the difference between seeds&keys

It was a Bukowski kind of day.  The kind of day where you give up around 10am.  Pour a Michelada and close the blinds.  Read a Dashiell Hammett novel.  Eat steak&potatoes.  Jerkoff.  Sleep.  A FTW kind of day.  You need ‘em.  The animal part of you needs ‘em.  Our entire existence is not social by nature, or rather, it’s just as natural to be anti-social.  Just ask the redbird.  He flies alone.  Someday, he’ll auspiciously light on yr rainspout and bring you, in your madness, some good news.
The good news is Fuck the World, its independence day.  Free to think any thought to its conclusion, or to no conclusion at all, w/o voicing it or announcing it to the world.  Free to have yr own little conversation, or no conversation at all (the best).  Unkink, unwind, just be.

The older I get, the harder it is for me to find a partner that I can do this w/.  Contrary, I know.  I’m lonely but for true intimacy.  Space shared, as opposed to words&ideas&&bodies&meals&time shared.  Just space and true intimacy.  As rare as a diamond but infinitely more valuable.  So,
yeah, it was a Bukowski kind of day.  Just being a lump of coal w/no potential and nobody’s gotdamn fucking issues crowding the brain w/snap judgements or political jibba-jabba&radio static.  Just the redbird and a 6 of Shiner.  Aho but Shiner Bock is fucking horrible.  Remind me to stock up on their Ruby Redbird or Black Lager next time I’m at the bougie store.  This Bock shit sux.  Hillbilly Michelob.

Perfect swill for a dour day.

listening to Polvo, reading Blades of Grass
I never knew a love so true
don’t think about the cruel way it all came to pass
try and think of Victory when I think about you
-lyrics from Again

Yrs,
Jim Trainer
Fox Den

The Beginning Of A Fast&Sleazy Decade

The quittin’ time sun was triumphant.  Warm breeze blowin’ in the yard.  Me&Isajiw took it to the lot.  The men stood there.  Talking about some sportsbar in Devon but I called it.
“Well, boys.”
You can walk through hell together.  Worse hells were on their way.  This one was over.
I retired from the piano moving business.

Shrieks of Paradise, Correspondence&Rails#3, Ello Luv

Sybil-

Great hearing from you.  Thank you for your kind words about my writing.  I will try to address each of your concerns/questions in order.

First:  No–she is not my girlfriend.  Generally speaking, I’m in some kind of relationship purgatory, condemned to right the wrongs I’ve done or at least come to grips with the reasons why I’ve ruined every good thing that came my way for the last 8 years.  This one’s a little different–special, as you say, because she’s more guarded than me and if anyone will ruin what we have it will be her. I’m just along for the ride, and yes–that is her car.

Second:  I don’t really know what was going on back there but I was glad to help out.  I was just trying to get some sleep. They were back there and being loud for a while and those punks were lucky they didn’t catch a beat down. After I saw you off, I ran into Camp on the stairs brandishing a tire iron and a flashlight.  

Third:  Job’s great.  They’re 15-hour days but with lots of downtime.  I usually write & play guitar, or teach Yoga. Without benefits but I’m still making 10% of my income playing gigs so I can stay on HAAM for medical&dental&etc–and, I got two books of poetry coming out, the first in the Fall.

Fourth:  Good fucking riddance if you ask me.  I don’t think the guy knows what it’s like to have to work for a living.  I think his parents were always there for him. But I’m a bad judge of these things, I guess–the whole employer/employee relationship.  I mean he’s no different than any boss I’ve ever had. When I was in Acting School we studied subtext. I always employ a subtle & violent subtext when dealing with bosses.  I sustain a tone of I will fucking kill you in my voice when talking to them and I never look them in the eye for very long, but hey, that’s me.

Lastly, sorry to hear that.  My subconscious calls the shots for me, for better or ill.  When I first moved down here my libido got lost and sex was the last thing on my mind.  I was working the warehouses and I had the weekends off but all I did was stalk Shoal Creek Blvd. and jerkoff in my apartment.  And now, this.  Yes!  I can’t tell what’s worse but I can go at anytime now and multiple times a day.  I hope it’s getting better, hope it’s reaching critical mass and everything will balance out.

