Poetry: Invisible

I am strolling through the mall
looking at expensive shoes
   and laughing

No one can see me
when I wear the right shirt
smiling at the right times

Appreciate the sublime beauty
        of another sale
Praise the wise purchase
   of the next obsession

I am invisible
                    and nameless

I am the hunter
rubbing himself down with deer piss
at 3 in the morning

I look out at all the other white people
chattering into cell phones and shopping
wondering if there's an ugly truth
brewing below the waves
of shiny plastic wrapping
and gigantic cinnamon buns

every one of them is pretending
and they're all miserable
underneath the credit cards and televisions

I think they are
 I think we are
  I think I am

I will

 start a new religion
 and take confessions in the public square

  worship no gods, no idols, no teachings
  nothing, no thing

   listen for the sound of a heart screaming out
   and while the tears roll down my chest

    let them know how each of us is dying inside
    and there is beauty in that:

When we share it with each other.

Morrissey: Years of Refusal

Morrissey has traveled an interesting road throughout his career, dipping into literature and dropping out of music at times. He tends to walk around rock music loosely and freely without much regard for other people's opinions and it shows. He's got a big collection of organs, synths, drums and guitars and he's gonna use them all tonight. Years of Refusal is a backstage pass to Morrissey's mind. This album starts off strong with "Something Is Squeezing My Skull" bringing a smattering of pure rock to the album, grabbing your attention and letting you inside. Then the he beckons you into the back room for tracks that sound more like a progression of his solo work since his return to the music scene in '03 with You Are The Quarry. For those familiar with Morrissey, you'll notice that his lyrics have moved outwards in this record, painting pictures of the world through his eyes and letting you inside to watch. For those unfamiliar, you are about to meet a brilliant lyricist face to face and come away smiling.

Poetry: Coffee Wench

I awoke in the dawning of the world of men
crossed the tides of black asphalt
staving off the foul beasts of early morning
with persuasive tones from an ancient guitar


Peering out from steel and plastic
I scoured the streets of salvation
for a single stalwart port
serving sweet hot thoughts
and pastries for breakfast


Presented with the flying flags of a thousand ports
I let the stars take me down a side street
to the wooden decks of unfamiliar commerce
and wafting smells of coffee and bagels


The wash of sunlight drifting past the windows
covered the floor with dreamtime
and the ragged edges of the bedsheets


My eyes raised to the bustling row of goods
passing over clerks hawking awareness
and busy breakfast paninis
to the absence of the of coffee wench


Can a day truly be begun
without coffee and a scowl?
how can any day be complete
without mean looks and apathy?


She was not there
like a hole in the world that says whisky and books
begging to be filled with the sleepy eyed damning of my ways
and hot coffee with cold sarcasm


I left feeling hollow and unhated
pointed my bow towards the sinking west
traversed the sea of commuters
towards the endless day

Poetry: Art Sucks

what's going on here

can't be monetized

doesn't fit into an agenda

there is no market for it

we are spinning lies into pretty shapes

just for the joy of spinning

smiling up into the sunlight

and laughing

unlike the rest of the world

who are spinning lies for a profit

or a feeling of importance

I dance with them between my fingers

I spit them out on plastic keyboards

like nude models on a canvas of fiber optics

these delicate moments are my friends

they are the monsters that live in my mind

and I won't sell them

I dance because there is nothing else

there is only the dance

between light and shadow

between night and day

everything else is an illusion

so I prefer to live among the pretty lights

that people treat like real things

threading my fingers through

each and every fiber of being

laughing at people who take things seriously

being very serious about unimportant things

generally being a fool

and dancing

what's going on here

is not art, it's dancing

is not a dance, but dancing

is not you, is not me

Poetry: Dick pills

ceaseless ads for dick pills

spill out of this plastic box

every moment of every day

telling me that my performance is weak

like I'm a fucking sports car or something

always hard

always happy

that's the american dream

isn't it?

