Heart condition

waiting for news. Blood work.

sitting here, a bar north of Mexico

save the fucking comments

we all must die.

God or no god.

Personally, I will leave here without

faith, without belief.

I will leave behind bio mass.

a body that feeds the soil

but tonight, in this blink of life

in the moment

I see drunken mutants dancing

with fat, brown women

awful music

on the juke

the words of mine over the years

carry my corpse in a glass coffin

above the freaks

above the damned and the

falsely saved

we're all born for dirt

all of us are here for a flash

and I know this flash

it follows me like a hungered thing

it follows you

your money is jack shit

your home your wife

your adoring faces

all of it is fleeting

but it counts

the love I feel for you

the love I feel for the words

the way I hide behind

phrases and cowardly

poems so prominent

but the truth is

I love you all

I love your hearts

from a young age I

was taught to obey the

rules of old men

the lies

and I rejected this

because the words fed me truth

they burned sunsets with fires

beyond the grasp of Satan

and Christ

and Buddha

and all fiction.

Do I love you, regardless?

I do

I do because the mutants dance in front of the

bar and a fucking freak asks me for an

autograph

and I tell him I am nothing

but shit

but there's no convincing

a mountain of lies

of images

I remember the ghost of my mother

the ghosts of dead writers

the feeling of them

the way the rabbits run

beneath a Sun so orange

so flawless

you and I, we have a deal, we always have.

But let me break though skin and define

the fear:

I write, and hope it's not shit

I write and send it off with crossed fingers

no matter what it means to me

personally.

Do I love you all?

I do.

Can I admit it soberly?

I can't.

But the rooster flounces

before the hens

and I am nothing more

I am a pile of begging words

and to say anything

otherwise

would be a sick attempt

at something

I can't abide soberly,

in the light

of you.

Everything we are is what

I earn

and from Schopenhauer

through celluloid,

I'll take the heat, climbing the dirt trail

while I wait for what I already know

the diagnosis

I am dying

and I make it to the top of the

cross on the mountain

my breaths short

my failing heart

and mind

and body remembering the

lyrics of Buckley

we share the first name

but he died before me

the lines of his carved in my skin

on top of the mountain I've reached with

one last labor:

As she weeps on my arm walking through the bright lights

and sorrow. Oh, drink a bit of wine we both might go

tomorrow. oh, my love.

I think about the eyes of my dog, and I remember what I said to the doc when he remarked that I was taking the news so calmly:

I'm just thinking of the words I haven't written, the places I won't see. I just want to outlive my dog.

And his confused, stupid face, the doctor, the trained fool. He had no idea what I meant, the intensity.

I stared at the paperwork of the EKG

Anterior infarct -age undetermined

-Negative T-waves -Possible Anterolateral ischemia

Basically, I've had a heart attack in my past that didn't

take me out, but I'm on the edge

my doctor is an unfeeling piece of shit

further tests are needed

I am 44

I am not real anymore

I am side to side with the ghosts of my mother

my father

I am a shell of life

I conceived this space

and a team of young, healthy blood built it

I am successful and close to death

the epitome of irony

but I left this mark

all you writers

from any distance from the

grave:

write and edify

offend

inspire

be free

stop at nothing

know that

there is something counted beyond

the servile hours

and

the mountain from which I write this

Jeff Buckley's Grace blasting through my headphones

while I watch the mountains of Mexico:

As she weeps on my arm

Walking through the bright lights and sorrow

Oh drink a bit of wine we both might go tomorrow

Oh, my love, and the rain is falling

I believe my time has come

it reminds me of the pain

I might leave behind.

I reach the top of the mountain, and I stare over Mexico

I remember the whiskey

the women so perfect of eye

the mercy of the hours

and the song returns in

a morbid reminder

and I remember the words

the tours

the people so astute

that never ceased to amaze me

not to sound incredulous, but the

words grip me at the summit:

And I feel them drown my name

So easy to know

And forget with this kiss

I'm not afraid to go

But it goes so slow.

and I watch the earth from where

I sit, and my heart gets heavier

and if death takes me now

it takes me with a debit

it takes me with words unwritten

and I think back to the fucking fat doctor

with the facial pussy

hitting me with the news

and my eyes welled up for a second

All the words I haven't written. They will have nowhere to go now.

And the fuck looked at me, confused, and I left there to go back to the hotel to be with my dog, to feel his eyes upon me

through me.

To feel again the thought that

I wouldn't die soon:

Regardless.