The Dead Apple Trio And My Blues

Moody little jazz
Meets me in the bathroom as I linger,
Away from the table
Of the red dress and the pointed finger,
I stand leaning against the sink
As the boys pour in with the familiar stink
Of alcholic drink.
Troubadours and trumpet sonnets,
Smooth and amenable
Guage my perception of the
Narcissistic bride of tonight.
I sashay to the bar ahead
As the sauntering symbol slides my step
And order another scotch,
While the bitch smirks at me hard;
It's going to be a long night.

Intalian Roast and Significance Revealed

Early morning air
And everything else surrounding me
When winter's soon to settle down
To give us all some time for thinking.
The heart thinks long
In the winter days,
It struggles to relate itself
To everyone and everything
It knows and wants.
Still, it is not that time,
Not on mornings as these
When I can settle myself before the winter
And be satisfied
With a little quiet about me
And the river-breeze upon my face;
Whispers of small wonders
For the taste of next years comings and goings.

Mediocrity Rules, Or So Le Tigre Says, Those Nasty Bitches.

Mediocrity everywhere.
In the shower,
In the kitchen, or the corner of the fridge.
Around the oven,
Under the ironing board.
In the floormat of the car,
Under the leaves in the yard.
In the faces of bosses,
And bosses bosses bossing around
Them and everyone.
In their voices.
"They" are everyone, and anyone.
But when you meet someone
And not meet someone
Simultaneously
Cravings make some minutes
In this long monotone lifestyle
Worth the doing;
Or maybe its just that pebbling hope
That not all days will be this full
Of Mediocrity everywhere.

Some Poems From Early 2006; ENJOY!

A Winter Song

Winter setting, cold and clear.
Into the great gray skies I disappear.
Longing for the big change,
Longing for that big love to take me away.
Or something to rest my head and heart;
They are in need so much to rest.

O hopeless woeful ways of winter,
Forever folding over my wonder;
Wherefore is my purpose made?

My head falls downward as I ponder…
The thickness of the air makes everything unclear.
Some change is due in this wreck of a life,
Some sort of reckoning need take avow;
Yet still here and now do I find
That I do not find myself anymore resolved.

O hopeless woeful ways of winter,
Forever folding over my wonder;
Wherefore is my purpose made?

Will the face of spring, like a red robin sing
All of my aches and ail away?
To this day I wait, and so carefully concentrate,
And yet the clarity I seek is repeatedly unseen.
I go before the fires and I seek a new perspective.
To change my life among these things
Is but my only solid directive.

O hopeless woeful ways of winter,
Forever folding over my wonder;
Wherefore is my purpose made?

To this and these great longings do I guess;
That of myself, and of my workings,
I’ve yet to give my very best.
Since I’ve left out on my own
I’ve come to realize how very far
Away into the years it will be
Until I finally feel at home.

The sadness dissipates my virtues,
And brings me down some depths unwanted,
And yet what mysteries are still to come
Forever press me on and on,
Even if my heart gives in and all my breath is gone.

O hopeful woeful ways of winter,
Forever folding over my wonder;
Wherefore is my purpose made?

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I Saw You Dancing

The last time I saw you, I saw you dancing.
In a spell of wheels spinning and grinning;
Timid, I aware of you who stares,
Yet unmarked measure come prancing vivid airs.
Low and behold, for now I walk off into clouds;
A vision spiraled and aroused by consonant beats.
I claim to change what I claim to own,
And yet as if I go alone, I go unwelcome.
Here is a home for you to call on.
Here is a place you can hang your hat
I had to walk on.
No silence but a constant reason;
A subtle circumstance for my own penance,
When I should not have called you so late.
So late it was, and were I balanced, I would have
Walked upright among the others,
But here I crawl and slobber and choke
On my own words, now come apart.

-----------------------------------------------------------
O!

O, the future is taking me!
Whispering while all I do is shout and shout.
I look for you, I look for you;
You’re dancing in and running out.

