the man at the bar keeps telling me to slow down. to think about my health. to think about tomorrow.

i don’t have a tomorrow. i have this drink and the next one and the one after that.

the world is a bad joke told by a bad comedian to a half-dead audience and i’m somewhere in the back row laughing at the wrong parts.

i drink. i write. i fuck things up and then i fix them and then i fuck them up again. that’s the whole show.

if you stand in my way i’ll walk through you. not because i want to — because i can’t see anything anymore through the cigarette smoke and the cheap whiskey and the years.

i was born this way. a small monster in a small room with a typewriter that still works and a heart that still works and not much else.

it’s enough. it’s always been enough.

they tell me to be careful. to plan. to save. to wait.

what the hell are they saving for? the cemetery doesn’t take credit cards. the worms don’t ask for a 401k. the dirt doesn’t care how much you put away.

i watched my old man work forty years for a gold watch that stopped working two months after he got it. he died in a chair watching the news. nobody cried. not really.

not me.

i’ll spend the last twenty in my pocket on cheap wine and a horse that looks tired in the third race.

i’ll write poems nobody reads in rooms nobody visits.

i’ll sleep with women who’ll forget my name by morning and i’ll forget theirs by noon and we’ll call it even.

safety is a small box. most men crawl into it willingly and call it living.

me? i’ll take the chaos. i’ll take the bad bets. i’ll take the hangovers and the empty pockets and the women yelling through closed doors.

at least when i go down i’ll go down loud.

i don’t trust this world and i never have.

i was eight years old when i figured out the game was crooked. my old man hit me and called it love. the priest told me god watches and called it hope. the teacher gave me an F and called it discipline.

bullshit. all of it.

so i started drinking early and i started writing early and i learned not to expect a goddamn thing from a goddamn place.

the world is a stage, sure. but it’s a bad stage. the lights flicker. the actors forget their lines. the audience is drunk and half asleep and the playwright walked out hours ago.

every time something good happens the universe sends a bill. i pay it. i keep paying it.

i’ve seen women leave in the middle of the night without their shoes. i’ve seen friends die on the way to the bathroom. i’ve seen money come and money go and i still can’t keep my shoes tied.

but here’s the thing —

i show up.

i show up to the typewriter at 2 in the morning with a cigarette and a glass of something and i hammer the keys like i mean it. because i do.

the world is fake. the world is hostile. the world is a bad poem written by a drunk god.

so what.

i’m a drunk too. and i write better poems than him.

i used to think love was the answer.

then a woman with hair like burnt copper took my last forty bucks and my dignity and my dog and left a note that said “you’re not even trying.”

i was trying. i just wasn’t trying the way she wanted me to.

after that i quit thinking love was anything.

now i sit here. 3 a.m. half-bottle of whiskey on the desk. typewriter that i bought used from a man in pasadena who said it belonged to a real writer.

it does now.

i don’t want a porsche. well — maybe i do. yellow paint. loud as a bad mood. but only on tuesdays. the rest of the week i’m fine with the bus.

i don’t want a million dollars. i want enough to keep the lights on and the bottle full and the landlord on the other side of the door.

people gossip. people laugh. people roll their eyes. let them.

while they talk i write. while they sleep i write. while they go to weddings and family dinners and christmas parties i write.

it’s not noble. it’s not heroic. it’s just what’s left when you’ve burned everything else to the ground and the ash won’t blow away.

the rest can go.

i’ve got the typewriter. i’ve got the bottle. i’ve got the dark window and the hum of the refrigerator and the slow ticking of a clock that won’t quit.

it’s enough.

it’s always been enough.