I like this…but its missing “Oomph” ya know? I think it’ll come, but I’m hoping folks have some suggestions!
New Song I’m Working On
Click Here to Hear
I am a creator like God is just a man
made of plastic thieves that rob a worthy change
while I am stumped for words you are still inspired
by the steel and sands that stay the same
love is still a thought like hate is just a feeling
we still pretend to bathe upon the sun
I’ll create the waves for us to sink in
for a love that twists our necks to realize it
I swear, I will never ask you for yes or no
black and white is grey at the edges of us all
Then we can fall together in our image of a sky
and it will cease to matter when we sing and when we die
You are here for me and I am here for drugs
and here we rip and tear each other down
while perfection is dead and the heros all have vanished
we still eat the tabs that smash out all our mirrors
And while we cannot create in a room made of fear
with nothing on the walls to draw a life with
We still find inspiration in the breaths that we breathe
we can survive in a lonely room of memories
I swear, I will never ask you for yes or no
black and white is grey at the edges of us all
Then we can fall together in our image of a sky
and it will cease to matter when we sing and when we die
Monday, December 6, 2010 -This middle-aged coffee shop wreaks of money Chai Tea and Vicodin
I was trying to walk off a cold
The other day
And I passed by a young man
Maybe seventeen or twenty
He had pencil-cut levis on with a bandana wrapped around his knee
A leather jacket
With bands like
The Exploited and
Conflict
Stitched to the sleeves
And a huge back patch
Of Flux of Pink Indians
His black cap was too big for his head and it sagged
Down over his eyes
His brown greasy hair was undoubtedly
Wild under the cap
I thought it was probably like an untamed
Ocean of grease in a horrible windstorm
Just slapping up against the side of his black stocking cap
Making a light “thud” every time
He turned his head
He was meandering through the lawn of the capitol building
Staring at the ground
Like it was the first time he’d seen it
The kid bent down and snatched a pigeon feather
He raised it slowly
Twirling it between his pointer finger and thumb
It was like watching the feather take flight
One more time
In the grasp of some lowly punk rocker
I was in awe of how in awe he was
He held it against his pinky
Comparing length of his pine needle fingers
And this chunky, dirty, ripped-ass pigeon feather
I figured in a few moments
He was try to collect as many as possible
And strap them to his fingertips
He’d have huge bustling hands
Built to fly
And I imagine
He’d climb to the top of the capitol building
And look down on this fair city
For some kind of disaster he could destroy
Maybe a mugging
Or a dirty cop
Then he’d spread his leather arms
And open his feathered fingers
And he’d jump
In my mind
He made it
And he saved us all.
October 28th, 2010 – Part III – Dallas to Carolina
I like this pen.
Micron 01 Pigma .25mm
Sounds like a weapon.
Which, as a pen, I suppose
It is.
I use my weapon to kill time though.
Which is nice,
I guess. Time isn’t really mine to kill though, eh?
Its always a guesser.
And we’re lucky to get what we get.
Except when we work at a numbers job.
Then, time
It stops
Giving a shit about us.
____________________________________________________________________
Its really the best moments
When I’m by myself, sitting in a ‘no loitering’ zone
On the front patio of a National Bank
With a metal canteen
Full of gin.
Watching people in suits walk by casting
Droopy shadows
Longer than their lives.
Petite women typing on cell phones
Typing at work
And typing difficult words
Over and over in their minds
As they drift to sleep every night
like,
“Ambiguous. A.M.B.I.G.somethingsomething”
Their spindly fingers moving while they
Dream of turning to twine and unravelling
In the wind.
See the toothless.
See the men and women wounded by war,
Yelling and pleading for a cigarette.
The true heroes that made it back to us
Still can’t even afford to kill themselves.
I see the con artist with a chrome crooked
Smile
Working over some old woman in the bank.
See her frail body inch away and clutch her handbag
As he bends down and cranes his arms to the wall
Between her and the exit.
Gin.
See the mother walk hurriedly, dragging
Her daughter’s arm like a fleshy leash.
The young girls cries
Pointing backwards.
Ma just keeps her heavy steps.
See the large man.
The tall, round man
Float lightly down the sidewalk with a
Dumb grin and a
Twenty foot pizza box.
See his belly rumble and peek from his
Sweatshirt.
See his stains start to dry from his ten minute jog.
I can hear his music from his headphones.
Workout music.
See the monster that no one sees.
The mustache of a killer.
He probably has three names.
Like,
Paul Wilson Whitacker
He was always quiet.
Kept to himself.
See his black levis in pristine folds and
Silver gleam and see his bony pale fingers
Twitch
When he catches the college girl on her tour bike.
