mantra for christmas 2011

I have to keep going and writing and letter by letter
finding a path through today into tonight and the next day
in a way i have never known before, on the outer edge
of truth i never wanted to really know, no matter
how much i secretly hid in corners wanting so bad
to call my self something that demands respect
without a chuckle and snearing eyes telling me
I will never be what i want to be so I keep running
and hiding and writing and when I don't write anymore
my brain that is being crushed by a skull that refuses to grow with me
is still anonomously loving words in silent inner screams
that leads to pulsating flesh and tips of fingers that tense
up, and push against the air with every cell of every passionate dreamer
and liver of life i once thought i was or would become, pleading
for there to actually be something, to push against...to join
with in violent freedom and release of the present tense.
to push so hard that my abrasions are cut open to not hide
the wounds anymore and let my blood pour
through my fingers to the letter keys and through space, through
the same air i am tensing up and pushing against...pushing even more
now with eyes wide open and momentarily blind, i can
almost believe in the contrast of the soft and hard edges
of your curves that for now only smell like christmas trees in
empty rooms owned by someone else's family...
where i am for now away from hope and home but regardless of
what anyone says or believes..I am fighting, in
my own way...repeating a simple mantra over and over as i push against the
blank air...soon...soon....soon

at 24 or 27

what is the worst that could happen
If at long last I stood bare and bleeding
on the atomic stage bright and bombed
with everything i was and am and will be
opening, coagulating, and crusting over
maybe healing all by osmosis
as i am revealing all that will escape me
to show who i am, you are, we are
alive and standing tall through
tragedy and love defined by a solo
nightmare hoping to sweetly evolve
as it craves another...sitting, watching
me, if not right there with me...and touching.
it's all ego you say, and i say of course
what else are we, but not the ego of
what i have to say is important...
but that it is just simply important enough
that i have to say it...shed it...let it go
for now...for you.
to not be concerned with acceptance
to not give a flying this or that
(i don't want to say fuck right now)
about money...
and even not be concerned if i will
make it out alive or not.
that's it.
that's what i want
that's what real artists do, yet
truth is, hardly any stay unaffected
past that moment
besides the ones who indeed do not
make it out alive.
the ones who die
at 24 or 27.
the ones i used to want to be
but now if if I'm going to be honest
I'm pretty sure I don't want that
anymore. (it's too late anyway)
now i just want to be
everything that i am
and maybe even prove that in
this used up world maybe
there are still
new frontiers of aliveness...
of revolution through self and art.
but if not, I will settle for growing
old with a friend and knowing
we tried and that was not only enough
but it was the point of it all
and a destiny that is really not so bad
and maybe even revolutionary in it's
way, when looked at someday
through the eyes of an artist
who will die
at 24 or 27

(stolen poetry)

She asked me, how much did it hurt to have your windows bashed in on Melrose Avenue, and all your recent pains and thoughts of love lost ripped away from you?

As I drove all around every boulevard of battered memories in a city I almost call home, not being able to help blasting into another galaxy that may lie right under my feet…wishing I were drunk, crashing into walls where vipers breed to sink their scales into winding minds…and where the hell did all the real memories go?

“Do you remember the time when you were a TV star”, she asked, “walking in circles with the living dead…I mean the beautiful people…having not a single clue what would come next.  What about the night you were dressed up in 1940’s snaz, in that second when swing was king, and I was dressed in a football jersey.”

I couldn’t open my mouth, maintaining a habit of standing in rooms of people and so called people, pretending I wasn’t even there…I was invisible and the football jersey could never see me…at least I thought that until solid fat body doorman stopped me from running away into the city streets, told me football jersey wanted to meet…but I was still…still invisible.

Memories and everything zoom zoom past me like a shot bullet flying the opposite way of the train I sleep in…in post world war noir-ish dreams where I am nothing but that guy.  The guy just released from the prison of his own mind…wondering, why the hell did someone…something steal those words from my stupid car…raped, violated, my memories are holding on by a wild thread that grew there just to save my life…but I am still filled with blood red wonders of what the hell was he thinking when he crashed in my open heart that was on the verge of freedom.

I traveled with wind blowing my mind, blaring the speakers with music that tried to keep me sane, then stopped and the valet took my empty windows filled with busted nothing and handed me a ticket to the one place I somehow felt safe where I went on to celebrate the millennium among neon extravaganzas of dancing smooth hardness sweating their tears that mixed with my dreams to die in a brilliant cocktail of lost poetry.

