The Break

A friend had a severe chemical imbalance that resulted in a psychotic break and ended in schizophrenia. The internet, counseling and time have given me the information I need to properly understand and process what happened not only to my friend, but to me as well. At that time there was no internet and I had no idea what was happening, I naively thought I could help or fix what was wrong and guide this person through hard times and back to ‘normalcy’. It ended with her being hog-tied by her parents, literally bound hands-to-feet in front of me, then driven across 2 states back home. I have no clear account of how many months this all lasted, I certainly became delusional myself and had no idea how to reach out, or who to ask for help. My memories of those months are very gauzy; ripped apart and spread out like messy clumps of cotton pulled across perfectly manicured hedges in the ‘burbs around Halloween. 

Her decent into total dislocation from reality turned out to have classic symptoms, naked walks in public, auditory and visual hallucinations, divestment of all material possessions and intense bouts of paranoia. There were possibly hundreds of hours she stood in the hallway at my place, a 5 bedroom San Francisco flat I shared with several friends, in an apparent somnambulant state; unresponsive, unaware of her surroundings and unable to make any contact. Convinced she was in a state of ‘hibernation’ I kept trying to get through, leading her by the hand to vistas and landmarks we both knew and loved, putting items in her hands that might get a response or playing music I knew was meaningful. Having no idea what it was that was happening to her mind I chose to believe that her actions and attitude were self-imposed, something that needed to be worked through before coming out the other side in a hopefully better place. The Park Rangers brought her to my house a half dozen times after finding her walking naked through the groves near the ocean, she would disappear while I was at work. She emptied out her bank account and gave thousands of saved dollars to homeless on the street, boxed up her cassettes and records and gave them to a garbage collector she had become friendly with before the break. Lost her apartment, her job and all context that separated what was happening inside her head from outside.

The beaten cotton clumps of memory I have since recovered lead me to believe that I tried and maybe succeeded in helping her kick her drug habit, she chose needles as the weapon of delivery and anything she could cook as the poison, and one of the few memories I have never lost was standing near the Golden Gate bridge and watching her throw her works over a cliff; sharps bent and melted, all tied up in the rubber strap usually found cinched to her bicep or calf.

On some of the excursions we went on I would fantasize that friends past or present would randomly appear and provide me with guidance, saving me with some way out of the trap I was deeply immersed in and pulling me out of the weeks and weeks of despair I was in over the situation. On one occasion I remember feeling sure I saw an old friend from high school as we were walking the beach at Aquatic Park, I waved and moved to get a closer look but my addled friend took that same moment to break for the ocean. I lost sight of this person in the crowd near the concrete seats as I wrestled my ward to the sand and kept her from plunging into the surf. I was so certain that this person had seen and recognized me too and that experience is also one I never lost, it somehow gave me hope that ‘normal’ life still existed outside of my darkness. 

Perhaps I became a lighthouse for imbalanced minds at that time because not long after this episode ended another similar one began, a young woman that slid into delusion naming me her savior, her jesus and although more responsive and lucid than the first her grasp of reality had become fragmented and without rational context. I was not as kind in this case and my emotional faculties completely shut down, I have no tenable memories of this time and emotionally was more hollow than the discarded snake skin. I learned from brief and painful conversations later that she was also collected by her family and shipped back to where she came from. Pieces of information that floated my way about these 2 women would occasionally reach me in the following years, and perhaps my friends understood how much these conversations would crush my spirit because often the tone of the telling was delivered in overly positive spin. More than a decade later I am not quite willing to recover most of what I experienced and rather would let those years from the late 90’s remain buried in purposeful psychic landfill, a thick layer of protective mental concrete smoothing it all out to a monochrome strata.

 Not surprisingly all the relationships I had dissolved, not that I was very good at maintaining those under the best circumstances anyway; the flat I shared with my friends was abandoned, the projects I was part of crumbled and if it hadn’t been for one of my former flat mates generosity and kindness I would have undoubtedly ended up on the street or worse. I started working 2 jobs, somewhere around 16 hours a day doing daily double shifts. I lost 40 pounds and instead of sleeping found myself lying in bed with endless streams running from the corners of my eyes and into my ears. I remember the feeling of being unnerved by the tears in part because there was no recognizable or predictable emotion to accompany them, but also because I knew I should be feeling something and most of all I should be exhausted and asleep.

