the stars, the sea, and sleep.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Getting Rid of the Past Tense

This is taking flight,
Stepping off the ledge
And never asking why.
Just because something here felt right,
Something here felt real.
And we feel it
In our blood
In our lungs.
Our bodies fit like gloves,
Warming us and swarming us
With circulating release.
It's the pleasing satisfaction
Of anticipated reaction,
That cracks in our voices
And shakes in our knees.

The wolves' howls turn to whimpers
In the shimmer of night diamonds
As we laid there like lions facing the sand,
Hoarding the warmth of the heat of our hands.
We challenged the roar of the crashing waves,
And there you gave more than I'd ever save
In pictures,
In poems,
In music,
In art...
I've been set free.
You've set me apart.

I couldn't have it any better,
No, I couldn't ask how.
It was dreaming back then,
But this,
This is now.

Mixes and Scarves

I drank in the light that dripped into my eyes
From the moon shining bright
On the darkness of calm,
And the fragmented white
Dropped on it like bombs.

We were spectators
Flying at the edge of this war,
Hiding our shivers
In the warmth of a coat.
No warboats or fodder,
Just dull light and water,
That filled in our thoughts
To make memories float.

And we lost our words
To the music and sight
Of skyline and ocean and Ferris wheel light.
A hush,
A moment that showed on our faces.
And finally,
Everything's in its right place.
Phenomenal, fabulous, running, and cheese.
I never thought this would ever be me.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Rejected Blood From Dejected Donors

It's the pressure of perfection
That synthesizes the convection,
And the red phone rings
And sings for connection.
But then begs for direction.
Yet the hand of the master
Stays still,
No affection.
With one hand on his desk
And the other underneath,
He reaches to pull the plug.
And all remains quiet on the western front.
He only enjoys that setting sun
To watch arise another one.
And his daughter laid,
Confused with love,
He cradled to sleep with printless gloves.
And there was hush from fingers and lungs
As they both were emptied in unison,
And one was fighting.
And what was fought.
But here, he is god
And he's not saying, "Stop."

Sunday, June 28, 2009

The Answer

...And as starry nights seen through blurry eyes
Become blurry nights lost in my starry eyes,
I'll toss and turn and stir until light,
Thinking two purring cats and ten hungry bites.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Shishin

Every day is a trial of mental strength
Throwing myself against grain.
Going against the world,
Against myself,
Against the pain.
And at times I prevail,
At times I have failed.
And if flightless birds saw paper trails,
This would be my goodbye.

These vacant eyes have flushed out light,
Empty, black, a starless sky.
Oh no, these are no good.
If you could pull the switch back
You know you would.
Hell, I'd do it too,
But I'm too weak.
You're seeking switch passes passed long ago
And you're blinded on tracks through innocent snow.

My hands are cuffed and painted red,
By this skilled artist, bag-on-head.
Now I walk dead down death's wedding aisle.
Yeah, it's been a while
Since you've seen an honest smile.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Stimulating Simulations = Resignative Anticipation

Sleep sessions are restrictive,
Predictive fictions made all the same.
But I am still-staring
And the seams are still tearing
As I wear out my blood
In covers undone.

I am draped.
A body bound to the grave,
Comfortably waiting,
Anticipating to be saved.
I'm gravely symptomatic
But never diseased,
I'm kept on my knees
Under satin sheets.

Wake me, wake me,
I'm going to die!
Repeated rested readings
Leave the feeling inside
Unfinished,
Diminished,
Heaven's incomplete call.
So I linger in limbo,
A sleep unresolved.

New Sorrow

I'm your class-A dead weight
Waiting for the day
When continents collide
And I have died a thousand times
Just to save a cat's meow.
Ask me how and I'll say
Nothing at all.
It's braking on air
With the wind through your hair
When you're living a life
Full of no one there.
Nine lives back,
I had my back to the wall
Propped for the push
For when I'd take it all.
And I was backed with the wrath
Of a thousand sure-fires,
But I still had no desire
To go.
I know we're all drones,
But I'm the sole one to show.
And now I fill this page
With the rhymes of a slave
While I count up the days
Of lies that I gave to you.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Low-Fi Lullabies and Silver Strands of Trust

Who could've believed
That we would shove iron giants out to sea,
Trumping the skyline in buoyant majesty,
Rivaling gods in westward bound travesty.
A disappearing act.
And all the chips are stacked.

