LIKE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Walking along in the city, talking with street signs that glow even when we don’t see, or sitting in the apartment and having a conversation with the dishwasher that runs even when we don’t listen. Otherwise we are closed off from the rest of the world that’s always trying to tell us something.
TALKING TO TREES I ask the tall redwood, What’s wrong grumpy tree? He turns his back to the trail and says, Don’t look at me. With his branch arms crossed and stump chin pointed to the sky, refusing to acknowledge us passersby who hike the trail looking at our feet.
APPLE WHITES Apple whites in starry nights that fickle fights do fumble. Up and all the leaves do fall that tear my heart asunder. So please do pray that all these days in the end have meaning. Otherwise my solemn eyes might find a reason not to.
THE GRASS IS HERE
White roofed in green tall trees I wonder about who lives there. So when wonder weighs what won’t be held it’s hard to keep it quiet. Why don’t you lead with what you see and please just let me follow. The grass is here the water too so nature's sights will wile.
A few things to remember when you feel sad and lost: you are part of everything; you can think of nothing; and be grateful always.
Cooking up
some good mind
like stirring a pot
full of thoughts.
~
Once you have seen the trick,
it is only by great effort
that you fool yourself again.
~
Doing what you’re told
can be useful practice
for when you start
to tell yourself.
~
I don’t remember
what changed about me,
but it’s been who I am
ever since.
~
The most depressed men
must have too much desire
and not enough ability.
~
The theoretical man
was never born.
~
The same question,
asked more accurately,
becomes the answer.
~
I was really enjoying
quite an ordinary day.
~
My fear of
death takes over
and I stop thinking
about the future.
~
I dream and die
and remember
life is precious.
~
On a beautiful morning like this,
I wonder how I could have been
so depressed last night.
~
I forget what I can’t do nothing with
until I catch myself in the double negative
and remember it’s good for something.
~
She has the strength
to weaken me,
and the weakness
to strengthen me.
~
He moves about
like a man in a home
built with his own hands.
~
I like to read
fiction characters
as possibilities for lives
I’m not yet living.
~
I like to be sick
and lay in bed all day
and escape the obligations
of a healthy person.
~
Any good writing
is an ode
to the language itself.
~
Puts words in some ways
and leave silences
where they’re due.
~
There are only
so many combinations
of common words.
~
There’s a little
of everyone
in anyone.
~
How a shadow
can hide
just the right
part of a body.
~
A piece that discovers
the meaning of meaning,
held together by itself
and nothing else.
~
The difficulty is not to decide.
You will decide no matter what.
To sit still, even, is a decision.
To do nothing is a decision.
~
I think of
just how easily
it could have been
any other way.
~
I think up absurd things
and wonder if they’ve ever
actually happened.
~
A lot of the time
I leave it out loose
and just let it be.
~
I’ve seldom time
to look deep down;
I’ve cared about
what I can.
~
Sure, you save some now,
but how much have you
wasted before?
~
Why worry about war
if not to rest
in the peace between?
~
Everything is out of sorts,
says my control;
everything is all right here,
says my peace.
~
When it wasn’t what was wanted
by the violent crowd
my knees began to tremble
and I wondered who I was.
~
In my eyes
in the mirror
are my selves.
~
So we get caught up
in chasing something new
until we chase that down too.
~
Some things to remember
when you feel sad and lost:
you are part of everything;
you can think about nothing;
and be grateful always.
IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFERENT
Here is what we need and what we were meant to have, until the order that was supposed to give frame for the beauty, actually ended up corrupting what it was meant to protect, rounding its soft corners into edges for the advancement of a frontier that we thought was in line with our needs, but really just served to trade a lasting happiness for ephemeral pleasures.
LITTLE SPECK THAT STAYS Creep back coyly, cut past the pride with which you stepped out, shrink into what you were before your evolution hoped for all this, dash your tiny leaf on a wave of oppression that was always stronger than your Will, loose what little motivation you mustered— except for that speck, that little sliver, that all alone is no match for an adversary at any one time, but as time passes, as everything else that was so strong in the moment fades away, this little speck holds on, it stays, though small, it remains, so that when nothing is left, there is this speck, hanging on. This little speck is the last of you. It will carry you to the end.