Was back in New York and thinkin’ of you
saw you from my cab, a shimmering jewel
The drunk on absinthe way you see
she’s a great soul in a small destiny

I guess all this back & forth really begs the question.  What if we had stayed in college town? Would we still be in love?  You were my first and biggest, rivaled only by my second. Seems kind of cheap & petty that we’d buckle under something as asinine as your infidelitiy with a jerkoff guitar player from the Burning Brides for fuck sake.  Yeah I stuck around. I picked up what I could and picked it clean. And I found a royal flush on the street when you left our engagement ring in a Nat Sherman box at the bar.

Woulda, shoulda, coulda.  Today’s trouble’s just piss in the can compared to the twisted shit we had to deal with back then through our 20s in the ghetto.  That shit was real.  It wasn’t just some headtrip or whatever, like, it actually happened.  I mean, I had less than noble intentions and we all had something to prove but ignorance didn’t give a fuck. That dude would have left us for dead and bleeding out on the corner of 47th&Chester.  Ignorance is what conservatives have created and what liberals don’t understand.

It got the best of him too, and now he’s gone.  I remember how sad people were, when they heard.  Tau offering “His death was yours.” If anyone else had said that to me I would have just laughed.  So I said good riddance. The fall got cold and it wasn’t fun anymore. I walked out front your house and spit.  I felt like just another suit in your deck of cards. So I said goodbye and walked away.

I stayed in college town
and took my time to move on
My name will never move
carved in the sidewalk here with you
-Johanna of the Spirits

Hope this helps.

With Love Always,
Jim

UPDATE FROM THE RUINED ROOMS OF THE HIGH LIFE

I moved the office to the kitchen. Seems right and she’s pleased. What else? Bumpin’ me some Weezer right now, boys. That’s right I like pop music. I’m pretty shameless about it. It has the ingredient crucial to any good music-it simply is what it is. No artifice, no pretense. Lyrical content can be vapid, the song can be about nothing, as long as it doesn’t pretend to be about something.  And, harmony-as an ex-bass player I can dig me some harmony.
Don’t get me wrong, there was nothing wrong with the old office. But it reminded me too much of my homeless days, cigarette ash was accumulating in the corners of the bedroom and she did not approve. She fucked my brains out on Wednesday. Thursday was hard&what a drag it is getting old.  She went back to Seguin and here I am on a Saturday night, listening to Weezer and drinking the rest of the housewarming wine that Skye Downing was nice enough to bring over for her birthday dinner.
Perched here, atop this nothing night, I can proudly report, I have no regrets. There is no ever-pressing dread, there are no heavy-as-lead nights or headache-yellow days that can get the best of me now, brother. For true.
You can live your dreams. It just takes about 20years and the steadfast resolve to discard every warning and any indication the world offers as to what the path to happiness is. Happiness is easy and there is no high life. My best friend told me that once, and like so many things he said, it stuck.
The last 20years were a real trip, Jack. Plenty of love&trouble. Enough to last a lifetime and to be jaded enough to know-what they sellin’ ain’t ever it. It can’t be bought, brother&your money’s no good here.
For Madmen Only
-Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf
Thanks for joining me in the savage lamplight.  Nights when I can slip a jewel from the serpent’s mouth or sadly hit the net like some failed romantic acrobat.
Stick around and don’t go in for anything anyone, including yourself, tells you. Victory is survival and we can all lay down in thanks every night knowing that we won another day.  If we wake up tomorrow, we will win again.
Unsurprisingly, its happiness that is the hardest to bear. It’s impossibly light and it goes away but everything goes away. We’re still here.
That my friends is Victory.

Kingdom Found

Henry Charles Bukowski humanized poetry.  The stoicism of his anti-heroes perhaps betrayed a respect by many writers of the 20th Century for Ernest Hemingway.  They called Hemingway Papa.  Hemingway is not my Papa.  In plain-spoken, dispassionate prose, Bukowski included the sometimes gross and hairy minutiae of life to arrive at a greater truth.  He was not resigned to this–sometimes there is no greater truth.  Some nights there is no peace.  Papa helped me through many war-like years and he still helps me, when I must ruefully look back on those years and try and find some peace with it all.  Giving up is easy, the fight is painful.  Losing the game is painful, until you find your own game and are thus victorious.  He wanted to “frame the agony” and get in touch with magic, the miracle. He had more to say at the street level because that’s where he lived and spent most of his time.  What is so important culturally about Bukowski is that, for all intents and purposes, he was part of the Beat Generation. The difference is he had to hold a job throughout America’s boom and twilight.  He had no aunt with a house in New Jersey where he could sober up and dream of America.  He watched the new school from out in the yard with all the other hopeless scabs.  He watched them come and go and he outlived them all.  