Who could've believed
That my greatest dreams born in quiet tears
Would be mine to trample just once a year.
A rainbow in one shade of blue.
Bolts and desperation,
Imagination and glue.

But who would believe
That you'd leave and never see it.
And if you can't believe
What I see, then so be it.
This is my last garrison,
So save me the embarrassment.

I know you're tired.
I am too.
But any plants we seed,
Before the autumn leaves,
Is a little heaven seen and another dream received.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Montauk Getting Heavy

O, how I wished for mirrored beaches,
Salty cheeks from washed up dreams...
I just wanted to believe.
I just wanted to believe.
But this,
This changes everything.

So readily lost at sea
To forget the things you used to be.
Now you lock up the boiler
Since she took too much in,
Because you won't make it out
Without leaving me in.

I see the light and find the charm
In splintered wood and rocky arms,
And burn my maps in signal fires
To call you home and hope a liar.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

The Exhale After A Shortness of Breath

You're putting tape
On lips fresh wet.
Licked for the taste
Of a space less expansive,
In a porcelain shell
That cracks from advances.

Hands, hope, and heart
Hum a drone tone
In dreams recurring,
Hurrying the process
To return to address.
To burn in her dress
In the hot summer sun,
To read to the end
Of what he'd begun.

This one-hit wonder
Wonders where it went.
The order's now backed,
Was to ship heaven-sent.
The light has been bent
Suspension bridge burned
Shock value reduced
All levels returned.

A lesson learned and one to teach:
Better mute than ill to speak.

Money Shot

I get my wish against the wind,
Looking for calm pockets of air
Your eyes hide behind
The locks of your hair.
Lovely hair.
Sprawled in the grass,
We let the good times pass,
And I am still young again.

I let my childhood go,
It floats.
It catches the air
And raises my hopes.
This is the simple glory of flight
Backdropped on dramatic skies.
...And these eyes are far from worthy.

She's willingly helpless to the uncontested
Stockholm Syndrome, so well invested
In her heart.
That tears her apart.
That sets her apart.

Wings are for angels
And I'm not there yet.
After seventeen times,
Here's one final bet.
I'll be the blindest of pilots
From the kindest of drinks,
Alcoholic.
Symbolic.
Sweet like sinks full of honey.
I'm calling shots in the dark,
And this one is money.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Three Ways To Forget

It's a matter of tone.
Your voice shakes to my bones.
And with static and mumbles,
I'm mostly alone.

I'm only human.
I can't say what's wrong.
I'm shedding my wings.
I feel change coming on.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

The Quiet Game

So who's even talking?
Who's spoken of?
Does the glove even fit?
Are those wax candles lit?
Thousands of words,
None ever spoken.
No curse ever lifted.
No beast yet awoken.

It's a contradiction.
No,
It's a work of fiction.
I don't get his diction.
Where is the conviction?

I zip these lips to loosen yours,
I leave a crack to peep through doors,
I talk too loud so you can hear,
I stare you down so you can fear
That these words might be yours.

For all I know,
I talk to myself
To wipe down the shutters
And unclutter shelves.
And for now I'll say that it's all done me well,
Until these heavy words drag me straight down to hell.

Narrations

Where do you draw the line?
Is it under the numbers
That count down the days?
Is it under the words
Emphasized when you say
Nothing at all?
Germane, of course.
Her name, of course.
This direct object,
Is directed objects in its direction
From the perfection in strokes of a pen
Making curves smooth and fancy,
That pleases the eye
And makes thoughts antsy.
It's the sound of grinding keys
That slip through the lock
That fit snug and tight
That don't need to talk...
Because if they spoke,
It'd be the greatest of lies,
So he silently waits on the other side.

The present, the future, the past,
Redefined.
When you erased the line between
Memories and dreams.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Geologist

You found your progress going back,
Tightening the slack to see if there was something,
Something still hanging on.
And then the rope was taut.
Your calculations were shot,
And there were too many variables
To take into account.

You can't dig this deep
Without walls collapsing,
There are more than just skeletons
Buried underneath.
You can't breathe this deep
Without lungs collapsing,
There are just too many words
In your chest
That you keep.

And you hoard them with fear
That the end is near.

Precious metals speak precious truth in my head
About this precious youth and precious doses of lead.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

6:15

With your hand on my lapel
As you damned me to hell,
A warm swell came on.
And in a flash flood
Of nerve endings and blood,
Songs took on different meanings
And sleep took on different dreamings.
So here's time to think without mine to say,
Counted days on open hands seem so far away.

