the stars, the sea, and sleep.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

It's Actually Tuesday

An audio pregame put us in a good buzz
And the amps warmed up while we waited,
Waited out on the sidewalks,
Under the shade of glass towers.
A stadium breakfast in a bun
Makes you unlucky three to one,
So get in in a second and breathe in on the fourth,
To all come back as one again, cut and retied.
So make a friend for the day
And leave them at the door
Either on your way in,
Or right before you get out the last chorus.
They put back what you couldn't help but drop
Without picking a damn thing up.
But in some cases we just can't,
It falls forward and caress your hand,
A friendly reminder of what was to unfurl
That I finally lost to all the cute girls.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Summer Plans

These are little pockets of warmth
Stored as promises for more.
The hot floor sticks to my steps
And keeps me rooted where I need to be,
Between the penciled in lines,
Resting on the spine of stability.
My limbs branch out like a tree,
My fingers trace the lining
As I wait for my turn.
These are my hopes turned to
Pollen and leaves,
Calming the creases of thinking,
But brooding on the intentions.
And with definitions in a shell,
I will hatch my own inventions.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Damn Yankees

We finally broke the silence.
As much as I will try to hide it,
It will shout back in retaliation.
So now it's time to recalibrate
Everything you thought you had straight
Before the words got twisted and snapped loose.
Let the bridges crumble for separation
For clarity without the enemy,
Instead, a friend that I know is there with me.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Limit Pusher

Empty leather and another open window,
The music is a little louder
And I am speaking out of turn, out of context.
I chase holes in the sky
And listen to the silence where it comes to collide,
Where the sun soothes the water with a million crystal lights.
I got closest to the source with the poorest excuse
To black out every single damn color I used.
A downward momentum that pulled me apart,
And a bruise on my chest from a still beating heart.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Dreamshift

We were driving towards a hazy city
Exalted by a crowd of industries and apartments,
Your knees tucked under the glove compartment.
We found a spot where we sloshed into park
And walked the lot like the morning trains,
Steam running off of our breaths.
They turned to Morse code from my yell,
And your giggle as I slipped into the snow.
By then I didn't know it slipped my mind,
By then I didn't know you slipped into mine.
The second steps made much more sense
With a night spent deep in recompense.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Black Trees Sink Deep Into Night

No words beyond courtesy,
May as well be none at all
Besides this block of text,
As brief as the moment we never met,
To savor the flavors I never tasted next.
It might fade to bitter and bland,
A chance wasted, unless an act of fate for which
I would have surely tampered with the evidence...
Don't say it wasn't evident
When you found your smile was there to stay.
A brief etching in my retina,
Maybe it's best to be remembered that way.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

A Wednesday In August

A good first impression starts with a bang,
Then they are free to engage.
Black smoke and dust eat up the sky before
Dinner plans could be made around the war table.
I could decorate you like a soldier,
But if you ask for honesty,
There will always be
A guilty possibility,
However you are undressed.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

The Hanger Club

To keep the fluid balance, I tip my head back
While the rest put bias on a balance beam,
On which we put our burdened coats,
Stained, pretty patterns of
Pained, petty ghosts.
With my problems large and small,
He let me see the medium
And I scraped them off the pictures,
Until I saved them on my mirror.
There they hung off-center
Like a dissatisfying tie.
I'm caught in its noose
And the residue keeps everything hazy.
I'm stumbling backwards,
I thought the blindness would save me.

Creaky Feet

You are the familiar thief,
Habitual and greetings brief.
Slaving away because you don't know any better.
You're caving in, but safe in the shelter you've made.
Tacky-furnished, you wear a tacked on smile
And like it, even if the choice wasn't yours.
Movements spill sound on the floor
That you clean up after yourself,
Getting to know every step you take,
Slow with the heavy words that you make.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Dockweiler Lime

Oh yeah, I remember...
The structure, the function, the purpose,
Soft curses under the most sincere smile
Will ghost the shadows around the fire.
It reminds me
Of a grainy picture, blues and blacks.
They remind me
That returning is not going back.
She reminds me
Every time that ever is.
He reminds me
Finds me, makes me live,
Background to the heart and
The chorus as familiar as the floor.
When all you can take is all you can get,
A little sour taste will burn where it bleeds.
I watered it down and tried to pretend,
But the shower head fell on my shoulder again.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

