God Save America.
(Michael Gira)

And all across America
The poison fires glow
And in the blood of our procreation
Annihilation grows
Yes love was made for slaves like us
Designed to fetishize
Consumption, waste and an identity
Based on a dying lie
So God forgive America
The end of history is now
And God may save the victim, but
Only the murderer holds real power.

We came across the seas
We'd fill with offal and disgust
And any object industry required
We bought, enslaved, or we crushed
And now our minds are as naked as
The Paradise we stripped
And our reward is our entropy
Our emptiness is our gift
So God forgive America
And every human on this earth
And God forgive the ruined lives
And nothing is what it's worth.

sometimes the sky

Perfect Day.
(Lou Reed)

Just a perfect day,
Drink sangria in the park,
And then later, when it gets dark,
We go home.

Just a perfect day,
Feed animals in the zoo
Then later, a movie, too,
And then home.

Oh it's such a perfect day,
I'm glad I spent it with you.
Oh such a perfect day,
You just keep me hanging on.
You just keep me hanging on.

Just a perfect day,
Problems all left alone,
Weekenders on our own.
It's such fun.

Just a perfect day,
You made me forget myself.
I thought I was someone else,
Someone good.

Oh it's such a perfect day,
I'm glad I spent it with you.
Oh such a perfect day,
You just keep me hanging on.
You just keep me hanging on.

You're going to reap just what you sow,
You're going to reap just what you sow,
You're going to reap just what you sow,
You're going to reap just what you sow...

Untitled.

lost lamb cries for its mother
nature can be a cruel thing
pits lonely lives against each other
alone in the violence of spring
first bloom is drown in a shower
a bird in a cage tries to sing
joy is not allowed when you've
lost the purpose of your birth
evolution shaped you to be free
but you've become the furthest thing
sing the saddest songs on earth

there's an apple in my plastic cup
a switch, sorry, don't know how
it got there; I must have eaten it
but I can't remember - they took it from me
like a bad person takes candy from a baby
and lets her cry until false forces come
to the rescue, ameliorate her feelings
with lies and imaginary justices
I was caught between a rock and a place
that was far too soft, I buried myself,
don't tell my family, I'm embarrassed-
I took a position of hardest man in the world
so I could conquer my fear of dying

lady in waiting,
don't wait any more
your prince is never coming
your life is a snail-like thing that
oozed through the cracks of life;
we all try our hardest
when the chips are down but that
doesn't mean we achieve
a goddamn thing
or that falling trees make sounds.

I want the sun to warm the planet up like it's supposed to
so I can go outside and breathe real air
and feel it on my face: warm, calm
right now it's just something in the sky,
like a placeholder for the real thing.

cold sun,
sleeps in late and tucks in early
you've got people down here who need you
in the worst way.

unknown credit

Dancing Shoes.

Dancing shoes
On the wall above your bedside
Saw it all as we performed our
Pirouette.
Fleshes fused
As the flicker of the candles
Threw upon the wall a single
Silhouette.
Tu es dan ma coeur et dans ma téte.

Dancing shoes
We have loved on distant beaches
Where the winter never reaches
There we fell.
Dying swan
On the dawn you danced before me
Though your eyes were dark and stormy
I stood still.
Qui peut dire le faux et le réel?

Dancing shoes
Though the distances divide us
There's a paradise inside us
We can't lose.
Me and you
Dance a pas de deux forever
And I pray you never
Shed your dancing shoes.

