(unknown artist)

Alone.

Here I die and live, in a makebelieve shift
Windy noises scrape the walls,
Beasts of yesterday come crawling on the floors
Into my sanctuary
The ground is opened - throw him in
Do not allow the sunlight through to his
Blue white face, crazy leering at everybody
Crows clustering overhead
In the trees
In the trees

With every rose thrown on upturned soil
Well-wishers voice their moment
Less haunted by death than sick to their skin of memories
Some tip back flasks instinctively
Fingers colder than the body hushed away
Disgraced, what the young preacher had to say
Was lost among the chattered voices
Some say the trees themselves made the noises
Whispered in his ear
Whispered so he could hear

Here I sit and here I pray, in a makebelieve way.
Desert nomads took my mind and vanished,
Nothing is like anything before you or since
I cannot see you in that tree, your threats blocked up my ears with mud
I cannot get myself to grieve for you this time.
The yellow sky compromises,
It shows me ways back home down crooked paths
But never leaves my past behind me
No
No...

So off do you fly with a rush to heights
Careen over belltowers lost between being and fading
Between dark and light, ...now look at your eyes
Blue turned to grey in the slip of an instant
Hanging trees cherry pick boys like you
Who show an interest in mechanical devices,
Who think too long about biological things,
There is no language here, just the humming of the
Great sand seas and metal waste that you wander over
It's nothing like yesterday.
There is no calm upon in this place, to interrupt the
Cold, cold air, or make you feel fine again
Or keep you wrapped in a golden silence.
You're stripped and gutted up with eyes clamped open
Even the walls and the celing of the sky are grey
A shaky sky endlessly raining
The cold gets in your ears and throat
It hurts to open your mouth
You cannot cry out anything now,
You can't even remember faces...
As your fingers fade
As your body fades
Alone.

Northern Lights.

Thank you.

I just want to thank my mom, my sister, and my brother-in-law for always being for there for me when I hit the skids. You three, most of all, are lifesavers! I don't know what I'd do without you and I appreciate you more than you know. This isn't a slight at anyone else, just wanted to thank you three in particular. I love you all.

Sheol.

Have you ever been too scared to moved? Your heart completely stops, your breathing gets shallow, you feel a sickening tingle shoot up your spine and your stomach feels hollow and sick?

Ever felt that unimaginably cold, visceral presence with you in the middle of the night? The one you wouldn't turn to look at if someone paid you a thousand dollars?

What about the sudden rush of fear as you leave a dark, empty place, the one that makes however fast you run out of there not fast enough? The dizzying fear of pursuit by something Wrong?

Ever felt that way for an entire day?

Come to Me.
(Björk)

Come to me,
I'll take care of you.
Protect you,
Calm, calm down.
You're exhausted,
Come lay down.
You don't have to explain,
I understand.

You know
That I adore you!
You know
That I love you!
So don't make me say it...
It would burst the bubble,
Break the charm.

Jump off,
Your building's on fire.
I'll catch you,
Destroy all that is keeping you down.
And then I'll nurse you.
Come to me,
I'll take care of you.
You don't have to explain,
I understand.

all cats are grey.
(robert smith)

i never thought that i would find myself
in bed amongst the stones
the columns are all men
begging to crush me
no shapes sail on the dark deep lakes
and no flags wave me home
in the caves
all cats are grey
in the caves
the textures coat my skin
in the death cell
a single note
rings on and on and on...

Something that's been bugging me for awhile now.

Why are dimes so small? Shouldn't they be between quarters and nickels in size? That way when you scrounge for change and have it all sorted in your hand for the guy at the gas station, he doesn't get confused (and thus angered) by the fact that size-sort order is not the same as value-sort order.

This has bugged me since I was little. Probably even earlier than that.

Silver money.

For you, in your spirit, I spend my time searching
For silver money, rejecting the spirits of copper and zinc
And the cotton paper that is nowhere to be seen drives
Me to the brink of cover;
For you, I've got some Canadian money by mistake
An organized, tidy life and a heart that doesn't want to break
A new start first-chance sprint to the finish line of a
Race that's never over;
And would you ever consider a brown-haired boy who'd
Move mountains just to win you over?
The choice is easier and harder than you think,
You just have one lifetime to mull it over.

Cloud Watching.

I spend my days dreaming
under towering skies
and sometimes,

a pile of puffy clouds will drift by.

Nothing seems safe anymore
if you listen to some people,
the air is full of pollutants and the sun
is trying to kill you with its light

But above me I just see a little white cloud,
watching.

N&J.

Look at all the lovers walking hand in hand
Isn't it grand!
Isn't it sad...

All the sweet young shoots get had
By the swaggering dogs with sod on their boots.

Except you. Except you.
We could make a twosome wholesome and winsome
And then some

Look at all the players on the board
Moving pieces,
Peacefully bored

Except me. Except you.
Except you.

For someone special.