forcing the cholesterol wash down hard paths

through a heart that stopped beating

years ago

into the tip of a phallus that doesn't know when to stop

we are an erection that's running out of things to fuck

but we can't stop jamming these pills down our throats

swallowing anything to keep our dicks hard

washing it all down with buckets of chemicals

splashdown in the liquor sea

bubbling up antacid clouds

through the antibiotic antidepressant antianxiety bitches brew

strung out eyes follow the hookers of the world

working girls won't even look us in the eye any more

they've seen the raw and bleeding sunrise

at the end of the oil and cocaine fueled nights

and they know we're not paying nearly enough

to make them put up with our shit

and our promises

and our lies

lazy and soaked in gasoline

barely seeing the outline of the street

we stumble still looking for a cheap hotel

and getting turned out of the doors

doesn't stop us

laughing when our friends tell us

you're gonna die young

forcing each breath through a cloud of tobacco

and exhaust fumes

fuck you man

I'm gonna die hard

and I'm gonna die happy

Poetry: City Life

the fumes this city exhales into my face
every morning
are starting to eat at my mask

and the trash of 200 years piled up around me
is a constant reminder that we can never throw anything
far enough away

it's a thin film over every romance
every half-assed attempt at significance
we pass our fingers over every summer

sometimes i think we're not even fooling ourselves
rotting as we are along with the detritus of our ancestors
sitting here next to the mountain of pbr cans
in the foggy reminders of late night laughter

i know i can smell it between your breasts
the city life is there
beating between the wings of two bluebirds
as fierce as your mouth on mine
fighting to reach the sky through the clouds of exhaust

are we any different?
fighting through the street traffic
tweeting viciously at the gray dawn light
and fighting each other
for crumbs
in front of another corporate coffee hole

the ghosts with their skim lattes
don't see me any differently any how
i'm just part of the scenery

another bird on another breast
digging through the trash heap
of civilizations past

wearing each treasure
like a discarded mask

Poetry: I am not your lover

I bet you thought you had a lover then

the two of us snuggled up against the teat of military spending

sucking down the milk of suffering and death

Until I took off all my clothes

and my teeth started coming out of the walls

Until my skin started wearing too thin

and the wool over my eyes evaporated

in a burst of flames

I almost let it slide this time

I almost believed in it all

that the shiny new toys of the 21st century could make me happy

that a cage so gilded, so covered with flashing lights

could ever contain a wolf

that any man would ever be happy in his golden shackles

that the tiny rebellion

of an iPod full of punk rock

will sing my soul to sleep

or make me shut my fucking mouth

I have been bleeding my soul onto Interstate 95 too long

I send these white blood cells up the concrete

riding on waves of cancerous clouds

the irony of this does not escape me

that this system needs it's repairs so bad that it will sacrifice anything

to keep it moving

I am wired into this sleepless monolith

of recorded conversations and cost-benefit analyses

that never looks at the costs in anything other than dollars

information never takes a break to watch the sunset

24 hour caffeine buzz burns mindless droning sounds

across the wires that replace the trees

I can almost fall asleep

I can sometimes ignore the pain

of this wire jammed up my ass

but as ashamed as I'm told to be

about my anger

that no evolved man is angry

That we talk about our feelings

and we work it out

I can't let it go

There are words burned a thousand feet tall in my heart

YOUR ANGER IS A GIFT

YOUR ANGER IS A GIFT

YOUR ANGER IS A GIFT

And I am not your fucking lover.

Leonard Cohen: Death Of A Ladies' Man

There is this heavy air in the hotel lobby. All of the dreams of afternoon lovers are pooling here at the entrance and threatening to choke off your air. Lost in a haze of emotion and unsure of each footstep you stumble further through the red and gold wallpapered pathways of midnight hell towards the record player casting shadows out of a doorway.

There are memories tied to every note, remorse on every staff line of this ode to the moment you're in. Vision blurred, stumbling towards the song floating into the room you fall into the bed in slow motion. Leonard Cohen can seduce you in ways you never thought were possible. He has forgotten more about being spiritually and physically naked than most of us have ever known.

This is definitely not music for listening to at work, in the car or any time you're not able to grab a bottle of wine and take off your clothes. If you have someone to share this album with, you're in the place he wants you to be. Leonard Cohen is a poet of the highest order, sparing with his words and generous with emotion. But don't listen to me, listen to him. I lock this album up in my liquor cabinet with Nick Drake, Ani Difranco and Joe Henry.



Good for: Melting the clothes off of your lover with poetry.

