Leveling

A hard right turn to
right the ship; we spent a long
moment nearly lost.

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With my immersion in DC I've been fortunate enough to have been shown some of the cities' sights and, more importantly, sounds by a select few somebodies who sincerely love language. In these endeavors I've been exposed to the world of spoken word and slam style poetry performance and have fallen pretty hard for the potential that can be found in the rhythms the life the joy the love and the hate embedded in each sing-song, sling-slung stone-smooth syllable. Since then I've made a number of attempts to write something in a similar vein. Many of these have been abortive at best, but, after finally giving in to the idea of relying upon alliteration as my driving force I ended up with this (and yes, that IS a blatantly lifted and transmogrified C.Finn line as my title. And first line. We all need prompts occasionally, alright?):

The Streets Gained what the Binge Washed Away

Lately I feel as if I’m walking with wide open wounds
with scars on my shoes,
a pain in my side and an internal heat
so intense that it burns through my heart.
Chars it completely,
cremates it quietly
and leaves me cold.

Selfless, cold and composed
of counterproductive accounts
of my life and no clear
account of the strife
and conflict I cause through remote,
uncalculated actions and crimes
of passion and lust and untrustworthiness
while moving freely - without feeling -
unfettered by consideration or concern for consequence.

Lately it feels as if I am removed from myself.
My consciousness surgically culled and carelessly
kept near the withered remains of my once robust conscience.

I am afflicted with that endemic,
twenty-something-specific epidemic
of callous hedonism.

Blinded by that gin and tonic fueled fire that divides,
through equal parts Illusion and Self-Delusion,
each night from the next.
Living now,
right now,
under the pretext
that what happens this evening
stays with this evening
and never reaches past the partition of 2 AM leaving
only the morning’s headache as a monument
to the potentially monumental mistakes
of the prior evenings’ practices.

We are our own cycles.
The circles we run in, while
providing contributing cause,
are never strong enough to excuse
the burden of our missteps.
And the pratfalls that showed themselves funny through dusk
reveal themselves foolish come dawn.

Lately it’s only on days like this one -
heavy with humid air and sticky with the sadness
of things sought after but not attained –
that I can ever set before my mind
each of the issues at hand.
Yet the plague that hangs
over my eyes is never a dark one.

More often it’s a blinding mix,
a spinning, sliding, streaming view
of rum and coke soaked scarves,
gin and tonic tarnished t-shirts
and all these ginger-whiskey washed,
wash and wear warriors who wear me out.

I’m wrung out,
wishing like hell I was strung out
so that at least then
I would have an excuse for all of this.

In this world, wet
with the slick of dance floor sweat
there are no mistakes, there are no accidents.
The dark and the drinks may lend license
but the daylight demands recompense.

Payment in full,
plus interest,
comes due on our uninterested
and casual affairs.




Enough.