hoth
and down there
the builders continue
purposeful
driven
oblivious to why
just doing their jobs
following the blueprints
the bunker is to be strong
steel walls
strong enough to withstand a firestorm
or a cold
like that of deep space.
more of an insulation against the cold
since this is more likely than the heat
i will refuge there in fetal
until my skin grows thick again
and i can face
the wintry deadscape
that you will leave behind
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Friday, March 31, 2006
sweet and sour chichen
as i waited i guess i drifted to the window. i was drawn by the rain. its that way when you are so much in your mind that you need to look at things in a way feels like there isn't anything there at all.
i drifted closer to the window, thinking of what i had thought to say and how everything is always so sad.
"sir? this you money?" the small chinese man asked - holding up my five.
i had ordered something i didn't want and had taken several minutes to do it, your face floating before me the whole time.
i turned and realized i was now across the restaurant from the counter. i didn't even remember walking. just looking at the rain and thinking...wondering...feeling...fearing.
"yeah. sorry. thats mine."
he took it and rang up my lunch.
as he did i studied his face.
a simple man - probably a normal life - pretty good car, girlfriend/wife - video games, movies - sending money home, some drinking, maybe slight drug use. happy, though - or at least not bearing the weight of the world. i could see it. some things were worth his time, most things he doesn't care about. "i'll bet its good to be him." i thought.
what was i doing anyway? i wasn't hungry...but more because i didn't care if i was hungry or not. she's been going without eating. i know how now. i used to do it alot more. you just live in your mind and forget about your body and it stops bothering you unless something is really important. its kind of ok to not worry about things like eating sometimes.
"what soup?" he had asked when i ordered. ordinarily i say "hot and sour" with a confidence and can almost taste it...but i could barely get the words out...stumbled over them...couldn't remember...tried to visualize it..brown...oily slightly...tofu...tried to say it...it almost came out with a chinese accent; "hon sow", but i managed to get it out. " h---hot n sour."
i lifted my food in the heavy brown sack and it pulled me back to here a bit. walked over to the counter to get the spoon and fork...tried to remember if i had enough money for a drink back at the callcenter..started tasting the food a bit in my mind. almost looking fwd to it.
walking slowly feels good. especially in a light rain. walking slowly feels good because it says to everyone who sees you that you don't care. it feels slow. your body does the work. your mind lets your legs go and keeps at its task of unravelling and trying to make sense the mess of your life.
i wanted the walk to be long. i could walk forever and not know what to do.
as i waited i guess i drifted to the window. i was drawn by the rain. its that way when you are so much in your mind that you need to look at things in a way feels like there isn't anything there at all.
i drifted closer to the window, thinking of what i had thought to say and how everything is always so sad.
"sir? this you money?" the small chinese man asked - holding up my five.
i had ordered something i didn't want and had taken several minutes to do it, your face floating before me the whole time.
i turned and realized i was now across the restaurant from the counter. i didn't even remember walking. just looking at the rain and thinking...wondering...feeling...fearing.
"yeah. sorry. thats mine."
he took it and rang up my lunch.
as he did i studied his face.
a simple man - probably a normal life - pretty good car, girlfriend/wife - video games, movies - sending money home, some drinking, maybe slight drug use. happy, though - or at least not bearing the weight of the world. i could see it. some things were worth his time, most things he doesn't care about. "i'll bet its good to be him." i thought.
what was i doing anyway? i wasn't hungry...but more because i didn't care if i was hungry or not. she's been going without eating. i know how now. i used to do it alot more. you just live in your mind and forget about your body and it stops bothering you unless something is really important. its kind of ok to not worry about things like eating sometimes.
"what soup?" he had asked when i ordered. ordinarily i say "hot and sour" with a confidence and can almost taste it...but i could barely get the words out...stumbled over them...couldn't remember...tried to visualize it..brown...oily slightly...tofu...tried to say it...it almost came out with a chinese accent; "hon sow", but i managed to get it out. " h---hot n sour."
i lifted my food in the heavy brown sack and it pulled me back to here a bit. walked over to the counter to get the spoon and fork...tried to remember if i had enough money for a drink back at the callcenter..started tasting the food a bit in my mind. almost looking fwd to it.
walking slowly feels good. especially in a light rain. walking slowly feels good because it says to everyone who sees you that you don't care. it feels slow. your body does the work. your mind lets your legs go and keeps at its task of unravelling and trying to make sense the mess of your life.
i wanted the walk to be long. i could walk forever and not know what to do.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
dodo
i felt it go
i watched it change
the full constellation apparent
when you faded
something simple
really can be simple
if you let it.
i'm good, tho.
i only walked to the edge and looked down
cause i've been on those rocks before
i only dream of flight
i remain
intact
and maybe the dream is enough
for the dodo.
i felt it go
i watched it change
the full constellation apparent
when you faded
something simple
really can be simple
if you let it.
i'm good, tho.
i only walked to the edge and looked down
cause i've been on those rocks before
i only dream of flight
i remain
intact
and maybe the dream is enough
for the dodo.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
you can't epitomize him
as the 80's wore on
it all became rather absurd don't you think?
the macintosh
the cats
the peacefulness?
truth is, he killed time.
he did it the best way
he took time
wrinkled it
tore it
and spit on it
handed it to a man
who boxed it and sold it to you.
he became what he deserved
and i am the dead people in his poems
but that nasty old fuck did 15 years in a job
you don't hate a job and do it for 15 years
or maybe you do
if it keeps your soul in a vice
squeezing out the juice
that is of course, for sale
------
crazy drunken fuck
these people don't understand
that for 3 dollars and ninety one cents
they are RENTING
a glimpse
into themselves.
wake up you shitbags
and send you car careening over the edge
full of kerosene and manuscripts
and all the little pieces of shit
you think are you
----
he typed because he was too drunk to write.
he used a computer because it was easier
than typing
now
its instant
soon
no interface
direct from person to person.
----
these dark insights
these visions of the wretchedness of man
the holdings of mirrors up to the world's face
these happen
when you stop
and think
and hate for a moment
and see futility for what it is
and see
that death is the only truth to any of this
that everything is love
and that all any of us have to do
is make it
---
you said it.
you can't epitomize him
and i thought
"this monster?"
but now i see
life is not laid down permament
in words
but time is.
"where the spirit wanes, the form begins."
he'd have died ealrier were it not for the bluebird
were it not for letters
were it not for a true buying of the myth of capitalism
and laying a shit-stained $10 on the nine horse and winning
and a fine piece of ass.
"she put ten years on his life"
well.
thats new math, man.
they didn't teach that in the 30's
----------
but i won't - you know i won't.
i can't.
i'm too pretty.
too palsied
didn't get my beatings
have no heart
can't know strife
never had to hurt
never tried
never cared
and I'M the freak
and I am.
-----
i see the bodies of people
and wonder how those
that work in the field
can not see skeletons
hanging with temporary humanity
see mud and dirt manipulated
into an animal
and then i'm struck
by the persistence of life
that moves this earth
and knows
and drags the knowing around like a club foot
and that just short of dying
there is some requirment
some mission
do not spread the darkneess
that dwells in the hearts of men
for this shall be your undoing.
--------------
upon walking into a tornado
i think i need to lay off this
i feel like a jackass
because i am a jackass
and im laying off today
i awoke - a dream of an old department store standing virtually derilect in the middle of a great city. a grand old building with big dark spires, arching windows frames in darkened yellow brick and other long glass fronts where all the wares can be seen. two businesses could not resist it and still had stores on two of the floors - grand and bright blaring out into the street through the old black framed glass, showing the city what real commerce was when people actually cared about where they bought things. we were working inside on the renovation - carrying the old salvaged windows down the long, wide steel stairs into storage in one of the abandoned rooms. dust and dirt and dripping water...like the building the last scenes of Bladerunner were shot in.
the fable of the snake does not apply.
thou shalt not anthropomorphize.
gratitude is a human construct.
i feel i've been before.
you've seen me once
in worse form
and i eventually left town
disgraced
after bloodying my face against the glass
of cliques
and fear
and protectionism
i've seen me a million times too
shuffling raggedly down the street
stinking of filth and brokenness
---------
a little is enough to pacify
to keep me from trying.
because when i get close to the real thing i start pissing on myself
and running around the party with my fly open.
as the 80's wore on
it all became rather absurd don't you think?
the macintosh
the cats
the peacefulness?
truth is, he killed time.
he did it the best way
he took time
wrinkled it
tore it
and spit on it
handed it to a man
who boxed it and sold it to you.
he became what he deserved
and i am the dead people in his poems
but that nasty old fuck did 15 years in a job
you don't hate a job and do it for 15 years
or maybe you do
if it keeps your soul in a vice
squeezing out the juice
that is of course, for sale
------
crazy drunken fuck
these people don't understand
that for 3 dollars and ninety one cents
they are RENTING
a glimpse
into themselves.
wake up you shitbags
and send you car careening over the edge
full of kerosene and manuscripts
and all the little pieces of shit
you think are you
----
he typed because he was too drunk to write.
he used a computer because it was easier
than typing
now
its instant
soon
no interface
direct from person to person.
