Railroad Avenue, Downtown Bellingham, Washington State

It offers itself to me. In the form of music, in the form of a Woman of God, in the form of guerrilla art running the length of the old brick buildings. Redemption sits quietly in the dark alleyways and in every stranger's stupid grin. When I find myself with a tenuous way, it finds me, and promises something like home.

This city is a shape-shifting one, this city has a spirit that takes hold of a homeless man's guitar and sings sweetly, straight through my bruised skin and into my organs to settle my sense of peace. This inherent soul takes the shape of a Woman of God, who hands me a cup of coffee and a cigarette and offerings of warmth and shelter. I explain to her the deity of the streets and what I owe, and she dismisses me instilling hope that tastes salty on my lips.

For this is the only home I have ever known, right here in these alleyways where redemption sits. No walls and no carpet, just the dark red brick and small concrete stoops and an accordion in the distance and the drunken people rambling echoes while I lay to rest past poisons. Quietly in those alleyways where redemption sits.

Let's forget about the tongue-tied lightning, let's undress just like cross-eyed strangers

And all this time my hair's grown to brush my elbows, and my heart has expanded to include memorized verse.

I've grown to wash dishes and bake muffins.

I've grown to be clay.

I've grown to call myself beautiful on my most washed-out days, because you cut the darkness right out of me.

And in this crunched, chaotic time you've become a man, and with that I guess I helped. I've cut the construction paper of your soul into a perfect snowflake, symmetry consisting of compassion and honor. I made you out of a good man, a good man that sparkles now.

But I see the little snips I've made, I do. Holes. I've instilled in you fear you weren't able to comprehend before. Fear of loss. Fear that seems to well up under you and pull you deep into the Pacific. Fear that makes you scream. Fear created by me, by my snips, my careless aim with these blades I so clumsily tote around.

No sonnet could tell you of my passion, or my comfort here in your home, feeding your belly. And no stanza could alienate what doubt I've given you and I know. We can't tighten the loose screws that rattle in each of us and create that throbbing, panging, nagging voice that whispers. We can't fill in the holes we've dug out of each other. We can only lift one foot up and place it in front of the other and laugh at our foolishness, because this is what we've created, and here we will stay.

Soreness

When the pains are shooting through my shins there is nothing better than my face in your hands at eight-fifteen. Sharp luminescence over my tiny skull, taunting my peasantry, pointing with your big finger.

We were eating cinnamon brown sugar poptarts in the rain when it burst out of his lips. He put his cold fingers on the side of my face during my plead. i was going to make you vegetables i was going to do your laundry i was going to be your very best friend. he, of course, proceeded to distract my estrogen with an herbal essence and we filled our lungs in silence on his concrete bedroom floor. i bit my lips between rips.

it's not that i loved him but because these three metal prongs no longer have an outlet to electrocute.

Something is Watching All of the Outsiders

When my lungs expand enough, there is a small ball of light that lives underneath my sternum. At the end and beginning of every day it awakens or dies with the words to myself: I am not dead. Yet. Rejoice, another day of breath and laughter. Fill your lungs and cackle. You are not a shadow of a cathedral.

I'm alive right now and I don't dare ask for much else.

La La La - The Bird and the Bee

Make yourself free, make yourself grow. Come on up into the attic - come and see the glow. A pretty idiot is kissing everyone she doesn't know, and the pigs are eating popcorn selling tickets to the show.

Give yourself away, feel the wind blow. We're watching movies on the ceiling, all the artists we know. If there's someone you don't like, you don't have to say hello. There's no reason you should leave, there's no reason you should go.

Take yourself out, hit the tambourine. We have loaded up your eyes and fed you tangerines. If you open up your box, you will find a time machine. If you try to find a scratch there'll be no signs of where you have been.

Give yourself up, make yourself sing. Don't tell us that you can't -You need a sampling?
Dah Dah Dah, Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah

Sometimes, when I drink coffee, I get a little sharp, metallic tingle in my tailbone. It's sort of my lower back - it's sort of my tailbone - it's sort of where the sun don't shine & what I would call the bending point. Bendy.

So when I drink extra strong coffee, the tingle is more like I have a proddish stake shoved up my ass. It is both uncomfortable and enjoyable. That's how you know it's working. Soon, I shall be running around like a dendrite-ridden axon, and a beautiful and exemplary piece of ass. I love this feeling - that signal that all is right with this! hectic! little! world! I! live! in! Can! You! Feel! It!?!

Music in our schools? No! Coffee in our schools! Keeps the teacher not-so-virile and breasts lumpy. Keeps skinny people skinny and smokers believing it's the coffee they smell. Coffee - the Taste of the Miners' Generation. Got Coffee? Got Sandra Bernhard? Coffee - the natural birth control. Let's go get some coffee! Let's swim in lakes and rivers of coffee! LET'S MAKE A GODDAMN DRESS OUT OF COFFEE BEANS, THE ULTIMATE HOMAGE TO FASHIONISTA JUAN VALDEZ!

I wonder if they've been lacing coffee with cocaine. I wonder if I should go get another cup. I wonder why my abdomen is aching with the pain of a thousand horses driving and caressing my intestines with hideous abandon.

And on that note, sweetcheeks and vermin, I miss your cracked out face watching me throw up in the morning. Cheers, darlin'.

gracefully taking it hard.

La fin

Within seven hours, the wailing and gnashing of teeth could be sharply heard from my front stoop. I sat by the monkey tree in my yard, smoking a Parliament and enjoying the entertainment, wondering if I was on The Truman Show (and, if so, how much compensation would I be getting when the actors finally grew fatigued?) Lightning bolts, clashing prisms, the cracking and crumbling of the earth's surface – it was all there. It was all present and yet I couldn't find a thing to say. I simply dug some bright orange foam earplugs out from under the shambles of wood that was once my house, and observed. Even if I could have wrapped some syllables around my tongue, there was no one to say them to. Every individual I had ever known was ill with shock, saying goodbyes, asking questions as frivolous as, "Where are we going?" What would it matter where we were going? We were fortunate enough to be alive at the very end of the universe, the greatest and most beautiful helter-skelter to ever become, and I was going to enjoy the show. The ticket was fucking expensive.

LMFAOMLMFAFOAM