Off the Road

I don't know what I'm doing here.
In this crowded, dump-of-a-bar.
Too drunk to drive my car.
Smelling like smoke.
Flat-fucking-broke, with nowhere to go.
You always gave me somewhere to go.
Post winter-time reflections rise
and stir up my ineptitude to do anything right.
With your patience strained from confessions of childish pain.
One-night-stands and busy hands tell the same story over and over and over again.
Every day that I manage to breathe,
I wonder what a person I could be if it wasn't for my apathy and my childish jealousy concerning all of these beautiful people falling in and out of love around me.
It doesn't mean a goddamn thing.
But lately, I've been playing god.
Sticking maps with pins as if a different setting could erase my sins.
Tracing my finger along the California fault
as if it could cut me off from all the old haunts and all-too-familiar walls
that I build in this place to keep everybody I know away.
Lately, I've been pulling slack catching up on my Kerouac and he's telling me,
"Kid you'll never be happy unless you realize you're happy where you are."
In this crowded dump of a bar.
Too drunk to drive my car.
Smelling like cigarettes.
Making bets on who's the bigger addict.
One day, I'll leave and become another fleeting memory like they left me.
But I'm on the mend, thanks to my friends.
They know best.
I'd do anything for them.
So three cheers to getting older.
Three cheers to steady shoulders.
Three cheers to getting over this,
over and over and over and over again.