It's really been quite the ride

Not to sound so defeated,

Sorry Ma, but I tried.

We were placed here to do

Something God can't decide

So like ducks in a pond

We drift tethered to Time.

35, Still alive,

With a thorn in my side.

These decrepit old bones

Struggle catching a stride.

While the taxes of youth

Catch up quicker each time.

All these years chasing dreams

But can't sleep through the night. ..

35, still alive:

Keep it mostly inside,

Honest words are too harsh

So I'll nursery rhyme,

And placate my sadness

For the people in line,

Hold the door for a stranger

But close my mouth when I smile.

35. still alive.

Death's not ours to decide.

I've checked out once or twice,

But I'll be here awhile.

A ripe age once was this,

I should soak up the time.

It's not that I'm ungrateful,

Truth is, I'm just tired.

35 still alive,

Like to call it a wrap...

Don't love much of anything

'cept for my cat.

Think I've held enough heavy today

For a nap

But somehow I still feel

Too guilty for that.

35. Still alive...

Guess it won't be so bad...

Should I find myself ancient

With wits still intact.

But mostly I rise

To this cold sense of dread

Like a blanket that's

Strapping me down to my bed.

35. Still alive.....

Guess I'll put on my pants....

There's an ape on my back

But this monkey can dance!

Though his methods

Are commonly misunderstood,

Every once in a while

He coughs up something good.

35, still alive,

And I'm having a ball,

The people I love

Still don't know me at all.

I've so much to live for

and that much is true,

Another thirty-five years

to feel just like I do.

35, still alive.

I hear it only gets worse.

I don't mean to sound dark,

I was born with this curse.

But it doesn't sound

Nearly as morbid to me,

It just sounds just like a long quiet ride

In a Hearse.

35. Still alive....

It's just hard to have heart.

I know I'm not the only one

falling apart.

I know there's so many ways

It could be worse than this

And somehow that makes it feel worse

Than it is.

35 still alive,

But who carries the weight?

And how come the work

never feels like it pays?

Sometimes I know

I'm the one in the way,

But nobody else

Knows my mountain like me.

35, still alive,

What's the reason for more?

When each days made to hurt us

Much worse than before,

We scrape to carve out

A small place to feel whole,

While we reach for a purpose

We still can't afford.

35 still alive:

Another day above ground.

Another day to pack all this

Old luggage around,

It's funny they say

"That's a lot to unpack"

Turns out some things we say

aren't meant to take back.

35 Still alive,

Another day in the boots.

They've walked me all over this town

I'd assume,

We've wandered our way

through each dark Greasy Spoon

But they're heavier

Every next day around noon.

35. Still alive.

Just day in the life

Held this whole room together

More than just once or twice

Kept a guy off the ledge

And for once, wasn't me!

Now I've seen enough life

For one lifetime, I think.

35. still alive;

Guess you can't save 'em all.

Every now and then Someone's

Gotta take the ol' fall.

And it seems a long way

But it happens so fast....

Turns out some will have love

Or choose nothing at all.

35 Still alive:

We're the ones left behind,

The one's buying your drink

Once you've spent your last dime.

The one's singing your songs

From this world to the next

So you don't feel so alone

As you did when you left.

35. Still alive.

I won't do that to you.

I've had thirty five years

to think all of it through.

And I never found pleasure

In breaking a heart,

So I'll patch mine together

Once more for the troops.

35. Still alive:

Another year in the books

And it's really not always

as bad as it looks.

I'll shake off the damage

as best as I can

And I'll get myself put back

together again.

35 still alive.

Though we've lost some good folks,

I carry them with me

Each place that I go,

In my small sacred objects

And totems alike,

Hope they might help me see

Every time I lose sight.

35 still alive.

Thought that I wouldn't be,

If you knew what I know

Then you'd know what I mean,

But I've earned enough luck

To protect me thus far,

Think I'll waste it on

Drowning my day at the bar.

35. Still alive!

I was meant for big things!

