Weekend Back Home (May 21-22, 2010)

Today rings the bell. At midnight 5/22 it chimes. Twenty-one years of feeling like the square peg in this cylindrical life. Back then my life was only up to 12 and now its been a day and eternity again. 21 on 22 with a hundred years of morbidity...enough! What's discretion: I don't know her. Scrawl a quick memory, this was the day he left me just a kid. Thank this world for friends that keep it looking like something worth following. These Springtimes that would hurt get anesthetized as if the stars sent it straight to us on the wings of notes and words and beats and smiles all over again.

It's not tomorrow till you go to sleep.

Tempo. breaks. drums. bass. keys.
Fanatical energy passes over to where I sit. Sponge it all up like juice through a straw needing music and people and comfort more than all else. All we need is a song and fuck it move on, next time, last one, maybe lone but not solo by any means.

Pick strings and take away the think: let the juice on the page with silver bricks and beauty on drums like a crush for years cymbals pounding through our ears. Old friends and cold beers. Who told us we couldn't play here?
It's a sandbox you say-sounds like December not May. Comfort like snow forgetting how nice it is to talk with someone who knows.

Onlooker step off this page. Get off the back of my seat it's too hot. One fucking slut I am not. Maybe a bit blunt but I've seen where it gets ya not to be.

Man my bros can rip up that stage.

It's good to be reading and feeling amazed. Been scrawling for years on courts and in cages...have only just started letting more of the world see my pages. I feel comfort and closeness and sleep's barely met me. But how can I sleep when this world came back to let me. There's been so many days that I watched and recorded: all these memories pushed to the bottom of a well. When they surge back in waves its amazing and sweet and all it takes is a smile, a song, an idea about pressing on. Makes me recall how much simpler was May. Before all the minuses and divisions and splits, there was peace and calm and friends. That was it.

So much time passed notes played lips kissed tunes heard all about this god-damn spoken word.

Audio in a tree. Audio on my knee. Audiometry: a name itself makes music when read. I can see the connect. Even after years later friends are still friends don't forget.

Check a page hear a tune make music make me move. Pick up pens and sticks and strum chords oh so rich with life and emotion and getting what I mean when I say that feeling ya know...just a feeling of comfort and brain-sync and free. Comes into view a scene of simplicity: only friends and time and beats, notes and blank pages, sheets and sheets to cover. Mnemonic that word like beauty sings to a nerd like me. Whats a name whats a title like a crack in the tile...

Who let you in my sandbox?!

I miss you all I do recall. Sneezed at a time when it was friends smoking dimes and kept thinking and drinking like hats eight or nine. When I think about Gateways and even never mentioned nevermen like Nezzermans: so many drinks courting my girl while an illicit affair was fuckin up my world. Solitude--I longed for it so much but tonight all I need is soft human touch, contact, strong hugs and friendship. Yesterday yesteryear I said fuck it. I didn't hear, closed my ears, drinks spilled, but fuck it up I always will. I always will...value those days when all that mattered was friends like blankets and impending haze.

Damn you thrash your guitar bang those drums slam keys and pound bass. These jerks behind me may get a smack in the face. Grills undeserving of any of this-just there to obstruct and distract, or try to fuck. Skills unparallelled and when we get outta here play me into your spell. I'm lost in notes and chords and ink like it always was, like smoke, pills, drink. Please don't stop it's better than sex just waiting to hear what old friends might play next.

All I can say is your bathroom mirror makes me cry and it was not even foggy or holding a photo but when I get flashes of what used to be that's just it. We go on and float on and hope they're all at peace. It's crazy how all it takes is just a little piece of this life to make us wish them peace in the next. Jamming vocals missing beats doesn't care doesn't matter anymore just music takes us in and comforts all that yuck that tries to creep in and make it dark.

Music is like a bandaid and ice on road-rash knees in blankets and water and a breeze and comfort and pillows and uncertainty but just live the moment because who knows what comes tomorrow. A mirror, a sign, a show, a beat, a trial, a spy in a house of beats who can't even find the words to tell-not to tell but maybe just to be a sister to that verse.

Your voice does what I can't: be beautiful.

