(and we bare)

My brain is a spoke off the long wheel stricken from the road of returning kings and queens (bloodstained and eloquent) whose footfalls woke some sleeping giants from their hard hearts and rehabilitations.

And we watched them rise again. stronger and far more beautiful than their counterparts. their anecdotes. their lovers' laments and forgetting what it means sometimes to know how precious it is to have a warm hand found clutching yours in the morning when strangled dreams precipitate the hell it can be to fake it for the money (because there's not all that much fame anymore worth seeking without becoming that long whore we all love to cry about in water coolers).

It's late this morning (as it always tends to be) and my heart is choked on popcorn and christmas stories.

But as i swallow my hundredth cigarette all i really want to do is reach this pale arm out and wrap it the fuck around a friend who lost someone precious today. someone i only knew in passing. in photographs and stupors on the floor next to an empty ashtray.

Huddled before a rock show. blind and smiling in the strange state that comes before giving it up for the rest we all stave off in our day to fucking day fucking attempts to make names.

When everything we've ever needed was whole and waiting at home for a kiss.

And though this isn't the best sometimes its all there is to offer a friend who only stuck around long enough to ensure one last moment of happiness.

Before being missed...

(and flies away)

My brain is the cancer creeping up along the lone mother holding her baby cooing all the soft melodies we wished we knew by heart but in the ned the best we get is a bar before we fall asleep.

Something specious.

Something sweet.

Notes we'd barely remember if it weren't for the times we broke down crying over the line between living and dying and the only thing to keep you on the one side was your fucking screaming cowardice when you saw your face. looked deep in your eyes and realized though it might prove harder to be alive at times it was a sure as shit better alternative to dying by your own shaky hands.

Besides, what could these weak wrists do but hold on to those ideas that pass through later nights wishing they were right.

(on gilded pawns)

My brain is the stumble down the spiral staircase leading no one close to nowhere worth the mere mention at fucking all.

New bruises. new scars.

And the tattoo that's just about all i have to show for the last some year of my life if it weren't for the curious enterprises that have done nothing more than cher me up and piss the fuck off the ones who know me best.

This may well be a rambling not stolen from nothing but fresh blood and the sound of the sailor boy calling out from his imaginary depths for a puppet boy to hold his hand and tell him it's all all right.

Even if he can't come morning.

So long as the night can shroud all truth and consequence all our heroes will survive in half-wrinkled smiles of bemused acceptance that they are so much more than what they all have done and in the end they will become something beautiful...

Even when the fates malign perfection.

(stake in ears)

My brain is a bedpost lying battered in the corner among familiar sediments from the year, some, scattered from strange bedrooms to smoky floor somewhere in queens.

And this makes a hundred.

I'm not sure that really means anything. maybe it doesn't. perhaps just having a marker doesn't justify any recognition at all, but the event is so rare in my life (i have the tendency to let occasions just pass me by) that i feel the need to take a moment and pause to simply acknowledge that i have allocated enough time in my life to simp and scream a hundred times into this growing vacuum of space because i feel, every now and fucking again, that i have something to say.

Nothing poetic and certainly nothing perfect.

Hell, half the times i don't even know that i'm write as i sit half-drunk (or better most nights) typing blind along some fucking stream of consciousness (an idea i so vehemently despised for such a chunk of time it's a wonder i can even recognize the relative facets of my mind) is even right.

But i do it.

On and on and on.

Because it's cheap and so am i.

No, that seems unjustified.

I guess i don't know why.

I really just like writing. to anyone. to no one. to the space between me and her. us and them. you and i. in the hopes that maybe someone, someday might steal a smile from what i'm saying.

Just a breath.

A respite in their trenches where they can feel what i do sometimes, just for a moment.

To be honest, i don't know how these reach out to people or if they do at all but the simple delusion is enough to keep me returning to this fucking stained keyboard and old idiot box smoking hard and rocking softly along the magnificent line.

These are my hours. this is my life. the most precious mess you're ever likely to find.

At least, that's how i'll remember it.

(days of rescue)

My brain is a night written anonymous in the shadows before the drunks start in on their laments and the good kids get to catch the last rays of the cathode which used to reveal a world of splendor i never thought i'd live to know.

But it's later now.

We've all survived (at least the ones that'll make this part of the story).

And with every day that passes me by i catch another shimmering glimpse of immortality.

I know that's foolish. i know i will die and so will every name i've ever loved. but in the moments i have before that time it is possible i can savor every inch of life. i can savor every inch of noise that made me wish i still cried like when i was a boy. i can experience the unrepentent joy of friends imbibed by a tree. i can suffer with the strange dignity of a man obsessed with beauty.

Which i am.

And i am glad to find it thriving all around me even when...

Hell, always.

(counts away)

My brain is the ebb on a primitive shore, stealing off to sea the last gasp of civility left brewing, unused, for years.

And from the fuzz of a midday drunk i seem to have nothing but nerves left about the days ahead. the pain. the scars. the color of blood running my down sagging frame.

Sometimes i wonder why i do these things. other times i don't bother looking for answers when i know the outcome is well worth and shakes that might ensue. or so i'll tell myself when i wake up in the morning and my body's changed forever (at least until i'm cinder survived by unnamed kin).

What the hell, though.

There are worse rewards for living than tattoos along old scars. particularly when they mark something as astounding as that explosion that streaked the sky so many years ago or the arm that cradled my life.

What's at work inside me.

(off mourning)

My brain is that girl found again, so many years too late and leaving for once in her life as whole as she might ever be and in her wake lies the petty pace of what madmen cry out dreaming.

It is no small thing to say that a man has lived his life if to hold himself once beside beauty. without the trappings of love or lust or a longing to reach out and touch what, for so long, has only lived in his mind.

And i am lucky.

Goddamn lucky, in fact.

Because i have known beauty the likes of which no fascination could ever prepare me. images that swell in my heart every day that i breathe, the weight of which one day will crush me.

And i'll be ready.

Smiling wide and satisfied because i know i've had every reason to be alive.

(with brightened angels)

My brain is the noble song of an idiot singing for someone lost to the trembling dust.

Sometimes loneliness is the best thing a man will ever find.

(out back counting)

My brain is the strange boy catching snow flakes on his tongue, late at night when he believes there's not an eye in the world worth looking down at him. not his parents. his neighbors. his imaginary friends.

He is alone.

And he imagines the earth is his castle. the wind his breath and the sky just a flash of his mind coming down from heaeven in perfect white.

He is smiling.

Because he knows deep in his heart that years later he will do this holding the hand of a woman he love more than anything he's ever let slip between his fingertips and land in gentle solitude beneath his tiny feet.

And she will kiss him on the cheek and hold her body close to his, warmed by the brilliance of winter and all the wonders that beat inside him.