So much has happened
In secret hours I keep
That are savored driving east
Towards a slow rising sun.
Anticipating questions
About unexplained sleep,
I slip into cold sheets
While others' days have begun.

Monday, June 15, 2009

God Damn It, Christian

"Tomorrow, I'll wake up and think this was a dream."

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Push

It only drizzles,
Never rains.
It only sizzles,
Never flames.
Rubber dreams are strung up on tall plastic trees.
They flew through the loops as they hung in the breeze
That tightened the knots on the gallows they braved,
And the future sends chills from the feet on my grave.

Coldwater Canyon

I pull out a crinkled map
Out of my back pocket,
Once pristine,
Folded neatly and clean
Eight states back with a changed state of mind.

You stop the car on the dime
and walk into the shop:
Candy,
Smokes,
and a six-pack of chalk.
You see through the sky
And walk down the line,
To outline my body
Just seven miles back.
The asphalt is dirty,
The white line is dashed,
Discrepancies were found from my credit to cash.

But I never bothered to keep the receipts
Purposely lost in the cracks of seats.

There are cities hidden in creases of the map
And the highway lines thin as the melt in my lap.
I can only drive besides telephone lines
Because all the world's liars write directional signs.
And we were driving so fast, but not going far
Since we skipped the fuel tank and poured gas on the car.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Justice

These wood floors are weightless,
These white walls are bare,
Each room carries echoes
Through nothing, but air.
The cars, the pets, the boxes were sent.
I'm finally free and everything went.

Built Up and Stripped Down: These Layers of Time

I fell victim to the colors,
Never changing.
Accentuating the aging
In body and soul,
A wholeness achieved
In a pale, slender tree
With poison dark leaves
That burned through the skyline
At leveling speed.

God's mind matter splattered
On a canvas of sky blue.
The rest slipped in drips
Down the slits of my shoes
That hardened to cement.
All the while,
The bloodhounds whimpered
At your stinging ginger scent.

The sheriff's searching town
For a temptress with a gun
Who drowned a man down in the river
And brought back...
His father's only son.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Blink

We spent our hours with each other,
Stuck in the mundane smell
Of countless cookie cutouts
That would otherwise be cooking
In the California sun,
But June Gloom has begun
And we're the only ones who see
There's more to life than hipster tees
Or skinny jeans that strangle knees
Or glasses made for those who can see
Just fine.
They're useless,
And stupid,
Just like this line.

But when the flood gates opened
And we were let in,
Only then did fanbased tempests begin.
Loud and crowded,
In a sea of glistening sweat,
We began to sway in every which way
Trying to say every line of the song
While trying to keep the air in our lungs
To let out another chorus.

It was the perfect storm.
With morals forlorn,
A new game was made
To see how long until your knees
Or your stomach gave.
All the while, the drummer drummed on
And we screamed in our ears as we sang along
In every pitch
In every key
On every note
On every beat
...My god, we were awful,
But we sure had soul.

The sweat in my clothes was mostly not mine.
I'd gulp some more air if I had strength and the time,
But there's just sweaty air, already been breathed
And cookies baked two over one-eighty degrees.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Dizzy Spells

Explanations are traces
On a circle, never ending.
Destinations are bending backwards
To find the light around the bend.
Around the bend.
Around the bend.
Around the bend.
Around the bending page
Is another for the books,
But the only hook was on a rod
Cast into a sea of infinite suns...
I was always after the reflective one.
Dancing in the ripples of the tide,
The yellow moon screams warning,
The yellow eyes cry mourning
As I contemplate the ways I can stray to the side
To soften the impact as reality collides
With every clock that ever ticked.
With every secret ever kept.
With every lie I ever told.
With every dream that ever bled
And stained these hands with the brand of hope
That comes from the uneven-layered ghosts,
That kiss before they kill
Your free will in your sleep,
And in waking, they're tracing,
A circle complete.

It means two different things
To stay the way I am
And say the way I am.
And I know I'm going to regret this,
But talk to me when you get this.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

606: A Hole In Your Devil, The Day of My Revelation

This morning I dressed up,
Pretty and nice,
To sit on the concrete and cry.
To watch something beautiful
Die in my mind.
Like the man on the cross
That now hangs in the sky.
It's metal.
It's cold.
It's dirty and white.
A mother suspends it,
So structurally sound
With a womb with glass doors
Where salvation is found.
A light for the ages.
Some fun for all ages.

But the most Sunday goers she ever does get,
Are the ones going by towards something else in their lives.

