5:00 am

In the dark with my tea at five am. Yesterday we ran the dogs at our special little spot of woods with the little stream running through it that few know about. Hank galloped and Lucky trotted. I lumbered along singing internally to the Dylan tune I heard in Starbucks. "I'm goin' back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough..." But I kept repeating the same lyrics over and over, had to shake my head and cough away the Obsessive Compulsive loop. When we got back to the house I put Hank and Lucky inside and filled their dog bowls with food and water and gave Lucky her meds and then went back out to J's new/used SUV and there was Hank sitting in the driver's seat. He had created his own doggie door in the screen of the screen door. Sitting there with a big grin on his face. I brought him back in and we drove around downtown looking at possible places for J to rent. We have both come to the solid conclusion that it is the best thing if we live in seperate places. Our love is still strong but we can't live together. At least not for awhile. I am filled with hope and the desire to paint has never been stronger so hopefully I can maintain this sobriety. It will be hard. I don't understand the urge to sink into the oblivion of alcohol but a book we have put on order may illuminate some things: "Man Against Himself" by Menninger. Can't wait to get it.

television eyeballs

Sober for a week now but I've been glued to the television. J points out that I rarely read anymore. I laugh condescendingly and she says, "You don't, you sit sipping your tea and crack a book for 15 minutes in a scholarly pose and then let it lay there. I've run my finger along books that I think you are reading and there's a layer of dust on them."

"Maybe I'm trying to dumb myself down so I can fit in better."

"You've succeeded. That's pretty dumb."

"I don't think it's conscious."

"Evverything boils down to whether it "on purpose" with you. If you don't do good things on purpose, then you will do bad things accidentally."

"I'm reading Conrad."

"No you're not."

"Yes, I am." This is a lie. I cracked Conrad during my bender and read part of the The Secret Sharer and it's now lying open on my desk at home, with a layer of dust on it.

But there is still the sobriety, a week of it, that I have attained with her help since she has let me recover in her motel room. During the day we run the dogs and paint and then I turn on the TV. Just another form of substance abuse, in this case non-substance substance abuse.

Studio 60 perked my ears up though and I can see TV beginning to waken to its potential, although it will remain to be seen if this remarkable beginning will turn into just a clever soap opera. Probably.

At least I've finally been reinstated to ebay and have already brought my numbers up to when I first started. Hopefully they will climb steadily upward as they did before (see the link to my art at right).


Meanwhile I am smoke
a fistul of programs
suck my mind
cameras shooting cameras shooting
cameras
in the lab the versatile
sequencing magic
that splits photons and spits them streaming
at me
creating dream awake state
feeding vicarious
thingwant
eyes closed
I grasp for words
the energy it took
to get to this point
of confusion is astounding

ooze

fingers thick
and shaky
uncomprehending eyes
roll back to look at
thoughtstreams of fear
and worry
gloomed deep
ocd toes flick to a
nervous rythmn
this is what it is to wait
again
with a jar of peanut butter
rent still upaid
car problems
woman problems
dog problems
the one that now knows how to open
the door and release herself
into the street
a phonecall telling
us of a scared
golden retriever
running through
a warehouse
can't paint
or write
ahh,
sobriety.

sober minded

Sober four days now. Feels horrible. Hope nobody took that shotgun in the gastank poem seriously. Some days I think if I could just paint in someone's basement and they bring me booze and food and smokes, keep the fucking money, just give me some music, Leonard Cohen, Warren Zevon, Beethoven...long list...I would be happy. And that's probably the arrangement Basquiat made with the devil. So what, the worldly affairs, like paying electric bills and uploading paintings onto ebay are so time consuming and frustrating for me that I get little work done. I was doing pretty well before I fell into the bottle, and though still I was working and doing good stuff, everything to do with the beaurocracy of my life became a tangle. Sorting it out now, but difficult. Difficult.

purple paint on my hands

Beer spewing out my mouth I inserted the 12 guage shotgun into the gastank. Everybody ran. Except for one old surfer dude who's name will go unrembered. Laughingly I took the Ithaca out of the gas tank. Luckily all the people were gone. So they did not see anything.

shadowboxing

tonight i got angry
my fingers blurry
when beethoven
came up
as a bunch of
frat boys

my saurkraut lips hungering for...

tonight i got angry
that nobody speaks the truth
as they see it

my blue eyes watering

all spin my love

but why did they have to...?

of course

of course

sweet jesus

it takes so long
just to realize you have been born
ass wiped nose wiped history
well let's ignore that
but it takes so long
just to get a hot meal
and then all the prayers and
well let's ignore that too
i hear broken voices in my sleep
which is not sleep
actually
just a long gasoline prayer
one after another
strike that
no
not the
match

basking in the twilight

Officialy we are down, suspended from ebay. The money has stopped while the bills flow freely in. Life goes on. I still have these enormous horse veins that were descended into me. So I will never give up. The thought of homelessness again really doesn't scare me but it scares the fuck out of my inner child.

15 stories

she dropped it. It fell, bounced off the kid's hand working a game, fell further somebody said gross and somebody said cool and further faster it fell. It saw what was coming. It looked back then ahead into it and it was happy. Frank, the local drunk saw that and into Franks arms it fell. Frank did not want to tip the cops off to his last beer. Jesus. So many questions. Frank handed the giggling baby to somebody who looked normal. Damn, that was still a cold beer.

So Much Distance

So much distance between me and myself. I feel comfortable without feeling the anguish that I know tomorrow will bring with its loud wheels and misplaced steel and our negative bill pay mode. I feel so good that I know it can't last. Still I feel good. I watched a young hustler win four straight games shooting behind his back because he can no longer hustle pool. "I have a steel plate in my jaw from hustling pool." Florida boy. Where they don't appreciate talent.