I’m wringing old blood out of a bullet holed shirt since I’ve slowed the bleeding. Though the cloth might be warning sign enough, people still manage to see some kind of holy man. My tongue is cut from all the times I bite it and my eyes are worn and old from fighting, yet some still come with accusations drawn. “I don’t think you give a damn about anyone, and I can’t actually believe that you’re even involved with something involving Christ.” She drew on me. I heard her coming though, as it seems I've got a sense about these things. The shots might’ve hurt more if I’d even known her name, but these smaller caliber types aren’t much for a big old beast like me. I shake her words like water from a bear fresh out of a stream. Have I become calloused to the voluminous strangers that approach and lob some critique of character having not known me? Perhaps I have. Perhaps not enough even. She was up in arms because I didn’t spell her name right, or didn’t like the way I said hello to someone else, or more likely than not, wasn’t saying hello to her the way that she hoped. I come with warning labels and I tell the skittish folks to be cautious, but yet they’re always mad when I don’t live up to some expectation that they’ve built. I never honor some contract that I didn’t sign. It’s like everyone knows some secret that I’m supposed to be more than a man, but a man is all I’m trying so hard to be. Its as if I am a scabbed over splinter in the body of Christ. I know I am supposed to be something more holy. Are "We" loved better then? Are you loved better when you’re doing your best? Or are you crucified by strangers that think that everything you say and do should be different. I’ve been clothed in bullet holes and contemptabilities. Both half dead and undying, I'm bound and bled by every word ever fired and every objection that’s ever left its mark.
Friday, August 26, 2022
Thursday, August 25, 2022
Ghost in the Darkness
Ghost in the Darkness
I'm picking my teeth in the still moonlight,
Spitting out the bones of this town
I'm grinning like a lion
Because I found my pride again
All you hunters with your arrows and guns
thought the best of me was taken down
and as I lay in the grass watching the wind blow
I remembered what it means to be free.
You're not treading on my skin thrown
across your hardwood floor anymore
because I've gotten that fire back in my eye
and I'm the king of the jungle
forget your spears and drop those sticks
I'm tired of your trite mud huts and frightened fire chants.
I'm done with this town.
I'm standing on rock, head held high
and when I breath deep...
I roar like the sound of thunder.
As Sons of Abraham
As Sons of Abraham
I watch them march away,
in a single solitary line
They had so much to say
But no one took the time.
Some were vastly wounded
while the others had the means to mend
Some were spiritually executed
for their refusal to mix and blend.
Control is what they are after
Those claiming to be shepherds to the sheep
Sowing seeds of disaster
As the tares devour wheat.
Where are the checks and balance?
Where is the growth and life?
How many have gone due to circumstances
That could have easily not lead to strife.
When all it would have taken was discussion
When all that one needed was an ear
Now the community is rendering destruction
and not one of the founders would come near.
There are those along the way that saw this,
And they tried to scream out a word
yet they were dismissed as young and selfish
and nothing they said was heard.
So I look at the bones of my church
and I let out a serious lament
As one of the latest to be hurt
I remember what we used to represent.
Necromantic
I opened an old wound last week just to make sure I was healing it right. I took a contentious book off the shelf of my heart and ran my fingers down the dusty pages. A tear in my thick skin stained the paragraphs with my blood. My eyes swam through the catalog of wrongs that I was professed to have done as my blood blotted out accusations. I flipped the pages of the old tome of many authors voices, the lines repeating like a hymnal. “An anthology of fear and contempt; volume 1” is emboldened in fine gold lettering across the leather bound book. Those that love me hate it when I read these chapters. “You must stop this” they say with exhausted eyes and tired attention. “This time is not as the others” I try to pierce their skepticism. I sigh a knowing breath, as my fingers tighten across the pages. I wouldn’t believe me either as patterns and predictions romance each other through recent memory. With my blood stained fingertips I scrawl a confession in the margins of the wrinkled page. “I had a sliver of culpability, of which their transgressions did not justify” . I rip the pages from this archive of demonization, casting a whole chapter into the fireside. I set the book back on the shelf of my heart where it will gather a thick layer of hindsight, until it’s inks are faded in time.