Exquisite human harmony someone should tell you about in bed if you ever get there together, so many impossibilities and wasted time but there's a bandaid for that too and its green. I loved to hear you spawn a verse so sweet and smooth and inspiring it hurts. Know this, know your plaid makes me think about how it was and now again everyone sings and plays, taking some of that pain away.

Long time ago, long time since, long time coming to re-converge. But what seemed a lost and lonely truth returns and shines like treasured lovely youth. Makes me hopeful we can all someday come together and find peace again.

Scrawling Under a Broken Hoop

I hear a young Jim Carroll say that in the next life he'll be holding the paddle.
I see four kids dangerously like me.
At 16,
15,
fuck it a 13 year old train wreck.
I can recall countless wasted memorabilia that met its demise.
Trophies flew in his world,
glass breaks in mine.
A mother yelling out the window she won't watch you kill yourself ,
you break windows-need to PUNCH GLASS
breaking doors kicking the stairwell walls,
running screaming stripping off the chains.
Writing in the dark because you're over my shoulder non stop,
scrawling till I get enough on backs of pages then a new book 17 or 20 of em filled to the brim and never enough.
Authors I love scream about angst and how he looked so young and so old and so dead.
Shaved head bad job caking on cover-up to overlook the bullet wound.
I'll never forget him lying dead-going through motions because we know we have to-we know it all too well.
Sitting at his service on my birthday makes September just hurt more.
Before you died we ripped lines and sipped Heineken and talked for days,
four hours before,
i never thought i wouldn't see you again,
i said I'll see you tomorrow and i never did.
these things keep happening to us-it never ends.
When we were twenty my first big chunk of cardiac tissue flipped in a Jeep on the way home to see us.
Never thought a phone call from Texas would be the last time I heard you speak.
Never thought we wouldn't carve trees in the cemetery ever again.
Smoking countless hours away, fucking in the grass, sleeping on the beach and making sure we always took it all--took everything for our entitlement because it was owed to us.
All the rich kids and their god-damn entitlement, it was so easy to just take stuff from them.
Too bad we only knew half the story.
Then we got some truth.
Death was truth.
Like a buzzing alarm clock you can't find and when you do oh god the words you find--
like sweet release,
like waiting for years and coming for days
a week
a month.
When you were no more it was surreal.
I stood by a mantle and stared at a photo and an urn.
Watched tears run down your sister's face and left them on mine because i was numb.
You used to be the one to wipe em off until you couldn't.
Not even two years passes and it's happening again.
One minute I'm thinking about who to leave the bar with and the next...
i didn't think
i didn't know
i said I'll see you tomorrow and your tomorrow didn't ever come.
Instead you grabbed your father's gun and did what I used to wish I could.
it was always too scary to think i wouldn't see you again until i couldn't,
my hands would shake and tears would flow
it looked so easy but the hardest thing was imagining your faces and i couldn't ever do it...
but you did.
For a fucking year I didn't even pick up a pen.
New York City crumbled and I swallowed pills in silence,
watching movies that were really my life slipping numbly by.
i don't recall where i went hiding out for so long,
or where i first saw your reflection,
in a fountain at the park,
in a window on Lexington,
or on the subway going numbly,
dumbly,
alone to work to school to a bed in another borough.
Amen for those distractions because they kept me alive.
I wouldn't ever have made it without them all.
Never intending to live to thirty and beyond,
We thought 19 was lucky and 25 was deluxe-you even stretched it to 27 and i was proud.
Things are never what they seem and sometimes we don't even see em for real until they slice us with a jagged edge of bottles we broke or burn us with the tip of a joint passed without looking.
However your memories come back: whether bleeding or burning let them out.
They don't go away and everything changes.
Traveling and breeding were for the sane,
I would just fuck around-float along and see whats next.
Could there be a way to do all this that would be OK?
When I got a stammered message that you died I was wasted.
Home for a change of clothes and a shower-rare.
I sat on the kitchen floor and cried as she screamed about how many beers did I have,
what was I on,
where was i going now.
Really?
He died.
Did you ever even hear me tell you that he died,
suddenly,
at twenty?
Why did I even say shit out loud-oh right,
i didn't say it...or did i and it fell on numb deaf ears,
swept under the wall to wall carpet,
or the floor mats of your new cars every year or two.
Might as well waste my intended future i certainly didn't want it,
for what...tuition,
a house...
Come on what was that in my future when the future was gonna be so short.
There could have been a change for better,
a chance to get it all down in print by 21,
be safe and stable,
expel the pain.
Nah-max it out instead,
charge up the denial and take it all from me.
I thought I didn't deserve a thing but
shit I didn't deserve that either.
Sometimes I think about never breeding because it's the easy way out,
I don't want a little ungrateful monster who's gonna tell me they hate me,
I don't want to be the one to say you're 18 so fuck off-good luck with life.
I'll never throw another person's spirit under the rails of the NR and say here's some plastic because I know so much more.
Death is truth,
truth hurts,
but everyone is blind to it at times.
Instead of reality or mature behavior,
we get "look what you're doing to yourself" screeched in hysterics as another vase hits the pavement,
we get "don't talk to me like that" and "show some respect" and it all becomes a blur.
I don't claim to have the answers to anything,
or know what comes next.
Even as everything happens I tend to want to stay numb,
but numb isn't inhuman,
numb isn't blind or stupid.
I won't ever forget some of the things we said:
fights and brawls,
drugs and scrawls,
nights spent sitting on a boardwalk fubar and wishing for a bullet.
A brown eyed Spanish girl named after a saint,
agreeing with me it was true "there's days you feel like dying--you just think about dying"
And I loved her.
She made it far-far away from these broken courts and sand filled pain pits.
Many of em did.
Yet it's the ones that hurt the most,
the ones who were like me and couldn't tell it out loud,
so many years: years without saying I love you,
when it was all i could ever think.
we never even apologized.
Those ones who couldn't say what we needed to say-they are my heart's blood
in veins,
arteries,
skin,
marrow.
I feel them every day and every day I hold them close.
Without them I am no one:
a souls a swish a swing,
not a breeze a breath
a gnat on an ice cream cone you already ate.
Without my angels to share my living I would have no life at all.
No life no words no time no place.
Death is truth--what a fucker,
it brings pain and inspiration: two things I've always known and needed,
and loved.
Truth on the other hand...
Truth can go to hell.

