Weird World

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.

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.  

The Last Second Chance

So be brave 
Everyone is going thru something
No one really cares or understands why
We all have our own living hell
Everyone is barely hanging on
Tired, lonely and the depressed
It’s just the way this life is
That’s just the way it goes

So be strong
Everyone is going thru something
The ragged homeless guy panhandling for pocket change
The trembling drug addict, dope sick
The innocence locked-up inside us all
The suicidal beauty queen 
That’s just the way this life is
That’s just the way it goes


So be alive
Everyone is going through something
There’s howling wolves at the door
There’s night terrors in our dreams
There’s horrors in the waking hours
It’s all red lights and sirens 
The noose dangles then tightens
It’s just the way this life is
That’s just the way it goes


So be happy
Everyone is going through something
Regardless of it all
Stare the devil down
Throw rocks at the squawking ravens
Toss your shoes over the power-lines
Watch your bridges burn as they light your way 
It’s just the way this life is
That’s just the way it goes

So be bold
Everyone is going through something
Your deliverance is paid for with your intentions
There’s a sacredness discovered in your last second chance
Nobility awaits the headstrong
You either give up, or get up again
There’s everlasting glory for those who refuse to give in
We find out what were made of in the 15th round
It’s just the way this life is
That’s just the way it goes




















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

Soul Purpose

The only people for me are the ones walking in circles, silently struggling while getting nowhere. The ones who are not self assured, or at peace with themselves. These are the ones who are estranged from their soul purpose. It’s only through suffering that we find out what we’re made of. I wish it wasn’t true, but it takes troubled times to grasp the meaning behind this place in which I now have chosen to call home. I am the product of the choices I’ve intentionally or unintentionally made. Time silently rolls by, inherently taking no passengers.

I feel at home with the lost ones who are misunderstood, the ones fired from jobs, behind on their rent, fighting addictions, crippled by heartaches, tripping over broken dreams, the ones holding on by their last shreds of hope. These are the ones who’ve made bad decisions, foolish choices, and considered by most to be a lost causes. Sitting on a broken-down couch, empty bottles, empty dreams, full ashtrays, the sound of cars rolling by my sun streaked window. 

And there’s nothing as unsettling as knowing you are a lost cause. Make no mistake, we must all fight for whatever we want to get out of this life. Who’s to say who’s the winner.  When in the end I’m only shadow boxing. 

“Never cut what you can untie.” Robert Frost.  

Old Summers

Sound track by Down Like Silver, First Light

Its dangerous to want someone as much as I want you

I turned my back on the sun and let thoughts of you eclipse my fear

Waning moon now my only nighttime confidant 

I don’t sleep well any more, is it because of age or is it the ghosts of my past coming to haunt me, reminding me of people and things I no longer want to know

Weighing a lifetime of rights and wrongs, victories? defeats? regrets?

Who’s to to say, who wins, or who loses

Cause we’re all the same in the end

My heart feels the nooes tightening 

Cobwebs await unsuspecting flies

A beach bonfire, a primal smoke infiltrates our clothes 

Drink no longer soothes me, In fact, it makes mornings hurt worse

Worried, restless

Always lonesome for something, but for what or whom I no longer know

Where do old summers go to die?

The idea of time scars me

Maybe we’re all scared, some of us are just better at concealing it

For the crazy ones

There are many brands of mental illness.You’ve got your garden variety schizophrenia, Bi-polar, chronically depressed, OCD, PTSD, ADHD (not to be confused with LGBT). There’s Anxiety disorders, Mood disorders, Personality disorders, Alcoholism, Drug addiction, Paranoia, Narcism and insomnia. 

If you string all those psychobabble labels together and allow them to infest a soul, you’ll find the makings of a poet. Poets possess a menagerie of mental health disorders. They come with many of the same symptoms defined in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, often known as the “DSM,” To be a poet is to be demented, a lune, batshit crazy, fool-hearted, delusional, insane and a vessel of junkyard beauty. 

Poets hear voices, see visions, are paranoid of the demons and devils that chatter incessantly inside their echoey heads. Some are being channeled by Jesus or Lucifer. Some claim to have been abducted by UFO’s who’ve inserted micro chips under their skin. There’s the ones with tin foil caps covering their skulls to blockout the micro waves that control their thoughts. They possess super powers, they are the cursed, the blessed and the god forsaken chosen ones. 

As far fetched as this may sound, these poets believe they can inhabit your brain and silently transmit disembodied emotions into your flesh. They scribble little black markings, or what we call letters on paper, arranging them into words and sentences. If these markings are assembled with perfection, they have the power to unlock revelations hidden within the readers gray matter. These words; these poems exist only in the readers imagination. They can’t be seen or touched, they mysteriously seep from the subconscious to the conscious mind. The author may be dead, but their words carry on in the readers head, like the breath of gods, omniscient, immortal——omnipotent. 

How crazy is that?

This is more than an observation I’m sharing with you, it’s a warning. If you choose to go down that path of becoming a poet, then you’ll need to go all the way. You’ll have to fearlessly peer into the heart of the darkness. You’ll have to force yourself to see and feel the things that most avoid. And there you’ll find death threats, condemned love, contaminated truth, the meaninglessness of life, a fools complacency, naked truth and simmering nihilism. 

If you can get past the fear and madness, if you are willing to endure the song of the sirens, you will find your own voice. There will be peace and wholeness. In the sadness there is beauty, behind crumbling walls of the fortress there’s freedom. In this secret place, time means nothing, reality is malleable, love is forever sustained and a poet is ordained.