There is a body buried in the memory of my mind. A graveyard of love cut down. I walk among the limestone markers with embossed epitaphs. So many spiteful last words. This boneyard is for the living that have died to me. In the dead of night I reflect upon the message of forgiveness, and its power to raise the dead. Some words catch like cancer in the throat. I cannot bring myself to enchant the dead. I bring fear to these living dead as most do not see them as the are. To unearth these rotting bones with their tongues of poisonous hate is to crawl myself into their graves, deep into nothingness. My loved ones look through the storm within my eyes to a sky that rages with light and not light. Backwards they tread as death pours from my mouth. In this graveyard of the living, there is but one body buried still. It is of the man I used to be. Poisoned knives have drank their fill of my flesh and I am poisoned, and I curse myself for allowing them to cut me.
Folded Neatly
I keep a stack of words neatly fold in a secret drawer. Some nights my mind travels backward through a Rolodex of faces that each tell stories of beauty turned to loss. I open this drawer of old words and I carefully unfold a few, draping them casually over my heart. My hand scoops up
a small pile of them from nearly 6 years ago and I finger them around in my palm. Some of these words fell from silhouettes that retreated back to the shadows in which they were spoken. Some of these words were spoken by warriors and men of honor, who have now since forsaken
them. Some of these words were delivered by wise men, and they were purposed with mending the soul. Yet here they sit,mixed and mashed together in this old drawer. These beautiful, damned words. Some of them were from men, who became children in their pursuit of lusts. Some of these were from the lips of gracious women who carried themselves with poise and stature before they too betrayed these forgotten words. In this old drawer of dust laden words are the utterances of those few paupers and beggars and thieves and liars, who choked out syllables in the midst of struggles and then BECAME something. They yearned for something. The strove for something more than what they were, and now, the ones still around are more
careful with their speeches. Their verbs are laced with caution. Their adjectives shimmer with pause.
I keep a stack of words in a hidden drawer, and some nights I dress my heart with their memories. The recollection of the words that I have given that chafed my character or chapped another’s pride. Words formed in dreams spelled out warnings for two then friends who were disgusted at the thought that they could ever, that they would ever, fall into such traps. Unspoken words congest me. I cough on their accuracy, and a few bring me to fever but I do not breathe them. I am finding such little use for a voice these days in a world that is unable to listen.
I shall save these words safe in store, folded neatly in a
private drawer.
Why I Love The Movies
A long long time ago, in a state far far away, there was a house that my family refers to as "The House" we were a family.It was before us kids were molded into survivors or warriors. We did family things like go for ice cream, go for walks as a family and go to the park. The thing that stands out most to me was when we went to the movies. We wouldn't often go to the regular movies then. At the grocery store we'd specifically ask for paper bags instead of plastic and we'd save them for one specific purpose. Mom would pop popcorn at home with real butter and salt and we'd fill these paper bags full, hide them in the trunk and go to the drive in. I remember being so young watching Bill and Ted's excellent adventure with my brother and sisters lying in front of me as I was sitting on my parents laps. We were a family and we were together. The movies were a special treat. I remember one time my brother and sister went with their dad, and my sister went with her mom and I was really sad because I was left behind. My mom and dad
took me to see Dick Tracy at the drive in. I remember nothing of the movie other than his awesome walky talky watch, but I remember even as a child how in that moment I felt such a great amount of love being there with my parents. I remember seeing one of the back to the future movies and smuggling in candy that mom would purchase from Walgreens beforehand and tuck away in her purse because even back then, they would price gouge.
When the foundations of my family structure began to shake and fall there was a lot of fighting and yelling in my house. My Granny and my Aunt would sometimes pick up all the kids, but mostly just me and we would go to a United Artist cinema. They'd even spring for popcorn that was made there, fresh. I remember I was a little bit of a tyrant when it came to that popcorn; I once bit my aunt’s hand when she tried to take it from me when we saw Short Circuit 2. I remember the time she took me to see the land before time, the first one. She wanted to sit really close because she was practically blind, and I wanted to sit further back away from the screen. We compromised by sitting separately. I remember looking ahead and seeing her wiping away tears when littlefoot's mom died. I remember being really small and thinking, "This is a cartoon movie for kids, why is my aunt crying" Looking back now, I get it but it was odd at the time. My parent’s marriage crumbled and that took a pretty strong toll on me. I would still find times where things almost felt alright. My parents had joint custody and I remember seeing Hook with my mom and my sister and though people were missing and we weren't whole, it almost felt normal again. At least it did for a little while. I remember seeing Aladdin with my best friend, her mom and my aunt and how we laughed and laughed. We walked out of there and
quoted the movie and the jokes for weeks. It was a connection that lasted longer than the price of admission.
