Friday, May 26th, 2006

I don't know if you are still living, still feeling, still reeling, still breathing, still alive, still yearning, still aching, still in touch with It.

It: the hurt the smashing the retching the ruination the dismay the dried eyes the callousness the financial crunch the carelessness the clueless direction the unconcern the uncouth the cotton-mouth the cashless sharing the call-soon the cold shoulder the crying the crouch of fear the call-back-please the clouded consciousness of It.

I do, tonight, feel It because the effects seep like pollution.

Slow Passing Time

The cable runs along the top of the windows, looped in segments of a couple of feet, and it ties into an electrical sensor that, when pulled, generates a light on the dash of the bus, a message of "Stop Requested" across the scrolling light board hanging from the ceiling, and (if you're lucky) an imperative voice that says "Stop Requested!". You have to pull this cable before the stop or else you walk back to where you were supposed to get off. If you pull this cable after someone else has already triggered the response, which happens to a lot of non-observant earphone-clad riders, you get nothing except looks from other people. The handicapped riders have their own special button that sits on their laps. Sometimes the cable doesn't work on one side or the other and you have to get folks on the opposite side of the bus, the side that has a working cable, to pull it for you when you need to stop. The cable is like the reigns of a great, white rectangle of a horse. It, indeed, does arrest the forward motion generated by harnessed horsepower.

When we get past the last bus stop before my stop, inches after we cross the threshold of stopping so as to commit no confusion to the driver, I grab that cable. Sometimes others beat me to the pull, but mostly I make the driver stop at the next possible, allowable stop. I need not even grab the damn cable; all drivers know my routine. I've fallen asleep on the way home, late at night after being out at some bar with unfamiliar singing folks or wrapped up in indecency of some sort, and the driver will ask a rider to nudge me and idle impatiently until I rise-mumble incoherant gratitude-and exit. But in the coherant, bladder-filled afternoons usually I grab the cable and immediately put my travel bag over my shoulder as I walk to the front. I like my bus drivers. Bus drivers put up with a LOT of bullshit on their marches back and forth over their routes, like junkyard dogs they are in their protective zones, but also like patient hippos ferrying dull-witted, lazy birds on their unconcerned back they tend to glide to and fro.

I talked to the driver, my better driver friend (the drivers alternate), and told him that I won't be seeing him so much anymore. He asked why and I told him I was going to finally do it, I'll be buying the Rusty Turd this weekend. After I explained the price and condition and history of the truck, he countered that I might still be seeing him more than I thought...and he might be right. We smiled, I departed while wishing him luck, and the bus moved on in a roar and bustle of movement.

I went into the same old store, the one closest to my house which causes me to walk a mile home after the bus drops me off, and I thought: "Life is moving onward. I'm to the point where I'm going to miss the bus rides. I'm changing..."

My Quiet Friend

Push against them, the whole tide of opposition, for they come with sharpened teeth and they know only killing. It hurts to feel their pestilence inside me, to know they are coursing inside this deflated body, this boy that once rode his bike and believed in Santa Claus and dreamed he'd grow up to be a spy like J. Bond. Now I clutch, I grab, I cringe, I crave and I claw and I have totally lost control of everything that I thought I had grasped on my escape from my sinking boat. These accusatory eyelids define me quietly in the night and I blink in rememberance daily the whiplashes of shame and regret and hindsight they broadcast to me in the coffee vapors of my artifical-light mornings. And you look at me and try not to shake your head because of the things you see that equal what you have already learned in your miranda rights life. And I shake my head with resignation for you, because you are right and I am lost, so I shift to scratching at the two dollars in my pocket, and no longer register the headache because of the ache of the crushing, dirty presence of the tide inside. These days, despite the outpouring of care, I feel the dying inside all too often. And it tastes like metal, or beer, or contaminated smoke, or bitter-caustic "what if?". I stare at the sky; hope, my quiet friend...

