Disappearing Acts Returning Centered

Clarity eludes me and that's fine. Our lives merge together. The newsreel marches forward. The energy only changes form and once we meet we're never strangers.

The blurred purgatorial yearnings toss and turn around the periphery of inactivity. I'm waiting in a line of my own mind. There's a step to be made. A chess move to be had. While, all the while I continue my expression. All the while I bide my time. All the while I observe and live and love. Everything is here. I'm wrapped in a dark blanket of love. My mornings are beautiful. My days are alive. My nights are magic. You are mine. I am yours. Bursting with life. Overflowing with golden mercury. The people in our lives are reflections of our own eyes.

Exploring caverns of living. Darkness beneath baseball caps. The mystery of others. What's being said in quiet whispers. Life on the fringe. Self-imposed exile from functional sustenance and it's moments of panic. This existence provides with the kindness of others and I know I'll return the favor. So much received. I'm selling myself short. I've given until I've lost myself. There were days when I handed it all over. There were days of pain. There were days of disbelief and futility. There were days when I received parking tickets during tragedies. There were days. There still are. Days split between freedom and fear. Days when I don't know what to do with myself. Days where I throw away meaning for gratitude. Days when I don't give a shit about philosophizing. There are days when I effortlessly create. There are days where I connect to my purpose. There are still days. There are still days. There are still days and somewhere beneath them all is the engrained optimism. The ability to see the fire. The importance it seems is in continuing the exchange. Movement creates more of itself. The rust stays off the kinetic wheel. Be cautious, dowse yourself in paranoia, but let some of it go, there's too much to learn outside of yourself. In a world of sickness, patches of light. In a world of entropy, reservoirs of health. In a savage world, we face bravely. With always something to share, I encounter my excuses, I adjust my perspectives again and again.

Creation

I hope you haven't abandoned me. The beating heart of a dusty impulse. The sun came after my waking. A cricket chirped from between the walls last night. Oblivious to the time of year like all true Californians are, it sang against it's own metronome. A quality we have in common. Like a pencil drawn maze, we retrace our lines over and over until we reach the end. I've been setting my feet onto the same footsteps in the sand for some time now. While time does his best to blow winds across these patterns and for that I'm grateful. It's these altered subtleties of the familiar that help keep my flame alive. This is an understatement of what can quickly become a hurricane. I'm leaving out the storm of conditions and beauties beyond my control. I'm forgetting the endlessly wrapped around infinities of imagination. I'm failing to include the unknown. Dreams both remembered, told, forgotten, and manifested. Then there are the people. The souls. The traces of memories. The hints of actualism. The foreshadowed futures, altered states, activities, meals, loves, and the affluent tide. I also should acknowledge the looming feeling that somewhere-out-there west is a roving magnetic point. Turning back and forth like a prison searchlight. Scanning and affecting the coast. Manipulating the insignificant moving dots as they decorate/desecrate the shores. When my friend and I swam away from the safe beach on that fringe day between summer and fall, we were moving toward this source. Existing beyond the patterns. Defying the same institutions that gave us purpose. There is cemented land, fixed ground, and then the shaky sand that signals the last bit of control we have before entering a larger mercy. It was for this wild element to which we were leaving our feet. There, strongly we swam across an ocean of light navy blue, fading into dark shades of black. Driven by the primal fight and flight mechanism. The same fear of the unknown that lent an urgency to our motions was also the invigorating quality that drove us out into the deep in the first place. Solitary beings encapsulated in a liquid vault. I became alone. I had lived this experience in variations all summer. The panic always had a new face. I swam and swam but the land never moved. And as much as the fear slid across my limbs, the calm was in knowing that the choice was mine. The faith was in avoiding the teeth. The spirit was in the freedom of letting go to the sum. The pride manifested as the strength of my singular. The laughter was in returning to shore. The gratitude in the existence. The growth happening sometime after returning to the sand, maybe later, maybe still.

Surrender fate to another's home, with only the strength of your ever-beating heart as your greatest variable. The rest is left to probabilities, chance, facts, the time of year and just how much you want to live.

6th Row Center Court

Very close to me, I'm watching giants weightlessly stampede like blurs. They glide across the court like personified gusts of wind back and forth along a timed continuum and I'm in a daze. Squeaking shoes leave the ground, upward. Acrobats. Humans advanced, handling the ball like an extension of their own dynamic forms. Together moving like one violent organism cutting between liquid and empty space. Buzzing crowd, always buzzing.

This game is a rush.

Whistles blow, timers shriek, and the lady behind us continues to yell "Defense!" in a foreign accent that makes it sound like "Day-fez!". The man next to me quietly reeks of booze. The guy in front keeps bumping my leg as he puts his arm around his small girlfriend's shoulders. All the while, I watch these symbols in the flesh, closer than I've ever been. They're playing a game I knew as basketball, only it's not the basketball I've ever known.