Stripped

The tepid rain fell hard on my face as I looked up at the blank sky above.
I could barely remember where I was.
How did I get to this lurid place?
All around me were grinding figures,
passion being spent like it was quarters.
It made me think about pinball and
hot neon.
I can see the past vaguely in the night,
Stars being people-clouds being me.
There were so many places,
people,
parks,
walking and walking,
running and naivete.
Surrounding my soul was a big fluffy cloud,
never thinking it would be me in this tomb.
That's what it feels like.
Constricted and cuffed,
I slide down a pole.
I see the sky through the window,
and it isn't really above,
it's slanted and twisted-on the left of my position.
I spin and circle worndering how,
how did I get here amongst these...
these broken human beings
so clueless and pain stricken?
Whence came the horror of it all,
whence came the numbness?
Triviality and harsh stabs of reality's rusty dagger.
On this very night I tell you my tale
On this very morning I awoke...
it's all too real.
To awake under the stars used to be a dream,
a vision,
now-a nightmare,
a doom.
I'm destined to be just how I am now:
basically no one,
on this twisted pedestal,
writhing around.
What would I have done,
if in any way I could have seen,
that in the end it would be me,
prancing on a stage of naked truths,
horrid films,
and plush reeking carpets.
No one would suspect it from a girl simple as I.
Untouched...
never.
But who is the man with his hands on my body?
the former teacher,
the rapist,
the liar?
Now I'm staggered,
blinded,
beaten,
broken

and

down.
Keep the key,
tie me up,
I'm stuck,
naked in this spiteful place.
Will it be forever?