I want to take care of you, make sure nobody hurts you. Be strong for you when everyone else deserts you. Give you the chance to be your own woman in this world. Without getting too cold, without feeling alone. I don't really like going out. But I will for you, if you want to be with friends, if you want to see things that start and end inside concrete and steel. Those things are real, too. But with my camera eyes and your flashing smile and the miles behind us, you no less than me, we could steal through the forests like choruses of hymns penned by the Brothers Grimm, in Carpathian splendor your laughter tugs at me behind you, outlines you. I am within.

I want to be your man, like nobody has or would ever again if I were gone and there was some other plan that had to be shown. On movie theatre screens love looms larger than life but so do the villains and decisions are made every moment inside the cells of our minds like penicillin - I want to be there for you when nobody else gives a damn, whether God has a plan for us or no, I want loyalty and love to be written on my tombstone or on my bones when I go. I want to be taken for granted, loved, never let go. The things I still have in store inside my chest are the best yet to come. I want to save them for you. Always, only, for you.

The Choice.

You can surround yourself with ugly cans, burnt-out
flatlined craziness. Old cars, cigarette smoke,
and roads to nowhere.

Or you can find orange maple leaves hanging from
a silver sky. Ripe berries, fields of sunflowers bent to hear
the charming whispers of streams.

One is there for the taking. You needn't do anything at all.
The other you have to walk out on your own to find.

"Silence is the language of God."

-Swami Sivananda

"As the wise test the purity of gold by burning, cutting and examining it by means of a piece of touchstone, so should you accept my words after examining them and not merely out of regard and reverence for me."

-Siddhartha Gautama

Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Riverentum.

We were called to the forest,
and we went down.
A wind blew warm and eloquent.

We were searching for the secrets of the universe
And we rounded up demons and forced them
to tell us what it all meant.

We tied them to trees,
and broke them down, one by one.
On a scrap of paper they wrote these words:

And as we read them, the sun broke
through the trees.

"Dread the passage of Jesus, for he will not return."

Then we headed back to our world,
and left the forest behind,
our hearts singing with all the knowledge of love.

But somewhere, somehow, we lost the message,
along the way.
And when we got home, we bought ourselves a house.

And we bought a car that we did not use.
And we bought a cage, and two singing birds.
And at night we'd sit and listen to the canary song.

For we'd both run right out of words.

Now the stars they are all angled wrong,
and the sun and the moon refuse to burn.

But I remember a message,
in a demon's hand.

"Dread the passage of Jesus, for he does not return."

-Nick Cave

The Same Deep Water As You.

kiss me goodbye
pushing out before i sleep
can't you see i try?
swimming the same deep water as you is hard
the shallow drowned lose less than we
you breathe
the strangest twist upon your lip
kiss me goodbye
bow your head and join with me
and face pushed deep
reflections meet
the strangest twist upon your lips
and disappear
the ripples clear
and laughing
break against your feet
and laughing
break the mirror sweet
so we shall be together
pushing out before i sleep
it's lower now and slower now
the strangest twist upon your lips
but i don't see
and i don't feel
but tightly hold up silently
my hands before my fading eyes
and in my eyes, your smile.
the very last thing before i go
the very last thing before i go
the very last thing before i go...

....i will kiss you
i will kiss you forever
and ever on a night like this
i will kiss you

and we shall be together.

-Robert Smith

Original painting by François Boucher

Untitled.

We are flames that pour out of the earth
I can almost feel the cold water of that lake
Lapping against my toes
Out of some ancient fissue I came
Rode a yellow steed into a hail of arrows
The arrows were my hundred doubts
The horse was old and spare
And when the happy pills don't work anymore
I'll probably leave the same way I came
To meet Vulcan, god forger of mortal men
Asleep inside his den of flames.

Untitled.

I'm afraid of the sky
It's so big
There is so much empty blue for all my empty dreams to fill in
At night it turns into nothing, but there
Are pinhole lights, uncountable
They make shapes I don't like and never did
I'm afraid of the sky
I have always turned my face to the warm earth
Where things grow and there is no
Prospect of endless forevers.

Yes, I can be hurt.

It hurts me to hear people say rude, untrue things.
Accuse me of arrogance. Accuse me of elitism.
I can't control other people, I only do the best I can
For myself, given what I have been born with.
It hurts me, to have others tear me down
Like I have no feelings.
Like I am somehow inhuman.
I do have feelings
So strong,
So deep.
I am only trying to make the best
With what I was given.
I never mean anyone harm or
To judge them in a way
To make them attack me back.
What I say is what it right for me and that is all.
I'm not preaching to anyone.
If people feel inadequate they should address that
Within themselves,
Like I address my failings within myself.
I am no better than you,
Maybe just more honest.
Maybe it hurts others when someone is honest
And it causes fear.
I can't be responsible for that,
But I do have feelings,
Deep feelings,
And it hurts when people are cruel
Spend so much energy to tear me down
Without even a helpful point to make.