I packed up the all my memories, literally, into boxes. Everything I had ever grown fond of from middle school into my 20’s went into tightly packed cardboard cubes, pictures, journals, mementos and emotions. I put them all in my pickup truck and drove them to Canada, leaving them with my Mom for 16 years.

The Beach

Sweat, salt and sun combine to get a perspective unique to the oceans influence. It cleared my mind and helped chase away some recent dilemma demons.

My Son, my Dog and my Love all relaxed together spending an afternoon on the cliffs, inside the heart of the California coast.




I left feeling refreshed and somewhat cleansed by the rough and fluid surroundings, almost as if I had run a mile in zero gravity. A much needed release.

Magnifique

Letters. VHS tapes, records, books and cassettes, zine's - ones I made and hundreds more others made, decal logos from cars that burned to the ground or were abandoned in a lot, keys from who knows where. Cheese stickers, wall posters and hangy things, slogans and buttons (you know, pins!) that go on your punk rock jacket. Middle school notebooks, journals and more journals, spirals books full of poetry and prose, collage papers big enough to have been folded dozens of times. My Dads letterman jacket from college, so many obscure pieces of debris neatly organized. I could tell that there was a method by the way the piles were organized in the boxes but I couldn't read it and had no idea what I was trying to tell me. pictures and sayings and references some badly burned from a fire that someone once set. The stories are that it was some other person who somehow did me wrong, the stories are from my Mom, the stories are suspiciously light in details and although I have no strict recollection I'm positive I set fire to my stuff sometime in the late nineties. Sometime during a month long drive from San Francisco to Chicago in the fall of '97, a pickup bed straining under dozens of cardboard cubes, many hurled into dumpsters at truck stops along I-80 while trying to fight my way over the Rockies. I drove 36 hours and then pulled over somewhere in the Dakotas and drove a distance off the freeway and sobbed until I passed out. All of the items were made and used and left in a barn for 15 years, since before widespread cell phones and internet. Since before Google and Facebook. I'm stuck now because I have had some very scary and powerful experiences with items that do bring back some intense feelings and emotions, like a deja vu thing but add in the stress dream about being naked in a crowd of friends. Sudden strong reflections I haven't had in many years. I'd like to think i have a personality disorder or some kind of specialized amnesiatic trauma but the reality is that I just lost it I think. I've had a few sweeping off my feet moments remembering people and places from when I had an easier time finding hope, granting myself an optimistic outlook. Less frenetic and more open to possibilities.

Hustling boxes in the west

I left San Francisco in 1997 just after thanksgiving. I packed up 9 boxes of everything I was and drove to Canada and left them there. Moving to Chicago in December and embarking on a year of loss and benefit, I moved back to San Francisco in 1999. 15 years later I drove to Denver with my 13 year old son and dog to retrieve them all and search the contents. We all bonded and became comfortable in the deep love we felt for each other. After I got back to SF I opened each box, mowing through the contents and sorting between trash, keep and unknown. On the 3rd box I laughed so hard I almost wet myself, by the 7th box I was crying.

communication breathless

Where there is practical beauty often the skein of torment lies softly underneath, bound tightly and waiting for release. In recording with mature equipment, and if by that you guessed I mean 2 inch tapes, hand built compressors and 50 year old consoles lovingly restored over years, it becomes necessary to develop patience combined with slow wit. Arriving at the site of creative extrication never fails to excite me, entering the booth with all the gear, dials and needles illuminated by lights, colorful racks of switches and knobs laid out for handling, stratifying the padded and smooth confines of the room. Gears and wires and rubber bands run all the equipment, listening to their whirlings and lock-step pronouncements as they flavor the commands of pushed buttons and circling capstans develops in me a tremendous amount of excited anticipation.

