Damn

I’m unfollowing everyone

Well, except me.

There are no reasons to do this or to do that, none that matter.

I didn’t mean to start this, but I’m pretty sure it’s my responsibility to bring it to a close. So, it  might not matter, but there it is anyway, staring at you, asking you why you’re here, pointing out the times you said otherwise, questioning whether what you said is even poetry at all.

They say there are 4 fires of life to keep aflame: family, work, friends, and self.

They say it is never possible to keep all 4 flames healthy.

They say you sacrifice the strength of one flame to feed the other.

Smothering.

Who said it? Who made up these rules?

When I said I wanted to, I WAS LIEING!

Laying out upon the desert,

Naked

Wasted on peyote and very cheap mescal,

Staring up at a million stars

And a million ways away

The only thing missing

is the peyote

and the million ways away.

But, no, that person too. Everyone.

Orange Juice for Breakfast

So, I don’t know. I have no idea what it means. Why ask me?

We do things, don’t we? We stumble along, we’re blind.

I am a 5 foot tall man, standing in a 6 foot deep rushing river.

So, don’t ask me why I do things. Don’t try to interpret through the rapids. I don’t do anything because of anything.

I am sorry right now for so many things. I don’t know what most of them are, but I can hear them scraping at me like birds on a roof. I feel them staring at me from behind bushes and through one-way mirrors. I have tried at various times to seek them out and to beat them into humiliation. They are much more clever than that.

I have tried drinking orange juice for breakfast.

I have sipped from the well of knowledge.

I have sought to simplify.

I have run faster than anyone ever has.

I have pretended I knew what is important.

I have admitted to knowing nothing.

I have danced.

I have slept deeper than the dead.

I have lied about everything and denied everything and hid everything and refused everything. I have betrayed everyone. I have ignored every bit of advice I have ever received. I have blamed my father and died for his love. 

Sometimes it feels as if I have already done everything, and there is nothing left.

Sometimes the orange juice tastes incredible.

Of a Visit to a Friend With Cancer

Although it was all we spoke of;
Neither spoke of it,
Really.
Cursory catalog of
Appropriate questions
And answers.
All other topics
Laced with ridiculous
Insignificance;
Events, stories,
Eating habits.

How weary she looks;
Of all the talking of it,
I suppose.

And how much it feels
Compunctious and
Artificial.
Dutiful parading
Piously
Past the stricken.

I began to wonder
How many came before
With patronizing,
And uncharacteristic
Intimacy;
As if sudden license
To pry.

Weary
Of platitudes
Of explaining
Of deflecting sympathy.
Of pitied looks
and solemn intensity.

Weary
Of time
With its words like
Eternity
Infinity
Lifetime.
Once joyous counselor and
Friend;
Now
Liar
Scoundrel
Thief.

Such Great Heights

“But everything looks perfect

From far away…”

But there is Dogo Na Hawa.

And there, there up close.

Things seem not so bright.

“They will see us waving from

such great heights.

Come down now,

They will say.”

But no

For I prefer the view from my comfortable place up here.

For when I am close enough to look you in the eye

I am sure I will see what you are thinking.

And wish I was a million miles away.

Into wind

As is probably typical - who even knows anymore - I come here seeking something.

“There are some things I used to be. Won’t you find the will to just remind me. Because you are so safe inside my memory. And the scar underneath my knee.”

Sounds like screaming.But it is so quiet in here.

She says “Good things come, when you stop standing around. Good things come, when you stop looking.”

But I swear I have been blind now for years.

And of course I want to turn the music up. up. up.

Until it hurts inside my head and scares the hell out of those monsters living there.

I wonder if it is true that your ears bleed when the music is too loud. Or is it just when your brain gives up and runs for the exits.

And this, this is one of those moments when I dream I am drunk, and all of this can be shuffed away as incoherency. And people can laugh, and I can laugh, and we can all smile and nod knowingly - been there before.

But no, there is no simple dismissing. There are no hallucinogens or depressants or altered states. Except for the simple truth of a mind slipping slowly away. And the terrifying vision of watching it happen and the standing by as numb witness instead of blurred victim.

Letter to Pat R.

This from Minneapolis Star-Tribune via NPR : http://tinyurl.com/yan7em9

Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action.

But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished.

Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”?

If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll.

You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.

Best, Satan

Wind

The wind blowing outside reminds me of emptiness. Makes me feel like a fragile piece of tissue paper, flittering with every tiny breeze. That wind sounds powerful enough to lift up the hole world and send it twirling out into space. But it need not work so hard. I am but thin and nearly weightless. I could be buffeted away into nothingness with so little as a breath of air pushed from the wings of a low-flying bird across this barren and beautiful landscape.