K and C

A. Share
2. Double Barrel
3. Is A Crowd
4. Downcast
5. Hope
6. Potlatch Croupier
7. Connecting Tones
8. Riddle Redundancy
9. Contest/Confess
10. Emulation
J. Contrast/Compare
Q. Subdivision
K. Homogenous Influx

The Blackest Night

Fear--it raped my sense of security, of boundaries, in a scythe swipe. I shook, my body racked with confusion and panic and adrenaline. I heard the noises again and tried to process in my overloaded mind my next move. The gun, a trigger, turn out the lights and tiptoe. Breathe quietly, silently...and don't forget to breathe...while my very alert senses configured my next action. The gun was hardly a noticeable weight in my tense hand but it was a comfort, and a concern. Would I put a bullet into someone, maybe. This decision struck me as odd, as I tensed against the wall out of the light to avoid shadow movements. These new standards of living and dying were the products of fear. I began to pray with my eyes wide open.

Curved Rhythms

Curved Rhythms-
Can’t stop wondering where this path ends
how far this line of sight extends
what direction this map line plots

Her words freeze across my lips like icicles
and shake my warmth into packages
that look like fancy-wrapped chocolates
that have been left in the hot car
and have now become a ruined gift

These pink mornings extend into the
heat of bright white and light blue
and onward into the gray overhanging tones
of rain and wetness, before casting
purple shadows leaking blackness;
pinpoints of night when I finally find rest

She closes me inside my words
capturing me in the meanings I leave
for her with flowers and stolen kisses.
While her mind still slumbers I have touched
her on her heart with my exploding belief
silently, that cannot be taken away.

False/Fade/Find/Fortunate

Tonight I slicked up my hair, wore a new shirt-open three buttons in the front and sleeves rolled up to right under my elbow-over a simple white t-shirt, some well-fitted pants, and flip flops. Oh, and my hidden-from-view-but-there new belt, and felt kinda cool for a couple of hours.

Why? What defines me by this choice of attire, this display? Is my self confidence and status based on fashion? Well, no. Not at all. But this was a night to have fun. It is Cinco De Mayo and I wanted to get out of the house, please!

My wonderful friend, and P&C teammate, Amelia came and grabbed me out of my doldrums for an adventure on the town. Amelia is the COOLEST chick, I'm so very lucky to have her as a good friend. Anyway, she was looking quite hot and I was either looking cool or looking like someone who is trying to look cool but whatever, we went out.

We went to a local place that is usually ok, but tonight it was kinda lame. We sat down and after ordering our $2 Coronas some jackass comes up and claims I'm sitting in his seat. No chairs were even in this section of the bar, we had to move some into our spot, and the whole place is not crowded at all...so this guy is just being an asshole. I stay quiet and listen to see how much he is going to sound off about his seat. He continues on for two or three sentences and then finally settles in next to me.

Apparently everyone around the bar, for lack of anything better to do on this fine Mexican holiday, has witnessed the situation and are looking at this guy like me and Amelia are, which is "what a drip". He then changes his tune and wants to be friends, introducing himself and apologizing profusely with transparent false pretenses amidst many "good natured" back slaps on me. If we didn't have full beers we would've left, just on principle that this place sucks from the jump. He then shifts into introspection and remains quiet the rest of our time there, thank goodness.

The entire place is lecherous, old and ineffectual and tagged by the contents of their wallets...or blonde, fake, laughing or sipping on bought drinks, and wondering how long until they can go blast away their respective positions by bright white in a dirty bathroom.

Amelia is not blonde, the only female in the room not blonde, and is bright, talented, funny, witty, and enthralling. And soon all those wallets are cutting eyes to her, insulting the blondes and suffocating poor Amelia. Then they look at the chump to her right: me. "What does this goof have?"

Respect, not that I need to reply. We finish our beers and leave this insulation of the self-damned. We end up at Taco Mac, the old haunt. Peace and love and nachos and conversation and clarity. The night unfolds, the rhythm shifts, and we are syncho de my ohh.

Driving home I explain the shades of drum and bass vs. house music styles of turntablism and feel human, complete and understood. I write this in thankfulness for a great friend. Thanks Amelia!

Earth Turns On Hurt

Questioning drops
Of crumbling quiet
With golden words
Is confined misplacement.

Can you reach across
Sunset-streaked colors
To find my contentment
Without you?

I remember clearly-
Birthday morning overcast,
Sleepy-eyed surprise;
Shines in a dark place.

A year has passed
Since that promise.
Lessons burned,
Goodbye.

