love

Throwing Stones

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Soundtrack by Sheryl Crow “Always On Your Side”.

I want to write “I miss you” on a stone and throw it to the bottom of the sea, never to be seen again, or remembered. May my demons be your delight. At midnight, in bed, I remember it all to well, and I die a little bit inside. It’s always the small things——-those restive eyes, the scent of campfire smoke in your hair, rainy day drives in the country, as the radio played one perfect song after another——- me writing you lousy lovestruck poems, cool sheets, warm skin, that one naive moment in time when we believed the outside world could do us no harm….Cause we had the temerity to carve out our own world.

Together we discovered hidden record stores, secret rundown coffee houses, dusty used bookstores—-places that belonged to a different time and place, places best suited for leper romantic’s.

For a while, we escaped a world that spurned the likes of us. By providence we found one another, someone to belong to——-something to believe in——-we wandered into that indescribable web of love——-my chest filled with hallelujah-

We turned ratty taverns into Parisian Salons, there, we’d engage one another in extraordinary conversations about life, death and purpose, sharing stories from our childhoods, expressing beauty and pain, prayers, promises, finding our breath in the words of the other.

Buzzed and giggling we fell up those stairs leading to that old hotel room. I swear we both could have died right then and there. Nightbirds sang outside the open window, the old neon sign hummed, laughter and music filtered from the streets below, our shadows on the wall becoming one, intertwined in the dark humid air————- Down there, in the streets, it was just another ordinary evening, with ordinary people doing ordinary things. With you, life was anything but ordinary. How were we to know that everything would unfold as if it were a Shakespearean play——our tragic comedy.

I toss my stone into the sea.

 

To Be Alive

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Soundtrack “Whatever It Is” Zach Brown

 

 

Whatever your age is
It doesn’t matter

You think you’ve grown up
but there’s still an eight year old inside you
still a 14 year old, an eighteen year old
A twenty something, thirty something
and so on and so forth

All these remnants are still
pieces buried within
ones personhood

Even after surviving all these life milestones
of age and time
The specter of these past characters
still rumble about
within you, they inhabit your
subconscious, slipping out
when least expected

Reach back and find
the little pieces of yourself
that live behind
the mirror, beneath the veneer of adulthood

Cry like a baby
stomp your feet
Scream “no” to everyone who
wants you to obey their rules
Play like its the last day of summer

Make love as if it’s the first time you’ve
ever felt the breath or skin of another

Lie, call in sick, sleep in
and then go to the beach

Take the long way home
because the radio is
playing a string of songs that
fit like a perfect soundtrack
to the swirling scenery passing
by your window
And it’s good to be alive
and you know it, as it’s
happening

Keep on driving, miss your turn off
go to the woods and build a bonfire
sing songs, Skinny dip
hike unmarked trails

Call someone you miss
and will always miss
call and let them know
you’re thinking of them

Shove her up against the wall
and watch her look of surprise turn to desire
all that uncontrolled passion
that ache to be touched
melting between thighs and sighs
and muffled screams

Skip dinner and eat
chocolate cake with your hands

foster your imagination
All of life is a fantasy
make it up
as you go along

Never surrender your incurable curiosity
want everything, at once
all the time
be impetuous
uninhibited
authentic
Ah, yes—-to be alive

what an experience

what an adventure

The Gravity Of Lust

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You’d have to be a man to misunderstand woman the way men do. Women are complex and mysterious. We’re stymied by their anatomy, confounded by their emotions, frightened by their will to love or to hate within the span of a nano second.

We fumble and fondle them like a Rubik’s Cube in the hands of a chimpanzee. Their legs, their breasts—— the way they disturb space and time, dishing out their gravity with our lust. But like their physiology, much is hidden, out of sight and enigmatic. Men are like their genitals, what you see is what you get.

Paint Me A Picture Green and Blue

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If love were a color, it would be green——like the traffic light that screams GO!—like the grass that’s always greener on the other-side, green like a twenty dollar bill earned the hard way—– leaving you one blistered heart, its in that sweet scent of sappy pine needles in early June, rare like a four leaf clover, it’s in her emerald flecked eyes, like the squirt from a lime after a shot of Cuervo——–but never the color of envy—–

My love is blue, like the deepest part of the ocean, like the sound of Muddy Water’s graveled voice singing “You Shook Me”, as wide open as a cloudless Summer sky, it’s the blue that flickers at the tip of a campfire flame, it’s in the bluish colored veins showing through her ivory skinned neck, a river of life rushing from her quaking heart, her body like a little factory producing beauty, it’s hiding within a cold azure tiki drink—-it’ll kick your ass like a stiff right hook to the soul.

