10.8.06 Poem by dan hightower

Tangiers sounds good to me, my melancholy repose states silently as those damnable thoughts creep up like fog into a mystic riverbed from where my sustenance now finds pestiferous carcasses upon which to feed, to slither with vermillion eyes through the morass of it all, the goddamned fluttery inhibition, the damned ole tendrils of the last tyme tonguing at my scorned being, the tattered fray of my favourite jeans suddenly exemplifies my salvation, old and in the way, constantly making me trip until my sole is worn thin like skin newly forged to cover the tender remains of a hole, a whole part missing and now in jeopardy of leaking what’s left of me onto this wall holding up my bent back and tired mind, the bricks cold on my shoulder blades heated from the relentless sun slapping my peeling neck over and over, where is my solace, where is my home, which way is the answer or is the answer the way, wayward I am now, careless and callous caressing the emptiness is somehow not as fulfilling as caressing the somethingness, or even the possibility of the somethingness, or hell, at this point I could fall in love with the nothingness, just so long as it has a form, a shape, a dissentious refrain, reformation happens in spite of rather than because of, and it’s because of spite that my reform is halted in the ugly phase, the ugliest phrase I can mutter is “I want…” because it’s irrelevant, my life is dirty and I want the cleanliness of godliness, the sheen of good, to repel the options leading down that path I already know, the ending is the beginning and it begins in me, where it shall end, perhaps I shall end it soon, this morose existence proving nothing, nothing positive for anyone, even the ones who feign positively positive poses from my reposes against shadowy walls today, this day, this day may be the countdown, may be the impetus, the fragile form is brittle today and I am not sure where the strength is anymore, where the down-n-outers gather, where the splendid samsara resides, where is my concentric circle, to which fate have I been found worthy? I am curious and wonder if this to shall pass or if it I who shall…