New Book, no title yet

Part 1
As a child, my bedroom window was my vigil,my comfort, and the place where I could wander freely, like the delicate seed of a dandelion or like a tiny star being hurled into its destiny. i can't remember a time or place where I wasn't enthralled in the possibilities, dreams, and visions that waited just outside a metal screen and sheet of glass.

Midnight until dawn was my time; the time when no one would bother, abuse, or question me.  I'd lie under my navy blue cotton sheets and gaze out the large window. I even moved my bed right next to it, as if to bring myself closer to the world's I'd dreamed of.

Sometimes, I can still feel my fingers touching the glass; cold, thin, hardly a fitting barrier to keep a soul from going.

Just outside was a small winding ridge that stretched around the neighborhood, Hillcrest Villa Mobile home Community.  It held numerous slight trees with jagged branches, lush shrubs, and wild bushes.  During the spring and summer it was a miniature green wilderness, during the fall it resembled a wall of suspended, serene fire as the leaves turned bright yellow and orange, and in winter is dissolved into a network of dark wood and frost that made everything the color of stone.  A sleepy sky stretched above, who's moon and stars I would come to revere as lovers or angels who gave me songs, and who holds my wordless prayers, pleas, and various outpourings of the heart.

In gazing, hoping, and believing I found both solace and restlessness. Yes, my home is out there, far away from here, miles away from this dilapidated trailer park. I will ride. I'll take off in some dream machine without any pause for goodbye, leaving only a few poems and a graduation gown crumpled and forgotten in a closet.  Let them all just guess why. Let 'em wonder....or maybe not. Just be gone from here at last...but no not yet. When? Soon? No....

Overwhleming joy mixed with tears of frustration without the immaculate release I craved. Jaw clenching. Dreaming. Yearning for a home while simultaneously yearning for harsh and beautiful abandon. The white walls covered in grime, cracks, and cheap wallpaper with tiny blue and pink flowers, seemed so weak and insignificant, yet they managed to hold me in and smother me. The only real break in them was the window and cursed goddamn glass and mocking wire screen.

One Night I opened the window and pressed my nose against the screen.  The air was humid and smelled sweet and inviting. I grabbed a pair of scissors from my desk, then gingerly began cutting away at the edges of the screen (thinking my parents wouldn't really notice as long as I made it seem like the screen was still intact. They never did, as far as I know). It was a slow and deliberate task, for I didn't want the sound of metal slicing through metal to wake my parents or little sister.  Soon the thin, semi-permeable wall became a mere flap, and I slipped through and landed with a happy thud to the moist dirt.  It was like stepping, or falling, into a different world and different time.

Everything was still in its proper place; the trees, the road, the rusted metal shed, the flowerbed my sister and I had built for growing cantelopes, all the tin-houses and broken cars, and dim orange streetlights. Only, the tone had changed. The air was less severe. The dirt and weeds and roads were empty, and they were mine. Everything was liquid silver in the light of the moon. I felt much better and took a deep, appreciative breath. A bat fluttered to a streetlamp close to my house and then spiraled away into nothing, and was gone.

I looked up at the moon--full, silent, glowing like a silver dollar in the sun, only surrounded by darkness and thousands of tiny blazing crystals. I felt a connection. I can't fully explain this connection because words would somehow ruin the memory I have of it.  All I can say is that I was suddenly locked in and my brain, or perhaps my spirit, was sarcastically asking, "Well, what do you want from me?"

I climbed back through the window, closed it, slipped into bed, and fell into a liquid, soundless sleep, like falling into a deep blue lake where no one could find me.

Nostalgia

I'm supposed to feel nostalgic, right? All those adults said I would always look back on my high school years and smile or cry or something. . .well, they were wrong again.