Something inside of me emotionally began to shut down when my mom moved away. Emotional wounds were being compounded and over time I began to lose myself. In my heart, in order to cope I was becoming numb. This was further impacted when I watched my father die at 8 years old. Depression hit me hard and I think that On some level, I tried to medicate a hole in my life with movies. Perhaps it was a sense of escape from what I'd gone through or what was continually happening around me. In part, I would think that somewhere in my subconscious I
was reaching for that place that felt like family and home where we were together in mind and action interpreting stories. When I moved to New Mexico, we didn't have a lot. We were not well off. We used to get food boxes from the pantries sometimes to try and make it through. For my birthday one year I remember getting homemade coupons good for a video rental at Hastings and one was for the whole family to go see the nightmare before Christmas. I didn't quite know what to make of Dana, my step dad because a lot of the time he was angry and mean in a passive aggressive way... but this was an effort. He was trying to make us a family and that for me, was one of the best ways to do it. I was so excited to see the movie and I remember the night that we were finally going, he was mad and had been yelling about something stupid before we all piled into the car. It tainted everything for me. It withdrew the family element of the situation. At that moment, I was seeing a movie with a jerk, my Mom and my sister. It was in New Mexico that my sister and I would fight like cats and dogs to the point that we would get grounded and our punishment was that we had to spend time together. Looking back, it was
brilliant. We hated it, but we both knew that it wasn't all that bad. One time we went to the mall together to see a movie and we were waiting for mom to pick us up and Jas ran into her friends from school. She took a drag off a cigarette and she told me not to tell. For whatever reason, I didn't It was one of the first times she had trusted me with something that could have hurt her and somewhere in my mind, I attribute that to being at the movies.
It was while I was living in New Mexico that I became old enough to be trusted with seeing a movie by myself. George Lucas had just added a bunch of little things to Star Wars like that garbage about Guido shooting first and my mom had assessed that I was finally old enough to go see a movie by myself. She dropped me off and picked me up, but I was able to watch The Empire Strikes Back alone. For a kid that wasn’t at that time allowed to stay home by himself it felt like a milestone. Movies helped me feel something. They made me laugh. They instilled a sense of awe and shock and anticipation that I knew was supposed to be somewhere in my real life. I acted out and had terrible behavioral issues stemming from suppressed emotional
coping and issues that I didn’t even trust anyone enough to open up to about regardless of how badly I needed to. My rebellion landed me in a residential treatment facility while my family moved to Michigan.
My Mom’s new boyfriend at the time reconnected with His dad and they thought the best way to spend quality time together was to go to the movies every Friday at 5pm. Every week we’d see the new movie whatever it was, good or bad. Saving Private Ryan was amazing and we were in awe coming out of the theater. Universal soldier 2 had us in tears laughing so hard when Walt Sr. loudly remarked that the portion of the man’s skull that was just removed and looked exactly like a ham sandwich. We’d watch movies together and talk about all the best action scenes or how artistic the cinematography was. We’d sit around the dinner table quoting the dumbest lines from the worst movies because they were so bad they were almost good. For all the bad, for all the struggles in that time with Walt going through liver treatments and high school being as bad as it was, I always pressed through until Friday here things felt like normal. Fridays were an echo of family.
