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.