Prose: Endless Twilight

I remember that day we hid upstairs. Peering down between the floorboards somewhere between loneliness and fear, I tasted the air all around her. Delighting in the smell of monsters lurking behind those eyelids, crowding out this vision of me hunched up in the corner. She never looked my way, just shivered as the world crept up on us with it's cruel sunlight and endless gazing and slunk into my arms shallow from the effort of silence. Our skeletons stacked in the corners of the hallway closet, dusted off and polished for company. Never too old or too young to hang out our problems to see, we used to take pride in propping them up in lifelike poses, dressing them in fancy clothes. I was busy washing her hair with my fingertips and remembering to breathe while she sewed up our latest designs.

When the wan light of this treacherous day had pierced the flowered armor she so skillfully deployed across the windows I left her laying on the bed to see how far the enemy had come. Defenses shattered, I peered down at the encampment cooking fires by the dirt road leading up the hill. The one we'd infiltrate on Saturday nights pretending to be in love so we could screw and drink. Looking at the twisted reflection bouncing off the lead glass I wondered why I lingered here in this endless gloom. The blend of tea, sweat and weed swirled around me in clouds of ecstasy and desolation, daring me to try and walk downstairs. I remember thinking I had been stuck in a loop in that moment, like the shuttle control of my mind had been fucked with by some cruel bastard intent on making whiskey my only water. I found myself back on the altar, tied to her with rope I never brought, staring through the back of her head and trying to untie my hands without making a sound. But I think I was her captive audience, the jewel in her crown of thorns.

I wasn't even needed there, just a warm body and a pliable soul that eased the burden of an emotional hoarder. Those endless stacks of well thumbed through magazines depicting couples on Parisian avenues, dimly lit cafes and wine cellars were the walls she had put my artwork on. Just the topmost layer of a collage of wistful yearning and childish dreams. We'd spend these perpetual twilight hours together painting pictures on each others faces and making love to our favorite masks. Later in that endless night, I found her eyes behind a bookshelf full of empty cigarette packs and used condoms and tried to put them back. Only they didn't fit anymore, the sockets burned cold by peering between fiction and this dim imitation of her fantasy.

We rolled around in the whispers of an endless night for years, reaching further and further into each others throats, as she tried desperately to tie one last knot in a rope of pleasure and guilt. I finally woke one day to find the upstairs room empty, a museum of obsession echoing through my mind. Her clothes were laying on the floor among the stacks of morning skirmishes that turned into afternoon passion and torment. I packed the last of myself into a rusty car and headed down the dirt road past the enemies lines, musing that they never looked so transparent as they did that afternoon.

Prose: The Delicate Dance of Desire

And so I dance.

This dance has steps that resemble nothing else in the world. They are hidden rules and everyone follows them religiously. Like a secret society that everyone else is a member of, whispering the dark secrets of form and ritual in hushed back alleys just outside my earshot. A twist here, two unspoken understandings there all done behind the screen. I've been listening as long as I've been alive and the steps elude me even to this day. Perhaps I lack the subtlety required of its participants. The grace of the common man is beyond my reach despite the dizzying patterns I dance around the hard wood floors and pillars of beer cans.

It is a cruel thing at times, desperate and clinging. The fever pitch of a thousand paper hearts flying through the air smothering the floor and choking the life from anyone caught in the swarm. The band reaching its crescendo and falling face first into the crowd. Everyone is staring around, wondering if this maelstrom can outlast their willpower. The answer is yes, and you won't know your face when it's done.

Then you watch the grace of two seasoned veterans, toying with emotions that rattle like sabers in the hands of a master. Each perfectly poised and perfectly detached from the reality of the steps. Smirking bastards. These are the people who write the rules of engagement for everyone else. It is cool and inhuman, pausing for breath only to suspend your disbelief. I can enjoy the show, watching robots try to fuck if only to give me an uncomfortable laugh. The truth is that the methodical actions of these dressing dolls are as much a mystery to me as the ramblings of the madman whirling in his endless hair. It is perhaps the last mystery we're allowed.

At a certain point the vast majority of people expect that you don't believe monsters are hiding under your bed. I think they go to live in your heart when you banish them from the comfort of dust balls and one left socks. All you're left with is the boring underside of your mattress, a few boxes of random crap and a crumpled up porn magazine. Gone is the myth we carry around as children, the wonder of a spiderweb and the witching hour between this world and the next. We place all of our belief and mystery into smaller buckets, call one Love and the other one God and move on with life. It is all boiled down and bottled up in a dance and we dance it all the time, whether we know it or not. It eats up all of our time and energy and most of the time we're pretty unaware of it.

But I've been watching my feet very closely.
I think they'll betray me soon.