Lifelines

We take love
We fake love
We make love
We break love.
This is my hole,
In it, I'm deep.
This is what happens when I never sleep.

Block

I am distractions,
I am subtractions from lines
Of what this might have been
If I didn't have the need to sleep in.
Gorgeous lights gorge out my eye
To the words' alignment on white.
They become inkblots,
A product of a tired and spotty mind.
So here's my one card, redeemable today
And I'll come back tomorrow
With something better
To say.

Maren

We are everything that is around us
And we are made into nothing,
But our own.
And in our secrets,
We are alone.
You are my future,
You are my unknown

Session

Impression
Obsession
Depression,
Repeat.
Suppression
Repression
Digression,
Deceit.
Compression
Profession
Confession,
Retreat.
Delete.
Delete.
Delete.
Delete.

Classic

A favorite fragrant found by chance
Advances to assurance of a good day.
History is written in the patterns on wings
With flourishes, brightness and colorful things
That flutter in their kisses like lashes on neck.
So we beckon the moment to stay.
Words arched at a burger joint
Make the point clear as day
That this is the way eyes focus on light.
A perpetual dream state laid out on the floor,
Sprawled out on the couch,
Or asleep in the bed,
And the sun-soaked mornings
Make me want to stay more,
But only so many good things can be kept in my head.

Glory Pain

This morning is the good hurt
Like the first fight you won
But first took one in the head,
And the chest
And the legs,
And the arms,
And the back.
And the fact is
You're actually a little more tired.
But you're running on adrenaline
Left over from last night:
Fought up to the gate in the first row,
Setlist in-hand by the end of the show,
So many bruises,
So little water,
So worth it.

Warm Milk & Basketball

Everybody has a story
That starts on tiny metal plates.
They are always from the same states,
But all going to the same place:
A city that never sleeps
And tries its best to keep you in.
Yeah, welcome to the city of sin.

Mirrored hotels to indulge our vanity
Gambling and sex to the point of insanity
Seizure-inducing flashing lights
Fashion reusing guido guys...
This place makes me sick.
Like the anesthesia women sucked
Before their plastic fix
For their plastic fantasies
Armani and alcohol
On a casino balcony.

Just add a little rubber
For a recycling party,
Recycling girls between
Clones of Ed Hardy.
Let your money and vomit drain down the sink,
I came to this hellhole to rock out to Blink!

Fader/Balance

I twist my fingers in the air,
Stirring vibrations with the rolling of my wrist.
The music and dreams
Lost somewhere underneath the eyelids...
I know that everything will be alright.
I know that this isn't goodbye.

Bobblehead Night

He wasn't supposed to play,
But what did the crowd say?
The biggest number on display.
Ninety-nine.
And as the chant echoed loud,
A chill ran down my spine.
Every plate was covered in blue
And it was time to see
What hope could do.
Hope calmed the bullet
And guided its path,
Hope pushed wood
To make lovers at last,
Hope was a crack
That was heard through the stands,
Hope was the making
Of the grandest of slams.
One pitch it took
To turn the tables around,
One fence it took
To turn a ball overbound,
One man it took
To put it six underground,
Manny Ramirez,
And this is his town.

Whose Word For It?

This life runs like clockwork.
I'd say it was God's work,
But who'd get a robe so dirty
Working at thirty-minute intervals
Weaving a fateline of subliminal messages?
These tiles are snug around the edges.
I walk over them quietly
Touching them, lightly.
A T.V. screen pours light where none is needed,
Keys sing in the dark of a room overheated.
We float unbound in this river,
But it has always had a path we've missed
Glancing over words in parentheticals...
This is purely hypothetical.

Hands On A Numberless Face

These are my fingers
Pulling up on the ledge,
This is the light that pours
Around the edges.
The sky has no direction,
But I follow it with my eyes
And it tickles my retinas
With the azure as sure as
The darkness of night.