Why the hell couldn’t he she it whatever just steal my damn radio spitting out short term play lists of the same cliché verses and bridges leading to a land of nothing…then again maybe my dreams and dying moments that I hoped would open me up and carry me to the next level of whatever I wanted to be was really no different than that radio spitting out all the commercial nuclear poison that has built me into this monster-man from day one.

Then she stroked her hair across my chest as cameras watched, and I tripped the life fanatical of whatever was supposed to be me in that moment when I was over taken with the thought that the feeling that swept from my eyes to the eyes of that strange creature grinding her pain away on my legs…and every strange wild star dreamer I ever met, was, had to be, more poetic than any words that were ever ripped from my illusion filled super car that I only bought…or leased…cuz some other super woman I thought was hot wouldn’t get in my little, how you say…chick car…gay car…I hate L.A. car!

There will forever be more poets living in the dirt under the fingernails of desperate dancers…screw it…strippers looking for a friend, than there ever will be in any and every word I ever write or any memory that I can’t hold onto.

I can’t hold onto broken windows and crazy ass lost words of wanna-be truth…I can’t hold onto love of chick flicks who run red lights just for fun while they beg the gods of the Billboards to make them alive as they run and run and never can just stop for a second to hold a friend.

I will always have the speed memory that I beg every night to slow down to meet my future, and that will forever be more than the whining words I dare to call expression and freedom…but none of this will ever be more than love or even the absence of love…so go ahead and punch out my windows in front of broken down rock and roll clubs and steal my pain…I don’t want it anymore.

I only want the truth serum in a bottle off the vine of neon dancers begging and praying with every move that there is no pool table on the side, just standing ovations from gods that are born to forgive.

I hope you are reading me wherever you are…I have nightmares of your face once in a while, and I see you change from my words and smile…and then I sleep in peace, but wake up sweating out my full blooded ego that built this dream from nothing.  The same ego that should lie rotting in the same pile of garbage where I’m sure you threw my forever lost words that were way less important than all the crazy girls…and all their dreams that had the power to teach me what it means to explode in the middle of dying Hollywood dream streets and bring them all back to life spreading like a virus though the desert into other cities where families live that I forgot were alive…if I just had the guts to live…If I just had the guts to die.

love you better

I love to laugh and dance around the kitchen on any given morning, singing along with a choir of voices that only I can hear…singing a gospel barber-shop quartet medley while spinning around with the elation of a man with no limbs getting high on the oxygen of his tears.

I love to laugh and play in cardboard boxes with homeless kittens on lonely manic Saturdays wishing they were Sunday when I can feel the walls breathing and my heart becomes the sun soaking up the morning dew and teaching someone inside me I never knew, who wants to love inside of you, that if you watch your tears falling, the stains they leave on the kitchen floor create a map to the center of somewhere soft that may even be heaven…but that’s only a theory and probably not true anyway.

I love to laugh and choke on my own words till there are no words left, and a herd of speed-freak elephants could put out cigarettes left over from my mother’s ashtray, in 1977, on my stomach and I would never feel anything…besides my brain bursting, wishing it had been born a heart instead…a heart that never speaks, but joins wonder-twin powers with heart number one to become the form of faith reflecting back at me, and the shape of a pond in the middle of a crazy city where we can all meet and listen to undiscovered master tapes of by-gone geniuses while submerged in a back-alley baptism.

I love to laugh, but it hurts too much…so I hold it all in like a boy who once was afraid to use the school lavatory and ran all the way home praying to a god he had yet to believe in, that he could make it through the pain and not explode on a small town American bi-centennial street where it would be revealed that our dreamer hero was nothing more than a baby boy who ate fear for breakfast years before terror shocked the American air that we thought was free to breathe.

I love to laugh…so I will…someday…but for today I will swallow the blue one and grow up and up and away flying though shards of glass that once reflected a hooded stranger that told me to swallow the red one and I would be the real me and together we would conquer the seas where the sun never sets, yet I only ended up in a dark alley curled up in a truth called delusion, hiding from the night rain…and as two hungry kittens were eating holes through me looking for their Mama, the pain overwhelmed me with a prophet’s gift as I could see the dying rain give birth to the living sun and on that very morning I took the blue one and cried tsunami tears, that sprouted wings, and gently learned to laugh again…and love you better.

lucky & faith (a dream journey in 12 micro-chapters)

1

And so, as I was saying, he lied there with a rabbit named Lucky.  Holding on tight…praying for an unconditional friend to kiss him on the forehead and whisper, ”though this may be the end, it will never be tragic.”  And by the way, his rabbit was not named after a foot…but Elvis in Vegas in love with a kitten of a redhead.