In Michigan, we still were poor but I don’t think we were AS poor considering Dana was no longer around to waste money on stupid pet projects that he’d never finish. Outside of the usual Friday thing, If I wanted to see a movie with friends, My mom in her embarrassing but smart wisdom would make me come up with the money. I remember going to the movies with a group of kids in middle school and having them in tears laughing when I pulled out a zip lock bag full of change, mostly pennies, and the man at the counter had to count my $3.00 bills and the rest change to make the $7.00 ticket. I was embarrassed but at the same time, I realized that David Byers wasn’t laughing at the fact that I was poor, He was laughing at the situation and how this poor guy had to sit there with handfuls of gross couch change being pulled out of a sandwich bag with $ written on it in sharpie. It was there that I learned that even if you’re in a crappy situation you can still laugh at it. As I write this now, I’m laughing at it. After my brother moved to Michigan, his father ended up there not too long after and again, it became our ritual to see movies together. One of my fondest memories was sitting in English class board to tears about to fall asleep when the phone rang. My teacher hangs up and says that I’m needed in the office and to bring my things because I’m not coming back. As all the students let out the classing “ooooooohs” I started to think long and hard about anything that I could have done wrong for the reason being summoned. I was drawing a blank. I walked down the hall and could see through
the glass, my brother was standing in the office looking stern. I pushed open the door and he looks me in the eyes and says “We’re late. Did you forget you had a Dr. Appointment today? You were supposed to meet me here.” Without missing a beat I responded “ I TOTALLY forgot, I’m so sorry” Kane said thanks again to the attendance lady and we walked outside where his dad was already waiting in the car. I climbed in and buckled up and asked him “Where are we
really going?” “Well, Dad and I were thinking we wanted to see Legend of the
Drunken Master, and there is just no way we could see it without you… so we
came to spring you out” For a while, It was like there wasn’t years without my brother, we just did a brother like thing.
When I moved back to Arizona I was living independently. I was 16 at the time and working, while going to school. I remember my brother was at work and my friends were busy so I decided I would walk down to the cheap theater a block and a half away and catch Swordfish before it left the theater. The whole situation felt off from the second I set my mind to it. There wasn’t the excitement of anticipation to see the movie, I just walked alone in the Arizona
sun. I sat by myself in the dark theater near other people that were by themselves and it just made me even sadder. When the movie was over, I didn’t have anyone to talk to about how cool
the explosion was at the beginning and how the movie pretty much peaked there, or how Hallie Berry without a shirt did absolutely nothing to advance the plot. I felt really alone walking out of that theater, and to top it off the movie wasn’t very good at all.
I met one of my best in high school, we got an apartment together after I had to drop out to support myself. We both worked at Gas stations about two blocks apart. We hung out all the time and we’d see two movies a week if there were that many. Sometimes we would see two movies in a day. One time, we even watched Terminator 3 twice in the same night because after we got out we met up with our friend Ray who felt left out that he couldn’t see it due to a prior engagement. I felt like I had a new family beyond the scope of my original. There was one time James needed help moving to north Phoenix and he had rented a U-haul. We crammed it full of his stuff and we were exhausted.I looked at my phone and realized that Superman Returns was about to show at the Mills mall just off the freeway and so, right in the middle of moving, we
took a break at the theater to watch Superman. James was awful at actors' names and he’d get Kevin Spacey and John Travolta mixed up and it became a running joke that James thought Lex Luthor was Danny Devito. I remember when him and I went to see Finding Nemo and at first were embarrassed that we were two grown men going to see a kids movie, until we walked in the theater and saw that it was predominantly adults.
It wasn’t all action movies or Sci-Fi thrillers that I would see. Some of the best quality time that I have had with my sister Jasmine would be when her and I would go see some romantic comedy that she wanted to see. That’s probably the only reason I know who Hugh Grant is. We’d talk about what was going on in her life and my life. We’d go over pressures of family and chaos
until the lights dimmed and the previews would start. I’d sit there wide eyed thirsty for a story that would soon head my way that would be an epic cultural event, or would be so bad that we could tear it apart.
Some of my favorite memories are from being with friends at the movies when I lived in Woodstock. One particular time comes to mind when I went to see the Wickerman with Kelly Childs in what could have been a date had I not also invited my friend and her ex boyfriend Kyle. It was awkward, that is until we were sitting there watching Nicolas Cage slowly traipse
his way down the stairs with a stone set stupid look on his face and then BOOM, He punches some lady in the face out of the blue. I was so unprepared for it that I immediately began laughing, loudly, from the gut, uncontrollably. Knowing that I would be unable to contain this outburst and TRYING to be respectful of other guests, I left the theater, past the lobby, outside into the street. I stood in the street laughing for a few minutes trying my hardest to get things under control. I walked back inside and sat down and noticed a few glares from strangers and then I turned to kyle who said in a very monotone voice “Yeah, We could still hear you laughing” It was even harder to contain myself later when the movie featured Nick in a bear suit punching people and screaming about bees.
