My Poetry
RANDOM INSPIRATIONS
Made for Love
Making love for an hour
Feels indulgent
Barack is in the background
And no one is going shopping
But then on the bus
The golden evening sun
Keeps licking my face
And pressing its warmth against me
The angle of the setting sun
Exposes the hidden beauty
And flaws
Of my city.
Walking home
The cool fall breeze
Keeps running its fingers across me
The bright evening moon stares at me
The silver rings hug my fingers
The ivy plants breathe on me
The purest, sweetest exhalations
And I realize
I was made for love.
(October 3, 2008)
Nothing to Say
Politics are like sports
Not yet blood sports
In this country
But the hockey moms
Want to change that
A party bound to religion
Must lie about science
Or betray their allegiance
To unchallengable dogma
The easy position is theirs;
Protect the unborn innocent
And kill the guilty offender
I take the hard road to defend
The wider way of freedom
That sometimes the guilty
Deserve a second chance
And sometimes the unborn innocent
Must die so that quality of life
For those already here
Can be maintained
"Filling the Earth"
Through science is now possible
But is it moral?
I have over 100,000 unborn children inside me
They could all grow in a petri dish
I could fill a small city
But it wouldn't be right
We don't need them now
They would only hurt us
Because we don't know what to do
With ourselves yet
(September 19, 2008)
What is the Reason?
We wake up in these bodies
That change everyday
We self-help
And group help
To repair our brains
But what is the purpose?
The ultimate goal?
Are we conscious just so
to experience our soul?
From ashes to ashes
And dust to dust
What's the point of the detour?
Wasn't dust good enough?
Why did dust need to breathe
And get teased in its youth
Then spend college years
Searching for truth
We pursue peace and joy
To balance our vices
We fall, get back up
And warn those behind us
Being human seems a unique
Punishment
A strange way to experience
The vast firmament
More eyes than a rock
Less heart than a dog
More freedom than the tree
Less freedom than the fog
So we live day to day
Inside of these bodies
And keep our minds clean
So we can find God.
(September 12, 2008)
Too Busy
I'm slowly dying
Like a once beautiful houseplant
That had so much potential
You walked by, and,
Seeing my brown tips,
Dumped the rest
Of your coffee at my feet
On your way to the sink.
That was 60 days ago
I'm still thirsty
And you know you should stop
Do the right thing
But there's still some green left
And you're sure I'll last another day or two.
Besides
Plants don't scream like children
Or cling as tightly
But your heart still hurts when you lose one
Because they were in your care
And you vow not to make the same mistakes
Next time you get a plant
(September 9, 2008)
Pain
The only way out
Is through
Stop running
Let the pain
Pierce your heart a thousand times
Or a thousand days
If that's what it takes
Scream in your grief
Acknowledge your loss
Let your faults, errors and shortcomings
Stream from your eyes
Stop drinking.
You think your numbness
Keeps you from dying
But your pain won't kill you
Only you can kill you
And that is your choice.
You can kill yourself slowly with a bottle
Or quickly with a gun
Or you can let your greatest fears
And feelings of failure
Die in your chest
Instead
Don't let them take you down with them
You are not your pain
You are not your past
Choose life
Choose pain over death
Pain is a teacher
Swallow your shame
Like medicine
Let it seep into every cell
And it won't kill you
Only you can kill you
Study your pain
Feel where it lives in your body
Like a needy child,
It just wants your attention
Your pain will purify you from inside out
If you let it teach you who you are
And who you are not
And eventually if you keep your head up
You will see the light at the end of the tunnel
And life becomes beautiful again
(September 5, 2008)
Balance
Work till you collapse
French Fries & ice cream
Find a place that doesn't hurt
And watch a movie
Chase a dream
When you catch it
Rub the fairy dust off its wings
Drop it like a fall leaf
Leave it to die
Then spring forth anew
This is what cats do
When there are no mice to hunt
And their stomachs are full
Swatting at flies
A game of skill and speed
And ennui
(August 29, 2008)
Getting Real
It's about to get real
Real fast
We've been living a fantasy
Most of us
Our lenders
Took advantage of our
Lust for comfort
And our keeping up with the Jones'
Now the bank's taking your house
As the stack of bills climbs
No one else will pay them anymore
And the bubble that held our dreams, our wants
Is bursting everywhere
There are new ghost towns
Where dogs have to find their own food
People will see you for what you are
Are you afraid?
