Let's Get Drunk

I need Beer
Lots and lots of beer
Insane quantities of the stuff
Let's get drunk
and play ping-pong on any table we can find.

Let's throw down
And throw up
And throw out
Our notions
Of sanity

Let's get drunk
And try to raise a god
Or bring one down
I'll let you choose which
They're all pretty much the same

Let's get drunk and
Make out on the back patio
Where the neighbors can see
Make em jealous
Make em wet

Let's get drunk and
Try to walk a line
Try to touch our nose
Try to not see double
Two of you would be just fine

Let's get drunk
Let's get naked
Let's howl at the moon
And if the police come
We'll howl at them too

Broken

Torn and tattered
the beat of
an irregular staccato
on calcium walls

In the time before time
In the perpetual then
I was the dream
The belief and the idea

Now I am the ghost
Of the phantom
Of the dream
And a price must be paid

The price for pain
For weeping
For sorrow's secret heart
In the dead of night

I am the past
And I haunt you
When you close your eyes
When you try not to think

But that's all that I am
Your specter
The spook that haunts
Your Scooby Doo nightmare

That's all that I am
And I can hurt you no more.

It's All Copper Wire and Soot

It's all copper wire
And soot
The machinery is broken
The cogs won't move and
All the panels are battered
and burned

There's human remains
Skeletons of friends
Memories
The ghosts of the past
A little boy smile and
Little girl hair

And there's no more
of interest
Besides a name on the wall
A name written with sorrow
in pain
Written in anger with hasty strokes

A name that has power
A name scribed in ash
A name that calls me
A name won and lost
and left to stand in the dark

But I can't pronounce it
I can't remember how
It's sound has been lost
burned up
like everything else

Only a skeleton
of it's meaning remains
And I'm trying to read it
But I'm lost
and so are you

In this burned out place

It's Raining Here

Slivered streaks of rain
Spattered on my window
Running away
With a week's worth of dirt

The road wavers
Ashphalt liquid
The air smells of honeysuckle vine
And overripe melon

This is Texas, Man
Redneck rainforest
Loud trucks and big guns
And all the best radio stations
are Latino

This is the Way My Mind Works

In a flash of light
A naked girl
Caresses her breast
With the edge of a sword

Dandelions devour the living
In a field
Of ebon grass
On the edge of town

An ochre sky
Rains yak teeth
On the straw cottage
Where the lizard man lives

The sequiened king
Rests on his throne
And watches it all
In a pool of whiskey magic.

White

Slips of paper
And hourglass sands

She didn't know
And I couldn't tell her
Because
I didn't
Know the words

She's out of the Green
And into the White.

mud and bone

Some days I'm made
Of mud and bone
Head hung low
On a chickenwire throne
And there's ash
And there's smoke
And I know I'm not alone
But some days

That's not how it feels

I am connected

I am connected
To you
To him
To all of you

The World

If I stop
Close my eyes
and wait
I can feel you all

It's spinning

What you're doing
Where you're going
I touch you
A thousand miles away

So fast.

Do you love me?

Do you love me?
The shape of my laugh
The spark in my eye
Do you listen for my voice
In a crowd?

Do you hear my name
And wonder where I am?
Standing in a line
Or watching infomercials
on television?

Do you dream of me
In the dead of night?
And if you do
Do you wake up
Screaming?

3AM in Chicago

Skull full of whiskey magic
The city shakes it's fists
And pulses in time
With the veins in my head.

Dead bird in the gutter
Worms crawl in its eye

The night is rusted
And tastes like ash and wet rubber
The hooker on the corner
Turns away when she sees

Neon puddles of green and red
Steam from the manholes
There's blood on my face
And I don't know why or whose
But I think
It may be
Yours.

You think you know

You think you know
But you don't

You think you see
But you don't

Inside it's all black
Blood red crimson
With splashes of chromium steel
And the twisting squeak of leather
And sometimes I think
sometimes I'm almost sure
sometimes I know
That I'm not quite
sane

And maybe you know about that
And maybe you see that
And maybe despite that
You love me.

You're reasons seem
Inscrutable
To me
Yet there it is, and there you are
Open
Patient
Waiting for the black to fade
So the warm blue-green of you
Can cover me whole.

(If I'll let it)

Am Not

I'm no coffeehouse poet
Delusions of Ginsberg
And Warhol dreams
Pretentions affectations

Counting meter and rhymes

No cappuchino tall
Or venti latte
I'm whiskey and cigarettes
Grime and dirt

Black snow in the gutter.

I'm knives hidden in pockets
Long fingernails and scars.
Ponytail hair and black leather chrome

Tequila in a border town.

Blood on the floor
and in my eyes
A sawdust honky tonk

The tamale girls know me