escape our bodies with our long winded breath

with my thumb and forefinger i unmindfully strike the flint, pulling the simple intoxicant through my broken smile and feeling it cascade through my lungs, and then i simply let it go. the same product out as the same product in. i watch the wraith of carbon monoxide and arsenic escape my cracked lips and close my eyes to envision a different place. a different dialogue of circumstance where we both could calm down the heart beats and express the thoughts and dreams that are both running rampant through our encapsulated minds. we burn like a cigarette, just some shallow moments that then escape our bodies with our long winded breathing. we are the smoke, trapped for a moment and then let free into the great, open, star-filled skies.

the point where we will grow gills or drown

i awoke this morning to watch the world be slowly cloaked inside a pretentious gown of white. slowly fluttering from the omnipotent skies it trailed on for the greatest expanse ever known to human thought or reflection. optimism used to entice these veins with the dawning of each new day, a wealth of possibilities to be endured and chanced upon. now there is just a sense of slowly churning dread. it as though i am constantly waking up in a dream, but not the normal vision where things are possible, no, this dream is consistantly marred by the restrictions of this earthly cross. every day that the calendar turns, every second that ticks off the clock, it grows ever more evident what a failure i am becoming. i have almost spent two decades walking these simple paths, and i am beginning to realize that they never lead out of these foothills, not a venue to the western mountains or the crystalized sea in the east. the extroadinary thing is, all though i realize this simple, ringing, truth, i am always trying to decipher a way around it. there is no escape, there is no glory like we witness on the film's silver screen, there is just the present. there is just this set of unvariable circumstances that are constantly forcing our heads underwater to the point where we will grow gills or drown. i'm not feeling very fishy at this current juncture in time. everything is stuck in this cyclical revolution, where the ideas on men's tongues overshadow the daft skill of their hands, we are a generation of lost dreamers, and we will give away the world for a chance at the things those before us were promised and found. a kindred heart, a steady pay check, and a delayed trip to the grave. i want none of this. i want to embark across the many fruited plains of this continent and find a place where this midwestern weather won't get stuck inside my skin, a place where the stars are an open invatation to dream. not of fortune, fame, or foolish men's dreams, no, but to dream of the things that are immediate, to dream of where you are, for your mind can not ponder a place of greater magnitude or grandure. so we will dream with open eyes and half filled hearts.

getting, going, and gone nowhere

this is a race. a race between my fingers tapping away, escalating the noise, across the keyboard, and my mind slipping into a meditative state. the pills always win, and they've had a solid head start. i can feel them creeping now. i'm slipping into the unknown and can't currently...i lose again.

Something I've Been Planning On Doing For Awhile

a couple of weeks ago i wrote out my goals for the new year in my journal, and i've been meaning to publish for some measure of accountability, so, here, they are.

1. stay in love, and be content with that
2. manage to get back into shape
3. play shows as much as humanly possibly, while balancing everything else out.
4. hit the west coast like a tropical storm.
5. find some source of stable income.
6. kiss someone in the snow, in the rain, and in the street.
7. write a record i can be proud of.
8. wear a bathrobe for some amount of time every day.
9. stabilize my relationships, cut out the highs and lows.
10. put my feet in both oceans.
11. go to fenway and wrigley, the two remaining chapels of america's greatest game.
12. dream, write, express, all while being mindful of other people.
13. watch the sky.

oh, and i'll add go camping with sarah and lauren for good measure.

cover me, breathing water

happiness for me is outlined with three common factors, a cup of semi-warm sugarfilled coffee, a shabby flannel bathrobe, and calrity by jimmy eat world slowly churning out sentimental structure in the background. right now i find myself at an impass, a distance neither here nor there, with many decisions to be painstakingly made. i could walk the path down near the river bank, the passionate, unkempt dream. just as easily i may walk the opposite direction and haunt the city streets for the upcoming years, cloaked in safety, watching the world transgress through a black and white television set. this is not easy, this is not hard, it is somewhere stuck in a purgatory, a previously untraveled distance. i'm standing on the edge of living, and just watching the waves preparing to crash from either side. am i ready? am i strong enough? no time to prepare the defenses, it's just a race to which tide will rise quicker, which sea will cover me, breathing water, lost to the rush.

