Gauntlet Runs

Oh, you will suffer. No doubt about it, you will be ravaged and exhaused and fooled until you learn to deny your basic cravings. Sin is suffocating, clouding your next step with tainted illumination, and prepare for evil doorways to beckon you inward with offerings of respite; plainly spoken, you cross the threshold of this den and you will be the spider's dinner. You will die or wish you were, for your path will have ended with one false presentation or another...nevermind what sucked you in to lose the plodding ahead...finding only regret is left to ridicule your soul-lacking bones for eternity.

Morning light peeks gently through the slit of my shades, pinning the cat in the corner in spot-lit grooming, and my nightmares evaporate into the versions that are real, visceral, kniving and biting: the new day begins. Prayer splashes me in the shower, words of the Bible train me in patience on my commute of bus and train, but the path is slippery, perilous even, but remember that it is not destined.

Narrowly

The shadow-draped corner, stalled now by the guy with a similar hat who snaked into the bathroom and shut the door before I could react, now was teeming with seven hefty, imposing, unsmiling bouncers who knew only that their target of inflicted pain was a "dude in a hat" and there I stood. The long-haired narc grabbed my arm and whispered, "Get Out Of Here!" and I looked into his face with shock, followed by quick panicky comprehension. The bathroom door opened, dude's hat emerged preceeding his form, and I slipped carefully between the hulking forms of angry, violent men before the screams and meaty pounding sounds and the squirt of red, alcohol-thinned blood splashed. My cuz and my dumbass, blessed again.

Exposed Film

Straining the poisons between two eyeballs, a pair unfocused, seeps a little death left, half contrite right. This draft is whiplashed words slit onto the expressed page; I'm broken but in that suction down I glimpsed her. I connected with her; remember that amid the daily strangling, under the bouncing of battering, when the onlookers sneer and whisper. Think on the beauty of the scenery during the headlong plunge over the cliff, for it is a one-time viewing, and your flight will either splash red or surface to amazement and awe.

Repainting Iron Railings

Early in his life, the upward stretch beckoned him to explore. The lazy mid-morning light was languid and the neighborhood air calm and empty, especially of parental figures. He reached high on the rails, meeting the halfway mark and gripped tight. His feet holds were problematic; the curves of the swirled inlays in the wrought-iron railing resisted easy ascension. He wedged a Converse hightop into a swirl's connection to the left rail and shimmed his hands up over the flaking rustoleum paint for greater height while his unsure right foot dangled behind him. With extreme concentration and exertion, he pigeon-holed his right shoe into the bottom of a bigger curlycue and felt his left ankle starting to shake from the pressure of his form; his right leg now bore some of his form's weight at another obtuse angle, but at least the burden was shared between his two legs. His hands slid upward, quicker now in his physical interaction...like time was running out for his climb...and caught a spiderweb in his hand. One hand gripped the rail while the other tried to shake free the dusty adherence. Both ankles began to strain, he was almost up to the top, and he suffered the web-crusted hand for a victory extension of his feat--needing to slap his palm onto the carport ceiling for verification, which he did with a hurried pop--and then he clung to the rails while his gravity intensified. His bottom foot seemed to be asleep and stuck, unresponsive to his coaxed releasing. His right foot was wedged; this was when his arms and hands and back and shoulders chorused their exerted pain. His panic was real. He yanked on his right foot, bending the curved decoration inlay on the wrought ironwork, wrenching his leg free. His exulation of movement caused his handgrip to give away suddennly, plummeting him to the ground. A final touching of his right leg, under the weight of this fall, and the weakened handgrips that came far too late, combined to find him on his back with the left shoe still trapped in the now bent bottom curve of the wrought iron railing, fists white-knuckle locked about 2 feet off the ground saving himself from the smack of concrete by sheer fear and coursing adrenaline, and heavenly luck. He gasped for breath, his hands stung, his leg was twisted but numb from lack of bloodflow, and he was practically in shock by the flurry of events. Extracting his twisted foot, he recalled that he reached upward, he had touched the top, he had overcome his desire without dying.

