with no flame,
and you had a can of kerosene
and a pack of cigarettes.
We used our hearts as flints
and made a spark that never seemed to fade.
The black turned to gold in our light
and the coal in our hearts turned to rubies
that tasted like tropical punch.
It took me 23 years to find you,
but it's just a drop in the bucket
if it means forever.
So take this with you wherever you go
and know that I stay up nights
looking at the stars;
and spelling your name.

Do Not Feed The Writers

This pen is filled with poison.
It strikes with graceful precision,
like a cornered cobra.
A few strokes and you'll be on
your knees
reduced to a hemorrhaging heart.
But it's the quiet one's
you have to keep your eye on,
isn't it?
The one who never punches back.
But the punches and insults
don't go anywhere.
They linger inside and produce venom.
They pace like a waiting tiger in a cage.
When the pen is full
and the tiger is hungry
they will attack until
they get their fill.

Fall In Love With Everyone You See

I drink, I smoke and I write
because I do not greave.
I do not let things die.
Death is not an option.
I folded a winning hand
and I threw my drink in
life's face.
The only thing I have ever let die
is their notion of who I was
supposed to be.
Now I walk the margins of sanity.
I've sailed to the end of the
earth hoping that I would fall off.
I live alone watching myself
from afar, in an out of body experience.
People flow in and out
like a crowded bar,
always trying to catch me at happy hour.
Always trying to take what they can,
while giving nothing in return.
All of the women who have ever loved
me, said they couldn't be with me.
This man once told me:
"Don't fall in love with everyone you see."
But it's impossible not to,
so I write about them.
So that a piece of that love
may live on after my heart grows hard.
So sit with me on a stoop in this lazy
Los Angeles weather.
Share a cigarette, pass the 5th.
Maybe we'll fall in love,
maybe we'll fuck,
maybe I'll remember your name.
But when it's all said and done,
I'll sit on this stoop 10 years from now
and remember that night.
The day fire, candle wax,
and volcanic ash drip from the sky
I will have a lot of stories to tell
and a lot of faces to remember.
Will you?

Where Are You When I Need you?

I miss the woman I never met.
I miss the woman I'll meet some
time from now.
Why is it the one for me,
is always somewhere else?
Why is it the one for me,
is always fucking someone else?
The ties that bind us are fragile
and foolish.
They are allegiances that we
can never keep,
but it keeps us from being alone.
It's hard to get over something
that never really happened.
It's hard to get over someone
we never really knew.

One Day Soon

We’re miles apart but I still feel you next to me.
We both have our scars
but we can play show and tell all night
‘till I’ve kissed you clean.
So put on that blue dress
And meet me under the ballpark lights
because we’re one hell of a hot mess.
I’ll rub your back,
you’ll scream my name,
and we’ll leave a trail of
empty bottles and broken
glasses in our wake.
When it’s all said and done
and the rain is coming down
I’ll be holding you close
as Morrissey sings you to sleep.
So tonight when you dream,
dream of me and remember
There is a light that never goes out.

Exerpt of Long Distance Drunk by Charles Bukowski

Francine turned over to him and slipped his arm around here. Three a.m. drunks, all over America, were staring at the walls, having finally given it up. You didn't have to be a drunk to get hurt, to be zeroed out by a woman; but you could get hurt and become a drunk. You might think for a while, especially when you were young, that luck was with you, and sometimes it was. But there were all manner of averages and laws working that you knew nothing about, even as you imagined things were going well. Some night, some hot summer Thursday night, you became the drunk, you were out there alone in a cheap rented room, and no matter how many times you'd been out there before, it was no help, it was even worse because you had got to thinking you wouldn't have to face it again. All you could do was light another cigarette, pour another drink, check the peeling walls for lips and eyes. What men and women did to each other was beyond comprehension. Tony drew Francine closer to him, pressed his body quietly against hers and listened to her breathe. It was horrible to have to be serious about shit like this once again.Los Angeles was so strange. He listened. The birds were already up, chirping, yet it was pitch dark. Soon the people would be heading for the freeways. You'd hear the freeways hum, plus cars starting everywhere on the streets. Meanwhile the 3 a.m. drunks of the world would lay in their beds, trying in vain to sleep, and deserving that rest, if they could find it.