a process of thought

there is the sensible choice
(and then the one that makes me quiver)
the one which stands out in bold print
(and the one who easily slips off into the background)
the one i have planned with my parents
(and the one that will never escape these lips, except to her ears)
i promised her some kids, a house, and wedding rings
(i never needed to)
she stood out in the light
(and I chanced upon the shadows)
i put time and effort into the relationship
(and it never even needed the work)
she was a thought
(and she was a dream)
she was the one i planned with
(she was the one i dreamed with)
we set out the future in black and white
(and yet it will be full of color)
she asked me to marry her
(and i felt exactly the same)
i love her with my head
(and for once i love her with my heart)

let them slip out of focus

life is like a stop motion work. everything seems to be trapped inside my mind in lapses. it just moves rapidly from one frame to another, the figures moving with very little fluidity. as a frame falls, as the pages of a calendar turn, the people present in my life are constantly shifting and rearranging. for one day there are the important ones, the ones that will always be a shadow cast on the background, no matter if they can actually be captured within that simple frame. however, more often then not i let them slip out of focus, forgetting what has built the image itself. i want to open the camera and expose the film, leaving the script to be completely rewritten with more precision and thoughtfulness. everything for me seems to be in constant cycles and this is no where more apparent than in my relationships with particular individuals. i will go months without consulting with those who matter most, and i will barely notice that they have slid from the forefront of my life. i'm a miserable excuse for a friend, however, this was never my intention. i spread myself to thin, like paint over too broad of a canvas, i can not possibly cover the surface i had envisioned. maybe someday i will realize how to correct this tendency, however, as the days go by and i find myself older, i contemplate the simple truth that this is what makes me who i am. i constantly fading figure on the radar of so many different people.

this propensity for courage is failing me

i fear for the worst right now. did i really just let the love of my life walk out the door? i assume that everyday for the rest of my life i'm going to look back on this time period and wonder if the right thing really was to walk away. i feel so alone. i love her. more than i ever thought i could love anything. this propensity for courage is failing me. all i ever wanted for so long was someone who i could love and would in return have their love. i never realized i had found that here until i decided to walk away. i know she is dishonest. i know it feels like i'm a number all the time. i also know that in my heart there is nothing that shines as pure as when she smiles and tells me how much she needs me. i wonder if all these promises to visit one another, all the misguided words will all turn up emptyhanded at the end of the day. i love her so much. it has been killing me for the last week to know that i am the source of her tears, and it has hurt so much worse that there is nothing i can do. i have to go back. i have to go to where home used to be and show myself that i can survive there without caroline. i let her take my world from me, and now i'm going to go and take it all back. however, maybe that's what i'm supposed to learn from all of this, that hannah is so much better, so much nicer, so much better for me, and yet i'm going to leave her crying in my wake. i feel terrible. what can i do? nothing. there is no emergency stop on this train, and it will roll away from here in a few days time, and there she will be on the platform of my life, forever waving my goodbye, laying a kiss on my lips, telling me to return soon. everyday for the rest of my life i will be fighting my way back to you, rest assured. i love you today, i will love you tomorrow, and don't plan on having a minister ask if anyone has any objections as long as i'm not standing across from you, for i will be the individual bursting through the heavy oak doors of the church to profess my unfading love for you. that's what this is all about. i may walk the aisle with someone else, but i'm always going to wish it were you standing there, holding my hands, whispering i do's in front of our families. i love you hannah, more than you can imagine.

hope is an empty handed friend.

right now i am at a physical loss for words. i am crying for the first time in months. i am out of breath and long on empty promises. i am going to forget you. right now. you are dead to me, and i to you. forget all of my words, forget all of my promises, you have already taken yours back. hope is an empty handed friend.

wolves descend so fast on sunny days

this is an empty nonfleeting feeling. i've been knocked to the canvas again. i'm hurt right now. wolves descend so fast on sunny days, there no longer fear the light and hide in the shadows. fuck insomnia. i left myself vulnerable and right now i feel as though it was all for nothing. words escape me. i just feel like crying, for a long time, just because it might make me feel better. i'm a fucking wreck. not even an hour ago i was content, smiling, hoping, and confident. it has slipped through my hands like grain through the hands of a harvester. fuck trust. fuck vulnerability. fuck laying yourself on the line. fuck hope. fuck feeling empty. fuck nicotine. fuck feeling whole. fuck dreaming. fuck forgetting. fuck anything that matters. right now your smile could make it better, but you have no interest in showing it to me. fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck times a million, the only thing playing on repeat through my head and running through my brains. you have broken my trust, and it hurts.