That's what I'll remember
When plastic sheets
Match my couches
And others in my house.
But the dark of that night
Is as dark as my eyes
Looking forward.
But look inside
And you'll see silhouettes.
There is nothing I hide.
This past is mine,
For I passed the time.

And I'll carry to the grave
All these pages that I've saved
That say the most meaningful things
Wrapped in plain linen sheets:
Good moms make you eat,
Good sons go to sleep,
Good friends you must keep,
Good seekers must leap.

A Latex Cloud

The pushover was pushed over the edge,
And brought the second back
To the arch of my neck.
The apples aren't quite in season,
But a reason to pick
Is very, very near
And my mind's getting sicker
With every passing year.
Traditional,
Unreasonable,
I think I've had it all
...and It's not even fall.
He said,
You've found your head,
Now find your heart.
And I never thought I'd be,
But now I'm finally there
When a single white balloon floats up in the air.

Relax

A skin deep fever tickles the senses,
"It's the house with the white gate and green fence."
See friends that make you feel alive again.
Liquid diamonds
Shade of blue,
A single pearl that shines for you
Unstrung,
Unsung,
The words before the rhythm
The softest point of living,
The impressionable mention
Of the tension yet to pass
Strung up in wood framing
Under a widow made of glass.

This is a reflection of the things unknown,
The pseudosecrets we let breathe,
But never let known.
One light at different angles,
One life of silken tangles,
Static in our conscience that sparks,
Never shown.

And this is far from over,
We're only getting older.
I know I've been bold,
But I'll have to be bolder
Because on mirrored seas
This sheep has no herder
And when the sun sets,
It only gets colder.

So I'll take their hands,
They'll set me free
And let me be away for once,
Let me see from my own eyes
And drop the pen hen brooding
On how we will die.

Vines

Names made of light
Fight under plastic and glass.
Racehorses with blinders
Make corners tighter as they pass
Stacked,
Packed,
A relentless, foreboding stampede.
This delicate weave of poison leaves
Rejects a double helix
As it tangles like weeds,
As it dangles its seeds
Over super-rich soil
To feed these machines
that breathe and bleed oil.

Evicted Two-Fold

This is the real world,
Where positive numbers
Seem to only get smaller
And as time goes by
As does the size of your collar,
Until your strangled with debt
And the general regret
Of living a cubical life.

So wake up young
And focus those eyes.
Not on money spent,
But the unworthy prize.
You're stupid,
And spend all your nights in a car,
But now think of the ease
Just to see all those stars!

The Harbor Buzz And My Pillow Fuzz

A ticket to the sea,
Through the glass on which
We breathe.
We knead our troubles into mush
And cast them into the deep.
Metal cables, plastic whales,
Crystal jellies, crystal scales
That hold the gentle balance
Of all our mental talents.

A ticket to the sun,
Under pine tree needles,
Our faces smile young.
A lighthouse, a song,
A mountain half a mile long,
We blow soft bubbles
From the laughs in our chests,
Unexplainable,
Unattainable,
Unchanged and nothing less.

Can't Take Me Down!

Strep choked on the words in my throat
And Cold is in the closet,
Getting his coat.

My body has has won,
A double-team too!
Sicknesses: 0
Immunity: 2

Conscious Sessions

I couldn't tell you when I returned,
But I can tell you that I burned
In the awareness of the bareness
Of these walls.
I painted them with empty intentions
Lacquered with the hope of
Divine Intervention.
But no work done.
But we jerk, son.
Colored up making noise,
Fired up girls and boys.
The bluest light
Face-to-face
In overlapping time and space.

It's been erased.
But faded lines mean brief recession,
When day is replaced with conscious sessions.

Newfound Wisdom In Strip Club Lighting

Downtown Los Angeles.
Leather couches and barbed wire
A choir of commercial jets
Shake loose from the metal frame
Of this warehouse,
Painted with phrases worn out,
And get lost in the scrap yard of the dead
Somewhere over the fence
On which I rest my head,
It came and left in a rumble.
The tumblers start up
And tear this heart up.
Hipsters,
Industrial strength.
Hissers give them hunger pangs
And venom glistens on the floor
Making and breaking,
Always wanting more.
And of course we know the truth:
These are the trials and errors of youth.

