I was young, taking notes

Picking up tips, checking out pros

Playing guitar tracking down hearts

To love and break out on the road

Staying stoned and outta money but

always full of a steady buzz of

Drugs, sex, and rock and roll

Now I'm old still the same

Most folks I use to know

have grown up moved on

But I was made for

Drugs, Sex, and Rock n Roll

I'm a crazy Poet, Gypsy, Soul

Drugs, Sex, and Rock n Roll

I'm a crazy Poet, Gypsy, Soul

When I show, you know I'm

always perfect and loving, you get

the best parts of this broken

beating carved up meat on a hook

This bloody affair isn't fair

But there's always a way to

rearrange broken things till they

resemble some semblance

of youths reckless rage, turn the page

time machine back to days

When I was made for

Drugs, Sex, and Rock n Roll

I'm a crazy Poet, Gypsy, Soul

Drugs, Sex, and Rock n Roll

I'm a crazy Poet, Gypsy, Soul

Wouldn't trade my fender

for all the gold or sell my soul

Still go on benders, a sinner

I repent, rinse repeat baptize me

in that whiskey southern muddy river

Drugs, Sex, and Rock n Roll

I'm a crazy Poet, Gypsy, Soul

Drugs, Sex, and Rock n Roll

I'm a crazy Poet, Gypsy, Soul

Drugs, Sex, Rock n Roll

Crazy, Poet, Gypsy Soul

An artist

may not

actually walk

in the same

shoes

as the art.

Therefore,

it’s your eyes

that shall

separate

them apart.

It didn’t have to be you.

Moments in life can make us grow or tear us apart.

But you knew that from the start.

We are blood.

We grew up in the same house.

Our parents choices didn’t have to become ours.

But you knew that from the start.

Blame our parents and blame our past but you are the one repeating family history.

Bringing back old family trickery when you know that you shouldn’t be.

What life are living?

I’m worried for you and my niece.

And it kills me.

Because I know it isn’t a happy ending.

She choosed to be a cactus

in a world full of beautiful flowers.

Perhaps because a dandelion will be picked up

by someone to make wishes in hope to fulfill their desires. Perhaps because a rose will be picked up

by someone just for her beauty.

And it is certainly true that a cactus will not be picked up by someone, unless that someone is willing to hurt themself.

twentytries

Lonely boy was bullied -

brunt of mean remarks.

It was an accident, I swear.

He went to funeral,

making sure tormentor

was cushioned

safely in casket.

Child put his head down

pretending to cry.

If I spark the flame

Will you blow on it?

Words are not the same,

When you don't breathe

The spaces between

And give syllables meaning.

If I capture something

Of a deeper truth,

Until you speak my words

Are they idle ravings?

Don't press fingers to your lips

And keep us guessing.

If my words refuse,

Would you take the refrain

And echo it by choice?

Emptiness is pain;

Colour me blue

I yearn to hear your voice.

"Hi, I was just looking out my window and I couldn't help but to notice a Yorkshire Terrier in the street outside my house. I believe that the same dog was chased by the local kids back here. Is he your dog?"

"Yea, he my dog."

"Oh, great. I'm glad he's safe, then. He was just so small and skiddish, I didn't want him to get hurt. You know how the people speed down here."

"Why you talkin' like dat?"

"Like what?"

"Like that."

"It's English."

"I know what the hell it is. Why you speakin' it like that?"

"I'm a native speaker."

"Don't tell me what the fuck I already know. You sound white."

"I didn't realize that colors have sounds."

"I mean like white people, lil' gurl."

"So are you trying to say that my voice sounds akin to a white woman's usual dialect?"

"Stop gettin' smart with me, bitch."

"So now I'm an increasingly intelligent female dog? I feel as if I should see that as a compliment."

"..."

"Have a great day, ma'am."

In a used bookstore 

on the Oregon coast,

I found, in a box of 

foreign language books,

an East German government directory

from 1974. I leafed through it,

testing out my high school

German, and then as my girlfriend

came around the corner, I showed

it to her and we laughed over the

randomness of secondhand

bookshops. Then I flipped a page,

and saw a black and white photograph

of a man who looked, not just like me,

but exactly like me, only some years

in my future, which was his past.

He had the same long lashed-eyes, the

same thin lips, the same facial structure.

He was me, in twenty years, still

fadedly handsome, in the square

wire-rimmed glasses of the time, 

as though I had dressed up in  

costume as a minor government

functionary and had my picture taken. 

My girlfriend's laughter stopped 

abruptly and she looked up at me, pale.

She was genuinely frightened, so I 

laughed again, but I was unsettled as well.

I bought the book and we went back 

to the hotel. She took a nap, and I opened

it back up, to his page. My rusty German

told me he was a deputy assistant secretary

in the Economic Ministry. He was married to

Hilde, he had three children. It was not merely

a likeness, it was uncanny how closely we 

resembled one another. It was not so

difficult to imagine myself as a 

dedicated socialist bureaucrat, 

even without the man's picture before me. 

I stayed up late that night, setting 

my drivers license beside his square portrait,

adding years to myself, matching us up

perfectly. He is an old man now, I told myself,

he is much changed. At home, I tried to 

find out anything I could about him, but

the biographical details of mid-level

East German appartchiks are not easily

found. Eventually, though, I came across

a database that listed Ministry personnel of the time

and found that he had died

on the day I was born, still in his post. My girlfriend,

skittish about spiritual matters,

demanded I throw the book out, but I couldn't.

I memorized his entry in the directory,

I became obsessed with him, I even

planned a trip to Berlin to see his grave.

My girlfriend left me, in no small part

because of him. I decided that he was like me,

a good man-in-progress beset by doubt, 

believing in his system, in the people around him,

blindsided by upheaval. I forced him into

the contours of my life, willed us to be similar.

Eventually, it evolved into coincidence, 

then something I rarely thought about, but a few weeks ago

my former girlfriend called and asked how

he and I were doing, and I laughed and said

I'm fine. I heard the slight tremor in her laugh,

and the quickness of her ringing off.