i see hope inside her eyes

an uneasiness is setting in. it is as though i am sitting on my porch, looking out over the green fields, storm on the horizon, cigarette in hand, wondering which will shake me worse, the carcinogens or the thunder. i see hope inside her eyes, but i wonder if it is just mistaken, a handful of dying dandelions that that will be spread with the wind to choke out and destroying other thriving plants. she consoles me, but fails to recognize what the quintessential moments are under this ever unkempt stubble. she can not be expected to replace what is lost, especially on such a brief time schedule, but she is carefully filling the gaps god left vacant between my rigid fingers. right now i am not thinking in a conscious stream, more like water slowly prickling through a crack in a concrete fortress, soon the water will wash over everything, either ravaging the countryside or washing it clean. right now i need her, right now i need this, and it is so unfair to her. i can not ask her to take this shell of man and make something out of it. my dreams flicker out like streetlamps, and my words fall short of what comes to mind. i need something, and it may not be her. i have lost my grip and have stumbled into a free fall.

"don't worry, i'll catch you."

i need to take a holiday, but where can you escape yourself? i feel as though i do not belong at the crossroads i find myself at, each vainly extending path leading to ruin or shame. this must be the retribution for my squandered youth, the haphazard punishment for long forgotten sins. i see the diamonds slowly trickling down through the frail hourglass, this time we have wasted has come at a great cost. i am the forgotten vaudeville star on an empty stage, washed from the limelight by unfaithful eyes. so many nights i have wished to be uncompromisingly loved and accepted by those who have found favor in these fading blue eyes, to no avail or purpose. i am jack's forgotten friend. i often half heartedly contemplate if i am writing these over extended words to anyone in particular. we are a flawed generation, our existence outlined in glowing monitors and empty orange pill cases. we are taught not to show that we care, but still do it immensely, for if we all were to show our true colors the others may not find us acceptable of charismatic. i am reaching for the bottom, with the hope of salvation, knowing whole heartedly that i will come out empty handed once again. what does it fucking take to make it out of here? i am trapped. i always blamed that sleeping midwestern town and those beautiful trapping brown eyes, but the problems have always been deep inside this tumultuous arrangement of veins and organs. i am fading quickly now, to quick to catch, but i always took those words as truth, "don't worry, i'll catch you."

like the old melody goes

fogotten friends,
i hate when things end,
just can't let you go,
a thought of you but not a picture,
so there's nothing left to show

what is it about me that just won't let me let you go entirely. i have caught myself dreaming about you the last three nights, and then waking up heartbroken in the morning, you having passed like a ship in the night. how have you permeated every molecule of my being? i miss you, right now more than ever.

willing to pay the ransom

"without faith the sky isn't as blue"

there is a highly likely possibility that i am teetering on the edge of a full mental collapse due to lack of sleep. however, it is equal in probability that i have run out of the elixir that has been coursing through my veins in the recent weeks, causing yet another with drawl of sorts. i have never encountered such a situation as this in all my days compiling to this one. i am completely comfortable with the person i have become, memorizing the parts to play had waxed too long, and now i have forgotten the script, venturing to bare these facts and burdens from behind no uncomfortable mask, but right now, i want to flee and hide. from what? i am completely and utterly drowning within my own loneliness. there is no one here to run from except myself. there is the ill fated chance that i just want to run back to the places and persons who would dictate what and who i should be, then i wouldn't have to face my cracked and fading complexion in the mirror with each waking breath. it is as though i have found a place of solitude and the piercing silence is holding me hostage, and i have no savior willing to pay the ransom. our generation is drowning behind dimly lit computer screens, grasping through the darkness to encounter the right words to form some kind of real and unalterable bond. i want to be someone's one and only. so badly. i want to wander hand and hand searching for nothing other than the words that can convey how much i hope she needs me just as fatally as i will need her. i want nothing more than to sit in comfortable silence, her head on my chest, passing the evening without any strain or care. i have lost faith in this saturday morning story board, but i hope that in my hopelessness that someone will fulfil the script inside my own head. i am fading, i am lost, i am faltering.

this city or i have passed away

as i have now spent hours contemplating and reconstructing my past as i have been back home again, i have come to the obvious realization that it has all been for naught. there is nothing remaining inside these brick streets and picturesque views. this city or i have passed away, however i still have feeling in my veins. i do see it pulsing though. reverberation has over taken its arteries, and new blood now flows where i used to wander. we have cleansed one another of each other. both still breathing, however i have just awakened. i have the leg up and i will run for the door, no panic on this occasion, just courage.