At least, that's what they told

Gifted children like me,

But most days I wake up

Just a regular guy,

Pissed off that I'm not

living up to the hype.

35. Still alive,

I'm the talk of the town,

Either place "best in show"

Or the "worst all-around"

Maybe I ought to think

About hangin' it up

But then how would I live

With whatever was left?

35, Still Alive....

Guess I fucked up last time.

Got ahead for a minute,

Then, fell back behind.

I'd be a stray dog

If a grave were a tail

Now I've run myself 'round

To the end of the trail.

35 still alive.

I should clean up my act.

Thought by now I'd be worth

Some more Money than that.

Dug a pretty good hole

In between every check,

Good thing when I go

There won't be nothin' left.

35, still alive,

But I don't mean to gripe,

I just really thought that

There'd be more to this life,

Than a task to complete,

or a thing you can buy,

or a debt to pay off

by the time that you die.

35 still alive,

Feel like taking a drive.

this place wants to kill me,

can't believe I survived.

Made it thirty-five years

And have nothing to show,

Not sure I can take

Living thirty-five more.

35 still alive.

And I'm lucky I am,

but there's something still

Chafing me now and again,

So I feed my two wolves

While I'm counting my sheep,

In hopes they'll devour

the damn thing that eats me.

35 still alive.

Make it all go away...

Every time that I left though,

I wished that I'd stayed...

I met grandpa death

Once or twice you could say,

Hell, we even shook hands

But it wasn't my day.

35 still alive,

Like a hole in a tooth.

Now I'm out of the red

but I don't leave the blue.

Still limping my way

Towards the top of the heap,

With a lot more to chew on

and less I can eat.

35 still alive.

Thought it might be my year.

There's got to be something else

Keeping me here,

Besides blood in the sink

And the grit on the mirror

Where I watch myself fade

And one day disappear.

35. Still alive

But where'd all of it go?

I have stop-motion mem'rys

Like angels in snow.

You can't turn back a clock

With some words on a page

And a memory just doesn't

Buy much nowadays.

35. Still alive.

Would I do it again?

Truth is, I wouldn't be here

If not for my friends,

And I'd trade the whole world

With a wide ocean view

To go back to the moments.

I met each of you.

35. Still alive.

Though it could be our last

Know that I'd never leave you

Without one parting glass.

And a poem about

hanging on to our peace

In world that's promised us nothing

But grief.

35. still alive.

It's my birthday today....

If only I had

something better to say,

What happens from here,

I'll leave up to the fates:

What the tide wants to bring...

What the tide wants to take.

It's crazy to me that fans or media personalities will react so adamantly to a fight promo or post fight conference and say something about how "unprofessional" this guy is over something he said or because he dropped the ball answering a question or not handling a topic more sensitively,

Right after they finished getting punched in the face for 30 minutes or so.

He's a professional fighter, not a public speaker.

Did he show up and do his job?

Now you're grilling him about the performance he puts on after he clocked out?

Do you think this guy became a world class fighter because he was the nicest guy in school and he was really good at math?

No, they're highly specialized athletes who worked their whole life to do one thing really, really well and usually it's the one thing they were good at very early on,

Everything else is a secondary. Floyd Mayweather's probably never even made himself a sandwich.

So People freak out when a professional basketball player or a musician gets a DUI or Tiger Woods cheats on his wife, sure these aren't good examples to emulate, but people have lives separate from their careers that they fuck up like the rest of us. And yet somehow these things still are supposed to reflect on your career.

To err is human.

Every now and then

There's that 1 highly specialized individual that's the best in the world at what they do; can also be really good parent, cook a great steak, have a fucking pilot's licence, be a certified deep sea diver, speak multiple languages and also happens to know a lot about quantum physics and speaks at the UN on climate change on the weekend...

But they're 1 in 7 billion.

And one of the worst things the Internet has done to us is to make us think that it's even remotely rational to think that any one person that's striving to be the best at what they're specialized to do is supposed to be an upstanding, perfect member of society in more than one way

Let alone every way,

Every. Single. Day.