COOKING UP SOME GOOD MIND
Cooking up some good mind
like stirring a pot full of thoughts
that mix and mingle
and make a whole thing
that’s different than any of its parts,
turning up the heat
and then turning it down,
melting to allow joining together,
cooling to solidify that joining,
waiting with the oven light on
watching a thought arise
and probably satisfaction
for you and your friends and many more
if it’s really good and big enough,
waiting to see what it will be,
like what you picked out of the cookbook
or something different with your secret sauce.
Here alone it hurts me Herald hairpin lies Hoping during the worst we Hold on for goodbye So it leaves me like this So it goes they say So and sew it lightly Duck darkness into grey Even the one world where you create your noose out of thin air doesn’t end up hanging. One of the hardest things about making art is forgetting what it’s like to be a consumer.
HOT AIR BALLOON
It’s only sometimes when I’m like a kid again, I get so silly high that I forget about everything and blow so much hot air into my own balloon, until there’s no breath left in my lungs, and I start to fall—
like I imagine it is to jump out of a plane that’s very high up. Terror in the beginning, yes. But then boredom. And after boredom, curiosity for the clouds and the air around you, for what you can see and what it is like to fall now that the fear is commonplace.
Having gotten used to the fear of falling, the trauma upon impacting earth is surprising, and brings with it a new pain upon the hard crash landing.
My impact drives me so deep that at first I know it is temporary but at some point so far beneath, I start to wonder whether I’ll ever rise again. So much time in the dark, and deeper, darker all the while,
I start to think I’ll never summit, I start to think that I’ll never return, I start to think I’ll never be the same—I can’t really help it, thinking like this. But boy, when I’m high up there, lighter and higher all the while, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
WHAT IS NOT
Now I know I always come back. Nothing seems so bad anymore, knowing there’s always a bounce instead of a crash at the end of these falls.
Like I imagine it is to jump out of a plane that’s very high up. Terror in the beginning, yes. But then boredom. And after boredom, interest in the air around you and what you can see and what it is like to fall now that the fear and pain are commonplace.
So I’m sick with dread and a split head but really just thinking what is it for a head to split while I wait for everything to put itself back together and redeliver me to the paradise I can only stand for some time until the same effect takes over. Nothing is anything really, at least to you, until you make of what it isn’t.
HARDWOOD FLOOR
Wallets I would have had if my bookshelf could have kept from toppling. Empty bottles full if they weren’t so full to begin with.
Laying on the hardwood floor hurts a little bit, neither of us will admit. We even roll around before confessing we’d rather be in bed.
Shoes and rolled jeans; I like her dressed up as much as not. Honestly don’t think it’ll last much longer, but at least it lasted this long.
Even just that it lasts right now is more than I can really ask for. God, I’m thankful. I forget too often.
WHETHER I REMEMBER OR NOT
So that in times like these, when I’m not really processing anything, both for being overwhelmed in this moment, and all the moments just before, with which I haven’t quite caught up, but the dirt picks up under my feet just the same, and supports a body that houses a mind in a universe, that moves regardless of whether I remember it or not.
IN BETWEEN COUCH CUSHIONS
Split down the center of a formerly indivisible line, these become two sides of your wonder wall. Not too far apart, as their magnetism still draws the two sides together, you nestle yourself deep inside like a child in between couch cushions. It’s not long until, something from the outside world catches your attention. You look up to see, a symphony, for you and the other split cushion dwellers. So you start to say, with less dismay, this really isn’t that bad, what with the music that echoes inside your comfy canyon walls, as the same magnetism that sucked you down and in, spits you back out, into the world that welcomes you home.
HEART’S CENTER
Let’s go through it, unsure of how we’ll come out, this is all we’ve got. One direction being no different than another, the only real difference is our speed, if we are to control how much ground we cover.
