Paul Sexton*

At home
I rarely drink
the bottom of
a can of beer
or cup of coffee.

I only like
my beer cold
and my coffee hot.

I reckon this is
mostly because
I am a die-hard
first-world asshole
who grew up in
privilege, where
I can waste
a little coffee
or a little beer.

There are probably
hardcore motherfuckers
in places not as nice
as Texas,
who’d kill a man
for a gulp of coffee
or that last
sip of beer.

Probably in a
knife fight.

Still though,
I don’t think that
will change me.

At least I drink
the whiskey
to the bottom
of the bottle.

So there’s that.

Life is nothing
but the striking
of a match
in the darkness.

Being enamored
with the flame
doesn’t make it
any more than it is.

It’s just a little fire

Which can be beautiful
sure,
but it’s still only a
temporary respite
from the dark.

Nothing to
fall in love with,

unless you’re crazy.

But I’ve been
crazy before…

haven’t you?

I have cursed the clocks
a hundred thousand times
since her death,
and still
time won’t run backward.

I can’t recapture
the days that we had!

It’s just this slog forward
towards old age
and change,
away from the glory of love.

In time,
even the poet’s tears
grow silent.

The puddles
dry.

What was
absolutely is farther away.

And what is
definitely is what is.

The truth I’ve found
is that most people just
aren’t all that awesome.
They’re just ok.

I’ve met a few over the years though
that had an awesome streak
in one way or another
and I’ve tried to love that in them
as much as I could.

Of course I acknowledge
the possibility
that this truth is just
a matter of my own perspective
and the awesomeness
I have found
in the few places I’ve found it
is meaningless
to a broader audience.
In which case humans
are all just ordinary
and predictable.

But I prefer to remember it
the way I remember it.

With a little bit of awesome.

When I was asleep
on the couch
today
I dreamed of
my oldest son
as a baby.

He was laughing
and playing
in a diaper.
I felt like
I really missed him.
Baby him.
Like I haven’t seen him
in years.
Which was confusing.

Then as I was kind of
waking up
I had to acclimate
to the fact that
the reason I haven’t seen
baby him
in years
is because he grew up.
And he’s 19 now.
And I saw him last week.
And he was drinking whiskey
and talking about
having sex with girls.

When I think about them
my head hurts.
When I talk about them
other people’s eyes squint.
When I look for them
they are hard to find
except for the signs
the subtle symbols.

Where they live
must be far away,
places that I have never been,
but they must have computers
and telephones
and they must meet occasionally
I suppose,
at the Bilderberg Hotel
or the Bohemian Grove.
What they do there
must be Bacchanal
decadent, even alien
or perhaps it’s all just business
the crunching of numbers
the twisting of fate
the shaping of the destinies
of the faceless
the proletariat.

We should find them.
We should kill them
if we can, but

when I think about them
my head hurts,
so I stop.

Some people drink all night
because it’s what they do,
photographed in Deep Ellum parking lots
while listening to poetry CD’s,
singing Hallelujah
arm-in-arm with a homeless man
named Ray Charles.
Looking for him later
with a banana and cup of hot coffee,
because the world is a fucked up place,
Ray whispered, “Don’t ever give up man,
she’s your soulmate!’ into my ear.
Some people toast the sunrise
giggling and whispering
words of forgiveness,
playing in lawn sprinklers
half-clad at the break of dawn.
They tell each other they
feel like home. But,
people like this aren’t so good at home,
are they?
Some people fall in love with babies
they nickname “Webby”
whose brother asks,
“Where did Paul Sexton get that pretty girl?
At the pretty girl store?”
Some people laugh and cry,
then laugh and cry
so many times together
they become convinced
no one else could possibly understand
them the way they do one another.
They come and go from each other
with a frequency similar to the way
emotions come and go inside their heads.
Some people never get it right
with each other
or with the world.
And people who meet them
always want to give them advice
about what they need to be doing
which mostly they laugh about
and mock
in silly voices,
because they themselves know
that they are more alive than
the smiles on giant crocodiles,
than a million imploding black tar suns,
than most of the rest of you.
Some people never get it right,
but when you meet them
you love the shit out of them
and everybody everywhere
loves the shit out of them.
And you can’t help but wish
they might actually get it right,
not just for each other
and with each other,
right inside themselves,
but right with the world.
A world that, although it seems to love them,
mostly doesn’t get them
or care
or seem to give a shit
about all the million exploding things
they have inside them,
they are trying to get out.
Especially,
the beauty they possess
whilst drinking and singing Hallelujah
late at night
listening to old poems
about to say goodbye again,
about to say goodbye again…

Baby, all kinds of people
have different shaped souls.
A lot of people, regular people
have souls shaped like squares.
It’s easy for them to find someone.
Just another square,
to sit next to them on the couch
watch Network TV
spend their corporate paycheck.
It’s easy for square souls
to find other souls.
But me and you?
we’re complicated.
We have souls with crazy jagged edges
Like jigsaw puzzle pieces
and it’s difficult to find
that one puzzle piece of a soul
that fits next to your puzzle piece soul.
but I’ve found it.
You are the jigsaw puzzle piece to my soul.

I used to tell her this sometimes,
when she was mine, and
she used to like to hear it.

She was so beautiful,
I don’t think that
I told her that
enough.

I was always worried
that she would think me
interested in her
for shallow
surface
reasons
and not her
magnificent
intellect
personality
humor
spirit
and such.

So, I held back
on telling her
how beautiful she was
as much
as I thought it,
and when I did,
it was always with the
qualifier
that true beauty
comes from the inside
and that this is what
she possessed
in such a big way.

It was probably
the right approach.
But if I had it to do
again
if she were still
alive,
I would
stare
into her eyes
every single morning,
and whisper
into her ear
that she was
the most beautiful
woman
I have ever known.
And she was,
she truly
truly
was.