3.31.2006

(folding lines)



My brain is the crack that calls morning out from under the last grips of those shiftless sons of bitches we call our own or us as the case so often seems to be. the shattering light of new hope. new chances. opportunities to stand up and smash every fucking thing to pieces just to see what it would be like to have nothing but a name and a place and the willingness to do something right with the time we have left even if it measures long enough to see it all really and trul end in a blaze on unspeakable glory the likes of which no no brooding highschool half-baked anecdote could have ever possibly conceived. even if we don't see a sunday coming down again like it did when we were kids and all we had to fret over was the homework that might have shaped us if we'd ever bothered with accomplishing other than a certain take on flipping the bird that still makes certain folks nervous because of the way it cops a palsy.

But then again (and herein lies the perspective) there are so many things we never could have achieved that grant us a solace to sleep.

3.29.2006

(katydid hymns)



My brain is the sliver of crocodile tears still staining the old man's tail.

And the question now is just how far we go before the delirium finally sets in. shit. all i want to do is sleep it off. the day. the week. the month. the year. the hours upon hours staring all rat-a-tap in front of idiot machines trying to make something powerful out of me and the click-boom machine i'd like to call a second act if i had the balls and the wherewithall to find my right way around the fucking thing.

Not that i have, at the moment, anything all that much worth running from. i might even be smiling if there weren't so many muscles working their way to get my face down and into the cradle of an end to the day i had all but guaranteed would wind up badly.

And it did.

But that's just working. that's just the grind of new york city (and fucking la la's angels as the case may be). that's what i have to do to stay alive and floating high above the sea of flailing groundlings who stepped onto these streets for all the right reasons only to realize they'd done themselves a good dose of wrong.

So i do. so fuck it, this evening.

I just want a good dose of sleep and i already know, by the digital bomb sitting on my window sill just waiting for the right part of the dream to shatter every hope of stealing glory, that i won't.

Ugh.

Might as well have another smoke.

3.28.2006

(empire stasis)



My brain is a scrapbook holding up the end table once we've remembered everything.

Until then, though, let's sift and worry. let's laugh away our shames. look back well on the women that made us and broke us. the men we'd like to hang. scribble a skull on that familiar face we see every fucking day just to wonder what it might be like to be undead. wonder what the fuck it was we were singing before our slackjawed asses lifted our glasses up and out of frame.

Let's just swing that sentiment. again and again and again. spend the end of a perfectly fine day of fucking about under flourescent lights listening to mclusky like they were the cat's goddamn pajamas (because when i think about that shouting match in jersey i realize that they just might have been and not near enough folks this side of the atlantic coast will ever know) and stave of bed another two hours.

Life's better in delirium anyway.

3.26.2006

(on ogi pond)



My brain is the torn skin of a tourniquet, hours later and buried under the last glass of the accident.

And it seems in all these memories there's nothing for this moment at all. no anecdote. no trolling face. nothing but space between my morning star and an evening devoid (seemingly) of fate.

This things can happen i suppose.

I can just sit here wondering nothing at all. too ready to sleep. too tired to get my head straight and make more of the day than joy at being with the ones i love in the right way.

Because this is my time, goddamnit.

And i can waste it as well as anything.

3.25.2006

(stunt coronation)



My brain is a table shot dream for the old man resting full in the crook of king neptune.

And all i want are the arms of my bed.

3.22.2006

(sky shakes in age)



My brain is the face left behind the door. forgotten. confused and almost as furious as the girl back at the bar when she realizes just how far she's fucking ended up in a life lead by ladies night and the guys who'd front the twenty bucks just to get a chance in the sack with some chick who doesn't know a damn thing what the hell he and his boy's are talking about but doesn't care because the drinks are cheap and so's the scene which makes the whole thing just seem all right so long as they get out the door and in a car before the lights are up and she has the curious opportunity to stare her mistake in the face well before she has to face him in the penance of light that marks her every sunday.

At least one of them will call it a good night.

Hell, if they're lucky one of them might even eke out an orgasm.

But if whiskey's taught me anything. if beer's been worth a damn. its to know the cold hard fact that good old fucking never came out of the bottom of a bottle.

Shit.

Sometimes it doesn't even come with loving...

3.21.2006

(compass roast)



My brain is a chance for the arctic where my loveless monster sleeps.

3.15.2006

(scatter in pairs)



My brain is the word whispered from a shaky believer to the one i believed in longer than i'd like to admit. along a bedside. beside the accident waiting to happen again even when she swore things would end up better than this.

Even though they do sometimes and so do i there's still a quiver in her tongue.

And i bite mine.

So in the morning they'll be something real to survive the night.

3.12.2006

(the argument)



My brain is the first taste of fire from the cinder of her lips.

(dallas hours)



My brain is the walk from a farewell kiss, dressed in a grin and the knowledge that this time we won't be living the lie that kept us at night, drinking whiskey and staring down the barrel of an unlit cigarette.

I'm not sure what it means, really. i don't know what the hell i'm feeling.

I just know that i'm happy for some fucking reason.

Even broke. even sober. facing a lonely smoking bed and this manuscript again.

I guess its something in the air. spring under the hell's gate bridge and the same music i've been playing the last few months but, tonight, sounds like the soundtrack i've always needed to a life i've demanded of myself since i was sixteen and finally realized what it was to mean a kiss.

Awkward as it was for a shy boy playing the lunatic, in the back stairwell of the bio building where i'd had my first (to an embarassing record that doesn't bear, at the moment, repeating).

A simple story for a lesser time but a quiet moment to remind me that i haven't regretted a single one since.

Including those that got my ass kicked.

3.10.2006

(double black)



My brain is the rebel straying along the line in the sand again. waiting for the right fight to come along and make up his mind where his allegiance ought to fucking lie.

Two cups of coffee on one cigarette and no headache worth mentioning. jitters all the same but i'm rather fond of them. the sun is shining on another unseasonable day in march that might as well herald the end of winter as we know it here on the east coast and i'm smiling with victoria.

Not sure why.

Perhaps its just nice to wake up and find i don't want to fucking die for just an hour.

Maybe there's something to this whole not being hungover.

(tie in machines)



My brain is the disaster play of passion wrote on heartache, hastily at best but with every hope of making a mark that would last longer than any of the hundred odd love songs that keep us company late in the drunk.

And here i am with half a hard on and a mind to spend the rest of my sober hours enjoying the tawdry tenets of stolen fantasy.

There are better ways to end an evening. there are worse.

But at least in this cheap ploy i'll find a morning where i know i'll stand just fine in my fucking skin.

3.07.2006

(out of sprawl)



My brain is the last one to steal us back from recovery.

3.06.2006

(red notes)



My brain is the toothsome racket of skin that lingers, still, in our sunday morning.

3.01.2006

(last known elapse)



My brain is a body born in the rye. falling from horizons lined with smiling faces, forgotten friends and lovers bright as the sun the last long day of autumn when we stood drunk and watched the shivering trees.

And i remembered me.

As i was. as i am.

Holding her hand like i would the secrets i keep in the promise of spring.