----
these dark insights
these visions of the wretchedness of man
the holdings of mirrors up to the world's face
these happen
when you stop
and think
and hate for a moment
and see futility for what it is
and see
that death is the only truth to any of this
that everything is love
and that all any of us have to do
is make it
---
you said it.
you can't epitomize him
and i thought
"this monster?"
but now i see
life is not laid down permament
in words
but time is.
"where the spirit wanes, the form begins."
he'd have died ealrier were it not for the bluebird
were it not for letters
were it not for a true buying of the myth of capitalism
and laying a shit-stained $10 on the nine horse and winning
and a fine piece of ass.
"she put ten years on his life"
well.
thats new math, man.
they didn't teach that in the 30's
----------
but i won't - you know i won't.
i can't.
i'm too pretty.
too palsied
didn't get my beatings
have no heart
can't know strife
never had to hurt
never tried
never cared
and I'M the freak
and I am.
-----
i see the bodies of people
and wonder how those
that work in the field
can not see skeletons
hanging with temporary humanity
see mud and dirt manipulated
into an animal
and then i'm struck
by the persistence of life
that moves this earth
and knows
and drags the knowing around like a club foot
and that just short of dying
there is some requirment
some mission
do not spread the darkneess
that dwells in the hearts of men
for this shall be your undoing.
--------------
upon walking into a tornado
i think i need to lay off this
i feel like a jackass
because i am a jackass
and im laying off today
i awoke - a dream of an old department store standing virtually derilect in the middle of a great city. a grand old building with big dark spires, arching windows frames in darkened yellow brick and other long glass fronts where all the wares can be seen. two businesses could not resist it and still had stores on two of the floors - grand and bright blaring out into the street through the old black framed glass, showing the city what real commerce was when people actually cared about where they bought things. we were working inside on the renovation - carrying the old salvaged windows down the long, wide steel stairs into storage in one of the abandoned rooms. dust and dirt and dripping water...like the building the last scenes of Bladerunner were shot in.
the fable of the snake does not apply.
thou shalt not anthropomorphize.
gratitude is a human construct.
i feel i've been before.
you've seen me once
in worse form
and i eventually left town
disgraced
after bloodying my face against the glass
of cliques
and fear
and protectionism
i've seen me a million times too
shuffling raggedly down the street
stinking of filth and brokenness
---------
a little is enough to pacify
to keep me from trying.
because when i get close to the real thing i start pissing on myself
and running around the party with my fly open.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Alice In Chains
i see you down there.
i know how the walls are built
learn to be a B student
and put the pedal down
for the larger side of what can matter
because soon the storms will come
and you're naked
---------------------
Learn To Forget
Lets sit down right here and forget that this year ever happened.
All of those nights i regret will be like smoke in the wind.
and if i did something to you that i dont remember
then i hope you can learn to forget.
i hope you can learn to forget, my friend
you did not expect that I would get on such a bender
with the crying and screaming and putting my hands through the glass.
you said you'd seen worse, but that you'd be hard pressed to remember.
well, i hope you can learn to forget.
i hope you can learn to forget, my friend.
i've got a young son.
I don't know what else to say.
don't do like I've done;
don't give your freedom away.
and i hope you can learn to forget
i hope you can learn to forget, my friend.
Lets sit down right here and forget that this night ever happened.
'cause you and I know that the rest of them won't understand.
Sometimes a man can't look forward for what he's draggin behind him.
and i hope you can learn to forget
i hope i can learn to forget
i hope we can learn to forget,
my friend.
i see you down there.
i know how the walls are built
learn to be a B student
and put the pedal down
for the larger side of what can matter
because soon the storms will come
and you're naked
---------------------
Learn To Forget
Lets sit down right here and forget that this year ever happened.
All of those nights i regret will be like smoke in the wind.
and if i did something to you that i dont remember
then i hope you can learn to forget.
i hope you can learn to forget, my friend
you did not expect that I would get on such a bender
with the crying and screaming and putting my hands through the glass.
you said you'd seen worse, but that you'd be hard pressed to remember.
well, i hope you can learn to forget.
i hope you can learn to forget, my friend.
i've got a young son.
I don't know what else to say.
don't do like I've done;
don't give your freedom away.
and i hope you can learn to forget
i hope you can learn to forget, my friend.
Lets sit down right here and forget that this night ever happened.
'cause you and I know that the rest of them won't understand.
Sometimes a man can't look forward for what he's draggin behind him.
and i hope you can learn to forget
i hope i can learn to forget
i hope we can learn to forget,
my friend.
imitating EC
addicted
addictive
restrictive
contemplationary confrontationalism
only in the ethernet firebreathernet sunscreen.
great yawp of power and conquering
foot on chest
alvamael in miniature
nothing is fair
childhood is the only truth
hence the pain
"the night i was born, the moon turned a fire red"
----------
enabling yes man
perpetuator of pain
sense of self derivational
------------
addicted
addictive
restrictive
contemplationary confrontationalism
only in the ethernet firebreathernet sunscreen.
great yawp of power and conquering
foot on chest
alvamael in miniature
nothing is fair
childhood is the only truth
hence the pain
"the night i was born, the moon turned a fire red"
----------
enabling yes man
perpetuator of pain
sense of self derivational
------------
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
i can't continue.
i feel it going there again where i have to choose to be a friend or not...and i can't be your friend when i think of you as beautiful.
how do i think of you as not beautiful?
i can't
so i can't be your friend
unless your love is wider than i know
or you want to be with someone who has no dreams
or future
or a life
no, you don't want that.
you've got it good
even if you dont think so.
stay where you are.
dont come over here.
this is quicksand over here
i feel it going there again where i have to choose to be a friend or not...and i can't be your friend when i think of you as beautiful.
how do i think of you as not beautiful?
i can't
so i can't be your friend
unless your love is wider than i know
or you want to be with someone who has no dreams
or future
or a life
no, you don't want that.
you've got it good
even if you dont think so.
stay where you are.
dont come over here.
this is quicksand over here
Thursday, March 09, 2006
little redhaired girl
always there is one like you
untouchable save
for a social supernova
but for you
i'll get up early
and buy film for an old camera
and think of you
as i choose the shots
with my heart
a little green bus toy
for you said it was your dream
i'll stash it somewhere
and we'll play a game
that no one else will know about.
always there is one like you
untouchable save
for a social supernova
but for you
i'll get up early
and buy film for an old camera
and think of you
as i choose the shots
with my heart
a little green bus toy
for you said it was your dream
i'll stash it somewhere
and we'll play a game
that no one else will know about.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
middle school letters
3-21-86
Clark,
Hey, whats up? Me, nothing much, just thought i'd write and ask why you told Leslie that you goofed up yesterday? I don't see where you went wrong because she's going to the dance with you isn't she? Last night after you called her she called me and all she talked aboutwas how much she liked you. I hope you like her alot because if you evertell her that you don't liker her all that much I know what she'll do she'll cry because when she found out that you said that she was about 80ft tallerthan you she almost cried. I wish you two get together before the dance because you never know what you'll get if you ask her to go with you. Well I better let you go for now. Bye see ya later.
Robin Bradburn l/s Louie Tillery always and foreverLeslie Johnson l/s Clark Gordon maybe hopefully
Currently listening: Journey - Greatest Hits By Journey Release date: By 25 October, 1990
----------------
gone again
i knew a woman once
i saw her through a window
while we danced slow
her head on my shoulder
a long, sad song
we turned so slowly
rocking from left foot
to right foot
and back
she never looked up
and i shifted slightly
and she never looked up
i knew her then
during that song
through that window
and then she was gone again
-----------------------
west end girls
5-10-86
Dear Leslie,
Hi, how are you? I'm doing great. I had a good time this weekend.
I know you didn't expect me to show up there at your house. Its only nine miles from Paris, my grandparents live there and I like riding my bike anyway.
I liked hanging out there with you (especially in your mom's roomwhen we were listening to the tape with the Pet Shop Boys on it - i hope she's ok with me smoking in there...maybe we should have made the bed..) I didn't know you were an AC-DC fan. Thats cool. I really like the For Those About To Rock album.
Anyway, I guess I should go. I'll meet you in the stairwell right before 2nd period.
Love,
Clark
Sometimes you're better off dead
There's gun in your hand and it's pointing at your head
You think you're mad, too unstable
Kicking in chairs and knocking down tables
In a restaurant in a West End town
Call the police, there's a madman around
Running down underground to a dive bar
In a West End town
In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
West End girls
Too many shadows, whispering voices
Faces on posters, too many choices
If, when, why, what?
