writing

Chet Baker’s Trumpet

Outside it’s late afternoon and the tree’s are swaying against the blue September skies. There’s a chill in the air clinging to the days last perennial bloom. Autumn brings reflection and contemplation. It’s the season of solitude and the smell of burning leaves. In the distance there’s the sound of howling dogs, even they know the pain of yesterdays last second chance.

I wonder what became of you. What is it that made you disappear and leave us all behind. I wanted to know so bad that it made me ache deep down inside. I remember the sound of your voice, your words were filled with sadness and passion, like the quivering melody of My Funny Valentine being played by Chet Baker. From the ether came his soft meandering melodies like specters floating in the air.

You wanted life to be safer——love to be warmer——didn’t you? But as we all find out, life is neither safe nor fair. I was always expecting things to be different, or, should I say, better than the way things are? Was I asking for too much. All I wanted was a place where I could empty my boots of sand and let go of all my foreclosed dreams.

But life is big—-to big, it made me feel small and insignificant. All I had were the secrets we shared and the promises we broke. 

Sometimes we’re born and given the wrong name, from the wrong family, lost and scared, having faith in the nothingness of it all, holding out for a missed opportunity, expecting a complacent life, betting on lost causes, praying for a reprieve. As we walk down vacant streets as if they lead to somewhere-anywhere.

Isn’t Love A Beautiful Thing Toast

Isn’t love a beautiful thing

To have someone who’ll laugh at all your old jokes (even the corny ones)

Isn’t love a beautiful thing, 

When the world is conspiring against you, but you have someone at home who’ll always have your back

Isn’t love a beautiful thing

When this world is just about to make you crazy, and then suddenly you both realize laughter is the only remedy 

Isn’t love a beautiful thing

When you have someones hand to hold

while taking walks on summer evenings 

Isn’t love a beautiful thing

When you have someone to build a home with

Someone to make a family with

To share your dreams with

Isn’t love a beautiful thing

When you have someone to remind you to throw out the garbage, to not leave dirty dishes in the sink, to put the cap on the toothpaste and to put your dirty socks in the hamper, and you respond by saying “Yes Dear” That’s love!

Isn’t love a beautiful thing

When you have someone who multiplies your joy and diminishes all your woes and worries

Isn’t love a beautiful thing

When on February fourteenth, you have someone to call your Valentine

Isn’t love a Beautiful thing

When the time in front of you is shorter

than the time behind you, and your shared memories are the glue that holds you together

Isn’t love a beautiful thing

When at the end of the day you have someone to lay down next to you, someone to say goodnight to———someone to say,  I love you too

Isn’t love a beautiful thing

When you have someone to help you solve those repetitive life changing questions—-such as, What do you wanna do for dinner tonight? What? What did you say? I said, what do you want for dinner?  What? I can’t hear you. I said, what do you want for dinner, I still can’t hear you, you know I can’t hear you when the waters running, and so it goes

Isn’t love a beautiful thing

When being right is less important 

as being kind

Isn’t love a beautiful thing

To have someone to encourage you 

when you’ve had a bad day. And you come home exhausted and there’s someone there to tell you everything is gonna be okay

On this journey we call life, 

I wish you both——- love

Nothing less, nothing more

Yes, love is a beautiful thing

Love, A Four Letter Word

Infidelity, what side of it are you on? Are you the cheater or the cheated? My best friend has been calling me and telling me how he is no longer in love with his wife. The situation is a bit of a cliche. He has fallen in love with his office mate. She’s half his age and very flirtatious.  She wears short skirts and tight blouses. When she bends over the file cabinet he swears he can see the full moon. He speaks about her as if she is an angel sent from heaven. The relationship has incrementally grown into a full blown affair. This is the stage where infatuation creates clouded choices and blind predilections. You begin to believe that you’re the first and only person who’s ever felt the adenine rush of being in love.  