Each take of captured music is a suspension of belief, practically religious in it's regard, as the players strain for measure and pluck loosening the constraints of memory while gripping firmly the moment that strives to incite and elicit breathless connection of sound and vision. Often on playback of newly minted sounds the pathways between ear and brain seem to elongate, developing either a slowly realized and pleasant catharsis or meditative doubts that enclose the perception; I find myself actively trying to separate the performance from the sounds that rush and worry around the room so as better to make either peace or war with the results.

Those moments of playback are singular in my experience, they always give up something and often with wildly divergent result, unexpected pleasure or intransigent opinions develop in the recording booth when having given up both ears and brain to the moment of reckoning. These moments are insular and level such a total commitment to the moment that all other pieces of a life are removed, focus becomes immediate and a cocoon is born out of the concentration and predilection to being open to all possibilities that may result. Even the basic reasons for trapping sounds and performances to a physical medium have slowly evolved over the years, where once I imagined that others would hear and experience the multilayered joy I found in the creations I was part of, I now only imagine a moment of sound; wrapped so delicately in unspoiled communication, release, collaboration. Neither a secret I want to keep forever, nor a blazing trumpeted aural missive to thrust upon all, the music and sounds are all I want to surrender to; marking for the minutes and hours an undefined purchase of pure feeling and thought.

The Dead End

So I'm at the end of the internet universe, I mean totally on the edge of the known interverse. Not coincidentally I find myself on the Facebook more and more often, because even at the edge of the internet FB is as ubiquitous as dog poo in an SF park. It's weird because I don't care at all about anything that anyone writes, nothing is well written or thought out, no one cares about what they post (unless it will impact their social standing in which case they delete it) and the whole thing is a huge narcissistic circle jerk and popularity contest. Same with the whirlpool of sorrow called kickstarter, woe to you who thinks you can use this web tool to make anything happen unless you are already wildly popular and able to retain multiple relationships with hundreds of people simultaneously. Oh and yes, there is a website that tracks all the huge failures on kickstarter, but I'm going to let you search for it yourself because it's so fucking depressing you might as well google image search kids with harelips. The internet is done, it's really done. I found a picture a few months ago (the last thing I laughed at out loud or, um, you know LOL'ed at) that featured a large puppy dog, a small kitten and a baby fox sleeping together in a big lump - the caption was "Shut down the internet!". That's when I knew I had felt out the internet completely and really had nothing left to examine except the weird cysts, obscure wrinkles or annoying rants. Not a great feeling right before my birthday but in keeping with how the internet desensitizes everything not really a bad feeling either. Oh distraction, why can't you provide me with a path or at least a hint as to where to go next? I know what you're thinking as you get defensive about the internet, but let's be serious we all agree we'd be a lot better off without it.

Vida

I just read something beautiful and insightful written by a friend (actually I’m not really sure we are still friends, I don’t know how to qualify that in this age of internets. We used to be friends when we lived on the same coast but I don’t keep in touch very well. I guess if she blocks me from reading her blog I’ll know for sure we’re not); it was moving for me because it described a kind of malleable regret partnered with coping and past loss that I find myself very familiar with, yet not with the intensity that effects an emotional core – like losing a family member. I should feel lucky I guess because for me the feelings revolve around poor choices I’ve made in the past surrounding friends, music or personal relationships.

For sure this year has been full of reckoning for me, looking back earlier in the year on a show I played at Kimo’s the week before they closed for good, where I became so morose and agitated (and fueled by a fifth of jameson) that I ended up throwing my drums around the room and having a booze fueled ranting tantrum not just in public, but on stage. In about 20 seconds I ended the night, alienated the other bands players (whom I had become friendly with before we played) scared the crap out of the bass player, and decided to break up that band.