Grass

Lines fold from lack of structure, tall survivors of green aromatic grass between grooved lines of swirling destruction taunt me with resilence. I aim again, second round, to destroy your progressive height and to erase my amateurish driving. Inbetween doomed patterns, I drive around this old yard thinking of time past. I recall early life, innocent days and nutured living. I remind myself, amidst the spreading razor-scythe swath of demise I leave behind my lawnmower...I remind myself of how I grew up in this yard like the hardy weeds that slip by my destructive path. Times flash backwards, show how my best friend edged out alive too, which is so rare from our ghostly generation. These thoughts tremor along vibrations and screams of shattered sticks and the suffocated bogged-down dead grass bodies clogging the swirling machination of finality. Weeds survive; the common, generalize grassy lawn is shorn and unremembered and dismissed as unnecesary.

Black and Blue Sunset

Hate to let my mind roam over the areas of my thoughts that are sprinkled with landmines of hurt like a decorated zero-donut of demise, so I turn it off. Click. The switch is heavy to flip upward, spring-loaded downward. I crush those heavy draping recollections so as to not stumble under the weight of a bruising, a battering, a beating that is my past...that is still me when I'm out of focus...that is my upturned hands presented to the sky in abject confusion of love.

Hold onto distance as a cloak to withdraw into so as to avoid plugging into lives of surrounding "others" and dance behind the puppet wall, the cut-out mask, the costumed fool, the shadowy pantomime. Ride that elevator up to work and hop that train and pull the covers up over blackened regret and painful remorse and after the prayer by the lonely bedside, the words whispered across the darkened room that cry for help paint the backdrops of my dreams.

Restricted

Like the others that wave from outside the glass surround of your gazing eyeball, so life beckons me to come out-of-doors and play on the freshly cut lawn today.

"Sorry, I can't play today. I'm...", closing myself into shadows and stale corners of an overworn house of familiarity.

Not today.

Stalled

This light that pulls
Out the other shadows
Is always radiating
I lose my bearings

Hard fall again
Is not planned
The hurt contains
End inward slams

Wound around my own words
Captured, I stir the memories
Grasping, groping, reaching for holds
Acceptance--stalled motion precedes demise.

Complacent

Sunsets enjoyed from my backporch have always defined good moments of my life, and tonight was a recollection and awknowledgement of those special transitions: A book, a cigarette, a cold beer, and the slowly sinking colors of the day bathing this quiet, tranquil space in peaceful changing actualization. No matter how many times I've reveled in this sensation I still connect and reflect and absorb anew the moving-shadow imagery of our planet's rotation...and the sensory presentation of the concept of time.

I sat out back and watched the gentle swaying of the trees and bushes, heard the scampering of birds and squirrels as they slowed the day's activities, noted the coming-home sounds of the neighbors resound and fade off like the churn of the distant roadway traffic, and let my eyes gradually react to the diminishing light of this day's color spectrum amid a restful disattachment from my usual cares, worries, and emotions.

Satori

Onward drips the heavy rounded beads of days, gravity pulling the weight of each contained drop downward into a sort of mini-river of memory, with the past being that gathered pool underneath the river's waterfall. A defined, calculated slice of the passage of this constant current is a day--a 24-hour period in which the earth circles a full rotation inside of its greater orbit of the sun. One day is a circular completion of each given water drop: specific in its fluid edges which separate this encapsulement from the greater water source, the drop is now pulled into a motion after a maturation of density bearing a gravitational descent; yet this individual drop forms a particular shape pattern, colored by reflected light, and expresses unique soundwaves generated upon impact with the greater flow of the mini-river of memory. Even enveloped into the splashed conformity of formless, flowing days past, amid swirling inclusion of the ever-flowing stream of events, a recalled memory can find and identify a completed drop once immersed into the collective liquid. The mini-river gains force and widens as it degenerates over a pitched edge, cascading airly and sprayed into splintered projections onto a general pool of all the created drops, which slowly ebbs and flows and pulses and reflects...until a final drop shatters the calm surface, breathing outward a concluding reverberation.

Unspoken

Chocolate layers of deepening receptors swallow eyesight
Inverting reason and capturing care on slick pitcher-plant walls
Absorbing, engulfing, encapsulating, compiling
Stacked and packaged and arranged presentations
To discover the sincerity of the origin
In a lingered, shiny flash
Portrait-painted faces and masked visages
And ensnared words captured, sticky,
On locked tongues, withheld
Under such a powerful glance.