During shoot-around these men never miss. The ball is shot in a looping trajectory and cuts through net again, again, again. The long limbs belonging to these men move fluid and loose as they go though their reps. Some of them work with coaches. Some of them by themselves. The Machine goes through stretching drills with bands wrapped around his arms, legs, and wrists. Even bound, The Machine never wastes a dull moment to scan the crowd for young women. Even during the game, he's always keeping his eyes on the prowl. During the game. During the game, you realize just how quick these men move. Bodies flash and disappear in front of the ball-handler at all times. Everything is coordinated on a higher rhythm, faster than life. A lightning intuitive precision. You have to be immersed in this flow since birth to stand a chance and then you must possess the skill-set to outwit the rapid hurricane.

Watching the small ones thread between moving giants like tornado chasers. The genius knows his limits. He wanders fast and drunkenly amongst the redwoods, with his stringy hair the last thing to catch up to his quick frame. "You have no chance Nash!" another drunk behind us yells. "Lakers are gonna win by twenty. You watch. They're gonna win by twenty," this seemingly useless blob continues repeating.

"No chance at what?" we ask ourselves. Though it's clear this two-time MVP has no chance of holding rapt the imagination when number twenty-four is on the floor in gold. Looking at this man from so close after admiring him for so long, I'm struck by just how made for this game he appears. Everything about him is chiseled to an aerodynamic absolute. His body composition, the shape of his head, his length, his height. When he moves, there is no wasted motion. Everything he does appears driven by purpose. Every step, shudder, look, is to better outwit this game. This game is his opponent and best friend. He does not belong to these other hyper-beings. He's somehow greater than them all. He has forged himself through thousands of meticulous hours of self-scrutiny and advancement. He's isolated and nurtured everything necessary to reach the potentials of his inherent genius. He sees a canvas. He aggressively creates. He effortlessly desires so much more than any man around him. He moves in reverence to this temple. He dedicates. He sweats in worship. He excites. He dazzles. He sees the patterns. He is the game.

Then there is the spectacle. The men bringing their Sunday's finest on their arms. Thousands of eyes rolling side to side watching the players or one another. The witnesses. Each one absorbed in separate lives, coming together, sitting beside strangers, acquaintances, or loved ones, packed to the ceiling, releasing themselves to a greater circus. We cheer is unison, file to the restrooms together at the half, admire what we ourselves can not do. A night at the show.

When it returns, the game moves fast. The rhythms ebb and flow. The known grows. By the fourth, the opposing subs have been sent to play in signal of defeat, like medics sent to sort through the carnage of a futuristic battlefield. The victors rest. Towels around their necks, a days work. It must be quite a way to live a life. Playing this game, because they're the best, because other people want to see them play. Living 82 games on a travelling carnival schedule adhering to an evolved infrastructure. These are dignified performers. The fans pay homage to their ability. They cheer, they follow, they identify, they love. Team colors. Histories. Cinderellas. Players. Personalities. Shots. Impossibilities manifested. Uniforms. Logos. Dunks. Spirits. Cascading leather. White Nets. Wood floors. Motions and boundaries of a higher purpose. Echoes of the basketball punching the ground like heartbeats, dribbled by losers, men, heroes, warriors, idols, caretakers. The ball beats the floor repeatedly, these dark bouncing echoes of sound and vibration are sent like phantoms through the fans ears, skin, minds, hopes, dreams, souls, whatever, you tell me how far it goes.

I love this game.

Walking Through Doorways

I sit in the sun. The night was cold. I have to engage the world. That came after you asked questions. Small steps turn to leaps of faith. Handshakes turn to doorways. Capability has never been the issue. It's been a matter of confidence. It's been a matter of confronting the inevitable.

The Noble Confrontation

A boxer sits in his corner. Soaking sweat. Nirvana is a lactic delirium. Deliverance. Awakening. Free of empathy. There are no hoops or helmets for passive-aggression. There is only an understanding: Two beating hearts encased in well-trained flesh, looking to pump more blood to faithful conditioning and unseen variables while seeking destruction in the opponent. Concentric and eccentric movements demonstrating force into the nervous system of someone else. Sharing something. Handing over ownership of painful energy. Freeing aggression into a physically violent truth. Three minute spells of survival. If you could hear the ringing bell, you're still alive to fight again. There's always another fight. A night watchman with an eye peeled on the rising sun. A flash of fury. Results of practice and endless days filled with repeated loss of sweat/blood. The sacrifice of comfort in quest for higher identity. The training becomes the purpose. The theoretical punches for battles yet to come. The summation of which arrives in the form of a bout. The fighter's life exchanged for this liberation. There, the clanging bell.

Touched gloves. Dance. Chess game of feet. Timing of punches. Knuckles meeting inertia. Velocity and strength formulating applied impetus. Seeking weakness. The eyes of the crowd gauging intangibles. No one knows what feats can rise from the ashes, confusion, unconscious desperation to live. Genius can spring reality, annihilating talk of reach or records. Electric charge can spark a fire inside the muscle fibers. Conditioned instincts can rapidly change moments. In a flash too fast for your eyes, something occurs. Most of the exchange is guesswork by each viewer's own magician brain. While the next frame watches the other soul already floating along gravity's merry way. Slamming down on thinly veiled wood. Shattering the tender balance of bipedalism. The body laying on the blood spattered canvas.

From high above it must look like framed art.

