Old Words; Or Why Fire Breathing Dragons Was the Pinnacle of My Lyrical Ouptut

"Heads Will Roll"

This is a test.
This is a trial.
This is a sign of things to come.
These are the words that I remember.
While you foil a life that I'd prepared to lose.

Of all the things I've heard!
Trading bees for fireflies?
Basking in new dawn, trial by ice and open hands.
For every single note sung with love and broken glass, there's a sneaky pitch.
But failing never felt so right.

Big hands are waving me over.
Big faces are hiding the shame of such regret.
We'll be uptight when we're older.
Today let's swim in the seas of violet.

And heads will roll, just as they're told.
Violet's misleading when you've never seen the sky.

I'm settling for less; wishing while I've got the bug.
Trading stock in fear and wading through a vat of blood.
But we'll find diamonds in secret corners of a maze; polish through our sins.
These wicked plans are never right.

The darkest night's most trusted flights hover over lightning then dip into descent.

Night falls on dolls when you flip a switch.
To bed we lay the martyrs.
Tonight we'll fight and toast to the void; we've nothing left to falter.
In time we find that our lot in life leaves nothing left to conquer.
Oh, all the fame! Through all of the flames your legend will endure!

"The Apple And The Whip"

The smaller I am, the more room I have for maneuvering the lanes.
When weaving in and out becomes a sleight of hand, I plan my dangerous escape.
So I lay down and shade my face from the light; hide my life from the sun.
I watch the birds take flight on any afternoon, and in their dying light, I'll burn their favorite field.

So, I'm getting out alive, but I'm going it alone.
I found the reasons why I left and now I'm never coming home. But with a subtle disregard, you'll never bother me.

Our size don't matter now, and as victims we're allowed these open-ended lies.
We'll use bed to mask the sound. "Oh, there's no need for your gown! It's too heavy with the sweat of the messes we'll forget."
It's too fake now. "You're too vain to be surprised. So 'tween pops and crack of stolen skin we cry."
"And those swells can be repaired, though they're nothing when compared to the crimson cuts of one too many blistering nights of woe."

I'm getting out alive, alone. By my God-given right to cast the first stone.

We're over our best days...fly by night
And all we are asking failed tonight.
Look over your shoulder...please don't lie.
Your past's but a whisper...so don't fight.
Fill out a request for full access.
Erupt into laughter, but don't jest.
Decide if the battle's worth the war.
We've got too much riding to be bored.

You're choking at the bit
The Apple And The Whip

"Underneath Each Level"

Underneath each level of the lie, you'll see me; enveloped; verified.
To us all, give shredded bits of light, years from now, if we choose to decide.

My senses are becoming dulled.
Just give me one more hand to fold.
I find something to look forward to before I run right back on you.
As drama mocks us all tonight, it's hard to tell who's wrong or right.
My God, you can't be so severe when your intentions seem so clear.

It's easier being deranged.
I'd settle for feeling the same.
With focus receding...retreat.
White flags are unwavering.
Defeat.

I've lost something I can't explain, and all my efforts, though in vain, are structured to relive a time when my actions justified your crimes:
1. False hopes designed to soothe the meak.
2. Double-back methods (oh, so sleak).
3. Frequenting squats in search of truth.
4. Denying both pudding and the proof.

All I've read leads to promise of a better day.
But time well-spent means nothing 'til you find the way.
"So, file through until there's wrong enough to follow you."
"I'm biding time in search of everlasting paradigm!"

Underneath each level of the lie...you'll see me.

Portland Casket Gloom

I. Monaco Morning Delusion

The maids have forgotten to draw the shade for us
While crane labor screams
Old men with hardhats at work on a weekend
wrestle with the warmth of their pockets
Mill around and point to beams
Stable the frames of the shell of the shed
hammering new wounds on graffitied rooftops
Fifth Avenue doom impends throughout
the crane is crooked, bevvied, old
And the ton-scale molds do creak to its fulcrum
Flanked each horizon by jutted parking monoliths
taller than most hotels
And the Monaco concierge implores the
will of the housekeepers to rush the
turning of the bed.
But we're not awake yet
Just tossing
turning
yawning with the maw of the crane.