Bloody Frustration

Touching the black and white wires sparks and arcs and crosses currents and melts, burns, rends the segregated halves of the system. Dazed-in shock-I reel from the eye-blinding burst on contact and stagger over to the toolbox. I reach for the metal, long and kinda skinny, flattened phillips head with a rachet and drill bit that has the bubble in the magnetic extension ruler...the non-existent instrument that will fix my fused, reversed current, deflated, empty and dried, dead, broken life. My collection of hand tools, accumulated from my years and lessons and experiences, lacks the special implement needed to restore and repair this wasting heap that I work on daily. I wipe my hands on a dirty rag, swig on my flat can of beer, puff off my nub cigarette, and swear under my breath at the time I've wasted on this dead-end project.

Easily Captured

There are things in life that each individual is really good at for unknown reasons, a natural adeptness that is unexplainable. One of my lucky traits is making musical mixes. I can take 10 completely random artists and put them together to create a mood, a statement, or a dreamy background fade. I don't know why I have this ability but I cherish it, and so do my friends. Most of my mixes are simply made to see what can be made from this "stuff", which is very consistent with my "throwaway art". I have a term called throwaway art to which I apply on any kind of art that is created or reformed or hacked together to create a bigger, more organized on concepted artwork, particularly if the elements come from found or discarded materials. The end result is that the finalized piece is to be "left" for others to find and ponder over. The ability to mix music, burn it onto a cd (or record it onto a tape in old-school days), is a tangent of my throwaway art form. My friends benefit greatly from this habitual, hobbyistic trait of mine. I most recently took 10 dusty cds from various artists that I haven't, literally, played or even touched the cases of in at least 6 years and within 30 minutes I easily had one of my mixes. This latest one I truly like: a dreamy background fade. It is music that you play while you read a book, take a bath, clean the house, etc. It really is not meant to be listened to with scrutiny, rather it is a space absorber.
My pals Andy or Dan...or maybe even Sue...definetely my cuz DJ Jubei...will reap the understanding of this mix. If you are interested in any of my throwaway mixes, shoot me an email telling me why you'd like to hear one and I'll send it out to you on my dime.

Took 15 Minutes

A series of opening lines...

1. The fork tines rang anger in clanking waves of constrained soundwave rings that was easily heard amid the hunched shoulder, tense but polite guests seated for the dinner. "Invites be damned, if he...," she thought while locking her forehead into the opposite of tense, but nowhere near relaxed. "HEY, oh shoot, dinner is on the table!" her husband proclaimed as he and her best friend emerged to join the dinner in progress from their extensive, lengthy tour of their basement.

2. "Drop me off here dude...", and then he added, "please." The rain was fierce hammering points of liquid fury onto fools out-of-doors. He slammed the truck's door and dipped into his coat's hood with the repetitive rain clouding his hearing so that he only heard the passing hiss of air as if he was trapped in a seashell's cavernous nautilus, intoning brief reflection on his youth before quickly striding down into the dark neighborhood streets of danger, demise, regret...alone.

3. Exiting the train station he had the cigarette perched upon his lip, ready, before he opened the exterior push doors. The cold scratched at his exposed skin, a flame kissed the awaiting tobacco stick, wind curling around skyscrapers making ignition troublesome. A down-on-his-luck character approached him in his hurry; eyes connected, pleading looks and inward groaning, he shook his head no. Across the busy street he paused, guilt clouding his gut. He looked back to recompense his callousness but the person was gone, the moment passed, decision cast.

4. I raced into the train as the doors shut, settling into the gaze of an old gentleman observer, and in reaching for my small Bible I saw the hidden fortune cookie. I offered it to the man, who was so surprised that he took a long time before shaking his head negatively, and it caused me to smile to myself as I put the unopened message back in my satchel in exchange for the book of Mark in my tiny Bible given to me as a gift when I was baptised.

5. I was so happy to have time alone with her because she amazes me with each topic we squeeze in between the crowd's surges and exclamations and peels of laughter. I'm too scared to let her know that I admire her, nervous to move too fast, cautious of error, and I find myself spending long thoughts, daydreams I guess, hoping for more minutes to become lost together with her.

Gentle Extending Hand

A message to myself and those smart enough not to tune out...

"So we must listen very carefully to the truths we have heard, or we may drift away from them. For since the messages from angels have always proved true and people have always been punished for disobeying them..."

I choose the KJV here for this one to tie it together, more bossy and bold:

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen..."

But I love my LIfe Application version sooooo much, which says it as so...

"What is faith? It is the confident assurance that somthing we want is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it up ahead."