-Dan Fogelberg (1951-2007)
requiescat in pace

AZRAEL.

song for dead time

now the past is untrue

and this breath is a lie

and the sun is an emptiness

that burns through the sky

and this ground it'll slide down

down into the sea

and when this body dies

no man will breath one word

of ignorance

for me

so bury your trust beneath the ground with me

and lay your loneliness down for the sun to consume

now the earth bleeds cold water

in my open hands

but their bodies bleed poison

and they swallow the sand

and we'll walk to the river

where we'll die of a thirst

and my fate is no question

every fool he is broken

beneath the same

unholy curse

so bury your love beneath the ground with me

and lay your loneliness down for the sun to burn to sand

(hymnal singing)

-m. gira

***

When I came out of the dream it was through what seemed like miles of liquid. My limbs were as useless as they always are and breath was short; just momentarily I wondered if I could breathe water. But in the backscattering light that filtered down from a point a thousand miles above me, I heard a voice just like mine coming from a mouth that looked like mine, telling me I needed to push on, to break through, or I would be lost. I couldn't explain. I just kept surging forward, limbless and breathless, and the journey seemed to take long long minutes if not hours, and those hours were stretched and skewed and rewound by the watery prison warden that ran this hell.

And then I was free, and I was so high in the sky, with an ocean of turbulent water from horizon to horizon above me, and I fell into the bright air. I don't know how many miles were between me and that person on the ground, shouting for me to go back. I could see him so clearly and his thoughts were all words to me; I imagined I could swoop in like one of the sons of God and then his little playtime would be over. No water dripped into the vast blue void, and the resistance I'd felt before against my face and hands had turned to a vacuuming force pulling me faster and faster like a thousand dead things which had never been alive jumping on my back and hanging from my wet shirt. I couldn't slow down; all I could see was green that never seemed to resolve into any finer detail.

The man was gone. I stood on a tree stump in a small grove near my apartment and closed my eyes against the hostility of the subatomic world. In my effort to eliminate thought, I thought more than ever, arms out like a scarecrow's, legs crossed, head bowed. I suppose people must have thought that I was always like this, so removed. But I wore jeans and my skin had scars and a suntan upon it, and so did theirs. My eyes felt unnecessary. I didn't even want to look inside. I knew it was another layer of the onion, and that I had far to go, but I was lost. You have to be lost to get anywhere. At last I heard a bird in the sky, and then other small noises of leaves and crawling things, and traffic, and the morning came alive. And I was to be seen no more, for now my body twisted about itself inside a chamber of fire, and the heat was like a hundred biting dogs tearing at a bone.

Once again I saw the man, through the small room's thick window, and he beckoned me to escape, that I would be lost if I couldn't somehow push back the gravity of so much heat and break the glass. I think I could see someone upside down behind him, like a shadow against a wall with a mind of its own crawling around in search of detachment. Then I sank to my knees: I couldn't do it, it was just too much. I was too tired. Besides, it would all be over in time. Time... And then I knew the name of that man outside, who now just stood quietly with no expression on his face, and he was just like me, except that his eyes were missing and the sockets were black, and where his mouth should have been there was nothing at all. I screamed my last scream and waited for the flames to take me back to the world of sleep, where I am writing this, so it could be over.

Over for a day, maybe longer if I was lucky.

URIEL.

We all gotta go sometime. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to go. I'm scared of it. But it's inevitable and sometimes... sometimes I'm not afraid. I wish there was another world, a better world. A nicer world. Don't get me wrong, I really want to go.

What am I living for? Seriously. I don't want anything. I don't care about too many people. There's nothing I want to accomplish. My life has little value to me. It's not fun and rarely funny anymore. Most of the people I've cared for and who have cared back, who would come sit down with me and give me a hug right now, are too far away or are gone. So I want to be gone too.

As curious as I am and as much as I can lose myself in the details of things at times, this overarching fact never leaves me and if the army of medications let me up from my state of perpetual thought-arrest for a few minutes, I can see it all and quickly realize that nothing changes except me. And I don't know if I change, I just... exist now. I don't know why.

You're not supposed to ask "why?" That is supposed to be the point. Living in the now. But who dictated that? I'd like to meet the being who allowed us to evolve all these tremendous abilities to ponder and put patterns together, to illuminate darkness and discover mathematics, and to find order where once was only chaos, only to tell us we're not supposed to see behind that curtain: Please keep your head down and stare at a dot, eat your rice, and live like an animal. Animals don't ask questions.