II. My Father's Place

She reads like a racecar;
sputtering, lightning fast, stuttering
stanzas in sordid soliloquy
in din of dim diner smoke

III. Division Walk

Oh Portland casket gloom,
illuminati peeking through the cloud
to warm my neck but for a second.
Why do I punish myself
on crooked, cobbled walks
to count the steps between the slats;
to trip on root-jutted faults in concrete
where nature yearns to best the modern world;
and cats' paws labor for the
cushion of quartered plots of grass;
and crows perch the power lines,
ignore the trees and peck at littered chip bags on the street?
Oh Northwest teasing rain:
Show thyself or never fall again...

The rainbow rows of Hawthorne fan
like Chinese foldups,
manipulate the grid to
labyrinthian treasures of gold.
But all you find are faux doubloons in rustic yesteryear
bottles in ditches
behind cordoned projects;
tenements spaced 'tween dream homes and cafes;
the streets urbanized by aluminum siding and spiral-stained condos;
tricking the tourists expecting the lore.

IV. Over The Rhubarb Bounty

Beyond the sizzle-grill suare,
just past the cubbyhole clubhouse in the shed,
the rows of citrus, berries,
dandelions, ancient deciduous trees,
snakepit monoliths and cooing blackbirds wait,
taunting sinful beauty
and cutting to the quick,
wincing in the face of this electric world.
I can go to corners of the hill,
quartered in the plot
beyond the music and the masses
to sit and shut my eyes to dream;
to fashion silhouettes on tree trunks
with my hands in the sun;
to lie in trippy flower beds
and brush bees off my face.
And you and I and no one else
will ever need another thing.
Over the rhubarb bounty,
the tudor-home rooftops domino and squeeze the sun away.
The motorbike coughs and sputters
by the will of the throttle,
poisoning the berries and the grass
with its luminescent howl
and I suddenly remember now
that someday I will die.

V. Post-Closet Revelry

I stabbed myself today
in the knee
by fleshy jointed cap.
I didn't mean to;
I just hate everyone, that's all.
The ballpoint shank pierced the goosebumped skin
to spurt the crimson truth
on all the nascent babies
Nowehere near the navel-lathe
where nothing thrives but native suns.

Skin Bag with Foreverness Inside

Oh, through whose veins does my blood flow now?
Do my vices hinder hosts?
To whose heart does each breath yield doubt?
And does this mean I'm a ghost?
For all the dreams I left undreamt, and the wishes I unwished,
Does playing God enable me forever to enrich?
I'm stuck inside your body like an amber-fossiled bee.
And with every step you take you know you wouldn't without me.
I recall longing for the day when I'd know when to quit.
But now that's left in your hands.
In setting sun I'd moan to know which stars were still alive.
But now my eyes can't see a thing, that is, 'til I arrived
to haunt you and to fight the wear of puppetry and mime.
And now I'll live forevermore, or until it's your time.
So help me prove that life is all a storybook to read.
Think of me on lonesome nights and know it's me you need.
Pace and bellow openly, 'cause that's what I would do
If I were having trouble sleeping, only now it's you.
And I'm sorry for my restlessness,
I'm sorry for the fear,
I'm sorry I can't change the way I died.
I made a big mistake and now I relive it through you.
Help me to redeem my sins in time.