"We've all been raised on television to believe that
one day, we'd all be movie gods or rock stars..."
Shit, if they deserved it
So did we.
Or did we miss a step?
(August 20, 2008)
Repeated Until Learned
My grandmother wore $1 flat shoes her whole life.
Even after she married someone with money
He didn't buy her new shoes
Her daughter, my mother, thought she deserved new shoes
Nice, comfortable shoes.
Grandma raised a dozen children and never complained
She was a good person.
She never asked for new shoes
And never got them.
I always had holes in my socks.
I hated going to new people's houses
Because I might have to take off my shoes
Then everyone would see the holes in my socks
I thought I deserved new socks.
Mom and dad couldn't buy new socks.
Someone gave us new socks one year.
I was embarassed.
I hated being dropped off at school in our rusty old car.
Everyone else had a nice car that looked new and didn't make funny noises
I thought I deserved to ride in a nice car
I grew up and studied hard and bought my own new socks
And I never made my friends take off their shoes when they came to my new house
And I gave everyone rides in my new car
I was so generous
I gave lavish gifts
Like no one had ever given us
Then I moved to a new city
And sold my car
And I sold my house
And I started all over.
And I was a good person for a very long time.
But no one bought me anything.
And somehow I thought they should have.
Because grandma deserved new shoes.
(August 18, 2008)
Naked
Naked human bodies
Draped over the glittering seashore
Smooth and supple
Vulnerable and innocent
Have you seen them?
They look like another race
Or another era
Rubenesque and shameless,
What happened to our nakedness?
We've devoured the planet.
A parasite in a 3-piece suit
Homeostatic inertia
Prevents quick changes
Even when the sky is falling
Together we are virtually unable to act
In the absence of
The smell
Of certain palpable death
This must be how the dinosaurs felt
So large and slow to move.
We are a biofilm
One part linked to 6 billion others
Moving in unison, guided by ancestral instincts
So self-righteous and smart
Distinctly aware of being separate
We play the part of separatists
But none of us holds the strings.
We've all done the same things
And had the same ideas.
We paved the world over
To make smooth roads to roll on
In doing so, hastened our work
And our demise
By sucking resources faster
We came to this land just 300 years ago
To find a place to be free.
We didn't need anything else.
And what did we do with it?
We divvied up the land and
We set up a game where you could trade
A paperclip for a house
As long as you worked harder
And faster
Than your neighbor
And smiled when you bumped into people
But everyone played the game.
Eagerly, too eagerly.
And our frantic exhalations filled the sky
With smoke and poison gases
And our massive steaming piles of feces
Got buried with our giant claws
And we peed into our lakes, our rivers, and our oceans
Until our toxic urine fell like rain
Stinging our eyes
But we kept grabbing.
Because that was the game.
And we didn't know what else to do
So the President said to work harder
And buy more things
And move faster
Because we all know it hurts to change
And he'll be dead before the Parasite
Runs out of food.
We all thought we had a hundred years
Before the party was over.
But the lights went out
Her parents came home,
And they yelled at us to leave.
And now we can't make any more babies
Because they'll do just what we have done
So we deserted the cities
And left them to the rich.
We put a wall around each one and let them
Bury themselves in their own trash.
Then we started over
And we limited the size of our colony
And we limited the size of each person's wallet
Because money is power
And power corrupts
Corruption is greed
And greed is a deadly sin
And we enjoyed our nakedness together
And the beauty of life and death,
And celebrated the heroes that passed on their love of freedom
And not their hoards of Monopoly money
And we stopped killing everything around us with bleach
And sprays
And we accepted that a human might get sick
And we accepted that we might die
Because that's what happens on earth.
Even though they told us we had a right to live.
_______________________________________________
I sterilized my cat.
I felt bad about, but everyone told me it was the right thing to do.
Otherwise, cats could take over the city
Eat all the mice, then the garbage,
Then get sick and spread diseases that kill people.