King of Tyre.

Untitled.

At all hours of the night
I can feel some beautiful spirit move through me like a desert wind
Because I like to feel dry, and tight, every pore closed up and
My skin like a suit that fits perfectly
And my hair feels thick in my fingers, just like a young man's should
We piled pillows or built tent fortresses against the wind
Or at least I did
I brought at least ten time as many comic books in
As I'd ever have time to read, and my eyes
Were looking for cracks in a vase not yet built
But my mind was in the stars, in the moving stars
I built tent fortresses against the rain
Where cats would scratch and force their way in
It was nothing like the nitrous tents my thoughts have made
To turn myself in
Because at all hours of the night
I can feel beautiful
And a spirit moves through me that is unlike any other
Dry and tight it has the face of pharoah and the breath of god
Wherever you are.

Peace to all.

Grow your hair as long as you can, never stop
Because you'll never find another like me
He may look like me or have a degree in English
And the silken rays of planets may come sliding down
Your mind's filthy chimney
And the sun may grow until it explodes
But we're only little people after all
We don't really count at all
So grow your hair and let it go, as long as you can
I've never met a woman like you, so let it go
Let the beanstalk inside you grow without bound
And be the person you are meant to be
Or just be.

Losing the star without a sky.

There's a time for perfection, and it's never it. I've spent my life trying to be perfect. I thought perfection was the goal. I knew it wasn't reachable, but I thought trying to achieve the best you could possibly do in whatever you threw yourself at was the point, the noble way to live. I am now at the age of 33 finally abandoning that thought. Like Newton's clockwork universe was shown to be an exquisitely beautiful mistake, I feel like I've spent my years running in figure eights pounding the heads of gophers of irrationality and making sure my mansion of cards lined up, looked lovely from every angle, made others feel special and inferior, and that every single atom of my creation was both self- and cross-referential at the same time.

As days pile on one another, this goes from being an extraordinarily difficult feat to an impossible one. I've been reduced to writing poems and meta-commentary on the state of my writing, rather than doing original writing itself. I've forgotten how to just look. I've described the veins on leaves, the textures of pollen, but I've forgotten how to see a tree. In my quest for self-consistency I lost the artistry. I forgot what it meant to be alive and just feel.

No more. Starting now I am lurching back into the world full force, and if I make mistakes, it's ok. If I use a word wrong, I'll correct it if I catch it, otherwise I'll move on. Maybe the wrong meaning will even be the right one. I don't want to write like an English scholar anymore, I want to write like a person who breathes and sees and when he thinks, it's only to more efficiently return to those sensory delights. Senses are all anything is about, at root. Plato thought it was pure thought, as I once did. Plato may have found an end to his path, but all I have ever found is horrifying fractal hairsplitting and infinite regression leading to madness. And suicide. Always the specter of suicide.

I don't want to make this site a shrine to any single person, but I want to credit my beautiful friend Nicola for unwittingly bringing about this change in me. Her imagery and attitudes have taught me to see the world with uncynical eyes again. She writes with the broad strokes of an impressionist's brush, where I built up my constructs one scientifically-perfect pixel at a time. She once told me she didn't see the beauty in math, that it made what was simple seem complex. At first blush I disagreed with her; like Feynman, I felt I could both see beauty as a nonscientist AND at a deeper, still-beautiful level of left-brained determinism. But that is another kind of beauty which only borrows the same word. For people like Nicola there is no internal war here; the asymmetric rabble of purple flowers on a hill is beauty pure and simple, and machines, even natural ones whose detail has been explained and exposed, are not. For me I have straddled the fence my whole life. I could see both. Like a mediator who can see the validity in both sides of an argument which has polarized two people.

But I am done sitting on that fence. I have hopped off into the land of irrational beauty, never to return. I don't disbelieve science at all. But I don't care about it anymore, because it's another endless regression than leads to finer and finer explanations of nothing, and for no purpose. All it has done for humankind is to create a world of ugliness and anxiety. I want to return to the feeling I got from the fairy tales told to me as a child. There was magic back in that world, and science holds very little of that magic now at the level I understand it. But a mystifying tale, a riveting photograph, a painting whose colors touch a part of you where no one is allowed to go: this is still the unexplainable sorcery of joy at work. I want to dedicate my life to feeling the magic that I've ignored much of my life, and to creating it as best I can for others to enjoy.

I want to kill the cynic in me who has an explanation for everything and replace him with a child of big dreams who knows absolutely nothing.

Lazy bum.

Something Different.

I just want something different. I always have. Something new, strange, different, and great. If you give me the same bit of genius twice in a row, I'll kick you in the face for being the bore you are, hoping to kill that part of you. I am a simple ape. I just want something new, and something great. Appease me.

Friendship is sacred.