He can’t stop speaking about her. “She’s sexy.” “She “gets me”.  “She’s my soulmate”. “I’ve never felt like the before”. “I’m going to marry her”. “She loves me, and I love her.” Warning, the word “love” can be a slippery slope. It’s frequently misused and means different things to different people. It’s malleable and disregards common sense. It’s a masquerade, a mirage. It’ll cause those old bones to rattle from a flood of testosterone. Before you know it, you’re ordering the old man’s drug “Viagra”. 

In the beginning you share life stories. You share dreams, aspirations and heartaches. She starts siting a little closer to you. She lets you smell her perfume. You nervously respond with grinding hugs and gentle caresses; incrementally crossing lines of appropriateness. You write one another passionate texts, sharing favorite songs, exchanging promises and intimate suggestions. You’re like a teenager discovering a fist love. The sky opens up and a choir sings. You get goose bumps just by holding her hand. The love songs on the radio seem to be composed specifically for you. 

It’s the small things that breakup a relationship. It’s the slow gnawing away of loyalty and trust. Love without trust leads to broken vows and broken hearts. You unwittingly become strangers to one another. Once you’er married the passion is consumed by the endless housekeeping tasks that need to be done. There’s no longer time for the fun things that hold a couple together. It becomes a business partnership. Everything feels like a chore. Bills need to be paid. The car needs fixed. The faucet leaks. The mortgage and home insurance are due. Sex is a routine that feels more like an obligation rather than an expression of intimacy.

Who’s gonna throw out the garbage? Who’s gonna do the laundry? Who’s in charge of the finances? Who’s gonna decide what’s for dinner? Who’s gonna do the dishes? Who’s gonna feed the dog? Everything seems to be collapsing and falling apart around you both.

The cute little chick at the office doesn’t have to share in all these boring mundane tasks. She doesn’t have to figuratively or literally scrub the stains out of your shorts. She keeps you hanging on by allowing you to play grab ass. Everything is fun and exciting. But beware, there ain’t no fool like an old fool.

Love, everyone wants to feel that way again. To feel alive and excited, to be touched and to feel the touch of another. How long should a love last? Does it have an expiration date?. In time, all those little annoyances accumulate into an excruciating sense of resentment. The romance is siphoned off as the hard-work of trying to remain in love with someone becomes fatiguing.

In time, your perfect lover no longer seems so perfect. They’re petty, selfish and predictable just like the rest of us. They’ll roll over and fart, they’ll wake up with bad breath, they make weird faces when having sex, their opinions are stupid, they dress like a slob on weekends, they no longer look at you with that look of excitement. The fuel of love sputters and evaporates. It feels more like a trap and less like a dream come true.

Just as it’s the little things that break up a relationship, it’s also true that it’s the little things that keep a relationship alive. As the saying goes, “love is a verb” it requires action. It’s wrapped up in all the little boring gestures like patience, forgiveness, understanding, listening, being heard and sharing in all the victories and loses that this life will dish out. 

There’s no counseling or magic drug that will resurrect a dyeing love. In the end, it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it. Is it worth fighting for, or is it a lost cause?

In spite of the hazards, we still choose to fall in love. We dive in heart first into a lake of fire. In this crazy life we all crave intimacy over complacency. We all want to feel immaculate, sexy and valued by our partner. But we’re only human, with all of our flaws, faults and blemishes. It’s a package deal, you have to take the good with the bad, because that’s the way it is. Introspectively you ask yourself, does the good outweigh the bad? Are you expecting too much, or too little out of love?

In the end, love is having fun with someone, it’s that simple. It’s spending time with someone who make you laugh, who make you feel alive, who make you feel like you matter. Settle for nothing less.

I’ll leave you with a riddle.

You know why they call it love?

Because all the other four letter words are already taken.

