(at work, April ’97.)
Speeding down this highway,
Rocketing to our inevitable unknown finish,
Wrestling the devil, searching for affection,
Rolling and racing to our private apocalypse.
i’ve seen it all here, from behind my counter and through the windows of the world.
i work at a coffee shop,
a place where the regulars are known by Indian names:
Names like Mean Coffee Guy, Nappy Cup Man, and White Chocolate Latte Woman.
Feeling like a fake because this java joint is a zit on the face
of a nationwide chain-gang bookstore.
While i’m serving up the customers’ daily dosages
of caffeine-charged wit and attention,
i try not to think too hard,
Try not to remember that i never wanted to work
under a corporate entity,
much less one with
hushed-up Mafia ties.
The customers keep on coming
When i feel inspired,
When i want to step out of things
for fifteen minutes of quiet creation.
The customers keep coming
Coming in and asking, begging, searching–
Always searching–
for an answer in their paper cups,
or the person who hands it to them.

(Five Points, March ’97.)
Off work and still drawn to the coffee
to the people who serve it, surround it,
Search in it,
Swim through it.
i went to a costume party the other night;
We all dressed up as ourselves a year ago,
Recreated in ritual perfection the lost innocence of our last lives.
It was here that life happened,
Here it was that i once saw it all:
i’ve met men who claimed to be the devil, devils who tried to pass for men–
Teachers who denied their lessons, students that tried to teach them.
All of these and more i have seen on these journeys–
Fighting and loving and learning to live
and perhaps now, needing to die.
But to what end?
Have we not come full circle?
i’m not the man i used to be–
i’m more than half but not quite whole;
Searching, forever searching, for….
What?
So it is with the rest;
All of the exhibits and exhibitionists,
Ringleaders and ring-led,
How many have found the prize in this
Two-year round of downtown hide-and-seek?
Through it all; all of the art, the music,
the poetry, the poverty–
Who has ascended?
Who’s been left behind,
to fade with the memories
of a victim of eviction?
Loiter no longer in this mad revel,
Friends; find the exit,
Find your answer,
and search somewhere else for your next question.

(Montevallo, August ’96.)
i cannot find what i want or need here.
The answers lie below face value in this town;
and everything’s more than face value here.
We try and try to stay awake,
to make it through, to make something of this journey;
We drink cup after cup of coffee at all hours
Huddled by our computers,
Reaching out across the world for a familiar hand
to hold onto, to grab onto,
to pull us through until another next day.
Can’t sleep in this town for more than five hours a night
’cause this town’s too small to hold all the dreams
of a sleeping campus, too small to contain
Every hope and ambition and wish
of the searchers, the seekers, the dreamers
of our days.
Lessons abound in the daylight,
And three-fourths are false.
Be careful what you find,
scratch below that gilded surface.

(The street, October ’96.)
We have shaped insomnia and insanity
into a lifestyle,
Found a solace in an inherited Bohemia.
The living, we’ve found, isn’t in the answer.
It’s all in the search.
And so we continue seeking
for comfort, for happiness, for love and for inspiration
to fuel our passions.
We are all searching.
We are a scattered sea of
Individual voices
Laughing and crying and looking together
for answers to to the question of our lives.
We cram impossible numbers of ourselves into a booth
at Waffle House at two in the morning,
Living an unrelenting existence,
All the while asking the gods that we doubt
Why we’re put here,
and secretly loving
Every minute.