2

And so the story goes…He cried himself to sleep…at least that’s what I would say if it didn’t sound or appear too pathetic or, at the very least, supremely cliché…Anyway, he drifted off praying, or some semblance thereof, that the night would soon end and a new day would come…a wasted prayer for it always does…but not wasted cuz his truth in that moment was…it may never come.

3

It would almost be okay if I was promised a kitten of a red-head disguised as a rabbit or a bunny (wink, wink) to wander up to me, kiss me on the forehead and tell me, “forever has arrived…and by the way, what does tragic mean?”

4

I tried so hard to write about him, but by chapter three I wrote about you: AKA me…and the thing is I read it over about ten or so times before I realized what I had done.  Oh well, moving on, and so on…where was I? Oh yes…exploring forever with a redheaded rabbit, or bunny named Lucky.

5

Where it began was a simple terrain…a desert…leading to nowhere, it seemed to me.  But still I had nothing better to do, so I took one step, then another, and every so often I would ask Lucky where we were headed, what’s next, or at least…what’s your sign?  She would spin around and flash a smile, or sometimes fall back and give birth to angels in the sand and once in a while an angel would rise and dance through the sky and just before it would scream out loud…it was never there (only a cloud).

6

When I asked Lucky where the angels went, she said I had been given a gift, or maybe I had not seen a thing…But I did! Then she said, ”Well, then I guess you must have faith.”…What does faith mean?

7

I’ve heard, or read on postcards and a few gurus’ business cards selling spiritual hopes for strangers and aimless passer-bys, that it is “the evidence of things not seen”. So what good does that do me?  I had seen.  Anyway who cares, it’s probably all a dream.

8

Again, I asked Lucky where we were headed.  She walked up to me, and kissed me…not just on the forehead this time, but still…gently.  Then she began to say, but I did instead in the daze leftover from her kiss, “Angels are our guide.”  She giggled and played along as she asked, “What makes you so sure?”

“I’m sure as there are clouds in the sky.” We then looked up and not one seen by our playful eyes.  “Well”, said I, “Maybe it is all a dream.”

“And if it is?”

“Then it’s my dream.”

“And?”

“Anything is possible”

“But what is possible?”

9

What is possible?  The question at hand did not come from Lucky, but another voice from behind.  I turned to find a ruff and tumble cowgirl sittin’ on the porch of a wild-west saloon that just appeared in this nowhere at what could only be high noon.  I stood there for a time…just stared into her eyes…I wanted to hold her, dream with her, make love to her ghost…but I chose to just try to see what she saw as she stared into nowhere.

10

“I wasn’t staring into nowhere, I was staring into you.”  Her voice had a twang with a dash of peace and a slice of pain.  Anyway, as I tried to understand that there may be a difference between nowhere and me, I began to tell of the desert, the angels, and the never-ending dream…then over shots of pinot noir she mused on maybe it’s over, maybe it’s not, but either way I should consider myself lucky.

11

Lucky.  It wasn’t until then I realized the kitten of a redheaded rabbit was gone.  Maybe she was still part of me and I could indeed consider myself lucky…but to believe that, to live that…I must have…

“Faith,” said the ruff and tumble cowgirl.

“What?”

“My name is faith…I thought I should tell you.”

“Did I find you, or did you find me?”

“Does it really matter?”

12

Then we just sat there, wind blowin’ hard through our hair, our hands barely touching, our ghosts finding love, our eyes hardly meeting…but I had found Faith…and our adventure had just begun…

poet at the corner cafe'

I see a man sitting at the corner café.

