i like informality

beer straight outta the bottle
pizza for breakfast
wearing a shirt 3 times
before washing it

doing dishes by hand
reading old birthday cards  
stayin up til 2
even though i have to be up at 8

bonfires
backroads
gettin lost on the way to a bonfire
because i took a backroad

going to a bar
on a tuesday night
and kissing a stranger
just because i'm drunk

and lonely
and through the years i've aquired a taste
for whiskey on lips.
And besides, isn't that

the only reason we're here anyway?

A mother whispers into the fire of Night
I hold a match
I hold Yarn
I Am Wool
Shrinking to the formation
The intricate designs of your rib cage
of your brother's belly
of your Grandfather's waist
Am I simply a fool?
And Who
Doth I ask This question too?
A Torn book
A tattered sonnet of Man's sore feet
blistered eyes that are Green
That are Brown
That are Blue
I Lay with myself Tonight
I am Awake
I am Loud
In your Night
I Am the Janitor beneath the hardwood floors
of your Dream
I am the
Poorly Waged Electrician
With Shoes that resemble an old dog
I Light Your Highway
Your Street
Your Morning coffee
your
cigarette
Am I The Child?
I fall in love with women I see on the streets
Their Wavy hair
like a French sea
Her pale complexion
the Brown Glimmer in her eyes
And I paint on her on Tombstones
On Coffee Mugs and on carpets rolled up for the Dumpster
At Nights
I prefer to dream awake
and sit with a BathTub of words
of stories that melt like cheese
that stiffen like Ginsberg ****
that Shriek and Strum like Tom Waits stomach when he starves on backroad streets
And when I cannot
reproduce
I make love to a woman
And a poem is made
and I kiss her
and my lips say 5 am
and I wish her not to go
But the Dog
is waken by Robins
by the Pigeons
by the digestion of night to day
by the Greek Gods and Goddess' Light
That Falls down
like long hair of woman you have so longed for
and you kiss her chest
And there is no Death
There is no Sleep
or ****** addicts or gasoline or paved roads or shaved faces or mothers or Dostoevsky or Beethoven
There is just her
and you run your fingers across her skin
through her hair
She is the bottom of the Ocean
You are a homeless crab
a Shellless Clam
falling down
down
down
to the bed of the great ocean
and there she lays
With a reflection of Youth and Beauty
And her complex simplicity makes me think of
me as a boy
running behind brick collapsed business buildings
Kissing a girl behind church
Buying Icecream with Josh in Winter

That's what a woman does
She erases Death
from the palms of your hands
and your thoughts
and you sink
to the bottom
and you watch the Coral
The other fish
swimming along
and you laugh
Because you do not know Death
And Death does not know you.

The party was great but afterwards is but a hangover headed south.
A wrong turn  a strange bed even I dont get the words slurred from this drunks mouth.
To young and just right.
Today we break the ruloe's and bask in rewards of this awkward fight.

Im a character in a paint drying scene.
I'll tickle more than a fancy if ya know what i mean.
Hey I think she's loose hell so am I.
Tagged the town ***** and me just another demented slightly insane guy.

My hearts a backroad ruff to the ride.
Hey i said Id return hell why does everyone run and hide?
Sure i say forever but how bout tonight.
My love a airport and this plane needs to take flight.

Are you okay you seem a little off my dear?
It's okay its seems i have that effect on everyone here.
T is fr TEXAS  and P for Portland ya perves.
He doesnt crash but often swerves.

My love life is like Christmas its overpriced and over to fast.
Course when your paying by the hour guess its okay for the party not to last.

Im cheap as a motel and more messed up than the carpet inside.
I'd make even the devil blush if ***** deeds in him i should ever confide.
My love's like a backroad so they say.
A great place to dump the body  but honestly who the **** would ever wanna stay.