The referee counts while the crowd screams and yells. The man who also came to destroy is now seeing only black. A dark and honorable black that fades in and out with a skewed sense of time. Do you hear me son? He listens to one consistent buzzing in his ears and nothing else.

The one still standing feels equally the pain he distributed, for it's energy had once belonged to him. But now he's a winner by KO.

This Time

I survive by the decadence of my imagination. The confines of the Earth zoom in, zoom in, zoom in. A precious gemstone becomes a symbol for transfixed eyes. The journey is an inner one. I claim this land. I fight for heaven's sake.

The men working in mines were metaphors for forgotten souls. The worker soaked in oil field sludge would later shower away this liquid wealth to reveal his wage appropriate skin. The rows of factory workers were tangible symbols of the uninspired anonymity that drowns so many. We breathed above water as we looked down at the photos. Our eyes fulfilled the still-frame purpose. These images do shape humanity.

When bombarded with published inspiration, I'm a broomstick of jealousy. My urge to create sears holes in my skin. This is a good thing. Contemplative. Then there is a calm. I wander down what used to be lonely aisles of a tomb and arrive at your presence, resting on the floor, turning large pages. The reality changes.

The silence denotes strength. The beauty is a revival. The sweat is the greatest reminder. We're moving. "Movement is medicine." I heard a man shout in a youtube video.

Literature will die by the hands of pop culture references.

I once used an instrument like a helicopter propellor to break up caked shit in a septic tank belonging to an upscale rehab facility in the hills above the sea. My plumbing partner and I laughed about it as the excrement flew into our goggles like bugs onto speeding windshields.

Which reminds me of the Arizona butterfly migration.

Bec and I drove through the desert while yellow butterflies created splash art against the car windshield. Maybe I was a murderer and her my accomplice, those delicate butterflies, victims, in a greater debate. And we were bandits taking out all in our path. I know that we laughed after each speeding bullet met it's demise. These light-hearted angels crossing deserts to find love, only to become obliterated by a greater indifference. Perhaps we were the butterflies.

Then.

In another life I surfed alone. I wandered along freshwater creeks. Stole watermelons from nearby farms. Ate the ripe fruits underneath shady oak trees. Juices dripping from my mouth down my chin. I slept until my limbs felt rested. I woke up and stretched in the warm afternoon. I continued wandering in circles of karma.

In another life I was an Indian brave. I recognized the Earth. I lived my life hypnotized by nature's song.

There was a time on a boat in the Marina. I got drunk, spun around, took some pictures, and tried again. There was a time alone, purgatory grew familiar, until I couldn't recognize the greater alternative. I fused with my lonely ghost. I caressed depths. I almost lost myself. Then I did lose myself. Like most things, it took sunshine to defrost spiritual isolation. It took gloved hands to tear away the piles of debris covering my heart. It took tears to reduce the banter to truth.

Sometimes.

I dream of childhood friends. I dream ashamed. I dream satisfied. I wake up and still dream some more, in my better times. Wade across dark pools of silent water and arrive.

Mourn the past, lose a minute, get it back right now.

Monsters of Folk - Temazcal

A Constellation of Thoughts

It's interesting what inspires the individual when major conflicts fade into past obscurities.

Once intense feelings deteriorate into pale abstractions. What's left after the wreckage is a wide open terrain. How it's explored rests entirely on the courage of the individual. Scarred, shattered, bruised, the human walks forward, continuing a moment in a wildly new context.

It's no coincidence that people stumble into and back out of our lives at specific times while we inhabit various forms of energy. You certainly can use the people you're drawn to, and who are drawn to you, in a given time, as reflections of your own current state.

Sometimes these same human interactions and transactions can feel not just attracted by our personal climate but by time-cyclical, like they're set off by unknown alarm clocks.

Whether randomly or magnetically we all become symbols in one another's lives and for better or worse we can ignore the impact we make and the times we share or we can understand them to better grasp this continually changing road map that is the journey of life in this current form.

I believe we can create our own chaos or aspire to nothing. Today I read a quote "A life lived full of mistakes is better than a boring life, lived from fear" loosely translated as all of my quotes are, I painfully enjoy this outlook. Painfully, because mistakes normally are, but once again it's always in the outlook because some will tell you that there "are no mistakes, only lessons." I'd like to contribute the idea that beyond the learned lessons, we find our freedoms, passions, loves.

Sometimes beautiful mistakes occur. Sometimes a guy can consume too many intoxicants and find himself leaning against a pillar in a two-story sports bar. Sometimes he can reach out his empty beer pitcher, cheers the first young woman that walks by him, and sometimes lightning strikes. Actions create the imprints on our lives. Even inactions are actions. Everything is a choice. Even physically bound, our minds can choose our reactions. The energy and outlook we bring to these chosen motions are what determine the results, whether tangible or perceptive.

We are not lost. We are questioning. Exploring, we are rapidly gaining ground on our next greater purpose, we can coax it's arrival by being receptive to our delightfully present and meticulously, sometimes painfully, created intuition. We build and nurture ourselves, move toward our visions, breathe in the moments, stay aware, lose ourselves, recreate, learn from mistakes or otherwise, and we feel something powerful growing, then lightning strikes.

