Fallen.

I came back here to die.

Like a dog that gets sick and crawls under the house.(Leave me alone.Don’t look at me.Grrr.)

Quietly and with as little fanfare as possible.

I could lie but whats the point? I mean,what else was there left to do really? My forever had Nagasaki-ed and the fallout was biblical in size. Emotionally and physically unmanageable. No husband,no home,no band,no hope.Exiled from my beloved California and estranged  from all my friends.Ever the pragmatist I knew that the money it would take to get my body back would not be forthcoming so on that last day I knew I was dead and only had to seal the deal.Mission? Get on the plane and deliver corpse.

It was just a question of putting things in order and hopefully being felled by my grief.That way my hands would be kept clean literally and figuratively,you understand?.Sharp things crooned to me at unsociable hours and I danced with the blade making an unholy mess but never delivering the vertical clincher.Just a coward hanging on to see what would happen next… life wouldn’t let me go.Grief is a brute.Physical.I hope never to feel anything so painful again but it will get me  I am sure.It stripped the flesh from my bones and melted my heart clear out of my chest.

And had left scars on my self esteem that will never fade.

Still celibate and alone.Because this is how it is meant to be.How could I ever inflict myself upon another animal in this condition? It would be plain rude and if there is one thing that I just cant abide it is bad manners.Courtesy is big in the south where I originated and thanks to my saint of a mother.

I understand why people do it though,you know,marry a drug and stay faithful to the last.Hurt yourself if you absolutely must but watch the perimeter.Don’t take out the onlookers with your supposed friendly fire.Mind your fallout son.But junkies? Dude,they don’t care,you are nothing but a walk-on part,non-union and below scale and don’t you ever forget it mama.They fake it real pretty until they just cant be bothered no more.I was naive and blinded by the largest love I had ever known to believe otherwise.And I was stupid and did nothing but.

And here I stand on the eve of ten years.Its the markers,the anniversaries that still get me.And I can still remember absolutely everything about that day,from Scotty picking me up that day from the apartment in the shabby converted Victorian mansion that I had hidden myself away in since the demise of The Ranch,to what I was wearing. Getting up on stage with The hard -ons and just destroying a ten minute version of “Suck and Swallow” .And then I met you and I knew.Even though time and circumstance would separate us,I knew. And so did you.

I have decided to flag all festivities.Last year was taxing enough on my ghosts and memories.This year would have cut me off at the knees.I pick my battles.Especially the ones that take place in my undervalued heart and head.2002 and the world was ours.Time runs its course and some days I don’t know how I ended up here,a decade down.I sadly learned the hard way that it is possible to be more alone than you ever imagined while at someones side.When the damaged fall to type and oh-so-predictably damage us we defend them.Shame? Misplaced hope? Embarrassment? Fear? I would say a witches brew of all of the above.It was the poison of derangement and delusion and I drank it down to the bitter last drop.Cast as the savior by my oppressor I was valiant till my smarts stepped in and saved what was left of my tattered life.

Repairing it is akin to being Ray Charles sewing spiderwebs together with a thorn and a thread of baby spit.

And I know that in my absence the cast changes but the  script remains the same.The movie keeps on rolling baby.Knowing this provides scant solace but you take what you can get,mash it into a poultice and apply it to the non-healing wounds that weep sticky rivers of “why?” instead of plasma. This is what you do and you survive.This is what you do as you strap your scarred hands in lead weighted fabric and punch till you are numb to the elbows.This is what you do.You chase sleep like Pamela Des barres hot on the trail of The Beatles on their 1st American tour.You hunt it.You are shameless in your pursuit of the only oblivion available to you.

You shudder as memories assault and batter you.Of what the Hollywood undead deemed normal.They still do and you exist on anger and vengeance on the other side of the planet far from their illegally fueled follies.

Surrounded by friends last night you burned on taurine and laughed ,the post show high not fading in the slightest.This is where you are,where you find yourself for better or worse and it is your duty to shine.

The music mon amour,now and forever………….

It will always be the sounds that bind me and find me when I try to hide.Shared sounds and ones that you dance to alone.The Metro was a sweat-fest of good vibes, conga lines and smiling people with no rhythm,bless them.I saw dear Dave Batty and it lit me up like a roman candle.Blackie texting me from The Rolling Stone awards (“You were robbed!”I furiously write back illuminated by disappointment) ,Lilli by my side swaying on her new vertigo inducing platform boots,Luke rocking his Colonel Sanders facial hair (“I’m too drunk to taste this chicken”) samurai sharp Jen…The cast in my movie such a gift.We hugged and beamed at each other.Many friends and fine greetings and salutations on the way in.I found my way up the stairs to my usual spot,leaning on the wall above the backstage door and proceeded to drown.

El Mariachi Bronx. Songs sent back and forth in secret over oceans. It sounded like all the Quinceaneras and weddings in my old neighborhood.(Crossing the border and sitting in the sun,silver around my brown ankles,turquoise on my fingers,my friends backstroking drunk in icy margaritas the size of swimming pools,dogs mean and cunning,hungry on dusty streets and shadowy churches full of ghosts and saints,sunspots blinding me in the transition from light to dark…. ) You send songs to people for a reason.To say something. Hence mix-tapes.Duh.You want the receiver to read into the lyrics.Music says all the things that you wish you could so one chooses wisely,hopes that they will be interpreted correctly and sends them on their way.

Fallen.Remember?

And as the sweet nylon strings,tamed by talented fingers of the original tobacco blonde dripped honey in my rock abused ears of 1001 and one nights and my feet did their stomping bad-ass thing in brown leather high heeled boots purchased in lieu of a weeks worth of food on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg back when I was a rockstar girl the first time around,I thought of my lost losing themselves over and over again on the most terrible loops as the horns cut through the thick air and fluttered, flirting brassy with my sternum beneath my sweat soaked tee shirt. Magnolias dropping onto the streets of Hollywood,orange capped rigs like sleeping vipers and fat teeners,hustlers long past their used by dates waiting on the corner with haggard faces and missing toes,the yellow walls of the pawn shop melting in slow motion under the relentless summer sun,the hum and drip of the overworked air-conditioner in our window.What I wouldn’t give to go home again,before it all turned to shit, and sit once more whispering all my secrets to Dee-Dee’s granite headstone,my fingers drawing circles in the grass six cold feet above what is left of his earthly remains.Writing in my journal as the sun went down so in love at last……

I have stood on the stage that my eyes are seeing though a make up destroying veil of tears right now.I have played on it and triumphed.I smile thinking about how thrilling it feels when people ask me what I am up to.

“Well” I grin “I am in a new band!”

And I am and it thrills me to my jaded core.A second chance that I never imagined would befall me.I find myself whispering it to my silver shadowed reflection in the train window as we race through the tunnels connecting the airport line to the city.”Dog eat dog” thumps though my headphones and I shiver with gratitude at the unforseen and unexpected miracle of it all.

I came here to die and I didn’t and now I am in a new band,recording my solo project and playing a show with Blackie again this weekend.Lilli reminds me that Sharon and Ozzy love each other and wanted it to work and that is why it did. Same with Johnny and June.I am shit out of arguments. I have failed and lost.I put my feet up on my long dead great grandmothers coffee table and silently bow to defeat.

Elvis,I have to admit and I mean no disrespect,some days I don’t know why you didn’t call me home to heaven but I know that in all of your white jump-suited,blue suede,black leather 68′ singer comeback special glory,that you always have a plan and I trust in that when I am in no shape or form to trust myself.

I just hope it involves and Ampeg endorsement.