How many times did I pass the city gates
And forgot to look around a bit.
There's beauty, little bits of trembling fine-
ness, good bright things in places.

I lay wait in shadows of ideas. I'm underneath some underpass by highways,
And all I need to cure me of this is a little sunshine.

There isn't a thing that kills this spirit.
I've tried to put to sleep all unsettling things, but they whisper here or there,
And though it hurts me sometimes, I've found a peace within the chaos.

Take a walk, read a book.
Cook the dinner, wake at reasonable hour.
This modest existence, not knowing the weight of dreams, well it can kill.
And love is a circle, just passage bending.

There are users and accusers.
There are silent things, and rough trade.
I'm okay, I'm alright, I'm alive.
I see it, and it suits me, because I journey.

Untitled No. Whatever

I Distill the paths that others took,
When the taking took them to big changes in their being.

I rewrite every thought in my mind.
I'm always dividing,
I just never seem to follow whatever strange current it seems is sweeping me.
I should just ride that thing, maybe...

A contralto of horns play out with
My steps around this town.
Yeah, I'm dreaming again, always.
My ride is a tally between comedy and tragedy. I should just hold you, baby.

I'm sick in the head, positively.
It's all just visions and accumulated decisions. My instinct is insipience.
I want all the closeness, all the heart.
Just don't know how to start any of it.

To look harmless and hiding a dagger.
To seem resolute yet remiss.
Place my lips to this; whispered kisses.
Two roads diverged in a wood,
Go through the woods. Paths aren't good.

No pattern scorned the earth with it's
Amount of recognition to the wild.
Life wins, love envelopes everyone a little.
To be scared of what's most desired is
Perhaps natural, but dare the unknown.

Post-War Post

Didn't see me before.
Yeah, I know I was intense,
I just saw progress,
And you weren't at your best.

We few who fix broken things
Take a little more time to heal.
All that's best is come and coming still
While a breath in us there is.

We believe in love too much sometimes.
But did it hurt more than the beauty
Of such splendid encounter?
Did it still beat long in a late night hour?

Just a simple sort of feeling, really.
You make my being jump coarsely
In the shallows and depths of light.
Feels right, but I'm not trusting of feelings.

A heart is a heart, just a thing.
You've shown yours, I mine.
But the moonlight glowing on you is grace.
I didn't know what to do but embrace it.

Rendition To Old Camera Obscura Songs

A blushing boy walking alone
Down a long, low lit street faintly
Glowing by yellow street lights late,
And always walking away from things.
He didn't ever get it. Never lingered
Long enough to taste the fruit of favor
For any other thing, any want or dream.
Like some mechanism that shifts,
Suddenly he turns away.
He remembers all this vivid.
Hot summer nights of sighs.
Cold wind and brushing snow falling over
Everything around. Always walking away.
Taste the best of the fruit, then toss aside
Any left to look for something different.
He never knew the worth of waiting around...
Someday he might feel it.
Put on the sad songs and reminisce
All the glorious retreat.
Some people are hard to love.
Some people don't allow themselves that grace.
A heart is just a heart, after all.
Whatever you fill it with is what it becomes.
A heart is just a heart, in the end.
Whatever you tell it is how it behaves.
Emotional gypsies. Wanderers of love
That stake no claim but still wish to feel everything.
It's selfish, but commonplace. High risk, low reward.
You wouldn't think I'd talk about myself this way.
Must've been you thought I had a handle, but I'm like everyone else, or no one.
Just a listless prospect of constant wandering.
A sad boy, at heart. Fall apart at the perfect times.

Hey mama,
We all bargain for a better thing.
Am I what you bargained for?
I have looked long at the lengths
That make breaks in change for
What's at stake,
But the needle falls the same when
The music plays,
And if I don't fit it'd be a shame to
Rearrange this symphony for the sake
Of easy listening.
What I'm saying, in this roundabout way,
Is are you sure what you're looking for
Is something close to what I am?

I have felt broad breaks in my being.
I have been split open wide, like deltas
Find opening to seas,
And I have turned over every stone I could fathom, trying to get at a meaning
For another, except my own,
Which I fear is lost now,
And maybe I don't care any longer.
Fingers remember names,
Dreams remember whatever they feel.
You are a window,
I see through it but the glimpse is clouded,
I don't know what I see,
But it doesn't scare me.

Dave Brubeck, Take Five

Step up to the alter of rhythm
And tell your story...