Night Window

Inside of a raindrop exists Heisenberg's Uncertainty. The apt pupil capable of outdoing all of his previous mistakes. Don't save it for the damned. Drink up. Swallow the medicine. Leave for awhile. The strings that held us together are severed. Enter the cave, turn left, burn. Tie one on, savor the falling leaves, bathe in the purple jacaranda flowers as they fall. Send in the Coast Guard for a raft that was abandoned a long time ago. The experiment takes a sudden turn. The race car obliterates the mind of the driver as they're thrown full speed into a lonely wall. No witnesses please. Shed your skin, expose flesh and bone to the elements, suffer gangrene, die on Kilimanjaro just like that asshole writer. You two would make a good pair of removed melodramatics. A curled message. A desperate uniformity. The transformation of a garden from good to evil. A succulent soil. Drained septic tank. Recycled trash heaps. Carbon fuel. Misunderstood messages. Darlings. Honeymoons. Maladaptive memories. Carry-on baggage. Wanton lust. The rest is poison. I'll spare you. A bed made in the morning. It's patient, I'll give it that. It mocks me. The sponge. The collector of fluids. The heathen. The phone booth. Organic matter. Opulent oranges. Orgasmic earthquakes beginning from the toes and ending in the darkest night. Organ players. Questions of a child. Disappointing answers of a conditioned mind. The death of trust. The waking of complications. Inherent beauties swept away by external realities. Chance occurrences. Boredom. Deaths. Circus tents. Bears riding motorcycles. Beasts of Burden. Quiet minds. Burger Kings. Archangels. Diabetic shock. Heaping spoonfuls of bullshit. Misconceptions, humbling experiences of purity. What we can do. What we can do. what we can do. What we can do. What we can do. What we can do. This is not a message in self-loathing. This is a wandering stardust. This is a mercurial chasm of failing matter. This is a pointless remake of a classic. A candle dying. A bike lock stolen. A piece of wedding cake smushed into the groom's face. Vanilla sex. Chocolate lullabies. Forgotten tears. Downtrodden posturing. Loving embraces. Drifting tides. Burning bridges, Mood rings. Past lovers. Alternative lifestyles. Hands covering faces. Chance occurrences. Sweltering heat and humidity. Drawers containing wisdom teeth. Drawers containing notebooks. Drawers containing beating hearts. Old journals. Ghosts of product. Stoned children's stories. Failed mechanisms. Destitute prostitutes. Poorly drawn conclusions. Insensitive remarks to feelings told. Apologies. Elder statesmen. it's the bad dreams. It's all the shit that flew through my brain when you were in bed next to me. It's born-again fragments. It's feelings that lay dormant but never die. It's the puncturing in an attempt to bleed my horrors out. It's the fact that you made life better. A canopy strung between the moon and some stars. A corner bar where I used to sit alone. A passive pursuit. A scared child. A revolving journey like a vortex. A bed in a Hollywood living room. Two birds outside a window. A bad idea. Always a bad idea, hanging artwork, parked cars, inhaling together, always a bad idea. Never talk and drive. Never leave undecided. Never begin a sentence with and. And always use a bookmark that doesn't drive you crazy at the sight of it. Nobody knows anything. Somebody knows something. Everybody knows everything. I'll ask you to dance in a faraway bar and it'll be perfect because I always told you I didn't move like that. I'll surprise you one day with my sense of adventure. I'll return a better man. I'll wake up. I'll change more. More. More. I'll evolve and it won't be subtle. I'll pinpoint my feelings. I'll carry myself relaxed. I'll charge full speed ahead like a victory cry. The mornings will start slow. The sunrise will greet us with a smile. The universe will shake hands and ask us to tea. The present will dazzle. The moments will grow infinite. The laughter will explode involuntarily and shatter human shells. The world will begin again.

What You Missed

I had become so sick of my music until you came back.

An ant crawls vertical up my blinds. Faraway clouds puff around the sky. Dark brown shingles decay on a roof in front of my window.

Trav said something very important to me last night. "You've got to be oblivious to the results."

The famous director told me I was moving around too much and that I should act almost as if I was underwater. I tried. I fake yawned and rubbed my eyes. The ad execs sat on their couches entirely disinterested. I was the last one that day. He made a joke about taking the prop pretzels home and I made one about contracting the flu. He laughed and told me to get out of there. I left cursing and swearing under my breath at another missed opportunity.

Into my car.

Circled around the grocery store. Beer, pumpkin pie, whipped cream, milk, eggs, mouthwash, and a new toothbrush. I muttered to myself down the aisles in excited disappointment, trying to work reverse psychology on the universe or my self-esteem, I'm not sure which one. I paid at a self check-out terminal and left.

Then I went home, sat on the couch exhausted. Feeling, even through the let down, that I had really lived that day. Trav ordered pizza and said something very important to me and we watched South Park. I texted you and then you called me and I was tired. I felt sorry. I was so tired.

I used my new toothbrush, then the generic mouthwash, and I fell asleep.

I dreamt uncomfortable dreams and woke up early. It's a new day and I have to make sure that I don't go around kicking myself in the ass. It's another opportunity to be alive. It's another. You're here. We're all here. Oblivious to the results.