A Reagan's Youth

These days drag on
but only in the minds eye.
Young men want to be off
in the thick of the action,
always on go
Never stop, never sleep;
drinking, smoking, fighting,
falling in and out of love.
We're all broke but it ain't so bad.
We get some whiskey now and then
and a piece of ass.
This is the life of a king.
Yet misery still hunts us down.
It finds a way to creep in through
the window molding
like a draft,
like the stink of garbage on a hot day in July.
We sit back at last call
smoking our cigarettes and ask
WHY?
Then the phone rings;
Sarah wants to come over.
Said she has half a fifth of Cutty left.
And just like that it melts
like the ice in our glasses
as we swallow it down somewhere
we'll never see.

Jumping Boxcars In Dixie

Back when things mattered
they'd call me a dreamer.
They'd say I was a vagabond.
Back when things mattered
I'd hop a train.
I'd see the infestation
from coast to coast.
I met a woman once,
she said I was a tiger trapped in a cage.
Said I had the killer instinct,
but I'd become dull.
Back when things mattered
I wouldn't bother making a difference.
I'd sit in that boxcar and think
of Hemingway.
I'd read the forgotten poetry
the Indians wrote in the land.
Back when things mattered
they'd try to shame me for not joining their war.
But that would be fine by me because
I'd remember that woman;
and the way she'd describe my brown eyes.
I'd remember her say...
I was a jungle cat in disguise.
I'd rip her to shreds
and feast on her words.
At night when I'm in the boxcars
with the wino-s who snore and groan
I think of that woman.
Somehow I think she knows
I made it out.

My Soul's Walked More Miles Than Jesus' Flip Flops

The mad hatter sits at his helm; in hysterics.
He balances out the world.
He makes it out the way no one wants to see it.
His hung over soul will release the locusts on all those who call the night.
But to the 3am drunks,
this is just another night in Los Angeles.

Lost Piece

She said: “Loving you was harder
than anything I ever shot.
You always had that subtle taste
of demolition on your lips
and there’s no such thing as mistakes.”
But there’s nowhere to go from here,
there’s no methadone for my name.
You’ll have to sweat me out with someone else.
The drapes will pull closed
as he takes off those faded pink panties
and forgets your name.
But she’ll use him like a bummed cigarette,
making sure she gets all he’s worth.
It took me three years but I finally
realized the thought of you was better
than the real you.
So claim your set like the rest of the evangelicals
and call your pusher,
cause I’m tired of being your buffer.
I’ve got the lust for life
and all you’ll ever be is an anvil.
When he leaves you’ll just cover your tracks
and scout your next mark
at the Red Room.
By the time you get back to your bedroom
my trail will be leaving the station.
Don’t bother looking for me
left of the dial.

Complicated Conversation

I’m starting to think having her back isn’t the answer but a band aid, or maybe she is the answer and I’m too stupid to see it. It doesn’t feel normal having this control over another person. Have we become so empty and dependent that we resort to clutching to other people? Last night there was another woman, a vulnerable specimen. It was only through drinks and drugs that we were able to convey to each other a fraction of who we really are. Her tears still stain my sweater and she was porcelain in my arms. To grant one the happiness she deserves would be to destroy the other. Nothing is ever fair but new wounds heal quicker than old ones. Human life is a parasitic dichotomy of hurt and ecstasy, a choice of familiarity. Sometimes it’s easier to wake up next to a stranger. But by sheer definition when does one no longer become a stranger? Was it a desperate act of convenience? Or was there a universal connection? A shared bond over drinks and cigarettes? She is where I was. An island, a separation from humanity. Or maybe for the first time I said all the right words. Hurt and humiliation are the cause and effect of being human. But I’ll never get the chance to tell her, and maybe she already knows. Under different circumstances, I would have erased her pain for the night. I would have been her bookmark. Maybe one day through trial and error she’ll find this bottle, this lost letter floating in an empty ocean, and know that she wasn’t alone.

