Soundtrack “Sailing The Wind” by Loggins and Messina.
She is with me, even though she doesn’t know it. The oppressive southern humidity causes my shirt to cling to my sweaty back. The drapes billow in the late afternoon breeze as a honeysuckle scented zephyr washes over me like a tall cool glass of water. In the distance a Southern Pacific moans its farewell. I feel myself melting into the over stuffed leather chair in the dimly lit living room. It doesn’t feel like a living room, it’s a gateway into my growing hollowness. How many chances in one lifetime does one get to know love, to feel love——to be loved—–to give love? Love doesn’t seek meaning or purpose, it seeks only itself. If you aren’t quiet and still, you will miss it. If you doubt it—- when you are touched by it——-then it will orphan you.
She’s in me, even though she’s no longer aware of it. She’s in each breath I take. She’s invasive, giving me life as her memories softly kill me. Such a cruel contradiction. Love is a living thing, it can nourish you—–or it may desert you. It’s a monster, a ragged angel with broken wings. It’ll shake you, scare you—–surprise you, make you believe in miracles and allow you to indulge such sweet misery. And as quickly as she comes on to you, she’ll mysteriously abandon you.
She’s leaving me, I know it now. The living room is shrinking. I feel her silhouette in the days dying sun. I smell her skin, taste her mouth. My voice sounds like that of a stranger. I hear myself whisper——- “Stay, god please stay.” She is going on without me. She no longer gives a fuck. I’m overthinking everything, I’m over feeling everything. I no longer have a place to go. I forget what it’s like to be me without her. A honeysuckle scented zephyr washes over me like a tall cool glass of water.
I dig old shacks. Makes me wonder who ate their dinners here and then went to bed to dream their dreams. In the morning waking up to peer out the now shattered windows. Who walked these floors, maybe a cowboy or homesteading lovers, gurus, drunks or perhaps a wishful prospector.
Those collapsed walls must’ve seen it all. Next winter ought to finish off what’s left of her and the secrets she conceals—-such a shame nothing last forever.
All those houses we lived in
The stories they hold
How we never fit in
And never really could
The cities we passed thru
Back then you said you knew me
Once again, I call another disconnected number
It felt so empty—–to be me—-without you
The radio on in the kitchen
Doing dishes with your clothes on the floor
From the bedroom I mumble
This life is killing me
Do you ever get lonely
You once turned the key
You swore you’d always know me
It’s another lost summer
You found better things to do
I just park by the beach now
On a crowded day, I swear
I caught a glimpse of you
Back Home Alone
By Victor Uriz
So young, then———-weren’t we all
No one will understand our love
So just forget it,
cause baby
You’re my best kept secret
A trail of blood, leading back to your door
To what might have been
Letting go, letting on
Maybe we should’ve tried a little harder
Fantasy and reality, who can tell one from the other
Me into you——like faded watercolors
Looking back at me, looking at you
What one remembers, isn’t always what’s true
There was no place to go, that we hadn’t already been
So we went our separate ways back home alone
Like gypsies needing no home
So young, then———-weren’t we all
I was young and bound for glory
Buried beneath fears and fossils
There’s heroes in scars
There’s music in the stars
Wake up
Cause dreaming will only take us so far
Forgotten Places
By Victor Uriz
You don’t care if I’m okay
You put on your makeup,
Just to make me wait
I take you out, but you don’t care
We order drinks and blank stares
I want to take you home and do you
But you’ll play me along like you always do
It ain’t fair and it ain’t right
As you turn over and turn out my light
My eyes scream F-U-C-K
Did you ever love me. who’s to say
Texts with smiley faces
You touched me in now forgotten places
It isn’t what you say
It’s more what you don’t do
The wells been poisoned—-
Flawed intentions, desires worn thin
It ain’t fair and it ain’t right
As you turn over and turn out my light
At dusk when the city is quiet and the sun fades, and as the city lights gradually begin to come on, I get this empty feeling inside. Being empty is better than being consumed by the nothingness that comes with unfulfilled desire.. I’m better than all the bullshit that comes along with trying to be something or someone I’m not. I’ve grown tired of playing parts that no longer suit me. Those that fail to change or evolve become fossils, emotional and intellectual mummies—-soul sucking zombies. Their conversations are archeological digs into a dead past. That may sound petulant, but it’s the truth.
There’s always been this distant between me and what’s passed off as reality. Where does your reality end and my illusion begin? Is it faith, not gravity that holds this universe together? Is it hope that becomes the step child of mercy? The music is already there, you just need to let go and find it——listen…
I don’t really know anyone anymore. My wife, my children, my friends, everyone seems so unreachable. Is it me or is it them? Do others ever feel this stoic ache? Maybe it’s the cliche that we all grow apart? Is there an expiration date that comes with relationships from the factory?
I remember her giving me a hug, but it felt different. She was no longer giving herself to me, it felt like she was pulling away from me—–it wasn’t a good to see you embrace, it was a cradledfarewell.
She let go and we stood there looking at one another as if we were strangers——-it felt awkward. There was a timeless silence weighting the moment down. I believe in love at first sight…….Conversely, I believe that growing apart happens imperceptibly slow——it happens so gradual that it’s almost undetectable.
I’m beside myself as I watch my-self experience life. I sometimes get lost in the bathroom mirror.——-At times I forget which side of the mirror is me and which is an empty reflection. Am I real? What’s this whole thing about? Where’s it all leading? How did it get started? I feel myself falling through time and space on a little blue ball——Are we alone? Am I alone? I take these thoughts apart and reassemble them.
Did I mention that I over think everything? I’m neurotic, NO, I’m a writer——one and the same!
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.
