I know where I'm gonna be
when that final silence comes to me
I'll be right here

***

everything happens all over again
we spend long years sorting out quick from dead
and we learn
keep short hours
pass from turn to turn
then take our place to mourn and be mourned

you've been reading message board historians again
so what if I have
I always know cause you start talking shit about the end

that's maybe so but you and I both know
that none of this can last
but I'd like to think if I get the chance
I'd stick around for what comes next
if we make it through
we're gonna need you
if it all happens all over and over
I won't do it without you

***

when I come in on my down days
I open up the door
and spend five minutes watching the sunlight
waiting for the shadow of the end to cross my floor
I stack glasses
and I wash tabletops
and I listen
to the songs I wanna hear when that bomb drops

it's a flash of light and then nothing
or an earthquake and then horrible pain
hostile alien gods
or a new plague
or just a pretty big rock at the right time and place
or the internet goes down
and down is where it stays
and we lose it, one by one
I see it happen in a million ways

more often though its heart attack and vine at nine am
and I'm thinking on days spent sleeping stoned
as my regulars come in
tom the most begotten son
sings gunpowder burlseque
and I feel the spark of that organ hit
the shockwave mutters through my chest

maybe everything up and over flows
with pouring biblical rain
or maybe yellowstone finally blows
and things everywhere just slowly go gray

when I come in on my down days
I see it happen in a million ways

***

everything in this house
is held up with thumbtacks
a monument to impermanence
and a half-laid plan
to get somewhere far from where we're heading
but I don't like to think about it like that

as we sleep
the house gets colder
till I wake restless with winter at my core
and your tousled head at my shoulder
I turn
and put my back against your warmth

and I get better
a little every day
it's hard to see the change
when you're a whole lap off the pace
but I get further
a little every day
and I keep waking up next to you
knowing something's gonna break

***

hey what's up
it's been a long time with no talk
and I've got a couple things to say,
like I know it's not nearly fair,
the ways that we've made each other pay
or the way, I wake up every day
in control of my body and most of my brain
and most of the days I feel okay
it isn't fair, the things you gotta let them do to you
it isn't anything but tragic, the things you gotta take
call it selfish, we want to take you alive
if not happy, then whole
for now
I wanna see you see 25

I've been smoking every day to keep a foggy lid on the edge of my brain because when I don't the things I say get people scared and they drift away, do you need help? Well I don't know, dude. I thought getting fucked up in your twenties was just like something you were supposed to do.

I don't talk like I used to, I don't speak to the people I used to, I still get high the way we used to, but I don't do a goddamn thing anyone tells me to. Something bad is coming, but good things follow close behind, my friend assures me. If you don't get yours, we can share mine.

***

Giant Eagle Jackie, how did things get this bad
standing across the counter counting coins
into your paper thin skin hand

Eighty and standing eight hours a day is no way to spend your life,
I wish I could feed you free five dollar lattes till the light fades
at the end of time

Giant Eagle Jackie, you make me so afraid
stealing my cloth, wiping tabletops cause you need a job,
something that pays

when that final trumpet blows on the last boat off the planet
you and me and our poverty
will be here picking through the ashes

while the escapees play Call of Duty eight
tumbling through endless space
hold it up like history
and teach their children earth was a dangerous place

but not that they made it that way

Giant Eagle Jackie, how did things get this bad?
you just hold your head up
we'll do the best we can

***

I can see from my window traffic frozen on 376 across the Monongahela, and it's been that way for days. Nobody's moving anymore. Pittsburgh is as quiet as the rest of the world.

I know where I'm gonna be when that final silence comes to me.

I'll be right here.