Close friendships are rare, and by rare, I mean they don't exist. When you are little you have lots of best friends, but they're just children like yourself who want everything they can get their hands on and give away as little as possible to get it. Where a mutually beneficial exchange presents itself, you both suspiciously agree, and then proceed to consider yourselves best friends. Except me. I sat with my hands folded in the corner of the far corner, looking down so I could see as little of the hateful world as possible, and I drew faces in the sand, and not nice ones.

When you're older, friends again are means to acquire what you normally could not get, and also to satisfy that mammallian need for comfort you unfortunately inherited from those uncouth distant ancestors. Monkeys die without love. So friendship becomes a social bond where everyone can stay biologically healthy, trade for goods and services, and feel generally ok about existing for no reason. Friends are substitutes for reason. But they all want and only give grudgingly, even the best of them. Except the very best of them. I'm tired of writing now.

Nicola.

If someone offered to engineer me the perfect woman for $1000, one who would delight and fascinate me, but also challenge and shake me from any smug complacency I might be mired in - I'd laugh a hearty laugh in his face, keep my money and spend it on a comfy reading chair and a couple rinds of brie. See, someone meeting all those descriptions already exists, and she's all the woman I could ever want and more. I want nothing else than to please her, and in the process learn new things about ourselves and each other.

Lifetimes spent together don't have to stagnate. With work, with a sense of delight, with true love and nurturing, they can blossom and take deeper root in richer soil than the most fulfilling solitary existence, and sprout up stronger and healthier than most couples will ever know. This is what I dream about, the part of me that still dreams after all these years, the part of me that won't die even in this world of metal and tears. Two lives shared as one, made happier by association than either could be alone. Nicola, I love you.

Friends are people who suck the life out of you and then send you the bill.

Most people are not mature, and immature people begrudge others their happiness. The moment you fall in love, secure a good job, or become the beneficiary of some other windfall in life, friends and relatives who were so caring when you were down can suddenly become some of the nastiest people. It really makes you question whether they cared for you when things were rough, or just enjoyed feeling superior and were thankful it wasn't them in your shoes.

The happier and healthier I get, the less people talk to me or wish me well. At least, it has moved on to become a different group. I suppose those I surrounded myself with before were the type who enjoyed taking care of people but couldn't stand to see them rise up of their own accord. As caretakers, for someone to get well threatened to render their services obsolete, and then they would either have to question the whole twisted basis of their idea of friendship, or more likely would just find new project people to make themselves feel good.

One of many bookcases. (Yes I am insane.) Click pics to
see book titles more clearly. This is my right-brained section.

To my love, with thanks.

My mind overcomes its clutter
My heart begins to flutter
When I think of her I shudder
The thought is better than butter
For in my dreams I mutter
And dream of a life together
I've seen the view from a tower
And I've languished in the gutter
I've landed myself in Sutter
Where they wrote me off as a cutter
And sent me home no better
Just one more freak or nutter
But I love you truly and stronger
And with any luck far longer
Than all those pretenders put together
Because I never want to leave you ever
Or make you feel somber
You make my ambitions stronger
I love you like the best of dreams.

Where my sweetheart is at the moment

My silent uproar.

I don't believe in contests, they're stupid peer-judged lovefest staged by resigned amateurs, godly evaluations dominated by current trends and other forces beyond the work itself. Therefore I love them and think they are the final arbiter of all things good in the world. It would please me nothing more than to win another contest. I could put the gold-colored leaf-covered plastic prize obtained from a warehouse supply store next to all the others, lined up like toy soldiers primed for eternity for a war they will never fight, and then burn them and free their tiny souls.

The best picture I have ever taken is this one.

The Moon (a prayer).

The moon is not only beautiful
it is so far away
the moon is not only ice cold
it is here to stay

When i lay me down
will you still be around
when they put me six feet underground
will the big bad beautiful you be around

When i lay me down
will you still be around
when they put you six feet underground
will the big bad beautiful moon be around

Because the moon is not only beautiful
and it is so far away
the moon is not only ice cold
it is here to stay.

-chan marshall

If you have seen any of these or other missing children, please go to http://tinyurl.com/breww and report them immediately. Please. Apathy is their worst enemy.

(Mimi Harvey)

Poppies in July.

Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?

You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.

And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

A mouth just bloodied.
Little bloody skirts!

There are fumes that I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep! -------------
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.

But colorless. Colorless.

-Sylvia Plath

The Sleepers.

No map traces the street
Where those two sleepers are.
We have lost track of it.
They lie as if under water
In a blue, unchanging light,
The French window ajar

Curtained with yellow lace.
Through the narrow crack
Odors of wet earth rise.
The snail leaves a silver track;
Dark thickets hedge the house.
We take a backward look.

Among petals pale as death
And leaves steadfast in shape
They sleep on, mouth to mouth.
A White mist is going up.
The small green nostrils breathe,
And they turn in their sleep.

