Falling/Getting Up; First Steps

Great God and spilled soda cans scattered conversing on the gravel; silly toes bleeding grapevine story lines unrested and tortured in winter socks. Listen:

I stare out my window at the withered world aggravated and gray watching the Painter as he fills in the finest details only to scratch them out and smear them over. On one side of the high wire the forest crawls with life; on the other side the desert frowns faint and flaccid. After your first fall for life you wake up cold and sweaty, frantic and drunk on the dreariest dream's spell. I swear the door opened itself; all the colors came to life one at a time, each singing and dancing to his own tune. Just the night before a lost boy laid crying in my bed. Now he stands tall picking flowers in the clouds. Like some great comet hitting our frail home, everything can be vanquished in an instant; but everything, everything can be found in a tiny hole that a youngster digs in the backyard.

Sterile

By the sea, the wayward sea; blown by the breeze, the salty stifling breeze, through ashland trees over sterile concrete ring the coastline's gripping whisper tapping gently on lowly shoulders and grazing dangling knees of rotten boys staring out at the wondering blue. A peek of sunlight grazes the afternoon, a hush in the clouds, the tickle of automobiles speeding through winding canyon roads, squealing gulls and the gargle of saltwater, that damning grumble of a highway packed too tight on the long ride home; all twisting through and eating away at the innards of scowling boys with soft faces and long hair flowing in the gentle waft. See it in his eyes bent and twisted, some unsatisfied growl of the blurry nights and breezy empty mornings. Gazing out towards the fairest faintest blue, some imaginary color endlessly far off, that hue that exists only between the horizon and the ocean’s end. A stiff telling stare back that says I ruined everything; but California ruined me.

On Crashing

God, Man, none of this is real. It's just little girls scribbling Crayola on the walls. The ripples on the lake tearing through trembling reflections of a militia of lost boys just like you; a hundred thousand runaways stare back in the tide at you standing alone on the rocks with your faltering flask, a weapon that seems to work a little bit less every time the sky falls or the city burns to ashes. Maybe it's time to put away that dark cringing heart and let your lips melt down your face to mingle with the soil. I see a thousand fire flies beneath your skin bursting like popcorn over an open camp fire in the eyes of that same little girl, gripping her crayon and jabbing it through your stomach neat and clean like those military runaways with their bayonets in history text books we ignored when we were younger. Whether you drown in this moment and that flask or just drift off the meddling fumes towards the moon's light, you'll find few things faint and distressed as your fragile body can hang around for very long. So you'll drop towards the waters or bob straight to the top, but your famous first breathes will be as beautiful and boisterous as history texts burning in that camp fire and the wind guiding the smoky remains of all good and bad of recorded mankind to the same murky moon light or scaley lake bottom that you sought on that night on the rocks with that old flask when you tried to give up and awoke the next morning drenched on the rocks by the lake, cold and alone and alive for the first and last time.

Faith is For Flowers

God isn't listening, but kitty's
foot prints paint the horizon;
leaping around the sunset
sky strokes of green and purple.
Pause and breathe in deep
that hazy valley smirk. An air
so polluted it rests golden on
any tongue brave enough to
lick. This is the gilded age;
We are the chosen people.
Kitty laughs and leaps through
the mash potato sky that
stares down on me so grim.
A white teeth of cloud devour
kitty and suddenly there is no
artist, no God, no eternity.
I'll put my faith in anything;
I'm just an old dog who
can't learn any new tricks.
I bear down on all fours
and wag my tail in the sunset
as I drift off again, lost pup.

Half Awake

Sure. Imaginary, ordinary, inbetween.
Sure. Just right. The days wink by
like the twinkle of stars haunting
each passing night, passing week,
steadily passing life; a life that
suddenly seems more real, more
precious, more sudden, more
stout, more important, more,
more, so much more. Life. Sure.

The black sky seems so empty,
so distant, so vast and vacant;
but suddenly so heavy, too much
for one man to shoulder night
after night. The days seem so
much shorter, twelve months
isn't enough; let alone four
weeks or seven days or
twenty four hours or
sixty seconds. Always more.

Sure. It seemed so easy, so
little effort to watch it all
fade past; crossing out days
on a calender, setting alarms,
daylight saving switch twice
a year, and on and so forth.
Routine. Sure. But it's crushing
me now; everything I try to tenderly
grasp suddenly too much to swallow.

The sun goes down and up and
down again; resting and starting
and stopping and pitterpattering
like a slow heart or footsteps or a
child humming a tune. The nights feel
painstakingly short and the days
march on endlessly. The sun
and the moon become one and
bleed into each other across the sky.

Black becomes blue and down
becomes up. Flowers frown
in the summer snow while
the winter heat wave welts
the front lawn. My murky
reflection in a puddle stares
off to the side impatiently. As if
days meant so much more. Sure.

The Awful Rowing Toward God

Oh, who am I kidding?
I've been there too;
in the garage, the engine running.
Oh, I've been there too.

And I've been there on the hill,
in the chair at 8 AM. Dancing
in a circle, oh, la la la.
Oh, I've been there too.

I've watched the dark moving
in the corner. The lights turned
out. Asking, which way is
home, Mister?

I've breathed in intense, those
fumes of life. Listened for the
music swimming back to me.
No signs to tell the way.

I fingered the keys debating.
I locked the door. The song
remembers better than I do.
The motor growling louder than the music.

And I was not afraid. The music
came back to me; but life
continued to escape as each deep
breathe felt more alive.

There were no signs to tell
the way. So I just sat there, my
grip on the steering wheel slowly
relenting with each deep breath.

So I danced in a circle. Locked in
the chair at 8 AM. In the garage,
the engine running. Kidding no one.
Oh, I've been there too.