Something

She was crying, crying so very hard, and it almost sounded the same as hysterical laughter——It was a sound steeped in deep emotions. Emotions are strange and uncontrollable but never wasted. She had the fading foundation of a woman who in her younger years was pretty, No, not pretty—-She had once been beautiful. She’s my Sad Autumn girl.
Getting older is rough, even more so for a woman. Losing ones attractiveness is a cruel trick of time. There’s no punch line, just laughter and tears——and we all live somewhere between the two?
Kindness is more attractive than beauty 
right there and then
I wanted to change my life
We all want to
We are all
Afraid to live
Afraid to die
some days leave us feeling like forever

Somedays will never be forgotten
somedays show us what we’re made of
It would take all my strength 
To beat back the darkness
When did it get to be so hard
Maybe nothing and no one changes
Or, maybe it’s only me who changes
I don’t really know anyone
Anymore

And no one knows me

I prefer it this way
I wanna figure it out
On my won
I miss everyone
Everything hurts
Nothings easy anymore
How do I carry on
I just want something
Something to hold on too
But something is so hard to find
I’m lost in the wonder of it all
and it makes me cry and laugh
living somewhere between the two

The Phases Of Writing

1. Fame makes great writers drunks and madmen

2. Fame makes good writers self conscious and reclusive

3. Fame makes okay (commercial) writers rich and predicable 

  1. Anonymity makes horrible writers drunks and madmen.

Be advised, being a drunk and a madman does not make you a great 

writer—but sadly, it often comes with the territory, see rule #1 and #4.—

If you don’t find any of this shit helpful, then go live your life and write about what you hear, see and feel, then have a taco—-

Helpful Hint

“Try and make the pretty stuff sound sad and the sad stuff sound pretty—” V Uriz

Feel free to substitute your word of choice in place of the word “pretty”—depending on your mood—

Teller of Tales

a crazed woman cut my heart out of my chest, she then carelessly disassembled it and put it back together all wrong, it was slippery with blood and hard to handle, so she shoved it back inside me where the organ for caring and giving a shit use to be…..these days I compulsively take my pulse in search of a rhythm, but all I feel is an occasional spastic fluttering in my chest, like a bird beating its wings against hurricane winds—and when it gets dark, it stops all together—

come closer to me, go ahead, lay your head on my chest, I’ll whisper, cause others may be listening—-at night those blues come stalking me, they peer through my blinds like some nefarious wide-eyed peeping Tom, leaving foggy predatory breath on the window pane—-the bleakness of it all tramples across the nothingness of another specter ridden midnight—I can feel my heart go still, like an unworn love left hanging in someones dusty closet, an addiction traded against a corrupted souls collateral, broken people warehoused like damaged goods, young kids with no fire in their eyes, an old guy going in circles on the metro for an as-semblance of company, the scent of morning rain on dirty pavement, damp leaves smoldering in the drizzle, the stench of alley piss—-time is blurring by like a whirl-wind whooshing past my car window on a Sunday drive to nowhere in-particular—-once again, I’m tired of me and how things get all twisted, I’m left staring into the futility of a gray weather beaten morning, realizing I’m no longer running from something, nor running to something—-I’m slowly being crushed under the ache that comes with knowing there’s got to be something better than this—-someplace—–somewhere—-cause this life is way to long to be miserable and far to short to be boring—its time I set that caged bird free, so lets get on with it boys—-

there’s too much pain in the world to believe I’m immune to it, or can hide from it—–or selfishly fear that I’m the only one being consumed by it—that would be a righteous sadness, the kind of sadness that beckons the lugubrious to replay a heartbreak love song over and over again.  Real sadness has no soundtrack, no words, no explanation—-its like tree sap that mysteriously shows up on your hands and can’t be washed off—-

people always ask me the same question “Was that story true or made-up?”   To be perfectly honest, I’m don’t know anymore.  Most of the stuff I once thought was true, ends up being a lie or an illusion, and what I thought was fiction (made-up) is just an alternative version of truth or reality that I’ve failed to grasp.  I’ve come to believe that what’s true, and what’s made up, is a predilection reserved for the teller of tales. 

but I do know this, one day that little bird trapped inside us all will be set free—-