Tonight I'll Drink Wine

Tonight, I'll drink wine and insist on staying indoors, shielding myself from the musty humidity of this unwelcome heat.
Tomorrow, I'll be hazy with puddles of sweat on my cotton pillow case, dripping with the destiny of fever dreams I'll never recall again.
It's with swallows I yield cottony smack of gums on teeth to groan and breathe first nascent breath upon my tomb of a room.
It's the sliver of sunlight slicing through my blinds at angles to my eye that stir me from my sleep and deride me for forgetting to think.
I'm at odds with the morning, too tender to care for even one more day without an enlightened guffaw to keep me real.
This tome of my life, too empty with spotted speckles of ink, ellipses drawn where marvelous minutae should thrive and cry to all to know me.
But in time I can dive in the deep ends of pools, to swim and open my eyes underwater with stinging Chlorine imploring the wince of my soulless lie.
To be braver than God and to dine on the mystical berries of the cavernous unknown, spelunking to depths of an echoless chamber of love.
I can see the shimmer of moist corneal detritus when I blink, and can guide my heart by the pulse in my neck.
And when the ropes start to weaken and tethers unwind to fray and threaten my doom, I can learn to float in the void of black and nothingness for you.
And you will see me, weightless, bouncing, gravity at odds with my sordid delusions of might, and sigh the sigh of the lonesome lioness, waiting for her King to come home.
Ah, but Kings do one thing well, and one alone: Besmirch their husking lusts for fear of overthrow and dwindling grip.
And keep their passions at arm's length until they're drawn and quartered.
The mighty beasts of justice do capitulate and exact the swift red rivers of the gluttonous and sin-soaked demons.
But if I float here long enough, blind within the colorless casket gloom of the bottomless cave, my kingdom will survive.
And my queen, my lioness, will caress me when I return.

December 28th, 2007

I remember that when lights shine dim to loathe the cloak of dark...
I sense the seeming unpredictability of shadowy villains when purged upon by shimmering doves...
I clench my teeth and seethe at familiar phantoms should cackles trump the catharsis...
I bemoan restless urges when whatever heaven is smirks a mirthful grin...
I entangle wits at will when angels and devils collide...
I marvel at indifference and enact the throes of wist at wishes...
I enable pits of contrast when alone, affable, atrophied from stoic columns of trust...
I notice the slur, cadence, courage, fear, cowardice, peace meal marinade of voices smoky in the cold...
I insist on brooding, lonesome, pathetic Id and selfless admiration for lust and for living...

I blush at bravery, blasphemy, dime-store wisdoms blurted through million-dollar mouths...
I cringe at self-inequities, quivering lips at dawn when truth lunges to expel from every pore...
I burst for beauty and hide the detritus for languishing osmosis and dutiful class...
I bellow meaningless opus for you and shiver at stutters in Squire Room nights...
I love and I loathe and I lather the ebbs with the flows of a humbled heart...
I muse at your mask, shading life from a lithe and supple shield too thin for Earth's encounter...
I search for the will, way, and want to fester the windy gusts of change...
I twinge at the insistence of the steady love and long instead for lust's cruel labor...
I age and crumble at visions of a face that scares me to my core...
I dig into murky depths, damp and dirty, for claims of false reception, in no uncertain terms, but certain of a kind of love...
I sink in crinkled bed sheets, crumpled with clairvoyance for the higher yearn of man...
I endeavor to be true, to aim low when high and high when low, wherever the light of the sun warms me...
I preen my hair and tousle the strands of fate to make tender their unknowing lie...
I sit in a room with relics of a bygone era and dream of the future...
I bask in a glory too heavy with doubt to be glorious at all...
I sift through abstracts and yawn when eccentrics garner all the gold...
I prime the globe for the commoner to even the playing field...
I kill them with kindness until too much blood spurts into my eyes...
I cry and cry and cry for a life too well lived for my grizzled cast...
I shoot the moon and dusty space clogs my windpipes with the wisdom of forever...
I sing into sky for you, and wait, for you, and moan for you to know my moan for you...
I sleep the sleep of the careless man and awake to fever dreams of hope in crooked corners...
I gasp for air when known to those I want to know...
I sweat and tingle with prickly unease when secret names unearth to secret nights...
I miss you when you stray from my orbit to lurk on falling stars...
I own my feelings and belie the standards of the Roman birthright...
I gaze and guzzle in your eyes to see clearer the mysteries of me...
I dip and dive and deliver myself unto your unwitting beauty...
I need more fleeting bravado, more than your smile...
I found you...
I tire...
I finish...
I...

