the molecules of membranes maintaining memory

bad dreams and nightmares

what was my last entry?

there is no sentry

 

it’s just moments

and your mind making moments matter

 

gone gathering gooseberries

was a rhyme someone gave me

creative writing class

 

after which i became alice through the looking glass

down the rabbit hole

and all my recent efforts to not drink

didn’t even make me a contender

 

three seconds into the first round

i hit the ground

no need for a sucker punch

beer was not only my lunch

but breakfast

 

i need to be on lock down

far from the fingers that fondle

the frosty mug

 

but i’m not

and tonight i didn’t even scowl

i just threw in the towel

and opened a beer

 

i no longer want to write this book

or while on the streets take a look

and write what i see

 

i just want to try me

more than on the verge of sobriety

but on these streets the only thing i see

is my reflection in the store front window

holding a brown paper bag

 

my shirt inside out exposing the tag

no more stories of one night stands

no more stories of reaching hands

just the brain cells i can’t seem to destroy

 

when i was a boy

i was going to grow up to be a writer

 

i should of dreamt of being someone

who designs bombs

me and the world would have

been so much better off

 

now i just cough

as my lungs protest another cigarette

and as always i have no point to this poem

 

my head is already starting to hurt

and i’ve barely begun my drinking

oh why can’t i stop thinking?

 

and please let that be

what happens when we die

a last sigh

and all thought just stops

 

is it selfish to want to be loved?

is true happiness being the one who can love

without needing a return

such lessons i cannot learn

 

in short i have no answers

i’ve always just been a dancer

waiting for someone to take my hand

and show me the moves

 

and now everyone thinks i’m crazy

at least everyone who can hear

as i scream at the cars careening by

that the sum of the parts does not equal the whole

 

there is nothing that we control

but we expend to pretend that we do

and interpret the meanderings of magnetic fields

as something that yields

motivated movements measured just for me

 

where is the afternoon

when the room

was a bed with my nose nestled

in the fragrance of her hair?

 

now i can no longer use the word “care”

as a rhyme

 

and i don’t know why

the happiness i define

was that afternoon

before the previews said, “coming soon”

a poet who will pogo stick on

the dark streets of decay

 

but i swear on that afternoon i prayed

as i lifted my head from the pillow

and looked about her room

the windows not only covered with shades

but tinfoil that enhanced the gloom

and held her body in a spoon

“that i could be happy here

with her”

 

but there are no gods to answer prayers

and all my thoughts i am forced to share

with a universe that laughs

at the laws of physics

 

except the concept that we barely conceive

as the notion of “random”

 

i am not on a tandem, a rant or a rave

i’ve just gone into an alley

sat on the side of the dumpster

that is hidden from the passing street

drawn in my feet from view

taken a long swig to swallow

 

and found “palisades park”

by counting crows

on my mp3  

turned it up so loud

i can’t hear the world spin

tilt the bottle

wipe my chin…

 

***

Math taught me how to keep track of my six pack

Oh my god I didn’t make it, I didn’t even come close, my breath is battered with beer, my mind is toast. I had two seconds on the wagon now I’m dragging behind, my flesh feels so warm but the rocks I’m pulled over shred my mind. No one else to blame, dancing with my own shame and all I can claim is that I need help. When your hands slip off the wheel and you crash they call it an accident but I look to my right and that one beer I was going to have had babies and maybe as June Fairchild dies of liver cancer I have the true answer to the prediction of all addiction. Hey Jack Kerouac is it a fact that your tour of Big Sur cannot procure anything but the final cure of death by addiction? But can I stop, surrounded by crops of thorns on the long stems of roses. The buds bloom so far above my head as I run through the fields and find the deception yields nothing but cuts over every inch of my flesh. Can I survive the cuts without being saved by zero or play the hero without entering the bed of roses prepared to bleed for all who feed as I disassociate my mind from the wounds they are going to find?

         

***

 

 

 

East of the sunset

         This has been a hell of a week. My therapist calls each day, “A journey of a thousand little cuts” but it has felt more like demons have torn asunder every surface of my soul, peeled off my scalp and devoured my brain while their claws dug into my eyes to keep themselves steady. Everybody wanting more, my muscles fatiguing under the burden and no Roman soldiers to compel another to shoulder the carry; and worse, I did it sober. Well, sober for me. All obligations obliged I would have a couple beers before bed.

          Did I mention I did it sober, crawled across the finish line where, whether first place or last, you reach your day off and I’m just too tired to do more then lay beside the layer of that line, still sober. Creatively I am even more spent, the only rhyme I could spill all week was:

