It’s not so easy anymore, a few beers won’t topple me. Twelve hours will mend me. I am boxing a balloon, humping a leg—

Pretend like your hell is the new normal. Now the space is calm, and poignant, and telling.

Nine times out of ten, it’s a demon you’re seeing, not an angel. They have all kinds of disguises, I know-I know,

Nothing is all I ever wanted, now I’ve got it all! Careful! Lest I become a braggart… From nowhere it’s a hard fall.

Every time I leave my parents’ ho… I am filled with a sweet sorrow. It has taken me half a lifetime to… and now I love them so dearly, so… They nor I are getting younger

The choir of the saints is heartle… They’ve parried happiness a lifeti… seeking only the old earth, the marsh of the meek— where earnest suffering

That one more, chasing the dragon, carrot dangling,

I saw him on the side of the road, on the side of the interstate exit… Maybe he was 18, definitely not 21… tired but not yet haggard. The moment I saw him

Trees poke from the earth like the mummified hands of the martyrs. Buried alive, they strained with last breath

Finally alone, I lie with a volum… I venture again to hear the injunc… normally I savor their sensitivity… but tonight all I can think about

This day, there is no ONE to beat your fist… No party, no tyrant, not even a faction—

III Too late to call vagrancy a fad, an experiment. I am too old and still at it. But it isn’t like I am separate

Ten days secluded now, improper and unshaven inside a black and gold hole, dope den of sultry sound and opiate mood.

The only thing you can prove is how crazy you are. It’s the best defense. Where was I going with this? I don’t know.

Hell came through on battered wings, and thought to ask just one last thing. That If I could,