The ink they drew on our arms faded with each day.
They told us it would last forever, but they knew nothing.
We had said forever, but we, too knew nothing.
We thought we could do it,
We knew it would be hard, but we were committed, willing to fight.
Until the fights lasted for days,
Until we grew tired and hungry,
Until, instead of battling together, we battled against one another.
And then with each passing second,
With each look of desperation,
With each sigh,
We grew apart.
We were slowly dividing.
The miles that separated us were nothing compared to the silences.
We blamed everything on that,
We said that the distance that separated us was merely physical, but it was emotional too.
So 2 years ago we gave up and called it quits,
But you called me the other day
To be honest, I hadn’t thought of you for a while
And when your face light up the screen on my phone
It darkened my day
I had forgotten about you
Not accidentally, but through lots and lots of sleepless nights
But you called,
And I remembered
It all flooded back and I hand’t been prepared
So I sank back into our past
Our history
Whatever it was that we were
And this poem doesn’t really make much sense,
But neither did what we had
We would talk, hang out, hold hands
Then we wouldn’t speak
You would call, we would drink coffee, longboard, and as if we were truly flying,
They days swept passed us uncounted.
Then you wouldn’t look at me during school
And you wouldn’t ever actually date me
And you wouldn’t make it facebook official
And everyone knows that if you’re not FBO, then it’s not real
Or at least thats how it was in high school.
So I left, I moved away, I forgot
Then you would call again and we would talk and laugh and even cry.
Remember that time you told me you loved me?
I forgot about that too, until you called the other day
You said you loved me and my world fell shattered
You dropped a bomb on my complacent life
And the buildings and routines crumbled
And like that Glen Hansard song,
We were falling slowly
And in a hopeful voice, we had said that we still had time,
But I was a thousand miles away
And you had a girlfriend
And time had run out
What we had in high school, whatever the hell it was,
Wasn’t going to work this time.
So we stopped talking
And those letters that I wrote to you freshman year are scattered along some backroad highway in Kentucky
And yeah I know you’re not supposed to litter, but I had to get rid of you somehow
I had to wash your smell off my skin
To erase the words we had spoken
So fine me!
Because this has already cost me everything
Remember those nights when we would lay on deck and look at the stars
It sounds so cliche now,
But those were the nights when nothing else mattered
When the world was just you and me
Remember when we said we would move to Colorado
We would buy a cabin in the woods
I would write books and you would read every last word of them
You’d teach me how to snowboard
And I’d fall, but you’d pick me up like you always did.
And we’d go home and eat chicken noodle soup
And you would hold me until we were no longer frozen
But thats all just a memory of something that should have happened
A frozen dream that will never thaw out
Why in the world did you call me?
The scars had finally healed, but you had to go and reopen them
You took a scalpel to my heart
And I don’t know when I’ll ever stop bleeding.  
I read once that we will never forget our first love
And I don’t even know if you can call what we had love
I don’t know if you can technically love someone that you never even dated
But I’m throwing all technicalities out the window.  
You were the first
and the only boy that I have ever wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
I wanted to travel the world with you
To be so lost in each other that the maps would never be able to tell us the way home
Because just like that other song,
you would be my home
Because Home is wherever I’m with you
But now your just a memory
A healing wound that sometimes breaks open
One I look at now and believe will never heal.
But eventually, over time, if you ever stop calling me, it will.
And sometimes I’ll look at the scar and remember you, but I’ll feel nothing more.
So as hard as this is for me to say,
And as much as I wanted it to work out
Please, please don’t ever call me again.

Mine is a generation of taboo.
We are tribal tattoos and cheap motel room honeymoons.
We are slander,
and slang,
and brittle teeth.
We are born-agains and suicides.
We are podium preachers and cracked-pavement prayers.
We are melted plastic and oxidized metal-
sometimes we gleam with the Liberty Green of corroded copper,
sometimes we crumble with rust and stain calloused hands.
We are the last stand of Art.
We are the manifestations of forbidden bloodlines
and insanity.
We are just as much our mothers
as we are our fathers,
and we are everything that they are not.

