words

There is grandeur in this life
this broken machine that
squeaks and whines
in the back of my mind
while I try to sleep.

There is hope
in these old bones
reincarnated karma
shot straight through
my soul.

While you were sitting
and watching I was right
in the middle of the thick,
rich drama a little like coffee
grounds on my tongue but more
like the same shit in my mouth.

We are spitting words,
regurgitating hypocrisies.
Horns beep and millions of people
yell every second
every minute every hour
every day every week
every month every year
and I die a little death to be consumed
by this city for a month or two and live
wearily in the valves of this old town

opening and closing with the tide,
run over by grit and sand, eroded
just to be built back up again on a
shaky foundation of words. But in

this city
I see the pavement sparkle and shine
and I know all the souls that lived here
were cemented in the ground so that we
can remember them and never be without
another story.

I get tired of the influx of words,
the steady stream of morality and
immorality because what’s the point
of crowding such a short time
with hours of words and no accomplishments?

But we need to talk talk talk.
I need to hear your reasons and
the red river of lies travels faster than
the twittering birds determined to tear you down
with their beaks. If there’s one thing I learned
it’s that no one is safe from the sharp little claws of
insecurity that scrabble at the insides of our skulls

but we’ll keep talk talk talking
until we’ve exhausted ourselves into graves
way far away on the Island, so close that
we can smell the freshly churned earth and
fulfill a dead man’s dream. There is grandeur
in this life but now I must take a sleep much
longer than any other I may ever know.