Chrissy cranked up the radio with one swift twist of her fingers and let angsty lyrics and devastating riffs fill the car and drown out the other cars on interstate 89....

I was nose deep in Jack Keroac’s “Book of Blues,” when I heard the scraping bang. I snapped my head up, as did every other person in the library, to see clouds of dark smoke clawing at the window.

Eyes were widened and met one another with the same question strewn across their faces: what the fuck? I looked to the librarian’s desk just as she was hanging up the phone receiver.

“Two cars crashed ...

Sturdy steps for the most part

Slows down and speeds up

At its best

Flutters like a hummingbird

Shatters like glass

Little shards fight to keep

Their head above blood...

I took a long drag off of my Maverick, noticing the thick dirt under my fingernails, which was getting bad even for me. I flicked my cigarette a few feet in front of me and wiped my hands on my equally as dirty jeans, fully knowing that action wouldn’t do fuck all. I reached into my pocket, glanced in all directions to make sure no one had followed me under the bridge, and started counting the mon...

I couldn’t see shit, but I could smell the rotten bastard on the upper deck—sour sweat, vomit, piss— a punch of cheap rum, that when mixed with the moldy salt air, almost knocked the wind out of me....

Memories

Translucent as water, empty

as my bank account

salty as the Dead Sea.

Ghosts

Slamming doors, no

opportunities

foaming at the mouth

regurgitating what has

crushed me in every lifetime...

Falling backwards, blind

Landing in a fiery pit

Or a bed of silk...

It was strange. Each gravestone had a word or phrase on it in quotations. It wouldn’t be uncommon to see that occasionally, but every stone?_ Where the fuck am I_? I thought as i continued gliding between the rows of well-kept memorials. I quickly scanned each stone as I walked, when one stopped me dead, no pun intended, in my tracks.

The stone to my left read in deep, blocky letters: “Motherfuck...

I stomped down the street in my black garbs, big, black sunglasses on so no one could see my eyes. I needed to be free to let them dart around, roll in the allyways like marbles, undetected, and trip the mother fuckers who were gangstalking me....

Resentment replaces recording sessions, and now you’re singing Bright Eyes songs on YouTube with disheveled hair and the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. No new lines, no new growth—the same “punk” boys from a small town in Southern Maine who are now in their forties who stroke each others egos more than they stroke keys....