 I've started writing another book, more like a mix of poetry and prose, but a memoir nonetheless. It's all true, every word. For some reason it decided to take me back to my childhood and adolescence, and you know what I've discovered? there's really nothing there to discover. Much of my memory is hazy. But a few things I do recall fairly well, only there's no connection to them. No emotional ties. Like it all happened to some one else, and I'm writing this book for someone other than myself. All the friends I had in middle and high school? Nonexistent by this point, except for one friend I've known since I was 7. The buildings, roads, hallways, scenes. . .nothing. Not a tug or even a sigh.
I'm Boulder's boy now, even though I'm currently living in Denver. The stage, Red Rocks, the Flatirons, Boulder Creek, the cafes like Innisfree and The Laughing Goat, that's my home. This is my life. All that other stuff was either an accident or a detour that eventually lead back to where I am now. Even the name I was given is something I can't recognize.
 When I left I didn't formally say goodbye to anyone and very few people bothered to say goodbye to me. Now i can't even remember all their names or faces.
 So, what is this? Certainly not a belated fare-thee-well. More like another insignificant outpouring to no one in particular, a photograph of a perfect stranger found on the side of the street and then casually discarded. No remorse. No explanation. Just a mild wind that blows through you, shakes the earth a little, and then is gone.

some songs

"Hit and Run"
I got a funny feelin' tonight Lord
something's comin on and I don't have much time
there's a new darkness to this winding road
and something more behind these cold eyes
she left me waiting at her siter's house
she left meprayin to the bloody moon
I walked the floor, lit a smoke, and tried not to crumble
as the sound of sirens filled the silent room
well I thought my chest just might cave in
thought my hands would never be clean
there was soemthin goin on somewhere but I didn't notice
my brain jsut kept playin our last scene

that night our bedroom was a battleground
where all wars are only fought in vain
we took our twisted words and hurled them hard as we could
into eachothers hearts without refrain
my blood was burning at the thought of defeat
she took a breath and let her tears flow
we both stood there wounded in the unforgiving dusk
then I turned my back to keep from watchin her go
for three long hours Iblasted through the rain
jsut hit the gas and let her fly
last words I heard before my world was ripped open
were "he was drunk, it was a hit and run, and Louise just..."

I went out searchin, searchin 'til I was blind
with the devil chasin after me
there was a busted ford on the edge of town
and a busted man staring back at me
my heart hit the bone as I slammed on the brakes
and stepped out with fire in my veins
I caught him against the wet solid ground
and his blood mixed with the rain
I heard his screams, then nothin else
just a silence rollin hard and deep
I stood over his body and watche dhim fade away
into the void where the angels must weep

I drove past the town where my baby was born
past the land we called our home
well they say to everything there's a season
but who among us would ever really know
I got a funny feeling right now Lord
dawn's breakin and I don't ahve much time
I won't hang my head and ask for forgiveness
this sins are all I ahve left inside
since I made my baby cry

"Let Love Be"
Well I ain’t sleepin’ tonight, not in the mood for dreams
not when I still feel you so close to me
I like to think that a thin wall is all that’s standin between
me and you, babe, and all the love that could be

I know you’re sitting there all alone
I wonder if all these feelings will show
once morning comes with its sacred glow
if you ever wanted me, honey would you let me know

Well I hear a wolf howling in the night
howling for the tenderness he denied
Colorado wind’s blowing icy across the line
that divides faith from fact, and your heart from mine

I know I’ll see you tomorrow, I know I’ll yearn
for you to hold me again just like before
hold me so tight that this fire don’t burn
until you run too far away, it don’t even return

Honey do you know what you do to me
Sometimes I wanna shout, but don’t dare speak
for fear of discovering exactly what’s comin between
the worlds we inherit that won’t let love be
whatever it is, I wanna tear it down
and set this love free

"Lay Me Down"

Well sometimes I get tired of fighting
of bangin my fists against the wall
I’m comin home tonight Melinda
it’s better than just comin to a fall

Between all the bosses and late nights
I’ve gotten too weary to break free
I guess I ain’t exactly the strongest man
but I’m strong enough to admit when I’m weak

Chorus: So just stay up a little longer
and pretty soon I’ll come around
all I ask is that you greet me with your kiss
and sweet baby just lay me down

There’re so many people on the line
demanding everything we need
I’ve been slaving like a fool down here
wondering how many of us have to bleed

Well I don’t claim to provide any answers
darling I just know none have come
but right now the answers don’t matter much
right now all I care about is your sweet love

chorus

honey take your hands of sanctuary
and run them over this body of stone
sink with me into the light of our bed
and remind me how I found my home

'cause I come alive at the sound of your name
and in the blessed surrender and mercy
I don’t wanna run, I don’t wanna chase
I don’t want no shallow dream that’ll curse me

chorus

Maybe tomorrow I’ll rise again
and be ready for the world outside
that can take everything you believe
until you wish it had taken your life

but someday we’ll stand proud knowing
they could never tear us apart
but tonight, I ain’t lookin for victory
I’m just yearning for the beat of your heart

It's been a while since I last posted...

