When the isolated and creepy
are finding each other in malignant droves,
and when a few too many of my brothers and sisters
are marveling a little too hard at the bright lights
they tore down to make room for different colors,
I think it’s time to get out of here.

We’ll call it the prestige of being a quitter.
Every night should not be a culmination of every
sweeping musical biography that describes love and death.

There has to be a ghost town that hasn’t chewed me up,
and not so much spit me out,
as push me out of the meat locker,
and onto the street of Baltimore in August.

I’m tired of waking up,
sobering up, coming down,
standing up, and finding myself in the middle
of a parade that wants to wear prison riot clothes.

That hasn’t happened yet,
but you still have to watch your ass.
You never know when someone’s going to set
their $500 computer chair on fire,
and send it out the fifth-floor window
to see if it can make someone else happy.

I don’t need that.
I don’t need to keep meeting these pixies
with wild at heart clichés,
vile tempers, and matches that can only speak
to a cigarette when they’ve been struck against my forehead.

Save me from the blue skies that exist
in the schemes of buddies who live on cough syrup
and the proceeds from stolen hot dog carts.

Release me from old-time religion.
Too vague, and it makes me wish I had
another infinite afternoon in Berkley.

It’s time to go.

There’s a painting in the lobby
of a place I can’t go back to.

I want to look out at things
the way the woman in it is.

I want the forty years worth of quiet
that’s gone by unnoticed
by so many people
for so many years.

06/23/2013

Posted on 06/23/2013
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