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.