hug a dead man

he’s walking, laughing, telling you consequential stories, entertaining. lucid, beer in hand, social and wise. selling you ideas, trying to convince you, that he is not a bad person. but you do not believe him. you see his bent shadow and something inside pulls you back. you see his raw talent for the tricks and stunts he pulls. you nervously grab your hat. you don’t understand, you are not impressed. you don’t want to be. you don’t need to be. you don’t have enough. he is without. something inside is dying, waiting to complete it’s surgery. till this cancer devours him. till he collapses and returns to dust. you see, he is trapped, suffocating, bound by tired labels, religion, stuck on a death row, abused and sentenced in the name of God. hug him while you can. for he’ll be dead, in your hands, slowly but surely.

freakshow

as they see it. a show of emotions drawing concern. “were you drowning your sorrows?” i don’t know why but i found it really amusing and could not stop laughing. i was simply having fun, or so i recall myself saying between the pair who have found themselves acquainted and bothered enough to sit me down. all i remember was the last scene, my elements all sprawled over the table, manners and all.

it has been difficult to get through the thick of those who hold the stakes. many moments i just want to give it up. why am i trying like it means something to me, when, really, it does mean something to me. “get your ass back up!” a facebook personal message was enough to send me to tears and break down my resistance. i remember why i stepped up in the first place. my first love, to tell it like it is, all arms, sleeves and back, ploughed. my redemption and the story of the one.

and it still feels alone. a journey that’s taken me round and round at this stage. coming to accept that this will be a journey less travelled. and few, very few will be, and fewer in for the long road ahead. how do you not grow cold and still keep your heart ready to flex it when love calls to give and lay it down? this is my paradox, my seizure for the day.

vampires

Some things you can’t tag a dollar value. Like a trip, against wise advice, to re-access blood relations.

 

It’s ironic. Spend my years running away from the men whom I never quite got; phoney replicas, behaving like fathers, but never intended to protect, serve and love, shepherd wolves who, in fact, were vultures after raw flesh. I, too, was hungry. So don’t blame the jury.

 

While in hindsight, I’ve done my dues, I still walk with steel chains cuffing my heels, doing my time on parole. I can’t engage without something breaking. That’s the smoke in a habitat of mammals, warm, full, fed from their rightful.

 

What’s right these days? Against our backdrop of easy instant drugs and overdosed pain. Nights, wishing for the kind of affection carrying no hidden agendas to take, steal, plunder or gratify. Just a warm breath, blanket that believes in more hope than the horizon can hide. An instinct under the skin. Somehow believing these basal physical elements can engage without a blemish of sin. That it will bring strength to replace dashed hopes of ever finding the wild soul.

 

A soul still festered and wounded. Cuts, rashes and effects aside, I wouldn’t be quick to conclude.

 

Some days you can’t explain yourself away. No one gets the drone and it only marks its make with you. It’s rare to find honesty with yourself and when you do, the whole world aligns like the moon, stars and sun in an earthen eclipse. Your hand writes what you haven’t thought of and words come tumbling out like they were meant to be.

 

When you try, it gets worse. Try and it falls flat, on deaf ears, hands that can’t wait to judge, push to the point of resolution, transfer you to the nearest facility to be farmed for research and psychiatry.

10 minutes more and back to the wild, the snow storm. I got no one else, so here’s trusting you.

foundation

face the facts. what is really fact and what’s fiction? the boundaries blur. had to dig deep to find enough to pay for the ham cheese croissant. things feel different and the familiarity is quite foreign for that matter. much, that there’s no attention to how the crema stays flat on top the white. found the teaspoon balancing on the rim, lungs inflated, discovering something in the distance.

don’t know what to make of it. except these voices swimming, in the head, ache. wanting out, still wanting in. everybody wants in. so what makes scrutiny & fodder? what lifted the fog was a familiar face beneath the tint bending past. it was nice to find safe ground. to know a simple shrug can still be ok. we don’t need to know. it’s all context and different syntax.

so, still broken, quite severely, to speak of, quite plainly. still short of breath, sleepless, countless. not complaining but hours don’t seem enough. what is it, to look forward to? the weekends are coming back to haunt and here’s back to fear, all over again. it’s getting late and meaningless. hang on old boy. some things cannot be replaced, but read and finish that damn book at least.

unfound

why can’t i seem to fold my laundry and tuck them away? instead they lie in a heap on my couch right next to me where Entourage plays. i stare at the pair of goodyear shoes next to the high hat pedals and let my mind wander. quit thinking too much. too much of anything, i found the hard way, makes life a little more than enough to handle.

my thoughts drift to the mid morning snack at the library. “i decided, i’m not going to be another kurt cobain,” much to the relief of another fellow. the beans were on display, conversations held in array in the midst of familiar faces sitting right next to us. it’s a neo-varsity hangar. almost walked out without paying.

i found the weeks past have lent themselves to scrutiny and public imagination. the virtual drama that surrounded the absence. i never knew how much this was going to cost and how much anguish there was for the loss. those who knew, the near and the remote and almost everyone else in between. “it’s not worth it, we just want him back!” If only every lonely soul knew and be surrounded with common humanity. it was sweet and painful. regret, gratitude, a stir in the soul to want to come back home and find my shoes again.