We are stigmata.
We are red paint on white canvas.
We are fast food coffee.

We were born to the sweet smell of formaldehyde
in rooms dressed in florescent white
that share plumbing with the morgues
beneath the linoleum floors.
We are the mix of ***** and innocence that lingers
in the kiss of a dimly lit basement.
We show and we tell but always only for the right price,
the wrong reasons,
or the promise of an exchange equaling to the feeling that
this is a mistake.
We are rosary beads counted between gnarled knuckles
and dragged across smooth palms that long
to sweep tear salt from flushed cheeks.

We are Heaven's lonely singles.

We are skin stretched out too thin over skeletons.
We are the complexities that machines can't calculate
much less imitate.
We are the futile cries that once tried to keep towers from falling
when the sky came crashing down.
We are the pardoned and the withered.
We are the hardened faces of those that have
worked too long
and been loved too little.
We have been told that the safest place for your soul
is in the hole of your chest,
but only if it's reinforced by
four inches of concrete and steel,
and strapped tight with a Kevlar vest,
because they said people,
at best,
are manslaughter.

But we have never been great listeners either;
when we were growing up
we pressed our hands to hot stoves
even though our mothers said not to,
because we couldn't just be told what it was to burn
we had to feel it for ourselves.
So every now and then we will crack open
our rib cages in the hopes that someone will come,
light a fire,
and decide to stay.

We hopelessly spray paint things like wings
On deserted brick buildings
So that, at the very lest, we can feed the
Hollow-eyed passerby the belief
That these streets still have guardians,
Even when we, ourselves,
Abandoned such ideologies in
backroad dumpsters
along with our deities’ infidelities.
  
We are the period at the end of the sentence.
(Or maybe we are the ellipses...)
We have redefined the American family
and proven that even Christianity knows how to hate.
We were raised by sixty-percent divorce rates,
yet we still believe that we are soul mates.
We are the jokers of the deck:
either smiling fools or wild cards.
We are cocked heads with smoke billowing from throats
coated with blisters and cough syrup.
We are back alley scavengers crawling on all fours.
We are the era of the Auto-Tuned voice,
proof that with a pretty enough face anyone can sing.
We are foggy mirrors with smiles drawn on them
by print-less fingertips.
We slip up the thighs of our lovers
and swirl down the drains of sinks with chipped paint.

We are the hearts in your hands-
Crush us into powder and brush us across your face like Indian war paint,
Give us up to the sky so that we can be revived by lightning,
Dance to the rhythm that we beat,
Squeeze us and watch as we seep through the cracks of your fist,
Conceal us in your pocket and only ever speak to us in a whisper,
Or,
with all your natural voice,
sing to us
songs about thunderstorms
to wet the dusty desert dirt around our rooted toes
in the hopes that we will blossom in the most vivid colors.

Just do something with us.

Don't sacrifice us to the tops of lost bookshelves
to collect dust
or rust in the rain with everything you once loved
but grew too old for.

Hunting dove down on the backroad
way on back only the rancher knows
he doesn’t care so we wait for flight
12 gauges ready to start our plight

Ring necks, white wings, and mourning’s are game
chichi birds make us swing all the same
listening for the whistle and the beat of the wing
one of us today, will win the brass ring

Limiting out is what we’re hoping for
but if not, you couldn’t hope for more
outside with friends and family alike
kids getting bored, gone on a hike

Men at the truck with cold Coors Light
relaxing outdoors, no one’s uptight
suns getting low, they are about to fly
here they come, hear the wings sigh

Draw a bead and a lead and fire away
one bird down, hope there’s more we pray
birds on the tailgate at the end of fight
get em’ all clean before the black of the night.

