Break them down

5:30 in the fucking morning.

If I don’t do it now

I won’t do it

-in bed counting the minutes

it will take to stand up, walk to

the bathroom, piss, pour the

dog food

start the coffee

determined to get out of my head

and get it fucking over with

-reckoning with the boxes full of the past

and the new things

taking up all the space

I have a deep-seeded hatred for

cluster and clutter

and the filth that builds up

in my mind

from bad memories or

things that remind me of repetition

of patterns

on my back

Journey’s

Only The Young

stuck in my head

for some reason

toilet

kitchen

dog food

start the espresso maker

standing in the cluster and clutter

of all the things from my old storage unit, and the collision of worlds as it looks upon all my new shit in the living room

I pour some hot water over my

dog’s food, mix it in, and stare

at the wreckage of past and now

my dog cocks his head at me

I set his bowl down

and nod at him,

“Your dad and his animism. Eat your food.”

He digs in and I cook up 4 shots of caffeine

I watch the coffee run into the cup and

the years blur

the faces blur

the voices

the loves

the places

and placement

all become a

dull and numb

thing

first shot of caffeine

courses

box-cutter from the garage

headphones on blasting

Only The Young

on YouTube

while I break down the boxes

and during the fourth or fifth

listen-through

I get to a shoe box and mechanically

unfold every flap

and I remember

the jobs

I can feel it again and it

fucks with me in the strangest ways

I was nineteen again, twenty, twenty-five,

stumbling into the warehouse or factory

assembly line or work station

dark and early like it is now

whichever shit hole I was renting

in whichever shit hole part of whichever

city or town across the States

waiting for me 10 hours

from the job

what waited was

a typewriter

a desk

a mattress, maybe

and maybe another story

to get my mind unweighted

to free me of all the bullshit

from which I knew no escape

the workers in those places

the older ones would see me

there, tired from a night behind the machine

or hungover

or wrecked from

fucking a hot little thing

until I had to leave for work

and she had to leave for

work, or wherever

the merciful beauty of them

went once we parted ways

on the sidewalk

and on the bus

or driving a beater

or riding a bike

or walking

to those jobs in those

cities and towns

I learned fast to lose

the dread of what was

facing me when I walked

in

wasting my mind

my heart and blood

full of all the love and power

in the world from the

words,

from the stories and poems

but in the outside world it didn’t

mean shit

and I stood there working under

those lights with the rest

of them

and the older ones would look

at me and smile

and the smiles held an admixture

of envy and sympathy

it was written on my face

when they were dead

I’d take over for them

but if I could see back then

where I’d be

now

an author, a beautiful rental in the Northwest

a Japanese pond in the back yard

money in the bank

a car that fucking WILL start every morning

a full fridge, a happy dog, and devices around

my house that will

connect my writing with the world

any time I want

the world opened

at my feet like

a Spanish whore

on ecstasy

but mostly I would

want to see that

there was no shame in

the way I chose to live

the road

not the fucking hippie road

or the fake fucking Kerouac road

but the real road, the road that

often spits you out after

your prime

spits you out behind a counter

or into another factory

all the glory behind you

because you gave

the road the chance to

be one hundred percent honest

with you

and you accepted

that without understanding

that you could be

better

and that all the

stupid motherfuckers

you had to deal with

were simply there because

they were everywhere and

they really meant nothing

beyond a test of your

endurance

and what your writing

really meant to you

and still does

but the way I chose to

live was fucking brutally

senseless

and at the same time

I couldn’t help but feel

all of it had a purpose waiting

and when the good things came along

the good dogs

the good buddies

the good women

the good times and

laughter

plenty of those

-writers like to focus on the

hard shit-

but in reality, there were

some damn good years

when I total up

the moments that

kept me from losing it

cutting boxes

breaking them down and stacking

them on the kitchen floor

switched over to

Diary of a Madman

Ozzy sings and I watch

the back yard

lighten

it’s grey but almost bright

and I grab another box

a shoe box again

and mechanically unfold the flaps and

flatten it

and think about those old

faces smiling at me from across

the lines, the floors, the tables of

industry

the faces of them

they’d laugh if they could see

me now

and I’d laugh with

them

I empty the grounds

into the compost bin

under my sink

grind up another full group

hit the double shot button

and wait

while Randy Rhoads

fucking rips through

another solo.