Inspired Recollections

Last night I crossed a bridge, hopped on stage, hugged some long missed and brand new treasured friends and here's what came outta my inkwell:

It re-surges again creative urges return as I wonder why I don't just go do this all the time.
Lights get dimmer and the mood is so mellow,
Sipping wine,
enjoying coffee,
and candle lit stories.
When it happens it starts out slow,
to shape and shake and drum and throb and
we all
get down to it
again.
Minds meld making musical sounds,
Not only not new anymore-but wait-was this ever?
It's like an inborn desire to sing and dance and spit words like fire across a cafe,
I see parts of my past smiling into the room and everything is just like no time passed at all.
Like we shared that coffee,
that drink,
that lo mien a sitting in the cafe area like friends just do,
agreeing we love duck sauce and green tea.
Like the time we all chilled in a borough not this one,
or how many nights ended in smoke like a mirage.
Words--
we don't even need em all the time.
I see the rhythm like dust in the lampshade,
like toothpaste on a mirror being wiped clean it comes.
The beat,
the sounds of sweet song in the air.
I mean it-we don't always need an inadequate alphabetic mess that wastes
vowels on whores WHORES! we shout in unison from a canyon.
Songs about old shoes,
postcards,
pictures,
we know all of it so very well those postcards from the edge of sanity.
I shudder to think of all those cards sent and unanswered,
unsent and saved,
unsent and answered in an eerily accurate depiction of my own mad rantings.
Reminders of things that have been so fucked up but now we laugh:
like a relative calling your lover by your boyfriends name,
fucked but ironic,
like friends just being friends at a show, a cafe, a wine bar, that club,
like a kiss you waited years for and lost within a day,
I have no off button
no pause to press
no black line to put across the photo anymore.
So many nights chock full of memories
like your mother spells out asshole with your weed across the carpet,
how we laughed and smoked some more.
Like my roommate flushed my dust but good thing,
cause we ate all her pills that same night-karma-the boomerang.
Bygones.
Bygones like Robitussin and NyQuil,
bygones like a punch in the face over what
a boy-a girl-who even remembers now?
bygones like the way it used to feel to have to lie to everyone about what I really think or where we all really went,
bygones like the fake goodnight walking down the front stairs and circling right up the back,
like swimming in the dirty ocean in a lightning storm and not caring if there's a jellyfish on my shoulder or if it glows.
Pick up a pen and let it all just go,
you make me bleed ink like Cheerios and toast,
familiar like an old friend and the memories just keep on flooding back and back and back.
It's all gonna be alright we all will be alright
that's right.
Ooh profanity doesn't even have enough feeling to expel this all,
there may not be enough words that come close,
A scrawl like knives and I hope its not just us that thinks its all become so
very
very
strange.
Out of range,
out of logic,
out of touch-just don't talk about it too much.
Don't lose the shock value cause if it goes on and on I won't lose my words
but may lose my way
we should PAVE the way
beat drums and yodel
and
just have a sick good time.
Viva la Creativity!

Discomfort

As I sit in my living room; this false refuge, thinking about how I was recently connived into spending time with some people I was totally unprepared for intense conversation with, I recall how many, many times in the past I used to just get up and leave when things were too heavy to bear. Whenever something was uncomfortable, I would gather my belongings, run through the enormous list of excuses in my head, pick one at random...and just...run. If there was something being discussed that made me feel the yuck, or someone present I couldn't stand to be near...I was out of there. No questions, no five more minutes I'll be nice...just outta there.

Here's the kicker, during this recent bout of discomfort, my sneakers were tapping anxiously and my fingers spun the ends of my hair in wobbly circles as I thought about making a run for it. I sipped slowly on my tasty beverage, savored the small things that usually make it ok...but it was completely not ok anymore. I haven't had to think this hard about how to suppress the urge to flee in a while. Gossip flew and the "he said" "she said" bullshit ensued. Every time there was a nod in my direction with some comment attached like "Can you believe it?" I just sat numbly grimacing, holding on to the arms of my chair in a fit of needing so badly to run but somehow staying put. Was it courtesy? I honestly don't know. I wouldn't even go that far. Courtesy is not something I have ever been supremely influenced by, but it was something this time.

