all dogs go to heaven

the summer was rolling me up and down the skatepark and into the barrio singing songs of dilapidated front porches, rickety door handles and mexican radio. living in those stubborn venice blocks and alleyways was the insular feeling of a neighborhood giving everything it had to steer away the cunning eye of gentrification, a foul stare here, music too loud there, and a worn-out food truck selling produce in the middle of the streets every afternoon.

the crooked energy made the insanity a little bit less to bear but nighttimes were scary and disorganized and there'd be greasy bags of food in my hands or resting on pillows next to me in the mornings like lovers of welcomes overstayed. and sometimes there were motels and state parks, movie theatres and backseats, strangers and friends, and i was lazy and hurt and smoking too much weed and drinking more than i should have been drinking. to redeem myself, i wanted to write something spectacularly honest and truthful, instead, my efforts materialized into one-hundred pages of trivial dialogue that meant something to me and nothing to the world and i was out of money and drifting back into the suburbs, somehow sitting on old baseball fields of little league games past. this time, no uniform, only a guitar in hands and hurt in heart and this mind that wouldn't stop racing with all the probabilities and events that had gone away. and i'd get struck by these large swelling waves of adrenaline and wanted to act, but all around me there wasn't anything to change or alter because i'd been pushed away from the sea, and i was swimming in pools of faceless tract developments and air conditioned coffee beans, worlds away from my tortilla neighborhood, wondering if i'd ever get back.

and, but, i was rescued.

i didn't recognize it right away but there i was, surrounded by family and specifically by my sister Rebecca. she gave me a living room, an air mattress and a quiet unconditional approval that asked nothing of me but gave so much.

she also made the most heartening bowl of chili i'd ever tasted, whether after a workout, waking up, or any time, i'd sit in the claustrophobic august/september heat and eat this warm chilli, and it was resuscitating something, somewhere. and months earlier, i'd been struck by this feeling of incredible isolation, but there in that apartment, with Bec and her chilli and her slight indifference but absolute confidence in me, i was nourished again. and there was also Charlotte or Char Char, already near fourteen-years-old and with a tumor the size of a baseball on her stomach, her auburn hair receding on her back, Charlotte would sit by the door waiting for Bec to return from work and she'd stare at me, her little tongue out in the most obvious dog smile i've ever seen, watching intently and encouragingly as i attempted to clumsily locate my soul on the strings of my eastman acoustic. and it helped, it helped, it helped, there in that apartment was a loyalty and friendship and laughter that helped me come alive. and when i drove away a couple months later, back to my same neighborhood, i could feel the world and i cried. no man steps in the same river twice and if he feels like a better one upon his return it's often because another person, in my case a person and her sidekick, cared enough about him to let him heal and it's the most illuminating feeling to experience and the river becomes that much more beautiful. and i'm not sure if i've ever clarified how much that time and all the times we've had together have meant to me, and i don't know if i can accurately express them properly, but Rebecca if you read this, thank you, i love you. and Charlotte, last night you were put to rest, and our hearts are heavy, we miss you. the amount of brilliance you gave the world from your tiny Pomeranian frame has changed our lives, the lessons learned from you are undeniably good, you Charlotte, were, and always will be, undeniably good. and somewhere (in my mind or wherever eternal) you are on your furry back, happy, a foot rolling your belly back and forth in gentle motion.

time is a lake

so you and i skated a canoe across it's liquid plane and on this seemingly finite surface floated infinitely, arranging ourselves, four arms rowing through space where, after a sweet paddling distance, an incredible stillness emerged.

one orange sunset lowering behind waves of green trees.

nurturing silence, drifting in gentle unison, voices unfolding, discovering again and again the prizes of space and time.

and the day expanded, contracted and slept and we stayed awake and talked and you told me to look upward and i was dazzled. the stars, they blanketed our minds.

i've never seen such a brilliant arrangement of existence, you shimmered like a planet before me, i know you and you me and we explore, an adventure, we explore. our conversation danced through centuries and mingled into tangled histories and arrived in the present and found itself in love, everything we did together seemed to write love, love, love.

a picnic with the universe, four legs, hands, climbing to the middle of our vessel, pairs of knees to metal, lips meeting, the shooting stars whistled, mosquitoes crooned like a mariachi band, and our breathing whispering music. beneath us was depth, above us possibility, in human form, this ship buoyant by gravity and alive, so intensely alive with communicating souls and listening hearts.

the warm lights of the dock gesturing toward friendly earthly existence, our eyes in the same direction, imaginations bounding, romance existing under those stars, we're always under those stars, i'm grateful we're under those stars, you sleeping in my arms.

string

if you stare out the window, any window, and let the focus drift from your eyes, there are only colors, shades, and shapes blending, competing, perfecting. nights ago i found the 3:30-4 am terror that accompanies such a hollow half-hour, and nearby mornings i'm waking up with drunken butterflies in my stomach. from wasted eves prior or uncertain days to come, in those starkest moments, there is only the wooden table and a heavy feeling encouraged by the mind, so proud of itself for handling the futility, rolling misery along the tops of it's fingers like that trick with the half-dollar. it begins on skin, sinks into space, rises, shows it's face, heads, tails, falls along the wrinkly bumps travelling to the end, only to begin again. and that's a skillful act to pass the time, but it's neglecting the colors and fuck sight, i'm not talking about sight anymore, the colors and shades and shapes in our blood all ebbing and flowing like the union of two cells or rivers of invisible waves pouring crushing along existence like an eternal flood over a once dry creek bed.