One-Way

We're 93 million miles high
And we're falling in circles towards the sun.
Forever falling,
But never into,
A paradise lost
And found
In one.

Undeserving

These keys can click
For every tick and tock
Of every second on every clock,
For every minute
Turned to hour
To day of my life,
Through the waxing and waning
Of ecstasy and strife,
The best of me,
The worst you've seen,
The wrong and the right,
When the alarm bell rings
Then death to me bring,
But I shall never clock out
On the love that you need.

I suppose the correct attitude
Is perpetual gratitude.
An ocean storm on all latitudes
Of words that cannot express
The gush of water out of my breath
And a rush of warm air to put me at rest,
To feel life in my lungs and heat from your hand,
To see beauty in life right now where we stand.
To wake up,
To breathe,
To shut up and believe,
As the summer sun shone on our faces again.
Again.
Again.
This is unheard of.
This is absurd.
This is the song of my talking bird.

So she sings,
And I sing
That life must be rigged,
Too big,
Majestic,
Complex
And hectic.
Silk strands woven too thin for our eyes to see.
Supporting our lives with what it takes,
And what it brings.
We can writhe until we die,
Until we stare down the eyes
Of the calm venom keeper that puts us in deeper.
Or we can lie and look pretty
In a web connected
Like the lights of this city,
That brings us together
When we are miles apart,
So we can play our part in close lives in danger
Or be strangely complete for incomplete strangers.

You have the anger of a devil
With the graces of an angel
And I'm flying up rockets
And jumping off buildings
To find new perspective
To get a new angle.
Because the lines that lie between
Molten, earth and sky,
Have been blurred in my eyes
From the tears that I cry
So these lines and my life
Have become undefined...
But if there is one thing that's certain,
I must be in heaven,
Just badly disguised as every day life.

So with everything I did know,
My perception of reality
Was thrown out the window
To make room for you to fly right in.
And if I wake up
And this never happened,
I'll just call so you can tell me it did.
And so you waited for me to drift away.
To get lost in dreams
That can only gleam
In the radiant light brought on by today.

I've lost faith in logic
But find comfort in disturbance,
Because you're the exception to every natural occurrence.

Sickness & Heart

The moon made of cheese
Melted through the silhouettes of trees
And spilled in the cracks of blinds
Into a time-suspended dream
Relieved.
A negative mirror,
Jaws theme swimming with me.

Thank Trudy for moving
Regardless of what love meant,
Thank God for the clod
In my heart known as judgment.

It's a bloody smile.
The kind that takes a while to earn
Like the passage through swords
That perpetually burn.
They cut me while I was down
To prove a point
That drove into my sides,
To find a searing truth inside:
This is my deserved retribution,
Brought on by Christian institution.

Moldy Orange

Welcome back to the shits.
Life is as colorful as the cold grits
In your cracked porcelain bowl.
Every shirt has a stain.
Every window has a smear.
Every day is no more near
Normalcy.

How you used to hold it dear.
Now you fear the judgments of every day:
The letters, the voices, the tactile display.
You're checking your pulse
Before the phrases you say
Change the way the matter stands.
Delirious,
Delusional with the sight of open hands.
Out of tangles of strands of mismatched hair
Or defeat in the plainness of palms open-aired?

So with a charged exchange,
We've come back to the base,
Stripped off layers caked
To the same pretty face.
With the same ugly scar
That cut down far,
Too deep.

It was a strike too much,
That came all too soon,
From burning my eyes under citrus moon.

Vladimir Ballistics

Vocal clips must have faulty rounds
When I find that I'm the only one around.
A shot meets an echo
Then falls to the ground.
I count ripples in the sound
That have stayed for a while,
Ever since I swallowed the bullet in tragic style.
It's the pound of the sounding of words
Wished to speak,
It's the sound of the pounding of...
Keys, keys, keys!