Ousted from that warm bed
We are a dream they dream.
Their eyelids keep the shade.
No harm can come to them.
We cast out skins and slide
Into another time.

-Sylvia Plath

The Arcane.

Here in the garden
Of the arcane delights
Dark shadows overwhelm us
And and we become blind.
Blind to the needs of
Those who would be free
From the grip of fear
And the prisons of the mind.
Amidst the throes of perplexity
Freedom moves amongst us.
In her hand is held the seed.
Extermination angels
Stood beside the road
In violent retribution for
The seeds that we have sown.

-Brendan Perry

Sundays.

Sundays are challenging. Mine is just beginning, already I've gone through three moods. One: Oh no, another day. Two: Well, I'll keep my nose in something and stay busy, won't be so bad. Three: Oh, look who it is! Wasn't expecting that - how nice.

Besides, the birds are now starting in on their morning choir practice, and they don't seem to care whether it's Sunday or Wednesday. Even the landscape will soon switch from monochrome to color, once the sun wakes up.

Order of wants.

I don't ask anything too outrageous of the world. I only want things most people want, the basics. In order from the most fundamental to the least:

1. To be in possession of my mind, free from irrational fear and panic. To be sane.
2. To have personal freedom - my own place and the right to decide what to do at the moment (accepting the consequences).
3. To have friends - people who I can talk to, work alongside, hang out with, rely upon, give back to.
4. To have a girlfriend - someone who I can share a deeper friendship with, share a romance with.
5. To have long term goals - traveling, buying a house, saving for retirement.

Oh yeah, and world peace and to win the lottery.

One person.

If you have just one person that you respect and care about, it's infinitely better than none. More than one makes life pleasant, but it's a case of diminishing returns. It doesn't double and then triple your happiness, it just adds numbers after the decimal point, as it were.

To have just one person who's there for you, doesn't judge you, and sees the good in you makes life tolerable.

Cz.

My love is on holiday
Far into the pages of a history I have never seen
Where there are trees of pink and vermillion
And beautiful things
Scraping the bottom of Heaven

Only if I had the patience of angels
Or could sleep for once without interruption
Clockwork hammer blows might
Tap by like lava flows
But I know I'm in for an ice age.

Returning from the moon.

Everything's changed. I once read that because cells in our body constantly die and get replaced by new ones, that roughly every seven years we are COMPLETELY new. That is, we have no cells remaining from more than seven years prior. I'm not sure of the truth of that (what about brain cells, I thought they didn't ever get replaced?) but I feel like it's a good metaphor for personal lives as well. People change and their friends turn over, they change jobs, have kids, lose them in custody fights, go berserk and end up drunk on a corner or in some hospital. They find a job they actually like, or meet someone who makes them feel optimistic again, or decide it's all an act on everyone's part and cynically cyclical and nothing will ever change. Or they get increasingly sophisticated and ironic until they can't even keep track of whether they are sincere and serious anymore. But somehow, over the years, we replace ourselves completely. Family is supposed to always be there. They're supposed to be the backbone that keep you sane through all the change. But we're losing that as a society. I hardly speak to any of my family.

It's enough to make a person feel really lost and disconnected in this big world. I mean, who will even read what I am writing now? Anyone at all? Why then do I do it? I suppose I don't have much choice in a practical sense - I write or it builds up in my head and threatens to overwhelm me. Getting it out is therapeutic. And it's cool to create things and see them in front of you. Feels like you're leaving some little bit of yourself out there. Maybe you won't be totally forgotten after all. Ah, who am I kidding. I'm barely remembered as it is, and I'm pretty sure I'm alive.

So I scan old photos and think about what I want to "do" and I write and write, and I wonder if those "geek" cameras really make you a better photographer, and what are the merits of art. I just want a family of my own again, eventually, something I can take care of and participate in and feel good about. It doesn't have to be declared as such, I just need some sort of belonging again. All the little comforts and routines and acquaintances I once had have rolled over, like the clock and the calendar at the first breath of the new year. I want to do whatever it takes to reach that place and feel meaningful. I want to give back and do my share, make someone else feel good too, feel secure but not smothered (probably need to work on this one...:S) and still feel free to be independent and pursue her own goals. I've always thought of it like a partnership, she and I against the world, not in an aggressive way but more like brothers in arms...except like, er...a guy and a girl instead of two dudes. I envy the couples of the past who stayed together their whole lives and maintained a comforting normalcy in the home even as they explored Nature with their artsy eyes.

And it's not all just about human relationships. I need to work on improving my relationship with nature as well. We spend so much time indoor and in cities that we'd might as well be on the moon. We were meant to wander in the woods chasing butterflies, catching a faint hint of rosemary as dappled sunlight rained over our faces and shoulders. As kids we climbed along fallen logs and pulled ripe cherries off generous trees. It was all in balance then. We didn't think about meaning and motivation. We were all little Zen masters. I just want a taste of that spontenaity and inner satisfaction back.