Chatting with the guitarist from the band that opened for us started the cascade effect because we both shared memories of playing clubs in the 90’s in SF – people, bands, and then the inevitable awkward moment of “You were in that band?!?! You guys were amazing! Whatever happened to you guys?” The room swam around me suddenly and elongated, like in those movies where the monster is coming down the hall and you can’t get away. Here I was, 20 years later playing in the same club on the same weeknight with a band I cared much less about musically, to almost no one with zero expected fiscal or emotional return. Pouring the same amount of time and effort into booking, promoting, scheduling and general anxiety about getting paying shows with decent audiences. Most of my friends have given up on this life many years ago and I assume are much happier for it. I love playing shows though, and the later the night got the less I could reconcile this feeling that I had wasted years of effort, and was continuing to pour considerable resources into a bottomless pit of no conceivable return – not even bragging rights on some kind of local music legacy. At least back then I was playing music with close friends whose company I appreciated, but back then I just figured if I kept at it, kept putting sincere effort and time into playing music and doing what I loved that it would naturally progress to bigger and better things; that’s the way it works,… or so I expected.

Now I realize the folly in taking that precept for granted, and though I am truly pleased, proud and excited for those of my friends (acquaintances?) who are now productive, recognized, astonishing and sometimes even lucrative artists, I still don’t totally get why I’m not enjoying some kind of similar result. Then it hits me in the middle of the set there at Kimo’s; the reason why - the X factor, I “just don’t have it”. Defining ‘it’ is for me, impossible obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this.

Which brings me to the real subject of this post – and by way of the ‘reckoning’ I spoke of earlier, a band called Vida. I played in this band and was allowed, hell - encouraged, to write, suggest lyrics, even sing songs and as a result it became a powerful and intense collaboration. I pulled out the CD and gave it a listen and when I got to the last song was kind of crippled by regret for a moment, it had no lyrics and I think was written (or maybe contributed to) by me. It brought a flood of memories on how I had suddenly been consumed by personal tragedy that I felt I could not overcome and quit the band in a stupid and selfish way. I wish I could go back and change that now, sing those lyrics I know that I wrote, see the band through its only release, play those shows.

The guitarist, Lynnea, is now playing bass in a really innovative and successful band in NYC as well as filming and producing her art. The Bass player, Erica, has a doctorate and a beautiful family in So. California and by all accounts is an actual accredited musician and successful in both personal and professional life. The engineer and producer of the only Vida release, ‘Playing with Matches’ was an icon of the 80’s – 90’s SF music scene, Tom Mallon. His membership in bands like Toiling Midgets, American Music Club and others inspired and influenced a generation of SF musicians and fans. I found out recently through a mutual friend that he has been very ill lately and though he probably doesn’t remember me at all, he made a hugely positive impression on me during the 2 separate records I made with him at his studios. I wish him well and hold out much hope for his full recovery. He quit music entirely about 10 years ago and as far as I know didn’t look back for an instant, despite being a world renown recording engineer and musician. I wonder how that feels.

Vida – Playing with Matches.

I love the way this album sounds, and I really like how I played on these tracks. I’m super glad I recorded this and take no small comfort knowing that those who were there with me might think back fondly on this time as I do, and that possibly they were as inspired as I was/am to continue on doing what they love most.

CAMPING!

the tree's are large here, they speak, but so slowly you cannot possibly hear them. Another week in the thick of them with occasional breaks to swim and play. So much I love for this time in the Redwoods, I can't possibly explain how much prestige and power they seem to convey. Then again I am probably insane and work from such abstraction in my thought process that it might just seem like meandering disconsolate babble. The true benefit is that it centers me and provides adequate tools to cope with unreasonable co-workers, deathly unproductive meetings and the frustration of not having an outlet on my schedule. We took our new addition to the family Louie the dog, rescued from the death chamber, a mutt of epic proportions and unknown history. A good doggie.

It was a really excellent jaunt and I wish that all the people I have been close to could have dropped by the campsite and set a spell so we could chat. I miss so many of you and I can't tell you because I don't know how.

Robot Farms

I wrote a song a few years ago that I then posted on a now-irrelevant social networking web site. It was actually based on a scary nightmare I had about human/cyborg fusions as a result of Nanotechnology. When I first learned about Nanotechnology it effected me the same way that learning about the destructive finality of nuclear war did; I was fucking terrified. If you want to listen to the song here it is: Robot Farm - Lyrics below.