Imaginary Ordinary

Dreams of you calling
Keep me talking in my sleep.
So much for keeping sanity.
So much for keeping family,
Friend,
Love.

You're still all that I think of
Before I sleep,
When I wake,
And you're still always with me
With the absence that you make.

Timetables Obsolete

Captivated by the native
City smog and palm trees,
A closer view came dirty,
So they gave it for free.
Floating lights wait in line
To be heaven-received,
Guided home by the stars
We suspend on our streets.
More warming than blankets
Or entertaining than sleep,
L.A. at this angle is all that we need.

Lights in the Dark

Colored sparks spill out the secrets of sounds,
Suppressing surprises we'd meet on the mound
Seconds later.
And after failing to fill us with fear
From the frightening rumble we knew we would hear,
We dressed the smoky air with satisfied laughs
With occasional Woo!'s thrown into its path.
Yes, these are the beauties in which we revel,
Watching light rockets explode at eye level.
And I sit in wonder as two worlds converge,
Smiling in laughter
In such pleasant urge.

This is what I was let to keep,
Undeserving of this love
That was given to me:
Colorful, bubbly, sugary sweet,
The presents I hide in jewel boxes of sleep

Lying in the moonlight.
Rediscover new heights.

Something Sleep Can't Escape

I wasn't in for winners,
I was out for justice.
Just this is too much
And I clutch my heart
Kicking to escape,
Sticking on the points of my ribs.
This feeling is a wound to forever stay open,
Contact is a contract I've consciously broken.

The current state of affairs
Is that no one is there.
All I know is the familiar
Stale air of my cage.
With the occasional prison break
To piss, shit, and beat
And beat
And beat
And beat
And nose-bleeds become a daily routine.

I can't pluck a note on these vocal cords
They have bored and forgotten how.
It's just the sound of breathing
Every now and then.
And I remember when way too well.
It creates the hell encased in bone
In a separate hell I call my home.

When loves learned to hate and I faded away,
Silence came over with a word to say
And moved himself in with intentions to stay.
He pushed me down into a hole too deep,
He called it reality and it was mine to keep.

Nothing is certain.

I'm beaten though I do the beating
Under street lights.
Under these lights
Flashing in and out of my life,
A love started.
Friends drop like flies,
My thoughts pop me in the nose,
It bleeds.
They leave.
I need a full body exchange.
The mind can go,
This flow is empty.
I go back to the corner to spit out teeth
Into a dirty tin bucket
Called honest relief.

She was the crystal
I was the crane
Holding the wrecking ball.
Wrecking all the power lines
Except the spine that made me
Let it all go.
Letting the sun drift away
Given no reason to start her day.
Replacing light with cast iron
To take her away.
And I wait for the back swing
For all the bad things I've done
Fighting against gravity
With a triggerless gun.
An empty threat for the inevitable
So I choke on this inedible truth
Two in the morning,
Driving away from you.

Faces are scarred
Into the darkest places of the mind,
Disconnected from a darkened heart
Out of beat in the darkest time.
Where is my guidance?
I lost my confidence
When a took a butter knife
And laid my life on the ground
Mixing with tears and the horrible sound
Of heartbreak.
It drips down our shirts
And seeps through the cracks
Never to come back.
I skinned the pride
Now bring on the pack.
I'm waiting on lions
As I lie on my back.

There is no defense,
There is only fact:
I never knew it was this dangerous,
I never knew I could hurt this much,
I wish to god I still loved her
But I suffered the duty to do this,
And I'll haunt this world
Until I find forgiveness,
Undeserved.
Absurd.
Like every word that I spoke that night.
Like every picture painted on my eyes.
Of an immeasurable pain,
The worst of its breed.
And of sadness that sucks out
The essence of being.
I am alone now.
This is what I've become.
This is growing up and falling out of love.

Hi, my name is Christian Livingston Welch

I don't know who I am.