here i go again

anti-depressant memories

don’t exist for me

 

cold hard concrete

under soled feet

that’s what exists

 

this bar

for which i didn’t travel far

(at least i don’t think i did

not really sure where i am)

matters for the moment

to me

 

anyways what i mean to say

in this ocean of faces

that creates the sea

called los angeles

 

where everybody tries to matter

except me

though i don’t believe

anything matters

 

i still want to matter to her

though i’ve yet to find

who that “her” will be

 

the man on the stool next to me

is wearing a diamond cross

on a 14 karat gold necklace

and i think of ghandi’s words

“i like your christ

but i don’t like your christians

they are nothing like your christ”

 

but once again i digress

it doesn’t matter

even diamonds will know decay

 

and though i don’t bow

my head when they pray

i would still like to live

in a small town

come home after a hard day’s work

to a wife making supper

 

never having learned quantum mechanics

or heard john lennon’s “working class hero”

 

or wrote a novel that made me enough

money to finance my disreputable ways

on these dark streets of decay

 

***