So that the only choice we ever really had was to hurtle headlong into the furnace. The sun mooning up at any distance we charge into. And the moon sunning from the source. Your heart’s center was really the only thing that ever beat for me. No matter how much sense school ever made to me as a boy, I was always bound to chase after your heart.
THE NEXT SCARE I don’t suppose there was anything really like that where we came from so when we saw it we were scared but not just two minutes later we were looking past it and not even noticing anything other than the next thing to scare us.
simple, straight-forward writing is more naked. it can’t hide behind misunderstandings and words unknown to most readers.
Without meditation, like a safe shore, my art, like a tumultuous storm, would destroy me. I put my good feels into my art and breathe my bad feels through my meditation.
put words in some ways and leave silences where they’re due
it’s a writer’s work to articulate the forces that move us implicitly and wordlessly in our daily lives. while our economy works to answer for everything that is worth something and our religions seek to answer for what means something and philosophy seeks to answer for what is true; art seeks to answer for whatever is left over—just what is.
it’s a writer’s work to name what hasn’t been and to sometimes challenge what has.
sleeping, doing drugs, dancing in a crowded room, looking deep into someone else’s eyes, meditating on nothing, meditating on one thing, dreaming a dream I don’t remember,Slipping and falling accidentally into a daydream, or otherwise not being myself, even if only for a short while.
that your opinion is the popular one is not an absolute defense.
the dryer stops running having done its job and lets go a click which is the door unlocking —this is my cue to get up and fold the dry clothes. i don’t, however, or at least, not right away. instead, i sit and enjoy the silence in the apartment now that the load has run. but then i hear, another click which is when, i look up confused; because there is only supposed to be one click and it is always the same after the load has run for thirty-six minutes on the “Mixed Loads” setting —I don’t separate darks and lights like I should— so that now, upon hearing the second click, i am perplexed. a dryer is a mechanical thing and can only click as it is made to, and just then, as i had this thought, there was a third click! as if the dryer not only had developed the ability to speak, but now also the ability to read minds, and could hear me degrading it as just a mechanical thing i listened closer and heard now not only the clicks but also the subtle rgg’s and prrt’s that are the same as an athlete saying ahhh after a race or a lawyer saying phew after a case. so i said alright alright and got up off the couch to open its lid smiling smugly and then see its happy belly lit by a dim yellow and displaying for me a perfectly dry mound of clothes. thank you, i said. and just then, two clicks in quick succession, i swear it.
in such sobriety everything is clear as it should be similar evening to the drug that distorts reality such that with the drug around you need edges but I’ve seen show shark sobriety sharpens the edges 13 so round allowing me to see wrinkles the hardwood floor in the end it screws noticing things I wouldn’t have before stopping on my walk home to start something I walked by $100 but not noticed is beautiful being myself as a human should be but losing touch with something more that being human prevents us from accessingAt least not consistently only allowing to see as recluses like a drug guy but in the case you’re going to give that up so Briody allows your godly version of being human.
I had a dream that I was sleeping coming in and out of dreaming and after each dream it would appear good to me like something that should be in writing and I would think of how to write it But I was so tired so I would fall back asleep before I could get up to write anything down and then wake up again having had another dream that seemed to me like it would be good in wiring – Only sometimes did i know, in my stupor, that i had forgotten the dreams before, while other times i would unconsciously descend into another bout of sleep while conjuring up the thought in words to be written and at the same time mustering the energy to get out of bed and grab my phone from the kitchen counter and having something to write it but not making it and falling back asleep.
all of this, happening and wondering – one, why could i not formulate the thought and get up to write it before falling asleep again, and starting to feel loss and disappointment that I could capture none of it while feeling that some of these dreams should have been captured; two, and this was a particularly peculiar part, upon the fifth or sixth or seventh or maybe 100th dream and really feeling A frustration at this point having forgotten so much and if it it had just been forgotten no worries fucking van combined with the fact that there had been something good that I had missed either because I could not write it and share it later on or because I could not even remember it myself and maybe relive it for even having seemed to have lived at once if only just by remembering it once; but now, I digress again, because what really happened is this.
