There you were

Not a care in the world fast free, death was the next stage of life
Would anyone weep for you, maybe?
A few tears shed but you thought Mom and Dad would understand
Now Dad lays dieing in a Florida nursing home.
You thought you'd go first.
and if Dad went it would be quick, a bar fight, a car crash but no
It's a wasting disease and drinking for the pain just took out his liver.
Had to live F L A a hundred places you could have supplemented the pain pills
with natural herb but
all you had was booze, you knew it, it worked.
It killed your liver.
Now I try to suppress that self-destructive thing, you don't pick fights
You're ready to fight if you have to.
If that's what it takes to get home to your wife and kitten.
When you want so bad to ride screaming into the night
A bottle of something in your bag, into the night
to twist and shout
to work it on out.
Can't do that no more
She'll worry,
So you try to do it quiet like.
It's not the same
When you rolled home bruised bloody and laughing
because the things spinning through brain finally made sense
Now you sit listening to some music you used to like
quietly strangling the demons you used to beat to death.

Sometimes you can just smell the stupid

Like a big old cloud rolling in, you don't want to get caught in the storm.
Time to leave and seek shelter.
I've met you before or at least someone like you.
Your fun, your flirty and charming.
At first.
But as time goes by your just a problem.
I know you guys over at that table over there
At least I've known guys like you, don't think we need to hang out anymore.
And you in the truck, you can tell me, man to man here.
How small is it?
Or is it that you just can't use it right?
Or maybe it's that you just don't get the chance to use it?
Man drives like that on a public road
He's got to be trying to compensate for something, some sense
That he just isn't man enough.
I'll say "Hi" to your cousin when I hit Northern Lights.
That cloud of stupid hits smart people too.
One minute your a kind understanding and tolerant type.
The next your thinking about hitting people with a big rubber hammer.
Or your taking pictures of tourists taking pictures of themselves.
Time to flee.

Not everyone has a code to live by, do you?

The lost, the confused, the sight-seer and the stupid

They were all downtown today. Oh yes, they were.
Slow down speed up.
Piss me right the fuck off.
Rental car, bad map.
But some of you I love just can't help myself.
You who stop in for a drink
and stick around for the floor show
and sometimes it's you.
Then I love you all the more.
Thank you.
You humanize the others

Summer is a bummer

At least as far as the work goes. Sporadic, a week of sheer mind numbing boredom and then a weeks worth of work all crammed into one day but then you are alive you have purpose you have meaning, you flow. Always the tourists which they tell you are not as good as the tourists of days gone by. On the package trip not spending a dime. Ain't sellin' like he used to. New tourist old tourist they're still in your fuckin' way and asking for directions to things you don't go to."Is the coffee good here?" There are five fuckin' places to buy espresso within a block, this one has a line. " 'Moose on the lose' what a cute T-shirt" Not when you've seen it go down baby, saw an old man stomped to death outside of UAA. Welcome to Anchorage, enjoy your stay, now get the fuck out of my way. You hover between the madness of too much and not enough. Summer is a bummer. Summer when the dark demons come by for a beer, to kind of hang out and chat put on some tunes and eat all your snacks. Yet , summer is so beautiful it hurts. I should take off from work leave it to the wannabes and fixter/hipsters and spare myself the up and down joyride to madness, just trying to hang-on until the snow falls. Summer when you have to much time to think about the thing you do and when it's slow you ask yourself. Why? And when it's busy, when you have more things to deliver then you have time, when it seams someones said to at least half the drivers. "Kill him but try to make it look like an accident. When your mind and body hurt from the things you did on that road slicing, dicing, weaving with a godlike grace doing things that you cannot describe, when you have to have a few just so you can go home and be a human being to the wife and kitten. Then the answer is all to clear. That you were born to this life, this is what God made you for and who are you to deny the will of your creator. Until then sit, have a smoke and a double shot of espresso. Wait, to live again.

Sometimes I find it so hard to say what I need to say

"My Dad's in there he's like God to me. My gods in there he's like a Dad to me. 'Well give him all your cigarettes.' They said and he did time and got raped by guards and prisoners and knifed and kicked the shit out of and went in a hole for five months, three weeks and did not cry for nine years which is almost a million"
Steven Jesse Bernstein
When I can talk about this I will but until then here's a little song.

Sorry I didn't stop to talk.

I did see you by the school as I headed back downtown. I might have stopped to talk but what with my father in the hospital I wanted to be up that hill before I had to take another call about that. Of course I didn't make it up the hill before that call came in. I could have turned around but I was on the clock when seconds could matter, I could not stop and chat. I like running into you it reminds me how happy I am now.