Pastiche.

been through everything a thousand times
and I'm going crazy, but I'm already crazy
if I feel I'm about to explode because the sick feeling
in my stomach has happened so many times before,
well that has happened before

and it's a crushing weight some people must bear
who open every sense they possess to what's really there
instead of drifting through a dream world
I've made that decision a thousand times
and I'm going crazy, but I'm already crazy

Restive.

I lay here restless as a house-trapped fly. Even poetry seems trite and artificial. I wonder why the excitement of the creation act feels so hollow at times. Why life feels so hollow in between moments of joy. I have been very happy lately, but there are stones cast into the still waters, and worries begin small and intense only to fan out radially into vague overriding discomforts. Change, change. I've moved past the point of grieving, then acceptance, on most fronts. But everything all at once is a little hard to bear, even when it's good.

I seem to be down to only a few people in the whole world. I'm really disappointed in some people I've been close to and thought were true friends. I know I haven't always been the easiest person to get along with, and I know people have their own lives and issues. It's not that. It's the fact that very few people from my past lives show any signs of actually being alive. There is a faint pulse there somewhere, but it does little more than sustain them. There's not enough moving blood to create anything of their own, to learn something new, to contribute to what I have thrown out there, to even evaluate it. By way of example, my site's address has not changed and I have been writing more than ever, yet the number of people commenting on my site have dropped to one. I don't understand this - I would encourage and participate in the creative processes of those I knew and cared about. Maybe I'm just strange. Maybe no one wants to encourage me. Maybe I'm lousy. Maybe I'm a scar and no one cares.

Meanwhile I see blogs where someone talks about buying new shoes or about, hey, tonight I'm doing nothing, and they get 39 responses in two hours. I understand how these things work; they're tiny communities, like chats spread out over time. It's not really about the post itself. Well, mine is. I'm not here to find friends and mates and to spend a Sunday evening telling people how pissed I got down at the pub. So yes, I understand that a huge contingent of the online population is going to find nothing of interest here. But...none at all? I've posted to lots of other blogs I found intelligent or creative in recent months. It's as simple as clicking my name, and they would find their way here. A couple more clicks to leave a comment. You see it once in a blue moon, then they're gone again. I really have no other conclusion to draw than my site is boring and my either isn't accessible or is bad or is uninteresting.

I guess I'm just feeling burnt out right now, hence the recent rash of song lyrics and other people's photographs. I'll get back to my own writing and art soon, I'm just taking a break of sorts. Breaks for my syllable-leaky brain are anything over 24 hours. I live my life at a snail's pace in many conventional ways, but when it comes to contemplating and writing, I seem to operate close enough to C that my thoughts get heavy and the world slows down. Am I aging slower? That's hard to say. There are still duff days like today, but overall I seem to be growing younger.

(Maury Perseval)

Teachers.

I met a woman long ago
Her hair the black that black can go,
Are you a teacher of the heart?
Soft she answered no.

I met a girl across the sea,
Her hair the gold that gold can be,
Are you a teacher of the heart?
Yes, but not for thee.

I met a man who lost his mind
In some lost place I had to find,
Follow me the wise man said,
But he walked behind.

I walked into a hospital
Where none was sick and none was well,
When at night the nurses left
I could not walk at all.

Morning came and then came noon,
Dinner time a scalpel blade
Lay beside my silver spoon.

Some girls wander by mistake
Into the mess that scalpels make.
Are you the teachers of my heart?
We teach old hearts to break.

One morning I woke up alone,
The hospital and the nurses gone.
Have I carved enough my Lord?
Child, you are a bone.

I ate and ate and ate,
No I did not miss a plate, well
How much do these suppers cost?
We'll take it out in hate.

I spent my hatred everyplace,
On every work on every face,
Someone gave me wishes
And I wished for an embrace.

Several girls embraced me, then
I was embraced by men,
Is my passion perfect?
No, I'd do it once again.

I was handsome I was strong,
I knew the words of every song.
Did my singing please you?
No, the words you sang were wrong.

Who is it whom I address,
Who takes down what I confess?
Are you the teachers of my heart?
We teach old hearts to rest.

Oh teachers are my lessons done?
I cannot do another one.
They laughed and laughed and said, Well child,
are your lessons done?

-Leonard Cohen

(Maury Perseval)

Stories of the Street.

The stories of the street are mine, the Spanish voices laugh.
The Cadillacs go creeping now through the night and the poison gas,
And I lean from my window sill in this old hotel I chose,
With one hand on my suicide, one hand on the rose.

I know you've heard it's over now and war must surely come,
the cities they are broke in half and the middle men are gone.
But let me ask you one more time, O children of the dusk,
All these hunters who are shrieking now oh do they speak for us?

And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?
Why are the armies marching still that were coming home to me?
O lady with your legs so fine O stranger at your wheel,
You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal.