What am I to do?
Carry all this mess with me and live in all this doubt?
People pass on by;
They’re laughing; what’s it all about?

I’m sitting here all sick with worry,
You’re running fingers through my hair;
Telling me a million things through little looks
And I’m still looking for myself in you and
O, I just don’t know anymore.

So I go into my room.
The lights are dim, the walls are cold, the feelings old.
I can’t fall asleep.
Dreams were never made to keep a heart still sinking, soft and cold.

Let me pass you one request.
Don’t go falling in love with me, it’s more than I can stand to see.
When you go into the day,
Remember that the boy you left who’s heart you kept was only me.

I’m sitting here, all sick with worry.
You’re playing tricks on me this time;
Flaunting that you know you’ve got me,
I’m not sure that we’ll make it darling;
And O, I just don’t really know anymore.

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I Know.

I know it’s not so easy.
I know my eyes don’t let it show.
I don’t think you’re supposed to know me.
It might be better if you’d let me go.

But if in the night you need some comfort,
You can use me if it makes you feel better,
Sleep long and dream easy.
I know that it’s not right.
I wish I could be use to someone.
God knows how I’d make it workout,
If ever I knew there were a chance that I could change.

I know I’m hard on you sometimes.
Dissolving hearts are hard to hold.
You can use me if you like,
Just don’t hold on to me so close.
The winter’s coming when warmth is needed.
I’ll spend it cold, when you’ll wish I’d come over.
I cannot give you what you want and wish and need.

I know it’s not so easy,
I know my eyes don’t let you know.
I don’t think you should want to know me.
It might be better if you let me go.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Looking At My Watch Again.

Try as I may,
The world still arrives by the time of the day.
I still feel the same, though it never quite reveals.
Now I’m caught out on a plank;
The water is deep and the boat’s going to sink,
I’ll jump and see the bottom far before
I even get the time to really contemplate.
These people here, they always divide me.
Pieces of myself strung out before the table,
It’s a shame I don’t ever seem to collect them like they do.

Longing for a presence,
Some peace of mind is my only resplendence,
And now it seems I’ll not be having any such thing.
I do recall, by days and nights,
The simple life to which I set my sights;
I’ve yet to find it, did it leave me behind?
O, how this place feels like a cage,
And no the caged bird does not sing,
Lest we be silent.
So long as there is talking, there is laughter.
Cheating ourselves out of truthful answers;
Those very ones that divide the continents of our hearts.

So I float away in all this wonder.
Spend my days in a constant ponder.
Wondering and following, but still waiting for my freeing.
But have you ever seen a bird to the open cage?
The freedom is unfathomed. We retract in such distractions…
Its that bit of air outside that makes a scare we’d rather not wear.
And fear I do, the days ahead. When this is through, and the music’s dead.
I did not say it had to die, but tell me again how it wouldn’t
If and when our hearts divide?
Sighs and sighs and always goodbye.
I wonder why I even try to say hello.
I’d rather go, where nobody knows who or why I’m there.
At least I wouldn’t fill the air with empty promises
To catch the passersby with pleasant replies.

I am a bit of fellow folk.
I talk and I spit out the same old shit.
It’s all in good meaning, with no meaning really at all.
When we fall, we fall hard.
The ground, or whatever, I have yet to hit.
So I keep falling and fleeing from this and that.
The time presumes my presence well.
The madness with the minutes passing,
While I’m asking why it always ends this way.
It only gets bigger everyday.
Goodbyes are harder, looks are longer;
The things that last only grow stronger.
And here I go again on my own distressing gestures.

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*I hope you have enjoyed these. I wrote none are really connected to each other in any sort of way, nor are they in any particular order. Just a few that even I had not read in a while. If you want to do me any sort of favor in regards to them please let me know which ones were more appealing.