Life went on for Papa.  It always did.  He had to contend with elements unleashed after the dark curtain of a right-wing backlash fell in the 80s. And for all intents and purposes, we are only living in the post-80s.  He found courage, acceptance, defeat and ultimate glory in the mastering of his own game.  The poetry coming from Papa during the August years of his life in San Pedro is some of his most indelible.  It smacks of one of his heroes, Li Po, with its all-inclusive sentimentality and the beautiful realities uncovered once grand notions of entitlement and romance are stripped and thrown away.

It couldn’t be taken away from him in his early years either, even if he didn’t know it, while under the spell of his “assault”; bad cases of the blues he wrote about so unflinchingly.  Underneath all his armor was something his father couldn’t take away with a razor strop. So that, years later, when looking back at a “decade of 12 hour nights”, he was suddenly touched by magic and left the job for good.

Credit is perhaps due to Hemingway, for the emotional subtext of Bukowski’s man’s man, but as it turns out, his writing owes a lot more to Raymond Chandler.  It’s fitting that his last novel was a detective one, and his protagonist hired to find Lady Death.

Papa had some luck.  But luck won’t help the truly bitter and the ungrateful.  Luck didn’t help him continually submit work to the literary journals and magazines while he was:  unemployed, under employed and homeless (although he was perhaps his most creative while sitting on a bar stool in Philadelphia for 10 years, but, weren’t we all?)

Many lived like Papa but did not become a celebrated writer, poet and screenwriter.  Many just died in madness with their women or in a gutter all alone.  Throughout his literary output and life, Papa knew what eastern mystics like Li Po were saying.  He moved about a destitute metropolis of 80s America, admiring cats and simple distractions like the race track and the mockingbird.  But through it all he knew succinctly what another great Taoist writer, Lao Tsu, knew:  little fears eat away at man’s peace of heart. Great fears swallow him whole.

Make your best peace with things, a deal, because the game is rigged.  The real action, the best game, is inside.  Be alive with the gamble, be touched by magic but don’t get so wrapped up in trying to beat the game.  Be like Papa and lose everything.  Lose it all, you don’t need it.  It’s a rigged game and a burden.  When you put down the burden of who even YOU think you’re supposed to be, you can just be who you are.

Thanks for the courage, Papa.

 

---

Curator at Going For the Throat, columnist for Into The Void, progenitor of stand-up tragedy™. Jim Trainer publishes a collection of poetry every year through Yellow Lark Press. To sign up for Jim Trainer’s Poem Of The Week, visit jimtrainer.net.

KINGDOM FOUND, along with 6 other poems written in tribute to Charles Bukowski, are available in the latest issue of The Schuylkill Valley Journal.

Shrieks of Paradise, Correspondence&Rails#2: On Being Right

The Office of Jim Trainer
Fox Den
Hippie Town, USA

G. Razas
Whip In
1950 S I H 35
Austin, TX

7/9/12
10:13pm

Hello-

There may be no finer line between heaven&hell than the cursed, silken trail of cocaine addiction. Many have gone before. None have made it back. We’re left with their stories, their songs, or some gay tapestry they hang behind yr bar at the Whip In.

I thought I would start receiving my mail there and do it like Dr.Thompson, but after Labor Day Weekend I’m wont to just show up and play, and then go home. Who would’ve thought two plain-clothes cops could be so wild&free? Barley wine’s a motherfucker but don’t they have rape training&all that shit in the academy? Oh well, it would’ve been tits to have their traffic clearance last weekend but I can’t complain. I burned down 290 with 7 balls of hash&a bad bitch of a hangover but I got to Hippie Town before the sun set. Congress at dusk on Saturday is like some bizarro city. There are no homeless, there are no working professionals. Just random scads of tourists walking around like retards pointing at buildings. I can’t imagine what I looked like to them. I had my rifle specs on, naturally, and a blouse I had to borrow from her b/c of a bad barbecue accident. I must have looked like some berserk fag, getting off the bus with a lit cigarette in black crocks&white shorts and a laptop under my arm. Whatever. It was good to be home. Back in Hippie Town w/nothing due, no editors on the phone and gravy in the pan.
We will live to see stranger things than our own mortality, G. For true.

