the stars, the sea, and sleep.

Monday, August 31, 2009

Building Bridges In Ditches

The suspension swing sings
Over seas of aspirations,
Tempest-tossed and lost to
Hopes and expectations.
Echoes bellow deep
In a moaning metal sound,
We're building broken bridges
Just to stay on level ground.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Where are you?

The morning brings laughs,
The night lets them pass
With the clouds the bring rain
And stain the sidewalk a darker shade.
Light dances in the splashes
By which they scattered apart
And then became our stars.
And then became our hearts
Drifting somewhere in the air,
Solemn sky...

I just want someone that I can tell,
"Goodnight."

Friday, August 28, 2009

Unfinished Self

I rub the contour of my face,
Look into the mirror
And nothing's replaced.
So I look away,
So it didn't fade away,
Seven days on its way
Crooked lines had been retraced,
It didn't fade away.
There is always a reason
You don't want to stay,
But we say we miss it anyways.

The lines bind this train to the track,
Derailed, yet prevailing to stay intact.
Time is the length between theory and fact,
But metal on metal just whimpers and drags.
Outbound,
No sound,
A lack of responses,
Confounding this town for something I've lost.

The gasoline burned before it met eastern sun.
And delusions to truth rivaled
Three,
To,
One.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Holding A Gun To Your Therapist

I fell 2,000 miles to a chair and a chaise
And a message replayed.
No one is home except for the drone of phase,
An advantage advancing in retrograde,
Stomping our feet in a ladder parade
Unevenly broken to evenly break.
You're asking a healer to kill.
You're asking to take like it was your will.
But you won't.
It wouldn't be home and you couldn't,
You missed it.
Physician-assisted
With a gun in your hand,
You demand a prescription
Because you know you can't.

Prob-

The sun is up again.
Again.
A gain of none,
A yawn to morning sun.
I live in the night before
In some sort of magic,
Fantragic, fifth floor.
Solar panels flex in the light.
I crack my back and rub my eyes.
Machines never sleep,
Machines never die...
But sometimes it seems like we try.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Trees

Putting X's through messes
That compress into paper.
Irreplaceable,
Untraceable,
Insatiable as long as I walk these bridges
Sowing the ditches and sewing these stitches.
Whether grasping anew
Or holding to keep,
These branches reach high,
And these roots burrow deep.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Cutting Angles

Water falls for waterfalls
The pressure of the wave still calls
And everything falls still.
A voice emerges from the deep,
The fragrance of a dream received.
The audible caress of a plausible truth:
Boston is a ring and deserves a gem like you.

Chapters

I will never know
What I missed in vertigo.
Ascension to heaven,
I was taken away too far
To wipe the tears from your face.
I stretch out these arms
And brush my fingers through space,
Empty space.

I never want to know
Your words turned white
In winter snow.
The months to come
Will fade in flavor
Like the gum you used to chew.
You thought you knew
But were insecure,
But we know the thing
Of which we were sure:
Attraction.

The reaction is shock.
There is no longer touch
There is only talk...
Oh it's been so long
Since I've talked about love.
I had never felt so right...
The plane's direction is wrong.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Clear Waterfalls

You are reading this,
Wondering what secret crypts I'll reveal.
But every seal has been broken
And the warranty for hope has been soaked up
By a rising sun, nudging my eyes open
Because I am done,
And our thoughts go further than the syllabus runs.

Hours of stillness,
With nothing but the soft vibration
Of soft voices
Speaking soft choices
That wrap around our skin.
It's a refreshing calm from within
Like when these lungs can't hold anymore
Of this fickle air.
And I didn't care of the noxious gases,
Accustomed to the breathlessness
Of a moment that passes,
Over and over,
And then it is over.

Together we spin
Through open doors to the bizarre
Left ajar like tempting sin.
It dropped us into the purest waters
And we saw how deep we could put ourselves in,
But through the seaweed and crystals
You were always above...
Maybe you'll find it when you've fallen in love.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Sing With Me

Soundtracks emerge before the sun even sets
Behind Christmas tree mountains in the sea.
Our voices pour out like the concrete rivers
Flowing into the sea,
Flowing into the breeze,
Flowing into you and me.

The silhouette of numbers fade in
From the dark side of the moon.
The evening comes too soon
And an "X" goes through
April, May, June,
July,
And now I lie on the tracks
Held down by thumbtacks,
Held down by the numb fact
That the calendar won't back down.
The digits fly across the sky
And in the sea,
There they will drown.