Lately I feel like I have this inability to settle. I just can't stay somewhere I don't want to be. If something is not right I just can't justify keeping it. If things are not smooth, and trust me, things have been treacherously craggy in the past--I just can't sit still anymore. But why have I endured and not run away in the past? Why is everything changing now? Well if I could say exactly what it is that's different, I would have become a self-help writer. Perhaps I would have become a guru to those who wallow in uncertainty and think about how they should have done things differently. Telling everyone what really matters and helping them to see what it is we all press on towards...but I really don't know. The horizon is really blurry lately and I simply don't have a plan. I don't know what will happen down the road anymore. A scary notion, yes...but no more settling just because it's not uncomfortable.

Granted, things are looking up these past few months. Some good stuff has happened in all areas of my life. Yet something is changing for me now. Something is developing...that's not even the right word. It's like the resurgence. When something comes rushing back and you realize you forgot it for so long. Something that you needed to blast into your life and punch you in the face screaming "fucking look at me and see how you've been missing something you need!" That says it a little better, but still, the words are not so easy to come by this time.

A rare occasion that I have no words...happens quite infrequently these days. All I know is that when it gets to the point of thinking something has got to give, something always seems to...well... give. I guess the main issue then becomes can I give back where it's most important? If the universe is aligned completely differently now, doesn't that rearrange all the priorities for me...doesn't that throw a wrench into the works? I can't say I have the answers to any of this. I just can't. However now that the door is cracked open I can't help but hope for a breeze to push it further and show me what's on the other side.

Brand New Day

For a while now I've been feeling like things are changing for the better. I always used to crunch my shoulders uncomfortably up to my ears and grind my teeth as I muttered internally: something's got to give, something's got to give, something's got to give. While thinking in this way, I would storm through the streets of the city--head down, full speed ahead with eyes averted. I can imagine that this presents quite a ridiculous image as I actually scoffed aloud while typing just now...but it's true. I think there is a lot to be said for letting stuff go. I always had some kind of grudge that I was holding, or even something that was really small and minor festering into an unnecessarily enormous and painful hole in my brain's smooth gray sheath.

While thinking about things that are good in my life now, I can actually say for the first time in a while that I have quite a long list. Not only is there a comprehensive list, but there are things on it that really matter...like friends I love dearly, and a career I actually enjoy. For years and years I went through the motions of working to pay bills and paying bills to remain in a perpetual state of just getting by. Why it is that we do such things for so long is a baffling conundrum indeed. If we work these jobs that are not related to a lifelong passion, or we do something that just happens to provide enough cash to pay rent and be social, a forgetting of sorts takes place. I see now that I forgot a little piece of myself for quite some time. That little piece eventually grew bigger, and was no longer an insignificant affair.

For almost a decade I was virtually leaking inspiration like a Novocaine-ridden cheek trying to grin. It took a very very long time to see just how much was missing, but when it happened, it happened really hard-really fast-and in a manner that almost shouldn't be discussed on a page. Life at the time was just vulgur. There was a plethora of anger...and infinite discontent. There was depression, anxiety, rage, deception and carelessness. These negative things did abound so much, in fact, that I was completely blind to what was lacking in my life...however, I refused to see it.

In general, there are a myriad of ways we pull the blinders down on ourselves day by day. There are tons of things that we do to numb the discontent; drawing the drapes on our suffering souls. Much of what we do is intentional, and some of it is not. However there tends to be a large amount of denial involved...and we tend not to see the denial until all this time has passed and we regret something. Perhaps it may not even be realized as regret, but a close call or maybe a rejection that hits particularly close to home. It happens differently for everyone, but it eventually happens. When I say that we are the ones who draw the drapes, drop the blinds, or however many expressions we use for it--I do assert that we do this to ourselves. Often...more often than not, we create disasters of our own making.

Realizing all of this at thirty something is not an easy task. Knowing that something did indeed give, is not a simple thing to accept. If I had been wishing for something to change and it finally has, well then...what do I wish for now? If the same state of mind was inhibiting my judgements and slapping me silly with "should haves," "could haves" and "would haves" as it always did, I wouldn't be able to answer that. But things have changed. Things have changed a lot. All of these questions and uncertainties that are no longer at the forefront of my brain have become distant memories. Things that once made my head hurt with the idea of "what if" and made me cringe thinking "what will people think" are now like a distant memory. I can say one thing for sure--it feels good to be inspired, to lose the insecurity blanket, and to just go with whatever life throws at me.