Cool breeze, you're just swaying,
A little dance so others can too.
You keep it light, and just right,
But the tide comes in, and there is
No way you're getting out of this...
You keep it, but it found you.
Took your whole self and set a standard
By which all others would stack against.

Then it all passes,
And you are back where you started.
Cool breeze, that's you.
You just keep swaying easy, my friend.

I'm chasing myself through the eyes of a woman,
And she is a beauty I'm beginning to understand.
Born of cool temperament and change,
She's a storm of transition that shakes my foundation.
Collected moments, all of them graces.
Part of a better play for the savor of an instance, where I meet a force equating my own.
Fall on me to do these things. Fall on you to breach this man. But I am breached, and you are broken open,
And we are something like the lost and found bin,
Where things go to end their place with others.
I am wandering stillness, and you are ready, I think, for giving to new adventure, but you are slow like honey, cascading over me sweetly, but shyly,
And your soft heart isn't quite prepared to fall completely.
It is not easy being open.
It is quite uncommon to allow the deep to take its measure.
What crashing things with soft bodies and consequences.

There are no guarantees in this game.
We aren't opponents.
We are mixed ingredients.
We are collected stones from different beds.
We are sublimated water from different places,
We surround a common ground,
Neither of which holds any claim.
It is an agreement, with the weight of
All our heart to it.
Maybe that seems heavy-handed,
But then why is it so simple?
Maybe you're trying to make me fall in love,
And maybe I'm trying to convince you you're right,
But in the end, through all the niceties,
And the sweet words,
We have to stand plain and true.
What is your truth, and does it meet my own?

I am a lousy gambler.
I gamble my heart much, and every time it takes a little of me away,
But that's my gift, I guess.
I've been given such gifts before.
I keep them closer than anything.
Yours was cherished more than most,
But I was afraid.
Today I feel brave.
I seek you out, but you're your own.
I'm chasing myself through the eyes of a woman,
And she was born the sweetest of any,
With a heart like my own,
And all I ask is another chance.

So there's the thought. My truth is...
Well I believe in you, and for me.
I believe I might just be the right thing, for once.
It's hard to say these things. I could lose again,
And you could too. But I can't let fear decide what a good notion lends to the idea of better life.
You can't save me, but I'm not lost or in trouble. Just without that one thing, so dear to our hearts: real love.

2:07am

But I didn't stutter,
Not when I said I felt it too.
I may have tripped a little,
But I am clumsy sometimes.
I run after a thing, always.

I don't know what this is,
Because I don't want to speculate.
When every moment excites you
Why try to dissect it?
Turn it loose.
Turn it loose, and win or lose.

In the stop I'm thankful.
So many things aren't as real.
What can be, in this reality?
Do I dare gamble my heart again?
What more is life for, in the end?

I keep running toward the light.
I see something bright and intense.
I want to greet its luminescence.
It is something I can't fathom,
And I'll swim into the depths of this.

Discourse

From a burning golden glance,
With broken light from tree limbs
Cascaded down upon brown shoulders,
On a blanket of deep green grass
A heart is calm in a moment unending.

Ritual union in silent seasons
For a hand reaching towards a hand,
To ask for a dance in the fading light
Of this time broken by pieces.
And the past is a weight against chance.

In a touch everything is movement.
A symphony of molecules excite,
But all is calm, all is soft breathing,
And for once for a long time content.
The heart can be like stone or want.

All these fractured words are brittle.
Such a life that riddles with change,
Yet the night is peaceful,
I see something becoming beautiful.
I cannot will it's message, but I feel it.

Women know.
Truth is the easier thing.
Life is not a message in words.
There is the world,
And for whomever it turns.
And the words are inert.

Dripping faucet
Keeps the time in a quiet kitchen.
This is the small source of memory
That lingers on foggy window panes
In cold morning glow,
With rumbling coffee pot sounds
Awaiting a suitor for the ritual.

Born with a thin upper lip and
A temper tattered and cooled by
The nature of others, I await simple grace
In an easy practice of thoughts and
Cigarettes. There is so much noise
In this world. I'll take a quiet stride.

And there has been love, with much
To follow. There have been paper cups,
Dew laden grassy expanse, fields on fire,
And yellow glow of nighttime beginning
Brimmed with the whisper of day,
And the brute force of blackness that is
Night.

