you mess up,
you die.

give up
and you will die before the rest;

and if you try,
well,
you’re still going to die.

i was abandoned
like you

built up
and dropped

raised
then
razed

(for “Lonesome George”)

Drinking alone
in Omaha,
me and the old bartender,
Jack,
who’s bar i’d passed a few times
the past few days

and saw him,
this old man,
sitting by himself in the bar,
with no bartender
and no patrons,
and i thought
i’d give him some business
because the alternative
was
uninspiring:
sitting in my room
again
drinking beer
alone
or i could go do the same thing
down the street
and feel what it’s really like
on a Thursday night
in Omaha,
November seventeenth,
twenty-eleven;
so i pulled my bicycle
out of my work van
and rode down the
cold night
street.

Jack was sitting outside
looking forlorn,
another day of emptiness
at his bar,
and then i showed up,
and as i rolled up
he went inside and got behind the bar,
and i don’t know why i said it,
i’ve never said it before to anyone in my life,
but i said, “Howdy.”
And he said, “How you doing? What’ll it be?”

My beer choices were Bud and Bud Light.
Behind the bar was a well stocked shelf of
American and Canadian Whiskeys
and gins,
one large bottle of Vodka,
and some cans of soda in a see-through mini fridge.

“I’ll take a Budweiser please.”
“That’ll be 2.25.”

I sat there drinking my beer watching a college football game on the TV behind the bar.
Jack sat at the end of the bar watching it too.
It was quiet. It was like that for a while.

Then i asked him his name.
“Jack.”
“Nice to meet you, my name’s Brandon.”
“Where you from Brandon?”
“Los Angeles… How about you? You live here you’re whole life?”
“No.”
“Oh yeah? Where are you from originally?”
“Iowa.”
“So you just moved a little west huh?”
“Well, when the sheriff points in three different directions and tells ya, ‘You can go this way, this way, or that way, but you can’t stay here.’
You end up here.” Jack said, then took a drink from his mountain dew.

“You ever been to California?” I asked.
“Once. The northern part.”
“San Francisco?”
“No, we never reached the coast. I was going bear hunting in Idaho, and we traveled down into California.”
“Oh so you were in the Sierras? Did you get any Bears?”
“No. We ended up back in Idaho, and then our cabin got snowed in for three weeks.”
“Obviously you had enough supplies to make it through, you’re still here. Unless you had to eat someone.”
Jack laughed. “No we had a months worth of supplies, but there was six of us, so it was only about three weeks. Fucking snow was up to here.”
He raises his hand above his head. “We couldn’t get out!”

And then in walked an old surly Omahan
that sat between us
and without a word to each other
Jack turned around and got the man his usual,
a can of Miller High Life
and a box of Marlboro reds,
and i let the conversation go
and watched the football game
and drank the rest of my beer.

Jack could see in the bar mirror
that my drink was gone
and he asked if i’d like another.
“Let me me get a Jim Beam on the rocks this time.”
He kind of liked that, “Bourbon? You got it.”

I fucked around with my phone
for a second, posted a picture from in the bar online,
and finished my whiskey
and asked,
“Hey Jack can i get another Budweiser.”
“Another? Alright.”

And as i drank that beer, the whiskey sank in
and i contemplated everything

started feeling like
this would be the rest of my life
alone with my self,
no one waiting for me,
no one wanting me.

One could disappear in Nebraska
for an entire life
and never return.

Omaha
is a purgatory.

I finished my beer and got up from the bar.
“Take care of yourself Jack, it was nice meeting you.”
“You take care too, Brandon.”

Driving
lonely backroads
through Colorado and Kansas,
into
Nebraska.

Just me,
the cows,
and the country.

Falling into a job
that Kerouac would envy

was meant to be.

ii.

We’re alive,
and events transpire.

If something happens
then that was what was supposed to happen in the universe,
because it already happened,
so you can’t refute it.

It was calculated before the big bang.

Within this universe,
all that transpires
exists in a super-unified field theory equation
that combines the regular unified field theory (yet to be discovered)
with the infinite unified field theories
of infinite amounts of
universi and their
varying amounts of perceivable
and usable
dimensions.

Me typing this
is completely explained
and predicted
in that infinite
equation.

iii.

I guess that means
getting my heartbroke again,
like i don’t mean nothing,
was supposed to happen
so i can realize that
i don’t mean anything.

It’s actually quite liberating
once you realize how self-unimportant you are,
you can let go of giving a fuck about about a lot of things.

You can drive a van full of heavy gear
through the back country
of the United States
“tornado alley”
passing giant big rigs at seventy-five miles per hour by inches
coming the other way
with complete confidence
in knowing
a big gust of wind
could blow that big rig into you,
and you go…
you fucking leave the earth in a twisted bloody metal flash,
and you’re a quick blurb on the local ABC Kansas affiliate
as an unnamed motorist in a cargo van
killed
when a big rig collided with you
on Highway 40
outside Winona.

iv.

Prologue:

Everyday
is open,
fear disappears,
and every rejection
and every disappointment
becomes an affirmation

of why you don’t care,
of why it’s better to live a wild life
on this wild planet,

to keep on living as hard as you can,
as deep and wild and beautiful
as you possibly can.