maybe you were right: i never brought
home flowers or chocolate
cleverly arranged in the
shape of a heart and
i couldn't afford a day at the spa
but i'd always sit with my bare ***
on the cold bathroom tile for hours and
feed you toasted bits of cheese on ritz crackers
while you cried in the bathtub i'd
braid your hair as you
let your fingers wrinkle until
the water cooled off too much your
******* got hard and bubbles
stuck to the cut of your shoulders

because you were there when
my mom's little car died on a backroad
under the old black tree
that scratched up the sky
you pulled your pants up
over ruby knees and asked
me to fix your bra
smoked a cigarette lying upside down
across my damp chest
facing my feet and
made me make a promise
while i traced music notes into
the soft flesh of your back with
my ***** fingernails and found
the cracks in your porcelain ankles
with my tongue

you said my love for you is
something that will never make sense
and you never know what to do
with your hands when i'm kissing you
but you moaned the chorus while
i sang verses into your bellybutton
and tied a couple fingers to the
soft web of hair behind your ears
we were like two locusts
fighting in a gossamer heap

two weeks later you were dancing
in my kitchen like a daffodil drunk
on robotussin wearing only striped
peppermint legwarmers and
authentic dreamcatcher earrings
so i bought a theremin from
your favorite pawn shop
and taught you how to tickle it
and as the wind picked up
whipped your hair into a
crucial comet's tail and rustled
the caterpillar from the windowpane
back to it's home in the wormy grass
i could hear the warm whistle
it made when you played with it
alone in the bedroom

i am crying now while
driving down highway one
recalling how your nose crinkled
when you smoked crushed roaches
or the way your hair tasted in the morning
and how you used to spit a
little bit when you laughed
and i can still hear that haunted echo
even as the saltwater swells
and splashes past the rocks

that sun machine is just
a distant memory now
but it left burn marks on my skin
and the floor where we tumbled
and fought the first time
i called you beautiful

i've been waking up to desaturation all my life.
i don't know why but i've been
rolling over in the same grey-skinned body,
opening shoddy eyes, heart heavy
as a hangover. i climb into your chevy with
it in my hands. i know this is the fifth time i've lit
a cigarette since i quit, but my lungs needed the ash.
did you know, in a car crash, just one person
not wearing a seatbelt would worsen the casualties?
so if you see the casual ease with which i bare my chest,
know that the carnage of my reckless form,
hail in a storm of steel and violence, at least felt sorry.
the starry dark of a backroad, an explosion of light,
a bright metal supernova and colors even my eyes can't doubt;
we'll all find out exactly how heavy my guilt
is when the body sorrow built ascends through the windshield.

Some in my family say
Uncle Sam was my salvation
when I was a young man
hell, maybe so, I don’t know
but he kept me out of jail
and paid for my education
which is how I found myself
in West Memphis, Arkansas
surveying Indian mounds
that some fool professors thought
were put there by the Choctaw
but I knew they’d got it wrong
all along, it was the Mississippians
which makes perfect sense if you think
on it considering where they put ‘em
but I digress, I must confess it
was my fondness for backroad bars
and blues guitars carved from wood
of crosses burnt by drunks in hoods
and strings plucked by calloused fingers
of old men with shoulders slumped
like sagging barns and Ford pickups
you find out in them parts, singing
songs about long gone women, all
kinds of aching age old pains lingering
enough to make a man’s heart rain
until the US Army Corps of Engineers
blew the levy’s to send those tears
out across cotton fields and mounds
I know the Choctaw didn’t build.

Gravel, dirt or old blacktops
cruising around, not many stops
through a pasture or tunnel of trees
backroad therapy sets your soul free

Driving around, might even get stuck
No high dollar cooler in back of my truck
Just an old igloo, full of beer on ice
Drink them to fast for that yeti price

Backroads and beer
Nobody else here
No cops around
Jamming country sounds

Just me, my lady, my old red heeler
Flip channels, check score, cowboys and Steelers
Blanket and a picnic behind the seat
Pull over in the shade for an afternoon treat