Stretford or Valencia, I just want a room of my own, and skip the view - I'll put framed pictures up and antique maps. I will have my collections and my tiny living space will be my British Museum, my Smithsonian. I am the curator of odds and ends of the human experience, the rubbish which others in a Jetsons world have left behind in their mad mindless rush, but which to me is for fleeting moments worth the weight of the world. I love the world, except for all the people.

A casualty of Gettysburg. Could have been any war. He's gone.

God Damn The Sun
(Michael Gira)

When, When We Were Young
We Had No History
So Nothing To Lose
Meant We Could Choose
Choose What We Wanted Then
Without Any Fear
Or Thought Of Revenge
But Then We Grew Old
And I Lost My Ambition
So I Gained An Addiction
To Drink And Depression
They Are Mine
My Only True Friends
And I'll Keep Them With Me
Until The Very End
I'd Choose Not To Remember
But I Miss Your Arrogance
And I Need Your Intelligence
And Your Hate For Authority
But Now You're Gone
I Read It Today
They Found You In Spain
Face Down In The Street
With A Bottle In Your Hand
And A Wild Smile On Your Face
And A Knife In Your Back
You Died In A Foreign Land
And They Found My Letter
Rolled Up In Your Pocket
Where I Said I'd Kill Myself
If She Left Me Again
So Now She's Gone
And You're Both In My Mind
I've Got One Thing To Say
Before I Am Drunk Again:
God Damn The Sun
God Damn The Sun
God Damn Anyone
That Says A Kind Word
God Damn The Sun
God Damn The Sun
God Damn The Light It Shines
And This World It Shows
God Damn The Sun.

----
audio of song (no video)

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

-Bertrand Russell

When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.

-Peter O'Toole

My favorite books at the moment.

Siddartha

The Silmarillion

The Subtle Knife

Wuthering Heights

The Stranger

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The Life of Pi

Godel, Escher, Bach

The Complete Poems of Sylvia Plath

Invisible Cities

How the Universe Got Its Spots

Paradise Lost

~

I've read all these, and most quite some time ago.

Most made sense at the time, to some degree.

Now they all seem to make more sense,

The more I think,

And see.

All paintings by Samuel Bak

"All Apologies"

(Kurt Cobain)

What else should I be
All apologies

What else should I say
Everyone is gay

What else could I write
I dont have the right

What else should I be
All apologies.

In the sun
In the sun, I feel as one

In the sun
In the sun:

Im married...
Buried...

I wish I was like you
Easily amused

Find my nest of salt
Everything's my fault

I'll take all the blame
Aqua seafoam shame

Sunburn with freezerburn
Choking on the ashes of her enemy

In the sun
In the sun I feel as one

In the sun
In the sun....

I'm married.
Buried.

Married.
Buried.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

All in all is all we all are.
All in all is all we all are.
All in all is all we all are.
All in all is all we all are.

Radiohead - Street Spirit

death

from bottom: Brueghel, de Morgan, unknown, Kollwitz

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Heath Ledger

(1979-2008)

Tragedy takes the best and brightest
Why does it do that?
You were a hero to me, fearless

The finest young actor in years, peerless
Now you've left me in tears
God hands out genius and weakness
In equal mesaure, be the distance between them large or small
And now he's taken you away from us and everyone you loved
Just when you were at the start of it all.

I loved your big big heart most of all.

I can't believe he's dead. I was just renting the rest of his movies I hadn't seen. He was my favorite young actor, versatile, brilliant, and willing to take on any challenge in his roles. He was shaping up to be one of the best. In some ways he already was the best. He was the best actor of 2005 for sure. And his smile, his laugh, his candor, his humility, his maturity... I just can't believe it; I'm sick to my stomach, I'm in shock. I'm starting to cry finally. He's gone forever.

