“I would read my books in that chair right over there and she would surprise me with her lips on my neck. She just had this way that got me every time. My heart’s not in the literature much anymore, but I can’t forget the smell of her hair and that smile. That smile could save the fucking world.”
hold tight baby
toast to the ghosts
and curse the memories.
your living room
was where we’d get high
and celebrate
spill champagne
and appreciate
the simplicity
where we understood
the beauty of fragility
summer died and
we smoked it all
laid out on your balcony
with photographs to document
all we’ll lose
because what time can take from you
it will come to rob these graves
of the flesh and bones
that were once oh so brave
Time, like life, is fragile. Our plans are prayers and forever will expire. If you’re lucky, you notice the good shit. Pay attention to it, try not to take it for granted. You hold on to it, appreciate it, remember it. Understand, it doesn’t come around that often and it might not come around again. That’s the beauty of it. We will never have enough time.
Tracks In The Snow
she was smitten in spring
then bit by it’s plague
now venom veins
covered in pain
held up by strings
and washed up in the rain
hope’s head held high
while the pictures had been cut
to end up intoxicated and promising
she showed up, dressed in ash
from the fire that fall
where we learned to dream
we found out
all left from the fire
the night we learned to dance
summer came to take away
now she’s tearing up
across the state
driving in the cold
never could have known
they can leave
but these dead hearts,
will never be drowned out
Come winter, take me down, to the fire in the snow. Pour scotch to warm our bones as we inhale the smoke.
We’ll laugh until you take me home and put me back up on the shelf. Where I’ll wait it out, for the fire, there, just burning out the cold.
And in the summer, you will take me down, to the water in the ground. Wash these bones and dry them out. We will sit around, while we inhale the smoke, laughing at the sun, just laughing, until the sun burns out.
We won’t have the summer, but we’ll always have the city.
I’m rotting from the inside out
like a hollow tree
from a poison carbon cloud,
in a desperate attempt, to murder these memories.
Now we don’t speak, but it still cuts me up
your body in that dress,
and that someday, I won’t remember it.
She was full bodied and magnificent
she could get you high
like good whiskey and a cigarette
a river of chemicals
coursing through your veins
to cut you to ribbons in an instant
She was a symphony of perfect
violent and educated
and we’d go home with our armies
just to start a riot.
I took up the axe, it was the summer of oh five
it was hell, but there was a lot of rain
read a lot of books, cut a lot of ties.
home was here, chilly air, and nothing changed
the bottle contents kept me me up, the birds awake
crashed the car, in the sun, didn’t feel a thing
I was born, cut my hair, broke the mirror
had a lot of luck, never been the sane.
we would order in, tangle up, and I would dream
Shit, I was so young, I really gave a fuck back then. All the fucks you could give. I gave them hell. You know, they always tell you how you should act, what you should say, how you need to try, how you’ve gotta care some what you know. I ignored that, not consciously, but ignored all the same. Couldn’t help it, I never had a choice. I grew up on failed attempts, I knew how to build it up and in the back of my mind I knew how it’d break. I always hoped for the best though, and I think sometimes that’s all you’ve really got going. Maybe I should have learned a lesson here or there, but that never seemed to happen.
Saltwater Boats
The skeptics and the few believers are one in the same, wasted off their faith in the god of wine, tired from years spent smashing up their beautiful faces, jaded by these temporary highs. I’ve crashed this car the same way so many different times. Please take me home, where I once had, so many dreams I couldn’t sleep. We’ll take the back streets, tangled up and tethered to each other in linen seas, we’ll practice tying navy knots, so not to be, as lost as those who once believed. We hold tight and can only hope For clean breaks and a lapse in the cold. Oh I know you know, you play these strings so well.
Well I met you at the Hickey; we were standing on the steps. You were looking for a light and I was bumming cigarettes. We were shooting Jack and I had just got back, from a town a little farther south. We were standing in the cold and I couldn’t take my eyes off, your perfect skin and bones. They’d soon be calling out, as we know so well. I’d be paying up, for every toll I owe. For it was always there, it was your eyes; I couldn’t turn off mine. Goddamn those eyes and Goddamn what Sarah said, I have bones to pick with father time.
I saw your life in photographs and I saw God in your eyes. I realized we’re the lucky ones and understood the fragility of time. I watched God laugh at my plans and the ghosts in the woods, forever indebted to a past life. I watched childhood replay in a video, as I didn’t appreciate that gift when it was given. You went home and I didn’t say goodbye, but Mary Jean, I have buried you in every place I’ve been.
And now, I shoot myself in the foot again and float out to sea, to get lost in a boat full of bottles, filled with rocks and your memories. and now, as these sober lights dim, it’s with these sails, the wrestle I can never win, as rough as it is, in our self medicated ocean, praying for land, only to never see again.
We found ourselves on dive bar steps, sharing bummed cigarettes, fucked up and falling down, from warm nights in our little town, and we’d laugh out loud, until they kicked us out, and God damn i miss that now.