God Sex and Love

God, Sex and Love

I’m sitting here alone in my room after dark, with only one standing lamp giving off a sunday evening glow.  If you were here and the night became still, I’d have you tell me stories about your childhood.  Your soft warm voice would put my worrisome mind at ease.  I want to know you better, and to have you trust me like old friends do.  Its so strange, I feel as if I’ve always known you, perhaps it was in a different time or place—or maybe a thousand lifetimes ago, your face is so familiar, like those in my dusty old photo-album that stare out at me from yellowed snapshots, leaving me with that sad aching feeling deep inside my chest, a mourning for days lost and moments that have placidly slipped by, unnoticed except for my thread-worn memories and aging keepsakes.  At times the past feels as if it just occurred yesterday and then at other times, it feels like all these random events belong to another person from a different lifetime, do you know what I mean?——Maybe we once wandered down dark rainy streets of some unremarkable small town in the midwest, surrounded by an ocean of corn fields—ducking into smokey old taverns with the jukebox playing the likes of Merle Haggard, pool-balls cracking and the local yahoos giving us that familiar glare that says, “What the fuck are you two outcasts doing in here?”—-do you think this is possible?  I do—but I’m a poet and a dreamer and such dubious notions occur to me all the time——-maybe you don’t know what I am trying to say and perhaps you never will—-but for now, we can share our stories and see where they leads us.

I imagine you cooking us supper, preparing it with those immaculate small hands of yours; hands connected to your arms and then to your body and finally to a heart beating deep inside of you.  And I can see you smiling as you go about adding this and that to your unwritten recipe. Evening closes in and the kitchen is filled with that comforting aroma of seasoned dishes simmering on the stove, it smells like home.  It’s no big deal to you, but as for me, I’m enjoying the tenderness that comes with being fussed over.  I don’t know how you do these things, mixing all those mysterious spices and ingredients together, but I believe that sharing food is an act of love—

I watch you move thru space with an effortless grace; with athleticism and agility—oppressive gravity is envious of your dancers finesse. Unlike me, I trip over my own untied shoelaces. I dance like I cook—horribly.  I lumber, I lurch, and then stumble——as I trample across the crumbling ground of my faltering days.  My refuge has always been found in the eloquence of words, even on those darkest of nights when sleep eludes me, I am able to blend them silently together inside my frenzied head like watercolors that beautifully bleed and melt into one another.  The sharing of words is also an act of love. It’s really all I’ve ever had to offer anyone.

I remember on a whim you and I headed up north on highway 1.   The road traced along the rocky coastline, and everything was as it should be, with you sitting in the passenger seat smiling as the radio played the song Hero. Across bridges and up hill and dale we carried on as the rain fell on our windshield making the world appear blurry and dreamlike.  Back then, we had no plans or outside distractions, we were sorting out this thing called life in real-time—-no past, no future, just you and I naively melding into one—and so it went—so on and so forth….forever and a day….and for the time being, that was good enough. 

We holed up in a dumpy sea weathered motel and drank cheap wine, ate cheese with sour dough-bread and made love. Outside the world was dreary and gray with a damp fog blowing in off the sea.  We had nothing to do or nowhere to go, so we drank more wine and shared our secrets about God, sex and love.  We took walks on the windy beach until we were soaked and tired and then we went back to our musty old hotel room to talk.  I lit a candle and we stared at our shadows on the wall as the the flame flickered, we shared our thoughts in hushed voices, quietly falling in love, with the divine surprise of stone being sculpted into art.

I don’t remember if it was my eighth beer or my eleventh, but somewhere along that point, I’d lost the ability to self-edit.  Who can say if it was intellect or emotion that was guiding me down a one way street,  in the wrong direction, no breaks, no pulling back——just me blindly headed straight at you.  Fuck-it, all that sober talk was getting us nowhere, I was either gonna have you, or piss you off so bad that you’d never speak to me again—I’d rather have it that way then some middle of the road, getting nowhere banal discussions about the weather.     I prefer the more unconventional conversations.

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

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.