~RIP~

Seven Years In Tibet

(bowie)

Are you ok

You've been shot in the head

And I'm holding your brains

The old woman said

So I drink in the shadows

Of an evening sky

See nothing at all.

The stars look so special

The snow looks so old

A frail form is drifting

Beyond the yoga-zone

Time to question the mountain

Why pigs can fly

It's nothing at all.

I praise you

Nothing ever goes away

I praise you

Nothing ever goes

I pray to you

Nothing ever goes away

I pray to you
Nothing ever, nothing ever

I pray to you
Nothing ever goes away
I pray to you
Nothing ever goes, nothing ever goes.

Snow angel, your tear's
Frozen to your face, and lines are etched in marble
Where there should be none
But we all have some, don't we
Your lips are frozen blue, now, give me your hands
I will make them warm
And wish away all the harm from you
A single tear is quite enough
But you have poured a torrent down these chilling months
Snow princess, it is not mine to give
You happiness, but I will give what I can
Close your eyes now, sleep, rest up for the day
Though the sun may bring little warmth
You can feel that tear fall in its golden rays.

Photos don't lie, except when they want to.

Mid 2007

(busily building beard)

Mid-late 2007

(saluting my British friends)

Very late 2007
(betraying my Cherokee & Castillian heritage)

Early 2008

(looking quite youthful for someone in his mid-30s)

NOTES

Ok so I now have six blogs bookmarked for easy access. My own of course, The holy Magdelene's, T-Rex's, Lorenzo's, Raelha's, and Maalie's. I don't count Scaredy. Martin I'm just starting to know, as well as JLS...

Any other great experiences I'm missing on a daily or weekly basis? I know there are a million blogs, but I'm looking for the standouts. Opinions or advice is appreciated. No fundamentalist Christian blogs, please. I would be banned within fractions of a second.

Also, I keep hearing about this "Word Imperfect" site/game. Should I check this out? Would I be able to compete and have fun, or would I be the stupid American everyone laughs at?

META-META-META...

Listen to a real artist. Any will do.
Real artists don't tell you anything, they only ask questions.

How do we choose our gods... our blind faiths... our cherished beliefs?
What is the difference between God and Man?

"Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit?"

"Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?"

How do we choose which Alien to bow and kneel before and vow to serve forever and ever? Zeus, Xerxes, The Christ, Grays from another world, Metamatician, Metatron, Metal machines?

"LOVING THE ALIEN"
(David Bowie)

Watching them come and go

The Templars and the Saracens

They're traveling the holy land

Opening telegrams.

Torture comes and torture goes

Knights who'd give you anything

They bear the cross of Coeur de Leon

Salvation for the mirrorblind.

But if you pray,

All your sins are hooked upon the sky.

Pray and the heathen lie will disappear...

Prayers, they hide the saddest view.

Believing the strangest things,

Loving the alien.

And your prayers, they break the sky in two.

Believing the strangest things,
Loving the alien.

You pray 'til the break of dawn.

Believing the strangest things,
Loving the alien.

And you believe you're loving the alien...

Thinking of a different time

Palestine a modern problem

Bounty and a wealth in land

Terror in the best laid plans.

Watching them come and go

Tomorrows and the yesterdays

Christians and the unbelievers

Hanging by the cross and nail.

***

All nonpersonal religion is dogma which should be washed away by a Flood which in children's stories destroys the mistakes of an Old God, gives our kind a new chance and then messes that up too, a trilogy of flaws.

It's so stupid, so childish. To believe.

Listen to art, to reason, anything but to the lies that are poured like poison into your ears by the community amongst which you were born, lottery-like. Would you be arguing for the other side if it had been different? Would you be throwing bombs and piercing skulls and starving and orphaning children for Him instead of Him?

People believe in the strangest things. Aliens, Gods, Science.

I experience. I don't believe.