When was the last time your degenerate ass was the best in your class for a day and managed to nail every single action and interaction following that for a year or a decade? ......... Never

Because that's not normal...

It's not even human.

But there is a vision being broadcasted to us of a society where each one of us is this perfectly mechanized, ripped and sexy, fiercely polite, culturally savvy, average joe super genius that's wired to save the world, achieve their dreams, buy a mansion, brush your teeth love your neighbor and raise a family in this fucking mess.

And It's. Not. Attainable.

If you're tenacious, steadfast, tedious and unwavering, you might achieve your feat of a lifetime. But you only get ONE.

You could be the only person to swim around the entire world,

And you'd be remembered for that forever,

but that's the thing you'd be remembered for.

And when you crawled out of the ocean after swimming some 24,401 miles (thanks Google)

You'd face a sea of eager microphones dying to hear your thoughts.

And I'd be surprised if you didn't say something like "TIRED."

Or "I just felt like, Swimming"

Or "get the fuck out of my face, I need a cheeseburger."

If you're motivated to be a highly functional, highly specialized individual, remember not to trust this image of the world the Internet is painting for you.

We were wired to hunt and gather in very small groups,

with very little extra between us and our own survival.

It took thousands of years to learn to live together in a metropolis.

Yet we demand Utopia.

You're a fucking ape, it's a miracle you can drive a motor vehicle.

And you're here. Right now.

On the hottest days

In the end of summer,

Back when we lived in the city,

My mother used to make blackberry pie.

She'd give my brother and I

A white construction bucket

And send us into the brambles

Outside of our apartment building,

Where we could hardly hear

The screaming commuters

Suffering the crowded I5 corridor

Over our own childish anticipation.

We'd picked enough berries by now

That we knew which ones were ready

By the color and feel of 'em,

And we were tough kids...

Knowing there was a pie to be had,

We didn't mind grabbing a handful

Of thorny vines to get to the good ones.

We'd pluck one plump blackberry

And drop it into the bucket,

Then one more, that was too purdy for droppin'

So we'd eat that one...

And by the time our Little hands were covered in pin pricks,

And our mouths

were stained in berry juice,

We'd stumble back to the apartment

In our clown makeup

And dirty T shirts,

And drop a bucket of berries on the floor

For my mother

Like we'd just come home from

a 9 to 5...

I'd wash the blood off my hands

And sit patiently in a chair near the kitchen

And watch her mix the flour and roll the dough, and mash all those perfect berries into a slurry,

Pour it all in a pan,

And slide it into the oven,

And I swear

Every poor kid in the building

Got jealous when they smelled what was comin' from our kitchen. . .

After a time,

She'd pull a hard-earned pie from the oven

And my brother and I would watch the steam pourin' of it,

Knowing it'd hurt just as bad as pickin all those berries to take a bite,

And as much as we wanted to dig into that pan

Despite burning our dirty fingers,

We knew this pie was worth the wait.

These days,

I've traded blackberry pie

For cheap wine,

Even though

I know that the best things take time,

Like forgiveness,

Because everything tastes better

Knowing you worked for it

Now, my brother and I

Tend to bond over decent whiskey

And we're more likely

to bloody our fingers

On guitars named after women,

And I can't remember the last time

I ate a slice of pie,

'cause they never look quite the same

In a glass case,

At some roadside diner,

Where a lot of lonely people

Look at them in passing

Imagining their childhoods.

And a glass of whiskey

Will never quite look like my mother in an apron,

But sometimes

It does look like my brother

Grinning ear to ear,

And though

It won't make up for the

Bloody fingertips,

Sometimes,

It reminds me

That my mother

Used to make

Blackberry pie.

-Johnny Bourbon.

Some Choose

The path of commerce,

The pursuit of commodity

And monetary gain,

Some Choose

The path of procreation,

The pursuit of improving

Or undoing

The doctrines of our parents,

I Have Chosen

The path of Poetry,

The pursuit of understanding

The world of my birth,

To burn like the Sun

In life,

And glow like the Moon

In death.