“it’s been the hardest trying to come back,” those weeks since the last entry where the title page suffered a shift that signaled an ominous possible ending, though i was never intending. though for a while, it got dark. i still found enough. enough to distract till i find real hope. “all I need, somedays, is a simple hug to remind.”

I love the sound of japanese jibberish playing in the foreground, pages of the magazine flipping furiously, the sliding door struggling to stay put and the nervous overworked fan humming against my wall.

better than good wine and fine beer for company.

round the merry go round

i had cried so much that nothing feels sacred anymore. feeling spent and overgrown is one of those things that bring you back to your core. who and what makes me feel whole. why are we made to relate and live with our fellowmen and yet find them the ones that cause us the most pain, shame and be stuck in a game of give and take. i wish it were simple. i want to forget some things and pretend. but it takes time, healing, these careless days.

try as i might, to not let my imagination capture me, not get lost in the big picture, still believe there is good in even the good intentions of our religious reckless bastard days. now i can jump high enough to catch half a second of this view over the hedge. it is enough to keep me distracted. perhaps this whole discipline of books and time stamp really is the antidote this this poison of our human condition, my human ambition.

1, 6, 3 till it hits a 7. reducing it down to a three chord progression, always a walk, a trod, downwards. what does this mean? every melody finds a blue string bleeding into a deeper shade. i just found 12 albums and it will be a hoot to listen to them back to back.

bad dream

that it was a post movie affair. she held onto my brown pullover, bag slung clumsily over her shoulder, clutched tightly close to me like we were. for a moment i let her. for the moment till it occurred to me, found, she wanted to sit me down and load up some 5 hour marathon, grill me to the middle public ground, watch her cry, watch my heart shrivel, die, with salt and drugs from the nearby. clearly i wanted to just go home. i remember saying this is some stupid mistake. there was a struggle. i wanted to peel off my belongings held ransom. i wanted to just get away. run. before security mistake me for the basher. give me back what belongs to me. stop condemning me. let me live.

i hit the threshold, woke up in panic sweat. it was just an afternoon nap. my first sunday. lucid. much too close to home. i feel unwell. unsafe. i need someone to help me sleep.

the noise

couldn’t help but scribble and graffiti on the train. vandalize my moleskin with irregular font sizes. a hurricane is happening even as i script. i found the eye of the storm through a book called “The Inner Game Of Music“. Found an old friend who listed the book as a must read. That old friend who is now enviably in Berklee School of Music. Seems like there’s quite a few brand drops today. For now I am held together by a spinning centrifugal. feels like i found my trajectory.

i stayed home today and found familiar company for several hours. even though conversation was sparse and stubbed with short stabs of phrases, thoughts and actions, the presence of a fellow made the air a little easier to breathe. sharing life, space, table manners make a human more whole than doing it alone. a few things i am thankful for, few pleasures that help me look forward to living life more than just some hope and grandiose.

i remember the long and extended train rides not too long ago. like a mobius strip, the train don’t stop and that’s how it felt, proverbially speaking. reminds me of a movie i watched at a film festival with a good friend who is currently in new york right now. that bastard. i was looking for something. something more than what was going on. sometimes the search itself is the exact thing i need, more than what i might actually be looking for.

but now i sit here, probably $150 ahead and a few hours short on time in exchange for a favor for a friend who was present when i came out hiding from intoxication. it’s peculiar how i make decisions. irrational doors open. because kindness was given, love is found in return. heart and soul. it’s all good.

cabarets and clubs

spades and arrows, it’s a game of poker. i don’t know what’s coming next and i can’t control it. a short sting of fiona apple from long time ago and it surfaces a motown storm. phrases come crashing and my pile of letters and alphabets swing and dance steadily on the stave, the treble and the bass, yes the walking bass with a trippy tag line from the tight snare.

a late afternoon beer on the docks made for good memories. no, not just memories but history that will go down well like a wise old brew, carefully selected, handpicked and crafted, slow cooked. a hundred steps begin with one, smart ass one liners that find their way into the penthouse of a city view. hope has many faces and i found another one today.

sigh, i am tired, aching a little, thinking of the journey ahead. watching the world around me go merry and dance while i disciple the importance of being earnest as a steward. blessings, oh huckleberry finn.i need to clip my overgrown fingernails. transmission, intermission.

Mr Brenner

this jacket is dirty, i thought. needs dry cleaning. needs some patch work on the inside sleeves. it’s been keeping me neat and hiding my crumpled skin underneath. setting my spine straight, upright and sharp, so it seems to this mirror. mr brenner waits in the green.

my distractions are working. although for a long pause moment i found my shovel ready to dig the grave. for something sank inside and a state of mind fragile enough to be tipped over the edge. i want to be strong. enough to be dependable. but for now, i take whatever company keeps, even if it’s a buddy flashing icon. even if i talk affectionately into thin air.

i asked him what plans he had for his near foreseeable and the answers were lucid, well thought and eloquent. amid the loud, the thick italian chocolate accent in my mug, i found my own voice, a familiar nod, looking to climb the sides of the city scape again. i made a mental note to call my would be mentor and do the humble thing. remind him of what he said at the airport at the beginning of spring and find out if he meant every note.

he did. i can see it now. a little more hope than distractions to keep me living.