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.