Got a message from a friend today
About something i cant say
But it feels good to know right now
That we all feel this way

resist the urge to be yourself
destroy it all
push it deep, deep down
bend it out of shape
wake up and realize you don’t know how anything works anymore.


you are not yourself even if you try
give in.
stop speaking, thinking,
stop wanting to be understood
after a while you learn that everything stops.


you cannot be yourself
in the paranoid schizophrenic ward
locked in with the kooks
but there is nothing for you out there
and this is not an exit.

I am a ghost 
Passing through history
Traveling time silently —  
Here in this old city
Is clarity, reality
And sanity
Treading traditions of centuries
On the red brick road stretched before me
My thoughts suddenly dissolve to a slow-motion Past
Nights streaked with sweat and sleeplessness
Where I danced at the center of a cold universe
In a smoky futuristic place
Drinking it up from a hip flask
Blowing it up my numb face
Spinning like a star out in space
It was the best it ever was
Till I couldn’t stand it anymore
It was the worst it ever was
And yet still creep in thoughts of more
Like a recovering addict 
I feel the Past itch
The residue of its memory still in my veins
Seducing me to be let out again 
Like when I used to confuse being free
With a life that was killing me
But every day I recover more 
Regaining as much ground as lost the day before
Excavating myself from the wreckage of the Past
I am here now
No high was ever meant to last

i put the top down, step on the gas
cruise the apocalypse, and think about the past
i drive like a maniac trying to outpace
everything in the rear view shattering piece by piece
and the years are like exits ticking away
a decade of decadence and decay

all along i have kept moving perpetually west
now i struggle to hold on to the sunset
the end of the world is just up ahead
but i’ve already been where angels fear to tread
so what’s really the difference if i jump off the track
and just turn back around when the east calls me back

in the end it was always going to come to this:
everything i do and do not miss
just as i’d finally learned to let go
that which i couldn’t hold on to
that which i’d learned to love finally
i would never be able to take with me

a crystal skyline of sky-blue glass
cloud flecks reflected
in panels of pastel on steel
sterile and beautiful
all rounded, space-age edges
and zooming spaceships
and elevated footbridges
on a pristine landscape
an immaculate vision
beneath cameras
growing like fungi
on skyscrapers
you expect aeon flux to scale down the side at any moment
the enterprise to land
boldly going where no one has come back from before
a futuristic fiction
inside a terraformed bubble
in an otherwise desolate desert
there is a sense of there being nothing else
for miles around
and there isn’t
the avenues, wide, uncrossable,
named after stars and constellations
are empty and perfect
so gorgeous and grotesque
you could have an orgasm
or vomit
anachronisms of flesh
in this century city

aerialists and hypocrites
circus freaks with silicone lips
vanity addicts
looking to fix
all come here
to disappear

damaged children unloved too much
by an uncle’s magic touch,
a parent with a narcotic crutch
some repressive midwest church
they all come here
to disappear

misfits hoping to find a place
create a history-less race
each one, perpetually replaced
by every other pretty face
from across the 50 states —
they vanish here without a trace

here the whore of babylon
has her party makeup on,
as she wraps her mouth around your hardon
and you know now it won’t be long
till you come here
and disappear

here the devil’s never far
as you run in heels from bar to bar
on cahuenga or sunset or ivar
he’s stalking you in his german car
with room left for just one more
baby, he calls, come here
and like the rest, you disappear

back in our days of infatuation
with youth’s meaningless revelations
we’d all boarded together in celebration

but now soulless gluttonous sensation
and all manner of other forms of obliviation
became a train of hedonistic desperation

hurtling towards dead expectations
like your futile denial of deterioration
by the means of its exacerbation

a tolerance for senseless inebriation
a dubiously celebrated reputation
an artificial facade of rejuvenation

a million photos fit for publication
couldn’t photoshop the truth from your situation
couldn’t remove the date of expiration

so pray to the mirror for salvation
from your skin’s wrinkling reflection
and beauty’s final devaluation

up ahead i’ve seen the destination
and much as it might appeal to me, this temptation,
i must respectfully decline your invitation

i get off the train before it reaches the station.