hibernation of habitual unconsciousness

the deep hibernation of habitual unconsciousness is lifting from my spinning head. any of you that have had the good fortune of crossing an iowa highway in the early morning have visualized what is taking place in front of my chipped blue eyes, the steaming fog lifted from the surface, as if the entire world were an enormous tea kettle simmering on god's stove. i completed this metamorphosis, my wings intact, but somehow more beautiful and powerful than before. i no longer am left to encounter the thoughts of brokenness and misplacement without a steady hand, now there is no trembling inside these fingers. my heart has been gathered and mended, carefully sown that each stitch is stronger than the last, prepared for any malignant attempt to rip from the seams. this new heart has been filled with courage and fortitude, the will to face life's struggles head on, with a face to the violence of the western winds. i have reached the precipice and will survey these lands, knowing full well that with a cartographers eyes i can grasp whatever i attempt to set hold to. each day is a day i have been given by my forefathers, and each moment captured is needed only for that time, no need to savor it until it's sweetness has turned bitter, rotting between my sharpened teeth. i have emerged from the sheltered storms not unscathed, but rebuilt, manufactured for free expression and thought. i stand before you now and proclaim myself a free man. i whisper these words and i scream them also. they shall be branded into my skin that world may know not only my struggles but my successes. for no man has accomplished great things without first overcoming greater tests. i am prepared and ready for whatever tomorrow may hold. my vision has cleared, my gaze is locked, and my hands are steady. give me whatever trouble you may, for i will return it much stronger. i am ready.

an open-ended letter

to whomever it may concern:

12:12 is nowhere near as glamorous as 11:11, but somehow lately it always catches my eye. i feel as though the cyclical changes that have been transgressing over my form as of late are nearing an end, or, beginning all over again. it has been a bullet wound, pressed with an iron to ward off infection, teeth barred and tearing through a rag to keep my cracked lips from screaming, but in the end necessary. yes, she meant the world to me. yes, she was the shimmering city fallen to it's knees, gnawed and destroyed by the rats, but all in all, she's a good kid. a little confused and with more room to grow than an infant redwood tree, however, i know throughout this entire ordeal i wasn't the picture of statuesque maturity or reverent sainthood. my neurosis, this plague, has faded as our communications grow more blurry and disconnected. i am looking at memories through an old television, the picture still there, marred and distorted, filled in with thousands of ants marching through a bitter snow storm. it is growing later, and my words are turning into the late rounds of an ancient scrabble game, disjointed and misplaced. so many times i sit here and find my fingers rambling across the keys, my thoughts becoming more eloquent with each line, tonight is not one of those nights. i honestly do not care. i have let go entirely and the merry go round is spinning at breakneck speed, and, for once, i don't need her hand to feel comfort or security. i understand that i have left a trail of alienated and disenchanted along the course of my voyage that was caroline eileen feeney, and for this i am sorry. never again will i let someone so alternate my entire being, just to see a smile. i am not afraid to say that i loved her with all of my heart, what i tremble to speak is much more elusive than that. yes, i did love her with all of my heart, now i just have the regret that whoever i so choose to hold it next will be unsatisfied. the innocence has been drained from my orifices, the inner child pillaged and ravaged like three mile island so many years ago. what i need to express is this: caroline, thank you for understanding my neurosis, my jealousy, my twisted way of showing that i cared, and most of all thank you for not letting me get away with any of it. to the friends, acquaintances, and others that i bloodied of distanced from over the last year and a half, i give you my most heartfelt and deeply reaching apology. i love much, i hate more, and i receive both with open arms in return. i can speak from what's left inside this mass of organs and intertwining veins and say this: i have reached a place where i am at peace with who i am, where i have been, where i am going, and most importantly where i want to be. thank you for seeing me through the darkness.