Some people look at movies and they think that it isn’t much of an interaction, that you just sit there and then it’s over. For me, it’s more than that. Movies are something special that in some ways tell truths that Sometimes we can’t put it into words. In Grosse Pointe Blank when Martin Blank is telling people to their face that he’s a contract killer and people laugh and dismiss it, I’ve felt that around my grandmother’s kitchen table when I’ve said things very openly and honestly and people have laughed it off. In some regards they reached into places that I had shut off and the world had told me that I was wrong or alone in the way I saw things, and they made life more relatable. I can’t tell you how many briefings at work have been in side splitting laughter because of quotes from Tommy Boy, Black Sheep, Dumb and Dumber . Relatability.
Family. Home.
Recovery of an addict
Recovery of an addict
Far too weary I grow of empty words and the silence that accompanies them. I scream at nothing.
Echoes off of walls are no longer enough for the mind to pretend that others are there and caring. They are words wasted on the deaf. Barbed wire books for the blind.
The pilot light that kept warm the love I had for you, has been vanquished by the winds of change. The storm is reckoning. Stirring and whirling up the dirt that clings to a man until his mouth resembles a grave. The death and decay that I was was metamorphosing into a different breed of destructive.
I had forsaken my honor for the advice of a foolish heart. I had sought counsel from the unwise and believed. Within me there was an emptiness and I sought to placate. Trading valor for a fall, Swallowing a deceptive form of the man I used to be. She was as a drug to me.
I took her into my blood and she impaired my thoughts and mind. I stumbled as if in a stupor of wine. The taste of her affection was a high I had never experienced before. It began so innocently. She placed her delicate hands on the open wound of my solitude. The pressure of contact belayed my hemorrhaging of cold. She was good, and I was broken. The intoxication of those whiskey eyes made my judgment askew. Sound judgment of perceived boldness was truthfully reckless and brash. I'd dressed myself with good intentions. My finest attire was ashes. I stood with my soul bare.
I saw my reflection in the eyes of passersby, looking on the greatest weakness I've ever been. I had once seen such strength within. My feet were stone and my back was oak, enduring against the greatest of oppression and not breaking. When I looked into her eyes I believed myself that man.
Now those eyes are shut. Both hers and mine. I walk forward without seeing. Not needing an understanding. Not needing a direction. Only grasping in the dark for distance itself.
The sobering detoxification of an element is something that is felt from every cell of the genetic makeup.
Love is a drug that overcomes all of you. The pain of a lapsing prescription wreaks havoc on the senses. Loss overshadows life. Definition obscures into irrelevance. Questions of self and character are drooled onto the floor of a higher power. Inquiries of why this path lead here are laid before him as words are so delicately chosen as to not hint a blame in his direction. The knowledge that my choices, and my actions are what brought me here to this moment are not something that can be passed. The first step is admitting you have a problem.
The paradox of being both free and alone is a coupled reality. We all chain ourselves to something. We often willingly cleave ourselves to others. It is difficult to watch a transition in others when you try to break free from something yourself. Those who once turned a blind eye or even supported your habit, now look on you with disdain for being an addict. You see the failure they see in you. You look for redemption in their eyes.
Redemption is not something given you start to see. It is something stolen.
What of restoration? They will give praise and accolades on being clean and sober but all the while their eyes fall upon you waiting for you to slip. Waiting for your pupils to dilate with laughter. They wait for the track mark smile. They isolate. They damn their ears as they turn you back to the one who listened. The one who heard.
Every path is missing stones.
The Shape of a Man
The Shape of a Man
In the quiet company of a whirling fan
I wonder what kind of man I am.
Callous, heartless and a petty breed
are at the roots of the family seed.
As I sit alone here in the darkness before the day's breaking
I wonder if I invest more in others than what I'm taking.
I think about honor and redemption from sin
Along with what is broken being forged again.
One said I hurt her with my opinions
Saying her views on a matter are stone
Drawing lines of hypocritical dominion
when my counter thoughts are thrown
She claims my thoughts belittle hers
When we clearly just disagree.
The line separating idea and identity blurs
An she proclaims there is a monster in me
I care that she was hurt by the exchange,
But were my words the thing that hurt her?
Could it be an issue already in range
That pushed a sensitivity a little further
Sometimes I question in search of reasoning
But what is perceived is abrasive seasoning.
