Chasing Red Balloons.

Look at you.
All smiles and doe-eyed, looking at Ellis Island from a pretty Jersey shoreline.
Heart-bubbling with love and holding red balloons.
Sipping Tequila-lemonades and laughing.
Chewing chocolate turtles.
A heart in your hand that reads like a psalm.

Look at me.
Teary-eyed and silent, riding the commuter rail back to Manhattan from a pretty Jersey “sure”-line.
Heart-breaking with love and chasing red balloons.
Drowning in PBR’s and longing.
Chewing my mouth up.
Tracing hearts in your palms.

Look at the space between us.
No smiles, and holes where our eyes should be.
Heart-blistering with love and popping red balloons.
No liquor but still longing daily.
Mouths sewn shut.
Holes where our hearts should be.

In Response To...

We could talk about the endless gump,
oh sure, oh sure, but today there are simply no words for that.
No single word, it only comes out as poems
for my beautiful, dark haired belle.
She is dancing now, somewhere,
long past the reaches of my mind.
I am drunk and learning how to write.
But I know how to write, so I'm just drunk.
But it still feels beautiful to know that there is life out there
for a girl like her.
Filled with enough food & warmth to make even the loneliest feel at home.
She doesn't even try.
She doesn't need to.

The tunnels are flooding, fuck.
Teachers are slipping notes to students, "fuck?"
and I am drunk and starving.
I have .50 cents in my pocket, but it is nice to know now that she is well.
That even in the shitty process of being awoken
that there is whistling outside my door.
So when you think of me, fetal on the dorm floor,
know I'm thinking of you, safe and warm.

Even Bandini would be sick
"Please man, she's just one girl!"
Yes, but she's a tangerine, John.
She is every favorite memory from your childhood wrapped in orange.
She is tangible, yes I felt it once.
I felt more than that.
I felt HEARTBEATS and I felt madly in love.
I felt it all and then I let it go.
My 2 quarters on a postage just so she could know.

But Arturo, does it ever get better? Dogs die in hot cars all the time
so is that where I should sleep?
And does Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" apply to a kid like me?
I don't feel I'm alone when I get nervous with trains approaching,
and it's the same with how I feel walking towards the edge of a building.
Not scared that anything will happen, but knowing something could.
I could so easily jump in front of, or off of it all.
And maybe we all feel that way sometimes.
There is a tightness in the chest as the wind blows past.
But she is dancing & smiling still,
and today that is enough.

Dizzy.

John, do you remember the money we would scrape
to get the most we could?
I'll tell you now,
I haven't seen such sick desperation in quite some time.
But here I am.
And it was hard to say "I'll never drink M.D. 20/20 again"
knowing full well it's $2.99 for a 750.
Oh, how we stumbled!
Not enough for food,
but enough to keep our guts burning.

In our facedown months.
In our tired hearts.
In a loneliness that would have killed me if you weren't there.

John, you were just as bad an influence to me as I was to you.
We're still wrapped around the bowl, let's not get confused here.
But my college professor is working this thanksgiving
because he has "so much to catch up on."
It seems everyone we know is playing "catch up".

Meanwhile, I know Mad Dog is still $2.99 (INCLUDING TAX!)
Who is the sick bastard who did this to us?
They make Disneyland unaffordable and keep
MAD DOG AT $2.99!
It puts us right where they want us-
drunk and poor.
It's so expensive to be sober and happy
and so easy to stay drunk and poor.

What are we supposed to do?
How do we save enough to get out of this mess?

New

Broke as fuck,
but always managing to get my half for the rack.
Drunk, dumb, and distant-
stumbling towards sunset
and the things I've kept in my horizon.
It's easier to always want something than just get it.


Oh, I have dabbled in love (or was it just useless?)
but that killed the "hunt".
They give, but not enough.
Most get NERVOUS and lie.
She wanted "Truth" tattooed on her bottom lip
while I knew she had fake front teeth.
If that's not a metaphor, I don't know what is.
But I'm still skipping stones & class,
and both keep my mind off it all.
What I had and "lost" (YEAH RIGHT!)
I gained more in my "loss" than most gain
staying tongue-tied to some toothless liar.
But I actually feel sorry for the new guy.
No hard feelings?
Man, your girl calls drunk,
tries to assemble the patchwork,
fails,
and has the nerve to crawl back into your bed.

Back to the jungle.
I was born hungry and I'm still starving.

The Secret To Happiness.

Listen, love, and listen good.
I'm only gonna say this once,
so hear me out.
...I figured out the secret!
Ready?

STAY DRUNK.

That's right! Stay drunk!
Nobody was looking at me,
and right when I noticed,
I figured it out.
Get drunk off work.
Get drunk off your friends.
Get drunk off a girl, off love,
off the Italian cold-cut you got that day.
Get drunk off your rot-gut whiskey or wine (depending on preference).
Get drunk off a fucking book if you want,
or maybe even this poem.
Get it, and keep it.

But listen, love, and this is the most important part.
NEVER get shit-faced.
You'll get sick of it, or just sick (believe me).
Stay drunk on it all long enough to keep interested.
Too much will keep you in bed, or worse, the bathroom floor.
Anyways, love what you're doing.
Keep the taste in the back of your mouth when things get rough,
and hide an extra bottle if you need to.
Keep it interesting.
Keep the nervousness in your stomach.
And never get used to it.
The butterflies, friend, they don't come to just anybody.

When Everything Else Fails...

And it felt great then, to be outside Boston
with a pretty lady on my arm.
Giggling about the absurdity of it all,
how useless college and maybe just life seemed.
Oh! Oh! and her hair!
Holding it, smelling it, and LOVING IT
as we kiss on full-beds.

I have spent too much money in the wishing-well
to let it go.
There is love! It is everywhere I look today!
I graduated highschool and never learned a thing
but found what I wanted just beneath my skin.
When everything else fails, just fail with it.
It will all get better.
And we don't have to lock fingers, we can just hold hands.
You can stand by my side and be proud of your friend.

Drink and Conversation.

I'm like my father in the way our silence works
in dealing with the women in our lives.
I'm like him in more ways than this, but
this is the most notable.
I'm not too like my mother, except in looks and stubbornness.
I'm okay with this.

I will say I have it in me.
It is stronger than the Irish Whiskey
that's been running through me since birth.
I have bits & pieces of them and I see it sometimes.
They are fighters though, that's the real difference.
My laziness will kill me.
I've never needed too much more than
a handle of dirty
(or 20 of Busch Light bottles)
((or the 4 liter of Carlos Rossi, 13%))
and a nice person to talk to about it all.
That's really all I've ever wanted to make me happy.

That,
and maybe doing it in a different place every once in awhile.
I guess that's sad.
I don't remember what I liked before that.
I can fumble around on the board
or with the pen
to seem like I have some drive.
But Mom & Dad,
it's really the bottle and conversation I want.
It makes it come out easier.
It makes life easier to take.
On my back, drunk and talking about the clouds with her.