Might stop at the creek for a skinny dip
Squeeze her tight and kiss her lips
Chasing each other and splashing water
Keeping cool as the evening gets hotter

Backroads and beer
Nobody else here
No cops around
Jamming country sounds

Mountains blue, pop the top
This is so fun may never stop
Out in the country is the place to be
No suit, no tie, completely free

Ol red starts barking, sees a rabbit
Pull over, he jumps out to grab it
The chase is on, we watch and see
Reds tongue is flapping but rabbit ran free

Backroads and beer
Nobody else here
No cops around
Jamming country sounds

Apple pie and hunting ducks
rusty, worn out pick up trucks
tales of being out of luck
The story's in the song

Broken hearts and drinking beer
Friday nights, the weekend's here
Strong enough to shed a tear
The story's in the song

The story's in the song my friends
The story's in the song
If you can not hear the tale
I've told the story wrong
The story's in the song my friends
The story's in the song
Listen close and you will find
The story's in the song

Driving on a red dirt road
Carrying a heavy load
Living to a cowboy's code
The story's in the song

Backroad driving in the dark
Pick up games down at the park
Memories that leave a mark
The story's in the song

The story's in the song my friends
The story's in the song
If you can not hear the tale
I've told the story wrong
The story's in the song my friends
The story's in the song
Listen close and you will find
The story's in the song

the hard face
sunburned remnants of a man
allways loudspeaker for his intent
announces to the empty room
of his arrival
his field of landmines eyes
wander the crowd in the empty chairs
looking for the face
that will conquer or capitulate
looking for the ever present weak link

most days you can find her
in some park feeding ducks
some real some not so much
dont really make much difference these days
most days you find a smile in her heart
all of em real but not always so quick
most days nothing changes
but sometimes everythings gotta go
and she got no fear putting it on the line

he walked the carpet hall
with the framed pictures of three piece suits
and the victories they had over the outside the line desperado's
sunburnt remnants of a man
he walks with his shadow upright hand in hand
he walks in the darkness of the bright sun
looking for a face in the crowed emptyness
looking for someone that will conquer or capitulate
hes looking for her
but shes looking for you
cause she loves you
and the kitten you carry on your shoulder

most nights shes on the hood of her plymouth
drawing pictures in the dust of the road
sketching echoes out of the nights song
most nights shes driving a backroad with rockabilly
smoking her speakers
most nights you can find her in your arms
but not tonight
not this rainswept night

where we goin
why should this kind of thing happen
why take from someone never done you wrong
why do such things
is it any wonder you never see my face no more
is it any wonder im far away
most of the time

on scheduless days of stifling heat
when orderless ranks of canines beat
up the backroad and down the street
into the wood and onto the steep

a glorious arbor among thankless trees
"forever" says the whispering breeze
never mind the never-stop bees
the nimble squirrel is playing freeze

if ever there were a guest-
a sitting stone
but never a guest in this place
my place alone

drenched inside the thicket
a thousand thorny dreams
closing in on me
clamping down on me
altogether surrounding me

as home begins its beckoning
I reason it's a reckoning
I reckon there's a reason
for everything

skyward a fleeting glimpse
of a foregone future forlorn
shatters like a shadow
that a light shines upon

The devils in the bottle .
Well if that's so I've been searching forty years it feels and I haven't found that some of a ***** yet.

Probably herd bout my reputation.
Smoke pills coke and I don't mean cola .

I see the yuppies in the bar who admire crazy they buy me a.drink thinking we are friends.
The ***** hits you all the same so.guess its better on anothers  tab.

Real bars are dying being replaced by companies pretending to be bars instead of companies void of any soul.


If your favorite dive is some.yuppie infested family friendly overpriced resteraunt go **** yourself and have a nice day.

Give me  smokey dark local dives with.names like the Brown Derby ,The Thirsty Camel,The Shipwreck Inn,The Purple Onion and Monks .


Those places have character they have bloodshed there ***** dangerous on a good night and perfect.

