So, I think I know what I'll be doing today.
Passing thoughts of exercise while I laugh in the face of good health.
Stakes get raised, harder to wake every day.
Embarrassment fuels redemption, the solution is the same.
Sucking hard on the death, suck life out of me.
Water insides with dehydrants.
A black lung
An ignition key
Another night accelerates to stop and stay the same
Another sixteen hours down the drain
Waking up, coughing up hardened throats and blackened lungs.
It's easy to stop stopping any time you want.
Growing pains from growing old.
Fingertips burn from the cold.
Blood and oxygen
Another evening killing friends.
Will I wake up tomorrow?
Will it be another replay of today?
(and what did you expect?)
down the drain and out the door...
when too much begs for more...

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Chicago Is Burning...

We throw out our bodies on the fire and we die,
Settle into ashes as the flames keep piling high
We tossed and spread the kerosene and alcohol,
The ethylene ignited cardboard homes.
The second in a hundred and again as many years
Street signs, skyscrapers and names.
State street, what a great street
When the places and the people stayed the same.
Winter beats the summer on the worst ones
I fall in love again on the first ones
Carbon vapor lines burn as a grid
Like the burning summer evenings
Like my fingertips did...
This town is choking on our filth
Obstinate displays of wealth clog our lincoln,
Wicker, rogers parks.
Here's to your health Chicago.
Fiddle as we burn.
Nevermore,
Nevertheless
Build it up and tear it down and never learn...

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Turnstiles

with a light of this match i could
burn this place to the ground
then fire engines'd scream down
crowded streets onto the scene
and then i'd make it rain
numb myself to never say your name
that i've uttered in anger
said with confusion
laughed over nervously
said without sympathy
i'm not shedding tears for you.
all those lonely night that i've
said feels like i might as well be dead
no more smiles; revolving like turnstiles
no more deliberation; analytical creations
i'm incapable, a predepressionist
this is delivered with courage
muddled in tension
lashed out in honesty
someone come and save me
i'm dying to tell you
this kills it forever
it was already dead
and i'm just fine
i haven't called you but i haven't had the time
thoughts are stale
i've been revolving like turnstiles

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Asa Phelps Is Dead

Hey brother can you spare the time?
SKin and bones that's melting in a backwards way to grow.
Out of heart and out of mind,
And kiss me in the rearview when you go...
Dying at 23, I'm trying on my apathy
With a tired conversation floating in this ether sky,
Tried again too many times, and doesn't it get worse...
Sit and stare
Seems like we're running out of dimes.
Bodies that we burn as fuel, irreversible decline.
Pocket lint and turpentine
Warm my insides, wash these ashes from my eyes
Death with an attitude, I'm putting on my Sunday suit
Tired as a conversation held one too many times
A year or two or three or ten or twenty more...
Waiting

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All The Week

misleading utterings
shadow boxer
right hook mood swings
my endurance test
i coughed and bled and caught my breath
tender in a burning sense
the way we spoke when we were silent
repressed in living scenes
black and white like old t.v.s screens
front porch confessional
bottled feelings finally smashed
against the wall
this is the virus
sitting in silence
armed with expression
with vague misconceptions
came to me in a bleeding dream
on filtered avenues of light
blue serenity turned red angrily
thought provoking in a distant tense
a perfect paragraph of broken narrative
these dusty floors
don't seem to come clean anymore
i'm watered down
evaporated from the ground
connections faltering
dehydrated when the phone rings

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The Old-Timer's 2x4

Walking dead on two burned feet
Do you have anything left to say to me?
From barber chairs and baseball gloves
To calling names and slaps and drugs
From son, you could have been someone
To hey there, meet my only son
Lost in the mail for a convenient month.
A graduation unattended
500 miles, five hundred days
we'll never talk, let's count the ways we fake it
over every break and you kick yourself for making this mistake ...
(karate sound)
actions dismantle litigation
and I thought this would be easier for me
Another forced smile on vacation
Another disappointment paves itself into a two way street
And I see you inside myself
I want to climb out of my skin
I see you in myself every day
And once again, I was the worst mistake,
Your connection to a thirty year hate
I tried hard not to believe it
I'll try harder to feel it
Here's to you ya old bastard

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Here Comes The Neighborhood...