That is encapsulating, engulfing, to me. That is worth seeking out on any terms prescribed unto me. It sure beats the terms I've been given by any other persona in my life.

Faith is needed: My alcohol problem, my smoky lies, my unfinished attempts...faith. Faith. FAITH, carefully, words by both authors show the love, guidance, care, concern, needed articulation of faith to those that seek or care or even peer in curiosity in a moment's lingering. We should see the unquestionable love that extends to us, backward and forward, from our meager step to take one mico-brain second to believe, or even give pause for consideration.

Thank You Note

You--I want you to know that I truly appreciate the dinner, this kindly proffered food for me...for I surely would not have eaten this night if it was not for your generosity. I would have languished in some corner, with a growling stomach, and I would not have seen nourishment. That food! Oh, the taste of it still lingers in my mouth. I never knew that simple food could be so delicious, so wonderous! I thank you, I know you won't ever read my appreciation. I grubbed on true dinner this evening; I didn't tear my body's fortitude down for needed energy from the cells that form my constitution, to survive; Why? Because you fed me, you provided for me, you cared about me in my tarnished state, my lost plight.

Thank you again. I will pull these covers over my head and try to rest for tomorrow will roll over all too soon and I'll be in search again.

Sincerely,
Your bum son

Unearthing Hurt

For Ian

The lights dimmed, the surrounding noise followed suit, leasing shadows time among elbows, glass reflections, and haze smoke circulating.
"I'll tell you, I'll say it all...doesn't mean a damn really. Here, toast me to it--the story."
Mugs clinked, fluid sloshed, the bartender without a bra settled against the bar pretending to stare at a speck on the wall.
"It went down like this: two stupid people lost sight of the end of a tunnel."
There was a long pause which called for some serious endurance, and I sipped my beer a couple of times.
"And?"
"That's it Mate. That is the story in the concentrated form."
I watched the bartender walk away, noticeably let-down and bored from the summation of the story, and when she was out of earshot I whispered to my companion the horrible, the almost evil truth.
"LIfe was inverted for me, for our situation, and someone would die, no doubt, soon, if a drastic change didn't happen."
I let that sit inside of background noise, swallows, taps of a cigarette on the ashtray.
Finally, he straightened up and asked, or noted, "So...you are saying that by leaving her and the kids...just up and abandoning them...you saved a life, or their lives?"
My cigarette smoke swirled slowly around my hand, shifting away as I reached for the mug, and then dispersed as I snubbed the butt out. I drank the remaining contents of the mug.
I turned to my companion, locking on his eyes.
"Yes. Someone would have died if I didn't split the scene. It was truly a matter of life and death."
I threw down some bills and we left the bar with the heaviness of my past expressed out loud hovering between us.

Pad Days 2

This town seemed to ghost away before his eyes, daily fading into swirling dust and wind-blown curtains from open, empty windows of houses that once held vibrant life...families, laughter, connection.

The railroad spur discounted this community, sought a hard, bent-steel rail right into perceived ripened valleys of opportunity.

Mailboxes sat empty on hand-fashioned posts that lean from uncare, disuse.

The swirl of the wind whips when the life of a town is exhumed to past status.

He tilted his grimy hat brim, looking longing down streets that echoed calls of neighbors, youth, turmoil, care...he stood rigid against time with squinted eyes and a locked jaw. A fool on an empty Main Street of forgotten, moved-on-to-newer dreams; planted in his stance, he would continue this little town in words, in fistfuls of scourned, mouthed sounds, in gritty determination--disappearing words marking the dusk like Indian symbols, for those members that no longer gather.

He...cared about the Pad--people, purpose, potential. He felt it needed permanence and he obeyed--alone--because he found himself reaching out into empty night sky.

The wind quickend, the dust circled, he lowered his head and scratched positivity into the shifting dirt underfoot, trying to define time against an unyielding grind of motion.

This one stood against change for realizations...in solitude.

Turntablism

For Jubei

Echo...reverbing note bends in the foreshadowing of your eardrum, mind's eye, fingertip.
Manipulate from the tingle inside of your bio-timing,
Bleeding feelings into streamlined emotions
Poured outside to gathered, mingling receptors.

Sweat means you're human,
Ice settles in the cup,
Reaching for the follow up,
Control? No, only flow.

Watching distant aloof
You provide for my slice of life
For those to enjoy, decide, overload;
You leave alone knowing your tones
Echo...inside of us.

Flame