Spoken Word
February (Spoken Word Project)
A spoken word project for the month of February and my home town.
Briar Lane
A spoken word piece.
Paint Me A Picture Green and Blue
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.
Still Fighting It
Soundtrack “Still Fighting It” by Ben Folds.
I remember those backroad travails, we weren’t lost, we were searching for something to call our own, neiave enough to still be blameless——- perfectly young, rolling down gravel roads to nowhere. We meandered through misty, foggy mornings, the taste of her coffee flavored kisses on my lips. That old VW bug was our winged Pegasus, time meant nothing, we weren’t ever gonna grow old, it would always be a kind Sunday morning world. Bored cows stared passively, red-tail hawks circled, steam rose from the river, rusty barbed wire dangled from broken down fence posts, telephone poles stretched out into infinity, the earthy smell of dew on freshly tilled soil, you at my side, we were high—–soon the cruel August sun would force us under the shade of cottonwood trees.
The lights are out, he’s on his paint chipped front porch, glowing cig, cradling an old guitar——no one to sing to cept that merciless moon. She still swims through his veins like a fully charged ell. He’s trying to remember what songs were on that old mixed bag cassette she made for him. All he remembers is the first song “Still Fighting It” by Ben Folds.
He’d of changed everything for her, but she’s a chameleon who’s forever changing. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t find the right match within him—-to suite her. The more he changed the uglier he became. He teetered between love and hate on a quivering tightrope——gravity stubbornly siding with hate—–poor love flounders about like a lame duck emerging from an oil spill.
When a man goes pride-less—-his pulse clanks like a rock against a rusted out heart. Don’t talk to him of love, cause all he ever knew of love perished in her eyes —-everyone he’d ever loved and lost frozen there. He swore that he’d never open up to another person again—-that he’d move into a cave and exist on cheap wine while scratching out pitiful sad poems about her and that stingy body she lived in.
My Funny Valentine
Soundtrack “My Funny Valintine” by Chris Botti.
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.
Heaven Help Us All
A mash up of hip hop, jazz and R&B. Kind of like a Reggae Polka put to a Bulgarian March………I call it Jaxx……
Rants, Raves and Random Thoughts 