the days turn and somehow life brings us together grateful

a fallen buddha beneath a little tree. three million caribou cross the arctic. a young girl so careless with her time. i walk face first into spiderwebs of my own design. get all tangled up, silk thread across my mind. and you and i were you and i again, sitting across from one another at a strange memory cafe and empty indian restaurant. now in our late twenties, yes. you wore a hat, i had the same shirt on that i always did. conversation always alive, we've always been able to share the world. i walked around today, knowing you are my best friend. we've beaten each other up, made love vigorously, cried on steep hills, laughed like maniacs under full moons, moved together with bounding love, on islands and off, brought it to land, earth, water, the big blue is huge, mediterranean alive, a couple of kids grown up in different saltwater, united by warm blood, it's all the same, it's all the same my dear friend. you've made my days meaningful.

a work of fiction

the night before you left, your disease warned me. it smiled in my face like a devil. your body limp; you were submerged somewhere far down below, drowned. "i'm going to continuously disappoint you." you said. i disagreed, i fought, tried blowing it away in a hurricane of my love. i felt your racing heart on the kitchen floor, blanketed you in care, kept showing you the waves.

those were tears in your eyes when we said goodbye the next day. i got to work and cried.

that kid who follows you around, dresses you in splendor, he's not your best friend, he's a blind eye. you'll find plenty of those, swirling like helicopters around your image, willing to look away for the shine. but friend? right now, the disease is your best friend. i hope you ditch it for good. i wish you luck, i wish you love. i'd do anything if it would make a difference, but distance was the demon's best friend.

santa monica

she had this worldly accent and a voice different from any i'd ever heard and she knew how to push through a lot of the bullshit.

do you know what scares me about you?

huh?

it's that you're not afraid to be miserable.

which might've been true. it's tough to tell, because i've been feeling feeling feeling ever since.

graham greene

"he couldn't tell that this was one of those occasions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined--the taste of gin at mid-day, the smell of flowers under a balcony, the clang of corrugated iron, an ugly bird flopping from perch to perch."

proper bonsai care

life is what happens when we're falling in love. proper sunlight, plenty of water, never let the soil become dry. always admire once a day, a good one can last over 150 years. a good love can go forever. i believe in love, which is strange, because i'm more confused by myself and earth than i can remember. we've landed on mars, our planet is a bunch of gravity, you don't start shaping the tree for at least a few years. and when the weather dips below 40 farenheit, the organism must go outside for warmth. i get the feeling that time is still and we move across, creating the distinctions and writing stories linear, stories quantam. the thing about this tree; you can talk to it like a monk, give it all the attention in the world, kiss it goodnight, but it has to thrive on it's own, so do i, so do you. we share this time together, make it what we may, wonderful, fascinating, and as harmony accords, this tree will gift itself in agonizingly beautiful formations, provided by sunlight, care, freedom to grow.

capo 2

sometimes i feel i'm on a train
of which i have no control
holding on with everything
when i just want to let go

it's everything, it's everything.
it's everything, it's everything.

this isn't an exercise
more like the real thing
it's not some final prize
it's everything

you said move along
or you'll get run over by the wake
you still believe life is long
but we should not hesitate

sometimes i think i'm on a ship
far out to sea
it's going down real fast
and i'm letting go of everything.

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.