Desert Flight

The desert makes you wanna do stuff, doesn’t it?

There are endless distances, that invite you to race across in a dune buggy, or a sailboard, or on wings you made yourself from found feathers and glue.

And suddenly, yes, you are flying. Feeling wind low off the sand, scrubby brush racing by like reflectors on the late night barren highway, when you raced decrepit muscle cars, held together with wire and rusty bolts, but chromed and painted like monsters of the night - money better spent on superchargers and detailing, than spark plugs and filters. Then, when it still seemed like everything was at your feet, when the scream of tires made it all feel right. When the girl giggling and screaming next to you made you feel more powerful than a boy ever could. And that road, and those flashing reflectors made the world slip away into nothing but a fantastical ride into the future, a warp of time and space and reality and the laws of physics, as you contemplated whether that supercharger could carry you forward to the speed of light, and then out into the universe to chase the dreams of astronomers and wizards and poets.

And the air under those decrepit wings pushes you higher, up over low dunes and dwarfish twisted trees, replacing the sense of speed with buoyancy and floating, decelerating the world to slow motion, dragging out time below and around you, until it is hard to measure whether it passes at all, whether we are moving at all. The land below, the sand crystals, seem artificial, arrange themselves in surreal patterns that cannot be real, that seem to be telling stories. Glorious colorful canvases swirled with hallucinogenic circles and stars and arcs of light. And floating amongst these abstractions, dioramas of my life, past and future, real and imagined, lived and fantasized, played out like Disneyesque diarrhea with artificial colors and strangely cartoon-like representations of all those from my life.

Flying flying flying. Burning from the heat of the sun. Gliding over mountaintops. Careening into space.

Here I finally feel the stars. Finally know what it is like to float through space and touch the clouds of the galaxy. Here, I finally am free of all the confines of my head and this bastard world.

My wings melt away and I fall like a broken bird.

Living on the edge

Have spent evening in a state of denial, distraction, drinking, and delusion. Here, on this side of the bottle, it seems unlikely that anyone here in this shithole bar will be the one to save me from this, from me, from anything. So, perhaps another night of livin the fucking la vida loca with this nameless nobody across from me will be worth tomorrow, and make forgetting yesterday possible. We can keep on trying, anyway.

Bring My Family Back - by Faithless

“Bring My Family Back”

I’m on lonely street age nearly three
Recently Mama’s crying all the time
is it because of me or my younger sister,
even Dad was weeping when he kissed her.
Face all puffy like a blister,
crying like he missed her.
Since we moved away from the house,
where we used to play.
They say I’ll understand on day but I doubt it,
Mama never say nothing about it.
How’d it get to be so crowded.
I found it a strain, everywhere I look I see pain.
And I can’t escape the feeling,
maybe I’m to blame. So I strain to listen,
Praying for a decision, wishing they where kissing.
This feels like extradition or exile,
Mama finds it hard to smile
So I make pretend cups of coffee in her favorite style.
She says child I’m working so there’s nothing you lack.
But she know I want my Dad I want my family back.

I’m on Lonely Street, age forty three.
Couldn’t gauge when to quit so my wife quit me.
Took offense, took the kids,
I wish that was the end.
But before she took her leave
she took care of my best friend.
Working all the hours.
God send was not the tactic
You see, because after ten years
I’m left with jack dish. Wanted to make the cash
quick so I had to work real late.
Bad sex, my woman’s vex, even if I stay awake.
And if I’m honest, I had a little cake at the office.
I was eating. We’d do our cheating over coffees,
making tea for the bosses.
Making free with me,
and I agree I got sleazy too easily.
But I’m forty three,
this doesn’t usually happen to me.
Now I’m lonely,
I wonder what my son’s doing today.
Suddenly I’m blinking like the screen
on my computer display.
And I’m drinking.
Concerned about what’s down the track
if I don’t get my family back.

I want my family back

I’m on Lonely Street, number fifty three.
Boarded up property,
I’ll probably get pulled down.
Litter all around inside there’s
no sound and no light.
But yo it gets busy at night, People creeping.
Derelicts sneaking to fix. Speaking.
On the way my timbers creaking,
Roof leaking. And bricks coming loose,
knee high in refuse.
But even though I’m a slum,
I’m still of some use.
There was a time when my walls where decorated.
And under my roof children where educated.
But now paint’s faded, windows are all smashed,
a crash in the economy robbed me of my family.
And no strategy, combats negative equity,
so that’s it. Like violence it’s drastic.
I’m freaking, and seeking to be
more than just a house for crack.
Somebody bring my family back.

Listen here if you like: http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song/Bring+My+Family+Back/1096894