I awoke this time differently still laying in my bed and trying to think of the words only to realize that this time I had awoken into my actual bed and a reality that is more real in each of the times and walking after the sixth or seventh or hundred dreams for you to realize that this time was the first time then I actually work in all the times before were dreams within a dream of me sleeping and going to sleep and dreaming and experiencing something that is very familiar to me which is living a dream wanting to write it and then forgetting it over and over again so now is the only time that I am in reality real enough where I can actually get out of bed and grab my phone off the kitchen counter and actually write it only now I can write nothing specific about all the changes and dreams and can only write generally – not specifically about any of the six or seven or 100 dreams that were each stories or ideas or things that needed to be put down into words that people have not found yet to formulate ideas that are you and everyone would explain are yes I have thought that before I just didn’t know how to say it this is what a writer really tries to get after after all. So explaining my disappointment for having lost all of it and feeling this to be not unlike living mini lives and dying and not remembering your former lives and not only having lost the memory to recall the life clinic 30 but sometimes not even having remembered it in the first place such that it is questionable whether you can even say what it was lived at all if you can’t remember it or another words if you never met entered your mind with any clarity at least once there is a tragedy here that is at the core of my motivation to write in the first place and that is the desire that things should be written down, recorded, preserved, allowed to live on, or in some cases allowed to live at all even just once.
Conversely the tragedy I feel as a writer is having lost. Having forgotten, having never gotten something in the first place having let something pass by or die or not otherwise made something live and be shared in touch first my own mind at least once but then many other moments and have lived in many other lives caring on it written word And creating imagination, fantasy idea, story, ideas the minds of others that are in someways each lives that are given the hour to need to live again again with each reader.
if you can detach from the pleasure, it’s easier to get through the pain, which is really just a lack of pleasure.
eighth of a dose of acid for late shows, put a little hum on it (moose came up with it)
Don’t think like that, like you can’t go on, or it won’t be much longer, or it’s not true, or the end is near, or nothing matters, or anything else that might be true, but doesn’t help you by its truth.
Because you can be illogically happy or illogically sad – those are the only options, humans are not smart enough for anything else. So push out of your mind any thought that might be true but isn’t useful.
The writer is much like a sculptor, gathering a mass of stuff to begin with, going out and living to get the mass. Then sculpting, removing excess, shaping, defining—all away on his own. Until a lesser more defined thing is revealed out of the mass. And he can show it back to the world from whence it was gathered.
Once you have seen the trick, it is only by great effort that you fool yourself again. trick yourself and get going, then forget the trick; that’s how to get on.
i feel like i’m being tickled from the inside
i could just as easily be a beat as i am a sellout
walking to lunch today I saw a dead bird on the sidewalk. It seemed gross and unusual to me. Certainly not something I’m used to, seeing dead things. where does everything go to die? I always see all this living all around me, things growing up and sprouting in learning and moving and getting stronger but where are all the things weakening and shriveling and shrinking and becoming less. I know that things die. I know that things living will pass on. It must be because I’m still young and surrounded by young things. As I get closer to dying, as my friends die, as I’m more sensitive to dying myself, then I suppose I will see more death.
I used to fear dying insignificant, without having achieved anything. i used to feel the weight of this fear like it was important and i was bearing it alone. as i grow and find myself in others, i talk and even laugh about this fear, realizing that it is shared by everyone. while it is still real, it is lighter and less serious, realizing that everyone shares in it.
i turn on a dim light; dim at first, then bright once my eyes have adjusted. so i look up at the bright light and say, “who are you?” and he says in reply, “i am the same. it is you who has changed.” i search for a dimmer light to achieve actual dimness. finding none, I settle with the bright light aforementioned.
i write poetry to make others feel how Hesse novels make me feel.