The Cult of Julia - Unmasked in the Shadow of the Night

The cackling stopped when Julia entered the room. Whichever direction the lazy winds blew before her arrival at the lounge, well, they'd quit dead and all mischief and debauchery would cease, with everyone suddenly maintaining strict levels of courteousness and digging deep into their dirty pockets, fishing for loose dollar bills. They'd sneak quick wettings of their palms with gooey saliva to slick back their hair in a sort of makeshift Sinatra do, hoping beyond hope that tonight could be the night where fair Julia might indulge them in a harmless drink and hardy conversation.
Julia had her routine too. She'd hold up two fingers, suggestively to the bar keep, willing him to send over two beers to the petite corner table and plushy parlor chair she'd sink into, methodically, and with sometimes ghoulish, aimless swigs from her bottle.
From what some in the bar had been able to gather during drunken rants - the devious truths of sour mash and suds - Julia worked as a "goddamn waitress" and that she didn't "make shit for tips." It was true; she waltzed in each night with a name tag and clicking high-heeled shoes, a sad curl fixed to her otherwise pouty lips. Her hair was normally fashioned up in a shell-like swirl before it ended finally in a tight bun at the crest of her head. Her eyes bore heavy black shadow, which within the dim saloon would reflect bony disposition to her face, a sunken socket pair that sometimes frightened those who were seeing it for the first time. Her curvy figure bowed left and right in an ancient dance with once-resilient physique, belabored now by an ancient affinity for alcohol. It wasn't Julia's body anyone cared about. It wasn't her eyes, or her hair, her lips or her desperate clicking heels; it was the holy match and clash of sorrow and benevolence that sat rigid and very alive on her face. Hers was a facade wrought with the sweet and the sour in equal measure, the dark and the light, the trinity of hardened, contemplative and forgiving all at once. She was a gift to man to learn the ways of man. She was the key to a heart too big and too bold for Earth. She was it.
Paul felt that he must have known Julia in another realm in time, that she must have graced only his sweetest dreams and pucker-kissed his furled brow in times of cold and solitude. Her aura radiated manic reverberations around Paul's crazy, buzzing, numbed head with calculated frenzy, strategically straightening the dormant neck hairs to a full and respectful attention, like frightened privates saluting a war-hardened general. Paul thought that finally, finally, this could be love. This could be it...


Paul awoke at 5 AM to the pre-sunrise mist of old, cruel , crumbling, sleeping New York. His virgin white walls sat lifeless in the void, still. Today was like every other day with regard to measure of repetitiveness. His keen awareness of place seemed still intact, unshakable somehow, save for the previous night's zombified focus upon his Julia. He wiped the sleep from the corners of his eyes to slander the mental image of her swaying bosom, her surly taunting and simultaneous tenderness with which she carried herself among the evening jackals at the lounge. The fuzzy silhouette mutilating his inner eye began to rival the stoic brood of Paul's antiquated day-to-day. His cell phone flickered and buzzed, luring Paul to rise, shower, get to work, never break the cycle, never falter from the winning formula that's brought him so many riches. The time was now 5:30 AM. And though Paul's workday did not officially commence until 8, he always arrived for the the pre-game tipsters at Emilio's Cafe.
Emilio's was a swanky, sueded den for moral arbiters and degenerate gambling swine to huddle and hunt for hidden trade secrets, to smoke cigars, to drink coffee, and to operate in generally mischievous fashion, even after the morning bell had rung. Before Paul began his regular jaunts to the lounge, Emilio's had been the impending degradation of his outwardly plastic disposition. Still, he managed to swindle his way into their circle. Except for today.
Paul hammered hard onto his buzzing phone. Everything grew brisk. Every focus mounted weerily upon holy wooden planks and the heavy steps of department store flats that were being planted on them. The pickled rows would bend, creak, bow at the insistence of ambling progression. Old maple stock sunk in pitiful angles 'gainst meaningless lunges and lurching toward the fabled tomorrows of the men and women of yesterday's promise. There was a twitch there. Paul blinked with rapid panic. His vision fuzzy, he rose from what he thought was bed. He phantom-felt for familiar paths to the bathroom where he could cool his head with brisk cold tap water and maybe a miracle pill. He tripped at the doorway when thinking that the bookshelf would balance his sway. Were it dreams that made the mind so crystalline? Were the heavens really there? Was Paul dreaming? Was Paul Paul? Suddenly, and with violent accuracy, the glass came down on the crown of Paul's head. Hot blood rushed down his face, burning his eyes, flooding his mouth. He heard the same faint steps of department store flats, quicker now, in an unknown direction. He fell asleep, and wouldn't wake again until the following winter.