Honeysuckle

Erosion

Cut away the fat, carve the meat from the bone, dice and slice and mince and pinch and tense the calm, the good, the right, the positive in the carver's kitchen, in the meat locker, in the court room, in the pitch-black bedroom, inside yourself in an unconcerned crowd.

Do it again the next day, the day following, the rest of the week, the week after that, then continue onward as if that is what life is...the beating on yourself, the hobbling, the binding, the bending, the breaking.

Turn off your eyes and ears and heart and mind and life and blood for things you cannot change but are married to, enjoined with, infused into, burned by, melded...and stop making them hurt you long after the caustic bright chemical reaction, emotional poignancy, intellectual delve, sexual twist or careless cluelessness disperses.

Leave these rainy nightmares of the sticky, putrid past to fade, discard that dark hue that climbs out in rancid, acidic sweat to taint the sweet-rose dawn of each breaking day, and believe there is more, so much more, beyond now.

Derail

Another of my found writings, which just show me how far I've travelled since this feeling made me take pen to paper to permanence.

Can’t feel anything in this flight from you or myself and the empty roar within in me. My thoughts are scattered across the past, present, and future in a reconstructed haze of recollected premonitions. Your nose-wipe life befouls any dash to restitiution and deadens the point of the directional needle. Where is which-way, and who are they; am I to confuse when with how? Riddles for the sake of insanity and limbo read like obituaries in my latestest yellow journalism sensational. Hot off the press, lingering bathroom piss, tortured daily remiss: derailment of bliss.

TooL

Tool's new album 10,000 Days is out now. Go get it and freak yourself out, you deserve it.

Follow up: Yep, it freaks me out. Tool never ceases to amaze me and conjure up strange rhythms and imagery. Sometimes spooky, sometimes driven and forceful, but always, forever original and unique.

Rehabilitation

What hurts most in things of the past that turned out bad?

Is it the memory of the event? Or the pain endured because of actions?
Is it the hurt of being wronged? Or the guilt of craving revenge?
Is it the confusion and the bluffed feeling?
Or is it the letdown of knowing that you are human, that despite your best defenses you are still capable of being injured?

Or maybe it is that hard-swallow, sinking, Sucker feeling of bitter regret due to events, courses, actions, or words?

And if that hurt can be narrowed into any definite source, can it be erased? Eradicated? Overcome?

What makes hurt? And why do we continue to hurt others, as humans, after we have felt such pain from that action?

Time Capsule

Finding old things, forgotten pieces of a life before mine, connects me to my father. I am fixing up my mom's backyard as her birthday gift. It is an large project involving saws, machetes, rakes, wheelbarrows, bags, etc. Today I found the wheelbarrow had a flat. Easy to fix, but my toolbox was in the bedroom. Instead I went into the old shed out back. My father's long-unused tools sat quietly in his large chest, the kind of tool container you see in a garage when you are talking to Joe 6-Pack about how you accidentally hit the curb (leaving out the alcohol content) and why your car pulls to the right, while Joe just looks at you like are talking too fast for him.

In this toolchest I found order, care, and surprising cleanliness. This was a peek at my father's way of doing things before the confusion came over him like a rising tide. I found tools that I had no way of using, from sheer confusion of their purpose as well as lacking something as massive as the tools were meant to be used upon, and amidst the connection to my father's past I managed to find some things that could remove the wheelbarrow wheel. After some air at the local gas-n-sip from the 50-cent pump, I was back and removing sticks and crap with renewed vigor.

I was careful to put my father's tools back where they belonged. They are, still, my father's tools and I merely borrowed them for the task at hand. He doesn't need tools these days, but I respect them as if he would come out and give the toolchest an inspection. I know his hands curved around the handles and put the sockets in with the adapters, so I replace them in the same manner. I wipe my grease-covered fingers with a rag he most surely wiped his hands and tools with sometime in the foggy past.

This is the closest I've been to my father in 18 years and it filled me with content and satisfaction. Thanks Dad.

Hope Searches

Take a rectangle, put inside a picture of us behind the glass surface, and clasp it there. Turn the angle of the frame by the tips of the wooden edge and cast the sunlight of your captured remembrance across the surface, dancing shadows into the corners of this static feeling. See how the light cascades across your frozen smile? See the shine flip back in my blue eyes? Does that make you remember the things that smolder in these days of physical separation? That confined, stiff portrait is only a frame of the moments of life, of time...of things now known and conquered and encapsulated. Tell me unknown things instead of those scared feelings, the fears of hurt and regret and the septic past. Who talks of the days of the unknown without trepidation?..only those seeking the unestablished sugar-coated in hope.