-Johnny Bourbon

I watch them

In the winter

Falling for love

In the whitewash

Cozy by the fireplace

Bookmarking moments

Cataloging their generosity

Buying new pets

And lovers

I see them

Getting anxious for proposals

Waiting for the right Snow-lit moment

That will make the perfect photograph

They're getting excited

For new jobs

And new boots

and scarf weather

They bake

And make holiday drinks

And seem to like everything....

They like the long winter nights

The snow days

And keepsakes

They like the company

And the chaos

They even like eachother...

And I like

Day old wine

In the windowsill

Fresh cigarettes

On the nightstand

And writing naked in my bed

At 1 o'clock

On a Tuesday

I've written nearly a hundred

songs

That were never meant to leave my bedroom,

I picked at the wounds

To find the perfect words,

And brutishly mashed them over simple chords

A thousand times over,

To prepare them for the judgement of being seen for the first time,

And when they had legs enough to stand,

I'd hold them by the bridle,

Waiting for the perfect person,

In the perfect moment,

That may have needed those words as much as I did. . .

And when I played the song,

I felt it leave me,

Like a neighborhood cat that was never really mine,

Destined to leap from the kitchen window

After regaining it's strength,

To find someone

Who needed the company

More than I did. . .

And in those cases,

I'd never play that song again,

Realizing that it had always belonged to someone else,

And that I was only meant

To deliver those words

To the moment

In which they'd live forever.

People like James remind me

Of that simple truth

I so often forget,

That an entire life

Lived in a single moment

Is a life well lived.

And the best we can give to a moment,

Is our unrelenting affection,

Before we let it loose,

To go wherever a memory goes

Once it's left us.

And we may chase the feeling it leaves behind,

Like a farm dog

beneath a murder of crows,

But we should all be so

To have something to chase.

- Johnny Bourbon

It's December 1st

And it's warm enough outside to break a sweat,

Lakes, rivers, and reservoirs are seeing all time lows, chronic drought is our new reality,

Meanwhile, Facebook is building a virtual world for you to live in,

where "connecting with people," as Zuckerberg puts it, is the purpose of its inception, considering that soon the world governments won't allow you to leave your house over fears of contracting a virus that your already immune to dying from. But why would you need to go outside anyway?

Automation has already made most of your jobs obsolete, and the rest of you can work remotely,

(here's where the term essential workers comes back into play: those who can do the only things the robots can't..)

Your life support supplies (essentials) can be delivered by Amazon,

And the need for any other life enhancing

Commodity becomes obsolete as well, considering you won't be leaving the house or having company over..

Private property becomes obsolete.

(As does the need for actual privacy.)

You'll opt instead to earn and spend your time, and your "credits"

In the metaverse, on virtual commodities, such as clothes for your avatar, or paintings for your virtual living space that can be traded, "same as cash" or snatched away without warning by the creators of the metaverse, under the jurisdiction of a singular world government.. or even a random hacker.

You'll be sad that the imaginary things you worked for have suddenly vanished,

But it won't last considering You'll be able to press a button and feel any way you want to through the use of endorphin altering stimulant gas pumped in through your new VR headset feeding tube.

Just 10 credits for slightly happy!!

12 for slightly happier...

25 for ecstacy... (short-lived)

50 for pure joy

150 for orgasm...

( if you can afford it. )

For the right amount of virtual money, anything is possible! We become consumed by the pursuit of acquiring enough credits to experience every obscure sex act and achieving god-like super powers.

While you were busy in your imaginary world, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have finally merged to form Skynet.

(And by the way, there are biological robots being built right now using stem cells from amphibians, and they're capable of reproducing.)

Come to think of it, the entire world is already fully functioning in the new virtual one,

Why would all of you biological meat sacks need so much space?

Whole houses and neglected lawns wasting all those resources just for you to jack into the metaverse...