Second Sunshine

As the substances effects begin to wane, they're replaced by a new drug. Always a greater chemical with a sharper bite. I'm writing about Her now. I'm writing about how delicate I've become. But first to clarify; The strength I have is boundless. My stamina is tireless. She marvels at what our bodies share and comes again. Nothing produces greater warmth than hours upon hours of love.

As for the fragile nature I've discovered; It's like having the air sucked out of the room. Displaced equilibrium. The pressure wanes, then returns intensified. My heart sinks while my ears ring. I don't know of any sadists willing to walk minefields for the sake of adventure. I don't know what we get ourselves into. I know that the more intense the love we share, the more Her energy becomes a part of my own composition. I know that at times I'm as easy to move as a feather in the wind. All it takes is the exhale of a birthday wish and I'm knocked down and broken. Wounded and then bruised I look to the cause as my nurse.

Everything we do is self-contained.

The pleasure and pain are intertwined like our bodies. Limbs wrapped around each others like boa constrictors. Our parts combine and fuel the catharsis. Our movements ebb and flow like changes in a cocoon. We outlast playlists. We manifest the present. We grow aware. The sweat builds. My power sustains us. Her pleasure burns. We are a furnace. I am your owner, under my power you come again and again. Then you defeat me. My climax is a cemetery in heaven.

When it's over we lay dormant. Catching our breath like witnesses. Survivors of a flood. Viewing a world in ruins. Gentle.

Then we have our minds, spirits, day to day tasks, and the remnants and evolution of a changing exchange. Sometimes it moves in patterns. Sometimes it leaks. Sometimes it ties beautiful knots. Sometimes it leads us down moonlit tree-lined roads. What amazes me is not the anaesthesia but the fragile self. The sensitivity like animal scent. One trace of energy can alter this movement. Can collapse this house of cards. Exposing an unseen self. Invigorating a latent intuition. Revealing a second sunshine. It's more interesting this way.

The path widens and the surroundings change. Possibility grows. I value what this does to me. I value her. I value us.

Coulda Been A Contenda

Like a beggar handed alms. The joke becomes less funny as you begin to tell it more frequently. A punch card for an amusement park. Get paid double for overtime. Run out of things to say. Drop your camera only to find it harboring flies. Those digitized memories ring hollow. I was so close to molting but was failed by recollections of memories. A sunnier day in a different part of town. Quit the sad-sap routine and hop aboard the float. Wave hello as you ride through a parade of imagination without a spectator to be found. Only one waits for you and the two of you walk home together. This might be the turning point, only to find out, that the more you return to the living, the greater the hurricane. I want to do you justice. I survive. I create. I've climbed steep cliffs next to pancake rocks on the beach, only to emerge faraway from anything I'd ever known.

"The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam and I mean every word of it."

A manic gnawing principle. The fending off of adversity and trouble. The best ones keep their sense of humor. A person runs into a lot of trouble when their laughter and sense of irony abandons them. Maybe I've been a bad friend. Maybe I've been evasive. Maybe I've been living a dream. There was Davy Crockett. The Lone Ranger. A Western-themed room at Disneyland. A bad trip. An ever evasive tenderness. A discussion. A lie. A renaissance. A burden. A string. A mind. A refuge.

There is a breath. There is a moment. There is a heavy mind. There is a confusion. There is a desired outcome that thrives on resistance. Check the time on the clock. Read a children's story. Staple a bunch of papers together and make a book. Kids are haunted by so many different things and are never really cured of them. How do these impressive fears of youth manifest themselves into the minds and behaviors of who we now are?

Perhaps adults are ignorant of what haunts them.

Invented neuroses to occupy the dark rooms of our minds. Freudian issues like papier mache figures stuffed into suitcases. Las Vegas Casinos, loud, bright, filthy, violating like mirrors to an unfortunate collective soul. Filing cabinets filled to the brim with wasteful representations of imaginary lives. Tables set. Dishes done. Hands raw. The only sign of living.

When the Growth Plates Begin To Fuse

I don't feel guilty for my indulgences any longer. The secrets that we keep will collect like stones in our guts before we're thrown overboard. There is no burden to bare. There are no excuses to be had. There is only a conditioned state of mind to annhilate. It's becoming very clear that this system is designed to keep us on edge. Anxiety-laden shlubs with no strength to fend off the rubble.

It's Homer's hand stuck in the vending machine because he won't let go of the candy bar.

It's the dangling carrot that rots in front of us as we trudge through the desert dying of dehydration, both spiritual and otherwise.

To live in a modern world and believe in everything is suffocating. Stop caring so much. Pick and choose your realities. Make a buffet out of the opportunities that present themselves and accept some lacking elements every once in awhile. Sometimes caterpillars don't become butterflies and they die. Flying is avoidance. Rising above the rubble is only relaxing in theory. In practice it's damning. It gets boring as hell in the empty sky.

I saw a rainbow over a blue house from two eyes linked to misery. I drove through tears into direct sunlight as overhead rain poured from a singular cloud onto my windshield. Bolts of lightning cut like veins over corn fields from years before. Booms of thunder over hills, alone in my room, like battle fire. I once experienced nirvana. It was an underwater peace followed by a devil in dark sunglasses. The years speak importantly when we're ready to listen.