How much have you got?
Have you got it, do you get it, if so, how often?
And which do you choose, a hard or soft option?
(How much do you need?)
In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
West End girlsWest End girls
(How much do you need?)
In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
Oooh West End town, a dead end world
East End boys, West End Girls
West End girls
You've got a heart of glass or a heart of stone
Just you wait 'til I get you home
We've got no future, we've got no past
Here today, built to last
In every city, in every nation
From Lake Geneva to the Finland station
(How far have you been?)
In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
A West End town, a dead end world
East End Boys, West End girls
West End girls
-------------------------
Monday, March 06, 2006
its truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
1-31-86
Dear Leslie,
Hello. How are you? I hope you are doing okay. I'm doing fine. I hate school. You seem to enjoy it but thatsbecause you are so smart. I think you are pretty too and its ok if you are a little bit taller than me. I still like you.
There. I said it.
I was wondering, if you you weren't already going with someone ( i know you like Jeff) if you would like to go with the dance with me? I can wait for an answer and i understand if you don't want to.
Anyway, i hope you can go with me. I'd like that very much.
Your friend,
Clark
PS - I'll be at the table over by the window at lunch if you want to come over and maybe sit with me.
Sister Christian, oh the time has come
And you know that you're the only one to say
Okay
Where you goin', what you looking for?
You know those boys don't want to play no more with you
It's true
You're motoring
What's your price for flight,
And finding Mister Right?
You'll be all right tonight
Babe, you know you're growing up so fast
And momma's worrying that you won't last to say
Let's play
Sister Christian, there's so much in life
Don't you give it up before your time is dueIt's true
It's truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue (Yeah)
You're motoring
You've got him in your sights
And driving through the night
You're motoring
What's your price for flight,
And finding Mister Right?
You'll be all right tonight
You're motoring
What's your price for flight,
And finding Mister Right?
You'll be all right tonight
You're motoring
What's your price for flight,
And finding Mister Right?
You'll be all right...Tonight
Sister Christian, oh the time has come
And you know that you're the only one to say
Okay
But you're motoring
Yeah, motoring
3-21-86
Clark,
Hey, whats up? Me, nothing much, just thought i'd write and ask why you told Leslie that you goofed up yesterday? I don't see where you went wrong because she's going to the dance with you isn't she? Last night after you called her she called me and all she talked aboutwas how much she liked you. I hope you like her alot because if you evertell her that you don't liker her all that much I know what she'll do she'll cry because when she found out that you said that she was about 80ft tallerthan you she almost cried. I wish you two get together before the dance because you never know what you'll get if you ask her to go with you. Well I better let you go for now. Bye see ya later.
Robin Bradburn l/s Louie Tillery always and foreverLeslie Johnson l/s Clark Gordon maybe hopefully
Currently listening: Journey - Greatest Hits By Journey Release date: By 25 October, 1990
----------------
gone again
i knew a woman once
i saw her through a window
while we danced slow
her head on my shoulder
a long, sad song
we turned so slowly
rocking from left foot
to right foot
and back
she never looked up
and i shifted slightly
and she never looked up
i knew her then
during that song
through that window
and then she was gone again
-----------------------
west end girls
5-10-86
Dear Leslie,
Hi, how are you? I'm doing great. I had a good time this weekend.
I know you didn't expect me to show up there at your house. Its only nine miles from Paris, my grandparents live there and I like riding my bike anyway.
I liked hanging out there with you (especially in your mom's roomwhen we were listening to the tape with the Pet Shop Boys on it - i hope she's ok with me smoking in there...maybe we should have made the bed..) I didn't know you were an AC-DC fan. Thats cool. I really like the For Those About To Rock album.
Anyway, I guess I should go. I'll meet you in the stairwell right before 2nd period.
Love,
Clark
Sometimes you're better off dead
There's gun in your hand and it's pointing at your head
You think you're mad, too unstable
Kicking in chairs and knocking down tables
In a restaurant in a West End town
Call the police, there's a madman around
Running down underground to a dive bar
In a West End town
In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
West End girls
Too many shadows, whispering voices
Faces on posters, too many choices
If, when, why, what?
How much have you got?
Have you got it, do you get it, if so, how often?
And which do you choose, a hard or soft option?
(How much do you need?)
In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
West End girlsWest End girls
(How much do you need?)
In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
Oooh West End town, a dead end world
East End boys, West End Girls
West End girls
You've got a heart of glass or a heart of stone
Just you wait 'til I get you home
We've got no future, we've got no past
Here today, built to last
In every city, in every nation
From Lake Geneva to the Finland station
(How far have you been?)
In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
A West End town, a dead end world
East End Boys, West End girls
West End girls
-------------------------
Monday, March 06, 2006
its truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
1-31-86
Dear Leslie,
Hello. How are you? I hope you are doing okay. I'm doing fine. I hate school. You seem to enjoy it but thatsbecause you are so smart. I think you are pretty too and its ok if you are a little bit taller than me. I still like you.
There. I said it.
I was wondering, if you you weren't already going with someone ( i know you like Jeff) if you would like to go with the dance with me? I can wait for an answer and i understand if you don't want to.
Anyway, i hope you can go with me. I'd like that very much.
Your friend,
Clark
PS - I'll be at the table over by the window at lunch if you want to come over and maybe sit with me.
Sister Christian, oh the time has come
And you know that you're the only one to say
Okay
Where you goin', what you looking for?
You know those boys don't want to play no more with you
It's true
You're motoring
What's your price for flight,
And finding Mister Right?
You'll be all right tonight
Babe, you know you're growing up so fast
And momma's worrying that you won't last to say
Let's play
Sister Christian, there's so much in life
Don't you give it up before your time is dueIt's true
It's truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue (Yeah)
You're motoring
You've got him in your sights
And driving through the night
You're motoring
What's your price for flight,
And finding Mister Right?
You'll be all right tonight
You're motoring
What's your price for flight,
And finding Mister Right?
You'll be all right tonight
You're motoring
What's your price for flight,
And finding Mister Right?
You'll be all right...Tonight
Sister Christian, oh the time has come
And you know that you're the only one to say
Okay
But you're motoring
Yeah, motoring
Saturday, March 04, 2006
cliques
im watching it all play out.
eyes averted, knowing.
the broken social scene
a laughable parody
the two-way street of friendship
a long, lonely road
from here on out, there are no passengers
for all of them have ridden prior
their archetypal forms learned, experienced
and tossed aside.
what is this thing that loves life
loves to watch
loves to feel the rush
but cannot jump in the game?
i've seen it all go down
and yet, ive been nowhere
done nothing to make such a claim.
i just know.
i just cannot shake this feeling
of life being a dance
Musical Chairs
and i'm the fellow standing at the end.
---------------
im watching it all play out.
eyes averted, knowing.
the broken social scene
a laughable parody
the two-way street of friendship
a long, lonely road
from here on out, there are no passengers
for all of them have ridden prior
their archetypal forms learned, experienced
and tossed aside.
what is this thing that loves life
loves to watch
loves to feel the rush
but cannot jump in the game?
i've seen it all go down
and yet, ive been nowhere
done nothing to make such a claim.
i just know.
i just cannot shake this feeling
of life being a dance
Musical Chairs
and i'm the fellow standing at the end.
---------------
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
this place is a glowing cesspool
what goes around comes around. you're gonna reap just what you sow. instant karma's gonna get you. this movie is about retribution. i'm paying for it now, momma. I'm payin for real.
step right up ladies and germs and witness the disintegration of the mediocre mind. no one takes pictures of me but me and i always say too much. if it ever all comes together it'll be a helluva day but i think that train has long since left the station. i don't do anything that releases any aggression because i don't have any aggression. note to self: stop shrinking. i don't eat well, I don't sleep well, I don't drink well i don't well well well, what have we here? i've been thinking about this my time business. i figure if you're here and im here, doesn't that make it our time? this is our time. when the truth is found to be lies and all the joy in you dies? three is very much the magic number but three is kinda weird when you're a bisymmetrical, aquasimian biped, watermonkey.i need sumthin real real real fukkin bad, momma i just can't say what it is. i ain't got much but what i got i had give to me. once i realized that life is just something that energy does everything seemed rather useless. we're all just walking around brainwashed into killing time and trying to feel something while the oil companies swing us all around in circles by our lower intestines. no, there is no hope, just temporary pain relief...and then maybe the simple things like the bellylaugh of a baby or the taste of a good cheeseburger mean what they mean and are what they are - which is heroin.
