Poetic & Spiritual Delinquency in the Modern Age

St. Louis is a city of beer and baseball
 
I’ve always hated baseball, so I stuck to beer
 
then I moved to California
 
The palm trees swaying and standing large
in my memories from childhood
 
and in time I realize, like everything else,
how overrated it all is
 
and that discontent is a gift for us all
 
and that unhappiness can be found among the Dodger fans
just the same as the Cardinal fans
 
and that’s not why i came, escape, not seeking
 
so I watch the city lights at night
 
the hookers a rhythm floating across the streets as I listen to it all sing from
my crap hole apartment in Los Angeles, Pasadena, Alhambra, wherever I happen to be at the time
 
and it all reminds me of how cheap life really is, and how only a lucky few know these things
 
how the agony can come so swift the suffering so fantastic
that a year passes in one night
 
and the sweetness of death is a quietly framed picture
 
Lillies, lilacs, garden in the asylum, oh starry night, flowers in a vase
 
silent but for your i am and you alone
 
and it all reminds me that life at it’s best,
is appreciating the one guarantee, your loneliness
 
…
 
pain and humanity, the brush of tears, the stars clunking in the sky
overpriced rent and smog and the smile as 12 am rolls around again

hmmm, my fingers are cold

I sit writing this story, and fall leads the day on in the most beautiful gray and in between sips of coffee, I write this

the walls shake, things go thud with noon’s tide and all I hear is screamig, and now it’s the ambulance’s scream

I tried knockng, but no one answers

a woman sobs and they call the cops

I try yelling, “HEY - ARE YOU GUYS OK?!

just sobbing, “OH MY GOD, CARL - CAAARL”

the day is gray and beautiful

My knocks go unanswered and my inquiries are drowned in a lifetime of grief, all captured in a few minutes

Carl, what happened Carl? They have found you! They have found you with a noose around your neck.

“Oh MY GOD, OH MY GOD, I CAN’T BELIEVE HE DID IT”

“CHECK IF HE HAS A PULSE, OH MY GOD, HE DOEN’T HAVE A PULSE”

I sip my coffee and look into my computer screen

I hear the fire engine roaring up to the building, foot steps

lots of foot steps, but Carl is quiet

The coffee tastes good, and I like the story I am working on

“Stay right there mam - where is he?”

more sobbing, she doesn’t stop sobbing

Now it is many voices, many voices talking in hushed urgent tones as mine remains quiet and right here

We talked yesterday morning, Carl and I, cigarette smoke curling in the end of summer’s warmth

warmth that gives way to this hour as the day drizzles on, alive and gray

“Good morning,” we had said

Not too much, a few odds and ends

“Have a great day, man,” I said as I left for work

I don’t hear her sobbing now, I don’t hear the neighbor’s wailing and screaming

I hear the fire truck though, and it’s purring engine speaks to me of all it has seen

Really? Yes? Yes? But the day is gray and beautiful and the coffee is still good. Carl? Well, despair, despair, my friend

how it doesn’t stop for even the paramedics or children caught in the crossfire

what had been so bad? whatever it was, no one could have seen it, or else I wouldn’t be writing this right here

the engine purrs some more as the paramedics stomp out, their radios beeping clicking

transmissions, over and out

the day is gray, a lovely gray that settles in closely and asks to see what I am typing

and I tell it, Carl is not the first, and he will not be the last~

Hey man,

It’s Easter, 2009, and it’s been awhile since we talked last

It’s the holiday, I guess

That, and a machine-gun mind that rarely settles for anything like peace

I was thinking of you and how we used to skip church and get high

and that one Sunday we waited two hours for church to get out

as we sat on the back steps, talking about whatever stupid

kids talk about, waiting for my dad, and it turns out

that Palm Sunday masses are twice as long

double the pain

and how we couldn’t wait to grow up

and make stupid decisions on our own…

well, the holiday made me think of you

and yesterday

and tomorrow

and palm frawns

and stale holy water

and I gotta say,

I miss you…

I thought about that time we got way too drunk and how I puked on the floor

at my stepmom’s apartment so we used pine sol and a vacuum to clean it up,

and how you laughed so hard that you puked in the sink and how

we used Ajax and draino to clean that mess up

I thought about you giving me my first hits of LSD

and how we lived at music festivals together,

and how we chased women

and how we tried to solve the world’s problems

sitting at the edge of  a campfire:

the political mess

the suffering

and our concensus that we should just burn it all down

I thought about your family

and I thought about your father

and your alcoholic mother…

And I wanted to let you know that I’m doing good

Been sober awhile now

Working hard

Doing the only thing I ever wanted to do

You know, write

And today I keep thinking of you-

Your mad genius

Your wild, menstruating heart

A mini Hendrix on the guitar,

A natural-born poet

And the smartest kid in the class,

Far too sensitive to handle this world

And I’m doing good

I wanted to ask - How are you?

I was thinking about the last time we talked

I mean, the last time we really talked

And I told you I went off the deep-end

And ran to California

(about a year or two after you got back from

the land of withering palm trees)

and you told me

“that’s ok, we all

                            have to go off the deep end now and again”

and you told me you were ‘hangin’ in there’

and then I saw you for the last time after that, and you were out of it

hollow

a shell of the man I once knew

a shell of the man I once loved

and I know you’re not too far away

-

literally

-

you’re ashes are in an urn at the alter we set up for you

in my father’s house

that way, you’re always near, and I know this

but,

still,

I miss you’re insane sensitivity and your smart ranting

Your snobbish taste and the trends you set

And I miss our hungry lives

adventure for experience’s sake

Always curious,

Forever thirsty for more

And more and more

and I don’t know about an after-life, but if you’re there,

I hope you found whatever it was you were looking for

And I was going to say something like

“I hope we meet again,” but that just sounds so fucking stupid right now

And I know you’d laugh at me if I wrote something like that,

 so I’ll stop right here

Love,

Zach

I’ll gladly tell some jokes

or feel at home in the dark

or maybe fill you in

on life’s little happenings

like my mother in the asylum

LSD and Zen

being tackled by the cops

the Slayer/Manson concert last summer

staying up late and getting up early

armed robbery and intimidation

heroin and many brief love affairs

with woman who were too good for me,

yet still wanted a part of me that

I wasn’t even sure existed

sweet smiling memories to make you cry

souvenirs to wish back to warmth

a million secrets, begging to be told

and if you’re honest with me too,

maybe you’ll understand

I’ll tell you my deepest secret,

the worst and best of self-awareness

and I’ll even relive my

darkest hell for you

my life-

it’s all right here in these funny little poems

Poetry is a funny little thing
 
it seldom pays the rent
 
and at it’s best it’s nothing
more than a broken-glass lullaby
 
an atomic rat-trap
something like a sup-prime rose
a thorny siren’s tongue and an expensive flat-tire
 
and what makes it funny is,
 
there’s a lot of people that write it
and there’s a lot of bad poetry
 
most of it nickle-plated, dime-store garble
 
paper-back tricks and clever word games
 
simply, nothing special
 
poisonous, maybe pretty, if you have shit for brains,
 
but it keeps them coming back,
 
poets, loyal like a codependent girlfriend who
you once gave cocaine to
 
or a zealot,
or a roman,
a christian, a jew, a diamond dog
 
chasing tails, chasing cars, chasing funny little words
 
laughing and
lauhging