tumbling

quiet here on the east side of existence...looking for another way to plow through the fog...my brain is scattered on the shoreline...broken wreckage from years passed...i see a house as i walk on the deserted beach in the dead of winter, the cold of night...built long ago, but not too long...long enough that the builder is gone...gone upon the waves, out into the bliss...far from the shore...but not too far in the thought of existence, in the acres of time...so long a time it feels tonight, cooped up and lonely...too long a time to be here, to think here, alone...but in another instance too short a time...to be here, to think here, alone...and i miss you, and everyone else...i long for a nice stiff drink and a few old friends...their stories floating on the wind...the raw nerve is exposed, and the words fall away...
and with all the jacks and all the jills,
still an empty space that never fills,
with all the jacks and all the jills,
still an empty space that never fills...

the children cry
as the fleas die
i bow my tie
while the fish fry...

i have something in my eye
the sky the sky the sky!

ole mary

i feel even more worthless tonight...surrounded by inventions...everything around me has been given...the printing press, the recordable music, the television...the steam radiator, the wine, the window, the crapper...well i know i am just a freeloader here on the crust of the earth, i know...hey, what can i say, i am the king of mediocre...however i will take the time to thank whoever, wherever it is for whatever this is...because this whatever is something, and sometimes something is better than nothing...to coin a phrase...

carry on, carry out...

i walked the halls today, of a house from the past...not the house i grew up in, but the house i grew up in...spent many days in the ragged, unfinished rooms...remember the first time i entered in seventh grade...i was home...home in the cluttered collateral...home in the rubbished mind...i walked the stairs today, up through my first kiss, the kid's coming out party, and his sis' police poster on the wall...i saw his sis on saturday, we did some beer drinking and some porch sitting...magical...a few kiddos and a good life have rounded her out...and i am happy, so happy for the life she is living...back at my second parents' home...really cluttered, almost crumbling beneath its foundations...but there is something beyond i-beams holding the god-damned thing together...it is the love for family...simple, not quite profound...it is the family and the friends that keep us together...someday the dust will catch up with us, and all there will be is the love we have forged...

summer storm

the thunderstorms rolled in late last night and saved me...i was sitting, sweating, a single story up...listening to the corner boys, you know them, the 80 i.q. crowd, congregating outside my window...kids rollerskating up and down the street...the grating, grating, grating, like nails on the chalkboard...over and over, back and forth...gotta love kids, they can continue repetitive motions onward into the abyss forever...it was eleven at night and i wanted to shout, "stop your fucking skating, get yourself to bed," i wanted to scream to the dry, dirty, drunken parents..."put your little shits to bed for god sakes!" but what's the use...their tiny intellects can't comprehend much of anything, and it would be a waste of breath, and waste of energy...after all, i was already sweating like a big, fat, burger-soaked southerner...no need to sweat more...but yes! it came, slowly at first, rumbling from the west...rumbling over the appalachians...across the hudson, the thunder, the wind, the downpour...god cleared all those motherfuckers out...and there was silence on the street for the rest of the night...i have always loved thunderstorms, for many reasons...and now i have one more...

"the soldiers fill the hotels on the weekends"

there is something empty about this sunny saturday…i am listening to whiskeytown and feeling like that anything can happen…anything can happen in the emptiness…anything can happen at any time…and i am about to cry…thinking of every sunny saturday that ever was…for me there have been many, for many there have been few…had a good night with old friends, and have a belly full of strong coffee and diner food…life is worth living today, although nothing is different and nothing has changed…i would like to sob rivers of tears, that pour out like the grand glaciers, melting upstream from jersey…i miss you all today, i miss the sunny saturday afternoon that i have before me…

god's given you

there are bars on the windows...am i in prison? i don't know anymore...sitting here sweating in the moonlight, thinking about stolen kisses, and all the mrs., that used to be mine...but now, sweet nothings...mother's of jimmy and cindy so and so...wives of big billy big shot...lives and lives and lives that i used to know...ahh humans, sometimes i am sorry to call myself one...burping, vomiting, and shitting, the dirty bastards...when it all comes down to someday, it will all come down to nothing...i hope to be laying on a polluted beach, watching the blood red sun set over the peaceful waves...

