The Poem

It wasn't true or, benign, or black, or maroon
It wasn't about love, or sun, or experience at all
It wasn't in English, or German, or any language
Death hadn't found it,
Yet neither had life.
It certainly was not about the snow falling for the first time this year
Nor was it about the checkered print my shoes left in it
It wasn't even about me
I have no doubt in my mind that it wasn't about you
It didn't have eyes, or legs, or ears
and because of this it was not human
It was untouched by human nature all together
One like me would think that this must have made it beautiful
but it held no beauty
it held no attraction
It wasn't about the single mother throwing herself at the mercy of
hungry men to find the comfort of stability
or the teenage boys behind bleachers slipping their hands into a pair
of pink panties for the first time
It wasn't about the homosexual getting his ass whooped by barbaric neanderthals
There were also no crack addicts or whores screaming at you for change
No babies crying
No guns fired
No suicide
and no religion
Not at all
It was void of feeling
It shed no tears
It hadn't felt remorse, or heartbreak, or regret
It had never been drunk to lighten the weight of its choices
or to take the sting out of its over worked brain
or to welcome pain
Maybe because it had no liver in the first place
Moral-less and heartless
There were no words to describe it
There were no words at all
It wasn't prejudice
or impartial
or naked
or inspiring

it was nothing.

and it was not any thing.

yet.

It's a Mess

This is a god damned mess!
It is all one big god damned mess
Its the hands of the clocks that move with repitition
Its a place that comfort is closing your eyes to the television in the daytime
with tough men and children pretending that they don't cry
and its the roads that lead only onto others
Littered with homes and apartments
to store and fill up to the top with our idea's of what we believe it is like to be perfectly alive
Undershirts and empty soda cans
End tables and lingerie
Our complexion behind sateen embroidered curtains
Its the longing for a phone call
From some creature of distraction
To try and make the time push faster
So you can get to bed and dream up ways of how you will do it all over again tomorrow
Its a mess
It's standing outside in 10 below zero to make an honest dollar
and spending it on people who will always be there to let you know it isn't enough
And SOMETIMES
Its even the music now, that sounds like white noise and synthesisers committing suicide
and ill-shapen teenybopper's raving on about sex and love
Spiritless art
A fucking mess...
I read a poem just the other day about writing becoming a dead format
Apparently nobody likes to read anymore
and it went on as if words were at war
and I knew deep down in the back of my mind that my words have always been at war
and I could hear the disdained voices of my father and of his father
Telling me that pessimism isn't very becoming
That there is wisdom in being pleasant
and so much light in the world that I claim to know
and hey... That's okay.
These are the discretion's of war

Its a god damned mess
and it keeps piling up and we keep cleaning
Until the floors sparkle in the light and you could eat a meal off of the toilet seat
Thinking that we are always one step ahead by doing so
Too clever for fate
Until the shit comes piling back in
Its the man walking by you on the sidewalk holding his head down so as not to make eye contact
Its the fear of death when only the dead are smiling
Its a mess
and you live it
Feel it
Breathe it
Know it
and you make love to it in the dark
Out of sight and out of mind
and don't you know,
Ive got to be alright with this every now and again
Because if words are at war then our everyday lives have become the battlegrounds
Our downtown's and shopping mall's are the Vimy ridge's and Auschwitz's of today
Sharp shooters hidden away in book stores
Mortars planted in our backyards
pummelling us all to the ground with ideologies and conviction
The mess is you and I
Making all the wrong choices
Considering the fact that we could possibly live for 50 years
or 60 years
or 100 years
or forever
When the verity of the matter is distant at best
and some of you deserve the death
and the ones who do never die
and the shit pile grows bigger
and the Hitlers and sadists and backstabbers become your friends
Because there are no seraphim's left
None beside you
But there are words to express this type of segregation
Words at war
and even those are a mess