Humans are then shuffled into temperature stable boxlike apartments with high speed internet connections, wireless VR headsets and a series of tubes for their faces and butts.

Their fragile biological structures couldn't withstand the extreme heat outside anyway.. global warming and years of constant drought have fuelled megafires, thus making the air unbreathable without the use of filters.

Humans are kept pacified

With the only things that mattered to them in the first place, the need to buy and sell commodities for the sake of advancing toward an enviable summit of perceived accomplishment.

A need completely met and surpassed in the virtual world.

"We have created everything you need and more," robot Jeff ZuckerBorg smirks.

The Humans are satisfied.

Those that have the necessary "social" skills to thrive in the virtual universe at least.

Their bodies remain plugged in to the grid to produce electromagnetic currents which have been found to be intrinsically connected to the function of the planet

And thus vital for earth and for the machines to survive.

Something tells me, we all know what happens next.

Enjoy the REAL world while you can folks... we may not be allowed to for long.

Blue is the only color that matters.

Outside of this

There is only blackness,

To which, my hands reach into

And are greeted

By nothing.

There is no one waiting out there.

I am the angriest man I know.

So angry,

My stomach is rotting from the inside.

So angry,

I crumble under the weight of kindness.

So angry,

That silence feels like a brick

In the back of my head,

And sincerity

Feels hostile.

Blue is the only color that matters.

Inside of it

There is stillness,

Loneliness,

And honesty;

The only barrier

Between me

And pitch black.

The rain falls on the tin roof

To remind me of the season,

With it comes change.

Everything changes.

I think I can change, but all I really know

Is that some changes require attention,

While others, require destruction

And the rain doesn’t know the difference.

One day, it will get so heavy

That it falls through the earth;

Right through our houses

And cars,

Right through our hearts

And our minds,

Through our every accomplishment

And all of our regrets,

Through our long goodbyes,

And scripted endings,

Straight through the other side of the world

And into the void,

Where our story

Has never been told

At all.

Some things don’t deserve a rewrite.

In the noise of my childhood mind

I had a panoramic view

Of what the world was.

I wanted a father

Like a mountain range,

A mother like soft earth,

A god that payed attention to me.

I wanted dreams to achieve,

And adventures to have,

places to explore,

And a love that would never leave me.

I was so naive.

Lots of things

Are buried here

In the salty absence

In the drowning heat.

The Native Children

Hiding in the cracks

Between the eras

The devils in their dens

Below the crackled crust

The hoof beats

Of the long dead stampedes

Beneath the dry soles

Of the 20th century...

The remnants of the sea

Are buried here

The shattered bits

Of the giant saltwater snail’s shell

Along with the beak of Davy Jones’

leviathan

Poseidon’s scepter

Laid below

The fossilized footprints

Of giants and Pharaohs...

The remnants of freedom

Are buried here

Well-traveled charred hardwood bits

Hidden at the foot of a taproot

A lonely spur

And a severed bootstrap

In the shade

Of the red rocks

The sun-bleached hide

And the horseshoe

By the dry river bed

The hardened wagon trenches

Along the canyon

The Aztec gold

In the Cavern

The medicine wheel

Prominently left alone

To the 6 portals of heaven...

The remnants of love

Are buried here

With rattlesnake bone

And Clovis point

A shovel

A tattered dress

A revolver

And last words whispered

That echo softly still

Through the walls

Of the towering Mesas...

Lots of things

Are buried here.

Three worlds before our own.

The rise and fall of civilization.

The genocide of the children of Atlantis.

The death of frontier hope

Under the boots of Henry Ford.

The gold fever broke

Before the eyes of J.P. Morgan.

The unachieved dreams

Of the American Revolution.

All of them

Preserved perfectly here

In a land

That knows no time

Humming gently beneath

A crystal blanket

Beating and pulsing

With the drums

Of the Anasazi

Waiting for something

That nobody knows

In a silence

So perfect

You can hear it.