...things always get a bit crazy for me these days. At the moment I'm taking a break from pounding away at a paper I have to write for Shambhala Meditation class to write whatever I feel like. I have a french press full of black coffee, a full pack of cigarettes, there's sludge in the streets, and snow in the trees and in beautiful patches of sparkling white on the ground outside my grimy apartment window. My roommate is asleep (no sharing a bowl tonight--For those who don't know, I'm referring to Colorado medical weed) and there are some people talking and chuckling in the parking lot. I have to get up nine to be in the recording studio by ten to work on some of my songs, mainly "Shake Shake Mamma" with a couple of friends on piano, guitar, and tambourine. I'm on vocals, guitar, and harmonica of course. I recently had two poems published in two different anthology books and one in Naropa's magazine The Sycamore.
I've been praised, ignored, passed out, eaten out, frozen, hungry, broke, unemployed, employed, asked out, lied to, fucked, pushed, carried, cried on, fallen on, stranded, found, supported, aborted, and on my knees for various reasons with or for various people. I've been searched by the police on a false claim I had coke, I've gotten stopped and IDed by the police for drunkenly making out with a stranger in an empty street at 3am, lost my keys, taken mushrooms three times this semester, and this weekend I plan to hippie-flip (take mushrooms and acid at the same time) for the first time whilst dressed as 1970s Bob Dylan. And how the holy hell am I doing such a good job in all my classes? The only answer I can think of is...I was just made for this. This is what I was born to be like someday. I work and work and then I lose my mind until I've had my fill, sleep it off in one night, then start working again. It's quite a perplexing yet deliriously entertaining system.
The best part is, if I died right now I could honestly say that I've lived a very eventful and full life, despite how short it has been. Of course I'm not planning any funerals any time soon (but just in case, if I do die in my sleep tonight or on some bus station bench this weekend, I want it known that there'd better be free unlimited Jack Daniels and hash for all at my funeral, along with bad-ass tshirts advertising the event).
Call me Boulder's Boy; living, breathing, occasionally hallucinating, and hopefully not destined for doom or death by over-indulgence. God help me. If only I wanted him to...

"Heart of Mine"

Well this time your alabaster stone don't make me wanna stay
and your crystal waters don't keep me at your bay
I just can't spend my life climbin' up your castle stairs
and anyway you wouldn't believe the odds those people gave to me back there
look and see the saints are just posing
and the graveyard gates are closing
on you and me and everything I'm leaving behind
ah honey babe anyone can have anything, but why'd you take this heart of mine

I see you got those turquiose eyes now you're lookin for your crutch
to do for you everything that you used to say would be too much
baby I would've walked 20 miles just for one smile from a friend
and now it seems you'd do anything to prove I never loved you then
But honestly don't we both know
it was never my idea to let us go
but one night I said hello and you left to run and hide
so honey babe these days I'd do anything to take back that heart of mine

Remember when I had seven hungry hounds at my heels
and a devil at my back saying none of it was real
now you come up to me like you never once fell
or told me stories you knew I'd believe were yours' to tell
when every night that I cried
you were sitting safe inside
thinking about your condition or depression or the meaning of life
honey babe but all the while you must've known all you did was take this heart of mine

So don't ever expect me to crack and crumble at your iron door
or break my heals on cold hard gravel following you no more
looks like my life is rolling somewhere further down the road
the one that once crossed your street but now wanders all alone
but don't you know it's okay
if you never saw the light of day
shining through the valley where you used to drive me outta my mind
cause honey babe I'm taking everything and more than that you're gonna lose this heart of mine

This might be finished now...