She’s a good one. Got the fire in her and I’ll be back. I’m blowing through in September on my way to NOLA. With he 4-day weekend afforded me this job, a man can get shit done. 3 shows in the back of a black Acura. Jimbo gonna get lost in the Big Easy. Aho. Be good to be back in Crescent City. Haven’t been since I had my wallet lifted in line for security at Louis Armstrong International, Mischief Night ’07. Don’t get me wrong. Waiting to ship out on the rigs and working in the yard wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all, until I discovered how much money I’d be making out in the middle of the Gulf with just a lifejacket and a dumb hope my cigarettes will last longer than the company toilet paper. FIRE WATCH. Looks good on paper. Aho&no matter whatever it was or is, it’s got to be better than working at the Whip In on a Saturday night w/no coke and Singhai in the kitchen. Oh–
I hung the Matador tonight (PIC ATTACHED here) and I can safely&soundly say: HELLO! I HAVE MADE IT TO AUSTIN. AND HOW DO YOU DO, SIR? Living in the last Confederate Governor of Texas’ old place may be giving me a bit of hubris, but–consider where I found this poster of some bullfight in the 60s. I was living at my sister’s in Salem County and I was working for a junkman. You know, he comes and clears out the place of trash&furniture&detritus and hauls it all away. Well we did just that. I found this poster in some derelict&abandoned shoe store in Folcroft, PA. We had to get it all before the dump closed and before dark b/c what happens in the township after dark is weird&strange and cops. What’s crazy is the Matador&the Bull, a poem of mine, just got accepted by Anthology Philly. And they gon’ publish a book of mine in the Fall. Turns out all those years we thought we were so cool&young&angry&winning we were, actually, winning. Turns out that Victory is survival and that hot girl from high school is just a pain in that jock you hated’s ass. She’ll ruin him. We’re all on the path. He may ruin himself but as long’s he’s on the path to ruin it’s fine with me, Jack.

Be good, G. I’ll be in to pick up my mail and maybe bump a few back but, beware. Everybody knows the sad luck&trouble that a bad coke binge can inflict on all yr friends&loved ones, but nobody sees the danger to their hair. Take the last time I saw you, for example. You looked like an exhausted muppet. Your eyes were wiggy and your lips wet.  And they weren’t even pumping me outdoors, where errybody was, when I played that night. Woody was right. But, aho. Playing there sure as shit beats standing in the middle of Wm. Cannon with a baby sledge and 49more signs to go before you can collect yr 50 bucks. Oh well. The worst is behind us now. The rain is my new religion, and today in the Capitol City it rained.
Like a motherfucker.

En la Victoria,
yr Brother
James

D.C. BLOOM IS (NOT) THE RETIRING TYPE by D.C.Bloom

It’s true. I’ve retired from show business.

But that begs a boatload of questions, doesn’t it? Why would a 55-year-old Austin-based singer/songwriter that few people beyond his family and a small circle of Facebook friends have ever heard of suddenly disappear at the height of his obscurity? Is this some kind of maniacal publicity stunt designed to increase D.C. Bloom’s name recognition and brand awareness beyond, well, zilch? Can I find this mad genius’ entire catalog on iTunes? How incredibly hip will I appear to be when I turn my friends on to D.C.’s music? What, Anderson Cooper is gay?!

Let’s take those one at a time, shall we?

First off, full disclosure. I’m not really walking away from a robust musical career. That implies there’s something from which to walk away. See, I’m one of the half a million hobbyist musicians in this city. You know the type. We have halfway-decent paying day jobs that enable us to meet the most basic of Maslow’s needs – food, shelter, a pillow under our head and the occasional $10 Happy Hour lap dance. We have halfway decent musical abilities. Our voices have been described as “pleasant” and in even more laudatory terms such as “quite okay.” We write songs we’re overly proud of and have four or five all-time personal favorites in heavy rotation in our open mike repertoire. We’ve actually self-produced and self-released a CD or two, passionately adhering to the Ani DiFranco DIY ethos because, well, no one has yet offered to DI4U (That’s “Do It For Us.” Do try to keep it). We’ve sold said self-released CD to, oh, maybe a hundred or so co-workers, distant relatives, crazy neighbors and Austin tourists who don’t know any better. The other 900 or so are in unopened boxes in our dingy ghetto apartments. We’ve considered starting one of those Kickstarter things to gin up some money for our next ‘project,’ but have so far resisted the temptation because, well, we’re pretty certain we’d fall $2400 short of our goal with only a day to go. And how the hell would that look?

