Why did your empty gaze and anonymous mouth hypnotize me so? I turned you into a heavenly ghost and then followed you around the city like a red balloon. The truth is more likely that you are only a mammal, but it's nature's cruel indifference that excites me. Hair. Lips. Skin. Fingers. Fuck, it's the eyes. It's like they hold a secret that is unrevealed even to their possessor. My mind can protect me, but probably not for long.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Exile
Well, back to the drawing boards. I turned my back on the warmth of my cocoon for only a few days. The big, bad, crooked-toothed, shifty-eyed earth is back once again. Quick sand. A dead bird on my front porch. The Los Angeles TImes is an accordion-cut-mass grave of paper soldiers lying head-to-foot and vice-versa. I'm speaking to fewer and fewer people every day. Characters in books are closer, feel warmer. More real. I guess I got away from myself. When the church is empty even the faintest noise reverberates for hours.
Why did your empty gaze and anonymous mouth hypnotize me so? I turned you into a heavenly ghost and then followed you around the city like a red balloon. The truth is more likely that you are only a mammal, but it's nature's cruel indifference that excites me. Hair. Lips. Skin. Fingers. Fuck, it's the eyes. It's like they hold a secret that is unrevealed even to their possessor. My mind can protect me, but probably not for long.
Why did your empty gaze and anonymous mouth hypnotize me so? I turned you into a heavenly ghost and then followed you around the city like a red balloon. The truth is more likely that you are only a mammal, but it's nature's cruel indifference that excites me. Hair. Lips. Skin. Fingers. Fuck, it's the eyes. It's like they hold a secret that is unrevealed even to their possessor. My mind can protect me, but probably not for long.
Friday, May 27, 2011
"She ain't the one I want..."
"... so she may as well be nobody at all... I'm already somebody's forgotten boy."
When was the exact moment that his image changed in your mind forever. When did he cross that thin red line? You once looked 'round for him. Now he is to be avoided. You feel some pity but you can't be bothered. Your life is far too short. Your minutes are too few to be occupied by a boy who shoots just below the mark. You have mountains to consider climbing and windows to look out of. You have girlfriends to be bothered by and day trips to plan. You have outfits to coordinate, recipes to botch, movies to see only half of, job interviews to stutter through, twentieth century authors to misquote, pregnancies to avoid (until your too old of course), and a useless degree to finish, finally. You have to order a drink and sip it slowly. You have to plan your next breakthrough. You have to scratch the ears of a puppy who never did anything bad enough to deserve the name you will give him. You have a little girl's soul to preserve and elderly woman's wisdom to aspire to gain. Your father never returned from Saigon. Your mother never graduated highschool. You ran a Coney Island race when you were six and a half. You fell. You never got up.
Your breath smells like whiskey and he can hear the ocean when he presses his ear against your chest. You run your fingers through his thick black hair. It feels good. It's just after two thirty in the morning and his car is parked a block away from that bar where you dodged every question with a ghost's reply and you finished every sentence with a phantom's cadence. He is good enough for today. He has two arms with which to hold you.
But ya don't remember quite what to do now. When you close your eyes you hear old voices don't you? A deep voice invites you to stay a while and a high pitched one tells you to run. This is where you are and this is where you are supposed to be. [Sigh] But [sigh again] you don't hear the music, do ya? The static stopped for a few minutes, but now it's back. The guns pivot on their axis and aim once more..and it's "I'm not supposed to lay here, I'm not supposed to lay anywhere." ...you're right. You have to keep moving or you'll die where you breathe. If he remembers the way you smell, he's luckier than most.
He's a killer but ya bit him good. You softened his course skin. It's "kill or be killed" and you took him for every ounce of humanity he's good for. His brain is upside down and his voice trembles with each word. He's a cotton-candy cloud hovering over himself struggling to regain conciousness. He swore he'd not be taken but he's took.
He leaves a bad taste. His cute became creepy. He's a mundane. He resides just below your horizontal ring of yellow fire. You took a boy, you made him old, and now he's in the union. On the assembly line.
Now back to the big white world for you. Folks around here were whispering. There was going to be a riot. A murder. A coup -but you needn't worry, sugar. This isn't your back yard. You're just passing through.
When he cries, it is of loneliness. There is a gram of salt in each gallon of water.
A year later he is kissed by a plain girl underneath a flourescent marquee. Her eyes are large and bright. She is only as old as the sum of her mortal years. She is made of elastic bands and hand lotion. She is lovely.
But when he lays down next to her he reluctantly thinks to himself:
"She ain't the one I want... so she may as well be nobody at all... i'm already somebody's forgotten boy."
