2:45am (Pacific Standard Time)

How much credence to give a late night text message?  Lubricated by long days and long islands, how well can truth swim?  I admire it skeptically.  It appears tranquil but rattles so gently.  Neon signs of trouble.  I’ve learned from the moth and the electrified light.  I’ve always had a kamikaze spirit.  

2:49am (PST)

A minute or an eternity.  I’m not afraid of the weight of your world.  Let it flatten me happy.

3:11am (PST)

Carved by cupid.  Skinned and pinned down like a display butterfly.  Filleted heart held to the heavens.  A sacrifice.  Slain by arrows.  Neck slit, drained blood on temple steps.  Red war paint.  Dissolved by maggots.  Conquered by love. 

3:43am (PST)

Out of beer.  Here.  Allusions of grandeur.  Confusions of you.  Coded messages, encrypted heart.  Locked phones and wandering eyes. Look at us.  Groping for wholeness.  Lost fools.  Faulty foundation, built in floodplains.  Not afraid to get wet.  Encouraging the rain with open arms.  Built in badlands, born to bring it.  Before beauty comes wreckage.  Sometime it returns again.

4:01am (PST)

It’s funny when you stop being afraid of becoming the worst thing you can imagine.  All the fears dissolve.  Am I good enough?  Am I too fat or too naive or too incompetent?  Yes.  When you become the monster, the answer is always yes.  Writing becomes easy.  A process of bloodletting.  A warm elixir to coax the life-source from your veins.  The truth is as bad and as good as you can tell it.  All you have to remember is to tell the truth.  Honesty is an abject task for a broken spirit.  There’s a tendency to hide.  Shield yourself behind pretty pictures.  Create grand illusions, move through them awkwardly.

Acceptance, in many cases, is a necessary step.  Bow to the mountain ahead of you.  The crashing weight of the world on weak shoulders.  There’s no mercy to ask for, none to be given.  The footprints at the bottom of the hole look familiar.  They’re mine.  They indicate a desire to dig deeper.  A good deep place for a beast to rest.