Beauty doesn't mean a thing.

Beautiful people who know they are and use it to their advantage are the most worthless, shallow people I know. They don't ever develop other skills like courtesy, humility, or gratitude. Instead they have a built-in sense of entitlement which may or may not be accompanied by an inferiority complex inside. If it's not, they are just truly soulless. If it is, they are indeed sad creatures but not without blame - anyone can better her/himself and not rely on unhealthy and unearned crutches to move through life. But these freeloaders end up lazy and needful, and never develop that discipline which most of the world is forced into, and so are neither charming nor tragic. Just ordinary, flawed, and full of themselves, destined to attract and then hurt people their whole lives and leave a trail of sparkling slime in their wake. They are the politicians, the movie stars, the singers, the popular kids, the heroin-junkie has beens, the pregnant teens, the college burnouts, the prom queen suicides. They are not blessed by their beauty and not noble enough even to be called cursed. They're the useless peacocks of human society that do nothing good for the world and expect a living from it instead, like parasites, and the tragedy if there is one is that they usually find it, and least for awhile. But they will never be happy inside.

"Today"
(Billy Corgan)

Today is the greatest
Day I've ever kown
Can't live for tomorrow
Tomorrow's much too long
I'll burn my eyes out
Before I get out

I wanted more
Than life could ever grant
Bored by the chore
Of saving face

Today is the greatest
Day I've ever known
Can't wait for tomorrow
I might not have that long
I'll tear my heart out
Before I get out

Pink ribbon scars
That never forget
Ive tried so hard
To cleanse these regrets
My angel wings
Were bruised and restrained
My belly stings

Today is
Today is
Today is
The greatest day
That I have ever known.

Not My Friend

(Norah Jones)

Help me breathe

Help me believe

You seem really glad that I am sad

You are not my friend
I cannot pretend
That you are

You made it sting
Your voice is ringing
Just like the boys who laughed at me in school

You are not my friend
I cannot pretend
Anymore

You found a place
No one should ever go

I'll be ok
'Cause when I back away
I'm gonna keep the handle of your gun in sight.

Nothing is beautiful anymore.

Since you left me
well, we still do keep on talking
but your heart is somewhere I can't reach
since it left I'm without warmth
and nothing is beautiful anymore

It's a new year I know
clean, cold as the driven snow
I look at your face in these photographs
and I cry and I laugh
and nothing is beautiful anymore.

Images by Chip R. Jones,
The Forgotten Asylum.

Cellar Door

Time's lonely door opens to another door
These halls play light across in perfect reflection
Like the mirrors of Versailles, scrubbed and polished
Once upon the mantlepiece I seen a vase of real flowers
I tried to smell them but I had a cold that week
She took me into her office of tans and yellows
Important books lined every inch of space, but their
Spines was all pristine, and her mouth was open
I think she was waiting for me to say somethin'
I said I seen a jay fly through the hall that morning
Navigate each door, must've come from the garden
And was there some garden on the other end, ma'am?
Where it may have gone? I thought that was a good one,
To just slip in there like that, of course there was no jay
But she only sat like a stone block with her glasses
And asked me if silence was still what I craved the most
On some days, I said, though again I was lying
For I wanted conversation and life and color and music
And still I couldn't change what I had heard,
When I heard it I didn't want to hear no other words
From that person, I don't know her name or her face
I don't know his distance, his solidness, or his age
I don't pretend to understand their meaning
But these walls they've been polished to a sheen
And under arcs of sodium I saw the night nurse preening
She evidently had a date when the morning came
I wonder how people can wander from place to place
Yawning, I thought of my days of ancient grace, when
I was alone and fawning over girls and poets, we were
Made of gold in that lifetime, a long time ago.
Here is the bottom of the drain where all the dross goes.
I'm afraid because every creature on earth dies alone.
And where do their minds drift off to? Where do they
Find their mothers and fathers waiting for them at home?
Where are the lost days of learning, and the promise that
Some day you'll be an astronaut, or an archaeologist
If you keep on studyin'? She took notes with her pen,
It was red markings in black boxes on white paper
What a coincidence in my freewheeling mind:
How are we supposed to reach toward the light, ma'am
If the silence and the darkness leave us deaf and blind?
How am I supposed to go on dying for years? For all my life?
It was as cold as a rectory that day, all the mops were out
They were scrubbing and polishing, and my books were stolen
The week before, so I was in my finest t-shirt and open-
Flapped shorts, with low cut socks for traction on the floor
And it was cold, even though they could have asked the Sun in
But I think that old Sun may have had the sense to refuse
An' I think the Son may just have had the good sense to refuse
Cos we were stored in there, swept into those rooms like refuse
Or kept pickled in jars, or mashed up like meat and reused
And so I cried for once not out of sadness, for that was long
Gone. I cried when I saw that jay, and he made his break for
The garden; I laughed and wiped my tears away when
He flew for day, and I could hear his freedom song a-startin'.

