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.