Speak to me
I see
I see the grass and the herb
I see the ink and sun on the page
I feel the black naked trees sleeping
I hear the creek laughing below me and my friends
I hear you singing thru the white walls I covered in obscenities
I hear my nails scratching at your door
I feel the bars of iron growing cold
I saw a stray cat and I thought of me
I saw the ring around the moon and I thought of my longing for you
I see the rocks where we stood open in just our skin
I felt chest pains and hunger pangs and I wanted to climb up your hair
I saw me break before you
I heard you whisper
I heard you suffer
I heard your footsteps drifting up the stairs the night you walked away
I felt the dry skin of your open palm
and the chambers and the bones in your chest
I saw you sitting breathing still with your back straight against the frigid bark
I felt the wet earth under me when I fell and bruised my legs and arms
I saw you staring into me
I saw the hair on your shoulders
I heard the tears in your throat
you never heard me pray
but I prayed for you and waited

I've watched you disappear
I've watched you undrape
I've bowed my head and I've cursed your name
I've stayed up all night listening to Janis and wailing 'you don't know, no you don't know what it's like to love anybody the way I love you babe'
I was cruel to you because you made me feel like being cruel to you then I begged to come inside
I told you a lie
you didn't tell me everything you knew

I embraced the pounding of the desolate sea where martyrs are drowned until I needed a home
I sat at your feet but you still felt alone
I've watched you walk down the same streets I did and the same streets I didn't
I saw arms of light through the fiery trees before the smoke and the air took them away
I tried to leave you and I saw the cracks in the sidewalk and the faces in the cars
and the weeds and the wood and the dust on the street signs
I spat and lit another cigarette and ran
til I purged by a white picket fence
I kicked at the broken glass
when I came back you were gone
it was dawn
you were tired, I was burning
I was burning
I was burning

but I know I was dancing in that small cafe
and your shirt was open as the band played a rhythm I'd never known before
were we drowning, I don't know
sometimes I was flying
sometimes I wonder if you could feel me trying

I felt the bricks of the columns
I felt the heat and the winds from last summer's storm
I felt the thorns and saw the blood of 98 wounds running from our veins
I felt a goodbye that never really came
I felt the night and I watned to share it with you but only if you wanted to
I wanna hold you if you want me to, only if you want me to
please say you want me to
I'd do anything, but I don't wanna do just anything
Why do I follow you?

2
Why did I follow you to a desert out west in a machine filled with five unfinished souls
where I got sick in the snow of carson city and you couldn’t even hold me up much less let me lie down next to you
where you roamed while I trembled under sweat stained once white cotton sheets in a overcast afternoon cheap hotel room
why did I follow you
all the way to a bus station in Reno where you and all the rest left me with 40 bucks and a thousand tears and went on to your own california I would never see
as i was kicked onto the street jilted and at the point of dehumanization
sneeking into the Sands with strangers then standing at the window staring at the Circus Circus, this time the lights of the city did nothing for me and will never do anything for you

One night on the cold carpet and then a bus alone alone alone back to Boulder where I met you
and in Boulder I was angry
and in Boulder I was unbearably unstable and internally paralyzed
in Boulder my insides shattered and the glass I hurled shattered and my spirit shattered and tenderness for you shattered
so in Boulder I wept
and in Boulder I forced my hand in the fire
and in Boulder I crossed sentences with flesh and shadows of revelations never found
in Boulder where you once saw me cry in a summer soft lamplight hallway of death and brilliant life and goodbye
in Boulder where you once placed your hand on my stomach and told me to breathe when suffocation or hyperventilation seemed to make so much more sense
in Boulder you held me to the sun after a night of stolen whiskey and a seed that made me see fireflies that illuminated the path to you and your silence
in Boulder you pressed my tangled head to your chest and i could exist with you and feel with you the heart in me that in the end only scared you and scarred you and left me sighing into my bended bare knees in my lonely hangover sunrise bathtub
in Boulder you mourned your disposition and neurosis and loss of the want of love while my insides twisted with emptiness and begged for warm milk and a one night surrender
in Boulder I held your hand to no avail
in Boulder I swallowed more visions than you could take
in Boulder and everywhere else I recalled when you were angelic and didn’t mind if I got weary or shakey sometimes
in Boulder oh God I fell for you and yearned for your German torso and shy young hips and your cerulean patient eyes that had seen the cruelty of New York and the openness of me standing naked in the middle of so-and-so’s apartment amongst bootlegged jugs of Carlo Rassi and smoke where I performed a drama that continues to this day
but all I really wanted was for us to finally have eachother completely
finally earthly beings completely in a field of lightning and rain
in Boulder I ached for the light of your bed while I bled behind dumpsters and woke to find streaks of red across the heart of Dawn that never promised anything but another prophecy of Day
in Boulder I gave you a daisy
in Boulder your smell made me so painfully human
in Boulder I showed you my soul
and in Boulder I wanted you to tear my skin to pieces so I could weep your dreams and see us rise over cities of stone and ruin and dance like madness and make love like madness and fall asleep in eternity by the river where we died
and where I will die once again

