ORANGE STREET Wayne Mason

Drove by the old place
on Orange St the other day
and it was like seeing
a ghost of myself

The nights I spent there
slowly going crazy
talking to the cats
and drinking the hours away
watching sunrise through
the bottom of liquor bottles
some nights it was so quiet
all I could hear was the
sound of heart thumping
or the sound of my goth roomate
in the other room doing
god knows what with
her euro trash lover

Most nights though
it was a party and then
I felt even more alone
the lazy tea-heads and
paranoid meth freaks
never made it boring
but they couldn't grasp
what I was hoping to achieve
this destruction was holy
in a misguided way

There is nothing worse
than a junky telling you
that you drink too much

Of course there was booze
and the cheap sex
fucking away the pain
of being alive, still yet
in the morning they were
just another body passed out
on my living room floor

My wife
sitting across the car
asks me if I miss it

I contemplate the
madhouse nights
the booze
cheap sex
and drugs
and the days
withered away
with nothing but
cheap beer
ramen noodles
and a typewriter

and tell her
Nah

Good answer
she tells me


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