Where did those
Big scaly monsters go?
I'm tired of paying for gas
It would be so much easier
To fly to school on a dragon
No one’s gonna cut off a dragon
And I won’t need to worry about parking
Just stick it in the quad
And walk around the charred bodies
When I leave

I.
The people look like flowers at last - sick thoughts of dead men strike the clock winding backwards and ignite to illuminate my approach,
The people look like,
Cigarette burns,
Bullet wounds,
Casualties of Rollins' war with himself,
Of Ellis' numb utopia,
Of the Bukowski cynic suicide,
Of the thoughtless progeny of deadbeat generations desperate to push back,
Every street corner is holy, baptized in the blood of those who died believing,
A thousand fists moved to release a thousand frustrations, and a celebrity endorsement for each overdose death,
Angel mine, abate your gutter wars and mob mentalities,
The tattoo ink has dried and the clubs are closed for the night,
Where are the revolutionaries to go now?

II.
The revenge of the skinhead minority,
The born again soul of a fallen brother,
The madman defiant in publicized rage, the faces of the enemy painted with crosshairs on TV screens,
And the damaged finally able to stand on their own,
Damaged and unrepentant,
Damaged and brilliant,
Damaged with criminal record eyes,
with paranoia brain, with X's tattooed into calloused knuckles,
with track marked arms,
Damaged, the unstoppable tide of the righteous youth - caricatured in the spray painted stencils of their testaments

III.
The spoiled children of an undefinable zeitgeist with nothing to lose,
In ecstasy binges these angels hallucinated manifest destiny through non prescription lenses,
Studying traffic patterns I remember how people are afraid to merge and everybody is looking for just the right amount of trouble,
A fire dies and another is born almost immediately,
Careless ramblings in careless county - a land I'm sure was promised to someone, somewhere, sometime
But after the gold rush nobody could cash out fast enough,
I can't cash out fast enough -
Every girl has got the guilty smile of a teenage runaway living out a Janis Joplin fantasy, and all the boys line up like addicts itching to cop,
The air is so heavy nobody can hold a thought - and when I speak, It's the accent, they say, they can always tell,

IV.
Taxi rides in laser show utopia,
Sicilian saint newly minted tells me about the ******* machine and it's ravenous posturing -
be present & be seen,
Fake it till you make it,
Cop killers singing confessions for beer on the street corner,
While the socialist manifests itself in mispronounced beverages and faux-marked Russian volumes,
avant-garde hyperrealism & ritualistic sacrifice,
There was something about *** and dying on the radio I couldn't be bothered to hear,
A drunken brawl over a bad bet made, disappointing street race, police sirens distant growing moreso,
In ****** bars where ladies always drink free, I rewatch the fall of a ***** old man from the penthouse to the street all over again,
If you haven't figured it out by now,
Don't try

V.
In dreams I walk the Pacific Coast Highway dead of night, barefooted soul alive and naked in the Western night like a Jim Morrison poem, the traveler that never arrives, watching the sunrise form halos over the Sierra Nevada, like a girl I know back East who talks a great deal about plans, the best of which never even have an aftertaste of freedom
There is the same sublime anthems playing on every radio and palm trees forming crosses for any messiah who is willing to claim them,
Last train out of Anaheim as the tessellating California skies swell and give, catch and release,
I see the roofs of tenements lit up by Disneyland,
ocean reflecting the glare from Heaven,
faces of the impoverished reflecting the glare from Heaven,
everybody getting sunburned from the glare from Heaven,
I watch the lovers depart for Santa Ana,
Elderly Asian tourists for Irvine,
Hipsters for San Juan,
and the rest of the destitute ******* for Oceanside en route to San Diego,
There but by the grace of God go the drunk kids spilling out of greyhound buses, sitting till dawn contemplating skylines reflected on the bay, finding romance in every moan of living Earth,
wide eyed at possibility of removing themselves from the equation and finding the answer,
Neil Young harmonicas drift listless above Spanish villas,
Everybody talking like something bad was gonna happen but I couldn't see much thru the windows past the tourist burly shouldered slumbering beast,
I think it was somewhere between Yuma and Dallas, with Mexico stretched out like an invitation to an anarchist rally where I was haunted first,
I'm haunted by El Campo Santo, paved over restless Indian graves in the shadow of the hanging tree,
By La Calavera Catrina blessing the sinners as they pass, hollow faced and sunken on the ***** Spanish streets of their ancestral Apartheid home,
I'm haunted by Calvary, 3000 spirits hanging around unsure of what comes next,
I'm haunted by the faces of the beggars I couldn't spare a cigarette for,
In dreams the Western night releases me and I leave California a shade lighter,
And the handful of stars that manage to burn through the haze seem to promise me:
"You may be gone, but your shadow lives on without you"

I don't remember when the turning point was
But finally the anger inside of me degraded and only pieces were left
In the second half of summer I began to write again
But I made my room a tomb
A mausoleum built not to keep me inside but to prevent myself from making this mess worse
It was this half of summer that I realized that it was all doomed to happen from the start
It had been years since we both fell in love
And in the time between we grew
We both had boarded trains going different directions
And instead of accepting that fact we tried to put both trains on the same track
Why were we so surprised when the trains collided?