There's a giant robot farm- somewhere inside brazil- waiting to capture you- thats where I live- they'll bring you to me- here in my shell- interesting isn't it- how robots have no feelings- how can you decide- who lives or dies- when there's no definition of whats alive- on the field of scars- on the robot farm- on the robot farm- on the robot farm- we invested in the microchip- that last run was really hot- whistling for fun- as we brought- from the fields- all the sentient ones- now they master- while we serve- and the thermals- have invaded the earth- bringing static levels- until we all bend- bringing havok- until the very end- on the robot farm

So excited about my new band: Tsar Czar (thanks to Ego Sensation!)

12 hours and they didn't tow me

Hello nice people who park your car in this garage. Thanks for not having me towed last night, I don’t think I thanked you or apologized appropriately when we saw each other. I am super in love with this woman who has been out of town for a while, and she just got back and asked me to meet her at the PhoneBooth across the street. I guess I was so dang excited I just parked next to one of those construction barricades thinking it was a legit spot, when it was obviously your garage and driveway. I am so thankful that you didn’t have me towed as I just don’t have $500 to give to DPT/City Tow right now, and the fact that you waited for over 12 hours was fantastically thoughtful. I hope I didn’t block you in or prevent someone from parking for too long, but I did want you to know how much I appreciate your understanding and patience. Sincerely, Guy who is a spaz and obviously blinded by love enough to park really poorly in your neighborhood.

Slow Death

Old School

Post-Engaged

Last Show

Staid

Toothy and Houndy

Artful?

Entropy

Christmas in New England

I spent many of my pre-teen years living in the New England States and my Mom was arrested right before Christmas one year while protesting the construction of the Seabrook nuclear power plant. She was out of the pokey in less than 2 days but it impacted that Christmas severely. We lived next to the state highway in a small town called Marlow in a 3 story Victorian farmhouse built in 1843 and last improved in 1920-something. I think the population is still 200 shy of a thousand total residents. It had an annex and a barn, both attached to the main house so one could walk from the kitchen through the annex into the barn without going outside. It also had a crooked chimney which caused no less than 5 chimney fires in 3 winters, but the only heat came from the woodstoves, so it might not be that surprising. One of my chores as the oldest child was to start the morning fires in the 3 woodstoves downstairs, so most every day when I woke up I would put on all the clothes I owned and walk downstairs to the ground floor of the house and through the annex into the barn to collect firewood.
The winter my Mom was arrested at Seabrook, she and my step-Dad got this brilliant idea to buy half a hog from the Champney’s hog farm down the road. It was a full half hog, cut right down the middle from tip to tail and strung up in the annex on a wire by the snout. When it was first hoisted up and secured on the main joist to start that lazy spin I was fascinated, I pulled on the dead tail and stood on a broken dusty beehive to get a better look at the teeth inside the half of a mouth. I soon began to recognize the different cavities like the empty cranium, and would occasionally stop the slow rotation in order to check out the single eye.

When the days became shorter and I had to walk (then run) through the annex to get the firewood in the cold dark mornings I stopped calling out “Hey Piggy” and just tried to ignore the shadowy dancing carcass. As the winter wore on pieces started to disappear from the hog, and by the time Christmas came it was just the forelimbs, some ribs, the neck and head. I ate that ham for Thanksgiving with zero regrets though. Still, the creepy sprint from the kitchen door to the woodpile in the barn began to cause me anxiety, so much so that I started walking out the front door and around the house to the barn to get the wood.

Step-Dad had to go bail out Mom from the lock up on Dec 20th, and I was old enough to grasp the impact of this, but despite the strange conditions I would take every opportunity to wax long and wide about Santa and his amazing feats of heroism to my siblings. At the bus stop, doing dishes in the kitchen, feeding the cows in the pasture and going on and on about how the fat guy in the red suit could control animals, the weather, even time itself.

