the middle

The middle-

         I'll be damned if I didn't make it.
       
         Dead center.
         Bull's-eye.
       
         I have mastered,  exactly nothing.
         I've tried many seemingly unrelated things.
       
          I've lived out some of the things that I've sought to live out.

          I don't function totally in any fashion.
       
         I can sort of do a lot of things.

                                    My house plants are half alive.

                                    My children smile; sometimes.

                                    Things move forward mostly because of external factors which I cannot avoid.
                                    I'm a tiny cog inside of a much larger machine.

           Necessary?  Maaaayyyyybeee.

           Worthy? Fuck No!!

       Anyway, I'm like a gym coach -

        basics of any "sport" - down.

        Life analogies for said "sport" - down.

        Ah but only just a few.

     Onto the next chapter of the slightly ridiculous.
                                                                              The Middle.
                                                                                     Where I belong.
                                                                                             Where I'm from.
                                                                                                     Where I'll always make it to - almost.
                                                                     
                                                           This shit is way too familiar.

crooked streets

That smell - 

you know the one.

It won't go away.

Like a cigar on a moustache. 

Like 16th street in the early morning. ~

Fine line between "late at night" and "early in the morning". 

Both have a very distinct smell.

Especially on 16th street.

walk down alameda

*Do it like a madman - *like a benny addict - and I do!!! in my head!! oh the grandeur there could sell out the biggest halls. arenas even... but as far as tangible - real evidence? never...I used to think that would change , worse still-prior to that-I thought I was getting something accomplished-but no evidence there as well...and none since. So a dreamer most certainly ~ a doer: not on your life sonny jim!


"nobody broke your heart, you broke your own cuz you can't finish what you start..." {Elliott Smith}


*paraphrasing  Jack Kerouac

grab the yolk from the pilot ...

These circles...sometimes I look for the beginning.  The beginning of me, often makes me sad, so I do like so many, and usually reside somewhere in the middle.  Trouble with that is, it's dangerous- because if you forget the beginning, then you've really no middle, and one tends to believe the middle as the origin; which I'm finding out leads to a much more gruesome end.  Then certainly there's the townies or the ne'er changers. "Hell, born and raised man born and raised!!" They're worse in their own way. There are those that have stopped entirely because they've figured it all out.  These are surely the worst. They know. Just ask them.  Ah but then there are the enders. They're that proverbial nail always looking for the coffin.

     So what then do I have to look upon as examples?

     Do I seek the end? Or do I turn steadily in the center of nothingness back to nothingness back to strip malls and payday loan stores across from grocery stores across from trailer parks  across from duplexes down the road from some houses next to some apartments by the church across from the bar......?????
     Do I go back to the beginning, to my "first love" as they like to put it? and then in turn to the middle? I guess there are different middles? Is this circle also like a fucking tree? If so I'm in some fucking trouble...these circles...


"...of course I was raised to gather courage
from those lofty tales so tried and true...
If you're able, I'd suggest it, cause this
modern thought can get the best of you..." (the shins)

mistress...

Things are a bit stranger now since she's moved out of the building.  Things come and go, sure, but now there is just pockets of thoughts of memories, that are so small and fleeting, you're not sure of their actual existence.  But before, when she was still around, you had a purpose.  Though never quite certain the path, nor where uncertainty might take you, nor where you happened to find yourself, there was never even a question. Purpose. What was it, you may ask? Hell I'm not sure anyone, especially not myself, could tell you.  And for some reason that was okay.  I never nailed down a purpose, but I sure as shit had one.  And so I got out of bed every day.  And I never even thought it was possible to stay in bed.  And then she left.  Or rather, she was taken from me. And I must admit I took her for granted and so I lost her because of my unwillingness to appreciate what I'd had.  It's been told before, certainly, but I never used to understand . At least not fully.  I'm afraid I may never quite know what I've had and lost, and more importantly why, but I know this; whatever purpose I woke up for in those days, has disappeared. Vanished. Gone. And since she's been taken from me, I've been to the dark corners, and I've sampled the fare, and I've been to places I shall hope to never return to. And I've been to places I now understand their existence, whereas before I was even unaware of their existence.  So yes, some things make a little more sense than before, but mostly I am lost at sea, tossed to and fro among the wreckage of little half thoughts that perhaps once were, but there's just enough of the vessel gone so that, while its a possibility something was once whole there, there's not enough remaining to prove the existence of an actual functioning completion of anything.  Hardest part is she's not coming back.  And I have to figure out how to get along without her, and figure out how to come to terms with the fact that I'll never see her again. Both, I find, are excruciatingly hard.

To You and the Mirror

You get old.  All of you.  And yet I'm forced to be around you and all of your certainty.  Sometimes I
think that ignorance might still be blissful, and I actually envy you. Ah, but only for a moment, and then you speak again.  You're always speaking! Even out of turn, and on top of others...won't you ever fall silent? Do you even consider the possibility that your words may be trivial? I've found it so. You might even say meaningless entirely.  But that doesn't stop you.  On and On and On, with your drivel, and if that's not bad enough, you repeat yourself.  Over and Over and Over!  Sometimes even within the same hour.  It's so exhausting...

here's to nothing...

These games confuse me.
I'm struggling to find any connection.
Apparently I don't understand the rules.
Although there don't seem to be any...
One guy breaks them all; the right guy:
He's a hero and someone to be like.
Never mind how he got there, he just did.
I break the same rules, or act like I'm what Frost* was talking about---
Forget about it.  WRONG. I've gone and done it wrong.
Truth is, these little lines we've all drawn are imaginary.
They get bent and stretched and broken to start a "new" line all of the time.
They get regurgitated and reinvented constantly.
The truth is, that all that I've been led to believe as truth-
Is not so. It is actually fiction. Worse than that, it's not even good fiction.
Because of this, I can no longer discern truth.
The word has lost its meaning, and because of that-
I feel free.

Thank You.




*Robert Frost-"Two roads diverge in a wood...I chose the one less traveled..."