Song Without Words

Don't worry about words
There are none for this song.

Open your mouth,
move your tongue
and lips.

Those will always be
the right ones
at the right time.

Weight of a Sentence

The notebook is never empty

it only gives that impression.

Write something for me.

Tell me a truth

and I will tell you one.

Pulling at words

and thoughts

stretching them

until the sentence

is ready to fall a part

from the line and dro p

                                     off

the page

entirely.

You can only live the same dream for so long. 

In this well
are only ashes. 

Lucky in an indifferent world. 

I've got a frozen tongue in the freezer
that's got nothing to say. 

Nothing matters
Everything is worth saving

Life Feeds on Life

Something
Somewhere
Must die every day
For you to live

To contemplate the visage. 

The weighted wreck of expectation. 

Bubbles, Spheres, and Planes of Intersection. 

Daydreams float like seeds 
On the wind.

Which will fall to the soil
And seed the Earth?

Cut through the bullshit and find what matters most to you. 

I don't want to be the bad man I know I've been. 

To fall in love from a distance is the only folly. 

I want to be able to forgive myself. 

Broken Cymbal Symphony

We conquer our inadequacies or are consumed by them. 

Creative Cruelty

I'm just a shadow of myself.
I'm not the me I could have been.
I'm not the me I could still be. 

To be alive is to be in a state of perpetual fragility.

There is no growth without hardship and pain.

Even the faintest light 
can take us to where we need to be.

Stringing the Present

This desire must be fulfilled even if
only for a moment.

Pain and panic -
Thoughts of survival and triage.

What voice does your mind speak with?

My thoughts break up into digestible words
that fall short of actual intent.

The arm of the tree withers.
How much longer can it hold on?

Am I disappointed in my childhood
for not giving a more realistic expectation of life?

Coddled and safe -
I am weary of the change I need.

Your dreams are as beautiful
as I have known you to be. 

slow parade

A slow parade of discovery
with no drum major leading
the band. Music in and
out of time, rhythm
merely a suggestion.

Classifying Dreams

Classify my dreams as
likely, unlikely, 
never going to happen.

You'd be right as often
as you'd be wrong.

Things change so slow
that we forget 
what quick can look like.

I don't know your dreams
well enough to do 
the same for you.

I can guess and be as 
right as often as you were
about mine. 

Is it beautiful out there?

We have a drink
and listen to the sounds
of the neighborhood
in between brief
pauses in conversation

It has been a long day
and the only question left
to answer

How soon until we go
to sleep
so we can try this again?

Echo Park Summer

Haze of heat 
My body covers itself in sweat
The city seeps into the soles of my shoes
and I breathe it out

Walking the streets
choked full of youth on such
a summer day

I am as old as I have ever been

Nature has always made it easy 
for man to believe in gods.

La Virgen de Echo Park

I found her in an alley
painted on a dirty wall
with a light
shining upon her.
Her face was of divine
peace and compassion.
I parked my car in front of her-
perhaps - I thought -
that would keep it safe.
I am not religious
or even superstitious
but I was born on her feast day.
It could be mere coincidence
or not
but I acknowledge her
any time we encounter one another.
It couldn't hurt and
there's nothing to lose.

The proof is everywhere.

freewrite 8/6/15

Words are nothing thoughts are nothing and I
am nothing until I decide to be something when
I become something I will become someone
and when I become someone I will not be
forgotten by those who see and those who see
me will hold me in the closet of their thoughts
the door for it opening on occasion and that
occasion needs not be important or at length
merely a passing moment that serves as a
reminder of something and nothing that is what
we veer between something and nothing and
when we become something it is only because
we are on our way to being nothing again
this is no source for worry just an unceasing
continuum becoming is a process with no end
and no real beginning we can observe the rising
of the sun and its setting we can observe the
ascension of the moon and its descent we will
never see the end of their lives but they will
see the end of ours and continue their orbits
like nothing happened

The ground opened like a mouth

and swallowed me whole

I move in dank darkness

and speak and scream

for any way out

Give and forgive.