He sits there almost every day

Contemplating few lucid times

In a long life that’s passed on by

I see him there even on a cold winter’s eve

Kept warm from the steam of a Guatemalan dream

That rises up…like the ghost he faces

And vanishes …like the empty spaces

He tries to fill up, one line at a time

Writing poetry for no one, searching for rhymes

And words to express how he’s lived a lie

How he’s nothing more than a boy who died

Long before the beginning of time

And not the time that begins with the light

Or even the Word that made everything right

But the time that begins when he started the fight

To forget who he is, and just live his life

Always explaining and dying inside

Living a life that’s not even his

Holding it together, just starting to miss

His soul that’s a baby that was never born

But lies still in his heart, so let us all mourn

For the child that lies in the heart of us all

That chose to die, instead of facing the fall

And heartache that comes through the long dark day

Then the night comes at the corner café 

And he writes like a demon, and closes his eyes

And dreams of before the beginning of time

Then his heart comes alive, though it’s dead inside

But for one single moment the dead will all rise

And he writes like an angel who just learned to fly

Then he opens his eyes, and the memory dies

And he continues on, just living his lie

But I like to think he’ll always try

To remember the child every day

Through the poetry he writes and contemplates

While dreaming and watching the world go by

Sitting at the corner café 

hunger of a singular man

have you ever been drunk on hunger?
and hung over on hungry still?
what's the hair of that dog?
asked the singular man
walking past the
galleries on washington
in the surprising
morning sun.
asking no one
really.
just
talking out loud
to the air and pretty
girls in the bus-stop advertisements
who's reflection in newly clean and spotted
windows from a late rain draw the singular man to
look inside beyond the light and color of the pretty lies...
beyond his own sunken mysytery that he can no longer recognize,
and see the abstract multi media love lothario adventures
into gut impulses to be understood, or maybe not
even give a fuck about that, but more to just
be.  and leave the understanding to the
human being who has five
thousand to drop
so he can
hang this question
over everyone's head
when they enter into his cliffside home
with a ten thousand dollar a month mortgage
to drink a bottle of two hundred dollar wine and
discuss the latest box office for a movie that their company
released to much greater expectations than the reality that will
force them to laugh among convincing rationalizations that maybe
the world is not changing, and the people out there actually
do have another extra three dollars to spend times two
or more, on the right to have trains bust out over
them and the rest of the audience...
it must have been the storm last
night, that kept them home
and not the fact
that we are all drunk on
hunger and can barely afford
to love each other, thought the singular man
as he stepped away from the glass and continued to journey past
landmarks of movieland and more picture windows that hide
more gut impulses behind the reflection of a walking
singular man creating his own art in his own
mind as he realizes that life does change
and there are ups and downs...
and dammit there are ups again so go ahead and charge three extra dollars for the train to roll right over us because I'm getting on board and not looking back besides returning to drop five grand on a piece of art so we can stare at it one day with rich and pretty people and rationalize how the changing world has no effect on us...no that's not it, he said to the model's picture on the bus-stop advertisement and then kept walking past cafe's and out of buisness magazine stores until he reached the ocean and waited for sundown...yes that's it, yes there are ups and downs
and he slept on the soft sand to prove
that tomorrow
the sun would in fact rise again and that will feed him for today.

the fur : a parable

there were warnings heralded through the land
and in private whispers that were acted
out in pantomime so clearly that
there may as well have been
curtains, minstrels, and medicines.

a wolf had entered the streets
appearing from woods that no one
dared to enter or barely even glance at.
in fact no one even knew where he came from
really.  only assuming his orgin in the same
way we assume our heart will keep beating today,
when it could stop at any moment.

the hairy beast with a slow yet unpredictable stride
traveled lightly with a shoulder sack
that couldn't contain much more than
possibly
a delivery of
some importance, or
a secret talisman that was a key
to an ancient lifeforce.
why bother carrying this at all
if there was no story behind it...
or maybe it was just water
to live.

He continued to walk
being careful to not make
contact with the local curiosity.
He pretended he was invisible,
or at least just like them...
He pretended a trickling down
trail of blood
didn't reveal his true path,
which was easy since no one
ever looked down.
a race of strangers that could
be walking ignorantly
on air for generations
before looking down to
see they were in fact flying.
And hundreds of years with no faith,
wasted.

He stepped into the pub, finding
the darkest corner he could
to numb and drown and stare
out as he fingered his own fur
and under-scars...
finding, not losing himself
inside the hazy ether
of other hearts on the run
sucking up the illusion
of not being alone.

but then
after some time
he rested his head
in the soft lap
of a savior
who remained faceless
as he dreamt and only counted
on the smell of her flesh
to prove that she was real.
to taste her would be too much
maybe...
sweat of peyote inducing
fights and freedom flashing
pasts and dreams and visions
that are so intertwined that
the only thing that is real now is her flesh,
so he counts on that
even though that in fact her flesh
may be the least real of all these
ghosts.

