Tag Archives: poetry

Caesar Meet Brutus

“If I can’t be my own, I’d feel better dead”

– Alice In Chains, Nutshell

I think I’m losing my mind.

The week started out grand – with my computer crashing at just two months old, my car battery completely crapping out (along with a broken terminal), and a missed freelance deadline.

Hours on the phone with HP and three business days later finally led to my computer resolution. For only having my writing saved on it I question what makes a brand-new laptop crash. I’m not extremely tech savvy, but my suspicions have been raised.

It’s kind of funny how a day can start off one way and then end in a totally different one, isn’t it? It’s our lives. We go through so many changes and come upon so many crossroads that it’s amazing we even have the ability or time to think at all. It’s the sort of thing I happen to be all too familiar with yet really would rather not be. To know the ins and outs of human emotion to this extent isn’t always the greatest of gifts. I’d trade it to be sad any day.

But we still get up every day, doing the same thing over and over. And then we go off, telling ourselves and others whatever lies we must in order not to go completely insane.

It’s a vicious cycle we’re born into. We may not necessarily be born insane; in fact, I feel we’re all born with the pretense to run from insanity. This may be our best natural asset, even when we are having to make up things to run from.

And strangely it somehow works out, albeit usually messily in the end.

I think my favorite part of who I am is attacking itself. My brain is no longer my best friend, and my mind never was. My brain is a traitor. I’m losing track of myself and someone on the inside seems to be enjoying it.

Caesar meet Brutus.

That’s just cryptic immaturity on display, but not completely inaccurate.

The mowing season is in full swing and has been keeping me busy, taking away quite a bit of time from my writing. Which is why I haven’t been here in a few days (along with my many other reasons, of course). It’s hard to prioritize which “projects” to be working on when your time is limited, and I’m trying to be as ambitious as possible without completely losing my head (haha).

But it seems to be to no avail. I’m blinded to the days of the week anymore. I am consciously keeping myself in check because I can’t keep up. It’s Saturday night, but it feels like it’s Tuesday. I don’t know why. This will somehow be my fault, though.

I’m remembering things in fragments and snapshots. Some days I am blessed with the gift of being able to string real thoughts together, other days not so much. Lately, all of my writing has become diaries of fog. I get stranded in the cliché “sea of words”, and if it doesn’t come out sounding like rambling gibberish, it comes out very corny, full of phrases like “sea of words”.

I have written some poetry I’m semi-proud of lately, though. I hate writing poetry, but feel it is a necessary evil. Sometimes the spirit just takes over and I abandon prose for a moment, getting lost in what is more than likely pretentious and semi-fraudulent. There is good poetry, however. I just do not recognize it in my own writing.

I still play my guitar every day, which is a mental exercise built perfectly to my advantage. I only play acoustic guitar anymore and haven’t picked up my bass in longer than I’d like to admit. I don’t know if “music equals life” like the t-shirts say, but without it I’m not sure where my life would be.

I’ve never had my shit together. I’ve just been able to use my illusion to get by. Now, all of that seems to be catching up to me. I don’t have the ability anymore to fake it or pull one over on people by faking it. If this is a dance, I no longer remember the steps and have never been one for dancing anyway.

I seem to be finding more and more ways I am “restrained” in life but continue keeping up the good fight of not staying in any boxes created by the “powers that be”. I am proud of myself for that. Most people who know me say I have no filter, which at times can be true, dangerous, and cruel. However, I am not afraid to stand on my own two legs and say what’s on my mind. It’s been called both my best and worst quality.

I’m going to have to wrap this up because I can see the fog coming in. It’s getting late, anyway. Although I mainly complained, I am proud to have put together a group of cohesive words from a train of broken thoughts. I made it this far and, surprisingly, even I know when to quit.

a day in the life: snapshots & hand-me-downs

“The past beats inside me like a second heart.”

– John Banville

I recently had the luxury of finding an old notebook, one that had been used simply for creative purposes. It was about fifteen years old, but you couldn’t tell by its condition. However, the age of the notebook became more than evident after opening it up. To me, anyway.