You and I were curled amongst our own graces through that passing, once or twice. And you have been there the same.
In your world, the same as mine, a
Repeated rhythm refined in the summer
Breeze underneath woven folds of dark green underneath trees, a gentler world.

I am older and wiser now. I have patched
My hardened being into a steady lull of
Quiet seasons, soft and tender like fern leaves whispering softly with wind light.
Oh, I am all things at once unending.
I am everything, and absorbed in it all.
All the change either a question,
Or action. A simpler system, with gains.

All of life is practice, so always be practicing. Look for the new skill learned in daily dealing. Look for appeal and search for the ideal in every moment. Be incandescent. Burn through every hard thing, and do it with grace. Do not practice too often the easiest things, but rather the hardest. Hone a comfort out of a discomfort. Be resolute to change continually every part that isn't fully formed in your dealings.

Be a part of the great fluidity of life's message. This is preachy, but not really wrong. It is a call the the finer points of which we could all be living. It is a caption with an ellipses. It is a discourse of degrees and direction, longing for proper directing. So direct that grit into something worth a thought, and let time be your beckoning answer, rather than your master.

4:09

It's four in the morning
I'm stalling, I'm swimming.
Not drunk, not even,
Just locked inside a padded
Room of thought.

Say things I didn't like to say.
Felt turned over, and under.
So goddamn lost now I don't know
Who I am or what I want.
In finding what I thought I
Was searching for

I lost the central point of who I am.
Don't know why that happened.
So goddamn lost now.
I see flashing color behind
Dark, cascaded rouge glowing.
I see peering eyes, cut me easy,
Like a looking glass turned backwards.

I feel memory, in every particle
Of my being. I see no resolution to
This drama of my soul. It's a sickness
Or it must be.
The tempo of my heart changes
Constantly, for the better part of
Each day.

I am water, or I'm downing.
Either way I'm soaked in the thinking
That I'm having, holding on and
Letting go, all at once.
Never mind, it's fine. It's just timing,
And the nature of the heart;
Too many times torn apart.

You know
It's funny,
The way we make each other feel.

One hand lends to comfort,
But the other is cold,
Like glass in December,
The way your breath sticks,
And you draw pictures of what you want.
Things click, but it doesn't last.

Too early in the season for a winter heart.

I've operated in opposites
So I could understand the game.
I'm born to bite the bitter truth that
Lies between two reaching arms.
I have come to know what small
Feels like in a sense.

I could have painted this long ago.

I'll not revel in sadness.
It's not my place to disagree.
However, the truth of the matter lay
In keeping with a promise buried in
A capsule made of gold, and strong.
The one thing I cherish most of all:

To know myself, completely incomplete.

Slightly Intoxicated, However...

I am
Cascading moments of saturated
Sound, and memory.
Balk at the extreme,
I look to flowing fields of something growing.
Light bends in a prism to become
Color all over.
That is
The feeling
When a syncopated rhythm
Finds my hands and feet.
The first of two loves found again.
Whether it be a lazy melody
Or a crashing assemblage,
Being lost in the music is
All I really need.
People come and go.
Taxes are paid,
Rent is due.
There are groceries to buy.
Priority
Is within the spirit.
And the spirit is a wandering child.
Let it wander forever unending.
I feel the fibers of my being come apart
From sensory perception.
I feel...
Something without a name.
The moment we attach words to a thing
It is defined.
Let us revel in this ambiguity.
Let us feel, rather than define,
The open rhythm of such display.
I couldn't debase it with words.
Long winded and trying,
But the impression won me first.
So I will go to quiet depths.
I will understand my place.
I must focus all my cause
Towards a thing of belief.
Because loving is giving.
I shall give to everything I create.

That a heart would forgive
When forgiving was first formed;
A touch of something divine.

We are all so brittle, we things.
Hardly anyone is a person.
A collection of short stories
For a rainy day of reading.

I could have gathered my plums
While they were still within reach.
But I starved to watch their beauty,
And they spoiled as consequence.

How things grow again is natural.
Let us be as those.
An early blossom for new hands reaching.

The Last Day of July

Dale's Pale Ale
And the manifold perspective
Of wandering hearts all so misguided.
These days
To wrap my head around any thing
Is impossible.
It's all feel, want, need, desire,
Scared, scarred, broken, working,
Living, loving, well maybe,
And every moment is
Just a moment,
And you will attach what you want to it.
I'm starting to think
That we are all lost children.
Our damage is in degrees, but
From the things we first felt.

