119 To the Green Mountain State, Plymouth blues and Appalachian dues keep me awake to know I'm still wanted.
The Grey Shade Orchestra is playing Waltzing Matilda while my thumb plays the fiddle, on beat and on time it will never miss a car.
Stuck in Chelsea, Massachusetts with a noose around my arm I will never make a sound even after the head wound blunted.
Unwanted in this town it sticks by it's name, sickos in Vans and robbers in shame, this isn't for fame.. it's life, an open game.
I got adopted one night by a suicide note, 10 miles outta Boston, 20 pages long and so unclear why I left the boys without sheet music for a switchblade.
The notes spoke of retreat and seclusion, ones that I have battled for way too long, ones that I must put into twos and subtract by fours.
Just to be happier when I drink for being alone and having no use for the Ghost Brigade.
Made it to Burlington three days later, sewing and catching up in City Hall
Park, home bums, wing nuts and cancer, I was approached by three nuns and a choir of whores.
They took me down to the bike trails where we drank Brokers and laughed at the tourists, threw rocks at the lake and talked about the ghosts of streets past.
I told them what I've been through except this blank spot I received sometime back when I realized my kind ship as a human being, maybe I died that day.. maybe I drank too much .. either way it's gone and will never
come back. Like the girls and guys who made me a rebound, like the girls and guys who made me last.
Last in line for the points and smirks last in line to fill the racks.. like the Ghosts of streets past.
They told me truth and lies, only to make me think about the world as one big lie, like a baby in the womb like a shudder to think, I'm catching a memory to sleep well at night.
I awoke alone and broken, not a sip left to roll over for not a reason to open my eyes, the water had risen and sand was everywhere I didn't want it to be.

Drive it Like You Stole IT.

I took the opportunity to get a round and seven more, I drank till I finished writing Amanda and The 4 Month Fight, got a room and met some kids.
They talked about the old sun down town of Portland.. got me intrigued had me very retrieved, like a child like a virgin like a sideways dancer in circles.

We went north on Church Street, Main S.T. became Williston R.D... we merged onto I-89 N and took the VT-78 exit, EXIT 21 toward US-7, We all were lost but we all were found.
At this time I was writing a short story, I was lost in pages and the will to live, Ireland was the driver nothing more nothing less, M.R. Smith was a book in progress while Low Tide was a closet with no doors.
I thought about what they said I thought about what they did for me, born dead.. they told me the future.
I went through three days full of sleep and booze, I'm out of paper and nowhere to choose, so many good towns so many good states I guess its Portland that will leave no trace.
No trace of life or existance, no trace of human expenses.
We made it to Portland three days later, delirious and broken, soft but unspoken, I never wanted to say goodbye.
Whiskey flowing, Junkies dying and harlots lying. Ladies, gents and scabies all around, life was like a knife. It cut deep but not deep enough to make
you turn away, the kind of cut that just pissed you off, made you come back time after time, like your first love asking you to come out and dine, like your first real glass of wine.

We didn't make a dime.

The rest left and I was left there alone, sign in hand and my hat on the ground, it was my What Happens Next? flip hat, she came up to me, book in hand and a glassy glare coming off her glassy eyes pixilated from my glass
of beer. She obviously didn't mind who I was or what I did... she knew me from the Portland Coffee House, and was a fan of my brief spoken word session that I
did one night with Havok and a 5th of Old Crow, especially "When The Line Gives Out".. that was her favorite.

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