On The Last One

This is your classic,
Just the way you've always had it.
The best things come in threes
Or in however many people can fit in your heart.
Oh, take me back to the start
Where the eye looked over the overcast dusk,
I would never change the channel it looked over.
There is something in the background chorus;
It's hopeful that there's something for us.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

An Ode to John and Claire

They come from a lab of skunks and skanks,
International or Ninja Dy31@ng,
Where I gotta call my girl,
And where I gotta get paid,
Where it's not that funny,
But we'll laugh anyway.
Bolth of them white, yet whipped...50 lashes!
That's racist? Let's face it,
The boyish man holds the matches.
We burn through the hours
And devour catered food.
From the lunch trucks's hot cousin,
Not eighteen bucks and actually good.
I lol like a baby when the solar army falls in line,
Even James the Iowan can be cool and fit in...
Sometimes; I love times like this.
There are SHArKs in the water,
But I'm swimming in bliss.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Getting The Flags Out

I had my trust.
It was kept in the drunk of my bimmer
Because my pride needed the leg room;
It was time to kick some ass,
And the perpetually slow passing on the 110 from the 5
Was a sign the city's blood was slow in transit, but alive.
Cut me open and I'll show you what's inside:
A fire and a riot without the stolen cab.
And tonight the night streaks purple and gold,
Now the colors that guide birds back to their nests,
Back to the best feeling we knew we had coming.
We are L.A., this is what we deserve!
A championship won,
An ego preserved.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Work(?)

An American standard:
The American sandwich, three-one-four,
Shiny white coats and a shiny tiled floor.
Sometimes a little burnt on the edges,
But it is going to be a classic
And there isn't any other way I'd have it.
Time constraints make a schedule
Make a freedom of its own,
Some air so it can grow.
Some more so it can laugh,
Shake the heavies out
That scream about some whispered past.
In a digital world, binary we breathe,
Where all that we need
Is less than three.

Ninja Dyel@n

The water stays stagnant and warms in the sun,
Underneath, the earth breathes
Tiny grains of sand that shuffle on the surface.
My hands want to drink,
Ocean dust recedes down the cracks in my hands,
Soft cell river beds pulse with another day.
Water tension bends the light and mentions
In passing, a tinge of synthetic.
I wrote my mind's notes in the sand,
But I couldn't forget where I buried it all.
The treasure and trap,
Now a mirage that I hurried to.
I leave dimples in smiling sand
And feel the currents brush against my hand
That serve a sturdy lung in the body's water,
The vastness of past that I keep from its wander.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

A Lovely Night

It's summer and you're still warm
From the sun's longest hug of the day.
The breeze is your sweater
The stars are your blanket,
And this is your breath to make you feel better.
She wore the dress of an optimist
You wore the scars of pragmatism
That faded into red, irritated from your laughter.
Not long after, the road got wetter when
Parked by the start and the end of my youth,
Marking the start and the end of my truth.
I checked my pockets for anymore details
Then I checked my baggage for a plane I'd never take,
Hoping the right people lost their tickets
And found their way back home,
Or at the very least,
This shared window seat
Is better here grounded than ever have flown.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Block The Casting Call

What is it? Just listen. Revisit, hold open.
It's the verdict in double-jeopardy.
I would tell you to wipe those tears,
But first run those soft hands
Under warm water
With palms full of suds,
Wash my failures away from
Living lazy, bored, and always unprepared.
I want to go back,
No, forward, forward,
I want to go back.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

I Will Be Ready For Winter Again

When you pass the dates,
Everything but your brain remembers how to feel
And the synapses burn from continual sparks.
To start off Undeserving is to dig under the casket.
If I go down far enough, the stars fade away
If they fall down far enough, it is something I can taste.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Important Points (Part 2)

Remember your friends,
To let go you have to lose your grip.
You drop the pen with no point,
A blunt fall on a bare page.
There are shreds of rubber
Alternatively over a simple,
Old note held in a Möbius strip.
With creases in the paper,
It's much easier to fold.
No one ever said that it was over at control.