When was the exact moment that his image changed in your mind forever. When did he cross that thin red line? You once looked 'round for him. Now he is to be avoided. You feel some pity but you can't be bothered. Your life is far too short. Your minutes are too few to be occupied by a boy who shoots just below the mark. You have mountains to consider climbing and windows to look out of. You have girlfriends to be bothered by and day trips to plan. You have outfits to coordinate, recipes to botch, movies to see only half of, job interviews to stutter through, twentieth century authors to misquote, pregnancies to avoid (until your too old of course), and a useless degree to finish, finally. You have to order a drink and sip it slowly. You have to plan your next breakthrough. You have to scratch the ears of a puppy who never did anything bad enough to deserve the name you will give him. You have a little girl's soul to preserve and elderly woman's wisdom to aspire to gain. Your father never returned from Saigon. Your mother never graduated highschool. You ran a Coney Island race when you were six and a half. You fell. You never got up.
Your breath smells like whiskey and he can hear the ocean when he presses his ear against your chest. You run your fingers through his thick black hair. It feels good. It's just after two thirty in the morning and his car is parked a block away from that bar where you dodged every question with a ghost's reply and you finished every sentence with a phantom's cadence. He is good enough for today. He has two arms with which to hold you.
But ya don't remember quite what to do now. When you close your eyes you hear old voices don't you? A deep voice invites you to stay a while and a high pitched one tells you to run. This is where you are and this is where you are supposed to be. [Sigh] But [sigh again] you don't hear the music, do ya? The static stopped for a few minutes, but now it's back. The guns pivot on their axis and aim once more..and it's "I'm not supposed to lay here, I'm not supposed to lay anywhere." ...you're right. You have to keep moving or you'll die where you breathe. If he remembers the way you smell, he's luckier than most.
He's a killer but ya bit him good. You softened his course skin. It's "kill or be killed" and you took him for every ounce of humanity he's good for. His brain is upside down and his voice trembles with each word. He's a cotton-candy cloud hovering over himself struggling to regain conciousness. He swore he'd not be taken but he's took.
He leaves a bad taste. His cute became creepy. He's a mundane. He resides just below your horizontal ring of yellow fire. You took a boy, you made him old, and now he's in the union. On the assembly line.
Now back to the big white world for you. Folks around here were whispering. There was going to be a riot. A murder. A coup -but you needn't worry, sugar. This isn't your back yard. You're just passing through.
When he cries, it is of loneliness. There is a gram of salt in each gallon of water.
A year later he is kissed by a plain girl underneath a flourescent marquee. Her eyes are large and bright. She is only as old as the sum of her mortal years. She is made of elastic bands and hand lotion. She is lovely.
But when he lays down next to her he reluctantly thinks to himself:
"She ain't the one I want... so she may as well be nobody at all... i'm already somebody's forgotten boy."
It doesn't look good or feel good - so arm the young.
I'm surprised by the statements, irretrievable in the ether, that are made by small adults. Miniatures, not fully formed, who want only to become impressions of what they feel are functioning beings. I thought this was a progressive generation.
It's not that I claim to have any wisdom. The opposite is true. Fear under certain lights looks like fearlessness. Knowledge of the rifts that make up the surface of the earth results in an uninterrupted line around the sphere. I'm very comfortable in a state of puzzlement. I am a water baby. Nobody asks any questions. No one has a taste for the mystery. The vulnerability of choice is too frightening, nauseating. The young are fossilized.
Does this sound like boring old nihilism? A rejection of the institutions of society, the institutions of mine and prior generations, of culture? I hope not. I used to go on the same rants in high school -when children are at their dullest.
Our childhoods have been taken away from us, Marlene. Live it now. What do you have to lose?
I'm not in any hurry to be old or accepted. Especially if getting there means that the days turn into spokes and we are forced to cut the orange in half.
If you lead me, into sun soaked fields of tall grass, onto the cool concrete of an empty freeway, into the silk layers of blue that are the stuff of slow dreams, I will follow you, wherever you go.
"Youth is wasted on the young" and your big, beautiful eyes were wasted on you, child. Now lay down and don't believe anything any human being tells you.
It's not that I claim to have any wisdom. The opposite is true. Fear under certain lights looks like fearlessness. Knowledge of the rifts that make up the surface of the earth results in an uninterrupted line around the sphere. I'm very comfortable in a state of puzzlement. I am a water baby. Nobody asks any questions. No one has a taste for the mystery. The vulnerability of choice is too frightening, nauseating. The young are fossilized.