They are always on time,
When I'm late on the dime
But we have to make due.
A sorrowed flight spreads wings of truth,
Adhesive peels off from my shoes.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Expectations vs. Reality

And I'll remember when
The last summer sun is setting,
Just how it came to this.
A transmission lost in translation,
A definition of home.
The water's getting colder
And the sunset sinks alone.

Typically Late

This world is small, this girl is all it takes to get people talking. Now I'm walking in the grooves, a centering spiral uncovering truth. The record plays on. The decor stays on the theme of class. like drinking wine from colored glass...of the Solo cup variety. Every name is familiar. All the fame is a glimmer into something that will be left so soon. But would've been great. We are typically late with our movie-script conclusions, but it serves some justice to our media delusions. So here's a toast to cheap wine's sting and a conscious stream of "normal" things.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Wooden Saint of the Sea

In the darkness of night,
A familiar wheel is your beacon of light.
Spinning,
Spinning.
You grin at the hypnotizing spin
And you want to stay home.
And in the drone of late night
You turn to the other side.
Your organized life seen by organized eyes
Sees no divide between ocean and sky.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Holy Trap

Pretty, pretty, soft and witty,
These chairs are stiff
Like the poor man's coffin
After the poor man coughed out his last
Breath.
Breadth of this situation juxtaposed
By naivety with a smile and salutation.
A lead heart led me apart from reality
And pulled me to the ground
To hear the sound of surreality.
I feel vibrations,
Sensational and violent.
But these eyes remain silent,
Quietly crucified to the generic carpeting
Dreading what this mind is harboring...
Fiery ships guided by a lighthouse blinded.
Mariners strung up by anchors of distrust,
Dangling and waiting for the moment I combust.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Double-Faksies Lied

Compulsive
Impulsive
Decisions.
A fission at the center of the mind
Has thoughts crammed against your skull.
There's a hole in the hull
And time falls in buckets
Onto paper.
It bleeds through.
There is too much truth for a single sense,
The rest, lost in translation.
You hesitate on what it meant.
You had hung on the swings
As sleep hung on your lids,
And you slid into home so that you were alone
With a social exhaustion before leaving for Boston.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

I believe (Speak to me)

The hair on your skin turns gold
As you drive into the sun,
There are dust bunnies in your head
From the same old thoughts
That fought until death
As you laid in your bed.
You turn on the windshield wiper
And the sunlight comes in brighter,
Midas brushes the softness of your cheek.

When imminent change is absolute,
The elements of life seem to follow suit,
A humble gesture from spirits unknown,
Embraces from faces I'll always call home.
These are the traces of a life well-lived
When a sieve bleeds out impurities of heart
And leaves familiar unique,
The stable I seek,
An answer unquestioned, but known from the start.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Single Digits

A private city sits perched on smoky air,
We stare as the ash clings to clothes and to hair.
I'd dare to close my eyes,
But I don't want to fade away.
I don't have the heart to say--

These festive lights make no disguise
So I bottle these things that I've been shown:
Innocence,
Sweetness in sugary flow,
Things like these I'll never know.
I'll just smile at which I can't relate
And sip into a darker state.

So I take a few steps back,
Admire your laugh in my panic attack,
Finding a soft way down the slope
A dull light replacing the essence of hope
That maybe I'll find what always escapes
With a trail of photos and audio tapes.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Amber

Direct light gray,
Indirect golden.
This life works in angles
In shadows and degrees,
Never poured in your eyes
But in everything you see.
Remembering a father's anguish
Recalling a mother's pain
Recounting a brother's laughter,
All at once, and all the same.

I pack solitary warmth in a suitcase.
I pack my youth into a binder.
I pack my calendar with time
Because I don't know what I'll find
Once I've left the real thing behind.

And in a three-hour gain,
I'll feel a great loss.
Because somewhere in the worthless gloss,
Los Angeles is a paradise lost
Where jaundice spheres forecast the day
And all your dreams can come and play...

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The Right Side of the Bed

Once you get over the drone
Of the music that will always be home,
You hit a silence.
You see it in the dust
Reflecting beams of light
When you're spending time alone
When you're spending time to write
When you're spending time alright.
I'm alright.
I've been all right lying on this bed,
Making a lopsided grating
From celebrating tradition.

But now I'm mourning rendition
As forced as it may be,
For the raincoats and frost
And the seasonal leaves.
The trees will stand naked,
Only bare at best,
As I will be too
After everything's left.

I am poison.

Tell the girls and boys
There's dark leeching
In the screeching
Of the overtones in his voice.
These are the choices we make,
The greatest takings of chance.

When a train of thought stops
At the length of the page
Of a number detracting
On the calendar's page,
Like the wheels of a plane
That takes me away,
A sentence stops short
Of a meaning to say
That the Fields of Elysium
are my equilibrium,
A fable,
Unstable,
Where nothing is certain,
And I hold that burden.