yes, i presume a lot. yes im pretentious but there's no pretense other than im pretentious. I assume you'll read this. you don't care and i don't either. i don't know how to not hurt...double meaning intentional. im gonna get on a bunch of drugs after i get my teeth fixed and just freak completely the fuck out and keep little pet stacks of pebbles in the middle of the street and create grand and glorious monuments to people like Flava Flav and ...oh nothing. i never could be crazy, really. i try too hard. i should get to bed. i have to get up early tomorrow..well, not so early, but later than now. i wish i could go back to being 21 when i had great bulbous acne corpuscles (godammit don't you love that word - say it aloud now: c-o-r-p-u-s-c-l-e-s. yeah. when you say the 'uscles' part let the spit kind of roll and slosh around in your mouth) that would explode out of my seething, crawling, oily flesh like so many bubbles on the surface a hot mud spring. that's just nasty. they weren't big. regular sized zits like any young man who secretes somewhat abnormally high levels of body oils, but they were MY zits, godammit. i made them, watched them grow ...all stretched and distorted cartoon style. I have no idea. I'm bored to tears and don't want to sleep. As i said before, nothing is worth anything anymore but im tired of coming off sounding like a fat, ugly 14-year old girl all writing in her journal and being all depressed and sad and suicidal and knowing that i'm just dumb dumb dumb and have zits and live in an ugly pink room and Jimmy Koepeckne will never notice me over pretty, perfect Marsha Easton and i just want to gouge her eyes with my Mead #2 pencil sometimes in study hall they way she prances around in her mom's expensive clothes and ooh oooh ooh ooh i could just say a curse word, but mom says cursing is bad and a sin and that god loves us all but i wonder does he loves even me with my big ugly nose zits and eyelid warts and one leg shorter than the other and my evil, rage-filled black cinder of a soul? even me? even me who imagines Jimmy doing nasty things to me while i do things to myself beneath my dirty sheets? even me who secretly wishes i could see my english teacher Mrs. Schockley's bush just to know what I'm in for? no, but somebody like John Prine will write a song about me so i can fuck an ugly PFC in a dream and will maybe have one shining moment of release from this ever darkening and narrowing window of existence.
what goes around comes around. you're gonna reap just what you sow. instant karma's gonna get you. this movie is about retribution. i'm paying for it now, momma. I'm payin for real.
step right up ladies and germs and witness the disintegration of the mediocre mind. no one takes pictures of me but me and i always say too much. if it ever all comes together it'll be a helluva day but i think that train has long since left the station. i don't do anything that releases any aggression because i don't have any aggression. note to self: stop shrinking. i don't eat well, I don't sleep well, I don't drink well i don't well well well, what have we here? i've been thinking about this my time business. i figure if you're here and im here, doesn't that make it our time? this is our time. when the truth is found to be lies and all the joy in you dies? three is very much the magic number but three is kinda weird when you're a bisymmetrical, aquasimian biped, watermonkey.i need sumthin real real real fukkin bad, momma i just can't say what it is. i ain't got much but what i got i had give to me. once i realized that life is just something that energy does everything seemed rather useless. we're all just walking around brainwashed into killing time and trying to feel something while the oil companies swing us all around in circles by our lower intestines. no, there is no hope, just temporary pain relief...and then maybe the simple things like the bellylaugh of a baby or the taste of a good cheeseburger mean what they mean and are what they are - which is heroin.
yes, i presume a lot. yes im pretentious but there's no pretense other than im pretentious. I assume you'll read this. you don't care and i don't either. i don't know how to not hurt...double meaning intentional. im gonna get on a bunch of drugs after i get my teeth fixed and just freak completely the fuck out and keep little pet stacks of pebbles in the middle of the street and create grand and glorious monuments to people like Flava Flav and ...oh nothing. i never could be crazy, really. i try too hard. i should get to bed. i have to get up early tomorrow..well, not so early, but later than now. i wish i could go back to being 21 when i had great bulbous acne corpuscles (godammit don't you love that word - say it aloud now: c-o-r-p-u-s-c-l-e-s. yeah. when you say the 'uscles' part let the spit kind of roll and slosh around in your mouth) that would explode out of my seething, crawling, oily flesh like so many bubbles on the surface a hot mud spring. that's just nasty. they weren't big. regular sized zits like any young man who secretes somewhat abnormally high levels of body oils, but they were MY zits, godammit. i made them, watched them grow ...all stretched and distorted cartoon style. I have no idea. I'm bored to tears and don't want to sleep. As i said before, nothing is worth anything anymore but im tired of coming off sounding like a fat, ugly 14-year old girl all writing in her journal and being all depressed and sad and suicidal and knowing that i'm just dumb dumb dumb and have zits and live in an ugly pink room and Jimmy Koepeckne will never notice me over pretty, perfect Marsha Easton and i just want to gouge her eyes with my Mead #2 pencil sometimes in study hall they way she prances around in her mom's expensive clothes and ooh oooh ooh ooh i could just say a curse word, but mom says cursing is bad and a sin and that god loves us all but i wonder does he loves even me with my big ugly nose zits and eyelid warts and one leg shorter than the other and my evil, rage-filled black cinder of a soul? even me? even me who imagines Jimmy doing nasty things to me while i do things to myself beneath my dirty sheets? even me who secretly wishes i could see my english teacher Mrs. Schockley's bush just to know what I'm in for? no, but somebody like John Prine will write a song about me so i can fuck an ugly PFC in a dream and will maybe have one shining moment of release from this ever darkening and narrowing window of existence.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
The Dumpstelele
A friend once described to me the "Dumpstelele" [pronounced 'dumpstelele'] - a fabled Tom Waits invention. This was a few years ago. To date, I have not been able to corroborate.
"Ok, Its a steel dumpster, right? He welds the lid(s) shut and then cuts a big, irregularly shaped hole in one side.
Then he welds some pegs on either side of the hole and strings piano strings over it - big ones. Several of them.
The instrument is played by using a silver dollar as a plectrum and a wine bottle as a slide."
Just think about the sound this thing would make...then imagine Tom Waits all drunk playing it and singing some song about being a dinosaur and eating broken glass in New Orleans.
Thats right.
------------
down in a hole
so here
are the last of these years?
to spend shuffling around
peeking out the little jail window
safe behind the steel
but wanting someone
anyone
to come in.
the night is solid out there
but for a half-sphere lit
by the halogen porch light
a little defender
a domestic sentry that says
"somebody lives here still"
i don't want to sleep.
im not done with today
something didn't happen
again
a whole day gone
and the chances are all gone
the doors closed
and im left here
to carry this brain around
as it grows ever more tired
trudging along
towards heat death
yes, i'll grow old here.
not in this space
but in this place
because i've stopped climbing.
the bottom of this well is wretched.
but i know it
like i know myself.
in the dying of the heart
there is a lifting
of responsibility
of feeling
a fleeing of the self
a letting go
like bowels voided
when the body dies.
A friend once described to me the "Dumpstelele" [pronounced 'dumpstelele'] - a fabled Tom Waits invention. This was a few years ago. To date, I have not been able to corroborate.
"Ok, Its a steel dumpster, right? He welds the lid(s) shut and then cuts a big, irregularly shaped hole in one side.
Then he welds some pegs on either side of the hole and strings piano strings over it - big ones. Several of them.
The instrument is played by using a silver dollar as a plectrum and a wine bottle as a slide."
Just think about the sound this thing would make...then imagine Tom Waits all drunk playing it and singing some song about being a dinosaur and eating broken glass in New Orleans.
Thats right.
------------
down in a hole
so here
are the last of these years?
to spend shuffling around
peeking out the little jail window
safe behind the steel
but wanting someone
anyone
to come in.
the night is solid out there
but for a half-sphere lit
by the halogen porch light
a little defender
a domestic sentry that says
"somebody lives here still"
i don't want to sleep.
im not done with today
something didn't happen
again
a whole day gone
and the chances are all gone
the doors closed
and im left here
to carry this brain around
as it grows ever more tired
trudging along
towards heat death
yes, i'll grow old here.
not in this space
but in this place
because i've stopped climbing.
the bottom of this well is wretched.
but i know it
like i know myself.
in the dying of the heart
there is a lifting
of responsibility
of feeling
a fleeing of the self
a letting go
like bowels voided
when the body dies.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
U2 dream
it was a U2 concert...in what seemed to be a high school gym.
for some reason, they had some famous country jackass with them...i remember thinking that they had to have asked him to join them onstage to make them more popular in the south.
I was right in the front row...which wasn't really a row because it was just people standing around on the gym floor. I was reclining on some kind of chair while most others were standing.
They let the country guy sing his song...which was some well known country standard...only the band didn't know it at all...and even he was screwing it all up and changing it...the only thing that worked was when Bono finally figured what the guy was doing, he sang high, clear, strong backing harmonies to the chorus...which was the only redeeming quality to the performance of the song.
I don't remember anything else from the performance other than looking around at wht i knew to be country fans and feeling some smug satisfaction that they were getting ready to experience U2.
