romance

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

Throwing Blind Bricks At Jealous Gods

December 9th, 2009 @ 10:58:28

Soundtrack “A Different Corner” by George Michael.

I’d take raw emotion over a calm and collective indifference. Indifference is a wall built of blind bricks———nobody see’s their own loneliness from the outside in.  The opposite of love isn’t hate, but rather indifference. It’s that mute emotion of not giving a damn———-Nobody hears the screams of their own loneliness from the inside out. Love is the tiny kindnesses we toss like pennies into a beggars heart shaped cup. Why do we deny one another passage into each others world?

I knew a girl who was childlike; she protected her stained-glass heart. Like all things of beauty, it was fragile and transcendental. She walked on rainbows, she called to the thunder, ——-and she smiled with the eyes of a child, wide open with wonder. She was impetuous, headstrong, soul-strong. She was shy, mystical, complicated, sensual and not yet broken by the restraints of womanhood.

She found the door to my world carelessly unlocked. She strolled through all of my dusty rooms flooding her light on my dark empty spaces. Her eyes fractured the morning sunlight casting tiny prisms on the walls, ceiling and floor. Her breath billowed through my sheer drapes. She smelled of citrus, her skin was salty and savory like the sea. She let me move through her, we moved in unison, we swelled, we crested and then violently crashed in on ourselves.

Outside, their cites burned, their temples crumbled and the laws of the righteous went unheeded. We trespassed into the forbidden garden———and we defied the rule of jealous gods……………as we found eternal love in a mortal’s world.

My Funny Valentine

Soundtrack “My Funny Valintine” by Chris Botti.

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There’s a finality to the end of a summer season, and once again I’m reminded that there’s no turning back, such is the nature of life. Yet, there’s a longing for something familiar, a desire to hold on to someone or something. I spend my life reassembling memories only to find that at the end I’m several pieces short of a complete picture. All the traffic-lights have conspired to greet me red. The road that threads its way down west cliff is gray, the sky is gray, the sea is gray—— it’s a world of gray on gray——I’m making my way from here to anywhere——I’m driving just to be driving, just to give me that sensation of getting somewhere—-that I’m moving on and past this grayness. The sun spins, the earth circles, the universe exhales——summer turns her face away from me——the cold breath of winter is on my neck——yesterday is irretrievable—-and such is the sadness of time elapsing, of age whispering in my ear———like an impressionist watercolor, another season blurs and fades—— into another. I feel myself creeping closer to nowhere——

I’d call you, but I no longer know what city you call home. What would I say if I met you again in a windy park? I imagine you dressed in a lose fitting sweater, your hair tousled by the wind. You’ve readied yourself for the birth of autumn. And me, I’m still dressed in shorts and flip flops, clinging to a dying summer. Once again, we find ourselves falling out of one another’s season. Does “true” love have an expiration date? I don’t even know what’s“true” anymore. My life has been a series of let downs without you in it. I hoped you could be replaced, and god knows I’ve tried———.

Rain, now on my windshield like little diamonds in the exaggerated light of oncoming traffic. Chris Botti’s melancholy trumpet plays like a soundtrack that accompanies my reverie. Inside, you occupy the warmer rooms of my being, you haunt the quieter spaces of my soul. Outside, I irrationally scan crowds of strangers searching for your face—-failed love makes fools of us all.

If I knew then, what I know now, it would not matter where the road led us, as long as we were together. But the past leaves no room for marooned passengers. I pay my fare in silent movies that I replay over and over in my head. I see you in vignettes———visions of us walking mountain trails, the beaches we laid on, the dark drives through shiny cities, the sensation of you giving yourself to me, the smell of your hair, the taste of your skin, the electricity in your touch, the soft sound of your sighs. With you, making love was always so comfortable, so easy, so natural.  I’d come to know your body better than my own.

Good poetry makes you believe that each word written was composed personally for you. Like someone reached between the bones of your rib cage and pulled out your heart and spilled out all of its quivering secrets . And for you my love, this is true, for you, I bent and stretched my words into a net so I might catch you.

Little Wing

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Soundtrack “Little Wing” by Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Some people know your secrets before you let them slip, before ya allow them to spill out during one of those beer riddled drunken nights. They can see through you, as if they’ve known you before this brief life stint. There’s no pretending, they draw out the best in you, like a spike struck to the heart, or the rude awakening that accompanies a stiff slap across the face——Boy, she sure shook me up, she took me back to a life I’d forgotten. I knew from that first glance, she belonged to me…..She’s a part of me, always had been, and always would be—-there are few who can make one feel less alone in such an indifferent world, maybe that’s the definition of love? She was partial to me, like the sound of a familiar melody, she could play me by heart…..