It has not been enough
But it all is too much
And my only crutch is my frame,
Polished out imperfections
But still flawed all the same.

So I've crossed all my T's
And dotted my I's
As I sign my name off
To the greatest of lies.
A builder of morals
Independent of sin...
See the signals?
Hear the bells?
That's the train coming in.

Monday, August 10, 2009

JalapeƱos & Beer

There is so much with me
There is so much to come
There is so much in the muchness
Of not being done.
An unfinished masterpiece
Is merely trash on the table
And the OCD inquires the insatiable.
Forever foreboding
Forever controlling,
Forever sensational.

Red Zone

My shortened breaths
Have only brought words for myself.
They are selfish heaves
In a coward's panic,
Sucking up dust under a sheet up in the attic.
Baby boy, you're giving too much blood
And the wood floor drinks your body's wine.
There's not enough pressure
Not enough money
Not enough time,
Not enough time.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

12:34

This is an ode to every moment
Spent bent three-hundred and sixty degrees
Dividing the psyche into millions of pieces.
This is to five in the morning
Ending where everyone else began
Held back by the nothing
That no one would understand.
This is putting that ugly face on
When you hear the hardest song,
But mama said my face would stick
If I held it for too long...

So the seasons are calling for a change,
And though the trees are sweating
I am betting that their words are missiles
That will always be in range.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Magic

Retrospective catch phrases
Catch days in dreamcatchers,
Wet from the sweat
Of cloudy days in late November,
Brown leaves and wet trees.
Run through them screaming hard,
Laughing loud with your hands on your knees.
Wasn't it innocent?
A singled strand frayed at the end,
But brought together by fretting hands.
The same which cradle cardboard unique
Strategically placed and portraying me weak
As he always has.
Unintended, yet well deserved,
Like the multiple meanings in a single word:
Magic.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Bodies/Entities/Me

Words escape me as birds escape me,
Doves out of bullet wounds
That let out lovely swoons
As my lungs hiss and fall asleep.
Still light runs through blood vessels
And wrestles itself free on my irises
With the colors of Osiris...
The colors of a memory fleeting fast,
The blurry film reel feeling warm on my chest.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Where is...

Tired nights make you lonely
And you're tired of lonely nights,
Wired up to a pleasing screen
Bringing restlessness in a stream of digits.
And you fidget as the numbers get smaller.
A ring,
A fate,
A phone,
A caller.
The loved are so far,
The fear is brought near,
And all the pretty pictures have slowly disappeared.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

As Perfect As Death

Sunlight through a dirty windshield,
Bluer skies where buildings once were.
Something about the past,
Something about the last thing I said
Before it left me fast.
All the while,
I'm standing still,
Looking for something
Never lost nor found,
But longing and belonging
With feet firm on the ground.

Interim

Still light,
Night life,
Sleep is something that pushes from the east.
Where normalcy meets in the cradle of the beast,
Somewhere off the western ghost
With longitude, latitude, nautical ghosts.
Numbers are smeared on the clock
Like a cheap windshield wiper
On poorly fitted glass.
It streaks as it passes
And creaks in every
Tic,
Toc,
Tic,
Toc,
A pause.
A lock,
But daylight is breaking through the blinds
...My eyes are now opening to my mind.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Dining with Lions

Judgment came in hospitality,
And I clicked affirmations against my morality.
Because here is a good shot
And I heard in God's earshot
I'd be damned to not take it
If I ever wished to make it.
It was a circus on a turbulent sea.
Hand-wrapped plastic meat,
Lions and me,
Balanced on hard beds
With soft memories
Of some angel sitting next to me.
But as divided chains had pushed and pulled,
I stood my ground and then was full.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

New Light

Today was a day for transactions
So I converted my units into something
A little more compatible.
Divisions of four in a 4-door sedan
Headed into the mountains
Of bedrock and sand.
And what silly sung harmonies
Some hardly heard voices sang
That buzzed in the basins
And hugged on the hills.
Choppy English,
Baby laughter,
While a seasoned voice went higher,
Faster,
Like the wheels that rolled
And took us far away
Humming our hearts to heave
Something to say.
And that we did.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Unstable Equilibrium

Halfhearted happenings
Happen half the time.
So this candy tastes plain.
Every bar tastes the same
And the feeling's mundane.
And Monday through Sunday
I'm hoping that someday
These taste buds will bud
And not hide from the words
That I hold on my tongue.
But the future draws blanks from a clock with no face
And I am treading on time in the fluid of space.