Vicious Cousins (for JT)

The words that live inside our minds are often cruel and sometimes kind.  And sometimes life if rife with ifs and cigarette butts...sometimes we're all just goddamn nuts. That's the deal you make and maybe it's fair. Seems to me that in my years round here, fair never meant a goddamn thing. Whether three ring circus or telephone ring. Three in the morning and without a warning the whole damn table gets turned around and you find yourself lying upside down. Lying left and no one can tell if you're doing it right. But in these brambles we find ourselves in shambles, shaking like leaves of that turnaround table and trying to choose, come Cain cum Abel. It's all a joke but no one knows the punch line. Lost in the thicket of forgotten promises, hits and misses just collide and you just ride cause what else is there to do. You got your socks, but forgot your shoes. If they fit, wear em, if they don't then keep on faking it until it works your way. I'm not proud and I'm not noble, I'm angry at the whole damn mess of hate and self-indulgent stress. And I know someday it will all come back. One more train down that railroad track, but the track marks the rhythm and the track marks fade if you'll just let em. I preach a lot for a malcontent, the irony ain't lost on me. Omnipotent don't mean shit if that shit's not potent, I won't promote it, I'll buy three more hours of feeling human...trade ya six for a bubblegum card. It's not easy and it's not hard, it's a deal you made, it's a marked card. It was all fun and it was games, you met the greats and forgot their names, you take the praise and run with it for all you're worth, cause they think you're worth something...cause they ain't heard the punch line. You've heard it coming, you've heard it going...you knew it all when it weren't worth knowing. I sit behind my gilded cage choking on cheap songs and boy scout rage. The time has finally come when I can't stand the night time for the sun, I can't get up to get it all done. And I grasp and clasp the necklace shut. It's around my neck and it's getting tough. I've given too little and given too much. I try to do right by the people who do right by me and I even get that wrong. It's worth more than a cheap joke and a song, but that's all I got. That's who I am, and in five minutes I won't give a damn, but I wish I would. I wish I could be the reflection I see when I'm feeling sanguine and feeling fine like the first hot sip of summer whine. Shit, nowadays I can't see the line. I write from the heart and no one cares, I throw up a shot, get nothing but air, and the things I value don't get noticed and the things I don't they get important and I shake my head and wonder at the strangeness of it all. I wonder if that's what happens to us all, why Rhymin' Simon dropped the ball. Lost perspective, lost objectivity, trying to write a tribute but it's all about me. And I should feel shamed and I should just chuckle and I should hitch one notch on the old belt buckle cause lately things don't taste right to me and lately I'm chasing apathy. Or it's chasing me. So, this is what I wrote, and I know it's a shitty thank you note, but the sun's hanging on the last night cloud and the day is done and I don't know if I'm allowed to feel good about it. I don't know what I said or did. I know it should have been more and could have been less and in the end it's myself I kid. But if it means something, hell, let it mean something. And if it doesn't it doesn't, cause me and Antrobus know. Hate and love. Drunk or not. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. The world's full of vicious cousins.

Slow regret...

The sunshine through the screen smells of slow regret.  Of listless malaise.  It is an acrid smell, like the whiff of garbage through an open window.  She sits with head in hands, thick hair in clenched fists.  Again and again and again.  The air is stale and slow.  Her mind plods on as she reads and reads the same pages she has read a thousand times before.

Time is meaningless.  Laughter ricochets off the walls of the brick buildings that surround her.  Cheers dart like swallows and she swallows the lump in her throat, wondering what they are cheering for.  Trying to remember when she had something to cheer about.

Her arms can still feel the warm touch of flannel.  She can smell the cigarette smoke and sweat.  The smells reach into her and spark the twinge of sadness that marks her days.  She pours a glass of wine and tries to ignore the coming of a new day.  But it is there...in the evening air, taunting.

Channeling Bob Dylan.

What’s that feeling when midnight’s reeling and you’re stuck to the bedpost staring at the ceiling? It’s time, it’s time, just time you’re stealing but that ain’t worth but a rusty nickel in the bottom of a coffee pot. Grounds ain’t ceilings but for my last meal I might take, might take that deal, cause what good’s mealing when you know you got but one more hand and you ain’t done dealing. And that ace up your sleeve won’t make you believe and you can’t leave cause you’re in too deep and you can’t sleep cause the covers weep and the walls creep and crawl with every thing you scratched on every bathroom stall…the words come back but you can’t read em all, so you stall…you wait, you wait and pray, but it’s too late and your hair’s gone grey and there’s bills to pay and the man with the tie won’t buy your lie even if it is the truth. And who gets truth anyway, you can hear truth if you listen, hear it every day or you can hear a freight train bray, but it ain’t honest and it ain’t the same as sitting under a tree at sunset. That tree’ll shade ya and the ground that made ya, hell it will be there til the sky falls down. It was there when you were gone, nowhere around, nowhere to be found, lost in the light and strobe and sound. Stumbling, shuffling, subway bound. Underneath the streets you listen to the trains run by and the rocktime beats and you try to feel original. But original is just a word and it’s a word that everybody’s heard. And Woody heard it before I did, and I knew it all when you were still a kid. Still tossing a ball against the wall where fifteen years later your body falls and you can’t get up. They’ve beat you down and you’re sure that you’re the clown and the world’s the circus and just when you think you got it all figured out, you realize you ain’t figured out nothing but another cut out snowflake xylophone fake…and it makes ya nervous. But shit, son, don’t you know, ain’t you listening, did you really think God was at that christening? Did you really think it meant anything at all, those hymnals, those words on the bathroom stall. So close your eyes and let it be, there ain’t enough room for you and me…and time, that’s the only thing you see, cause when you’re knee high you got it all laid out and in a snap you’re laid up and outta luck and nobody really gives a fuck. You might as well quit, you might as well die, but you don’t cause you’ve got shit to buy…America’s got you boy, but good, and don’t try to play misunderstood cause it’s time you’re buying with that new car and it’s time you’re buying, but it won’t go far cause it’s all a sham, it’s all a joke, its all the lies and cigarette smoke, and it don’t make a difference anyhow – the train’ll be leaving any second now and whether you go or whether you stay we’ll still end up in the exact same way, same place, same face, same dreams you had that didn’t matter then, but you got your paper and you got your pen and if you don’t quit, maybe they’ll listen. Deep down you know they probably won’t, but hang to it, cling to it, play your guitar alone and sing to it. It may be all you got, but it’s a lot, son, it’s a lot.