I’m gonna take off every piece of your clothing till all that lies between us is freckled skin, damp breath and sloppy wet kisses, we’ll go around and around, then back round again, peeling off our tawdry disguises one layer at a time, till we’re naked, till we’re almost perfect, except for fresh blue bruises and old stubborn scares. Here, take my wallet, my car keys, my cigarettes, along with all the other bad habits I’ve used to hide myself—cause I belong to you like a bad habit. All I need right now is to be wrapped up in your arms, let me tear down those walls that protect your secret garden—now come over here—-yeah, just like that. Let us for now be silent and we’ll speak to one another with our eyes closed. I don’t need to know your name, your age or the name of your hometown, all that stuff is ordinary, frivolous and unimportant to me. You my love, are anything but ordinary——I cut my dreams on the teeth of her diamond shaped heart——

We’d been more than friends but less than lovers, we offered one another awkward goodbyes with tenuous hugs——only our eyes kissed farewell. She’s my little wing, “When I’m sad she comes to me with a thousand smiles she give to me free.”

Forgotten

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Soundtrack Van Morrison “Oh The Warm Feeling”.

I was there, you were standing right next to me, I swear I could hear you breathe. I felt everything so deeply—but that’s nothing new. I desperately tried to get you to see, but you saw nothing———to get you to hear, but you heard nothing. You wore the expression of someone waiting on a ghost taxi, you wanted to be anywhere but here——-alone with me. The gulf had grown to wide to bridge, the fortunes walls to high to scale.

Life is not a book, a poem, a movie or a song. Life is a cold clammy messy ball of unformed clay, a mine field of misconstrued words and veiled emotions, its harmony pitted against dissonance, it’s pages of dull descriptions with no plot or character development, it’s being locked inside someones illusion of you, it’s giving yourself to fate cause freewill failed, it’s a sledge hammer to a diamond shaped heart, it’s junk mail when you deserve a love letter, it’s spam when you crave intimacy, it’s holding hands with a memory, it’s french kissing a specter, it’s a text message when all you really want to do is lie on your back with someone in the middle of a quiet meadow and count falling stars, it’s asking for your secrets back, it’s cutting down a tree with a dull ax, it’s blunt answers when all you need is a soft touch, It’s a relentless wind whistling through your window pane on a sleepless night, it’s finding a beautiful feather after the bird has flown, it’s waiting in the wings, it’s a gray and rainy January day in California, it’s missing someone who has long ago forgotten you…..

 

Breaching Your Surface

Soundtrack, “Sideways” by Sheryl Crow

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So often we forget to live.  Instead we carry on as if life were a drudgery, as if love were mundane, as if our time were infinite. That is the gravest of sins; to forget to be alive, to neglect the sensation that comes with breathing. Sometimes when I feel my life being siphoned away, I think of you. I force myself to think of the first time I kissed you. I think of how you tasted, the scent of your perfume and how your body fit so well into mine. I think about it in the most minuet detail, the way the morning sunlight fell upon your bare skin, the smell of ocean in your hair, the way your eyes locked into mine, your childlike smile. I stay in this place until it hurts, until I think I might lose myself in the undertow of your memory. It’s like that reoccurring dream I have where I’m trapped deep underwater and I’m struggling to reach the surface. I look up and can only make out what appears to be a distant blurry surface. And, I know you are there waiting for me. My lungs feel as if they might burst, my mind and body are starved for oxygen. Every cell in my body screams out for a sip of air. My legs and arms strain as I flail and kick upward towards the shimmering surface of you. Time passes agonizingly slow, I am stymied by fear and panic, and then suddenly, like the flick of a switch, I sit up in my bed and suck in a huge gasp of air—but you still aren’t there. I’ve forgotten how to pray, or how to be alive without you near me. I toss and turn in my bed, a stray dog incessantly barks against the night.

What’s Your Story

 

The soundtrack to this piece is “You & I” by One Direction. The post is to be read while listening to this tune.

Some will make you believe in love again, and cause you to hear bluebirds singing right outside your bedroom window and you’ll rise to crimson skies and smell the refreshing scent of lilacs floating on cool morning breezes. Love wakes you to life, and where there is love, there is no need for purpose, precautions or possessions, nor drama, pretense or pretending. When it makes no sense, that’s when it’s at its best. Give yourself to such moments, declare a union, commit to an alliance, scream it from behind your window blinds—-only fools limit themselves to those who are possessed by reason, logic and timid passions—— all their nothingness smothering their life force——what is love but the stepchild of fear—— a smoldering fuse waiting to ignite starbursts—-and if it should rain there will be rainbows, cause love is sappy and corny and ridiculous that way. It will cause you to use language in new ways, you will write love letters on unicorn stationary and sign off with X’s and O’s—— hearts——envelopes sealed with a kiss, embossed with burning red lipstick——dripping with honey…..