you don’t want to do too much of your editing at once; you need to space it out so you can become as many different versions of yourself, closer to the general reading public.
if there’s too much ego in writing it can be bad, just because it’s not inclusive enough for the general reading public.
some would say the good steak is what melts like butter in your mouth, but i like the tough stuff that you can chew like bubble gum and savor the fat; they say it’s for peasants, but bah, what good is a steak that melts and is gone? what other luxuries do we misinterpret?
they say the good cheese stinks and the good wine tastes like metal, but bah, i want a cheese i can eat and a wine i can drink.
they say the good life is sitting around doing nothing all day, but bah, i’d be bored in the first second. give me the yolk; let me work up an appetite.
they say the rich sit way up high, but bah, put me in the dirt where i came from.
I have no ability to edit my own work; it has everything to do with how I feel.
cooking up some good mind adding in quality ingredients shaking, mixing, stirring heating, cooling, letting sit tasting, testing, adding
cooking up some good mind like stirring a pot full of thoughts that mix and change each other and make a whole thing that’s different than any of its parts, turning up the heat and then turning it down, melting to allow joining together, cooling to solidify that joining, waiting with the oven light on watching a thought arise and probably satisfaction for you and your friends and many more if it’s really good and big enough. waiting to see what it will be, like what you picked out of the cookbook or something different with your secret sauce.
The dark closes me in and keeps me pointed, the light opens me up and lets me out.
It even makes sense at a molecular. When matter is hot all the molecules are bouncing around. When matter is cold everything is slowed down.
a lot of my art comes from the simultaneous facts that there is no reason for anything and also that i happen to be here.
I had my coming-of-age in the not so sexless ruins of a revolution.
I’d rather participate in an accessible art; there are more people to talk to.
The theoretical man was never born.
things lose their color as they tend to, all depending on your memory of what came before, specifics combining into unnoticed generalities.
the feeling of need for something new, the feeling of having been here too many times before, eyes narrowed and blocking out the periphery, focusing only on what is expected.
EMPATHY (unedited) Seeing from a door knob’s perspective, from the sun’s eyes looking down, feeling what it’s like to be a sound wave. Running like rain water doomed for the gutter. Sleeping like sacks of potatoes in a farm truck. Kissing with lover mouths outside of the café. Hanging like a handle waiting to be useful. Competing like cars on the freeway. Remembering like an epic told over and over. Hurting like alcohol in an open wound. Feeling with fir tree fingertips. Loose and flow like a river and crumple like a chip bag, Loving with the dying heart of a soldier, thinking with the desperate mind of an outlaw We fall apart and swallow up all the time anyway, losing ourselves and becoming something else.
COME IN EVERYONE
As I walk around the city, and people pass by. I like to catch their eyes and live their lives just for the moment that I look at them —people I don’t know or at least can’t remember. My ego opens up wider, while my physical body remains the same, and my soul, with its larger grasp opens to a broader swath, and lets everyone else in.
I made several mistakes today. I can’t stop thinking of them. I am trying to part ways with the anger and learn from them. Mistakes are relative, I suppose. The worst are when they seem, in hindsight, as if they could have been avoided so easily.
This afternoon I ate a cashew like I was a prisoner in a cell, pretending it was the only food I had —the things you notice with such focus! I turned a page in my journal that was full of reminders, little poems, to-do lists, and notes to myself. I turned to a blank page and felt a sense of freedom. Not only the page but everything is blank and brand new, like all I’ve written here is all I’ve got—which is nothing. My memory is terrible lately and I’m a little worried, but I’m really just a sieve. My only function is to have things flow through me. Even the page in my journal full of reminders and lists was starting to stress me out. When I’ve caught too many big rocks, I need to be turned over and dumped out.
The difficulty is not to decide. You will decide no matter what. To sit still, even, is a decision. To do nothing is a decision. The difficulty is deciding rightly. Especially because with every decision there are so many options, and if you have not studied, you will only know very few of them, a few which may not include the most right one.