kevin

a weak dime-store version

as i was meandering my way back towards my home through the maze of stop lights and marquees, a simple billboard caught my eye. in the plain script of plastic letters it shown brightly through the rain soaked perimeter, "there is a difference between responding and reacting, which do you do?" sheer brilliance flashed across my windshield, intermixed with lightning and a mass of precipitation. all of these years i have been simply reacting to things that have stumbled into my path, and as a result they have caused a forced mimicry as i mirrored their stumble. the quintessential difference between quickly reacting and fully responding is simplistic in nature. to respond requires thought, to react requires just that, action. a reaction is immediate, where a response is stirred by an action, processed with thought, and then acted upon. i have a notorious irish temper that has been ravaging my bloodline since long before we hopped the pond and settled on this mass known as america, and with simple reaction, i have let it get the best of me on far to many occasions. in other instances i have crumbled like a wall under the force of massive armies, letting tears break through my surface and letting emotion completely envelope me. on yet other circumstances i have given my heart out with no discretion, only to gaze back in wonder how it was so malignantly torn apart. i look back now and wonder how much easier life could have been for me with a little thought. for the entirety of my existence, or at least as far back as my memory serves me i have wanted to fall in love. not the weak dime-store version of a romance, but the full fledged, head over heels, home run in the world series kind of love, the variety of love that really isn't hidden anywhere for us to encounter. this has been my greatest handicap so far in life, proving more a disability then an enhancing condition. i want to see the sun rise in someone else's eyes, i want to dance in the rain, beneath the stars, and everywhere in between. i want to stroll hand in hand down the boulevards where i used to wander each night, carefully reviewing conversations that had gone so notoriously wrong. these dreams are for fools, their contents built and manufactured for martyrs. life will never reflect an old film or a well written expose on what the author was feeling. you can not relive what has already passed, rescripting and renegotiating each and every syllable of each and every line. the ones who wrote those lines and lived those romances were the ones unwavered by the relationships of others, they were the ones free to express themselves, and their love, without a model or previous description. now, as i sit in what has become my lonely north, i am left to contemplate and devise my next steps on this great voyage through life. i am setting a course not for safe waters or safe havens, but i am setting a course for response. i am setting a course for freedom which only god knows and time will time if i can find.

verge of the hypothetical

this constant state of change and rebirth brings to my senses a hope for gain. no matter how many times a hand is laid on the casino floor, one's luck is bound to change. currently i am embodied by the blue haired women putting the last of her laundry money into a slot machine, and with one final, strength exerting pull, a life is change unalterably. i am on the verge of the hypothetical promised land, and although the desert has waxed long, it has been worth the vast journey. draw a smile to your lips and let out an eruption of laughter if you so choose, my dreams are here. i have discovered life is elsewhere, my wanderings incomplete, but my hunger diminished, curiosity is what keeps my feet leading one another. a year from now i will have reached the coasts, laughed at the ocean's vastness, knowing i have conquered all within it's borders, and more importantly, have slayed the giants ripping through my skin. have your doubts, before your shaking words would lead to a path of dismay and darkness, now, with the light upon my face, i shall watch it pierce your skin and swallow you completely. i have been set on fire, lacking a remedy, i have decided to burn out in the open. i will either die a martyr or be cleansed as a newborn. i will let time tell, the open road lead, and the oceans shake before me. i am a new man. i am a free man. i will never remember, for i will never forget. this plague ends today.

asleep at the wheel

i'm losing feelings in my extremities, this must be all that withdrawl takes. i am the hero in my own eyes once again, in an epic where the villians always win. i have let go of the rains and this stagecoach is still heading west, melting into the setting sun. i have a new feeling. i am free.

oath built to keep her

it's a groggy new found self-reliance that has forced me back here once again. i will sit and display meaningless thoughts and contaminated phrases for no one in particular, and only one person in general. at various intervals i compose symphonies of syllables that are only for the ears of one, but she is the phantom that never will glance across these pages. i am a wraith on this evening, i am departing from this body as i have on so many other occasions. i watch myself make selfless actions for the one i love without compromise, but to no avail or purpose. i have transformed myself so many times like a wandering chameleon just so that her eyes would notice and that her heart would possibly take note. so now i'm cutting out a rough new set of guidelines by which to live my life, a new systematic approach to discovering the vastness that has emptied and left me soulless. i have been living a life entirely empty, drained out of all semblance of my former self. this needed to happen, this is the sentencing for the trial of a criminal. i am that criminal, and so is she, and we both have proven our guilt so many times that the numbers no longer matter. just the fact that the small crimes multiplied have equaled our demise tonight. we endeavor to play off into the darkness with a fond goodbye and mutual choice, but that has never been a mechanical progress or solution. several hours from now i will be tracing the firm plastic of her cell phone number wishing we hadn't taken this new found vow of silence, while wishing she thought the same. however, with these two hundred miles and an oath built to keep her from my mind, i know they only thing going unmissed is me. the little meaning i once held has vanished, vanquished by so many other men much stronger and more noble than i. so i feel in the darkness for another fix, an apartment, a mattress, and another swallow of vodka, what it took the last time. now my veins are screaming for her touch, and there will not be a remedy. this is the with drawl from my greatest drug, this is my agony.

