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Before Someone Shot Lennon (You can’t make new old friends)

I Grew up
In simpler times
In a small town
Back when the world was still kind

Didn’t have much money
Road trips in rusty cars
Played the hell out of 3 chords
On our beat up old guitars

Thought we were cool
We were gonna change the world
We sang “All ya need is love”
Back before someone shot Lennon

Listened to vinyl records
Music set us free
People over thirty
We couldn’t trust or believe

I’m going back
To all those good times
Kodachrome memories
With all my old friends

No matter where we go
No matter where we’ve been
One thing for certain
You can’t make, “New old friends”

Smashed my cell phone
Threw a brick at my Big Screen
Lets sit down in the backyard
Where we once shared all our dreams

Lets look at old photo albums
When our hair was long
And we wore yesterday smiles
Life’s a vapor, Here then gone

Campouts and keggers
Cut offs and ball caps
bonfires down at the river
Cold beers and cheap grass

Exaggerated our victories
Minimizing our loses
Where did the time go
Summers once lasted forever

I’m going back
So many good times
Kodachrome memories
You’re a lifelong friend of mine

No matter where we go
No matter where we’ve been
One thing for certain
We can’t make, “New old friends”

13 O’clock

She told me once, we’re all breathing dead stars, stardust, dark matter, remnants of burned out light, frozen screams consumed within the singularity of a black-hole.  She inhaled and then exhaled, “You must breath in deeply, because this is where beauty reigns supreme.  Life, love and beauty exists between each breath we take.  Right in that briefest of moments when you are no longer breathing, this is where time is suspended, where life and death exist in unison.  Sunrises are here and then gone, just like you, and just like me.  This was her celestial “Dear John Letter”.  Like most of the shit that came out of her mouth, it would at first intrigue me and then piss me off. It could never be a simple goodbye with her. No, she shrouded her surrogate love in crazy talk.

She’s french and knows much about jazz, mediation, paints, mixes her own colors, creates light, smiles at me and laughs at the world, all the time, for no reason.  Like a child’s daydream she keeps my heart in a snow-globe at her bedside——she shakes my world leaving me lost in a blizzard of colors and emotions——there is “the world”, and then there is, “her world”—-and you are either in it, or you’re not.

They say everything happens for a reason, if that’s true, then that kiss she once gave me was a letter incorrectly addressed, mailed without a stamp, delivered to a generic “resident”—(me)—, cause now she’s gone, leaving me soulless like a corpse rotting in its cold dark grave———–if you choose to believe in such things—-love and death that is.

But you can’t get it back now, your kiss—now only my kiss (in retrospect, a one-sided kiss), cause I figure you’ve forgotten all about it——just another tombstone in your cemetery heart.  I’ve been in your bed, lost my self in your room of mirrors with its cobwebs, floating specters, broken clocks, and that black cat leading me into your dungeon of pleasure and pain.  So these words I send off to you are a curse, a spell cast by a zombie searching for the one who ate his heart and raped his soul.

Words set aside in a poem, prayer or letter are inescapable.  They aren’t like a song you can idly hum along with or mindlessly mouth every other word that you think the lyric is, or might be—-or maybe what you willed them to be.  Words are more like a haunting melody that forces itself into your head and then attaches itself to your wavering sanity.  That frightening place where reality and madness fight for expression. What is reality anyway?  Questioning reality is the first step towards madness or its crippled stepbrother “wisdom”.  And in time, my words will devour who you are or who you thought you might have been.  I’ll force feed you my words until you choke on them, because my words have teeth and claws, that at first——French kiss my mouth, —–and then become fangs that bite the neck and then drink the blood. Some kisses give life, others rob the very light that sustains life.

She fooled me—–I was sadly mistaken about that kiss she left on my mouth.  It wasn’t a kiss after all, it was a sucker punch, the bite from a black-widow, a soul siphon——she’s my lil demon, always taking more than she intends to give.  Tell me this, why is the forbidden fruit always so sweet?

And all the rest is way beyond words.

Throwing Stones 

I never really told ya how I felt
And still I don’t know why
It hurts to know you’re out there sleeping
under these same sad Denver skies

Though it’s only a dream, I held you in
walking in a world ya never knew
And thats why its so cold to wake up alone
within a dream, lost inside of you

Should of done that
Should of said this
keeping the truth a secret
stones I can’t throw, or forget, 

and now I know 
it only hurts forever

I never gave you my words 
or sang you, your song 
instead I let them burn 
like ash from a fire that’s gone 

now its so quite in this room of blue
blinds drawn to the things we lose 
that died a long time ago
within a dream, lost inside of you

Should of done that
Should of said this
keeping the truth a secret
stones I can’t throw, or forget

and now I know 
it only hurts forever

Love Dump

Soundtrack Coyotes by Jason Muraz

I always wanted to be in love.  But maybe I am one of those who can’t be loved.  I try to hard to be funny, to be passionate—-to be lovable.  But maybe I always choose the wrong person to love or maybe they picked me by mistake.  Everyone needs love, to feel special to another in a world that leaves us all too often feeling ordinary and small.  I think I’ve spent to much time alone, I scare myself with all these crazy love thoughts.  Maybe I’m crazy and that’s why love alludes me—-I scare sane people off?

Maybe I expect too much of love. Maybe all that crap in poems, songs and stories is just fantasy.  I need someone to share my fantasies.  Maybe love is pretending, as in pretending to be what another wants and desires? I guess that’s fair enough.  Okay then–how about a yard love sale.  A half off on all the miscellaneous dreams, wishes,  promises and prayers that nobody else wants anymore——or even cares to barter for.  