After the show, some people gathered at the stage. Everyone was clamouring to see Edge (i wanted to see what guitar pedals he was using)...i din want to fight the crowd, so i moved over to look at Adam's stuff...which was sort of simple and boring...maybe just a chorus pedal and a tuner?...and no one else was there trying to meet him...i sort of averted my eyes from him and went back over to Edge...i finally got to the stage...and he was running some kinds of wierd vintage delay stuff...and i asked him "Do you use two delay pedals - one set to a single tap and another set to a longer, more repetitive delay?"
He ignored me...and I thought "dumbass - of course thats what he uses. Why the hell did you ask that?"
and that was it.
Why the hell am i dreaming about U2?
-----------------------
and I feel fine
"Well, i know what that song is called!"
"And what would that be?"
"'Its The End Of The World As We Know It.'"
"Thats right! That is the name of the song!" I decided not to mention the parenthetical (and i feel fine) part of the title...after all, we were just getting out of the car at the school..
"Yeah - because he sings a bunch of random words and then says [singing] 'its the end of the wooorld as we know it'.."
"Well, they're not completely random. There are lots of names of people and places in there."
"Really?"
"Yep."
"hmmm."
methinks i know what our next reading project will be.
it was a U2 concert...in what seemed to be a high school gym.
for some reason, they had some famous country jackass with them...i remember thinking that they had to have asked him to join them onstage to make them more popular in the south.
I was right in the front row...which wasn't really a row because it was just people standing around on the gym floor. I was reclining on some kind of chair while most others were standing.
They let the country guy sing his song...which was some well known country standard...only the band didn't know it at all...and even he was screwing it all up and changing it...the only thing that worked was when Bono finally figured what the guy was doing, he sang high, clear, strong backing harmonies to the chorus...which was the only redeeming quality to the performance of the song.
I don't remember anything else from the performance other than looking around at wht i knew to be country fans and feeling some smug satisfaction that they were getting ready to experience U2.
After the show, some people gathered at the stage. Everyone was clamouring to see Edge (i wanted to see what guitar pedals he was using)...i din want to fight the crowd, so i moved over to look at Adam's stuff...which was sort of simple and boring...maybe just a chorus pedal and a tuner?...and no one else was there trying to meet him...i sort of averted my eyes from him and went back over to Edge...i finally got to the stage...and he was running some kinds of wierd vintage delay stuff...and i asked him "Do you use two delay pedals - one set to a single tap and another set to a longer, more repetitive delay?"
He ignored me...and I thought "dumbass - of course thats what he uses. Why the hell did you ask that?"
and that was it.
Why the hell am i dreaming about U2?
-----------------------
and I feel fine
"Well, i know what that song is called!"
"And what would that be?"
"'Its The End Of The World As We Know It.'"
"Thats right! That is the name of the song!" I decided not to mention the parenthetical (and i feel fine) part of the title...after all, we were just getting out of the car at the school..
"Yeah - because he sings a bunch of random words and then says [singing] 'its the end of the wooorld as we know it'.."
"Well, they're not completely random. There are lots of names of people and places in there."
"Really?"
"Yep."
"hmmm."
methinks i know what our next reading project will be.
gray ice dream
my dreams are like movies these days.
it was so wierd.
this family - or at least three members of it - the grandfather, the mother and a boy of about 8 or 9...were out side when something like pompeii happened.it started raining...gray needles? fragments of something...sounded like bacon frying as it fell ...a type of ice? anyway - it coated them almost instantly...freezing them in whatever position they were in - looking up to the sky, the boy was in mid description of something (like my son will do - with his arms flailing around to describe)...and they were frozen and died there - like the pompeii people...and there was a closeup of the gray stuff creeping/solidifying along a tree branch...and as it solidified it took on a shiny, gray metallic color/texture (like ice again?)...and in the closeup...as the stuff creeeps up the branch, it somehow exposes this... we suddenly see a little boy's hand clasping the hand of what appears to be a green tree frog - - you know how they're all bright green and fleshy...and the little boy's hand was clasped in it...and as the gray stuff fully exposed the boy and the treefrog, they go from hard gray stuff to living beings...and the boy falls from the tree and suddenly become aware...that he has travelled time and place...like as the other people are coated and killed, this boy and the frog are exposed and made alive...and we know that the boy is a younger version of the child from earlier that was frozen...and it just gets wierder from there. There are different versions of the same family entering and exiting the same timespace at different times and are all running into each other and there are all kinds of intense emotions and wierdness and disbelief and at one point im running through the 'family home' with the little boy and we're trying to stop it from becoming all Disneyfied...i specifically remember walking down the hall and seeing a Quizno's kiosk and going "Quizno's?! What the hell is a Quizno's doing in here?!" and we run into a big movie theatre - the kind that they have at the mall and we're running up to the back of the theatre to warn avery one...and then i woke up.
but at one point i was driving down a road and suddenly it turned into this rickety wrap-around porch type pathway around this old man's house...and he is the patriarch of the whole family...and the porch -type path is made of almost rotten tree branches with big spaces between them and its all painted gray and white (you know - like a porch - gray boards, white rails) and its extremely rickety and very high off the ground...and i get all the way down to the ground finally and the old man comes out and says something like "yeah - need to take that down" and starts to shake the thing until it breaks and falls away from the house...and people cheered that he had finally brought this old walkway down...lke i had been the first to walk on it in like 30 years or something.
it was like a movie.i woke up with full awareness of it and was all "wow - i have a complete movie idea in my head."then i started to realize how crazy it all was.
I think the premise might almost work though - the different versions of a family being caught in some wierd inadvertant time travel thing and encountering different versions of themselves and learning some kind of lessons from that.
-----------
fading
fading communication.
fading light
fading inspiration
fading friendships
(i feel you spinning around trying all the knobs and switches of us and none of them do what they did before and its all just stopping and you're sad but not too...just ...disappointed...and you are one of many my friend. one of many.)
fading intellectual agility
fading humor
fading wit
fading vision
fading will to live
(really)
fading faith
fading memory.
fading paint
fading clothing
fading fading fading fading.everything gone to black
"don't try"
as i throw my hands
cause every time i try
i fade.
and im exiting now.
more reclusive
less responsive
less involved
until finally maybe this body shuts down
and leaves finally
release
in the movies i'm one of the characrers that gets killed off fairly early.
game over.
thanks for playing.
you can keep all my equipment
i wont need it.
--------------
pj morning
1-20-99
A flock of seagulls. In the middle of a shopping center parking lot. In the middle of kentucky in the middle of winter.Some things just don't need an explanation.
I saw some black birds cross low over the highway this morning. A pattern of imaginary cross hatch as they pass just outside my windshield.
Fruitfly myself inside out."Victory"
"Happy and Bleeding"
"Plants and Rags"
The way she says “began” is exquisite as she pulls my face to her black, cold crotch.I tell her in my weak american way – ‘I would never do that to you.’
My stomach - a burning mass of proof –I smell horrible and I feel like crying and sleeping.So I do alittle of both.Smoking would not be good today.This is all in the brain before caffeineDriving, faster, faster, the faster I go the more I relax.Not really. No real relief. No matter how fast.I think i'm sick today.
------------
eulogy -1997
While i was alive
There were storms
and people
Making do and not
There was soft and hard
Big and small
and everything you have to work for.
I was a man while i was here
if not so boastfully stated every day
and there was everything i didn't understand
and did and didn't want to
There were things that stuck to me
and things that wouldn't take
There were springtimes
and winters
and undefined days
of no future
and there were lovers
at least they thought they were
or tried to be.
Something while you have to sleep
and wake and shit and wor
kand hate
and there were sounds
I thought were me.
and there was drunken Jazz
psuedo sex dancing at 3am
and toilet worship
agonizing pain of being alive
my vomit on my clothes proves i exist.
A million starts and twice as many stops
and no care and no being of what you are.
and there were queers
and freaks with beautiful lives ahead
with no fear
and talented bums
and teachers.
and month-long acid freaks
afraid to make it all real and getinline
and just about a million players
with big, young eyes and
"yeah, man - i can'really doit that well yet..."
and songs that rattled the fucking windows
and real blues with no sound.
I walked through it all
with my heart for sale
and just wanting a little strength
a little proof that i am something.
and i walked through it all
right out the back door
into the desert
which is where i was headed anyway.
I'll dream about this tonight
with my boring television mind
and i'll wake knowing i'm stupid
and weak
and stil have to be.
I want every day to be like fire
and all of my insides worked out so hard
they shine from overuse
and everyone to hear just a few of my words and make
me king of myself
and one good lover - a queen that makes me worthy.
----------------
the locking
The rains were heavy last night.
I was up through them.
Like the final front moving through
to wipe out the last vestiges of fall
and bring in the true death of winter
and i did my thing too
finally saying the unsaid
how did it land?
the silence is news enough.
i guess i'll go back to sleep
perhaps the preceeding phrase
has larger implications than we know.
vonnegut argued that this period is not winter
but is "The Locking"
when nature begins to shut things down
and get ready for winter
which strikes in mid to late january
or even february
and can go on into april.
methinks this one will chill us down
like we've not seen in years.
just a feeling.