In this half of summer I knew that what happened was more of my fault than anyone else's
These are the kinds of things that happen when you turn a blind eye to reality and instead only saw the dreams in my head
These truths made me feel no better than before
The bitterness was still there and I reached its epicenter one night in San Antonio
San Antonio where I realized the weight I had gained and where I knew I wanted leave all thoughts of you behind

We stopped talking
It was the best decision I had made for months
And in this time I felt both forgiveness and regret begin to grow
The darkest parts were over yet I decided to close myself off to others

In this time did I forget beauty?
Did I ignore love?
No
Instead I turned the love I had for you into steam energy and saw again the beauty in the world around me
I took the love of one beating heart and extended it to every beating heart within radius
This is how I found healing
And this is how I realized that the pain I felt had become less heartbreak and more ego
I decided to gather as much as that ego I could to burn it and spread the ashes

I have said before
We are products of our past
The two halves of summer were nothing more than individual tracks leading my train farther down the line
Destination: anywhere
Any homes of love, beauty, or any other arbitrary human word for the holy things
Summers end was a flash of blinding light and I travel forward new
Less born again
More never having truly died

The tone of my summer was set three days before it began
As I look back now it's as if I am looking into the mouth of a long forgotten cavern
On that day I got the message
A message that I knew was in front of me the whole time like a snake whose venom had already seeped through my skin
But now the message was tangible
Sent to me by a friend
A screenshot from your private Twitter you wouldn't let me follow
What it said was unimportant
What it confirmed was something I should have known all along but made myself blind to in order to keep up the illusion that we weren't falling apart
Yet the truth was that for a month now we were the farthest apart we had ever been

You said it wasn't cheating because we weren't "technically together"
You had said a break was what you needed
And I wouldn't have been suspicious if that hadn't just come up the day after you kissed him at some drunken madhouse party
And if you don't call it cheating what was the point of lying to my face and sneaking out at night?
I went to your house in a moment of foolish desperation and you lied while looking into my eyes
The truth would have been easier

Summer came nonetheless and I begged you to explain yourself and be honest about what had happened
You refused to say a **** word and honestly that hurt more than the actions you took
It's been 8 months now and I still don't know what happened

The first half of summer was madness and bitter anger
Over 19 years I had built a reservoir of raw emotion and when the dam finally broke it was from a hole no bigger than a pinprick
Yeah I acted like a child
I admit that what I did was wrong but at the time it felt nothing but appropriate
Half of summer I brewed in a disgust that only ever bordered on hatred
And I never left you alone like I should have
I wanted to dig myself a hole all the way down to the burning magma with no intention of dying but rather a grave deep enough to bury my bitterness

Half of summer I wanted to hate you
I couldn't
The first half of summer closed as a chapter of utter frustration and complete denial of who I thought we both were
In the end I cared less about the relationship but rather the seven year friendship that was ruined for a guy you talked to for no more than a month
The first half soon ended and the next began

She said her name was Sky
Or at least that is what I think she said
When we were asked to turn to those around us
And to shake hands and say good morning
I thought it was a beautiful name
And I have thought of it since Sunday

I saw her first when I walked in the door
She wasn't the first face I saw
But she is the first face I remember
Now that isn't entirely true
Because if I was asked today to pick her out of a crowd I may not be able to
I am a nervous man at times
I did not stare at her
I didn't even look long enough to take in the intricacies of her identity
We made eye contact
I nodded in greeting as I always do and continued walking
I can remember the coat she wore was purple
And I didn't know she would sit two seats down from me
And I didn't know I would become entranced by the thought of her

I fear that I fall more in love with the idea of a stranger
Than I would once I know them
I feel that I am a dreamer at times
Though I would never admit it
I know however I won't die lonely
Though not without its bite,
Lonliness isn't that strong to me
I don't think much of it

She said her name was Sky
And in my nervousness I only said
Good morning
And I hope I see her again

11:42
I should honestly be asleep now
But instead I lay here and listen
To October winds
Blowing through my neighborhood

Yes it is October now
It never started feeling like summer to me
Now why am I so surprised it's gone?

But honestly October
What is it about you
That made Jack fall in love with you
That makes the kids of my generation
Manic
And ranting
Pumpkin crazed
October winds are peaceful not spooky

When you asked me to write you a poem
I was afraid about what I would say
(I still am)
It hasn't even been a year since
I disappointed you
I try not to think of such things
But my life is full of many moments
I let people I care about down

You have done a lot of traveling
Since we first met in that coffee shop
Where all my good memories were made
The coffee shop has since left
And now the whole building reeks of emptiness and what once was
It depresses me to go back

You have seen so much more of the world than I have
California is only a name on a map to me
But you made friends there and in that state you grew to who you have become

And oh you have felt more than I
I lock up my emotions in a faux stoicism
I don't like talking about my feelings
But I haven't lived the life you have
Oh the people you have lost and the things that have happened
I can't imagine what you lay awake at night contemplating as I lay and think of such trivial things

I wish we could both go back
Valentine's Day
2012
I was never mad at you
I understand why you never came
It wouldn't have changed who you are to me

I wish we could go back
To the fall of last year
I wouldn't have taken the path I did
I wouldn't have alienated you
For the sake of her
Or anyone else

You have been there for me
Countless occasions
And I have created this debt to you
I wish to pay
But I am unable

Now we don't talk as much
And when we do it lacks what it once had
And I know it's my fault
I know what I did was wrong
But I'm glad you haven't given up
And you haven't forgotten
And I have never doubted that you have cared about me
And I hope we stay close
For as long as we are alive