Time is transparent, you can’t see it as it passes through you. I remember all the little things in my wake, the big things are chapters in a book I’ve reread a thousand times. I never tire of my memories, even though they can sometimes leave me sad and nostalgic, the fleetingness of time sifting though an hour glass, grains of sand like moments slipping by—-slipping away.

I once thought that if I talked faster, lived faster that I’d get more living out of life. But no, I got it all wrong, it’s exactly the opposite, the slower I live, the more of life I absorb. I also once thought that the harder I prayed, the more god would turn my wants and desires into reality. But, God doesn’t care about my hopes and dreams, what concerns him more, is how I walk through the fire, how I carry myself—–do I cower in fear? Do I hold another fire-walker’s sweaty palm? Do I piss on the coals?  Is the heat an oven to melt sandwiches of gram-cracker, marshmallow and chocolate into S’mores? How do you make your way across the coals—–doing your tip toed river dance while passing through….Cause were all just passing through…..Dancing on the sharp edged blade between chance and fate…..

Paint me a picture green and blue.

Warrior Poet

Soundtrack “It’s The Same” by JD Souther.

1773-4 Unknown

Warrior Poet

The world is overflowing with writers but it gives birth to few warrior poets. A writer will tell you the temperature of a room, the hues of a dying day, the silent movement of shadows on pavement, the changing phases of the moon or maybe describe the light cast during a particular time of day in autumn. A poet bypasses all this obvious crap, but instead shines a blinding light on the darkest corners of your soul—–cause deep down we’re all the same, we share a common misery, we suffer a shared sadness—–and once a poem takes you there, you’ll never come back the same.

You can fall out of love with someone and still get it back. But, once you fall “Out of like” with a person it’s gone forever———irretrievable——irreversible. We fall in love for crazy reasons. You may love someone for their hair, for the shape of their ass, or maybe its the car they drive. It may be the clothes they wear, or what they look like naked. Sometimes it’s the title attached to their name, their possessions, or the size of their bank account. Love’s a superficial and primal emotion that can lead to murder——-to madness—–to jealousy and pandemonium—–not to mention unintended pregnancies and failed marriages. Love makes fools of us all. The fruits of love is bedlam—–it decays ones ability to reason. You stumble around love drunk, saying and doing things you’ll regret in the morning.

Its possible to live with someone you no longer love, but living with someone you no longer like can drive you to homicidal fantasies.  If you no longer love someone, you can still exist as roommates.  You can divvy up expenses and household chores—–you can even share a pizza and a movie.  But once you no longer like someone it becomes extremely painful to be in the same room, breathing the same air.

To be “In like” with someone is to be enamored with the way they carry themselves. It’s who they reveal themselves to be in a dark musty hotel room at 3:12 am on a rainy Tuesday—-after the buzz has worn off——- and the loud music is replaced by dark confessions——modesty and clothes lay tangled on the floor———all the piddly ass small talk gives way to restive honesty.  There’s no place to hide once we’re stripped of our vanities.

Love is the illusion of what you hoped another person to be——a fleeting mirage composed of phony pleasantries, a facade concealing an alien beneath the mask. Authenticity is the rarest of human commodities.

Liking someone is how the other person makes you feel about yourself. I like how Maya Angelou put it “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  A friend helps you untangle who you thought you were from who you no longer want to be.

You’ll know a true friend cause they give you energy when you feel like giving up. Their presence makes you smile. They make you laugh at yourself——at the world——-at the futility and absurdity of it all. They’ll open your eyes and mind to unforseen possibilities? Their sadness makes you sad. They’ll turn an ordinary day into something extraordinary. If stranded on a desert island this is the person you’d choose to have by your side. They’re the one you want to share your time with, because time is all life really is. They make you feel alive? When you’re “In like” with someone, you want nothing to be different then the way they are.

We’re living in sandcastles waiting and watching as high tide slowly creeps ever closer. The waves are unrepentant, they crumble the walls you’ve built brick by brick over a lifetime.