Borderline

A QUIET MEDITATION ON ART
(and its impact on the artist)

1 2 3 4!

Poets and punk rockers
age worse than gov’t cheese and Thunderbird
And I’m both
So, fuck it
sour grapes and shitty baked macaroni it is.

A lot of friends tell me they wish they had my job
or at least the hours
and I do give praise
to the Great Sky Conductor for
every day I’ve never had to origami myself into a cube 
but the clock I punch
jabs back 
below the belt

This occupation consists of
constantly putting your heart and balls in front
of the world’s swinging knuckles
But I can’t quit it because
there’s not much else you can do when
your inner child is a spitting brat
and your power animal is
Joan Jett

My resume might as well read:
Jack Off At All trades
Master of Jack Shit 
and I suppose there’s worse things you can be
like World War Referee
or Fluffer 
but glory glory
this kind of living is killing me
Hallelujah

These days, my sex drive
takes the corners like a spastic ‘81 Datsun
Which is perfect ‘cause
I got game like Pong.
Worse yet, Colecovision
dusty, outdated, and with a shit load
of useless buttons

My get up and go must have
done jetted and stuck me with the check.

Maybe, just maybe
 if I shook the devil horns out my mouth,
took out all the fuck you’s put just one back and
wrapped up in dumb down
I could touch what my mother might call success

Maybe, just  maybe
 if I stopped shouting  at
all the fringe’s reflections of me, maybe
I could be happy

I’ve seen friends hit it so big,
it has splattered my clothes like John F Kennedy’s brains,
back and to the left out, pity party army of one
again
But I’m not bitter 
You can ask any of my guts dead butterflies,
but all their brittle little skeletons will tell you is:

At least we died for a reason

I love my job, aching balls and all of it
If I didn’t, I would’ve gone
full trip twiggy up a clock tower
after the millionth missed meal ago
I may have less than some, 3 hots, a cot, and the
alarm clock’s static reassurance that this day
will have no more or less challenges than the next 
but
I got a lot more than a lot, like this music that
refuses to be my creaking jaw’s secret
for one
second
longer
and shares itself full throttle, damn the honesty
or the hour

When a cigarette is all that’s keeping me going
and 5 twine rope thrown over a crossbeam is
the only thing that could hold my head up,
I just gotta giggle, step down off the chair
and remember
That I
am Hope’s
biggest bitch