Gin.
See the young woman in her car,
No thoughts swimming in her eyes.
Only bathing half her face in the falling sun.
The dark half,
Lidless and devoid of cheek bones
Lies alone in the driver’s seat
She stares forward through the cars
In front of her.
She blinks but
Not awake.
Breath in and let it out.
Its been a long day.
See the monster tap the passenger window.
She looks over.
Face engulfed in shadow,
Empty,
Sullen plastic black
She unlocks the door.
The monster smiles a yellow grin
Filled with crags and cavernous wall droppings.
He breaths in her perfume as he
Peals the door open
Like a surgeon
And fills his lungs with perverse thoughts
And dirty graves.
As he takes his seat, she looks at me.
The sun shows she’s 23,
A smoker,
Poor and alone
And the undeveloped wrinkles on her forehead
Crash inward as she closes her eyes.
The monster keeps smiling.
Light turns green.
Gin.
October 28th, 2010 – Let Your Mind Wander
8:20AM, Dallas, TX – Coffee, Dixie Cup of Water
Its like every woman I’ve known
Is a part of some horrorshow of a collection.
Except all I’ve really collected
Is a shoe box full of
Why we couldn’t get along.
I’ve been pinning down broken pieces of
Tsetse flies and tattered moth wings.
But, the meat
The meat, the body
Is missing on every one.
Numbered them 1-49.
Sometime I’ll score a Lord Howe Island Walking Stick
And I’ll pin that man-eater to my
Lapelle for all the world
To drool over.
“The finest catch for any collector,” they’ll say.
“But, have you seen anything else he’s done?”
“I mean, Christ, number 32 is just
A piece of an army ant’s thorax.”
Fuck 1-49
I’m looking for 50.
Yeah, 50.
Some people have a clear vision of their lucky number 50
And they put on their wading boots
And drag themselves through a mess of a marsh
With a net and a jar.
Sometimes they get lucky.
Sometimes they get lonely and lost.
Some people take the best parts of 1-49
And in their mind,
They Frankenstein.
And project a constructed lie of
Perfection on some poor, weak woman.
And sometimes she believes them.
And sometimes she goes crazy.
But, me?
I’m hoping to throw this massacre away.
I’ll keep a couple memories pinned to myself, I suppose
But, the way I figure it,
If you don’t project and you don’t throw
Your time away
Searching,
The prize will come to you.
Maybe she has, and you’ve been too pre-occupied
Organizing your labels.
But usually,
It takes that second glance to
Really trap them anyway,
Because usually,
Usually the first look is just
Surprise.
October 28th, 2010 – Morning Plane Ride
Whelp, I woke up fucking early.
And I fucking drove far.
Now I’ve had my coffee
and I’m 35,000 feet in the air.
I’m exhausted, despite the coffee. We’re headed to North Carolina to play a god damned ukulele festival. I’m sure it’ll be fun, at least thats what I was told this morning when I was leaving the beautiful naked woman in the middle of the bed. She always seems so positive, even when the sleep has taken her eyes over and our pillows are still wet and we have red marks on half of our bodies like some indented, cavernous veins disappearing under waist lines and hiding under our hair.
“You’re living the dream,” she says all too often.
I don’t even know what the hell that means.
Who’s dream?
Mine? Nope.
The American Dream? If that was the case, I’d make more money?
Her dream? Judging by how much she twitches and snarls in her sleep, I sure as fuck hope not.
I assume she means I’m lucky to get paid to write shitty songs and parade my sorry half-drunk ass all over this country.
Wow, now that I see it in writing, that does seem like the American dream.
Get fucked up.
Walk around.
Fuck up other stuff.
Fireworks.
Maybe she’s right then, maybe I’ll have fun.
She’s the only one I’ve met that can spill
Clichés out like gasoline
And mean it with such genuine intent that folks like me,
We actually believe her.
So here I am,
7AM on a plane to Dallas to North Carolina and I don’t care to stare out the window. I’d rather close my eyes and live inside my dream. Laying beside a beautiful naked woman who mumbles stuff like,
“That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
“Sometimes we just have to count our blessings.”
“And”
“Live life.”
And watch her chest pump up and down and feel the patch of pubic hair rub against my leg as she gently sinks into me.
Fuck this 7AM shit.
Last time we were in North Carolina, we got fleas. Fucking fleas.
Nah, my head is up in the clouds but my mind is still back in those bamboo cotton sheets so much closer to heaven than this useless 35,000 feet.
I just found 10 dollars in my pocket – Today is a good day.
October 27th, 2010 – Cheeseman Park with a gin & soda
David & Danielle forever.