Does this sound like boring old nihilism? A rejection of the institutions of society, the institutions of mine and prior generations, of culture? I hope not. I used to go on the same rants in high school -when children are at their dullest.
Our childhoods have been taken away from us, Marlene. Live it now. What do you have to lose?
I'm not in any hurry to be old or accepted. Especially if getting there means that the days turn into spokes and we are forced to cut the orange in half.
If you lead me, into sun soaked fields of tall grass, onto the cool concrete of an empty freeway, into the silk layers of blue that are the stuff of slow dreams, I will follow you, wherever you go.
"Youth is wasted on the young" and your big, beautiful eyes were wasted on you, child. Now lay down and don't believe anything any human being tells you.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Five Star Bar. May 19th in the year 2011.
Special thanks to Sarah "Bellum" and The House Of Breath.
9:35 PM
1.Your love makes me stoned.
2.Silverspoon
3.Take, oh take my heart
4.Did you notice
5.It won't be long
6.Down to the river
7.Lets go down to the mall.
With sweat in my face. Thanks.
9:35 PM
1.Your love makes me stoned.
2.Silverspoon
3.Take, oh take my heart
4.Did you notice
5.It won't be long
6.Down to the river
7.Lets go down to the mall.
With sweat in my face. Thanks.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Gage and Seville.
"... and it occurred to me - not by way of protest, not as a symbol, or anything like that, but merely as a novel experience - that since I had disregarded all laws of humanity, I might as well disregard the rules of traffic. So I crossed to the left side of the highway and checked the feeling, and the feeling was good. It was a pleasant diaphragmal melting, with elements of diffused tactility, all this enhanced by the thought that nothing could be nearer to the elimination of basic physical laws than deliberately driving on the wrong side of the road. In a way, it was a very spiritual itch."
Horizontal
Jeremiah, I'm hanging from a tree. If you can cut me down from where you are please do. Be strong. Don't let the birds pick at you. When you hear me cry, cover your ears, it will only be for a moment.
Pick up two rocks from the floor and bang them together. You will see that the sound travels only so far.
I'm afraid that the world is much too small for us.
You are beautiful the way that you are. If you can carry my body to a flat field, then i give you permission to leave me there. Continue onward without looking back. Run if you have to. Go on and do the things that I never had courage to do. Do not fear the devil. Do not fear any other man. Fear only your reflection in the water and leave a fire burning.
There is another child out there waiting for you.... the same way you waited for me.
I'm dizzy. Get me to my bed. When i speak blood spills from my mouth. My heart beat is slowing. I hear children singing in the other room. I smell crushed flowers. I fear I am becoming lighter. There is an owl outside my window.
Queen Jane. A black dog with an extra pair of eyes painted on his forehead. A fetus in a basket, floating down the river. Grace, do not travel far.
I am looking forwarding to sleeping finally.
Pick up two rocks from the floor and bang them together. You will see that the sound travels only so far.
I'm afraid that the world is much too small for us.
You are beautiful the way that you are. If you can carry my body to a flat field, then i give you permission to leave me there. Continue onward without looking back. Run if you have to. Go on and do the things that I never had courage to do. Do not fear the devil. Do not fear any other man. Fear only your reflection in the water and leave a fire burning.
There is another child out there waiting for you.... the same way you waited for me.
I'm dizzy. Get me to my bed. When i speak blood spills from my mouth. My heart beat is slowing. I hear children singing in the other room. I smell crushed flowers. I fear I am becoming lighter. There is an owl outside my window.
Queen Jane. A black dog with an extra pair of eyes painted on his forehead. A fetus in a basket, floating down the river. Grace, do not travel far.
I am looking forwarding to sleeping finally.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
The Avenue
The dim sum restaurant was closed.
Hungry, I walked through the neighborhood that I grew up in... back
when the water was still running and our blood was still comin' out
red. Our Crusade was one of picked hybiscus, ant trails, windex,
tennis rackets, grape fruits, training wheels, lemonade, screwdrivers,
a hundred-year-old atlas, broken telephones, a beat up beige Datsun,
and nail polish.
I can't hear music now. There isn't any. I've sat in silence for too
many consecutive days now. It's gone. Strange choice for a musician? I
hear cars and the hummmmmmmmm of computers.
If blood sustains the beast and the beast cranks the motor, who
cranks the motor when I don't spill blood?
Stay lit you fires.
Hungry, I walked through the neighborhood that I grew up in... back
when the water was still running and our blood was still comin' out
red. Our Crusade was one of picked hybiscus, ant trails, windex,
tennis rackets, grape fruits, training wheels, lemonade, screwdrivers,
a hundred-year-old atlas, broken telephones, a beat up beige Datsun,
and nail polish.