the universe constellates steampunk art in abstract hingeless particle based formations of unison out there in the black

its friday and pink and the neighborhood dogs yell, children talk, parents scream, skateboards crack and land and scuttle. there was a moment when i likened falling in love to chasing the dragon, then i encountered someone who slammed my expectations and smashed my ceiling and revealed the sky, sun, stars, moon, and there are clusters of other cosmic shit beyond our eyes that make our souls feel even more at home, i know it because i feel strong bunches of it intertwined with this girl, woman, i love.

imagine me blue

there was a day at a lake. i walked out on the dock, put my toes at the edge. and realized. if i jumped in and went for a swim, i'd never touch land again.

there was a line that i cut to the front. cuz i realized. if i didn't cut that line, i'd never go anywhere at all.

there was a vault. with the most complex combination i've ever seen. and i was a master thief. so i set down all my tools and went to work. first there were sparks. next the sound of metal on metal. then there were human moans! during i heard the futile weather report. which had no bearing on the clouds above my head. AND CLICK

I walked inside. and sure enough. there was something beautiful to hide. everything beautiful, is on the inside.

find you awake

nights ago, delirious, everything flashed in psychic trials of truth. i kept the window open for the cool air on my sheets, like my father, if only i could've been collected like him. there instead, a vacuum of hopelessness, sometimes the carrot rots and everything a human being is working toward disappears. sometimes purpose is relative to courage and belief in an elusive unknown. sometimes while things are shifting, the best job is to endure. trusting time, the most uncertain element, also salvation. i write this on the floor. humbled and beginning, returned, like claws on a jungle cat.

when the robots default

because they're making em smaller than mosquitoes. dancing on raindrops, they dance on raindrops. i give you the news story, you translate it into poetic motion. i think we do that like those two kids in the movie.

charlie kaufman

"but more importantly if you’re honest about who you are you’ll help that person be less lonely in their world because that person will recognise him or herself in you and that will give them hope."

typing

life, the one you know. it doesn't return. and so the unrecognizable can be scary for awhile. there embedded in circumstances, people, these precious precious sand dripping do something with yourself modes of existence, are the same insecurities, superficial wounds, skin, sensitive skin and chemical hopes of fill in the blank transcendent chunk, active chunk. standing on kingdoms of plastic, eyes in glare, relief at the bottoms of tumblers small, tumblers large, tumbling down hills like rolling stones for three day weekends or mandated grace periods, returning the same and changed.

a black kid's hands sliding along the neck of his left-handed guitar at an open-mic night. a mother limping down the sidewalk, eyes wrinkled in laughter because she can't help it, because it's funny. it's funny talking shit to your best friend on the phone in fragments of unspeakable drivel and dementia because somewhere along the way you both understood that there'd be no need for the middle part. and you clamor, silently or by open mouthed design, clamor, the pots and pans bang loud banging loud for someone to wake up in the middle of the night and understand the urges that tear at your insides for escape in form however abstract.

two strangers meet, say hello, fall in love, say goodbye, become strangers again. and all the wonders they made together, glow for all to see, twinkle in nursery rhymes, spin earth, spin, please keep spinning for the rest of us, we're not finished, we don't know why but we're not finished. i can use my hands, never mind complacency, lack of dramatic motion, my hands will tell you the truth, they'll press and grip and pray in reverence to the physical world, slip through the curtain, grant access to that electric field, it's terrible god, the velocity and strength of the indifferent current, interconnected golden spiderweb lightning singular energy ever-surging invisibly composing and vigorously regulating our existence, it's terrible and i'll channel it with my hands and construct something in dazzling likeness and express compassion and bring eyes to a close, opening them again.

you said the silence was louder tonight. i grabbed you close to me, kissed your mouth with the hunger of wanting to live, kept kissing you, everywhere, until you shook those series of shakes which communicate two souls and light up our brains. and kept kissing you. the victory over death is expressed by shared lips, perpetuates itself through inexplicably connected understanding hearts, shared by touch, texture, gratitude, in this physical realm, trusting in the magnetism that brings two people incredibly close despite themselves, knowledge, concern, trust in the undeniable evidence of wanting you, wanting to be together. creating something intensely moving in presence. painting, sleeping, waking, together. i want to write you a fireworks show, let it dream like the smokey aftermath, then reveal the night sky as a magician pulling the table cloth in one flurry to the amazement and wonderful arrangement of what's already there and eternally will be there, change black pocket of the universe and bring new suns, murder stars, entangle constellations, the universe will sort itself out in one great act of love. i know this to be true.

5

i drove the freeways rising and falling in love with the moment. the rollercoaster moving along and it's a large world after all, complete with wonders unexpected. the sky powder blue brown, cars jockeying for position, gas prices elevating and a feeling i'd never experienced as an adult.