That’s whats etched into the table.
D&D, eh?
I bet Danielle is the dragon.
She probably smokes
Has leathery skin
Probably always commands attention
Stretches her arms so far they knock down
Pitchers of wine
She probably screams and yells
And throws plates when her and David really get into it.
I bet the sex is amazing.
I bet David probably sticks around for the sex.
And he probably knows, that at 24, a man with a protruding gut
and a tribal tattoo
Is really only going to find love
In the claws of a dragon.
She probably gives him head in restaurants.
David jogs every other day,
But he really can only make it a mile
Before he misses home.
They go through their wedding pictures
Every first Sunday of the month
But, the distance between them on the couch
is getting larger.
They fall asleep to videos of themselves
on the beach
in the dorms.
But, David’s drifting earlier.
He’s getting sick of the sound track.
Danielle still makes it to the end,
Rewinds and ejects the tape.
Puts it back in the sleeve marked “memories”
And gently places it next to the TV set.
She still hums ‘Angel is the Centerfold.’
After two years, she still can’t get the
Organ part in tune.
Danielle always wakes up first.
She brushes her dragon teeth and
Takes a moment
To think about her hair.
As she runs a comb through,
She sits on the edge of the bed and
Scratches David’s back.
They stumble out the front door
Late again.
Danielle drops David off at the bank
Where he’ll simmer like a tamed stew
For nine hours
He has a turkey sandwich locked up
In a Mega-Man lunch box.
No one really laughs at his jokes.
Danielle washes her hands and prepares
To cut hair.
Her first client,
Miss Whothefuckcares,
(She can never remember the woman’s name, just that she smells like cliniqué and never takes her jacket off)
Is getting the same trim and color
You would expect on a 50 year old
Tom boy.
As the day inches forward,
Three times Danielle wonders why people
Come to get their heads shaved.
She’s a stylist, dammit.
An artist
She often wonders how she got stuck in this.
But, at least there’s still David.
David & Danielle forever.
The fucking horror
Well, two days left.
This tour has only been two weeks long, but its felt like a lot longer. We’ve been going to the same place in a different town. Oregon, it feels like there’s this hotel that’s been bolted to the ground, and people keep sliding out a different painted backdrop every day. While most of the backdrops have been littered with wine groves and precious fall colors, today is gloomy and soaking with little pools of mirrors in the parking lots that I’ve been rippling through with more and more lit cigarettes. I like hearing the “hsss” of a newly extinguished flame, but there’s nothing to do, so I’ve been smoking more.
I did my sit-ups and push-ups this mornings, and I’ve only had two or three drinks on most of these nights. The way I figure it, being drunk for two weeks in these creaking, wooded, haunted houses would drive me more nuts than I’ve been feeling lately.
God dammit, I wish I could remember my life better. I’m looking back at Stacey and I have so few real memories of her. I know I must’ve been happy with her once, but I’m so clouded with fucking booze and laziness. This same thing happened when ma died, I couldn’t remember hardly anything about her. That, I think, was and is the saddest part of losing something. I can’t fucking remember how happy it made me feel and all the moments that could pull me from these shit feelings that I have now.
I think I move on from things, not because I’m ready, but because without memories and without doing something to keep me busy, I just live in a cloudy world with truly nothing on my mind. I used to this it was zen (or some silly shit) to be able to wipe your mind of all useless thought. Now it just makes me lonely. The weirdest part is; I’m getting so used to having a silent mind, that I’m sick of hearing people fill it with shit that is so much worse than silence. Which is most shit.
Odd point of reference:
“Crazy” by Willie Nelson (performed by Patsy Cline) just came on. I’m drinking a vodka soda with lime because it has the least amount of calories. Fuck.
Ramble ramble ramble
Blah blah blah
I write all this shit down because I’ve never been good at speaking anything truthful about how I feel or what’s going down. And, I assume most people are the same way…So, I hope I can get a good song or something from these little bullshit entries.
“Why do I let myself worry? Crazy for feeling…”
This guy in the booth next to me just told his family – who was silently eating – to “shut up.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll get you a Safeway gift card,” he told his ten or eleven year old son.
I guess some people have it worse than I can ever know.
I’m just passive aggressive, not a cracked out dad slurping down Alfredo fucking noodles and literally saying shit like,
“Remember that, Bill. They tell you its free? Nothing’s ever free.”
What a douchebag.
What a Ford diesel fucking F150 douchebag.
Well, at least I forget about being a pussy and still get pissed at family man fucks like this.
Onstar.
Laughing at crying men.
Police
“We’re outta here.”
Fuck this guy.
“Why do I let myself worry?”