Receiving messages.

There have been stellar moments and even strings of them. Like when that roommate lunged toward me, her eyes rolled back, and she fell flat on her face like a corpse. The black cat hair on the carpet greeted her, it was Easter, I called the ambulance and then rode an underground train downtown, emerging in a Latino market, binge drinking into the night. I finally crawled beneath a dining room table and passed out on the floor myself. It turns out that she got stitches and I woke up craving a basketball game. I took a train back to Hollywood, found a park, and played with some other lost white adult males. They were so polite. I probably am too. Not that day though. That day it was hot and terrible outside. I took my shirt off and dribble-drived past every guy who challenged me. I poured booze from my pores and launched rainbow-threes that swished through nets with delicious noises like canonball splashes. The ball is shot in an arch, reaches a climax, and falls obediently as the world spins, gravity maintains, and our mechanisms obey our desires. It's such a beautiful thing.

Yesterday

I walked uphill like I was weightless. Blissed out by the complete isolation. That's not true. There were bluebirds, flies, and the wind. There was a huge rock. There was Bec. There was the sun. The blue sky. The dead little plant that used to survive on the rock. God, it had been awhile since I'd sat quietly. I used to run those hills and climb that waterfall in the hot summer sun. I used to push my way into the hills with a mind on hyper-thought. Oh the thoughts I've had! The thinking that's felt like a perfect dance partner. Engaged in higher rhythms. A zone of deeper consideration. Clarity of logic. Only out there in blessed wilderness do I transform. Aware of a connection to my spirit. Feeling the gateway of electric current shared from the pristine to the physical.

Then there was the weightless body.

I was floating up that hill.

I told Bec about it and she said that she was doing the same thing.

Before that, we had both enjoyed walking on top of the rocks in the creek bed, like a moving puzzle, searching for the right combination of angles for each occurring step. The high walls of green mountains gave the illusion of motion. We shared space and peace. The sense of being alive. Two siblings breathing in mother nature. My best self lives on hiking trails. My bravest self swims ocean buoys in the cold blue Pacific Ocean. My most fulfilled self is a warm feeling walking home after I've expressed a particularly resonate chunk of passing energy into a stylized form. My greatest self is sharing love. Yesterday, I lived heaven.

Dispatches From the Unbalanced

When the wooden wind chimes slap like human bones. The doors open and close, squeaking in time with the restless blinds. Every movement creates a reaction. That's why those shaking palm trees outside sound like crashing oceans, the six a.m. mornings make phone calls to hollow ghosts, and why a tiny stream of thoughts sink underground to join heavier rivers.

My hands are cold, so they move like mechanical spiders with many hinges. I roll our future in the dark. I hear my train coming. I feel butterflies in acceptance. I feel scared.

I jump into bed.

My back slams the headboard.

I take it as an omen to quit the self-loathing act.

There I am. A bird in a nest of comfort and solitude. Pleasure and pain advancing and retreating in inverse time like a drifting tide on the sands of guilt. A liberal spoonful of medicine. Mosquito nets hang from each corner of someone's room. There was sweat. There was always sweat when it was good. I'll come to my senses.

We were walking down the sidewalk. My friend tried to get into the passenger seat of a car that didn't appear remotely similar to mine. We were both dazed. The sun was glaring like it always is on those days. "It's better to be lost, then in nine to five misery right? I asked. "Of course." he responded. His certainty in the uncertainty was good for the moment.

The saddest part of a journey is not knowing that it ended a long time ago. That when you miss the sign, you wander down a lesser version of where you'd just been.

Honeybees Released From Their Jar

My downstairs neighbor is losing her mind. I'm so much better when I look into your eyes. Some members of my family are camera shy and I crave the spotlight. You and I should go to Cuba. We'll bribe the immigration officials and they'll look the other way. It's supposed to be beautiful there. I feel like we'd be more beautiful there. Pristine coral reefs are the best reason for a trade embargo. Plus, you could help me escape the lady downstairs. She is seventy-five and her mother is still alive. She yells at her about her own pain and it all seems pretty miserable. Next to her window is an accumulating cesspool that gurgles through the night. The water is green and stagnant and I'm too lazy to tell the nearby residents about their problem. Besides that, it seems like my other next door neighbor's job. She's a nosy nobody who lives off of righteous judgement like it's fuel. She's a bored indignant. I say that even though I understand that we do party too loud over here sometimes and the things that come out of our mouths would sound ridiculous if you didn't know us too well. But disagreeing with our neighbors is genetic. My mom and dad always had problems with the other sides of the fences. Sometimes they'd even argue about fences. Sometimes it looked like the Jerry Springer show outdoors. Little kids yelling insults at adults and vice-versa. Families engaging in verbal warfare. Things would get so messy. Maybe that's why I want to meet you in Honolulu on your way back from the South Pacific. I've been desiring a warm island paradise for awhile now. Everything is contained and if you're close enough to the ocean, then you have no one to argue with, I think. You see, life has been up and down. I can't believe how strong the wind has to be to knock me off of my feet. I wonder if the weight of substances helps. I wonder if the muscle-building keeps me grounded. Sometimes it seems futile and I want to disappear down to the skinny artist I am. But that's only sometimes. I'm strong. You said my grip was claustrophobic and then addictive, and in my better moods I felt the same about you. Hank said he woke up and found he wasn't as emotionally available as he had thought he was the night before. My brother turned to me and said, "you like that little speech uh? Sounds like you." I identified with it, yes. Another hundred thousand assholes probably nodded as well. That's a conservative estimate and I'm a conservative optimist. Shoot for the sky with a strong sense of worry. The past carried a heavy stick. The black and blue bruises from unfelt drunken escapades are the least of our worries. It's the ones that happened because we impulsively chose them. It's the ones that happened outside of our control that make us sick with fear. It's that unseen force that scares the behavior. It's that thing we call karma or conscience. It's that limiting element that contrives the intentions. It's the bondage that must be broken if we are to have one moment of real freedom. I saw you in a dream, then I saw you on the train, and now you're not youthful, and neither am I. I wrote that based on a message sent from the future. If you're quiet enough, you can grab fragments from anywhere in time-eternal like they're fireflies. I just realized that.

