No science in politics and no art to war.  No instructions for life or time for truth in the countdown to extinction. Not enough whiskey to shoulder the coldness of humanity. Nor enough coldness to freeze the indifferent toxins of exploitation. What began as the emperor’s new clothes has morphed into the world’s biggest nudist colony.

Because the world is aflame and everyone is lying for money, I take to my Walkman and a handle of bourbon. We’re all pushing each other around until it comes time to ask for a helping hand.  The lucky should be thankful to find loyalty. Amos says, if the market is guided by an invisible hand, that hand is surely attached to an invisible douchebag.

Mountainside bromides. Background of total black night.  Drinking without thinking about the amount of cans filling these construction bags. Truth is, I need more than 5 minutes between jobs to write; I need a patron, some coin, some advantage.  Something. And yet something in a David Bowie melody could come forth and grip me; alcohol could warm me, Aladdin Sane would try to warn me, but I’d ignore the narrative for just a few minutes of feeling.

I once had a tan satchel and within it, the means to nourish myself: water, granola, journal, camera, bandanna.  A plain tin flask filled with whiskey or brandy. Chug chug chug, pick up my stuff, keep moving.  Northern Liberties. There were homeless people everywhere and I knew all of their names. I had invented them myself on the bus headed into New Jersey.

You can hear the consanguinity of life through a seashell or the heartbeat of an alpaca, but you can’t ignore the ongoing history of competition among all things fighting merely to exist.  There’s a little bit of poetry in it, and lots of blood. Somewhere in the combustion we impose our love and hate onto unassuming things. We impose morality where we discern cruelty, seeking an otherwise unattainable divinity through what we call ‘compassion’. But in the end, the War rages forward, silently minding the eyes of the dreaming saints, our drunken eventides, these sleepy eyes, weeping towards eternity, ever-aglow for tomorrow with glorious visions of love and epiphany.