Beasts all over the shop.

——————————

Filling the gaps and eating the slop.

——————————-

They fill their cups and empty me out.

—————————-

I’m the beast in your shop.

—————————

I’ll never be a human and stop

———-

Being an animal.

–

–

–

Still I think of that Dying Day.

When summer fell, and began to fade.

It felt like I had tore my heart on every

Black tree fist.

As I walked through that forest of time,

I passed through villages, nameless and old.

They wrote detailed books of my story in that cold

Place.

Those empty huts were filled with those

Maniacs that I left behind me on the road.

They crawl on hands and knees just to be beside me,

Just to remind me.

With sneering smiles and breath made vile

From those things I’d rather forget.

Still they slide past those rotten stumps

And try to jump

Back into my mind.

I don’t want those stranger ghosts anymore.

She was a dream inside my dream.

She walked along those membrane connections

And wrote down the pathways in her little book.

She mapped my psyche

And called me crazy,

But she never wanted to leave.

Handheld opinions and wireless

Articulations.

Blue-tinted eyes with

Media bias.

I’ll never understand looking down when the world is

Up.

Alphabetically speaking,

I am a Why Y.

I ask too many questions and get fewer answers

Than I’d like.

If I were a thesaurus,

I might look up other ways to say Me,

But I have a gut feeling

That I would only be

More confused.

It started how I wanted it to go.

It then left my hands and melted away like

Springtime snows.

My fingers thawed, and my grip relaxed

Like an old man’s memories lost to the

Past.

And so my fury of frustration began to grow,

And it never went faster than slow.

It boiled and broiled,

Covered in cracked, burnt flakes.

My plans were failures.

My dreams were lost to her,

The personified ghost of time I wasted.

Chuckles and glee from her were all I heard.

When I attempted to temp my emptying mind of the secrets I had once held.

May the weight from your shoulders rest gently in your bed.

May the wind pick you up when those rocks drag you down.

May your breath be more free than the birds of the sky.

May your feet rest softly on sands of memories you’ve made.

May your eyes never open on a less beautiful sunrise.

Lay your tools upon the ground,

And smile upon the crowd

Of all the ones that love you the most.

Uncle Bill

—————–

Jack Kerouac wrote me a song.

It was too rambling for me, though.

He sang out his heart and looked in my eyes

from the start,

And finished in due time.

His fingers bled,

He hung his head,

And let those drops drip off from his brow,

And down.

And as I write this,

His eyes come up.

He lifts his chin like a king lifts his

Cup,

With someone’s else’s hand.

Jack is a friend of mine.

What he lacks, I excuse with time.

———————

Summer sweat, sweet tobacco

Cigarettes.

I drank in the moments like single shots of

Whiskey hats.

I cooked up tacos filled with

Chicken bits

And looked into your eyes.

I fell into them,

Weighed down by emotional brick and mortar,

Dragged to the depths

of lake water and sea foam and cilantro.

So sweet.

So please,

Pull me back up with your words

and stories about the old days.

The cold way

That winter brought you down and spring

Resurrected.

The third day when my bricks became wicks and we lit them

Aflame with seconds and hours lost

To each other in this summer’s sweat of sweet tobacco

Cigarettes.