tribulations

it is pressing

down

it's all i can do to stop myself from being crushed

air is esc ap i n g

my lungs are burning

i inhale aliens

coughing i try to find

what i am looking for

to bring me back to what i knew

but i know not what that was

i know what i want

ed

not

this

where can it be

why must it be

so

the weight is the world

insomnia

self-inflicted insomnia

is what i suffer from

in bed

with the lights on

at two in the morning

heavy eyelids

and a screaming head

for the pillow

but i can't

i lie awake listening to the nothings

or live vicariously through worn out pages

and broken spines

i spent last night with dragons,

but tonight i'm seeing the stars

disillusionment

every day is the same

but also it is different

i try to concentrate but something always catches my eye

i pick pick pick at everything and nothing at the same time

i run through hallways 

and can't remember if i'm chased or chasing

happy fortieth woodstock

here's some of the great arlo as celebration.

where has all the music gone?

tales

a few weeks ago i was sitting outside with my grandmother

it was nighttime and we were watching fireflies because our area doesn't have them

she pointed out the moon and said that there was a story they used to tell when she was a little girl in Iran,

about how the moon got all the craters on its surface:

"we used to say that when the moon was a little boy his mother was baking - while she was kneading the dough she turned to the moon and patted his face, getting flour all over him. that's why the moon looks like he has spots."

ode to allen

your generation has grown and abandoned the Red

it appears to be a disease that comes with age

accompanying the degeneration of body and mind

the degeneration of soul

and so we of today sit trembling

with our own bottles of whiskey and

clutching the old poems

a palimpsest of jazz whether consciously or not

we await the old enemy

Time

that robs us of our ideals and hope that

this time we have It right

our Shakespeare has grown to be plain

his metaphors are trite

but he is still revered

the message has not changed

so we shout it from the rooftops to the stars

and your Eternity

our Denvers much less exciting but enthralling in their own right

we have all grown mad but that is to be expected

and so our streets are full of the crazy

run by the insane

as our madhouses sing to the Gods of sanity

and genius has been subdued by a red stamp

and shackles

blindly we trip through alleyways searching for the Love that will save us

while Buddha sings his Ohms 

and you watch from your paradise and smile

because we are still hysterical

and have not yet found our clothes.

measures and bars

i lay beneath the stars as i was carried away through the city. on my back i watched the moon turn the grass blue and wondered if this was how it was so named. i watched the birds flutter past and sit on electric wires. old men and women stood by picking fruit from the trees, their skin was stained from the earth and was turned to a leather. on their heads they wore sombreros although though there was no sun. they straightened up to get a better look at the odd twosome that was riding by. the heat was moist and made my shirt stick to my back but i didn't mind because your music was all i felt. you used the machine to quench our thirst and satisfy our hungry minds. the soft chords and your low voice cooled my skin and brought me to a world far away. you played until the sun turned the horizon red and i was carried to sleep on your measures and bars.

just

be

aches and pains

i've been taking tylenol like water. it is because my head hurts. also, my heart hurts and my bones hurt and my soul aches. it aches because it wants something i'm unsure how to supply. but you can't cure an aching soul with two tylenol, so instead i feed it cheap liquor and hope for the best.

scream unconsciousness

we approach each other down the hallway, glossy, distanced & separated & idly i wonder how many bottles of conditioner he uses in one sitting/ standing/ i avert my eyes but keep watching & so does he & we look without looking & he mumbles & i smile because that's what madmen do & i find that comforting like fresh sheets on a summer night when the moon casts blue through your blinds & you feel like you're standing under a misty streetlamp with "Midnight" playing on the wind & dew forming on your hair & down the rabbit hole you go/ as we near we turn our heads back like two magnets pushed together by Left & Right & i wink & he asks what's wrong & i say there's something in my eye & we continue on our way

my treehouse

i've built a treehouse at the top of the tallest tree, it's where i go to listen to my records of Ginsberg, Kerouac & Eliot, or read the works of Dylan, Lennon, and Cohen. sometimes i write you letters but i never intend to send them because i know you can't read. when night falls i lean out of my window and run my hand against the craters of the moon, if i'm lucky i'll find some stardust; i've been collecting it in a jar for you. this is where i hide on those days that you can't find me. please don't be mad, it's just that sometimes you exhaust me, and for that, i've built a treehouse in the sky.

leftover casserole

i am winded every-time somebody says your name
even if it isn't in relation to you
the letters hover around my head like animated stars.
people ask me if i'm alright
and i say yes, because i am
it only really hurts when people say my name,
because then i remember how it sounded
on your lips.

were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America

"i woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when i didn't know who i was — i was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and i looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who i was for about fifteen strange seconds."



i would like to meet somebody who will join me on a road-trip to which On The Road is the map.