And if it's not real, what would be the harm
in tasting, he thought in a half asleep slumber.
what would be the harm in drinking her
instead of one more refill of emptiness.
what would happen if there were
no
more
questions
and only tounges, teeth, and drying lips
finding rivers of red and life and open
scars bleeding out innate proverbs of truth
that maybe if he had
the courage to look
her in the eyes
he could face
his own truth
that now
with each taste
of this phantom savior
comes anyway

and his fur begins to shed
and break and rip.
Thread unraveling
revealing wool...

and nightmares of fences,
locked gates, and
following the herd...

and the birth of an epic quest
that started with a murder,
a needle, a thread, and
a wild desire to be free.

He remained there lying in the
wetness of everything
that just poured out....

truly free at last
not trapped in his idea of freedom...
not one thing or the other.

not fur or wool.

not just running free

not just locked away

not any one thing

but wholly himself

as he sat up one last time
and saw his savior's eyes
that were deep,
distant,
and in fact real.

She then dug into his
shoulder sack
for the money owed her,
and only found the heart
of a wolf...

Then, seeing the dead heart
he carried with him in lieu
of being able to replace his
own with that one
that now
is as useful as
a shapeless
metal piece
of almost art,
he pulled a blanket
around himself
to vaguely
protect him from the
oncoming
coldest chill

as he at last
in his final moments
remembered that time
when he took that life
to save his own...
but always knew in truth,

real change is
never about
the fur.

Bella

Today is dedicated to you.

Today is dedicated to the spirit of living,

Unconditional Love,

And a dog named Bella.

She taught me how to live.

She taught me how to love.

Really, what else is there?

Some days though

I don't hear her voice, as I make

Stupid choices

That have nothing to do with

Simple truth.

Here's the thing...

Bella lost an eye

Just last year...

But she still wanted to play ball.

Then she got cancer...

Her belly was opened to take it out, but

It's not all gone.

She wore a cone on her head

So not to lick her wounds, but

Bella...The one-eyed dog with cancer

Still wanted to play ball.

Still wanted to love.

Still wanted to be loved.

Still...some days I don't hear her voice, but

Today I hope we all do.

She would say Thanks, and

Kiss you...

Cuddle up to take a nap, then

Wake you in her own special way, as

She uses her cone to throw her ball

In your face, and

Howl,

“So what I have one eye.

So what I have cancer.

Cuz today, like all days,

  I love you, and

  I'm ready to play ball!”

Really, what else is there?

my eyes were closed

My eyes were closed…

Slipping on wanderlust thru the funhouse

Standing before the wobbly mirror

I could feel my distorted lips part

Into what I think was a smile

My eyes were closed…

Continuing to move into shadows

Where I would consider never moving again

Collapsing into a fetal past

Covered in white face

I’d pantomime my pain

And lip-sync along with the show

My eyes were closed

As subtitles crossed my mind

When threats of darkness passing by

Laughed in foreign tongues…

Pointing at the ingenious details

Of the surreal boy

With the Cheshire yellow smile

My eyes were closed

And becoming wet

As more and more and more

Travelers cast their curious shapes

Across my face,

Strobing over-lapping languages

That spoke of pilgrims from arctic valleys

Who came to warm their hands

In the tears of the petrified angel

My eyes were closed

And thousands of generations were gone

When one foggy night

(long since the legends had died

 and the carnival kept alive

 by lingering ghosts of foreign beasts

 who bravely refused to speak American,

 had past away in dreams

 burnt away in books)

A femme fatale in a satin blue dress

Disguised in black and white

Caressed my back with her hair

Ending in a flip ripped off from Rita

Pretending to be a woman

She never could live up to

And never wanted to be

My eyes were closed…

My trembling fingers stretched out

To find her lips were parting

Into what I think was a smile,

And just as we were about to wipe 

Each other’s tears into a waterfall

Washing us clean to answers untold…

My eyes were closed

As they ripped apart and opened

To watch the late-late-late movie

Where two smiling clowns were kissing

At a carnival in a far-a-way land

That somehow looked like home

My eyes were closed…

But now wide alive

Traveling zero to zillion

To the start of my time

To the eastern frontier

I’ll meet the sunrise

And start over my day

With what I think is a smile

On my face…

Diving into the open sea 

With eternal open eyes

Swimming home to the funhouse,

Stopping to leave a stone prayer

By the memory of the boy who was petrified

But this time I’ll be walking out

The other side

With eternal open eyes.