So beautiful you should burst. Your skin and the rest of the fruit. Your resume reads like a desire. On a bright screen I finger you. On a light wind we sail. Crisp white bed sheets, saltwater curled hair, and time. Cast me in your latest video, shine like a sunset. There we burn. Then we take our turns. Here we come together.

You said I'm like a train.

You said time's like a river.

You said love's like confetti.

I swallowed your sharp breath. We created stew. A bed of human fluids. A mental collapse. An emotional ballooon. A waterfall too soon. Collide like two asteroids. Spell like two bees. Smell like a pissed bed and come again. Move forward through space and our story creates itself while scratched in blood on faraway cave walls. I'm waterboarded. I'm revealing truth. The misinformation suits. I reach out. I'm going to realize you. There we are again, a glimpse. There we are again, a forever. A basket on a bicyclye, you ride, and I fly. You try and I sigh.  Wake up to a face. A snapshot of skin. You are otherworldly. I am up early. We are inconsistent. We are a shadow with a moving sun. I chase girls like you. You move oblivious. A screen page like a fantasy. A conglomerate of perfection. A trivial list of accomplishments. A contrived projected self. A digital image. A beauty reliant on electricity. A scar. A human hole. A band complete with crashing cymbals and snapping snare drums. I chose you. I chose this life. I went through women like files. We've met.

An Escalator and A Slide; Side to Side

Ze thing about Neverland is that you don't age; but, do get fat. I've been there. I've drank the wine and sampled the fruits many times over. All the while my stomach expanding into a soft pile of subcutaneous bloat. It must have grown while I slept. It wasn't a noticeable progression. It came more like a heavy delivery. A growing mass first noticeable when I'd sit down and feel the rolls accumulate over themselves. Like a nightlife pregnancy. Each pound carrying an equal weight in unadulterated fun. A currency exchange of sorts. It was easy to dismiss due to the proper ingested amounts of mind-altering medications. It was easy to forget because I'd stopped looking inwardly. It was easy. My own image externally validated in exchange for the purchase of flat-lined personal growth. Anaesthetically stunted in Neverland, I was living in a cloud of smoke and it was a dense smoke, but it was still gaseous and easy to perforate. Only, no one cared to wave it away. Everyone was either getting vicariously high off of the publicized fumes or they didn't give half a shit. 

I dared. I crept out. I stopped, dropped, and rolled, and felt better and bitter for my escape. I missed the wildfire like a boring marshmallow without flame. An erotic stimulation of an ego turned on and off like a light switch. My own free will choosing the latter. Holding out for as long as I can or could until the next time. Content in isolation until I went mad again. It's a cycle and I'm a rifle. The next time you see me, my eyes will be scorched black by the sun. Then winter will cool me down and I'll dance-step back inside of the electric caverns. The first thing I'll notice are the filthy gum-stained sidewalks covered with herds of naked female legs. The next will be the uncertainty. Followed by the breath of adrenaline that comes with walking into the ego's Eden. I won't tell you what happens there. I won't fool you. I won't seduce you. I'll continue on as though it would be impossible to describe.

Then there will be the pristine nature of time immemorial reflecting core energy. A pure light. Isn't that reassuring? Isn't that justifiable? Isn't this a journey with a fixed end, but no map, no distance, and no idea to what sort of design the amusement park waiting at the "end" styles itself? 

The hell of Dedalus's preacher lives on this Earth as one of many existences. He can't scare me. The piles of corpses sitting in the bottom of a third-world morgue are now. They wait subserviently and rot indifferent to some of the world's paradise. What could have been. Scarcity and lack and one or two souls from better distributed areas wave their arms in consternation like I did as a boy jumping off of the couch trying to fly. They bravely begin at the beginning. With heart's seeking a human equilibrium of advantage over scarcity. I admire you for taking on the world one frame at a time. You courageous ones, you can gently shake the world. Through my cynicism there is an untouched optimism that lives eternal and roots for the evolution of higher consciousness.