Verbal Pink, Orange, and Red

Thorns rip me across exposed skin in my haste to blend into the thicket of woods and brambles. Solitude and serenity is my quest; a simple thrill in viewing the sunset alone, undisturbed and introspective, from a hidden natural setting. I bleed as I sit amidst the stunted-growth trees and pine needles and granite. It is Friday evening. I don't need a shower or clean clothes or phone calls or money or cigarettes or car keys or problems or rubbers or anyone. I crave this simple departure into the force of life that is bigger than any creature on the face of this earth. I managed to make it in time--time being relative to the turning of the earth and the clarity of the sky and the position my butt is resting--to absorb what too many people simply take for granted if noticed, blocked with sunglasses or sunvisors, or cursed/craved from behind a restrictive window.

Melding light and emotions and existence into the passing colors of tonight's sunset alters my direction and outlook on my life. It isn't easily described the inspirational power to alter in hues my life, or the opportunity to let the passing of time affect me merely in a reflection of skycast light, but the hum inside my body resonates from this event. And my earthly form was changed, my soul was touched from a bright-white source, and my thoughts were reconstructed based upon my deviation from my draining, deluding ritual of happiness or fun.

I've been impressed upon, influenced, motivated. How do you capture the passing of time in words? A picture would simplify the event. Words are harder; truly try to write about a sunset sometime and see for yourself. I chose to write this out of a day of thoughts, situations, and adventures for sheer survival of the captured beauty I shared with forces greater than I. Words are cheap, positive thoughts are lucky, impressions are rare, and finding the footpath of direction develops the receipent blessed to experience the transformation into motion and permanence. This is gratitude.

Myself

For Shannon Fisher, a good friend who is truly missed. This represents how I imagined his last moments to be...

When shadows creep, talons piercing deep, time drips slowly and the edges of fear bear sharpness.

When darkness pours, inside the wind's howling roar, forcing me to crawl and hide, disgusted inside.

When the feelings surround, an empty, hollow sound, the wide open abounds, and I breathe sadness.

When the hope-glow flickers, a solitary lingering sliver, a loneliness is triggered, echoing notes of failure;

Here within myself.

The World of Drum and Bass (ATL)

Strobed light cut across faces and bodies in time to the pulsation of volume, and blood and hearts. The room sprawled to the walls free of obstructions execpt for the support columns, and the colored lights danced across angles of floor and wall and dancers. The din of the explosive bass shakes my body, vibrates my privates, locks a timeframe into my observation, forces unconscious tick and twitches of my body respoding to the flow of input.

I twisted in time to the rhythm and felt myself loosen inside, lacking that clench of stress and the soft stab of hurt, clinging to the balance of light and energy and flow and music and possibility.

My cuz, DJ Jubei, shouted something in my ear that made me smile and I kept looking to the head-bent turntablist onstage and shifting my body to the beat. The beer was cold in my hand, acting as a counter-weight to my gyrations, I suddenly felt a little pooped. My journey was in need of rest, so I found a couch. And while sitting I watched many a person on their night...seeing the skimpy buckhead chicks, the gays, the drunks, the guy that ate too many drugs, my cousin dancing. All of these separated for the girl with the twirly light thingy.

And the night shortly changed after I asked her if I could buy her a drink. And the beat played onward and the buckheads still danced and the gays still showed me how to dress better...but she defined the night, the moment, and the future...which is up to her.

I remember hearing High Contrast...and that's about it.

28 Miles To Go

The adventures of some evenings redefine you, and I had one of those evenings last night. I still wear the gift you gave me, never removing it since your tender fingers placed it on me. It encircles the pulse of my blood with hope and care. You find it hard to believe words that you know and feel are true. Your hand in mine, the laughter of smiling souls, the closeness of your warmth against me; you feel deep inside a stirring that is greater than words can portray. I am patiently waiting for you to decide how willing you are to step into something that is bigger than you ever imagined, and I will be there waiting for you regardless of your decision.

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