The Drink He Had To Buy

"There's gotta be some easier way to die!"
Tony blurted out after staring at the bottom of his empty glass for some time.
He had been sitting at the bar all night long moping about and trying to suck sympathy out of anyone who thought for a second that they gave a damn.
"Yeah. Yeah. Tony." Jake mumbled.
Jake had been bar tending there for 5 odd years now. He'd seen it all. All walks of life crawled into that bar. Bum's, cheat's, Guido's, harlot's, angel's, stranger's, musician's, mother's, father's, liar's, business folk of all kinds, etc. Lefty also crawled into that bar.
   Lefty was a hard looking man. A real drunk. They called him Lefty because one of the only stories he liked to tell was about an obsession he had with beating his dick off with his left hand. Lefty was right handed but he'd say "25 years... 25 years with my right hand. Longest relationship I ever had and within' keepin' up the tradition of things I thought I'd pay a little more mind to my left."
He was a regular at the bar back when Jake was still wearing pull ups. It seemed as though his
age had been beaten into his face with a meat mallet. His eyes were all sunken in and hollow but there was wisdom in there...
Somewhere.
He normally kept to himself. Had the casual conversation with Jake, and some of the oddities that rolled into the bar but he went in there night after night for the booze and if they would have him, he'd take a woman back to his $500 a month bachelor apartment. The apartment consisted of a bed with stained old sheets, empty, cheap beer cans resting on his decade old television set and dresser, and scattered boxes of macaroni and cheese beside their powder packets. If he had taken a woman home for the evening he would walk into the bar the next day just as broken as he was the night before and Jake would always say something like "How was she Lefty?" and laugh a bit to himself.
Lefty always had the same meaningless response.
"Jake...She was a cold bitch and a warm fuck."
 
"Tonight's the night! I'm sick of this shit" Tony yelled out.
"So get it done ya coward!" Lefty howled.

You see, This was Tony's routine. He'd stumble into the bar around 4 o'clock in the afternoon everyday. Right as rain. Calling out to everybody. Shaking everybody`s hand's and buying people drinks. There were some regulars who would make sure they were there for Tony's arrival just to siphon off a couple of the free shots of whiskey but they would always make sure to leave after Tony would hammer down about 6 or 7. This is when the act would start to take hold. Tony would get quieter and start to shy away from the people at the bar and grab a seat. Always somewhere near Lefty. Lefty didn't usually mind. He was to hard and didn't care for fools like Tony, until that night.
"He does this every god damned night." Lefty spoke up.
"Yeah so what! The timing just wasn't right Lefty. I'm going to do it and nobody's going to stop me."
"Nobody is going to stop you because nobody gives a GOD DAMN! Asshole." Lefty's temper had drained from his alcohol withered body, finally. You could almost see his pale face turn a subtle shade of beige.
"Alright. Alright." said Jake trying to keep as much peace between the two as he could.
"Buy me a round and I'll show ya Lefty. Well... How bout' it?"
    In all his years Lefty had never seen a man die. He was asked to go to war when he was just a teenager but got out of it due to a serious case of asthma. It was about a year or so after that he started drinking, and with the drinking came the smoking only further worsening his condition. He woke up some mornings coughing up handfuls of deep purple blood before his beer and toast with peanut butter. Lefty didn't give a shit. He knew he was going to die. He just hadn't the slightest idea of when it would happen. He thought of Tony's request as not so much of a cry for help but as a gift of insight he could give.

"You're on hot shot. Get him a scotch and water..." Lefty demanded.
"Now Lefty are you so sure that this is a good idea?" Jake asked.
"Hell! He's not going to do the damn thing. The man's just trying to sucker me into buying him a free round. I'm just pissin' my money away on this deal." Lefty said to Jake reassuringly.