The Lady's Dowry

Here is the boy,
Here is the boy that you once knew.
He came back for a while,
Maybe just to make you smile.
There's a cold house that's abandoned,
In it stands the lady's dowry.
Tables, chairs, a vanity she used to perch on,
Now it's gone, but I still listen
From the hallway to her ghost
Echoing inside the bedroom;
I can't see, her perfume lingers.
I can almost see her hair brushed
Down gently, but it is only in my mind,
The house is lost,
The boy is drifting away again.
She won't replicate that place
And he can't find the key inside his pocket.
The childhood love that ran away
Is gone to banks of dank brown waters,
Small waves attached to stories
Of pallid people far below the surface
Speakers wishing you would wish them well.
Here is the boy,
Here is the boy that you once knew.
He comes calling for her tonight,
But she'll not answer;
You'll not answer me this time,
That house is broken,
All the same,
Her dowry; her heart is broken with it...
And he won't build another.

Strife And Submission

From these dark and dismal hands
A tortured madman works the stars
Into patterns of bended light and pain
For the pleasure of only one to gaze upon them.
O, my hands have seen some unsettling things,
But my ears ne'r known such tribulations;
Where Cupid stood there now be snakes
Whose arrows pierce the heart in only
Lonely lengths to stretch the days away.
I have held my head so high in wait for answers
Now found vain and absent, true and tragic;
Distant and darkened
Out of crows' nests' not since bothered since their stir
And unsettlement from such heartbreaking cracks
In this fair atmosphere.
High on the hill
The artificial siren stands, writhing in gasps of
Forgetful wishes to forget such souls
As those whose hands lay waiting for the next
Bird of prey.

A Week In The North

Well, it hasn't been the most exciting time, but it was good to see old friends. The first two nights were laced with booze, cigarettes, and laughs; my usual cup of tea. The next few days were catching up, and seeing all those old folks that I used to run with. I stopped off at my favorite park for a smoke and a brief walk, but it is cold, so the walk was the length of a cigarette. I witnessed the first snow of the season up here. It has since melted away. All in all it has been a good time. I would share pictures with you but I don't have a digital camera. Words will have to do. Today is my last day in town, the day of goodbyes until next time around. Sad but not too. I still keep in contact with nearly all that I've seen up here, so there is no real goodbye. Then again, you never know who will run away, including myself. So tomorrow I will drive home, broke, tired, and with cold. It will be nice to be home with the pace I have set for myself, but I can already feel the lonely presence in the four walls of my room waiting for me. So long as I get right back to work all will end up just fine. Lets hope it goes just that way.

An Old Writing Stumbled Upon

-I wrote this January 1, 2004
*disregard any typographical errors


"To me,
Did you forget what it meant to live? Apparently, you adult you, who makes your decisions, and no one really listens, because nothing is ever said. Few and far between belie some words you might have said before, and not too sure to even writeare any real and true felt lines that you have come to know. You adult you, you think everything's so much harder, so much further; life so far away. Life didn't stray, it was only you that lost the way. A turn you meant to take, a mistake you meant to make, a truth you called a lie. You adult you, who only knew life by the moment, never a picture, never a story you might someday tell. You left apart the best of choices for yourself to someone else's, lived a hundred lives except your own. You adult you, who seeks adventure, hides from future, aches so much for change. You have to make it, don't you know? Can't stand and feel like it will come if only you can wait. You adult you, who hides your will from cheaper thrills and half-paced motions you think are true cause. True cause must have true struggle, and harder levels; less of leisure, more so measure to the man that you can be. You adult you, who only knew life by the pages, and the stages of your stories. You have to know the end of a page is not the end. You can start again, and press on stronger, with something better; and fall you may but remember to rise again. You adult you, so full of love, below and above; you try so hard to make the whole world love you back. You keep on giving- never stop, and spread the good you know so well. Well like the stars you stared so hard, that shine so true, like you sometimes. You adult you, who sometimes seems so sad. Don't walk away, its nothing easier down that road. You must let go, and then hold on to all that you still have. You adult you, you're just like me, not free in an open cage. Sometimes the rage of loneliness alone can wear down to your soul. You feel so absent of control; feel so without something sacred but you're not, you've got your heart, the only thing that keeps you moving, keeps you humble and so hopeful. You adult you, who swears she's out there, dreaming somewhere, thinking of someone like you. You're right, you know. She is, you'll see, but only if you choose to live instead of be another wandering soul at rest, unrest. Your very best still locked inside, your favorite stars still in your eyes, your best of words still stuck beneath the hands that you so poorly keep. You're bursting heart that falls apart for every time you didn't speak. Your will still weak, for it you did not train to seek. You adult you, who only knew what 19 years could know. So you go on whispering instead of shouts into the air, apart from the glare of determination, now you've let one more moment die. You sleep now but you'll stir again. You don't know, but you'll comprehend. You break, but soon you'll learn to mend all of these lost dreams. And though it seems like all's avail, keep close your aim, keep set you sail. And though it seems like all's a waste, just find some hope, and hither taste sweet success. For within you there lies the best to see; humanity. You adult you, stay true to me."