I can't hear music now. There isn't any. I've sat in silence for too
many consecutive days now. It's gone. Strange choice for a musician? I
hear cars and the hummmmmmmmm of computers.
If blood sustains the beast and the beast cranks the motor, who
cranks the motor when I don't spill blood?
Stay lit you fires.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
A bronze rocking horse. The New York Times. Your check in the mail.
If it is my blood that you want, you can have it. It comes in a series of waves. At the moment this feels like a spiritual exercise. Mind over matter. Grace and resilience in the face of tribulation. Can our protagonist make it through the mine field in one piece? I play tricks on the earth so as to make her forget that I owe her much for allowing me continued breath. The comforts of a civilized and moderately happy life. I'm like a clown or some entertainer of an acient time. I'm singing and telling my patron stories in the hopes that he'll eventually be drunk enough and pass out. It is only then that I can have a moments rest. That's when i can think about the dimensions of my yet-to-be-built palace. I can sleep in a spare room. I can dream of the ripple effects caused by my finger tips. Christian in a BMW. Mr. Honeysucklerose on a vespa with a star of stage and screen clinging lovingly to his torso. I can endure much. But little and few can endure me for very long.
I'm thinking of coming up with a stage name for myself, for when I do non-classical performances. Been thinking of it for a while, but then I convince myself it's a silly idea. I don't want an audience to be confused. Is this the guy singing mozart? Or the one playing a song he wrote about whiskey and holy water?
Should I continue trying to ignore my instincts? So far the effects have been mostly positive.
The Lexingtons are one part wolverine and one part chrysanthemum. My mother didn't see fit to give me any brothers, frankly I've always been grateful for that. But I guess that sooner or later, if you're lucky, you can find one, two, or three, that will do just fine. When we put our diamond rings together you can hear the beating of wings.You can hear the screech of the friction caused by the Earth's tenacious path against the stubborn old solar system. You can hear the high frequency murmur of the spirits. The tick-tock-tick-tock of microscopic hearts working diligently in utero.
For the time being we have a monthly show that all should come to. We're also playing pretty often 'round the city these days. I won't talk about them in mere conversation because it doesn't feel fair, like it doesn't do them justice somehow. It's not just a job or a convenient circumstance. Ugh. Human beings rarely say anything to eachother do they? Don't ask me what i'm up to, or how i've been. I won't tell you the truth unless you have 3 hours to spare. Just sit in silence with me. We can share an avocado. Drive to the beach.
The nature of addiction. I guess the trick it plays on you is that it allows you to believe that there's more in that bag. More to be drained. More to be discovered. What if I was one episode away from the ultimate adventure? In order to walk away from the beast you have to have faith that you squeezed as much out of that lemon as you could or that you care to. You have to be proactive and make decisions. This is a terrible time to lose faith, son. Don't wander away in silence.
Concise.
I'm thinking of coming up with a stage name for myself, for when I do non-classical performances. Been thinking of it for a while, but then I convince myself it's a silly idea. I don't want an audience to be confused. Is this the guy singing mozart? Or the one playing a song he wrote about whiskey and holy water?
Should I continue trying to ignore my instincts? So far the effects have been mostly positive.
The Lexingtons are one part wolverine and one part chrysanthemum. My mother didn't see fit to give me any brothers, frankly I've always been grateful for that. But I guess that sooner or later, if you're lucky, you can find one, two, or three, that will do just fine. When we put our diamond rings together you can hear the beating of wings.You can hear the screech of the friction caused by the Earth's tenacious path against the stubborn old solar system. You can hear the high frequency murmur of the spirits. The tick-tock-tick-tock of microscopic hearts working diligently in utero.
For the time being we have a monthly show that all should come to. We're also playing pretty often 'round the city these days. I won't talk about them in mere conversation because it doesn't feel fair, like it doesn't do them justice somehow. It's not just a job or a convenient circumstance. Ugh. Human beings rarely say anything to eachother do they? Don't ask me what i'm up to, or how i've been. I won't tell you the truth unless you have 3 hours to spare. Just sit in silence with me. We can share an avocado. Drive to the beach.
The nature of addiction. I guess the trick it plays on you is that it allows you to believe that there's more in that bag. More to be drained. More to be discovered. What if I was one episode away from the ultimate adventure? In order to walk away from the beast you have to have faith that you squeezed as much out of that lemon as you could or that you care to. You have to be proactive and make decisions. This is a terrible time to lose faith, son. Don't wander away in silence.
Concise.
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