shy glance faded

lately i have been intoxicated nightly and stimulated into the writing process by a simple melody entitled nine crimes. this day, of all days, i am mentioning it for the fact that today it seems applicable to my thought process. as the sun sets on a day i saw it rise, i am left to suffer and contemplate that this is the sundown of the end of a chapter of my personal novel. each man holds a history inside his hands, etched in lines, marked in memories that someday he will crawl six feet down and hide from the ages. i have not the slightest inkling of where the page of my own tall tale is turning, but however, i have felt the sysmic shift that has signaled its arrival. i have gained the realization that i am a brilliant actor, but a horrible man. for fifteen or so calander turnings i have been playing roles assigned by an unlikely director. a young, shy, innocent seeming girl took me captive inside those big brown eyes, trapped inside jars to view the outside world. there she has kept my heart, and tonight i have decided to slink off into the dark and search the four winds until a new one can be bartard for or stolen. throughout the course of this production the director has shifted. the once feeble seeming, lost hearted, and needing girl has transformed into a harlot. the shy glance has faded to the brash words of no consequence, where once elegance spouted as though from a fountain. the girl i fell for on half bridges and whole hearts is now a young women i detest. she has taken me prisoner, not in the physical sense, but she has drained and captured everything that was once living behind this broken and bleeding exterior. she lays a simple kiss on another's lips and still manges to querry as to why i have grown billigerent and senile. she is my world, she was my savior. when i crawled from the decreped, powder and razor mirrored darkness, she held together the pieces of shattered glass. now she has broken me down to use as childrens jewlery or lawn decoration. so i must find what i can that remains of my former self and embark for a new light to find out of the darkness. i journey to find a new light and cause.

festering and rotten

how many words escape one's mouth through the course of a lifetime that are suddenly something devolved from the original thought that sparked the intention behind them? out of the blue the immediate reaction is apoligetic and remorse filled, but the ax has been swung, the incision made. no matter how many times the midnight oil is burned or suns set, somehow those words echo more than the complementary or meaning filled syllables. this is the founding factor in so many guilt ridden headcases and elementary level cat fights that rob us of our purest relationships. so many times have i eaten my words, like a wolf over some carcass, only to find the festering flesh is going to destroy not only myself, but those that i care about. no matter what has happened, as the get up kids put it so elegantly so many years ago, there's no need for reminding, you're still all that matters to me. this is a realization i came to long ago, and it rings as bell across a fresh blanket of snow through the countryside. it is a sign of the times, and that nothing has changed. you are still ringing inside my skull. the revirberations are deafening, but the silence is deadly. you are my only drug, you are my last elixer, and the final dose is wearing thin.

angels and ambassadors

posed against a rural skyline, not the wide open stars of a blanket sky, but one complete with housing developments and an old semiforgotten river, i found something tonight. i wasn't anything of concrete value, or a realization that can comfort future generations who will inhabit this floundering planet, but it mattered under this unkempt face. each night i find myself wandering the half filled streets with a half empty soul of this town which i once called home, and tonight was no distinguishable exception. as i exited my seemingly abandoned residence and began to crusade through an upper middle class neighbor hood, all while a cigarette was firmly secured between my lips, i spilled syllables out to myself in a raspy voice explaining how i ended up on this crusade of sorts. i began to contemplate the simple fact that i am drowning in this misery because i have so chosen. as freinds fled like sparrows from burning trees i stood watch, trying to extinguish and restore things to their once shimmering grandure, whilst behind my back everything marched on uneffected and unaltered. i have been bonding myself to something that can not be tied down, something so free it can not be tampered with or changed. i have been trying to oppress and contain the human spirit for so many months, i had lost sight of what i had originally envisioned. the only suitable course of action is to let the reigns go loose and forge for some uncharted and unblemished landscape. a place where the stars hang down and meet the horizon. i am searching for a new set of eyes to lose myself in, and a new hand to grasp and hold tightly. i am smiling, ear to ear, i am holding a grin so big angles and ambassadors should be jealous. tonight i found something unescapeable. tonight i found peace.