-------------------
turtle
they never tell you the secret.
they just back away
never saying things like
"if only you had said this in this way at this time"
"If only you had not done this in this way and said this."
they never let on.
they just stop, and back away and save their thoughts for people who will do nothing with them.
nothing productive.
like try
they don't want to help.
you're suposed to just know.
no, you just get to lose.
you don't get to learn.
or maybe you learn not to try again.
or try to learn not to try
or to remember
but they certainly don't want to help.
some sort of visciousness there.
something mean in that silence
but i do it wrong every time i guess
and you shouldn't have to endure that
you've every right to leave me be
cause i cant move there
and you wont move here
and it was rather a bad idea to begin with
and you don't want to try
because you've seen how i am
and i just can't handle someone like you
who won't open their fucking mouth to speak.
only to bite.
my dreams are like movies these days.
it was so wierd.
this family - or at least three members of it - the grandfather, the mother and a boy of about 8 or 9...were out side when something like pompeii happened.it started raining...gray needles? fragments of something...sounded like bacon frying as it fell ...a type of ice? anyway - it coated them almost instantly...freezing them in whatever position they were in - looking up to the sky, the boy was in mid description of something (like my son will do - with his arms flailing around to describe)...and they were frozen and died there - like the pompeii people...and there was a closeup of the gray stuff creeping/solidifying along a tree branch...and as it solidified it took on a shiny, gray metallic color/texture (like ice again?)...and in the closeup...as the stuff creeeps up the branch, it somehow exposes this... we suddenly see a little boy's hand clasping the hand of what appears to be a green tree frog - - you know how they're all bright green and fleshy...and the little boy's hand was clasped in it...and as the gray stuff fully exposed the boy and the treefrog, they go from hard gray stuff to living beings...and the boy falls from the tree and suddenly become aware...that he has travelled time and place...like as the other people are coated and killed, this boy and the frog are exposed and made alive...and we know that the boy is a younger version of the child from earlier that was frozen...and it just gets wierder from there. There are different versions of the same family entering and exiting the same timespace at different times and are all running into each other and there are all kinds of intense emotions and wierdness and disbelief and at one point im running through the 'family home' with the little boy and we're trying to stop it from becoming all Disneyfied...i specifically remember walking down the hall and seeing a Quizno's kiosk and going "Quizno's?! What the hell is a Quizno's doing in here?!" and we run into a big movie theatre - the kind that they have at the mall and we're running up to the back of the theatre to warn avery one...and then i woke up.
but at one point i was driving down a road and suddenly it turned into this rickety wrap-around porch type pathway around this old man's house...and he is the patriarch of the whole family...and the porch -type path is made of almost rotten tree branches with big spaces between them and its all painted gray and white (you know - like a porch - gray boards, white rails) and its extremely rickety and very high off the ground...and i get all the way down to the ground finally and the old man comes out and says something like "yeah - need to take that down" and starts to shake the thing until it breaks and falls away from the house...and people cheered that he had finally brought this old walkway down...lke i had been the first to walk on it in like 30 years or something.
it was like a movie.i woke up with full awareness of it and was all "wow - i have a complete movie idea in my head."then i started to realize how crazy it all was.
I think the premise might almost work though - the different versions of a family being caught in some wierd inadvertant time travel thing and encountering different versions of themselves and learning some kind of lessons from that.
-----------
fading
fading communication.
fading light
fading inspiration
fading friendships
(i feel you spinning around trying all the knobs and switches of us and none of them do what they did before and its all just stopping and you're sad but not too...just ...disappointed...and you are one of many my friend. one of many.)
fading intellectual agility
fading humor
fading wit
fading vision
fading will to live
(really)
fading faith
fading memory.
fading paint
fading clothing
fading fading fading fading.everything gone to black
"don't try"
as i throw my hands
cause every time i try
i fade.
and im exiting now.
more reclusive
less responsive
less involved
until finally maybe this body shuts down
and leaves finally
release
in the movies i'm one of the characrers that gets killed off fairly early.
game over.
thanks for playing.
you can keep all my equipment
i wont need it.
--------------
pj morning
1-20-99
A flock of seagulls. In the middle of a shopping center parking lot. In the middle of kentucky in the middle of winter.Some things just don't need an explanation.
I saw some black birds cross low over the highway this morning. A pattern of imaginary cross hatch as they pass just outside my windshield.
Fruitfly myself inside out."Victory"
"Happy and Bleeding"
"Plants and Rags"
The way she says “began” is exquisite as she pulls my face to her black, cold crotch.I tell her in my weak american way – ‘I would never do that to you.’
My stomach - a burning mass of proof –I smell horrible and I feel like crying and sleeping.So I do alittle of both.Smoking would not be good today.This is all in the brain before caffeineDriving, faster, faster, the faster I go the more I relax.Not really. No real relief. No matter how fast.I think i'm sick today.
------------
eulogy -1997
While i was alive
There were storms
and people
Making do and not
There was soft and hard
Big and small
and everything you have to work for.
I was a man while i was here
if not so boastfully stated every day
and there was everything i didn't understand
and did and didn't want to
There were things that stuck to me
and things that wouldn't take
There were springtimes
and winters
and undefined days
of no future
and there were lovers
at least they thought they were
or tried to be.
Something while you have to sleep
and wake and shit and wor
kand hate
and there were sounds
I thought were me.
and there was drunken Jazz
psuedo sex dancing at 3am
and toilet worship
agonizing pain of being alive
my vomit on my clothes proves i exist.
A million starts and twice as many stops
and no care and no being of what you are.
and there were queers
and freaks with beautiful lives ahead
with no fear
and talented bums
and teachers.
and month-long acid freaks
afraid to make it all real and getinline
and just about a million players
with big, young eyes and
"yeah, man - i can'really doit that well yet..."
and songs that rattled the fucking windows
and real blues with no sound.
I walked through it all
with my heart for sale
and just wanting a little strength
a little proof that i am something.
and i walked through it all
right out the back door
into the desert
which is where i was headed anyway.
I'll dream about this tonight
with my boring television mind
and i'll wake knowing i'm stupid
and weak
and stil have to be.
I want every day to be like fire
and all of my insides worked out so hard
they shine from overuse
and everyone to hear just a few of my words and make
me king of myself
and one good lover - a queen that makes me worthy.
----------------
the locking
The rains were heavy last night.
I was up through them.
Like the final front moving through
to wipe out the last vestiges of fall
and bring in the true death of winter
and i did my thing too
finally saying the unsaid
how did it land?
the silence is news enough.
i guess i'll go back to sleep
perhaps the preceeding phrase
has larger implications than we know.
vonnegut argued that this period is not winter
but is "The Locking"
when nature begins to shut things down
and get ready for winter
which strikes in mid to late january
or even february
and can go on into april.
methinks this one will chill us down
like we've not seen in years.
just a feeling.
-------------------
turtle
they never tell you the secret.
they just back away
never saying things like
"if only you had said this in this way at this time"
"If only you had not done this in this way and said this."
they never let on.
they just stop, and back away and save their thoughts for people who will do nothing with them.
nothing productive.
like try
they don't want to help.
you're suposed to just know.
no, you just get to lose.
you don't get to learn.
or maybe you learn not to try again.
or try to learn not to try
or to remember
but they certainly don't want to help.
some sort of visciousness there.
something mean in that silence
but i do it wrong every time i guess
and you shouldn't have to endure that
you've every right to leave me be
cause i cant move there
and you wont move here
and it was rather a bad idea to begin with
and you don't want to try
because you've seen how i am
and i just can't handle someone like you
who won't open their fucking mouth to speak.
only to bite.