Exercise One.

When you're looking at life
In a strange new room
Maybe drowning soon
Is this the start of it all?
Turn on your TV
Turn down your pulse
Turn away from it all
It's all getting too much.

When you're looking at life
Deciphering scars
Just who fooled who
Sit still in their cars
The lights look bright
When you reach outside
Time for one last ride
Before the end of it all.


The Eternal.

Procession moves on, the shouting is over,
Praise to the glory of loved ones now gone.
Talking aloud as they sit round their tables,
Scattering flowers washed down by the rain.
Stood by the gate at the foot of the garden,
Watching them pass like clouds in the sky,
Try to cry out in the heat of the moment,
Possessed by a fury that burns from inside.

Cry like a child, though these years make me older,
With children my time is so wastefully spent,
Burdened to keep though their inner communion,
Accept like a curse, an unlucky deal.
Played by the gate at the foot of the garden,
My view stretches out from the fence to the wall,
No words could explain, no actions determine,
Just watching the trees and the leaves as they fall.

Ceremony.

This is why events unnerve me
They find it all a different story
Notice whom for wheels are turning
Turn again and turn towards this time.
All she ask's the strength to hold me
Then again the same old story
Word will travel oh so quickly
Travel first and lean towards this time.

Oh, I'll break them down, no mercy shown
Heaven knows it's got to be this time
Watching her, these things she said
The times she cried
Too frail to wake this time.

Oh, I'll break them down, no mercy shown
Heaven knows, it's got to be this time
Avenues all lined with trees
Picture me and then you start watching
Watching forever.

Twenty Four Hours.

So this is permanence, love's shattered pride.
What once was innocence, turned on its side.
A cloud hangs over me, marks every move,
Deep in the memory, of what once was love.

Oh how I realised how I wanted time.
Put into perspective, tried so hard to find.
Just for one moment, thought I'd found my way.
Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away.

Excessive flashpoints, beyond all reach,
Solitary demands for all I'd like to teach.
Let's take a ride out, see what we can find:
A valueless collection of hopes and past desires.

I never realised the lengths I'd have to go,
All the darkest corners of a sense I didn't know.
Just for one moment, I heard somebody call
Looked beyond the day in hand, there's nothing there at all.

Now that I've realised how it's all gone wrong,
Gotta find some therapy, this treatment takes too long.
Deep in the heart of where sympathy held sway,
Gotta find my destiny, before it gets too late.

In a Lonely Place.

Caressing the marble and stone
Love that was special for one
The waste in the fever and heat
How I wish you were here with me now.

Body that curls in and dies
And shares that awful daylight
Warm like a dog round your feet
How I wish you were here with me now.

Hangman looks round as he waits
Cord stretches tight then it breaks
Someday we will die in your dreams
How I wish we were here with you now.

(all lyrics by Ian Curtis)