You’d think after unfurling through a million rejections I would have lost my self confidence. You’d think after all those polite, dismissive comments I’d throw up my hands and fade into the background. I thought those closest to me might toss me a bone, cause friends should understand what needs to be said—-even if it’s a lie—-but mister——-I refuse to beg.
I suppose others have their own moments of undoing——a silent desire for whispered condolences that go unspoken, until it’s far to late in the game, until it’s written for them in a Hallmark Card—–sincerity stained by obligation and too often regret—–that overwhelming feeling of regret that comes when awakening to the finality of it all.
The universe loves a fighter, at least that’s what I tell myself. I find few like me, swimming against the tide, a comfortable misfit, a beautiful pariah, a practiced oddball. I’m at home with the weary, with the ugly, the wandering ones wearing a lost look in their eyes. Cause, to be truly alive is to be totally lost, living in the gray areas, at odds with convention. Seekers must always go it alone. The cost of adventure is the possibility of coming out the other end changed, some for the better, others for the worse.
Pay attention to those in your circle, give them thunderous words of respect, cause if not from a friend———then whom?
Soundtrack “Famous Blue Raincoat” by Leonard Cohen.
I wanted this life to be different. I wanted it to be fair and love to be true. I’d feel others and have them feel me too. I foolishly hoped that such a thing although rare, might yet be real.
I walk around with my skin filleted down to the bone. I feel everything, I hate it, but there is a mysterious energy in this predatory pain. I inhale and then slowly let it out.
I understand everything, I believe nothing, it’s another poem, like a letter addressed to myself—–but there’s no one home—–there’s no forwarding address. What becomes of undelivered mail? It must fill disheveled cavernous rooms and dusty warehouses. All those words never completing their circle. Love-letters, letters of apology, lost confessions, fractured promises, forgotten excuses and declarations of sincerity. An avalanche of letters never to be read, by no one—-such a thought lingers like the dampness in an old musty room. I inhale, then slowly let it out. This moment tastes like a thousand sentimental yesterdays. I wonder what keeps us all alive, upright and walking through our individual versions of reality. She gave me a lock of her hair. I wonder if she ever received that poem I sent to her.
On a dark rainy night, I slowly roll past that old house we once shared——-now inhabited by strangers. The dim porch light, a beacon to orphaned memories. All those things I can’t escape, but can’t take with me….
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
I run my hand along the rough red brick wall. If you could touch truth, this is what it would feel like, if you could wear yesterday, it would fit like this. Brick buildings never age, unlike most things, they never grow old, they are the silent sentinels keeping watch at eternities gate. Time is in the raindrop that erodes away the mightiest of mountains one patient drop at a time—-We never seem to notice the passage of time until one day the mountain is gone.
Brick and mortar merges man’s creative life-force with natures unfaltering power to endure. ——Such walls keep some things out and other things in——-it all depends on what side of the wall you find yourself falling or standing——
I envision all of those perfect rust colored bricks meticulously hand laid, so even, so artfully composed——-the craftsman’s sweat droplets mixed in the slurry and forever embedded within the cured cement—–blood, sweat and tears, like long lost fossils hidden between the layers of time.
Long after another generation’s life-story has been told and then consigned to oblivion, these edifices remain as statues to a forgotten past—— bricks like memories, one stacked upon the other—— one timeless moment entombed within a dying eternity.————-Tell me this? Why the brevity of life, we’re here then gone, everything and everyone just passing through, my grip on the ephemeral is slipping, the impermanence of it all has me chasing tomorrows horizon on this lonely highway.
Skyscrapers are impressive because of their hight. But there is no romance in their architecture. Their birth pushed out into loveless cement forms and fitted together with the support of I-beams. The spaces we live in define our culture. Our cities are gray, cold and crowded with despair, boxes within boxes, where men while away their lives in cubicles, sucking recirculated air, no songbirds cooing outside the tinted windows, only the ever present monotonous hum of air conditioners—–there’s no place to hide from those harsh florissant lights, the computer screen is our window to the world, the feel of cool damp grass no longer beneath our feet——it’s a landscape of migraines, mind-games and lost virtues. All the symmetrical lines make the few remaining trees and plants seem out of place.
All the old buildings in my hometown are constructed of stubborn bricks. There is grandeur in those old buildings, the church with its pious stained-glass windows, the honorable courthouse and contemplative library. These buildings of stone reminds us of our need for safety, shelter and community. I feel holy when standing in the ancient brick church with it’s towering steeple—-it pierces the heavens like a hypodermic needle, injecting god’s blue sky with silent prayers.
The first time I saw rain, I asked my mother what it was, this water falling from the sky. And she said it’s rain. I thought a child’s thought, how wondrous, this thing called rain, water falling from the sky cleansing the streets and sweetly scenting the world. Who’d of thought up such a phenomenal thing?
The rain made all the old red bricks appear new again. Everyone was in a hurry to escape the rain, but I stayed outside to enjoy this spectacle of water falling from the sky. I stood there with hands outstretched, head tilted back, mouth open, tasting rain, feeling rain.
I once asked my mother about the tiny specks of light twinkling in the night sky. She said they are stars and that there are billions and billions of them—- they are like our sun, but millions of light years away. She said some of these stars have already burned themselves out and we are looking at light from their past. I thought a child’s thought, these things called stars are even more mysterious than rain. I sat on the porch staring up at the Milky Way galaxy—–Rain and stars, how unbelievable yet beautiful.
Maybe this is what Buddha contemplated while meditating under his Bodie Tree. At peace with oneself and the universe, walking the middle path of love between the yen and the yang——intertwined with everything yet separate…….Insignificant and small, yet omnipotent and omniscient———wandering between the birth and death of each moment———Nirvana——-
Rants, Raves and Random Thoughts 