Uma Experiência Nas Palavras; Tell Me Where It Takes You.

"In the silent, silent night
When stars have put themselves to bed
Beneath the clouds, and I rest my head
For the long-drawn dream flight
I talk to the air, or is it you?

A sin or an action?
Of morals, or God?
By the silence, or a nod,
My confessions found in fractions;
O, what compels these ghostly words?"

"Some unexpected love arriving right on time is more welcome to the ill than penicillin."
-Rod McKuen

And now for the musical break, (Please listen for at least thirty seconds)

Moving forward>>>> ...

Severely shaken,
The adolescent lamb
Climbs gently through the tangles
As the grass surrounding,
Higher than a farmers knees
Softly rolls with winds
That sound as if carrying
Some distant, violin driven
Dance of death. Deeply green,
Sickly so like a ressurrected
Sea from depth not meant to
Be found,
And the little lamb climbs
Fastly to the tangles
Beginning woods away
From the heard below.
When lighting strikes,
He shudders, crazed.
When thunder sounds,
His legs give way and
He falls to the ground.
Quicker he runs,
Into the dense dementia
Of the sinister fingers
Rising from the ground,
High brown, all around;
The little lamb lay
Daunted in peril's icy breath.
-The storm subsides-
Light rain falls steady,
The air is calm.
The trees, only standing
Straight and tall
Absorb the fall of drops
Atop the little lambs head.
He rises to run,
Merrily along the woods;
Lamb has known such things before
As rain and trees and nothing more.
The rain resumes its slow decay,
And soon it will have passed away.
The lamb is brave
And walks with ease,
And eating some mushrooms
He feels most pleased.
After a time
Thirst is dragging down
The smile of the lamb
Transforming to a frown.
Luck is better still
When timing plays its part.
The lamb discovered a hole
Filled with something cool and dark.
Bending slowly down
His nosed touched what was wet,
And pushing slightly downward
He drank all he could get.
The little lamb
Walked all around.
A home for whom?
A home he'd found.
And so he took
To drinking more,
Then the thunder sounded
As it had before.
The little lamb
Shuddered and froze
Next to the water
No longer in repose.
The thunder was quiet,
Not quite like before.
But the lamb never moved;
For a sound his heart could not ignore.
It came frightfully close
And then it died away.
The lamb still lay there still,
Then called out in a panic
As if someone would hear.
Someone heard that little lamb,
A moveable thunder
With a hunger in demand.
When the lamb called out
A second time
In the mouth of the wolf
Was the lambs last whine.

*Pausing for assessment as to whether that was a complete waste of time or not...

What for more else in the sickening silence of night do we men and women decline the constant offerings of madness on a pallet of mere regard? Wherefore do we find ourselves complacent and how may we ignore the deafening silence of our own measured minds?


I. Have. Nothing. To. Give.


Ok, finally being serious for you, I am going to just say that its an off night. Nothing coming out of this bearded brain of mine. I listen to maddened strings and pianos together in an intimately deviant dance that fill me with something- but something to which there is no directly filtered product to display. Perhaps my dreams will enchant some extroversion of my latest perversions of the mind. Until then, you melancholy froth-spoons, goodnight.