The Point System

Hey Crinklenose,
I'll keep the engine running.
Sunny Sunshine walks down starboard,
I follow.
A Lion was once a cub that pawed at everything,
I had paced the cage from the outside
It seemed like I knew which side was in.
In a dream,
I was asking questions in angles of three lights,
Clouds suffocated mountaintops,
God was as blind as justice,
I was in the stages of an epiphany.
I created you
And your best shot was mine.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

The Trials of a Working Man

You wake up in the morning with the same old face,
You use the same old toothbrush,
And the same old toothpaste.
There are leftover shadows from the night before,
You wipe them off again,
Then see yourself off
Again.
Incessant laps to win the coffee cup.
1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th red light that you stop at
Remembering just what you forgot at home.
Absolutely nothing...keep driving.
We make asphyxiation faces
In funny pictures of ending days,
And you try forgetting the pain
With every day that you get paid.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

You Are Light Streaks In My Camera Lens

There is the same face with a different photo burn
Bottom-right of the printout, every year's turn.
To be stagnant is to be an axis,
About which this world does not rotate,
But changes with no negotiation.
Every attempt made lets it stay a little longer,
A little faded, a little smaller
As the cloudy memory you keep in a jar.
The sound against your ear comes in waves,
The pearls that they gave are
Locked around fair necks,
And the buried glass is a bit more clear,
But you always have to check.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Course Post

Last night I slept in porcelain
And making up didn't make much sense.
Emotions are dense when sanity is diffused
Through the heat from my head.
Fever dreams are thievery things,
Stealing discretion
And shattering it on the tile floor so that
None of it matters, a pattern no more.
There is perfume in the medicine cabinet
It is all a chemist's work that made me sick.
But there's a method I missed
That will click when it's aligned,
It's hope in a code that draws a fine line.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

In Dependence

Condensation on my breath
Powered ice under my feet
A promise tight around my neck,
But draped over my chest.
Threads and buttons hug me
Walking down tree level stars
5a.m. on a frigid wet alley.
I accelerate on a runway of weeks
Expecting to leave the ground and fly,
But I slip on the ice,
Falling backwards into a January night.
And when I opened my eyes,
I saw Eden's door,
And walked out.

Mountain Talk

Here is your echo from nothing being said.
They are new repercussions and deposits of pure lead;
You were never one to follow,
So once again they follow suit.
I can't tell you what I've lost,
But I can tell you what I got
From pulling at the threads
And thinking of the thought.
The gravity of decay is stronger than I know,
It pulls down on the sun as it tries to melt the snow.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Oz (Eight Short of Forty)

Work before play,
Sleep deprived before the day
Starts rolling across the sky.
She wakes up snoring, rolls away.
A paid traitor is what has been said,
But there's no truth in this duality
When formality is dead.
And with a rush of blood to my head,
It goes from gray to Pink's,
Feeling like I should just like I could in L.A.
Connect the dots with freeways and stoplights,
It's the only thing I got right
After I took the third left.
I deal out words through shuffled thoughts
Until the court is out of order,
And there's no gavel in judgment's hand.
I swore myself in without ever taking the stand;
Is it becoming what I hated
Or what I couldn't understand?

Friday, June 4, 2010

Letting the Steering Wheel Go

A dirty reflection will stain your thoughts
When all you can give
Is all that you haven't forgotten
And every salted memory
Is still rotting in the backroom.
I'd trade my veins for wires
To get rid of all desires,
I'd give my human heart
For a strong voltage supplier,
Because the heartbeat makes me shaky
Like the grooves that line this road.
We are not infallible,
And the concrete greets you cold.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Contact Through Glass

A routine can be disrupted when you trust it with luck,
And then your stuck being read your Miranda rights
For attempting to break Murphy's Law.
Your color combination and voice box recognition
Was enough to break the safest place I had,
Leaving quiet implosions in my cage
With every glance you had to give,
Your necked craned like a key
That slips through me like a sieve.
I was the lock that kept you out
Of the door that you are,
Unlocked and letting everything in.

________ is overrated.

Every other thought is blank.
This is what the water washed away
When I sank into plush leather
And I couldn't decide whether or not
I knew which flaw I wanted to hide.
Some diluted solution
Sat in a beaker of indecision
As if any decision made
Was one less worse to contemplate.
Here's to flaunting it without a basis,
Finding homeostasis,
Breathing...so nonchalant.
But never forget, you won't forget
Everything you haven't forgotten.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Chillin' Like A Villan

Being a man, drink in hand, the other masters grilling
Fresca pong is long and they just keep on spilling
Burgers, dogs, and corn on the cob will keep on filling
Washington & Wilson for just a bit more grilling,
This summer is freedom except for work and billing
Financial and emotional, dramatic and thrilling
This warming summer smoke is a memory fulfilling
And if I don't choke, It'll be the life I'm glad I'm living.