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.