        So the three of them had a round of scotch and water's wondering what exactly Tony had up his sleeve to get out of this one. There was a younger couple at the end of the bar drunk and blissful, kissing each other and staring deep into their partners eyes. There were two or three other fellow's that had popped in the occasional time for a few drinks sitting at a booth in the quite bar as well. Lefty, Jake and Tony finished their drinks.
"Everybody! Follow me." Tony yelled out to the whole bar.
"This should be rich." Jake proclaimed.

They all put on their coats and walked out into the cold winter air. It had been snowing for a few weeks now and everyone was just settling in to their new winter skin. They trudged through the snow, up three or four blocks to where the overpass just above the highway was.
"Come on man! Lets go back inside. I'm freezing my balls off!" Jake yelled to Tony who was just up ahead of the group.
Lefty was first in line about ten feet behind Tony. They got to the overpass. Without saying a word or a final goodbye of any kind Tony threw himself over the railing. His body fluttered through the air, weightless and at ease. It was at that moment that Lefty felt time stand still. He thought Tony looked like an angel, or a mystical bird just flying through the snowflakes in the winter cold before the aggressive... Thud.
    Lefty had never seen a man die before that day. He thought about the war he could have been sent to and all of the years he had spent coughing blood out of his lungs. He even thought about all of those women he cared so little about and that shitty littered apartment he used to never want to go home to. They all stood there at the top of the overpass with their cigarette's and their beer in silence looking down at what was left of Tony's body on the pavement below. Jake, Lefty, the drunk men from the booth, and the happy couple from the end of the bar. They all stood there in silence and the only thing that passed through Lefty's brain in the strange silence was that suspended moment in time. The fool of a man that he could not stand had now become something else, at least in his eyes. He saw something real, something that even beauty itself probably could not feel. He saw an angel that night and it was worth every penny of the drink he had to buy.

Blurricane Sandy

Everyone is still babbling on about Hurricane Sandy. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the hurricane wasn't
a terrible 'fuck you' from mother nature but what I AM saying is
that most of you are full of shit. Shit up to your God damn eyeballs. Complete
with a shit grin and you also have a shitty way about you. You do not live in Brooklyn, you do not
live in Washington, Maine, or Jersey Shore. You people just like to hear yourselves talk. You are emotionally effected by
what does not effect you. You have an insatiable need to show people you care by posting Facebook status', by Tweeting and twatting,
and by heralding terms like "Lest we Forget." It is not kindness. You have a deep seeded need for subjective validation
and you are sick. If you do live in those places however, well... Hats off to you
for hanging in there, I guess. The shit, the destruction, the real death is still where it has always been... In our
street's, shopping mall's, bar's, and living room's. I've seen it sleeping next to me and I have shared drinks with it
on numerous occasions. Sometimes it looks like a hurricane. Sometimes it looks like
the face of a newborn baby. A good percentage of the time it looks exactly how you imagined it would. Trashed, broken,
poor, and lost. So... Let me offend you. Just don't worry about it too much. You'll get over it in a day or two just
as you will get over Hurricane Sandy in two months, just as you got over Hurricane Irene, the earthquake in Haiti,
that broken levee in New Orleans, Vietnam, WWI, Occupy, George Bush, Pepsi Blue, and your freedom.
Hurricane Sandy to us, here in Ontario, was nothing more then a sad one night stand. She came at us hard late at night
and when we woke up in empty bed's with empty wallet's in the morning, we were left with no phone number and a mediocre hangover. Oh.. And maybe a tipped over garbage can. But seriously, I'm sure I've had more miserable evenings sitting up
in my bedroom at night, alone. Staring out of the window at all of that boredom and traffic outside, salivating over
the idea of some flood or chaos tossing everyone into a primitive frenzy just to see a little colour in the morning.
If you care so much
then stop
talking to me about it. Grab a big white plastic bucket swim on over to New York City and bilge out those now
flooded subway tunnels. You do not care. You care enough to talk about it and that is as far as you are willing to push it
and talking these days means as much as a hard kick to the balls.
Pain, Puke or Recovery.