Paula Abdul saved my life
do you think that perhaps we know how to die?
that the soul knows how to end the body without raising use of hand or tool - only the the decision be not to go on?
these stories we hear of lifelong couples separated by the death of one only to be followed shortly by the other - is it coicidence that they reach the end at about the same time - that they are of similar age and the body shuts down just because it is time to shut down or is that it was love that powered these people and when their love is gone, they simply wish no longer to exist and choose, choose to die?
once about ten years ago, i had a bad experience on mushrooms. i left the terrifying party and arrived home - to a singlewide trailer i was occupying for the second half of a month a freind of mine had left behind for the ummer - rent paid - i was a sanctioned squatter.
i laid in my bed listening to the beating of my heart. i am part drummer, and i was on mushrooms, so I started grooving around my heartbeat - building rhythms, polyrhythms and solid beats - all with the steady heartbeat as their core. in a 'drum circle', i am apt to not initiate the groove, but allow it to grow, find it, move around it, into it and then try to change the fundamental beat at the core...the time signature even. what usually happens is I break the jam down...the grooving stops because the core had changed...this is why im only part drummer - this is not nice, communal drumming, it is selfish showboating and it generally makes things not fun.
well.
this night, i stayed true to my nature and began to focus on my heartbeat...trying to change the groove..then realized that I was trying to change my own heartbeat...and in a flash of gut-tightening fear, i felt that I had the power - somehow - to stop my own heartbeat. I had to get away from it but could not..it pumped in my ears and in my chest and moved the bed i was on...my own heartbeat became a frightening thing becaus i wanted it to stop and felt that something in me would stop it if I had to continue to listen to it.
quickly, i located the little clock radio i had (one of the few belongings i had at the time) and turned it to whatever station it was tuned to, which was the local, bad, low-grade pop station. A Paula Abdul song i think was playing. I brought the radio into the bed with me and cradled it to my chest as i curled into a fetal position...listening..to anything other than my relentless heartbeat.
eventually i slept.
i was sure that i could have stopped my own heart and part of me still believes i could have.
is this the power that we have?
if we could simply connect with ourselves enough can we commit suicide without an instrument or physical act?
maybe not.
maybe that was just a bad trip.
you know its a bad trip when Paula Abdul makes it better.
------------------
fade
there are many ways
to let it fade.
grown alone.
given to
detatchment?
its back again
the doing.
the doing over the being.
yes, many ways to fade.
as many as there are
people.
the rules of detatchment dictate
forthwith
you should stop
engagement.
and you looked at me
there in the yard
and I backed smilingly
drunkenly away
in the sun
and watched you recede
and wondered if i'd missed
or was right to hold my tongue.
"if you need absolutely anything"
i heard echoing in my head
and you stood with that thought in your eyes
were you watching me go
knowing you would not see me again?
refusing to smile
refusing to let it be okay
needing the pain?
keep it.
i will suffer no more your weight
or the threat of imminent heartbreak
or the possibility
the truth that
I just wasn't
It.
and now, its true
that I do not understand
that i did not understand
that it was all lost on me
that the reality of moments
non-ethereal
cannot be made magic
by bullshit
by ignoring the elephant
standing on your crotch
by dreaming away into some abstracted interpretation
of real human emotion
explained
like Rube Goldberg
flips a switch
no, the next time, i'm on.
i'm in.
i'm there
with no analysis
do be do be do.
but she'll be scared
of you
---------------
falling down
as I age, of course this will matter less and less to people around me...ill just become a graying marcher in the vast armies of mediocrity.
as long as i don't do any crazy shit like make sombody's head into a hat or drive my car through a church or something, the world will happily let me while away my time tucked away in some litte corner somewhere and they'll clean up all my shit when I kick off...in my sleep...after falling asleep drunk...after having been out at some party where i watched people dance and laugh for a couple hours before i threw my drink in the middle of the floor and walked out.
----------------------
do you think that perhaps we know how to die?
that the soul knows how to end the body without raising use of hand or tool - only the the decision be not to go on?
these stories we hear of lifelong couples separated by the death of one only to be followed shortly by the other - is it coicidence that they reach the end at about the same time - that they are of similar age and the body shuts down just because it is time to shut down or is that it was love that powered these people and when their love is gone, they simply wish no longer to exist and choose, choose to die?
once about ten years ago, i had a bad experience on mushrooms. i left the terrifying party and arrived home - to a singlewide trailer i was occupying for the second half of a month a freind of mine had left behind for the ummer - rent paid - i was a sanctioned squatter.
i laid in my bed listening to the beating of my heart. i am part drummer, and i was on mushrooms, so I started grooving around my heartbeat - building rhythms, polyrhythms and solid beats - all with the steady heartbeat as their core. in a 'drum circle', i am apt to not initiate the groove, but allow it to grow, find it, move around it, into it and then try to change the fundamental beat at the core...the time signature even. what usually happens is I break the jam down...the grooving stops because the core had changed...this is why im only part drummer - this is not nice, communal drumming, it is selfish showboating and it generally makes things not fun.
well.
this night, i stayed true to my nature and began to focus on my heartbeat...trying to change the groove..then realized that I was trying to change my own heartbeat...and in a flash of gut-tightening fear, i felt that I had the power - somehow - to stop my own heartbeat. I had to get away from it but could not..it pumped in my ears and in my chest and moved the bed i was on...my own heartbeat became a frightening thing becaus i wanted it to stop and felt that something in me would stop it if I had to continue to listen to it.
quickly, i located the little clock radio i had (one of the few belongings i had at the time) and turned it to whatever station it was tuned to, which was the local, bad, low-grade pop station. A Paula Abdul song i think was playing. I brought the radio into the bed with me and cradled it to my chest as i curled into a fetal position...listening..to anything other than my relentless heartbeat.
eventually i slept.
i was sure that i could have stopped my own heart and part of me still believes i could have.
is this the power that we have?
if we could simply connect with ourselves enough can we commit suicide without an instrument or physical act?
maybe not.
maybe that was just a bad trip.
you know its a bad trip when Paula Abdul makes it better.
------------------
fade
there are many ways
to let it fade.
grown alone.
given to
detatchment?
its back again
the doing.
the doing over the being.
yes, many ways to fade.
as many as there are
people.
the rules of detatchment dictate
forthwith
you should stop
engagement.
and you looked at me
there in the yard
and I backed smilingly
drunkenly away
in the sun
and watched you recede
and wondered if i'd missed
or was right to hold my tongue.
"if you need absolutely anything"
i heard echoing in my head
and you stood with that thought in your eyes
were you watching me go
knowing you would not see me again?
refusing to smile
refusing to let it be okay
needing the pain?
keep it.
i will suffer no more your weight
or the threat of imminent heartbreak
or the possibility
the truth that
I just wasn't
It.
and now, its true
that I do not understand
that i did not understand
that it was all lost on me
that the reality of moments
non-ethereal
cannot be made magic
by bullshit
by ignoring the elephant
standing on your crotch
by dreaming away into some abstracted interpretation
of real human emotion
explained
like Rube Goldberg
flips a switch
no, the next time, i'm on.
i'm in.
i'm there
with no analysis
do be do be do.
but she'll be scared
of you
---------------
falling down
as I age, of course this will matter less and less to people around me...ill just become a graying marcher in the vast armies of mediocrity.
as long as i don't do any crazy shit like make sombody's head into a hat or drive my car through a church or something, the world will happily let me while away my time tucked away in some litte corner somewhere and they'll clean up all my shit when I kick off...in my sleep...after falling asleep drunk...after having been out at some party where i watched people dance and laugh for a couple hours before i threw my drink in the middle of the floor and walked out.
----------------------
a dream described
you describe a dream to someone, they interpret and describe back to you...only they're talented and can write:
dream of the girl in green
nightly visiting the precipice, salted ocean c
linging to the dream: her face,
the way her hands recede beneath a sweater: green
her hair in dervish whip of coils,
pays frenzied homage to the winds
and her eyes cup saccharine secrets
that belie the depth she’s learned to hide...
what have you gone to find below the ledge?
what do you bring to her upon the sand?
what treasure there against rock reason,
makes you know you’ve found THE thing?
the answer slips in between the dreaming
and when you brush her lips: awakening.
i don't know why im here
I put my son to bed with the radio timer on his clock radio set to 13 minutes. Im almost asleep on the couch when It cuts off in the middle of his "favorite song" and he's almost in tears. He yells from his room to tell me "DADDY!!! It cut off in the middle of my FAVORITE SONG!!!" I yell back to the room, "im sorry - goodnight." and he replies with a diminutive "goodnight." and im more sad than i've been all night.
I eventuallly get back to sleep...unable to move to the bed --the couch is somehow more comfortable...restrictive..closer...smaller. I wake up early after a dream. Mike and I were practicing (full guitar rigs set up outside, but just us - no other band members) on the top of a local building when we see a fully armed military helicopter circling overhead.
We watch as it lowers and bounces off of a huge propane storage tank and splashes into the river. We gasp at each other and start to run, because we know that the chopper was carrying nukes. "DIAL 911 NOW!!!" and i look over the edge of the 2-3 story building...contemplating jumping, but unable to bring myself to do it. There is a click like when you hear a closeby lightning strike and then I see my friend Ed running down the street in front of a wall of fire....then i wake up.
I figure its about 7. I try to doze for a while and realize that i should just get up anyway. I have to put my guitar rig in the car for the gig downtown tonight...plus table lamps. We're using table lamps for lights.
------------------------
I put my son to bed with the radio timer on his clock radio set to 13 minutes. Im almost asleep on the couch when It cuts off in the middle of his "favorite song" and he's almost in tears. He yells from his room to tell me "DADDY!!! It cut off in the middle of my FAVORITE SONG!!!" I yell back to the room, "im sorry - goodnight." and he replies with a diminutive "goodnight." and im more sad than i've been all night.