Corperate America ***** .
Wallmarts on every corner killing the landscape putting the little man in the poor house everything's perfect least.that's what they have you believe

Never swallow ******* that the media feeds .
There's more truth told between old vets down at the legion between beer and smokes .

Its out there still.
Away from the polwish the yuppies so desire .
Where men still get there hands ***** get drunk sleep and repeat .

This is my world the rich stand upon the backs of the poor with there two faced logic ever so quick to preach.

I bleed the past and I love the small places and backroad gems that they would so quickly destroy and replace .

But what do i.know Im just a drunk .

Nothing worth a **** is safe .
Art,Drugs and *** .
All take passion not a timeshare or membership or mini van .

Computers are a drug that's blinded us to human contact breeding hate sitting on your *** talking **** behind a screen name.

Get into a real fight then tell me how great your Twitter war was.
The fools are many so don't add to there a mass of idiots and clubs are for lemmings .

Take a ride let the music and the wind embrace the void.
Breathe life into yourself before you approach that page .

If your real then take up a seat beside me.and I will buy you a drink.

Get off your *** and experience life before some.idiot in a suit destroys that flawed landscape that makes us unique flawed and beautiful in every sense.

See you at the bar .

the new moon really got me restless, i guess.. spinning out the ceiling like some headless daemoness, don’t wanna give my car a rest over that pothole on the backroad and baby, i’m not scared when you throw punches, give it another go. that bubbly went straight to my head, a place you can never find- wind it up now i’m ready to dance again, haven’t got pulled over yet so strap yourself in and grind that skin, you’ll never win.
i’m too good at this, you said it
your
self.

the backroad to
Florence, the one along Elm
that cuts past the McDermott
trailer park--

from matt's house past
Cedar and the old liquor store
at 50mph the cicadas sound more
like a cry or a lingering scream
the crickets don't stop for passing trucks
creaking to the metronome of a swishing
cow tail

farmers switch off their brights, come around
corners slow, in striped beat up Chevys, rusty
toolboxes weakly sliding from side to side
like their owners in threadbare leather seats
the young kids trail close, bumper
to bumper on a two-lane road, just me and
some kid named after his grampa, poppy,
Clint, who needs to get home before
mama chews him out--

sunday service still warm from this morning
where a single beetle clung to the wall and translated
my father's sermon, morse code for the elders, for the
elk and deer, he's been known to speak to hummin'birds
anyway, I think.

Let's say we just keep aiming straight
and lay more rubber on the backroad radius
of tarry black top Texas like two interstate
eight ***** rolling for free range
Take me to where the quail coo through
the straw with your wolf paw on my knee
Past the wooden western dispatch
poles and water tower stands
Past the tin roofed ranches through longhorn land
I wanna follow the fence row route to nowhere
up ahead and sleep under the stars
throw sticks into a vagabond fire till we're tired
of another country crock detour and wayside diner
Don't say no, let's just go

Written by Sara Fielder © July 2015

Your my highway girl,
I'm your backroad boy,
And you've become my joy

But when you see jet trails
your heart longs for rails
And steel and carriage wheels

And your mind takes wing
And your feet sing
For places they have never been

And I'm here hoping
That the trails on my arms
And the tales in my mind

Will be too much
To touch
And leave behind

So if you'll pack your bags
Put me in too
Cause home isn't home
Unless I'm home with you.

i've been wondering what it was like
to have words pour from your
fingertips like the cup of coffee he's
probably pouring for her right now

it always had a bitersweet taste to me

and so did he

the acrid taste was already enough
to make me falter

and when he came around she stuck
her foot in the door and her nose
up to me

no need for a going away
party

no need to bereave the death of
what could have been

i was already reading my eulogy
in tears at his mothers house

no cliche will ever get close to explaining
the sound of my feckless heart shattering

no one will ever know how much it
hurt to watch as she serpentined herself
into my place in his heart

so i grab my keys and drive

i end up on the side of a backroad
with my car turned off and a perfect
view of the days darkness creeping
in

i want to call him and scream at
the top of my lungs about how
he's trapped me in this
secret hell

but i know i've already lost
him anyways

so i get back in my car because
i and everyone else knows that
wishing on stars hasn't and
never will work out for me anyways

Driving down a backroad in desolate Apulia,
a black cloud of birds formed behind a hill--
It became two then one again in dynamic flight,
resolving into specks and finally,
graceful darts of life.
In the air: Swerving, splitting, rejoining.
Aware of each and all,
a synchronous response to a secret call.

