lose the sleep

you are a staggering guitar
growing intensity
your tongue a spear
a sticky pistol of poison
and subdued charcoal flavors

tonight is the sort of night
that pretty girls die in car wrecks
their drug store lip gloss
tossed out of broken windshields

nixon is coming back from the dead
and you still can't play a single riff
your window overlooks deer and gravel
and i can't get my damn cat
to return in from the grass

yeah, it's that kinda night
you're that kinda guy
and guess who will lose
the sleep
tonight

bukowski's daughter

hey, bukowski
are you home tonight, you old fuck?

i just can't help
but think
that i
could've been
your daughter

you were the one that said
"some people never go crazy...
what truly horrible lives
they must have lived."

what would you have thought of me?

neil young night

i want you to listen to tori amos with me
but it's a neil young night
and i'm all alone

i'm craving that lobotomy again
so annoyed with myself
i have such a penchance for unrequited love

fucking up everything around me
i punch the cruise control
and point the car toward concrete walls

you're not in that dive bar anymore
it's not the best place to wait for me
in fact, i don't know where you are
i just have an endless list
of everywhere you're not.

or maybe you aren't anywhere,
just a ghost in my mind, a misperception
maybe a failed communication
a dream gone awry or one of those unanswered prayers
the happy people go on and on about.

i'm just so sick of the ones-who-have
telling me how to handle my i-have-not
and i'm tired of asterisks next to my name
and after thirty years still being the one
who feels the need to explain

he called me a genius again
not everyone can have that
perhaps there has to be some
torture to find the truth
and in my melodramatic, egocentric way
i bend my head to keyboard
and think to myself over darkened, flying fingers

it's just another thing
that is so much nicer to read about
than to feel, than to live with
than to try to paint pink and
assign positive adjectives

i can't even feel self pity anymore
because it's so cliche
so used like april lilacs
and albatrosses around callused necks
there is nothing fucking new under the sun
just holes in the ozone
and an acceleration of sound

i never wanna hear you say

i never wanna hear you say
that the freckle on the
inside of my thigh
reminds you of venus or
stars burnt out and

falling
tumbling
to earth
or other far away
melon-scented
grass-stained lumps
of underappreciated land

i've been running from something
by calling it racing toward
ticket stubs pile up in torn pockets
i just gotta face the fact
that you can't be here tonight
even if you wanted to

if i can't leave a memory
perhaps i can leave a scar
i think that's how my mind works
when i'm afraid of being free

what i miss about love

what i miss about love
has nothing to do with cigarettes
and wine stains on rented carpets

what i miss about love
doesn't make me feel ugly, or fat, or unwanted
even if the feeling is unintended

what i miss about love
lies in bed with me without struggle or complaint
a partner in my pillow fort, under a canopy of stars

what i miss about love
has less to do with you than it used to
than maybe perhaps it ever did

Bitter
I drove
past the stewart's where
i craved a root beer float
I drove,
making the left turn
onto yet another street
whose name I haven't bothered
to learn

Bitter
I drive
not missing cigarettes
not missing even you
time has frozen but trips
it skips and folies and rehashes
elementary school stories
it remembers dreams of
an imaginary bank, cathedral ceilings
a painting stories-high
of a face i can't recognize

Bitter
I realize I'm blown my heart
and the alocation of caring is spent
apathy sets in and I won't love you
even if I saw you fade and die before
Not until the spell, the dream has passed
I can't and I don't know how and it's like
I'm no longer able because it's overload my circuits
shut down my neurotic mind
my brain focuses, an aperature closing
I can only think of breath
of fruit juice, of the scent of grass in the air

I won't lie on the floor
for fear that
I won't ever get up