As I Dream The Shapes Shift Into Petals or Of Cloves, but...

All of my women,
The tinted halves of faces,
Beautiful and decadent;
Lost in love’s hollows
All the same.

I see them in my nighttime dreams,
And in the corners of the streets
I walk about when it is late,
And lovers’ company would be
The perfect way to end the night.

At some or other time I left them,
Or they left me, it's all the same.
Arms outstretched were pulled back in,
They disappear and I begin to
Purge and search for newer flowers
Freshly woven in the first of sunlight hours.

But O my women gone;
Those red rouge specters
Smiling wide,
Sweetly touching with their tongues
The outer sinews of my soul,
They haunt me softly
When I’m sleeping all alone.

Often do I wonder back
To walks along the riverbank,
And in the car below the bridge,
And in the beds of theirs and mine.
How we teased each other so.
Promises flung into the night air;
Gentle tastes, saccharine and brine,
And my arms still reach out
When they are not there.

They will come and they will go.
Time is surely going to solve
The problematic things of love.
So long as I remember
Not to be
This way forever.

However will the hover of love go passing by?

Comfort

Music, like words,
Saturate the room.
As your fathers’ footsteps in the hallway,
And your mothers’ in the kitchen.

Wherever the magic is birthed
All around it breathes and soaks.
The walls, the floor;
The bedside lamp reflects
The darkness
Softly, and with warmth.

It is some magic, you know.
Some overwhelming
Sort of feeling passes by;
Outsized snowflakes
Of December snows.
Rain running fast
Through front porch gutters.
And magic,
From nearly nothing at all.

The Times

They are going to hang Tikrit's favorite son soon.
In a region full of history,
Burned in time by blood and bombs
The death of one more is nothing new.



America, in all its infinite wisdom
Is the mantelpiece
To this burning blaze of infamy.

When will men realize
That fire with fire,
Bullets for bullets,
Bombs for bombs,
Mean nothing in the end?

Plato said it best,
“The only end of war man will see is death”
Still we roll on,
Full-breasted, spearing and slamming
Humanity to dust.

We'll Never Sleep, But God Know's We'll Try

"So boys will turn from sleep and search the darkness,
Seeking the love their fathers have forgotten.
And they will dream of her, who have not known her,
And ache, and ache for that lost limb forever."
-Carolyn Kizer

To think of someone so much so that sleep is sacrificed for the thought is absurd, figuratively speaking.

You wonder of who I think? You wonder of what thoughts?

I'll never tell, and don't be so quick to guess at it either. I'm not that black and white, am I?

Sleep still, soft silence. Sleep seaps at every crack in time's fair measure. Pull your harbored worries homeward, let the trade winds bring you back, and steer your landlocked heart ashore to be rebirthed with love impending. Sleep, lone whisper. Sleep so the wind can carry your message safely away while you rest and wait for the sunchild to come out and play. Sleep; let not your eyes misjudge the darkness for the chambers of your mind, resonating fractures of your past, present, future, death, life, love, strife, crisis, peace, disquiet, discomfort, dissolitude. Off to bed as a child would were the favorite story read at the foot of their bed whilst the pillow drowns their head in soft, hugging threads.

Sleep.

Charlie.

Bow Out Gracefully

Well, another adventure into the heart of this little city, the beautiful, elegant, definate town of which I live. Out for drinks, friends and things, the barroom filled with barroom stink. So we hopped from place to place, face to face. Then I went to the dancing club. Oh boy. Yes, folks; I, the whitest of white boys was forced on the floor by three other girls to dance my night away. I tried escaping but it was impossible. They have grips like a vice and moves like ol' Mike Jackson from the 80's. So I danced, and drank, and smoked all my cigarettes until it was time to turn this buckaroo in. Here I am, recuperating as we speak. Well, we're not really speaking, since you're reading and all. Dance, my friends. Sacrifice yourself on the alter of dignity and dance yourselves into oblivion.

-Charlie