beer money

too broke to buy anything but alcohol.

and you're sick of the girl you love telling you that you don't care as much as you think you do.

she should know that you have trouble showing it.

and you're also sick of waking up in stranger's beds.

it makes you feel weak.

mostly you are tired from sleeping on the floor,

tired of falling asleep to an infomercial on low volume-

how many people actually decide they need a blender at 5 in the morning?

because you're so tired these days but your head is always spinning too fast to be left alone with your thoughts.

no glint in your eyes any more.

it used to flash up sometimes,

and make you feel young and energetic, but then next thing it's gone,

like the warm feeling that rushes down your spine when you put down an empty glass,

that only really makes you need another.

it was there outside a brownstone in boston one night in january, and then it didn't come back until a tuesday

in april, at a bowling alley, drinking pitchers of beer and waiting for the klonopin to hit you.

the soft rush of benzodiazepines lingers, and you like when your head feels empty.

still scared to overindulge.

in the back of my head, somewhere, i have acknowledged that one day

i will apologize to everyone, for all the plans that fell through, and the broken promises.

i will tell them about my untreated manic depression,

try and use that as a mass grave for my many regrets, mostly things i couldn't

or just didn't do.

that's my escape plan, i guess.

if anyone ever told you people can change, they lied.

we don't change, we adapt.

it's a basic survival mechanism reliant on the fact that we are selfish creatures

who ironically need companionship to feel a sense of fulfillment.

but i suppose that's not a lot more than an evolutionary tendency to tie reproductive urges to seratonin reuptake.

churchtown

might as well be lost for the speed you're going,

might as well be standing still for the direction you're heading.

not the first time you've been lost in churchtown,

not the first churchtown you've been lost in.

it's always late afternoon and the sun never goes down.

there are no sirens in churchtown.

the church bells are always ringing in churchtown.

churchtown, new england.

there are abandoned mills in churchtown.

there's one liquor store in churchtown,

and one gas station, which also sells beer.

there are more churches in churchtown,

than there are in most towns.

at night in churchtown, the sun never comes up.

you can drink all night and never feel drunk,

until you wake up reaching for a bottle of pills and orange soda

which turns out to be only about 60% orange soda

which is not a surprise but also a nonplus to you

because even 100% orange soda is not refreshing,

flat and warm.

churchtown knows about hard times.

churchtown has hit hard times, but the church bells still ring.

churchtown doesn't talk about its problems

because it knows you have problems of your own.

and so in return, you don't try and tell churchtown either.

so in churchtown you talk about things like the weather,

or what you will eat for dinner,

and sometimes a lopsided knowing lip gesture is exchanged,

but the sentiment is in the eyes,

and it's better that way in churchtown.

cole ave

walking down to the liquor store

i see a boy, about 10,

lining up budweiser cans from his recycling

on his porch railing

because he's tired of sledding,

and he's got his hands on a pellet gun.

pops and crunches and soft snow sounds

pepper the air and it's grey out

on february 24, while i'm

walking down to the liquor store

i see two art kids, carrying brown bags,

the kind that already graduated college,

and probably think it's real and gritty

to live in small town, ma.

small town, ma is only gritty because of

the sand for the roads and the salt for the ice,

only real because it's not plastic.

small town, ma is more broken down,

rotted out, abandoned, tired, and grey,

on february 24th, as i'm

walking down to the liquor store.

winter grime lines the street

and sidewalk, and the houses are missing panelling,

and a car is parked in a yard barely visible

under all the snow, and there is no sun

and there are no clouds. just grey sky,

grey snow, grey roads, grey ice,

as i'm

walking down to the liquor store,

on cole avenue,

in small town, ma

red white and blue

the stars and bars,

and the lights on top of police cars.

rapid acceleration of limbs causes quick intake of breath and trouble catching it quickly but at least they are not catching you, no they will not be catching you, not again. not tonight.

it is not easy to sit in the back of a police cruiser.

it is not like the movies, and your hands are cuffed,

behind your back.

and the seat is a plastic bench,

and cops do not drive well,

because they don't need to,

honestly, have you ever heard of a cop giving a cop a ticket?

spending the night in jail, much worse.

honestly who can commit suicide with their watch?

please just let me keep my watch on.

my collect call pay phone is broken.

so for now quick legs, shredded fingers and palms from the fences and the bushes, not again, not tonight.

this morning

i woke up in a chair this morning,

underneath my sweatshirt.

the warmth in the air and the tangible progression from spring to summer

won't let me go a minute without thinking of you

and how a year ago at this time i was the happiest i ever was in my life.

such is life, a long winter comes and then the mountain crossing is impassable,

and there might as well be time zones between me and where i wish to be.

i was young, athletic, and flushed with youth and drink and neurotransmitters

coursing through my veins, breeding happiness in my brain.

a long slow bleed has dripped it all out of me since then.

the smell brings some back, but mostly the pain of the loss;

the smell of her hair, and spring, and at first my lips twitch into a smile

from muscle memory, or something like that, it's not real at least.

i try to write in these elevated prose but always fall back to colloquial bullshit,

and i can't escape who i am. i think it just caught up to me,

this morning, so many beautiful girls on this campus and i'm sitting inside

pitying myself with my eczema and my heavy heart,

and my little bottle of rattling pills that makes me feel warm when i'm holding it.

i need to shower,

i want to remember more how it feels

standing by the beer pong table after winning the track new england championships

being drunk in west hartford, holding a box of wine.

that backpack i used to carry, full of 40s and condoms and in general just

the smell of summer.

brett has sold the house since.

the backpack has always had a broken zipper but now the front pocket is

contaminated with far too many used condoms,

knotted into balloons and stuffed back in their wrappers.

i always intended to toss them after i got off her road.

i hate who i am now.

the sooner i accept that i will never be young again the easier it will be.

but i can never accept that.

i prefer

hating who i was as opposed to who i am