There's probably some design
That dictates this awkward mess.
Then again, we could all just run the chaos.
I choose to believe,
Out of simple, primitive fashion,
That what I want is my aim.
And so I want things, and people,
And people are hard things to want...
In the end I am something imperfect
And a little misguided.
I'm okay with those variables.
Let's me know I'm playing fair.

My darling,
This is a reality,
But it isn't real.

Quit your fussing and let me take the wheel.

My baby,
Trust my measure now,
I'm in love with you.

Quit your fighting and let me do what I do.

You are hurt,
And you think you deserve it,
But that's not true, no,

Give me my time to stop the hurting in you.

I want us.
All of my heart says I do.
We should see this through.

I won't give you the hurt you always knew, and I knew too.

Lately everything has been upside down,
And I'm casting wishes upon pages,
Taking vitamins and thinning out,
Running marathons in my mind
About the things I don't know.

I see the universe in twos.
Always a pair, in every way.
I calculate accident percentage,
I know where to buy my fruit.
I can find anybody's lost remote.

I see the last episode of this present life.
I see the counterpart of many halves
Made whole again in forward days.
And the hardest thing is to be loved. 
And the easiest thing is to love.

Remember me as an old photograph
Stuck inside the tattered pages
Of a forgotten book.
I, in my youth, was fearless.
Don't take me by the changes I've been charged with. They have done much to make this man disguised in time.
We are all once upon a year young and fearless.
Life can take you places you didn't think existed.
So be an old photograph, forever, in your mind. Be that fearless wandered, bereft of weathered time.

For You

A long scanner in the dark tries to break the static, with a caller on the line, looking for an answer, but the answer is time, and time takes its measure the same as always. A brave thing it is to dance, and stock up moments for recall, the bliss of memory's keepsake, to be turned over and over again, like prized records spinning around the lazy hours of afternoon comforts. The soft light that bleeds through blinds creates a blanket across the wooden floors. This is yours. This is your place of changing and exchanging all that you have said and done and been before. There have been many who found their way inside, but none were ready, not even I. But how I wanted to be, and heady was the wake of my bow through the waters of your heart. I understand, now. I am no life raft, no just a buoy floating along. You know you're close to it all, but you've got a journey to troll. It's just another rap in the dusty, broken book of change that sends you here and there, so on you must go. I am not sad, no not the least. I am quite thankful, that your warm heart brushed against mine a moment and reminded me that these things are the best of all. We were meant for a time, and perhaps someday again, but my butterfly, you must glide to your own fair flower in the wake of your proportionate measure, and not one person or thing can tell you otherwise. Remember this: the beauty and bounty of your being are timeless and wonderful. I've seen your sweet spirit, if only for a moment, and I have noticed how it glimmers long and bright inside the ripples of my heart. We are children of sunshine and water. We behave with the inconsequential lust of our hearts. You have made me a better man. I want to say thank you for that.

My heart hurts
I don't care who knows it.
Fell in love with a wave,
It crashed me into nothing.

Now I don't know where I'm headed
Don't know what I do and don't regret
Just feel hollow, core all gone.
I crashed into nothing, this is my song.

Wake up sweating
Pounding in my chest.
Don't eat, don't sleep,
Can't imagine feeling like less.

Someone ripped a delicate thread,
The one that opened me up
End to end, and I can't sew
And I don't know if I have the thread.

Strange boy, stuck inside this man.
Was he always sleeping?
Did he forget to be brave all this time?

End to end
Half measured meaning, hiding
Behind the shell,
It has been cracked
And now I feel like a living hell.

*What is now cannot be forever.
What is lost must soon be found.
I'll bury this version, that much is sure.
Brave the pain for another round.

I'm a weirdo.
Uniquely the same as everyone else.
I am lost, like a child sometimes.
The very breath of me is taken straight from the waking
Of my eyes in the morning.
I lose control, so much.
But I always have two feet to stand upon.
I don't want to numb this problem.
I want to feel it sink deep into me and
Cultivate some new thing out of me,
And bind my loose ends and untie my tight holds.
I guess I'm broad and simple.
I live for the learning of it,
Probably don't take enough chances,
But love and do the best I can at all the other advances.
I want love.
I want it very, very much.
I want to be wanted, needed even,
To be a place someone else can go
When the world makes them feel this way.
Who would offer up such a measure?
Who could willingly unfurl their heart to mine,
Bind in a unison,
And go on this adventure of life together?
This is the only question I seek to answer right now.
Because I'll find a new venture.
I'll make a thing for myself that appeals to my higher nature.
I'll best my best again and again.