So we had a big dinner Christmas eve, with a tree that all of us went to cut down together from the forest near the famous ‘old man on the mountain’, my step-dad swearing at the dull chain saw and my Mom scolding and laughing by turns.
I remember that night how my Mom gave us a big speech about how ‘Santa might be real busy this year’ and maybe would get back to us sometime in January with a great pile of gifts. Of course we didn’t listen much, most of us too excited to even care about the words that drifted out of our Mom’s mouth like grey snow clouds on a windless night.
Christmas morning came and I could see my breath in thick plumes as I lay in bed.
I was excited but also somewhat nervous, right in between the age of reason and the fits of magic. I grabbed some clothes and shoved them under the covers with me to warm them up a bit and started off in the early morning gloom to grab an armful of split cord wood. That morning I was too tired and cold or just plain didn’t care enough to get my boots on so I ran through the kitchen and into the annex. Too late I realized the shocking hog spin was there to greet me, but so was something else…..
A giant burlap sack normally used to take horse feed from the grain store to the barn was lying right in my way. It was all distended and bulky, angular, like it was filled with giant salt crystals. I pretty near passed it up but my foot struck the bag while skirting the hog carcass and I heard the sound of bells, jingle bells.
I grabbed up the bag and it was heavy, and I heard that sound again. Sweet light and crisp like fresh hot toast in my ear I shook the bag and just felt tremendous goosebump joy surge through my body. I streaked into the house from the kitchen and started yelling loud as possible, “There’s a bag from Santa, he left us a bag near swingin piggy!!!” I was practically hysterical. The packages were wrapped so nice and tight with shiny bows and crazy curled ribbons. Everyone came down breathing huge steam clouds like they were all dragons and before my step-dad could even yell at me for not lighting the fire he took a look at the sack and said “glory-osky and god damn pilgrim pie,… what the hell do you have there red?”

Well my Mom was just about bawling as she took the packages out of the sack one by one, like they were made from the finest china, and she gave a look to my step-dad that was half love and half terrible anger. He shook his head and looked wide eyed around the room like he was going to see Old Saint Nick pop up from behind the chair and wink at any moment. I swear I saw waterworks well up in his eyes too, but I can’t be sure as I was too excited.

My memories get a little sketchy about this point, I remember I got one of those giant Shogun Warriors, the kind that stands about 2 feet tall and shot plastic darts from his hands, and I got a Star Wars Han Solo Figure and my first 45 record (KISS – Rock and Roll all night! B/W Beth),..my brother got some cool games and a couple of books which we both read over and over, one of which was The Hobbit.

Well I do remember that my step-dad went and got the wood for the stoves that morning, shaking his head the whole time like it wasn’t hardly attached anymore, and my Mom didn’t stop crying until at least about noon. Me and my brother and sisters got the best toys out of anyone in the whole town practically, and were sort of celebrities for the rest of that winter. So in all honesty, that’s why I still believe in magic, and Santa Claus.

burning, wishing, walking, soaking

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Trees. They become part of the scenery at this time of year don't they?

Yet,... do you see them, feel them,..... do you breathe in their husky myth?

They. Have been here much longer than you. And are most quietly listening.

What you say and do to them is unavoidable, no ducking or running option.
Just passive intense strength - choosing not to decide is still a choice.

think of the senses they touch in you if you have a mind:

smell, sight, touch, taste, being..... just like your teeth. only as strong as you let them
be.

How strong do you let them be?

A massive number that quietly listens - quietly massive, listening number.

foreshadowed in grey

"Dear Roberta Sparrow,
……….....I hope that when the world comes to an end I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to."

I had the dream again. It's been so many years (gawd like 20?) since it came I had forgotten all about it, seared it's visual portent away behind layers of glass and smoke. Burned from so many cells as to escape recall and momentum of presence.