          Run, jump, burn and hump

          Squat over a tall building

          And take a dump

I said it over and over like a mantra wishing I were schizophrenic so the world wouldn’t be real.
          Oh god why am I still sober? I have a refrigerator full of beer, no obligations, nowhere to steer, yet I’m sitting in bed propped up by pillows; an aging oak or a weeping willow? A far cry from the guy who just two hours ago finished a two hour weightlifting routine; now I just want to cocoon in this room, fetal and chanting, “there is no spoon” and rest from the rape of human interaction.
          Full Frontal Assault is the name of the play and the teacher put me in the lead role because I’m the best looking kid in the class or is it because I’m always front and center, hands folded on the desk, eager for approval?
          Oh god why am I still sober?! Have I forgotten how to drink until the functions of functionalism are on the brink? If you don’t salivate when ice clinks then you don’t know dependency. Writing is a tendency and every writer knows that writing is a waste of words and yet I vomit with my pen trying to win one more minute of sobriety. I never knew a person could drink so much water or look in the mirror and see eyes that are clear, or shiver in the searing heat.
          Why won’t I just get up and get a beer? I mean I never thought this day would come, as always I am unable to dodge the cum that is landing on my face in this hellish and harried pace and doing it without a numbing agent that facilitates a facsimile of a dissociative personality disorder. Let me cross the border, call me crazy and lock me up, solitary confinement, far from this journey of a thousand little cuts.
          There is a liquor store right down the street and I still have feet. I could walk in acting like nothing has a hold on me; ask for a bottle of anything and down it before I’m even out their front door. Why do I suddenly want so much more?! When the weariness of the waves that cascade like a violent angry monster never go out with the tide? In plain sight I hide with no one knowing on the inside I am nowhere near sober.
          I don’t meditate on beaches or confront your callousness; I cry and hide inside a bottle. Some men shave and shower before they venture forth, I prepare for the day in a completely different way, until recently that is.
          Rover red Rover won’t you come over and give a poor dog a bone and just once, if it’s not too much to ask, I’d like to be west of the setting sun.

***

an existential physicist

somewhere in santa monica i was conceived

mother, father, liquid seed

 

if divine hands have a plan

what was the purpose of me?

 

is god so involved

his hand scrawled

words upon an ancient wall?

 

or did the ultimate seed

reach a trillion degrees

explode into all we see?

 

where we created a god to believe

 

i’ve asked all this before

on streets of gray

or the santa monica shore

 

it’s a miracle the molecules of membranes

aren’t bored

with the endless questions

and irresolute beliefs

 

different generations

same old grief

 

the molecules are made by atoms

that mulled around for millions of years

before meshing into us

 

decay never prays

it only obeys

the laws of the physical universe

 

and the withered hand

stretched forth

can only be healed

if there is enough faith in the healer

to even bother moving your arm

 

“faith without works is dead” is not a charm

but the defining rule

of a relationship

 

and we are all ill-equipped

to mix our want with our will

 

my faith is a lot of unpaid bills

an expectation of the inevitable decay

of the universe

and a body subject to

the laws of quantum mechanics

 

unable to believe

that when i can no longer bleed

this once liquid seed

will still exist in some other form

 

my molecules will move on

but my memories will not be attached

 

and a god that can carry the weight of sin

is a nice thought

written down long ago

shortly after he ascended

 

but no one has heard or seen anything

from him since

 

in the school of theology

free will was god’s only mistake

and his excuse for being an absent father

who doesn’t even send child support payments

 

absence does not make the heart grow fonder

and it is more plausible to believe

that god is just our fanciful imagination

 

a comforter, a provider

giving our suffering purpose

our lives meaning

especially since he has created us

as eternal beings

 

souls that are refined

in the furnace of suffering

 

making us worthy

of the reward that will come

if we just accept

submit

endure

 

i am unrefined and impure

 

is humanity just a happy accident?

 

i don’t know what’s so happy

about endless genocide, war

rape, women forever objectified

disease, catastrophes

 

we look for, no we expect,

justice, fairness

but they are just concepts

if there is no one

with the authority and power

to dispense them

 

which i don’t believe there is

 

the only invisible thing i believe in

are atoms

 

that this universe contains

millions of galaxies

each of which contain

hundreds of billions of stars

some of which will burn

for a trillion years

and that humanity will be gone

trillions of years

before everything has decayed

to a universe that is nothing more

then unexcited photons floating

at the frozen temperature of space

forever

 

when the synapses in my brain stop firing

i will cease to create any conscious thought

there just is

and one day there isn’t

 

and as a result of all this

no arrangement of words

can make our momentary matter

 

as long as planets rotate and revolve

we will be able to keep time

so

it is five o’clock somewhere…

 

***

 

 

 

 

anne sexton’s final try

alone

drinking from a bottomless beer

old thoughts creep near

crawl and scrawl on the walls of my mind

 

knife edge resting on wrist

i want to die

i have tried

before

but

 

well

i guess you can see the result

 

i think of how it would affect my daughter

and i can’t cut

 

but i want to die

can’t tell you why

unless you have entered this land

you will never understand

the inhabitants and where they dwell

 

go ahead and swell

ring the warning bells

and think your advice matters

 

i never said i was right

just that i want it all to stop

 

harvest the crop

that no one will eat

 

in the end there is no grand feast

not even a tuna fish sandwich

and that’s why i want to cut

 

no euphoria

no spirit guides waiting

or demons parading

 

just the cessation of being

the true definition of

eternal rest

 

i will not be a guest

but i will finally be sober

accomplish the quieting of my mind

 

just don’t give me a spiritual burial

say i am in a better place

that god’s love is greater than my weakness

 

burn me in flames

eradicate my existence

 

do the world a favor

 

***

 

downtown los angeles art walk

i’m not gonna write

there’s nothing to write

i’m gonna stay drunk

out here all night

 

second tuesday of every month

art walk downtown los angeles

posers and drunks

but the food trucks

have really good tacos

 

they want to stand out

street performers and artists shout

i hide in plain sight

clean cut and white

 

but they’ve never seen anything

come their way

like the author of

the dark streets of decay

 

the l.a. art scene.

what is art

once it’s seen?

 

but i’m here

part of the crowd

drunk

and wondering out loud

why everyone doesn’t just sit down

 

stop

amid the realization

that none of this

none of us

not a single thing

just doesn’t fucking matter

 

but second thursday of every month

will find me back again

 

***