Well, guess what folks?
We are those cats.
We are already spreading poisons and diseases that are killing people.
We are not innocent.
Each one of us that has chased the American Nightmare
Has collected faster than the waste we trusted others to manage
And killed thousands of people and animals
In pursuit of our parent's
Mutated dreams for an easier life.
Ahh, the easy life:
The comfortable life.
A life without pain.
A squeaky clean bug-free body
Inside and out
Draped in expensive fabrics and jewels
High on a lonely mountain of man-made treasures
Away from hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes
And general Acts of God
And we thought we would be happy.
And we thought we would be safe.
(August 15, 2008)
Open
When everything feels like nothing,
And no one is your friend.
All the doors are slamming shut,
And no one seems to care.
Your head is spinning,
It’s full of words,
And you chase each one down.
Grinding your teeth and pulling your hair,
You run yourself into the ground.
When you’ve done all you can,
And it all turned to dust,
And nothing is what you planned,
Take a step back and put your hands down,
Lift your eyes to the sky and just stand.
And the little things you never noticed,
Speak volumes to you then.
Nothing feels like everything
And loneliness is your friend.
You can’t work hard enough
To buy a sunset.
The birds all sing for free.
The emptiness you felt was separation
The void, eternity.
In the end, your blind pursuits
Were just a waste of time.
Small things matter more.
The answers come when you’re out of your head.
Stop running, and open the door.
(August 13, 2008)
Madonna
Bubbles as passion
T-shirts as fashion
Slicing the apples
Blow out the candles
Spicy and smooth
Get in the groove
Laughing and dancing
Old-style romancing
Feeling a song
Staying too long
Missin and kissin
Chat in the kitchen
Naughty and nice
A fresh look on life.
(June 5, 2008)
Reality Escapes Me
I want to walk
And breathe
And dance with my eyes closed
I want to love
And share
And experience this life through you
I want to escape
And forget
And live in the now
I want to pulse
And melt
And drip to the floor
I want to spread
And permeate
And be in your body
I want to smell you
Taste you
And steal your warmth.
And I want to fly
Into tomorrow
Where anything I want
Comes true
And live my perfect fantasy
Where you know me
And we speak with the same heart
And we forget
All the years we wasted
Apart.
Lover, why do we pretend
We are strangers?
I've known you always
And yet you hurt me.
You steal my wishes and throw them out the window as you drive
Away, away.
And I am powerless
To chase you
Over that high wall
I can't even peek in.
And i sit with my back at the wall
Crying and feeling sorry for myself
And then i wander back to
My lonely world where i can create anything
But you.
And more time passes
And i miss you.
And you don't know
Because you can't see over that wall
Besides, you're driving away.
And the farther you get
The less real i am.
Until i don't exist at all.
And i build my castles
And entertain everyone
With my real stories
That sound like dreams.
And you get close enough
And throw a nickel over the wall.
I pick it up
And rub it without looking
Then throw it over the cliff's edge
And listen to it bounce
Down, down.
Then i turn around
And charge toward the wall
And pound and pound
With my two fists
Until they are bloody
And scream until
I have no voice.
Then i wonder what would happen if i
just wandered away from the wall
And never came back
And the ivy would cover it
And muffle your screams
And i could roll down the hill
Into an open green meadow
Where the sun
Warms my skin
And the winds
Caress my body
And I dance and sprawl
And shout in ecstasy
That reality has not escaped me.
(May 28, 2008)
Hope
Transparent fears
I want to rip them out of you and make them crumble in my fist
Change is so slow when you are waiting for it
When you need it
Open your fucking eyes already
My fear is I will run away
Into the arms of easy shallow love
Before the old dog can learn new tricks
And the masterpiece in progress
Will ly abandoned, half-finished
Drying up on the easel, sparkling under faint streams of dusty golden light
Don't let your understanding of someone
Or something
Become rigid
Everything can change in an instant
The secret to change
Is to forget the past, ignore the present,
And believe with all your heart it is possible.
(May 5, 2008)
Ever-Changing
When I was young
The stories made sense.
The lessons were clear.
The entertainment was pure.
The more I learned
The more critical I became,
Lest I seem foolish.
