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.

The Wine Of The Road

3 hours at home after a week on the road
and I'm ready to do it all again.
Keeping my bag packed and plan set
Keeping life just distant enough so it can't touch me.
Keeping the irish whiskey in my veins.
Upstate New York good god let's fucking do it.
Move on, over and out.
I am drunk off the wine of the road.
The couches they've been good, yes,
the guest beds and beds shared, yes,
drunk off all of this and still drinking, yes.
The memories are fading,
living isn't TOO too hard
and Avah is here.
I hear her name blow in from the south
on the cold wind as it whips by my ex-lovers house.
Where is she tonight?
Where did it go?
Is life good yet, or did The Aeroplane crash into The Sea?
They don't get it, they never have or will.
The road brings me closer to you
The wine brings you closer to me.
2 bodies fumbling, fighting for a feeling.
"We can get it back!"

You and me, you crazy horse, we're going places.
We're gonna do it all over again.

She's gone.

I would NEVER want to live forever, I explained,
as I would see everyone else die.
my lovers,
my brother and sisters,
my children,
my childrens children.

Watching them grow up and slowly down again and then
all of them, put into the dirt
headstones like flowers.
headstones like we never got out of here.

Everyone else gets out, as my life slows to its stop.
Never thinking I'd end up living and dying in the same place,
it clicks like a camera.
Or the memory of your shoes walking down the hallway toward the door.

It's really gone this time.

Friend, I could jump into the Atlantic and no one would ever hear from me again.
The ground is crumbling beneath us, it already looks as though GOD
may have been clawing at the hillside to reach us, as I think-


I need to get out of here, or we'll end up drunk for another 3 years.
I know you have been crawling in and out of bed with your new lovers
I know that they're probably better than me
in life and looks.
Meanwhile
I can't live or look at you.
It's really gone this time:
the feeling of splendidness
the orange days.
the gigantic stumbling of us towards the beat-up farmhouse.
I hope you find what you're looking for.
I tried.
But I never want to hear from you again.

Be A Man (roses)

I fucked up.
I tried to be a gentleman, paying for your cab back,
maybe holding doors once in awhile
but there's much more to it than that.
It's about BEING a man every once in awhile.
It's about not drinking
not taking drugs.
I'm a coward, I'm such a coward.
I'm hiding from you and from myself and from the only people who care if I live or die.
I'm scaring everyone and I can't stop I can't stop, I can't stop.
I'm sorry but it's the only thing that keeps her away from me.
I've made more than my fair share of mistakes but
I would have never dreamed i could have hurt you making them.
I built this room of bullshit around myself
and it's all caving in at the same time.
I can't stop until it stops hurting
and it won't stop hurting until I stop.