Attempting Justice Through Revision

Blood.
It rushes and gushes
Into every crevice of my mind
And my lips.
These hands are cold,
My heart is bold for once
No twice,
No third time's the charm.

Seven years.
Countless fears took hold of you,
But this is release.
This is running your fingers
Through cloudy fleece,
Knowing that you were right
All along.

I'm holding my breath
And counting to three.
Laying out the table
So nice and so neat.
And what it meant to me:
Reading out loud the lines in between
Painting a picture that hadn't been seen,
Has shaken the very foundations
Of memory.

You left me sinking for thousands of leagues
But now I've planted my feet on ocean floor
And twisted the knobs on open doors.
So let it all flood in,
As we let it all out.
Our ink-silent shouts
Had always been synchronized
And you read it in my lies.
And I saw it in your eyes.
A blue sky covered in clouds,
I found glitter in the silver lining.
You found a sun behind a storm front,
Hiding.

Every word, I meant it.
You took my light and bent it
Into a palette of beautiful collisions,
The clouds and the colors
With so much precision
That this vessel went down in the sea
And when I breathed in the blue
I found you, waiting for me.

You are the storm,
You are the calm,
You are the crystal bombs
That explode in the skies,
That fragment and sprinkle
On my world, on my eyes.
You are the siren
That tells me to leave,
That cannot be done justice,
That I love, that I need.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Two Lines and Signed

With one last call into the dark
Those deep, resonant frequencies
Finally shook doors,
And shattered windows,
And the widow's hourglass
Gave warmth like a heart.
With my own poison,
I woke the dead.
I broke my head.

Two lines and signed;
An acceptable ultimatum
Discussed in kinesthetic conversation.
I took my reservation:
Tentative,
Yet from years past,
The same.

You took the best weather in your name.
Just as you always did.

I paused for a moment,
Using twilight's shade
To hide what I betrayed between our hands.
I tapped into the past,
Under the faint morning glow,
And Adam screamed and told me
That everything must go.

Benediction

Please stand.

Class of 2009, family, and friends,
It is an amazing feeling
To stand here and know
That I've been a part of something
That can never be
Replicated,
Reproduced,
But most importantly,
Replaced.
We've walked down this road
Together.
Hand in hand.
And now we've made it to the platform
And our train is coming.
May you never forget
The warmth of your neighbor's hand,
And the warmth that you provided them.
May your voice always be heard,
Above the engine's roar
As we go our separate ways.
May your faces forever shine
Brighter than the whistles
Of friends and family,
Cheering you on
As you chug,
And chug,
And chug,
On a train with no rails,
Free to explore the expanse of the horizon,
Spreading the love and values
That we have come to know
As the defining qualities
Of such a beautiful and unique community.

Amen.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Unnecessary Changes Into Open Lanes

I pressed my clocks against the sky
Timing the choke before thunderous cries.
The storm is coming
And I'm becoming weary.
My eyes are straining from not seeing clearly.
I nearly hit a tree
Made of light that branched out from the clouds,
Illuminating details of a shrouded past.
I had reached in the bag of goodies
And sampled the stale cookies
Made soft once again by the moisture of tongue,
Memorizing the texture
Of sugary crumbs.
It found my blood
It found my heart
And started syncing its patters
With the things that once mattered
In keeping my chest warm.
I lost the wheel,
And I closed my eyes,
Regretting the roads filled with potholes and ice.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Soft Dirt

I planted jaunty flowers
As worms devoured her grave.
This is no way
For a grown boy to behave.
So now,
I've become a slave of a man
To something I can't understand.

I've been digging holes
And finding traps,
A golden coin on iron snaps.
Just look away,
Avoid the hurt,
Or run your dirty fingers
Through the cool, soft dirt.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Dreamborne Remnants

The nightmare doesn't start
Until you awake in a haze
A turbulent transition in the days
Out of step
Out of line
This time you've been called out.

There's a hunch in your back
From the weight on your shoulders
And now you walk the plank
As a court marshaled soldier
You were blindfolded
And told to walk.
Walk out of this door,
Walk out of this hell,
You're stepping on eggs
And breaking their shells.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Hassle

I'm always idle
Suicidal
Base jumping without the cord,
But every breath I take
Puts more weight on these heels
Until I'm
Dragging,
Stopping,
Bored.

What a thought to consider
That should have withered and died
But the sugar and sand
Shook cocktails encased
While the mind and the body
In two cars,
Collide.