And we’ve probably all – with the exception of those born-and-raised Austin natives we’ve never actually met – been somewhat big fish in other ponds. Here, though, in this big ‘ol pond that is the Live Music Capital of the Milky Way, we’re lucky if we’re even in the chum bucket.

Because those are the kinds of places you’re most likely to find hobbyist musicians like us. Playing for tips in dives not unlike Sheldon Plankton’s little establishment of SpongeBob SquarePants fame while the big fish of Austin gig across the street at cool venues like The Krusty Krab. For all of $50.

So, no, this self-imposed exile from show business is not some publicity stunt to garner your attention and/or sympathy. It’s not a clever ruse to get you talking about D.C. Bloom or to check out dcbloom.com or to download my latest “New Man” from iTunes (But, really, who’s stoppin’ ya?) My retirement is merely an acknowledgement that I’m getting too old for this shit.

But, then again …

I take another look at the printout of the Wiki entry for “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs” I alluded to up there. And higher up on Maz’s pyramid – just above $10 Happy Hour lap dances, actually — I see ‘self-esteem,’ ‘respect of others,’ ‘creativity,’ and, the cherry on top of it all, ‘acceptance of facts.’

So here are the facts.

It really is kind of cool to walk away from the cubicle at five o’clock and know that in a few hours I could be on-stage – or for what passes for one — at some nearly empty coffee house in Way, Way South Austin and hear the faint sound of one hand clapping to my biggest hit, “I Can’t Forget the Alamo.” Yes, Ms. Barista, please, do leave a little room for some self-esteem. Thank you. Thank you very much!

And, hey, it sure is nice when one of those bona fide stars of this Austin band camp of ours happens to be in the greasy spoon we’re playing, turns around for a few seconds during our set and then comes up afterwards and says something like, “I really liked that third song you did. Did you write that? Cool. You sounded good.” Ah, the intoxicating respect of others!!

So I’ve accepted these facts. I may not have ever been anywhere near as good as many of my Austin musical brothers and sisters, but, hey, I can get better, can’t I? Even at the ripe age of 55, this old Dog Wagger (the name of my band in Virginia, doncha know? Available on iTunes, natch) can learn a few new tricks. So I’m spending the next nine months of this self-imposed exile in the proverbial woodshed, honing my chops, practicing my scales and even taking a lesson or two from one of those big fish. Then I’ll be jumping right back into this big pond. So, see ya then? Hope so! You’ll be so freakin’ hip, ya know. Just say ‘yes,’ will ya, if you care at all about my self-esteem. Hey, thanks.

And finally, yes, Anderson Cooper is gay. What, ya didn’t see that coming?

# # #

Guest-Blogger D.C.Bloom

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.
-Hunter Stockton Thompson

D.C. Bloom came down from Prince’s Town following that Americana sound.
During the auspicious Year of the Metal Tiger, I was working as a bartender-cook-dishwasher-retail clerk and soundguy at a place called the Whip In, in South Austin.  D.C. breezed through and played a Martin OM-28.  His finger picking style and delivery reminiscent of all those great dustbowl-blues pickers up&down TX and OK way.

That night, watching him play from behind the bar at the Whip, I recognized it instantly-D.C. is the real deal.  While I spent the next 9months of my life working there telling all the girls I went home with that I was a songwriter (and obviously getting little done besides showing up for work fucked&hungover), D.C. was writing songs.  When I got laid off from that place, I took to wine&madness.  I was shacked up at Bat Manor, just shy of the barrio and spent most of my time at the pool or driving drunk.

I would  see D.C. out&about town.  I ran into him at a SXSW Folk Showcase at Once Over Coffee Bar on south 1st in 2011. I was there to see one of my very favorite songwriters, Cory Branan from Memphis, TN.  I saw some stellar folk acts that day, standing around out back and talking over beers&bitterness w/ ol’ D.C.  And lest ye doubt, you can rest assured, real folk music should  have some punkrock shit going on and in the mix.  For true.

The next time I saw D.C. was in his room at the Holiday Inn, where he was hosting a showcase for SWARFA  last September.  I was there with a crazy broad from Asheville and couldn’t stick around for longer than a beer or three.  But it’s always good to see D.C.