I reasoned and dissected
And sorted fact and fiction
According to what I 'knew.'
But Alas,
The more I learned
The less I knew.
And I came back to my child
For knowledge built on reason is
But a house on shifting ground
I've seen facts come and go.
What was the last great fact after the earth is round and we are not the center of the universe?
Don't bore me with your new facts,
Fool's gold.
Science is finite and I'm a skeptic that it can tell us anything we really need to know.
Yes it is useful, like the Neanderthal's tools.
Chip away at this disease.
Keep you from playing the lottery.
But leaning on science for all your answers is a limitation.
You will only be as wise as the number of theories in your pocket.
Know that everything you need to know is all around you.
Science is a magnifying lens through which we explore a part of the whole.
But the possibilities and joy are endless through the eyes of a child.
As I change, so do my theories.
But the infinite is infinite.
Thank God.
(April 20, 2008)
All I Need
No saints have shown me miracles
I have no special powers
I can't see auras
But I can feel your sadness and connect to your heart
God is nebulous
But power & beauty is everywhere
And when I'm driving in the fast lane
And the sun is setting
I turn the music high
And feel it in my veins
and I have all I need.
(October 3, 2007)
Terrorist
Fear is your weapon
Hopelessness your fuel
Twisted by sexual repression
And lack of resources
Skin is the enemy
Lust an evil temptress
You say 'Western girls deserve to die
For the way they dress and dance'
Well the Dark Ages passed
And light won out.
Your reign of terror
is destined for failure
Because the spirit in us all,
Even in you,
Longs for freedom
And justice and life
And expressions of joy.
But you see no future
And you are fed lies
And your desire to change your world
Yields only a fool's bitter destruction
And one day the frantic despair
You vomit everywhere
With your bombs and nails and gasoline
Will disgust you and kill you too.
And if you were not already dead
You would mourn the
Lives wasted
On the fruitless and heartless
War you waged.
And there will be no virgins
No one will forgive you
And no one will tell their children your name.
(June 30, 2007)
Music
I let the music in, and it lifts my heavy heart
with the grace of invisible marionette strings
It dances within me.
My heart, light, floats and bounces
High within my chest
My thoracic void lit with joy
The healing waves of sound
Clean my insides and
Sway my torso to the beat
The music moves me.
So I dance.
(February 22, 2007)
God
God made lepers, conjoined twins and supermodels
in his own image.
God made viruses, wooly mammoths, and homosexuals
in her own image.
God made thieves, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and midgets
in its own image.
God made cats, molesters, and nuns
in their own image.
God made axe murderers, butterflies, and venus fly traps
in my own image.
God made sunsets, hurricanes, retards, crackheads, the obese, anorexics, priests, carnies, victims, slugs, eagles, palm trees, ozone, gravity, the oceans, land, and all that inhabits here and beyond,
in our own image.
(March 1, 2006)
In God’s Own Image
I’ve felt the breathless power of the universe in the jolt of a quake
The kind that shakes you to your core
and reminds you that you are more than just yourself
I’ve touched…
I’ve ripped the wings off a creature and watched it as it died
A part of me died too
‘Cause we’re all made in God’s own image
I’ve seen…
I’ve held a grown man as he wept for what was lost
And if there’s one thing I’ve learned,
All our joy and pain is the same,
‘Cause we’re all made in God’s own image
(March 1, 2006)
Reflections
My life is a sickening sweet bliss of a nightmare.
The highs are absolute and the lows freeze time.
I want babies.
I lust for sunsets, mountains and water--
Especially water.
Do pencils kill passion?
I couldn’t handle fame. I’m happy when I’m invisible.
Unless I want to be seen.
Emerge from your bubble slowly,
Or you’ll be ignored.
(June 2001)
Rivers
Rivers don’t get nervous
They flow
Sometimes rushing mad down the middle,
Taking anything with them
And pushing obstacles aside
Sometimes pausing to churn in side-pools
Resting, swirling, but
Always moving
Necessary for life
Intricate, detailed, beautiful
Shallow in parts
Deep at times
Never complaining
Never resisting
Too hot and they disappear, too cold and they freeze
(January 2001)