The age of lust is giving birth, and both the parents ask
The nurse to tell them fairy tales on both sides of the glass.
And now the infant with his cord is hauled in like a kite,
And one eye filled with blueprints, one eye filled with night.

O come with me my little one, we will find that farm
And grow us grass and apples there and keep all the animals warm.
And if by chance I wake at night and I ask you who I am,
O take me to the slaughterhouse, I will wait there with the lamb.

With one hand on the hexagram and one hand on the girl
I balance on a wishing well that all men call the world.
We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky,
And lost among the subway crowds I try to catch your eye.

-Leonard Cohen

Two flowers.





























(photo by N.)

All I need.

It's ok to be naive; stay that way. Out here is only the vacuum of frozen, hellish space. Out here is un-life. How I wish I could live again through your eyes, embrace the horizon. Time dulls the senses, even when you keep bathing in battery acid to rid yourself of its buildup.

But I can still taste love. Love is ever-renewing, ever fresh. It's the one thing in the world I can't do without.

The Painter and the Poet.

She: Sees a tangle of green below her window.
He: Hears the chant of morning breezes.

She: Draws liquid rays of amber.
He: Drapes symbols over sounds.

She: With a smudge on her face in her dress of lilac.
He: With a curse on his tongue for the haunts of vanity.

She: Wants to be loved for the beauty that's inside her.
He: Longs to be cherished for his gallant heart.

Zamračený.

Arcadia.

I could run away with you, we
Could make our own life
Carved out of granite and chalk
Not castles in the sky
Just street shoes and urban slack
Towering blue skies and rivers
Drenched in gold

We could watch sunsets unfold over our heads
Enjoy them without needing words
Black pines against a black sky
Along the river

It's not the time of year for shadows
That feel like pill junkies scraping nails
Over cut glass
This is warm and understanding,
Still ascending, still bright
As though swimming all day squinting
At glinted summer light and ending
With the sun bending back west
Make our best evening smiles
Soaked in hot water and
Endless time

I could run away inside of you
We could make something lovely together
Delightful and alluring
Where walls stand white we could paint them yellow
Round off the world's square corners
Where sadness lives we could lift its heart
With the music of angels.

Said it before. Never said it.

I've said it before but I'll say it again. Pay attention to the moment. The moment is when all the good stuff happens. The bad stuff is felt moment by moment, too, but it usually arises from a contemplation of the future or a consideration of the past. If you just allow yourself to feel the direct results, you can not only get through the worst of it, you can obsolete that whole idea and just simply be. Feels great, when you can do it.

New Roads.

I'm really happy to be alive right now. Been a long time since I could say that. Life feels fresh. Yes there are issues and challenges. I only really communicate with just a few people now, but those people stick with me and are positive influences.

I'm really happy to be in love right now. It feels like love. It feels fresh, new, necessary. Yes there are subtleties and considerations. I want to make her happy and feel fulfilled, be part of her realizing her ambitions while staying safe and loved.

As The World Falls Down
(Bowie)

There's such a sad love
Deep in your eyes, a kind of pale jewel
Open and closed within your eyes.
I'll place the sky within your eyes.

There's such a fool heart
Beating so fast in search of new dreams,
A love that will last within your heart.
I'll place the moon within your heart.

As the pain sweeps through, makes no sense for you.
Every thrill has gone. Wasn't too much fun at all.
But I'll be there for you,
As the world falls down.

I'll paint you mornings of gold,
I'll spin you Valentine evenings.
Though we're strangers till now,
We're choosing the path between the stars.

As the pain sweeps through, makes no sense for you.
Every thrill has gone. Wasn't too much fun at all.
But I'll be there for you,
As the world falls down.

(for NVJ)

Fireworks.

Fourth day of the seventh month
I celebrate with digital paint and mp3s
Too much sunlight running around after
The sun goes down, never
Felt the shot ring out
Too much rain that never falls
I heard it on the news
Sunshowers expected tomorrow

Nevertheless
The silence now is like rotten wood
And my mind is on another fourth
Or fifth, or eighth, or something
Spent too much time running from
A rain squall in a paper shack
Lifting habits off of young people
Dying of old age.

A new beginning.

Third verse, same as the first. But the fourth verse.... Here we go.

Happy 300th to me

I've now posted 300 entries on this blog in a little under a year. Quite an achievement for someone as scatterbrained and unreliable as me. In my usual self-serving, self-absorbed manner, but perhaps with a bit more justification given the occasion, I've looked back over the whole blog and selected my personal favorite entries. Since there are 300, I chose 30 favorites, 1 of every 10. And the winners are...