It’ll blind your eyes, like shiny shards of glass flashing and then suddenly exploding in tremendous balls of whiteness somewhere behind your eyes. I’m broken, I’m drained, but I’d know your face from past life dreams, a thousand lives deep, I wonder what’s beneath that skirt, cause I’m into that, I’d tell you lies if I thought they’d do the trick, to get you alone, to get you to discard your clothes and lay next to me, naked, damp and all a quiver—-and you’d only be wearing a perfect dirty smile—-

We won’t become like the rest of them. The ones bored to the touch of the other, forgetting how to hold, how to fall asleep in love and wake together in a tangle of sweat stained sheets.

This life is your story, nothing more, nothing less. Tell it with boldness, kiss no ones ass, go down swinging, don’t let anyone still your glory or run you ragged>>>>>>never waste time on the bland and the blind, cause you’ll never get that time back…..

Ghost ships

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Soundtrack “Fire”.  Go to “View Original” and then press play before reading.

Trapped inside ourselves, this is it, the unsolved puzzle we must learn to live with, to struggle with and sometimes against, faith is encrypted with voodoo, the supernatural and magic are difficult to untwine, truth is temporary and dissolving, love like Atlantis lies hidden beneath myth and fantasy. Every love story is a ghost ship——a weary captain keeps night watch—–lost on rolling seas—-why do these tattered sails push us ever closer to the edge——towards oblivion.  No matter how hard you may try, some worlds will always be flat.

All of that which is true, is what works for a moment, be it love, science or salvation. Allow love to find you——be in love with something or someone before you cease, before all that you are sails off the edge. That’s all I know, cause upon second glance everyone loses their battle with gravity.

So this is middle age, unexpected, unpredictable, with all those promised existential unanswered questions. With age has come the harsh realization that I will never fully know another, at least not in the way youth had once opened up friends and lovers to me. Does age make us cautious, suspicious——to many broken bones, careless wounds and loves left undone—-if she should read this, she’d hurt what I felt. She interpreted my words better than I, although the poetry came through me, it was born of her, such a mysterious muse, mi amore.

God plays tricks on us all, allowing the fictions of falling through time and occupying space, as we grapple with this thing called life. Come walk with me, and let us pretend our love goes on forever and ever——-beyond the map, and then together we’ll pass through to the other-side of oblivion*****

Remembering To Feed The Cat

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Soundtrack Sparks by Coldplay.

When I was young I met a girl, she said she’d take care of me, but she couldn’t even take care of herself—— She burned Top Ramen, bled pink on my favorite button down shirt in the wash and was always telling me to get a “real job”. When my band broke up things got even worse. We stopped forgiving one another. We stopped holding hands. We’d lay in bed back to back, facing those bare opposing walls. She taught me how to say things I didn’t mean. In the darkness it’s easy to confuse how things are with the way things once were—-or, with the way things could have been. Once we realized that we were pretending, this is when the white lies lost their power to hold things together.

The stuff that drew us together——music, laughter, defying a world of clocks, money and the wanting of more—-came to be the things that pulled us apart. I went home one day and she was gone. At first I couldn’t breathe. She took her stereo and I was alone in my silence. For the first time I was on my own and alone, no family, no school, no job, just me. Life made no sense, everything was hard and cold—-I no longer had anyone to look after me. No footsteps falling in the other rooms. I suppose she took the cat, knowing that I’d forget to feed it.

Then I met a girl and I told her that I’d take care of her, but she soon discovered that I couldn’t even take care of myself. I tried to rearrange everything, but I ended up making a mess of things. I pawned my guitar and sold my keyboard. Something had ransacked my soul and smashed all the things I valued. I never wanted to take care of anyone ever again. It’s too much trouble. I taught her how to say “Fuck Off”. I laughed when she first said it to me. It sounded strange coming from her, but she was a quick study.

Love is like believing in aliens, it’s a crazy idea, but its better than feeling we’re all alone in this big universe.  Maybe love is having someone to look after—-someone to take out the garbage and mow the lawn, someone to make your supper and mend your shirts.   You can’t see love, you can only see its shadows.  For me, love is a practice, a discipline.  It requires patience, attention, and most importantly compassion.   I’m still learning these ways.  I do know this, spooning with someone is better than staring at your blank walls.