Okay then, I’ll share half my fantasies with you if you share half of yours with me.   And all the undesirable junk no one wants we can take to the love dump and set it afire watch it burn to ash.  

In The Depths

When I was a kid, I’d hop on my Stingray bike and ride it down to the city pool. I grew up in the Sacramento Valley where the summer temperatures could climb into the triple digits. 105, 108, Sometimes as high as 116. There would be a droning hum throughout  the suburbs of air conditioners struggling to keep the stucco track houses cool. The streets are vacant. No one dares walk barefoot on the scorching pavement. Occasionally I would hear a distant weed eater or lawn mower. Much of the yard work was done by Mexicans. All the Republicans wanted the Mexicans to be deported just as soon as they finished grooming their immaculate lawns. 

The only refuge for a kid like me was the city pool. Girls were screaming, boys had their water fights, kids would be doing flips and cannon balls off the high-board. All the commotion was unnerving to me. I’d dive in and swim to the deepest part of the pool and stay there for as long as I could hold my breath. Down there in the coolness, there was a tranquil silence, everything moved in slow motion. I’d sit at the bottom crossed legged Yoga style, looking like a red chlorine eyed Buddha. There’s a quietness there, a peaceful silence, like the deafening solitude found in the void of deep space, and there was a weightlessness like that felt while in the womb. With every birth the universe becomes renewed—-existence abhors a vacuum.

I’d burst through to the surface leaving my protective womb——body and soul colliding with the universe, I’m reborn into the madness—-Suddenly, inundated by the fracas of life with all its dissonance and chaos.  As I’d sink to the bottom, I’d become acutely aware of the sound of my heart beating in my ears.

I exist!

The Weather

I’d once thought I could tell her everything, anything—– and she’d be interested in me, she’d look me straight in the eye, She knew me, finding our common connection, a peak beneath the flesh

I don’t know to much about love, but I believe it does have something to do with being interested in the other person—-and that’s something that’s hard to fake

She use to make my coffee in the morning, and remind me to wear my jacket when it was cold out, and I suppose that’s a version of love, caring for someone is in the little things, something we don’t realize until we get old—– getting old is non negotiable—-kindness is a spiritual thing

At the kitchen table we struggle to feign interest In what the other has to say, we give up and settle on commenting about the days weather, enjoying the simplicity of sitting with someone, knowing the rhythm of their footsteps as they make their way down the hall, mesmerized by the sound of a familiar voice, it felt as if these days would stretch on forever—–nothing is forever, so cherish the moment, she once said

mourning and morning sound the same but are completely different things, they’re called Homophones

How can something once so fresh devolve into foggy memories, it’s like the morning fog as it fades away, late afternoons clouds wrap themselves around us. The sound of a distant fog horn breaks my heart

You can’t change the weather, yet people still want to know what it’s going to be

Pent Up Dream

There’s a few things I’ll never get over

Like those thousands of tomorrows that never came

The waiting, the wishing, searching and hoping for signs that I’m on the right track, am I getting somewhere, anywhere, or am I going in circles like a skipping record—-or am I moving full-steam-ahead towards an inevitable cliff?

There’s a belongingness in learning that we are all in a shared aloneness, and I once foolishly thought you knew me, I was wrong, my words were intended to be poetry, warm damp words whispered from my lips into your ear, tickling and sending shivers down your back, you said you always fell for the weird ones, poets, madmen, musicians, but I think I scared you away with my intensity, I so badly wanted to touch you, I accidentally called ya baby, suddenly your smile became a question mark, it left you bamboozled, you said you thought I put a hex on you

You came searching for pieces of yourself, lurking in the shadows between your light and my darkness—You too, felt the sadness in this world, and for a time, the sadness held us together, there was just you and I—and then all the rest of this nihilistic world against us

How many of our lost yesterdays gave birth to stillborn todays

And, how many todays do any of us have? who are you fated to spend your tomorrows with?

It’s a sin to squander once in a lifetime moments, but I did so, with you

Will this ache in my chest ever subside?

From some mystic place you conjured up your black magic

One part love and a hundred parts regret

I don’t believe in the concept of time

There’s only a greased and slippery “now”

I don’t try to hold on to things anymore, Because the Buddhist were right. The attachment to people and things is the root of all suffering, but I never could let go of you, I’ve choose to suffer

I mess things up, I say one thing and do the other

I’m a wandering contradiction, avoiding the lines on broken sidewalk cracks, tripping over forgotten promises, facing my inexcusable lies, living with all those pent up dreams of what might have been

I’m a victim of this relentless, aimless love

I’m Gonna Treat Ya Like You’re Not My Wife

If you were my lover

I’d hold ya tight

But you ain’t my lover

You’re just my wife 

If you were my lover

I’d make ya moan and scream

But you’re not my lover

Who gets naked in my dreams

If you were my lover

I wouldn’t holler you wouldn’t bitch

But you’re not my lover

You no longer scratch my itch

If you were my lover

I’d take ya home

But you’re not my lover

So I’m sleeping alone

I’m gonna take ya on a date

I’m gonna treat ya right

I’m gonna treat like a girlfriend

I’m gonna treat ya like you’re not my wife

If you were my lover

I’d give ya hugs and kisses

But I’m not your lover

You’re not my mistress

If you were my lover

You’d be my fantasy

But you’re not my lover

What ya get is what ya see

If you were my lover

I’d take you to bed

But I’m not my lover

That’s what you said

If you were my lover

I’d ask you to marry me

But you’r not my lover

You’re already my wife ya see

I’m gonna take ya on a date

I’m gonna treat ya right

I’m gonna treat like a girlfriend

I’m gonna treat ya like you’re not my wife