What good does it do to someone who wants nothing from you?

Selfish, careless love.
It's all I'm seeing in the world.

If I keep my heart on my sleeve,
If I keep allowing myself to be crushed
Will it change a person's mind someday?

The beginning of the end
Is a quickened heartbeat, close to another,
Not out of excitement,
But to close the moment without a fray.

The beginning of the end
Is a distant step away from love,
Measuring the distance to ensure safety
When the collapse finally hits,

Ah, but the end is also a beginning.
It becomes a beautiful cocoon of change.
There is always struggle to break a chrysalis,
But the end result is living without stop.

....

I chain smoke and realize I need to button up my loose ends.
In love with a ghost. She's the brightest light I've ever seen.
But bright lights don't shine long.
All the beginning began and ended somewhere inbetween.

She's not going to keep me.
It's just another pass at thinking about one's life.
I've been a stepping stone before.
I'll hope for a doorstep I'm welcome to cross.

Try once, I'll fight.
Try again, I'll bend.
I'm not that stupid, not anymore.
I love wholly,
And everything else is second in line.
What else would bind a people,
If not that one good thing?

Careless love.
It entered into us like a wave.
You rescued me from myself.
I rescued you from a sad past.
Now your scent ruminates my mind
Like stale flowers that were gifted,
And I just don't want to let go.
I can't believe I'm writing this.
Because when I write it it usually comes true.

So now let me write that I'm madly in love with you,
And you feel the same way too.
Please come to me and feel the love for me
I've never had. Someone has got to love this man...

Someone, goddamn.

I glide, I simmer, I sink.
Such abyss endless above,
When I'm flying,
Dance upon the glimmer of sun
And water binding the moments.
That's the feeling,
The feeling when I think of you.
Molecules found excited
In the wake of your mention.
How can a moment last forever?

Sweet red heart,
Burning heat in the afternoon brimming,
You arouse the wild me within
To a place without forgiving.
Every action with intention. True blue
Bustle for active understanding.
I crave you deep and heady,
Bow bent, rain brimmed,
Beautiful storm.
You are the link of love's argument.

Somebody once told me to write from a white hot place,
And I figured it's somewhere center, and integral- a part of some core we all live to face,
But it only recently became clear that the heart isn't it, but the love that fills the space.
I have known some versions of it, but never this maddening measure...
A burn, like a fever overtaken.
I'm surrounded by questions.
Am I good enough?
Is this real?

Could I manage this beautiful storm and live to tell the tale?

This white hot place is filled full, and I am afraid of a burst before too long.

All I can do is overwhelm with the love created, and hope to not fall down

And be overtaken by the greatest gamble of my life.

Sometimes it's good to gamble...

Have, Should, Want, Hope.

I can't help but think of Girl From The North County by Bob Dylan when I think of you.
Then I can't help but think of a bit of Whitman, when he said, "You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor see from the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books. You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me. You shall listen to all sides, and filter them through yourself."

So far in this I've evaded all true worth of self projected. Let me see about that part now...

I have sang your anthem before.
I have bordered between a good and a bad man so many times.
I have been, and often am, lost and crying
for a signal light.

I should have taken to books.
I should have believed I was better.
I should know by now my sad, repeating patterns of inconsistent action.
I should have thought about this.

I want, well, to know what I want.
I want sound mind, soft heart.
I want to be at peace with someone through this journey.
I want to be wanted, just the like.

I hope to find answers.
I hope you're not mistaking my meaning.
I hope I'll be successful at the things I love and know.
I hope you'll love me, all the same.

Pink brick,
Cream canvas.
I have measured this life
In momentary bits of madness.
Car wheeze, smoke stain.
Laymen terms for most things...
It's a project, and a fit.
It's a hard look at a tapestry
Forever unfolding in the passing
Of a wakeful sleep.

When the quiet night takes me,
Stops the prowl and awakes me
Briefly,
Well, I feel a feeling
Where I need not care
If the world is meant to spin me
Or just be spun by time and
Other such nonsense.
Universally, we're all limitless.
Still in a sleep, but also alive.