I work on belmont, but I live in wicker park
All my friends are bartenders in all the coolest bars
My girlfriend's in the coolest band that you've ever seen
They play the empty bottle every week.
I've got everything I need.
my loft, my motorcycle, my hip restaurant down the street
and my neighbors are all artists or hot girls over 18
who needs community when you live right in your scene?
Frim Jinx to Betty's Blue Star,
everybody knows my name
From north avenue down to Augusta
everybody's all the same
It's a playground fueled by beer
No Chicagoans live here.
It's geography ound tightly by big city dreams.
And when the property value's raised
you'll be on your merry ways
Like the poor outclassed families before you
You've already paved Ashland to Western
Chicago to North avenue
Congratulations kids, your shallow model city is sinking.
You've become what you swore that you'd never be.

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Light Breathing (Me And Martha Plimpton In A Fancy Elevator)

me and martha plimpton in an elevator
her golden labrador kissed my index finger
two in the morning summer saturated
i'd been drinking and it'd been raining
and it felt so strange cuz i didn't know what to say
and when she smiled i turned away
but that's so like me timid self
conscious crippling
she seemed so friendly and i must've seemed uninteresting
soaked from walking and smelled like boozed and cigarettes
i stood there listening to hear light breathing
and i wanted to say that i really loved her films
and i wanted to make her laugh and smile but i stood still
i managed to mutter hello
her eyes shining in the fancy elevator lights
i stood awkwardly hands fluttering
the doors parted and she said goodnight to me
and her voice was like a song tht wouldn't leave my head
and i thought martha i'm running on empty
and i couldn't help but think i'd missed another chance to live
but isn't that the way it always is

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Ghost Stories

raindrops fell without rage
eyes half-closed
skin like dark gray metal
inanimate and cold.
another flame to my face
the smell of sulfur lingering away.
you're here for the perforation of the heart.
precise incisions; anesthetic dreams.
it's broken like a ticking watch that need repairs
shattered glass, exposed face, waiting to be wound.
wounded like a friend of mine who eased
his pain by killing
not letting it kill him.
when you wake up you won't remember anything.
but that night the ghosts wailed in the windstorm.
cries sharp like a crescent moon
a sickle grazed against the skin
my breath fogged up the window
so i let the night breathe in.
i let the ghosts into my room and listened to their screams
incessant whisperings singing like music to my ears
a flash of life like lightning electric blinding blue
reminded me of me.

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106 South

Our trip had ended I didn't know what I had to do
who really cares at all we had to get away somehow
we settled on a place where the open road had closed
and we tried too many times before
and I spent the night alone with three things on my mind money -
bills-pills-thrills and girls
(i've been) looking through the pages of some magazine that I've read a thousand times
the food all starts to taste the same and it's 6:09AM
and there's nothing on TV and I'm fucked just look at me
watching the Simpsons
afraid to call you
I know I fucked up
I know I owe you
seven hundred
please don't hate me
I'll get a job
and I'll pay you back somehow
one more night alone and you can take it
there'll be more tomorrow
same magazine and tasteless food
same TV screen same shitty mood
and I feel like it can't get worse

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Minute

Another day chock full of choices of things to hate
Another forehead, cobwebby, dull, throbbing,
Almost pain...
Another obstrusive reminder of things I hoped were long gone
Gone and forgotten,
my stomach feels rotten
my shoes are all soaked
and my socks are all cotton
my insides are black from the smoking and pain
and every damn song is fucking the same
this same goddamn train
glides soft through the rain
and I sit and dizzily wait...

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The Last One

tired of these drunken evenings
listening to my staggered breathing
nowhere to fall back in but to sleep
you're beautiful in dreams
where words pour from my mouth in streams
rivers i could never recreate
i dreamed you traced worlds against my back
i dreamed you'd never known me
last night i said that this would be my last
you took up so many pages
the same dead words in different phrases
so much i'm almost out of ink
woke up january rain
idly sliding down the window pane
i had a dream you taught me how to speak
i wrench my hands around my neck
ciz i didn't speak
cuz i was suffocating
it's about time i started to believe
i promise this will be the last one

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