where you want to be

i recall when i was a freshman in high school an overly zealous english teacher forcing me to sit at a desk and write what i felt. what was composed inside that mass of twisted metal and fiberboard was a poem entitled "a tree stands alone." it spoke of a withering tree on a desolate plain that was a marker of a once more prosperous time, and i had been referring to only some higher power knows. however, now as i sit isolated on another sunday afternoon in this vacant outpost of modern culture, trying to carve out what i am going through, i reflect back upon that mirror of my current life that i managed to compose several years ago. how had i seen, from a classroom filled with portraits of western movie stars and inspirational sayings, my life on fastforward, to where i would stand the withering and half living tower of a once shimmering time. for me high school was never a place of acceptance, it was a place of fuck yous and have a nice days. the immortal summer that has been forever bookmarked in the history held by my mind involves a close group of unlikely friends, an old decaying pick up truck, voyages through early saturday morning garage sales, all paired with the current releases of what are still some of the artists closest to my heart, or at least where it was before i handed it out for little more than bus fare. since those days faded into autumn and my sophmore year of high school, i have been left voyaging to find what has left in those deep, well worn seats inside that pickup. as we grew the bonds faded and frayed, and we have chosen so many things over one another at least at one time or another, always returning on chance to those evenings where we can haphazardly throw in taking back sunday's where you want to be, and somehow be mystically transported back to the time where we did want to be. as of late wanting to be has been a problem. i want to be nothing, i want to write, i want to think, i want to express, and i want to forget. but, like locked in the verses in that fateful album, i remember more than i would like to forget. i recall the smallest details from what she wore on her sixteenth birthday, to what her favorite animal was the day we voyaged to the zoo. i forced away those who had shown me the deepest confines of brotherhood and compassion for a chance at her heart, however marred and untimely that shot may have been. so now i stand here, a tree withering on a desolate plain, somewhere near a northern outpost. i am still the same panic stricken runaway who fled that place. i am still running, now, someone needs to catch me. someone needs to catch me before it's too late. i am meeting the four winds, and dismembering to accomodate them. hurry, the panic is fading into darkness. say yes, say yes, say yes......

the course of a free man

contemplative structure may be the best action to chart a course, however, by the time our dreams are going to cement, we have always drawn the blueprints over fault lines, they all crumble. i have planned so many extravagant days and then when i reach them they have the shimmer of a tin can misplaced among railway ties. all evening it seems as though the endless turning mill inside of me has been draining poisons from this system, and maybe they are entering instead of finding a panic filled escape route. i am dying, slowly, each and every day. so are we all. we all have our addictions, misconceptions, and passions that take from what was once left our innocence. we are a short walk from the grave on these evenings, and all though we may not know the time or place where we will rest our bones, we can feel it growing ever near. short of breath and long on excuses is how my sentence structure seems to escape my mouth these days. i never know what to say to that one girl. people always seem to ponder what we need to survive in life. i have everything, my whole life it has been given to me. what is the one thing that i need? there has always been the girl who i could look at and wonder what it would be like to be given her whole heart. so many months ago, as a scribbled words and images on those pages and passed them into her hands, i gave her my heart. now it sits beating in some landfill or buried under several seasons worth of debris in a darkened closet. still i know when i see her eyes and hear her voice that everything that has happened will always matter behind my fading blue eyes. she is the past for me, she is a ghost, who for the price of a two hundred miles can become visable once again. so many nights have i sworn her off as a sidwalk prophet would a demon, but still i need her. she is my world, she is my everything. yet, i know that it is a fading dream, like a child who has outgrown his comic books, and now just revists them for the innocence they can still embody within their images. i now walk the twenty or so odd blocks down the park where i would play childhood games, fulfilling nothing outside of a sense of reconciliation with the past. maybe that is the someday i am looking for. the day where i can stand upon the precipice of free thought and proclaim myself a free man, a man no longer a victim and slave to memories held inside this mess of organs and veins. i try to paint these pictures so that you may understand that this is not what everyone else has experianced, and that i will not heed your advice. you tell me to forgot what has happened, let her memory pass from inside me, and find a new face to replace her. it as though i had walked through a department store after an earthquake, and picked out the only china doll with its face intact. everyone else is just a mass of chipped porcelin paried marred and shattered limbs. i need no other face, and i have finished searching to find another. i love her's with all of my heart, the same one i handed to her scribbled on that piece of paper, the same one that has been lost to the wind. i have been lost to the wind, and the four may spread me across the earth. only she can find me, but only she does not want to.