The Live Music Capital of the World could merely be a clever Chamber of Commerce ad campaign.  Don’t get me wrong this place is paradise but with the advent&implementation of the tip jar, making a living playing music in this town can be like looking for a free meal in a pool of sharks with only yr git&yr album in a dirty paper bag.  It becomes a hustle and survivors like D.C. and me know, it’s hard out here for a pimp.  We know what the point of  any Hustle is and it ain’t getting yo picture next to the SRV statue, brother.  Like I said, this place is paradise and thee most supportive town I have, in my experience, ever seen.  Barnone.  It’s just that the hustle&the girls&the swimming holes&the cheap beer, the Californians-make it hard for a man to shack up somewhere in his little corner of the ghetto and get some work done.  D.C. is a songwriter.  Aho, but if I’m doing half his hustle at his age I’ll be lucky.  The man is a songwriter and he writes SONGS.

“He’s retiring from show business.”  My partner yelled in the window.
“What?!”  He was out there on the roof smoking with his blonde, his beard&fedora blazing.  He had one hand on a brown bag of Kentucky Gentleman and his other hand on the girl, her thighs and whatever.
“Says he’s quitting show business.  Yep.”
“LISTEN MOTHERFUCKER,” I says to him, I says,”I DON’T KNOW WHAT KIND OF CHICKENSHIT RANCH-COLONIALISM THEY DO  IN ALABAMA BUT THIS IS TEXAS, GOT IT?  WE WORK.  WE DRINK.  WE SWIM.  NOW WOULD YOU PLEASE, GET BACK TO WORK!”
The blonde placed her hand on my partner’s arm.
“What does that mean, honey?”  She asked him sincerely.  She was cute.
My partner didn’t answer her.  He just refocused his attention on his laptop with a flick of a Camel Lite into the yard.

I been meaning to get that wry Yankee on this blog but,aho, this story seemed more than apropos for Going For The Throat, what they call good copy in the biz and infinitely more interesting than the post I was working on introducing readers to my new career as music reviewer for the Austin Blues Society.

As I told the mighty Luke up on the mountain last week, this blog is about outrage.  Plain and simple.  But you knew that.
D.C.’s got it, he’s just a little tired and nonplussed to have to break it down for you-explain to you why Bruce is the Boss and his dad is the man.
The man beat death.  Twice.  He ain’t interested in yr Country-Lite jibba-jabba.

Get yer own torch!  D.C. wrote me yesterday.  They carry them in the Olympics.  Those runner girls are spicly little vixens ain’t they, though?  BTW I don’t see one thing wrong with lycra.  On a male or a female.  Just sayin’.  See you on t.v.  motherfucker!

Damn Yankees.
Tomorrow.

yrs
Jim Trainer
Fox Den
Austin, TX

feng huang

Curtains drawn. Curtains blowing in. A dark summer afternoon lying against momma’s chest. Syncing his breath to hers. August.
The creeks have stilled to oily black hues. The burnt amber rolls and roils, asking nothing. All lies under the high yellow sun. Crow hide in they places. The redbird will not return.
September coming, coming of age in that town. With rolled cigarettes&white tee-shirts and drugstore cologne in the back of used cars. The honeysuckle rose will rise and choke the railroad bridge. Another dandelion will blow its wishes past the junkyard.
This the nightmare-dream, floating there embryonic against the rubble of her body.
Gone the idyll, gone the month of June. Gone the Father, gone the everything. The redbird will not return.

august

With a trusty lexicon, a grab-bag of tropes& grandiloquence, there is something to erect&something to hide behind. Reaching in&pulling nothing out. With the neurotic, crow-like pecking of scab&shadow. And those familiar, heroic themes…

we blow the
high trumpet of our
grandeur
on our wronged Nights
but
we slum away the high noons,
hiding from the parade
with a cold one.

In a city full of forever fools, our passion plays running into and from each other’s arms. We have an armistice of vanities while secretly coveting to the sugary-brown core of resentment. Perfect days waving inside snow globes and deep lost nights floating in the punchbowl against bodies&broken phones. We try. We rally&roil against it but find our only rationale is the cooing lie we whisper to the dumbing heart, laying there on some nothing night.
Nothing will change. Nothing will ever change. The summer nights will fire on, desire will move into the spotlight of our minds, our tired bones will marionette into the mouth of a soft wet grave.

there was a light at the window
a light under the door,
but it’s not there anymore.
-FUGAZI, Strangelight