Bend and return. Waver and grow stronger. Embracing confusion is the sexiest way to live. I guess that was my point.

The Sky Has Been Avoiding Me

Where to begin is the same place to end. The sky has no fine line. It only reflects brighter seas from sharper suns. It's a running joke that if a conversation has to do with anywhere, I've probably had a related job.

It's a running rejection until success intervenes.

It's a fleeing heart until a faster and more beautiful ticker catches up and ties it down.

It's a dashing soul that has no home.

I found you at the bottom of a well. Treat me like a symphony. Wonderful that you care. Freak out like an ego. Dance like Tokyo. Put on the bowler hat, make a funny face, and swing an imaginary Charlie Chaplin Cane while speaking like the Dickens. One lemonade stand that keeps me fed. One drunken tight-rope walk with fate. One contraction after labor pains. A mad scientist with a calm vision before the storm. Speak to me devil. I've listened and I've lied. You take advantage of my honesty. A sweating body. A moving mind. A shifting tide. A ride. A drive.

Mass Accumulate

One day we'll read about the past, sit back, relax, and laugh. You'll shrug and I'll smile, and we'll freeze ourselves to come back together again hundreds of years in the future. After we defrost, I'll mention the times we thought about the past and you'll laugh and we'll go down the same lane again in our virtually programmed minds. The sun will set in the sky, on the dot, as a slave. Controlled like Gulliver and made to function for the purpose of tiny creatures with larger desires. We'll simulate a cafe and drink elixirs together that double as social tools, like cigarettes once were, like coffee once was, and we'll push buttons to smile and other ones to connect simultaneously. I'll spread a blanket on the beach and we'll hide underneath sheets, like we did when we were kids, imagining other universes. Yesterday, we sat without a towel on the grass and watched the humans live. They played and played in funny ways and that little kid's laughter was contagious as he rolled down the path riding with his brother on top of a skateboard. You were right, we were lucky to be there at that moment. "This park is in really bad shape, but I still feel grateful to be here right now." you said and I felt the same way. This was where people chose to spend their free day, together with food and kids and footballs and playgrounds and poorly maintained rolling hills of grass. We were lucky to be there. On a quiet star, too quiet for this planet, all sound is created and muted. There are no echoes, only us. We talk and the moments are alive. We stop and the past has died. Everything exists as it does only in the moments together. We could function this way if we wanted. But I'm so imperfect, I'm so defensively conditioned. I'm so enslaved to previous experiences. Just watch me. Just listen to the shit I say. Never transcending the things I had no control over. Personalizing the stimulus. Always reacting to the outer content and pushing away the spaciousness. Deep breathing and release. We are mass accumulations of everything we've felt and seen. I can see it in her well-trained body language and studied responses. Only there to help, assigned to help, for the world itself feels no pity. The world itself is not an easy illusion but a traffic jam of individual and separate realities, colliding and competing for control of an otherwise blank canvas. I fall short. I survive. I grow. I achieve. I move forward. I surpass. I hate. I deny. I stumble. I fool myself. I shatter. I think. I dream. I contradict. I concede. I overwhelm. I fall. I love. I do. Somewhere through the endless uncertainties and false walls of the mal-contrived, mal-informed, mal-prepared, chaotic mind, the true I, wriggles free and in the best of moments loves. Isn't that how you're supposed to end these things?

To You.

You'll make it through

You're too stubborn not too

You'll find you're stronger

Than you ever would've guessed

You'll take you're power

and fight like a brave

You'll take your freedom

And wear it like a coat of arms

You'll hold yourself like a champ

And true love will call you friend

You'll confront the pain

Because it fears you.

You

A fierce light

A brightness so sharp 

You'll cut through mountains.

I believe in your greatness

I'm here for you. 

Hideous actions. This world is hideous sometimes. The washed-over western comforts flash all the more sudden and shocking when pain slices across present frames. The world is largely indifferent. People die and receive parking tickets. Tragedies become spoiled dinner reservations. Billboards advertise to starving souls.

Here I am, trying, grasping, clinging, to a desperate hope with no name. But I've seen it in her face. I've felt it walking home. I've found it, abandoned in nature, wrapping it's arms around my form. I've lost it so many times. Just like Peter's shadow. The best that we are, runs away. The oceanic pulse flat-lines. 

Clear.

Life contains suffering. Everything is cultivated in it's sickly soil. When the flowers bloom they illuminate impermanently, breathe them in as long as you can, before they fall victim to an entropic atmosphere. A golden rule toward decay. Fight and fight, surrender and surrender, someone hear me.  

All I want to do is find a mechanic for the past. Machinations grinding and halting and sputtering agonizingly. All the while this rage sits on a low boil, scalding, chained onto the ground until the fighting creature let's itself loose or dies trying. I hate the apathy I was and I hate the useless occurrences of harm. I detest the illness of man.

Fortuna's Wrecking Ball

Guarded faith that there are eyes and minds that do not crave information in forty words or less. This is me; Flower pots dripping down walls, vines crawling along ceilings, and voices repeating the same conversations on a loop.

Personal weight and desire is the infinite variable.