If you invite the demons, they will come.

Let's say; it's was a week from Halloween, set the scene, I am facing the holiday season for the twenty second time this year and I am leaving everything I accumulated in the gutter. The gutter don't care if and why we are all sleeping so needlessly alone. No, there's only the cocaine blues and pills, there's only the prescriptions to fill down there. We are bad habits and the gutter don't care. Against the backdrop of shit and piss and spray paint, you'll find the slow burners, out all night, ever inviting the demons. I could never pace a bottle in the face of my demons, and in turn I burnt out fast what I had and here I am alone on all Hallows' eve, working through the holidays again this year, repenting for my sins and understanding: just as there's the loneliness and demons that only live in our heads, there's the loneliness and demons we find in our beds, there's also a loneliness that only lives in the southwest. Yes, we are carrying the fire and it's killing us.

I will speak on your behalf and sign your name.

Pick me up softly, I don't know the shape that I'm in
I dropped through the windows and down through the buildings
And up to the front door again
There was a gunfight out in the moonlight
To settle the matters at hand
So pick me up stranger, pick me up softly
I don't know the shape that I'm in
And I did my best with my time in the West
And I tried not to leave anyone in distress
And I have stood tall yeah and I never lied
That's a lie
But I surely tried
To do everything I could do right
Pick me up softly, I don't know how much I've been hurt
One bullet missed me, the other one kissed me
And left me to die in the dirt
They killed every last man and shot down my Suzanne
It's over whatever it's worth
So pick me up stranger, pick me up softly
I don't know how much I've been hurt
Pick me up softly, I don't know long I have left
Oh I am not hurtin', but death is a-certain
There's a bullet that lays in my chest
I'm flooded with memories and people and sweet dreams
And words to my favourite songs
And I'll buy the last round if you lay my head down
And sing one for me when I'm gone


****


Some days I'm too drunk to see a damn thing and on afternoons like this I wake up sick and tired of getting fucked up all alone in this tired city. Then, after looking around the room to try and find my friends, I start feeling fainter as the thick layer of patience they front gets more disorienting.
..for a while I slept through to the end of some storm from the north and I had the strength and courage to dream. I slept furiously. Now it's the reoccurring nightmare when I wake up from a dream in which I was trying harder than you'll ever know to fight off gravity...but it always got the best of me.
..this is my flood and though I suppose it's inevitable that I drown in it, my hand will struggle to tighten the weak riggings of this shitty sailboat, less a ship. I can vaguely visualise the perfect waves on the day that my trail and tribulation slips out from under me.
A friend once said, "If you have the patience...dig a little deeper. You will find that there is more to everything that your world has to offer." but it's hard as hell to find that kind of optimism sailing in the dimples of a sad, stormy sea. Not that it matters all that much anyway because after-all we will all be gone one day. Not now, not then and not later...but one day.