Amid the bustle, there’s a calming reassurance here
A sense of stability in walking streets people have walked for four hundred years
Not far from where Paul Revere’s house stands, history is as much for granted
As the West’s desire to forget it.
In the LA desert, the past is a stretch of sand dunes, shifting and dissolving in the winds of time.
But here the past has structure, holding up the present like a red brick spine.

it’s hard to feel sorry for the free
beholden to no responsibility
save to fight for our right to party,
pampered with too much opportunity,
each bite of our luxury
increasing our morbid obesity.
we are the prisoners of liberty.

but it’s hard to pity our decay:
spoiled choices rotting away.
it’s a decomposing array
we compose our lives from day to day

and it’s hard to not laugh when we bemoan
how we feel so all alone
and elsewhere there’s famine and war-zones,
but we’ve got condoms and iphones,
so it’s no one’s fault but our own
that loneliness is a concession
for never not having to be tied down,
for never having to be dethroned.
oh, so light lies our crown.

i don’t remember what it was i said
when we were both lying naked in bed
but i do remember when he replied,
a little dream inside me died.
“you’re not understanding me,”
and i thought even then how it would be
pointless to ask him to explain
since we’d never see each other again
and i suppose he also knew
because he did not continue.

it’s quite a sophisticated place
now we’ve got satellites in outer space
to help us communicate, supposedly
but he was lying right next to me
and i thought, we’ve cured the black plague and polio
yet our fancy new problems didn’t exist years ago.
now we live lives with less destiny
than any past lives imagined theirs to be
we are a collection of dead ends
we are greater masters of pretend
than ancient civilizations who worshiped the sun,
we’ve deluded ourselves consciously; for fun.

these old minds trapped in new circumstances
we’re making missteps in these dances
as we watch our reality flickr on machines
(just who’s being protected by those “screens”?)
and it always seems more exceptional than it is
when you’re watching someone else’s.
i keep wanting to steal from my memory
of whom i’d imagined him to be—
like some mythical creature you could catch and eat,
and through you its spirit would repeat—
these attributes i long to possess
this mysteriously undaunted curiousness.
this unattainable zen detachment
of a man without doubt that his life’s been well spent
but no matter how many frogs you kiss,
you don’t get a transfusion from no prince.

but keep kissing them anyway,
half to keep hopelessness at bay
and the other half’s that dream that maybe still
some secret night, in a swank hotel
where gentle beach breezes caress your nape
and there’s nothing so bad about an escape,
whatever you were hoping you could steal
whatever you were hoping you could feel
might, even for a moment, have been real.

it’s not a justified distraction
when all you get from the interaction
is the aftertaste of dissatisfaction

there’s a test in everything
that never quite lived up to being
what you thought it coulda been

and this is not gonna be
enough to make me
fail at opportunity

even a dream can become
something to get over with and done
something shockingly burdensome

and in the end to pass this test
what it takes is the stubbornness
just to remain curious

these past two weeks i escaped death twice
danced in a desert paradise
got on 2 coast-to-coast flights
and lived someone else’s life for one night.

these past two weeks i heard prince sing
slept in a hotel bed fit for a king
slept in a tent, camping
slept in the bed i grew up sleeping in.

these past two weeks i got on a train
to spend one day in
what could be my future
then accepted an invitation from the past to disappear
into the ether
packed and repacked for a place neither
there nor here
then two weeks later
returned home, to get my now in order.

between SAYING you want something different, and actually proving it is in what you do when you get the chance.

it’s hard to break out of my own bubble
when im having trouble
finding
the way out of this cushy lining
and it’s easier to curse the devil you do know
when you don’t know anywhere else to go
i’m a POW
with a penthouse view
and yet the prison
is a lack of vision
cuz if i could just see
where i’m supposed to be
i’d take the elevator down
drive the fuck outta town
sing a lou reed song on my way
be reborn the next day
and become whoever it is
that i’m not when i’m this.

you can’t run away
if no one’s forcing you to stay
but you.