I want to know the structural integrity of a view worth sharing
And I often find that there is nothing there of any bearing.
Am I a tyrant pushing children into the mud,
Or a gardener nurturing a maturing bud?
Am I a bully for exposing an ignorance
in an attempt to inspire a greater sense?
Emotions cloud logic creating fallacy
Yet staunch logic without heart spurns lunacy.
Balance in both are truly needed,
As I think I come across a bit conceited.
Do I sit here alone filled with self doubt?
Over analytical with a satirical pout ?
I sit and I wonder what kind of man that I am
skimming over the pages of the man I have been.
Oh How I trembled
Oh How I trembled
The fingers flutter lightly across her brow, pushing her hair away
He tries to think of words to say,
but they fail him.
He seeks to speak of movement of the soul that has bestowed him
As he is near her, his heart burst to life like hungry lion at the sight of prey
the sensation is more than he could convey
All that he is, in this moment, is pulling toward her.
He is as a man with an outstretched hand
intent on recoiling a river,
The task is framed in impossibility to refrain the mighty and overwhelming urge for what is natural and beautiful.
Every atom orbiting within each cell seeks to charge to her.
He trembles,
Shaking as one would standing on the battlefield shortly after the last sword fell.
The restraint is so much more than most men would bear.
It looks like shivers in the cold,
as he struggles internally between being a man, and a good man.
He looks into her deep brown eyes and he can hear himself slipping away
HE can hear his voice slipping away
The choice between being the man that ravishes her, and the man that protects her from all wrong.
His eyes caress her lips slowly,
and in his mind he can see two futures unfold.
One that never regrets what would have unfolded, and the other that does what is righteous.
He yearns for intimacy, and yet, also honesty.
The variable of love becomes the strongest elemental component.
Will the cost of a moment, this moment, this beautiful moment, break something so priceless in time to come.
She places her hand on his face,
He melts into her embraces
He would give anything to lay down with her
He would give so much to be beside her for the sum of their days
In this second all he can think of is passion
So he leans in and kisses her sweetly
and he whispers so quietly in her ear
" I love you"
As he walks away.
And has he sits, and looks back at all the wonder and excitement he could have traveled. At the partner he would have had. At the unison.
He smiles at the truth of the matter.
That valor is sexy in itself.
And that he will protect her even from himself.
for love, is nothing without sacrifice.
The Absence of Sound
The Absence of Sound
We were like wind chimes on a day without a breeze
Circling each other, slowly and patiently
Waiting for the moment where we could collide together
and become a wondrous tone
When by the slightest touch, vibrations would cascade through
Our eminent bodies.
We danced a motionless dance
With every non-step and every absence of movement,
an expression.
Every inaction, resulting in more definition than the eye could readily see.
We were apart together. Our hearts alone in unison.
Not a Morning Person
Not a Morning Person
Eyes burning as I rise,
The sun the thing that I despise
An orb of obnoxious, intrusive light
Pesters me while it's sleep I fight.
Day has broken without warning,
and I'm not yet together this morning.
The sounds of birds circling overhead
Just won't let me go back to bed.
I stumble and shuffle through my place
Dripping coffee down my face
If I can get to noon I'll be fine
but God help me, its only nine.
Just Air
Just Air
Today I woke up and found my head had exploded
My brain couldn't retain the shape in which it was molded
Satirical wit; plots, plans and schemes poorly unfolded
It was most certainly quite an ugly and alarming scene
as I sat down here to look at my computer screen
Wondering if I could find words to say what I mean.
Writers block is eventually maneuvered around
That is, when you wake and your head is found.
But that obviously wasn't quite the case
When I looked in the mirror and found no face.
No beard, no eyes, no smile or sense
Nothing really of notable consequence.
A Little Self Reflection
A Little Self Reflection
I; myself, individually, am alive
I breath, I think, I conquer and strive
I sink in depths and soar upon heights
I savor sleep in mornings as I fight it most nights
I live with a fervor and I exemplify reserve
I am blessed beyond measure with what's not deserved
I feel the sensation of romance in a glance or a touch
I know the coldness of silence when others don't care much
I'm just a man, no other than most
I have no special charisma in which to boast
I savor silly little moments that pass so fast
As we all get caught up in our circumstance