So what does this all mean? The beginning of a new era in my life has been a theme for me this year. There has been much ado about a couple of somethings instead of needless anxiety about plenty of nothing. I have come really far from the ledge that I would stare down from as I drank my morning coffee. Realizing it now, the ledge was huge, cracked, slanted and crumbling quicker than was ever necessary. Why see it now? I'm not sure. I guess since so many things have changed, priorities simply got rearranged. I'm told this is normal...but I can't say that we all know the same normal so I guess it just is what it is. I have to laugh when I use the old "it is what it is" because now I always want to follow it with "until you make it something better."

Ah inspiration is sweet. Reclaiming my identity from the trash pile that it lay dormant on for so long makes me feel good. Positivity is something I used to know; but lost for a good stretch of time. Loss and grief and pain and guilt--they are like those exasperating friends who leech all your energy out until you realize it is way too much maintenance to bear another day in that relationship. That's not a friendship--that's a travesty. It's nothing we should have to endure. Changing the way we thought we wanted life to go can be very unexpected. It can be quite nice and it even sometimes happens in a way that you need only savor the sweet without sharing. It can take the form of a new friendship, a first kiss, a snuggle with a puppy, a smile from someone who adores you, holding hands, hugging an old friend, taking a drive or having a coffee and quality conversation. Whatever form it takes, I urge you all to discover it. Uncover the things that you may have forgotten and live out loud while you still can.

I know. It's downright bizarre coming from this girl. I get it. This is all brand new. But so is everything. Not a moment goes by that I don't remember how bad it got, how sad we were, how painful it was to even walk down a certain street or hear a song. I avoided phone calls and emails and didn't return one message because of those negative things that took such a hold on my spirit and soul...but now...now I'm done with regrets. It's Spring. New start. Do what I want time. Thinking about things I want and going to get them. Trying new things, losing the bad habits, increasing the new positive ones, and loving every minute of this life because it's way too short to do otherwise.

Summer Bonfire Nights

Where did it go?
I wonder.
Where are all those times now?
I just don't know
i can see us all together
sitting on the sand
lighting the fire
writing down the words
running through the surf-some naked-all fearless
thinking too hard
counting the stars
whispering a prayer
a song
a poem
we would say things to the beach
we would talk to the sea.
Those little slices of driftwood
were really angels,
They were silent saints who protected us: the steely sinners.
We were the silly kids,
the non-conformists,
we were so many things.
Never so different,
to be unalike,
yet not one was like another...
like snowflakes...
like rain.
Yet we were five of a kind,
with sisters
brothers
cousins all over the earth.
Why assume that time heals all this pain,
when its been so long
has it been too long?
It should be healed by now
now
now or never.
The breezes were so gentle,
the stars were like lamps,
the breakwater was just about a crash.
The time never seemed to matter
It was always us
Never
me and him
or you and her
or she and he
just us.
Now one lives in bliss across the river,
and two drifts alone in a sea of lies,
three has gone too soon-before his time away forever,
and four-i don't recall...
i don't know four anymore.
We called ourselves a revolution,
a misunderstood,
anarchist
brigarde.
They looked at us with pity,
we spat at them with rage.
Who was to wonder,
Who would have known,
There was always a bond to get out of--always a silent cage.
The elders would feed on our youth
sucking the hate through our eyes.
I remember the nest,
and the time i sneezed and they almost saw.
If you or me ever ran away
we'd meet there with our bikes and boards...
All I wish is thet we could skip rocks again.
Silver Lake
the ducks
40s,
and straight edges,
blurred lines and broken boundaries
among
cemetary walls,
and carvings on trees.
street signs
and truck hopping
Doc Martins
Vintage record shopping,
Blond angels smoking weed
on stoops under steeples,
Not even worth a prayer but surely worthy of a poem.
Now an angel sleeps in an urn
while the others look for a place to turn.
Where,
tell me,
where is there to turn-
when four are out of touch,
all our selves are out of reach
i miss you so much everyday
why can't i just get back down
to that beach