Black Cadillacs

The black Cadillacs were a reminder
of your time,
expired.
They told the story
of the unknown
to come.
The procession followed,
despite being left in your
wake.
Soon they will gather around you
and whisper in tongues like a
Native American shaman
coaxing flame to dance
at his fingertips.
Someone,
will pass around a flask
as they praise your last name.
Your bother-in-law
will steal your watch.
I will simply observe.
The dead do not live on in spirit,
they are forgotten.
Your achievements will be
forgotten.
But most importantly
your mistakes will be forgotten;
wiped clean and sterile
like your body,
re baptized and ready to return to the earth.

Whatever The Fuck His Name Is

The countdown to our extinction came suddenly.
I was living between bottles;
blinders you finally shot out.
I always fed off heartbreaks and liquor,
words between drags,
thoughts after exhales
and now I can't even stand to see the sight of ink on paper.
I lied when I said I'd be ok.
You said we'd be friends, better off.
But every night I drink myself to sleep,
self medication to say the least.
But I'm tired of sleeping with myself,
I'm tired of always thinking about you with him.
It's out of my hands and you've crossed county lines.
You said you're trying to be happy.
well I'm not.
I don't care if you worry about me swerving
at last call cause you stopped answering
all my 3 A.M. calls.
You said you'd pick me up every time I fell,
so who's the liar now?
I know he'll never make you as happy
or miserable as I have.
so try your best at mediocrity,
but if you're trying to be happy you're only fucking
kidding yourself.
So fuck him all you'd like
and spill all your guts over him.
You're the victim.
But I'm not coming back.
I'd rather talk to my beer
and kiss my cigarette
cause at least I know they wouldn't
want to be anywhere else.
I'm going to drink away these wounds
and I'm not going to stop until
I have committed a few sins.

Atlantis

"It'll be quick.
I haven't gotten any in a few weeks."
Oh. So you slept with someone else?
"No."
It rolled off her tongue like muscle memory.
She said it while grabbing
for the only thing that mattered.
I felt sick to my stomach,
but my dick was screaming at me
to stop being so soft.
We fucked like dogs.
The look in her eyes said it all.
I knew she'd seen him again.
The San Diego resident with that apartment
and that fake appreciation for wine.
He probably told her I was swine.
A complete asshole that used her,
guess he might have been half right.
If it wasn't him it was the other one,
the one with a son and yellow walls.
She said he wasn't like me
he didn't smoke around her;
at least not real cigarettes.
When things got tense he'd smoke a filly;
it tasted like grape.
Or maybe she just met someone new.
A stranger at a bar
who she'd fuck in the parking lot.
But I'll never know,
see I was never good at pulling her teeth.
A year ago I would have fought,
would have dragged the dirty details
out of her.
Now I'm just numb.
I recognize defeat.
I've got no right to make her wait.
Marcellus said it was,
"Just pride fucking with me,
that sting."
I pulled out and she said,
"Love isn't just a series of hard-ons you know."
She rolled off me, my dick still throbbing and wet.
I zipped up my pants
and got out of the car.
Lit my last cigarette and walked along the park.
Her taillights, her eyes
were red on my back.
The words echoed in the sand,
through the wet grass and trees,
through the bleachers,
and through the other cars.
I stood on the diamond,
on the stump.
The grass always seemed greener
surrounded by that clay dirt.
"That slight sting, that's pride
fuckin' wit ya.
Fuck pride!
Pride only hurts, it never helps.
Fight through that shit."
I was Atlantis
in the middle of Los Angeles;
and frankly,
I didn't wanna be found.

For Marina

If I were an artist
I'd paint you the world
through my eyes.
The simple grace of the
Santa Anna's through
your hair,
the stars at midnight,
and the ocean at dawn.
I'll show you Montauk in
the dead of winter
and the Pacific Northwest
in fall,
but summer will always
belong to California
(twister in July
O'Casey's in August).
One day you'll get lost
in Paris and slum in
the bohemian art lofts.
I'll travel the desert
in that used Cadillac
chasing Hunter's shadow
and plagiarizing Bukowski
in bars.
But we'll live through
these post cards and letters
and smile at the little
things.
The shared favorites.
So paint me the stars
and I'll write you in the
constellations.
'Cause one day our transient
lives will mix like the
paint on your brush.
But for now,
we have promises to keep
and miles to go before we sleep.