I eventuallly get back to sleep...unable to move to the bed --the couch is somehow more comfortable...restrictive..closer...smaller. I wake up early after a dream. Mike and I were practicing (full guitar rigs set up outside, but just us - no other band members) on the top of a local building when we see a fully armed military helicopter circling overhead.
We watch as it lowers and bounces off of a huge propane storage tank and splashes into the river. We gasp at each other and start to run, because we know that the chopper was carrying nukes. "DIAL 911 NOW!!!" and i look over the edge of the 2-3 story building...contemplating jumping, but unable to bring myself to do it. There is a click like when you hear a closeby lightning strike and then I see my friend Ed running down the street in front of a wall of fire....then i wake up.
I figure its about 7. I try to doze for a while and realize that i should just get up anyway. I have to put my guitar rig in the car for the gig downtown tonight...plus table lamps. We're using table lamps for lights.
------------------------
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
the fading
While you might think i look like i might know a
thing or two about the world
the truth is much less interesting.
I've been nowhere and I'm going back to stay
because I know what's there and nothing is in my way.
In this real world i can see the fading.
I can see the dim light.
I can watch life crumble.
I am dropping the reins.
I watch them fall slowly to the ground
as if under water
They settle slowly - giving me time to pick them up
If I want
But I watch them fall, absorbing the full moment of release
Of no responsibilty
Knowing that they will stay where they fall
and rot
and no longer exist.
While you might think i look like i might know a
thing or two about the world
the truth is much less interesting.
I've been nowhere and I'm going back to stay
because I know what's there and nothing is in my way.
In this real world i can see the fading.
I can see the dim light.
I can watch life crumble.
I am dropping the reins.
I watch them fall slowly to the ground
as if under water
They settle slowly - giving me time to pick them up
If I want
But I watch them fall, absorbing the full moment of release
Of no responsibilty
Knowing that they will stay where they fall
and rot
and no longer exist.
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
the pomato song
I guess we had a time.
A meal of just soup and bread.
You said you'd be a pomegranate
I'd be a tomato instead.
I opened up the wine
with a screwdriver from the shed.
I was a hero for just one moment
andyou were the Lady in Red.
I listened to the rain
as we lay in your mother's bed.
I didn't know if you were sleeping
but I couldn't clear my head.
I drove 200 miles
Just to see an old friend
and then drank up all of your father's whiskey
and ruined it all in the end.
"Apology accepted."
This is all you would say
"Apology accepted."
Maybe I'll get another chance someday.
I guess we had a time.
A meal of just soup and bread.
You said you'd be a pomegranate
I'd be a tomato instead.
I opened up the wine
with a screwdriver from the shed.
I was a hero for just one moment
andyou were the Lady in Red.
I listened to the rain
as we lay in your mother's bed.
I didn't know if you were sleeping
but I couldn't clear my head.
I drove 200 miles
Just to see an old friend
and then drank up all of your father's whiskey
and ruined it all in the end.
"Apology accepted."
This is all you would say
"Apology accepted."
Maybe I'll get another chance someday.
Friday, May 21, 2004
nashville
All the people I owe money to:
I don't owe you no more
and the people I been workin for
Will have to find another whore
I'm gonna leave it all behind
and I don't care if its in vain
'Cause I been here too long, honey.
In the wanin' summer I'll be gone.
I ain't takin too much with me
Just this guitar and a pack.
Got a buddy that went to Austin once and never did come back.
I ain't sayin I'm like him, I don't know just where I'm bound
But I been here too long honey.
I'll be leavin when the autumn comes around.
All the people I owe money to:
I don't owe you no more
and the people I been workin for
Will have to find another whore
I'm gonna leave it all behind
and I don't care if its in vain
'Cause I been here too long, honey.
In the wanin' summer I'll be gone.
I ain't takin too much with me
Just this guitar and a pack.
Got a buddy that went to Austin once and never did come back.
I ain't sayin I'm like him, I don't know just where I'm bound
But I been here too long honey.
I'll be leavin when the autumn comes around.
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
spock
again - defeat I concede.
Why?
Sometimes, there is beauty in the end of a life;
the finality of giving up
on things
this world
all of the tedium
all of it is secondary
to the internal
the real need
to be free
to not have to
"eat and shit and work"
and just to live
or not
and be free in the choice
constrianed by devices
and this notion of 'time'
this body knows no time
this body knows only that it wants
"and like so many of us, it does not know what"
continually, prepetually.
I give up every day.
again - defeat I concede.
Why?
Sometimes, there is beauty in the end of a life;
the finality of giving up
on things
this world
all of the tedium
all of it is secondary
to the internal
the real need
to be free
to not have to
"eat and shit and work"
and just to live
or not
and be free in the choice
constrianed by devices
and this notion of 'time'
this body knows no time
this body knows only that it wants
"and like so many of us, it does not know what"
continually, prepetually.
I give up every day.
Thursday, December 05, 2002
US 60 East
You won't see me comin round
You won't see me comin round
You won't see me comin round
You won't hear me talkin loud
No, You won't see me comin round.
You won't catch me gettin high
You won't catch me gettin high
You won't see me comin round
drinkin friday night
You won't catch me gettin high
You know i've seen you - the way you are
Yes i've seen you - the way you are
I've seen the darkness in your eyes
your smile -a thin disguise
Yes i know you --the way you are.
You don't like me - i know its true
You don't like me - i know its true
You've got it in your mind
that i'm a certain kind
and you don't like me - i know its true.
I got no reason to prove you wrong
I got no reason to prove you wrong
If you think you can know a man
by the way he walks or the way he stands
then i got no reason to prove you wrong.
You won't see me comin round
You won't see me comin round
You won't see me comin round
You won't hear me talkin loud
No, You won't see me comin round.
You won't catch me gettin high
You won't catch me gettin high
You won't see me comin round
drinkin friday night
You won't catch me gettin high
You know i've seen you - the way you are
Yes i've seen you - the way you are
I've seen the darkness in your eyes
your smile -a thin disguise
Yes i know you --the way you are.
You don't like me - i know its true
You don't like me - i know its true
You've got it in your mind
that i'm a certain kind
and you don't like me - i know its true.
I got no reason to prove you wrong
I got no reason to prove you wrong
If you think you can know a man
by the way he walks or the way he stands
then i got no reason to prove you wrong.
Wednesday, December 04, 2002
arizona
I'd tell you to leave but you're already gone.
I'd ask you to stay, but you're right here at home.
All of your things are under lock and key.
Still, there's just enough room for my guitar and me.
That boy from out west came by today.
Said he was nervous...didn't know what to say.
I told him its alright - that we talked about it over beers last night.
I'm still trying to forget it.
So it won't make a difference no matter how I feel
And it don't really matter cause nothing is real
I won't be a winner at the end of this game.
You'll get what you wanted but it won't be the same.
There's things I could say that would make me feel better...
But if you go away...
I'd tell you to leave but you're already gone.
I'd ask you to stay, but you're right here at home.
All of your things are under lock and key.
Still, there's just enough room for my guitar and me.
That boy from out west came by today.
Said he was nervous...didn't know what to say.
I told him its alright - that we talked about it over beers last night.
I'm still trying to forget it.
So it won't make a difference no matter how I feel
And it don't really matter cause nothing is real
I won't be a winner at the end of this game.
You'll get what you wanted but it won't be the same.
There's things I could say that would make me feel better...
But if you go away...
Thursday, November 21, 2002
vw dream
I had another dream...I had traded someone an old bus body for an engine - what I understood to be a new diesel engine. I had mounted it on the back of some old buggy frame -like a vw pan with cheap, homemade rollbars...i was cranking it to try and start it and for some reason I could see down the center of the engine - as if it were a tube of some kind. It began to build compression and some smoke began to come out of the center of the engine...It finally fired up and ran very smooth...i remember moving quickly to work the accel pedal to rev it and keep it running. I got all excited about having a powerful, reliable engine and then i realized i hadn't figured out how to cool it...after i started thinking about the radiator setup I got discouraged.
Wierd how VW stuff permeates my being...my old bus sits in the yard taunting me - it hasn't been run in a couple weeks... I need to get out there and play with it...
I had another dream...I had traded someone an old bus body for an engine - what I understood to be a new diesel engine. I had mounted it on the back of some old buggy frame -like a vw pan with cheap, homemade rollbars...i was cranking it to try and start it and for some reason I could see down the center of the engine - as if it were a tube of some kind. It began to build compression and some smoke began to come out of the center of the engine...It finally fired up and ran very smooth...i remember moving quickly to work the accel pedal to rev it and keep it running. I got all excited about having a powerful, reliable engine and then i realized i hadn't figured out how to cool it...after i started thinking about the radiator setup I got discouraged.
Wierd how VW stuff permeates my being...my old bus sits in the yard taunting me - it hasn't been run in a couple weeks... I need to get out there and play with it...