The stars with decaying wishes
Strewn out like fishnet & cream over
Their hot cherry bones
Pucker pin tops in the bruised up sky
From here I’m perhaps not anything.
I’m an empty pack of Parliaments
Nonalcoholic and kind of lonely.
Eyeing the door for ghosts
I’m nobody’s lover
And if nobody was somebody then surely
They would be bored with me
One can only go so suddenly so many times
Before the spontaneity shows its illegitimate spine
Then it’s just fear.

I never stick around for the last band anymore
Unless I’m loading equipment.
Every time I go out
I end up just a magic trick revealed by a museum
Or locked out of my apartment
Or two drinks past my limit
Everyone’s got postcards tucked into shoe bends
Stepping on the softest sands while
Making small talk.
Wish you were here.

Local artists being bought out by salesmen,
Or becoming salesmen,
Or bitching about salesmen.
Microphones don’t make them disappear—
This is snide self blowing smoke mind you
But irritated or not
I feel it from time to time.
The audience ain’t seeing much action
Unless you count saliva evaporating.
Weekend stoned and ruined
Taking myself on walks around the neighborhood
Wishing the streets would wise up and stop
Being the same
Routine causes crisis
But it never makes the news.
People still talking about themselves
Not as they really are but as they assume
Or hope
That others will see them.
If you define the word in question for me,
I tend to stop being curious.
It’s an easy way to lose potential friends
But it’s so hard to flick off the annoyance
When some young puff of smoke
Starts clogging the filters in the room.

I am not just a mind
I won’t apologize for anything
That’s the part about adulthood no one mentioned
This sudden burst of not giving a shit
Of backing off and taking stock
No bio clock here
Just my foot tapping off beat the believing
When it comes to the seconds
I think they switch up.
I’m not the first.

In a way, it’s even worse,
When you realize you can’t give up.
Willing the day not to break but
She’s a yolk already free and sliding,
Bust us once for being young
Twice for being fools
Again for causing proud militias in the bones
Such keeps us trudging
The long walk and the lone cool
In the end you know what’s best
You’ve got to keep going.

The good stuff is on the stove
Too hot for these hands
Even though my circulation
Is notoriously bad
I could use the warming
But the good stuff is creepy
Incredible to just digest
Compared to the battles
Swallowed down like supplements

Chaos keeps me sane
Who hasn’t said that
The part I hate to admit:
What sustains the brain
Will crumble the body
All those good deeds and still
We’ll rot to bread crumbs then dust then
Nothing, not gold
Not the words we smeared due to sweat on the lines
Dripdrop on my wide-ruled lap, the lean of my T’s
Pressed right up against the pink
This is my race track I’m always spinning out on
And talking about

Fighting the good fight
For an old cause