A wave in motion, a flowing organism,
never repeating but ever the same.
We stopped and looked with wonder--
How do they do that? And why?

A lightning bolt: Is it a protest? Pesticides?

What would we do when
topsoil blows,
oceans rise,
food is scarce,
and wells run dry?
Probably nothing as organized- or beautiful.

Bottles of alcohol squat on the counter, and cigarette butts
like yellow dead June bugs on the floor.
Bottles of shimmering reasons to not care about a hangover,
to leave prom early and rejoice in your parent’s absence.
Glistening necks, elegant glass nubs with no cap
tipped up into mouths screaming proud and hoarse,
We are STUPID! And CONTAGIOUS!
our ***** voices breaking under the radio sound
to a loud song whose generation no longer cares.
But we do, dumb boys and girls in a truck, rolling around town
like Haylee’s bottle of Jack Daniels in the trunk—
aimless, optimistic, and looking for reasons, so
buy a pack at the Chevron and let’s go smoke!
That’s enough, after all, isn’t it?
Reason enough to crack the windows, find a Carlyss backroad,
waste away midnight and half a tank of gas.
Still, as I drive on, a 90s rock station stimulating rotation of the spliff,
that smell puts my mind out of guitar solos and into placid hallways,
Smells Like a night in my dad’s apartment,
the stubbly couch with the nicotine blanket,
the Marlboro tone in the air, concrete crumbs and a lighter’s grating chrrt.
Divorce sounds like alcohol—
a word that burns, something sterilizing and for adults only.
But I don’t care, it’s my turn on the spliff,
and the backseat of my truck sounds more Alive
than the old horror movie rentals he would put on.
And why should I worry about what sobriety means
when we’ve been planning this night for months now?
All stocked up on Bacardi and Smirnoff Ice, Captain Morgan’s, Svedka, Mike’s Hard,
Swisher Sweets wrapped up in the **** bag—
We shoot our ***, soldiers eager to start the war,
that war against a domestic unknown enemy,
an enemy dangerous and subversive, like sober-minded aspirations.
And while Zack rolls the blunt, while Jack finds his Camel pack,
while you ask for a hit of Haylee’s cigarette,
I fill a glass with water, my intention to hydrate
exactly as genuine as my intention to forget about it.

i have moments where i space out completely
like in the classroom
where my teacher is talking
where i'm driving my car
down an old backroad
when i'm reading a book
or watching a movie
it's like for a split second
i'm not even here at all

sometimes i get so lost in my own mind
i feel like
i'll never make it out.

Our love was like a car ride
I got in the passenger seat
Buckled up
And let you drive me crazy
I should have gotten out the second you ran a red light
But instead I turned the music up a little louder
Being with you was like going 90 miles per hour on a backroad
I knew it wouldn't end well but i didn't care until you were slamming on the brakes
But i guess i liked the way you drove through the interstate of my mind
or the way you tangled your body around mine like a winding road
Maybe i was too distracted by the way you sang along to the radio to notice the dead end ahead
I should have known we would run out of gas eventually

you might realize that
not everyone is bad
but that you are so
different--

and that is not at all
a selfish thing to say
nor is it arrogant,

you are not any
more special than
the next or
deserving of
better treatment

but there are
varying roads
and signs, as
the analogy goes
and you are
miles down
a thin backroad
a world away

from his.