Berkeley In July - Enter Julia

Whereas Paul's morning routine left very little fodder for even the most vivid of minds, once the bustling commotion of the Stock Exchange ceased - the bell vibrationless, the trampled tickets and secret insider notes dirty with eager sweat and fingerprints all swept away after failed hunches and dreams shattered and lives enriched, all in theory, all in misery, all in desirous greed - it was the shaking rattlesnake tail of Old York and the undying glow of cricket-caked sidewalk lamp posts marking his way to the bustle that Paul selfishly lived each and every day for. It was the sound of imminent social discourse. By God, who knew what they'd all be up to? Hovering, husking deep into highball crystal, Scotch and sodas jangling, wrestling in liquid reverie with sparkly ice cubes, all nestled within mighty, stern, muscular hands, the regulars at the lounge were good old fashioned brothers and sisters of industry. Paul felt like if the martyrs of his day life could see the real and true face of those whose lives were at stake with every shady investment gamble, every crooked deed unmasked in the stony glare and twinkle of the honest-to-goodness John Doe laborer, that they too could similarly unmask, break down their three-piece corporate shields and treat Paul like a son of Earth instead of a statistic of e-commerce. Paul'd walk the eight blocks to where the rows of creaking saloons sat dusty and with little love from modern architectural or interior decorating practices. The sting of stale smoke and hundreds of thousands of spilled beers masked the stench of sheer lack of proper hygiene, and Paul quietly gagged upon first entrance during each visit to the lounge. Besides, the graveyard shift cabbies who always occupied the lounge at this hour would soon be on their way, drunk and smelly, with at least an 85 percent chance of survival on the mean streets of the East, and a 50 percent chance of not being shackled up by the Bobbies of the West for drunken driving.
The pungent stench of the cabbies followed them out the door into their lonely checkered metered tragedies and Paul ordered what every other "real man" ordered at the lounge: a shot of whiskey and a beer.
Paul would never drink his drink until approximately 6:30 PM when the first of the broken bodies from the taxing whirlwind of physical labor would come galloping into the bar, the might of their entrances slamming the handle of the door into an ancient groove on the wall behind it. Most of the boys coming in at this hour were young 20-somethings grabbing a few cold ones before they needed to rush home and face their varying degrees of advanced responsibility - pregnant girlfriends, young wives, etc. - but soon the whole bar would rock with a steady current of fresh faces, weathered faces, faces of angels and devils, faces that knew nothing of the world yet and faces that knew every dirty detail, faces of liars, cheats, saints and sexual deviants, all milling around the jukebox for a tune that might awaken them from their robotic stupor, or burrowing shiny quarters under the rail for dibs on the next billiard game, all looking at everyone and pretending not to, all feigning happiness in the one place you go when you're at least a little unhappy. Paul drank this scene up, along with his third shot and beer, in twisted glee. It was nearly 10 now, and he knew soon his muse would walk through that door, perpetuating that hidden groove behind the door once more, like she did every night - a phantom in a pheromone hall.

(To be continued... The Cult of Julia)