The clouds move away and I am flying and free, so far from everything so much like an arrow, a glider, a spring loaded grifter arcing through the sky.
I must be clearing the horizons terminator as my eyesight seems to dim and grow colder, it seems as if I am slowing while my limbs become heavier and heavier. The stars seem to evaporate in mist and as I turn my head realize that there is incredible weight bearing down, that I can see now the closing ring of light so far above me what must be the surface of the water I am now sinking more deeply than I have ever been. The last pinhole of sunlight reaches to me from far above and as it closes in diameter the world becomes still and dark and I can choose to stay this way or lose my shape and merge with the heavy still blankness. I feel the soft crush of millions of gallons squeeze every drop of oxygen from my body as I pass into oblivion and then wakefulness.

I am never left with that breathless post-nightmare feeling, it's more a slow burn; like I just got over a knock in the head.

course work - standardizing breakouts

Fuckoff. It’s a lyric from pavement.

Glance, don't stare
Soon you're being told to recognize your heirs
No, not me -- i'm an island of such great complexity
Stress surrounds in the muddy peaceful center of this town
Tell me off in the hotel lobby right in front of all the bellboys and the
Over-friendly concierge.

Yeah I lived this, yeah I am just a nother. Ripped on whiskey parked in solitude.
Whatever, like you haven’t. She said she was comin over tonight.
Painting she said, needed some materials she said.
Am I a garbage dump? A fucking pit in the psyche?
Yeah I lived that. Whatever. I live to serve and you live to earn.
Is there really a difference? Do you have such joy without pay?
My sun burns bright in the heavens, that light hurts your eyes?
Interesting, observe, defend, collusion, patronize.
Cycles you want to shine, steam in the deep which way to fly?
Now you have a safety net lane. No need to worry right?
It’s good because I see how turmoil drives your muse.
Not much to leave tight now?
Not much to leave right then?
Not surprising and when you catch me, my shadow will laugh, bilious and provocative. Feel bliss – as long as you can – it’s yours right now.
Earned and stocked in that cellar you call the muse.

Shockingly Irresistible

Time blinks, it holds and rolls me flat under it massive girth squeezing the soul juice into droplets that rivulet away into floor seams and roof beams.
Island dreams come next and delicious comfort driven before it, herded and coaxed along my eternal expectancy driving the chaff as I peek behind every corner and doorway, relieved and disappointed by turns when finding nothing but moist air and dust clumps.

Impetuous shelter in red velvet and garden apartments we used the cheese and chocolate to hold back thundering minutes, relenting to the fine pull of strong wine and sifting through the embrace of eyes, skin, hands. Too soon it ends and time readies itself for another brace of change, our fear of its inevitability has been given symbolism as twice a year we demand all clocks and calendars rearrange themselves, a paltry gesture that resides on walls of sand to control the tide.

Now it’s crushing me against the wall as it passes by with a giant load, the vacuum of its wake with invisible hooks urging me to follow, demanding that I recognize.
Stockings and candles and rapturous smellings provide more than distractions, letting my mind-heart torrent relax, not looking behind doors or breaking silences with a sigh at least for a short time.

some cages need no steel

“It’s nice… very open… this table is really big you could invite Boone and I over for dinner sometime…”

These words drifted off in to the room and the silence swept in like falling poisonous blossoms in a hurricane. The poignancy unintentional, but carefully crafted; rolled like a fine cigar in the hands of a child.
I ran my hand, skin dry and rough from the lotion she took and I needed to replace, along the sealed wood of the cabinet concealing the TV. In silence I set up the cables and cords so that it received signal from the world outside. Images sprang into action diffusing the room with senseless chatter. The wind bent apple tree in the rumpled backyard sighed and wheezed as it gasped along with the minutes and my extended duality. Friend, former lover, spouse, handyman, fixer of meals and broken sheetrock mincing the garlic and the power of longing. My longing. The innate desire cruising through all tangents of my life, pleading with the train of time to bolt forward if even just for a minute. Get past this.

I close and lock the door when I get home. The sink smells of wet spoilage and the clothes link together on the floor in a haphazard macramé begging me to pick them up and give them the dignity of the wash basket. I kick instead, bind rage infused, and they scatter like vultures disturbed from a carcass, some of them landing on the violet pocket shoe rack hanging on the closet door. Not mine.