Realization

Alcohol
Does not make
The abyss go away,
But it does
Make it
Spin slightly.

Solitary

I sip my coffee black
And smoke my Pall Mall Black
In the waning hours of the night
And note that
If my body split open
Splattering my entrails and brain
All over the table,
Killing me instantly,
Other than the busboy
Who'd have to clean it up,
Nobody would care.
Especially me.

This Coffee

This coffee
Is as dark
And bitter
As the gaping void
Where my
Emotions
Used to be.

To the people of Moore Oklahoma on May 20, 2013.

Your ground has been hallowed through blood spilled by arrows and musket balls and barfights in Old West saloons. Your foundations were scoured to a polish in the airborne sandpaper of the Dust Bowl. Your ancestors were tested by Depressions and busts and booms and busts again. You have sent your sons and daughters to distant continents to fight for America, knowing some will not return and others will leave pieces of themselves in those faraway places. You have been case-hardened in the flames of a madman's truck bomb. And through it all, you have endured, coming out triumphant on the other side. Oklahomans are nothing if not resilient. You will survive this. There will come a time when Oklahoma is OK again. We believe in you.

He Don't Have To.

He don't have to water his 'maters,
And he don't have to water his taters.
The rain it came while he slept last night.

He don't have to water his yard 'n
he don't have to water his garden.
The rain it came while he slept last night.

He can take thee morning off. He
can sit on the porch a-drinkin' his coffee.
The rain it came while he slept last night.

Gordian

He's a fixer
and he can't put it down,
this infinite knot of his subconsciousness.

"Maybe this time,"
he tells himself.
"Maybe if I untie THIS knot,
it will all fall into place

And the chaos inside my head
will begin to make some sort of sense."

But unfailingly, with every knot he unties
two more are revealed underneath.

He's laid it aside
who knows how many times
but he can't leave it alone for long.
He's a fixer.

As a kid, he took the telephone apart
to see how it worked. Satisfied,
he put it back together in the reverse order.
But his pain is not like that.

Above all, he wants to know WHY.
But there is no why;
what is, is. It goes no deeper,
no matter how hard he digs
or how many knots he unties.

The one thing he wants most of all to fix,
himself, is the one thing he can't.

And the fixer remains broken.

Another Morning

And I wake
next to a warm body
that can barely conceal
her contempt for me.

I am her meal ticket
and she my cover story.
We're both miserable.

We liked,
even on some level
loved,
each other
once upon a time.

But there is no happy ending.

Our friendly arrangement
has frosted into
resentment.

All because some 2000-year-old
book of legends and Romans and fairy tales
has convinced me and my country
I don't deserve any better.

I wander into the kitchen,
start the coffee,
then see what mask I can find in the closet
to wear Out Into The World today.