Untitled, 7-30-05
What time is it REALLY? 10-10-05
Encopresis, 10-21-05
Mornings are free, 10-25-05
The opposite of poverty is poverty, 11-1-05
Ours goes to infinity, 11-1-05
Chester, 11-11-05
Sandbox escape, 1-2-06
Untitled 1-4-06
What St. Peter will say, 1-30-06
Potemkin village, 2-20-06
Miskatonic, 2-22-06
Undated, 3-9-06
Untitled in April, 4-3-06
mental illness, 4-9-06
Taxonomy of Heaven, 4-24-06
Expo '86, 4-26-06
Self-Reflexive part 0, 4-27-06
candle picture, 4-27-06
seabird picture, 5-9-06
Jackson, 5-10-06
1:05 pm, 5-24-06
5:14 pm, 5-27-06
Contre, 5-31-06
Bluenight, 6-5-06
Lost in NJ, 6-9-06
Flowy motions, 6-9-06
Sunburn, 6-28-06
For you, 6-28-06
Unconscious, 7-3-06

If you don't see your favorite entry in there, don't worry. I'm right; you're not. When you have your own blog you can decide these things.

Happy 4th of July to Americans, happy belated Canada Day to Canadians, happy birthday or unbirthday to everyone else in the world, and happy 300th to me!

dream

everything's bright and right
the day is long and light
and the night
is short and sweet

we meet on the charles bridge
ridges stand up on my spine, it's time
to seal the deal with a kiss
light, heat, bliss... mine.

The Lake

"Everybody Hurts"
(stipe)

When the day is long
And the night is yours alone,
When you're sure you've had enough
Of this life to hang on.
Don't let yourself go
Cause everybody cries
And everybody hurts sometimes.
Sometimes everything is wrong
Now it's time to sing along...
If you feel like letting go
And you think you've had too much
Of this life...hang on!
Cause everybody hurts,
Take comfort in your friends.
Everybody hurts
Don't throw your hand
Don't throw your hand
If you feel like you're alone,
no, no, NO, you're not alone.
If you're on your own in this life,
The days and nights are long.
When you think you've had too much
Of this life to hang on.
Well everybody hurts, sometimes,
Everybody cries.
And everybody hurts sometimes
And everybody hurts sometimes
So hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on, hold on
Everybody hurts
You're not alone.

Unconscious

Odds 'n' ends

Once again, it's time for me to dump a bunch of randomness that never grew into full fledged blog entries into one space.
---
Los Angeles is a huge cemetery full of people who are completely dead but don't know it yet.
---
Some people are buried, some people get cremated. When I die, I want my body compressed into a diamond. We're made of carbon, right? Make me into a tiny diamond placed in a pendant hanging from a necklace worn by the woman I love. Or by some unsuspecting buffoon.
---
I'm: A no-good doer. A troll. A slimy thing in the earth. A death-head. A reptillian brained sugarcane sugar daddy. Dying.
---
Being with you hurts and feels good at the same time.
---
Don't waste your talent being talented. Get out there and work, like everyone else, and your talents may augment your happiness, but alone they can never bring it about.
---
Closes her eyes
Keeps her heart as cold as ice
Shuttered close and bolted
This woman who needs so much love inside
Feels the grip of night upon her shoulder
And is revolted
She opens her eyes
---
I'm great at handing out wisdom but lousy at following it myself.
---
To do anything great, you have to sacrifice many things that are easy or pleasant. People don't seem to have time anymore to care.
---
Hearing voices again, seeing people who should not be there appear in front of me. Whew, for awhile there things were getting weird.
---
If I had a kid I'd name him Tuffy.
---
I've had a beautiful pearl slip away; I've tried to polish a piece of glass to look like a diamond. And now I've just found a garnet/emerald who I want to be with so bad, and never lose.
---
You really ought to enter your cloud photo in a competition, you'd have a great chance of winning. Of course, since you won't, I have way more respect for you.
---
I don't write. I explode onto paper.

An old poem

Anxiety is rising
Up into the sky like grey smoke
My ribs push hard against their prison
A color streak in the corner of my eye
Whips my head around
Class was dismissed years ago
But I still dream every Sunday
I am back on my ten-speed
God where does all the time go

I saw you the other day
When you didn't know I was looking
Vultures were near
And an echo of sermons
Tossed my thoughts wildly
I couldn't say what made me smile
Right then, but it was a nervous smile
Voice stuck inside a golden throat
Forever passed that instant

Anxiety is rising
It is all I can do right now to
Keep my eyes from closing
My mind rushes through all the outcomes
Heart sputters like batteries in the gutter
I thought I'd figured this out
A long time ago
But there are roads which never end
And low, lonely waypoints abound.

(painting is Anxiety by Edvard Munch)

Plurality of worlds

Coldfire

I put all my heart in everything I do. I'm not here to sneak by. When I love someone I will bend steel for them. When I am down, well. But why not stretch that suffocating bodysuit of rubberized expectations we were born in? Why not be completely opposite, always.

Some people put their soul into what they do and give their all to those they care about. And some of those people do the minimum, or do nothing at all to reciprocate, to make an effort, to more than just make an effort. Like mold on life. Fuck people who don't try, I hope they burn in hell forever.