3
But please hear me
I know the two of us just don't fit
you never told me where we stood...but I guess you never knew and neither did I until tonight.
you never really knew me and damn it all to hell if you ever let me finally know you.
You don't like the way I chain smoke on a sunny day or cold morning or after a couple shots of Jack and one long conversation that ends up meaning nothing.
You don't like it when you ask what's wrong and I tell you.
You don’t like the stories I have to tell and I’ve heard all of yours’ a million times and anyway you only have the one
You can't stand to see me kiss a stranger after a hard night of introspective terrors and leaving me with too many maybes and sighs
You regret that promise you made to me, the only one I ever believed in
You get scared whenever you see me hanging from a branch or howling my spirit away on some grimy stage all hurt and free.
You used to look at a busted car or a bruise and say it's beautiful, but when it came to me and you it was never about beauty or anything that would have brought the two of us any kind of release or salvation.
You used to walk with me
You used to stay…
You hate the way that you left me and you hated the way I stood on my hind legs when you came back to tell me things a stranger could’ve said
When you held me it was only because I seemed lost enough and tamed enough to make it safe for you to hold me.
You loved me only when I was your wounded sparrow or baby wolf gone astray.
I came on too strong and too willing
your apologies fell to the hard ground where they were easily trampled like neglected roses blown away from their home in a graveyard .

Now me. . .well, it was never about me was it? There was no me; there was only you, and the you that you saw in me.
I was never there.
I was never anywhere, no matter how hard I tried. Now for that, I would never blame you. That should make you happy, knowing how much you claimed to hate blame in any form.
What do I want from you? A month ago I would have wanted you to die.
But tonight. . .take your walk to the creek.
Watch it flow and tumble and wash over your hands; I remember how fond you were of metaphors. Just know I'm not gonna be the tramp sitting on the cold sturdy rocks by your feet anymore.
I will not set myself on fire for you anymore
I will not let you relate to my loneliness anymore
Neither of us is Mary or Christ and I will not call on any angels or send you any prayers over the ruins that I was hurled into anymore and I will not let you touch me where it hurts.
I'll get mine. After all, if you can stand all this so can I.
I would never even ask you to remember me, but God damn it all to hell if I should ever be able to forget you.

This book...

....is laborous as hell. My other two books were relatively easy to write. Ii just wrote shit down until it was done and there ya go. My first took about 6 months (I was 11 at the time) and my second took a month and a half. I just wrote constantly with very little effort. This one is much different. I only have 8 pages and I had to draw this complex diagram thingy to keep up with all the characters and places and avoid plot holes.
The form is much more traditional than what a have been doing for a while; it's like a grown-up version of my first book in that aspect. It's pretty violent too, but now that I think about it both of my books were violent. Whadyaknow.

Anyway, this thing is rough. Kinda reminds me of my TaeKwonDo tournament days...specifically the tournament where I had to spar my sister and ended up going four extra rounds and then nearly cracked a growplate in my wrist on a punch to the ground during my free-design form. Damn. Just damn.
I guess it's because it had so much of my recent aingsty heartbreak in it. Maybe if I didn't make the time and setting and a few characters and events fictional, I wouldn't be able to write it at all without losing it to some degree. Of course there's some dialogue straight out of real life nearly word for word.

WARNING TO EVERYONE: if you break my heart, I'm gonna write about every fight word for word and post it on the internet and/or read it in public in front of your friends. Seriously, don't fuck with me.