Upon looking at the chicken scrawl that was my teen handwriting, and the pages and pages of pretentious writing that were also mine…I had a serious cringe moment. I don’t think of myself as a regular Hemingway, but my immaturity was on full display in those pages. It was also real clear that I had no real insight fifteen years ago. Just based on some of the passages I could stomach reading.

“…of the stiff, suspicious statues –

I stumbled along in agonizing anticipation

The voices were hollow and near

hiding in the plaguing darkness

I stopped –

and took in the sky…”

(2007)

There is absolutely no meaning to that. I had no idea what it meant then, and I still don’t. And I won’t try to pretend to spin it now.

The notebook is full of writing that makes me grimace. But its writing shows a side of me, one that I had yet to even define at that point.

It’s only one of many notebooks I could dig out and have the same feeling over (I have even at times thought about getting all the “old stuff” together in a chronological fashion of some sort, but life hasn’t allowed for that to happen). They’re the notebooks that are the basis for anything I am now.

They include song lyrics:

A worried man’s got his worried mind

And sees with two eyes that have gone blind

I been standing in the back just trying to get her name

When you’re that hard-up for a little fix

You ain’t clean, just a sober addict

You’re a million miles away, and everything’s changed

And poetry:

“I bought a brand-new mirror

and I hung it on the wall

I knelt before it every night

And prayed it wouldn’t fall…”

And then I stumbled upon this last little piece. It’s a poem that, at even twelve years old, I have found some merit in.

The Day I Left

the day I left,

in shackles and hand-me-downs,

the hardest thing –

that once remembered dream of

Passion,

I left the beach

I left, strangled and oblivious,

the curtain of hope decaying,

a penned elegy in my place

she was a sad-eyed mystery,

who was whatever I wanted,

sacred remnant

(left the beach for this?)

Instead of diamonds for sand and the sun for a father,

we have this –

Bombs for beachballs, tanks for cruise ships,

war for fun-in-the-sun

I see it all thru concave,

                  visions of mass deception,          

a summertime loss

this wavy clarity takes away

my security

the truth and enlightenment we need is found

in nuclear warfare,

and in our God,

bomb

Blessed,

I left in sleep

Cursed,

I left her

I push this way,

you pull the other

The day I left.

I found salvation

But not the kind I hoped to find

I found loneliness

I was blessed

on the day that I left

I guess if I had a point in today’s ramblings it would be to be careful what you hold onto and what you throw away. It may be old and it may be immature, but it also might contain the plotline for the next great American novel.

And Don’t Go Out Smiling: A Poem

And don’t go out smiling –

In the reverie of death’s sweet delivery,

a smile would only cloud

and be monstrous.

A vagrant would, but you?

The romance in dying

is like the alcoholic’s valor,

the vine in the wine,

the poison of being intoxicated

I won’t, but I want

Dying:

Body releases soul emissions,

spirit forms, falls,

and encountered are magnitudes of cosmic growth

only attainable in the rays of death

But don’t go out smiling,

stifle your grins and be beckoned by the angel’s smile

Let them, but not us,

oh no

Smile not

and leave this world in great Trumpet Death

H. Town: A Poem

If these city blocks could talk, would you hear the hollow echo

of my soul’s soles,

edging around the lonely buildings,

thru the twisted and deformed night?

The streetlamp spotlight,

and a little slice of neon –

pierced atmosphere.

The slanted, pale red brick,

now crumbling and blackened by fire.

The stiff, blue mechanics of alleyway night,

crooked neighborhoods, dividing tracks, and road.

Masked by the golden Sunday sunlight,

this town is as pure of an example as anything,

Nature,

and rough.

Superficial, sing-song birds pilfer thru car washes,

and seek salvation on power lines and in other bird-way terminals

The halls, shops, liquor stores, institutions etc.

all have twisted paths that lead to

One.

The hills have eyes

but so do the streets,

with their piercing stop lights, headlights,

bright lights, night lights –

This town stabs my soul with the pitiful remembrance of a strangled youth