do it for the bus

i had what you would call "warning track power"...this is something that has followed me throughout my entire life...i played the golden game of baseball for years, and had the success of one who had not been born with the gift of a golden arm, or of one with home run power conceived from a deal with the devil...that is to say, no success at all...i was never able to round the bases peacefully...i was never anything and still am not...and i have never experienced the joy of hitting a "ruthian" blast...i have only been a disappointment to existence, and like every ball i have launched, i fall short...it just isn't in the cards...i am what i is...another shadow on this lonely planet...

mother at day's end

where to begin on my odyssey back to jersey...should i start on the subway with the bearded loony on the other platform? i knew he was going to break...i could see it in his eyes...but what was he going to say? how was he going to flip his beautiful lid? well i soon found out, screaming to a few lovely ladies..."i know you are fucking lesbians! lesbians!" on and on into another hungover morning at delancy station...i stood and listened, praying for the train, while trying to keep all of my bodily fluids inside my fragile frame...then onto the train, sitting across from a girl crying...bawling...she, sitting there like an immovable stone...sad on the subterranean...then from penn station to the plains of jersey, a beautiful day to be alive, if not next to the garlic breath-ed gnome...probably from a breakfast of garlic knots, straight from the verdant ghettos of newark to my door...watching town after town of broken down blues flow outside the glass...watching body after body disembark with cheap flowers in their hand...to honor their dear sweet mothers, lost in what's left of the sunlight...and then after a productive day, traveling back, listening to obnoxious long-islanders..."what the fuck are you doing in jersey?" i think...talking about going to mexico and worrying about the swine flu..."jesus i hope you get it" was all i could think as the empire state rose above seacaucus' swampy hills...and soon enough i am home, roaming the crowded streets of lower, east, manhatty...safe at home...as my mother would have said years ago, "home again, home again, jiggity jog"...

last night

i am simply writing you to tell you i miss you...not in any grand sense but in a sense none the less...i don't need your appeasement, telling me you know, that it will all be alright...you are queen of the belittlers...i don't need that, or anything...i simply wanted to let you know how i feel...and how it is...for awhile you understood, and i couldn't believe it...you of all people understood...but then you fell back into reality, your reality, the general reality...i enjoyed going up north, i liked the train, i liked the people i met there...and i loved you...but the days disappear, as they always do...and i am left, waiting for a taxi, waiting on a train...waiting for you...

slapshot!

there are only two ways towards sunday, and one of them involves you, and one me...listening to a little blue rodeo, those crazy canadian bastards...i want to leave this awful continent full of the incontinent blaggards....can you believe the blaggards are upon us...can i cut the blue wires that run vertically through my body and blow this motherfucker up...i have no interest in that but i think it sounds great...sounds like a sad drunken man at one in the morning...he believes he is young and golden, but those days have passed...the german shepard from childhood is coughing and wheezing along with his family...along...say goodbye to sameness, and salvation...

feels like summertime

the term "living room" came from the idea of the parlour...before the "funeral parlour", bodies were laid out in the parlour of the home...after that changed they had a room to name...a room to name in honor of the living...it is all the same to me...i am living and dying simultaneously...living in that happy land, between dionysis and the darkness...where everyone gets their kicks and pretends..."just another fun night me boy!"...i remember summer picnics when i was young...people would stay late into the night and play poker...(crickets chirping through screened in windows)...i did not care why they were there...just the fact they were there was good enough for me...let us gather together and celebrate, in the comfort of the summer home-fire...in the comfort of something we can wrap our arms around...these days no one lingers...they are quick to retreat into the familiar peace of their own parlour...where they lay out and say in hushed tones, "come in and pay your respects" without a word...

comment-less wasteland

the ripples are slowly nipping the shoreline...whether we are knee deep in the east river, or the kill van kull...whether swimming naked in the atlantic like a bearded one-armed civil war ghost, or sleeping in the sound...arthur kill didn't plan on sayreville...i am sure he would take one look and realize that nothing good has come out of swampy secaucus...float belly up (or face down) in the hudson and see what happens...oh no, no starry skies my friend, i am speaking fondly of the lower hudson, not the crystal blue reflecting pools up by hippie towns like woodstock...i am thinking of the hudson that looks and smells like the delaware flowing through philly...like the river chicago, that burned, and burned, and burned...like the angelinos that swim a river dry as grandpa's martini, and got a face full of sand instead of gin...my emaciated body is slipping away into the inky current... i am traveling that lonely river into tomorrow...

