This is life. Pay the man.

In the shower, things wash away. The skin I shed yesterday that just wouldn’t fall off is washed off. It makes me wonder how some people can shower at night. To start a day, I believe this ritual of renewal must take place. When thought of this way, it becomes clear why homeless men can’t get their shit together, why long road trips with no stops seem to be one block of time without an intermission, or why we feel the need to say, “Tomorrow’s a new day,” or even come up with the word ‘tomorrow.’
In the shower, my thoughts always seem to be accelerated. In ten minutes, in my own head, I can cover thousands of topics. It could be my recurring fantasy one moment and then I’ll leap over to my job, women, drunken nights, guitars I’d like to buy, what I need to do today, how I might spend some of my money, where that scab came from. Eventually, I need to get out of the shower if only to escape my own mind.

Like Herod

Lightly glowing letters and numbers
dull your brilliance

sometimes things are inconveniently placed
like signs – or the plastic in
your hands.

Sometimes I wonder what the world was like
before cell phones
because maybe I wasn’t living then
or maybe that’s what I was really doing
and now I’m lost in ringing, dinging
and pleasant vibrations through pockets.

I choose to live like a monk
without principle
and I want to lose these materials with which
we build life
because there must be another way
and I need a way out

Gimme back my alcohol!

I read last night at Fine Grind.
It was Jade Alyssa's book launch, "A Book for Judas."
It's a good book.
Buy it.
Published by Grey Borders.
Congratulations to Jade on a fine compilation of poetry.


By the way, I'm sort of picking up the pieces.
I lay them on my coffee table and put on my glasses.
And I slowly, and suredly, connect the ones that fit.

Laying in bed, between giggles,
she said to me, "I slept with you
because of a poem you wrote."

After I let the Bukowski
feeling fade into the sheets -
after I let her and her
one-night-crazy out the door -
The only thing I could do

was smile.

There are thousands of him in this world.
Complaining clones --
unable to catch a break.
They all hate to work;
they all have sons;
they're all divorced.
Beer consumed by the gallon and
bellies bursting with liver failure.
Garbage day is a weekly crisis and
none of their wrecks are gone.
They tell me I'm failing.
I'll be one of them some day.

I drink my coffee with the sun sets and
eat my lamb.
I never could chew it fast enough.
When my plate is empty, I'll lay in bed
with caffeinated insomnia and
plan like NASA.

There are thousands of him in this world.
They all fuck two donkeys and
tell me to pick out mine.

At midnight the walls look different and
my stomach wails, newborn.
My skin shakes like snake’s rattle;
my lungs fill with the fresh scent of clean sheets and
the dust of the past week’s slow death.

Sunday is the start of a new week
when all my grey cells go green.

Every dawn begins
with eggs and
coffee.
Two spoonfuls of sugar, two of milk.
Cream is too heavy and
if I can’t jump,
I won’t stumble past noon’s speed bump.

I've come to hate this digital bullshit.
This fucking shitty white screen of failed attempts to read my mind.
It's not intimidating, it's annoying.

That said, I've taken to writing everything on a real sheet of paper with a real pen because everything I think becomes so much more REAL.

I understand the writer that uses a typewriter, and I guess that'd be satisfying, too, if it wasn't so much work.
Pens are cheap.
Paper is a fair price.
Thoughts are free to become valuable.

And this digital fucker-clust is not how anything is meant to be
because, plainly, I can't feel it.


Anything you see on here was written on a page first.

He told me how the world works.
There's a circular system.
Everything's been dumbed down for me -
I'm digitally dulled and he asked,
"You don't know the time?"
I did not.
I am not born of an analog world.
He told me the secrets
and I learned responsibility for the first time.
Ever since my feet have chased hands
and I've watched my world slowly spin quickly out of control.
Sitting in a chair, watching television,
a fire at his four o'clock,
he told me how he made time work for him in the past.
But you can't teach time control
in analog terms for a digital world.