“THE SAD THING ABOUT THIS WORLD IS;

EVERYBODY HAS THEIR REASONS”

August Renior

“Some people put the best inside. Some people put the best outside “ Bob Marley

I’m sure he had many of them, I do

People do -- have lots of them.

Secret ones that destroy others

like stealth bombs of desire.

After the scatological shrapnel slices you apart

They line their hearts, as armor.

The way you’d put gray flannel pants in the winter,

red wool over your eyes,

or sing an old Bob Wills tune.

“Can’t pull it over my eyes” he’d say,

before she smoked him.

Lit up and burned

like and old butt he found weeks later

under a small stack of love letters piled up

to burn for heat while living on the street.

Everybody has them.

Often they spread them thickly

like a protective coating of lard over their lives.

Even though tallow can be carved into fine art,

it has to be left in the dark and cool.

A place like your subconscious basement apartment.

Seductive they are,

once neatly spread to catch the flies

and well supported by Nietzsche, Shoppenouer or Jesus.

You pull them in.

Like knowing the right card in a three card Monte game.

Of course they can be slid to you via higher levels of consciousness

by Swami Snatchenyoudownah’s tantric yogic practice.

Taoists say the sage butcher never

has to sharpen the blade while crudely slicing - often into anyone near by.

“Look you just gotta’ get it!

It’s my destiny to move on now.

I have to get a new shape,

a new karma, a new lover with a better car,

a new line at the five and dime”

Many times reasons are made like fine Chinese papercuts.

You become so mesmerized by the art-

you don’t ever see the message coming

until it’s scissors slice through your open eyes.

You know, the way you would cut paper

for your kitchen drawers.

I mean, they always starting out bright yellow

with the idea of keeping those things neat

and available for your everyday use.

Every piece measured carefully

until the third drawer where you stop measuring.

Reasons build up like clutter.

The most expensive clutter, paid for with the pain

you have in your now gashed heart.

Breakdowns in a sobbing fetal mass despite the hot shower.

When you are alone and all of it comes.

Drawers get stuck.

Only the same one opens again and again.

“Don’t fixate she said !

Don’t obsess!”

Small swarms of blackened shadows buzz round at three am.

More like 3:33 blinking red now.

Their like assholes.

Everybody has em.

Reasons are piled up like cigarettes

along the curb at the stop light.

Like the lint that forms in your pockets

and the dust mites settling from nowhere

on everything you hold dear.

The tattoo marks you collect on your body

It’s a changing world

See it change.

Walking away, she said.

“I am sorry you don’t get it--it’s nothing personal.

I mean if you were me you would understand

I had to go! Things just got out of hand.

I had a new job offer, friend, lover,

a chance to get all new clutter and form new horizons--

bigger ones with brighter linings--I--I have to go!

Wasn’t like I wanted to be disloyal,

dishonest or lack character.

Those ideas are old, like you-- piled up in a back alley’s in the lower Eastside.

It’s not just me-- I know you had your own!

Just because you called them honor and loyalty high and mighty bullshit.

Next, you’ll be telling me why it’s called love and forgiveness .

Like you have some insight as to the influence you have in--my--world.

It is mine-- you know.” She said

Her reasons;

poured out like so much paper toweling

falling out of an over stuffed public toilet trash can

that no one ever picks up.

No one ever picks them up.

Because

they have

their

reasons.