first avenue sonnenshine

i love the new york winters, when all of the sugar-plum fairies go into hibernation, and i am left alone on the streets...no more silly french girls, or rich girls from the north american continent...they have gone back to their serious lives and i am left...the lone joker...walking the windswept morning-light-week-a-day-streets...a sly smile formed by chapped lips...downtown still offers great views of the chrysler...second avenue sunrise...where are my kin-folk?...spread across this cold-eyed colony...whether it be no-orleans, winnipeg sun-bake, or salt lake...why are they not within an arm's reach?...a question for the ages...the only question...the only heartache...

slip slidin'

i stepped to the sidewalk in the shadow of the sun...subject to the gaze of untied eyes...walking and sweating through my skull...another day filled with regret...children upon children, goddamn i picked the wrong street...school emptying early...i am already empty...worn out from an existence living with the selfish...how long can one take the take of the rest...sure i feel like dark matter but that does not give me the right to take and take...and destroy...i feel as if my arm will fall, i walk to my apartment which these days is nothing more than a squatter's paradise...everyday i lose more and more of what made me human...i can't believe that at one time in my past i even thought it noble to be human...i am becoming my worst nightmare...your worst mistake...

nicky and the monk

sitting on the stoop...giving stool samples to the wind...are we here to watch the waiting wind or to revel in the infinite bliss of existence...daddy said it's time to leave...watching the hi-way signs change from dull to duller...from hick town to hick town...i am listening to nicky cave...."i am what i am and what will be will be"...oh yeah nicky, i have heard it all before...i hear it everyday in this thin existence...i love you all, with every cigarette-ed breath...but what does it give me...another day lost in my own head...as the people pass...they speak constantly...they give me little...it seems as if in new york you are not entitled to five feet of personal space...you are not entitled to a sip of water without someone watching you...someone performing for you..."look at me muthafucka!"...yeah i see you on the sidewalk...i see you in the shadows...trying to shine...

number 17 with everything

the sauce is spaghetti although i am no longer able to partake...one by one my pleasures fall by the wayside...the first step on your way to death...they take the obvious away first but the simplest pleasures get you in the end...with no beer, no pizza i struggle to survive...they squeeze you, force you into submission...someone is always on your case...whether your wife with a guilt trip, or a majority with a hangup...and with it they take away the only reason you have to be on this planet...or at least the only thing that makes this planet bearable...yeah i've never been to the top of everest or to the bottom of the sea, but i still know what this fucking life is all about...the user and the used, and all you can do is see another sunrise and hope its blazing torch brings with it truth...

mystical rivers

i did a bit of porch sitting today...saw buck-toothed women speaking nothing but italian...saw a dog with bad hind legs chained to the leg of a deep-voiced, cigarette-ed, woman...man there are strange people all over this world...they are in every nook, every cranny...i wonder how anyone makes anything, how anything gets done with all these weirdos lurking around every corner...but then i sat on the porch and remembered how i took the ferryman's boat to the island...there i sat and listened to the music of the wandering minstrel...i saw the clouds cover the sun, and then felt the shade that the trees provided...and i remembered what this life was...the new york harbor...sailboats soaking in the sun...

to good ole ben franklin

i stumbled out to the corner last night to watch the fireworks light up first avenue...the dark red nectar from australia had me by the legs again...i had spent the day in an air conditioned tomb, soaking in my smelly skin...watching how ole g.w. fought for freedom against that other george...i loved the stories of the generals, revered throughout history, yet in their time nothing more than bumbling shells of humans...collapsed victims of a world they could never understand...it made me enjoy the day...and when i stood on the street, smoking carolina cigarettes, wearing a massachusetts tee-shirt, and listening to the cheers of roof-top new yorkers...it made me realize the beauty and futility of this country...bolts of light, red white and blue in the air...

the gentle lamb

another rough day in the irritable bowel of existence...another pharmaceutical remedy to help you stop pissing out your ass...as if that would stop the endless rain...i woke up and ended up where i began, in the shadow of the empire state building...with a good friend, trying to give love to those who thought that only people that wanted something would give you anything...another day of thank you's and empty faces...listening to bluegrass...the old folks telling me they've heard it all...well so i have i...heard the wind whipping through the trees, heard the three-legged beggars, heard the traffic come to a screeching halt...up all night feeling it creep in, body odor and everything...i've heard it and so have you...goodnight my love of the mountains...sleep peaceful...