little ashes

"Les Elephants"
-Salvador Dali















Javier Beltran and
Robert Pattinson as
Federico Garcia Lorca
and Salvador Dali

le deluge

I've been kicking up a lot of dust lately. Digging around. Delving deep. Wading back into the water. Sinking my hands in and searching. Feeling with blind fingertips. Tumbling my dark earth around, trying to shake out some of that sacred stuff. That rich, Garden of Eden dirt. The real deal. The dirt of history. The dirt of people and places. The dirt of war and disease. The dirt of love and time and healed wounds. My dirt. My dust. My ash. My people, and places. My wars. My plagues. My hope and heart, my scars, and re-set bones.

It is in this search... this journey, that I have discovered something. What I think to be some country of old, is perhaps, a Spain from another life. Or France through the eyes of someone a million miles away and decades in the past. Either road i see will lead me to the same place so I step forward. I take it in. I explore. Each scent massages it's way into the dark alleys of my mind. Each eyeful cascades over and blankets me in the feathery down of curious familiarity. Each sound, a siren calling me. Compelling my feet to move. My surroundings show themselves to be brilliantly new, and are yet, somehow, reassuringly ancient in both personage and spirit.

It is filtered through this faded photograph wall of my mind, that I begin to see something more. Something seeping in at the cracks. A light, a breath, a knowing. The filmstrip peels back and burns away. And I seem to have struck gold. Or at the very least, something heavy as gold, something solid. Something that shines as I brush away the mental debris cobwebbing it's way across the surface. The ground around me darkens. Grows soft. Shadows itself across the landscape. A humming in my feet. The rhythm beat of our drum. A pulse. A surge of tide almost overtakes me and yet in it's ebb I feel stronger. I am strong. But something is different. This is strength in a new mask. Strength of the poet, the artist, the musician. Strength of life and of death. The strength of sorrow and of joy. The strength of yesterday, today and tomorrow. The strength of love. Strings of the guitar and the blood of violins. It is a wildness, fierce with beauty. A halo in the depths, it rises with the moon and stirs itself among the stars. A fight to the death, and what's killed brings about a wash of clarity, purpose, determination of will. A haunted yearning, real and purposeful, rises up, begins to sway this soul to and fro. Back and forth. Ebb and flow. It grows and grows, howling it's way through the mountains and rivers and caves and canyons of my being. It begins to well up, threatens to burst through these caged eyes. I cannot contain it. I will not. It is the Duende, and it has fastened a jewel into my crown. A third sight that craves to tell the story of beauty and nature and the heart of all things. Mysteries upon mysteries... and a luxuriously lengthy stretch of road written in my name and set before me.

moved

you raise me up
"when i am down, and oh my soul, so weary,
when troubles come and my heart burdened be
then i am still and wait here in the silence
until you come and sit awhile with me.
you raise me up so i can stand on mountains.
you raise me up to walk on stormy seas.
i am strong when i am on your shoulders.
you raise me up to more than i can be."
-josh groban

my confession
"i have been blind, unwilling
to see the true love you're giving.
i have ignored every blessing.
i'm on my knees confessing
that i feel myself surrender
each time i see your face.
i am staggered by your beauty,
your unassuming grace.
and i feel my heart is turning,
falling into place.
i can't hide,
now hear my confession.

i have been wrong about you.
thought i was strong without you.
for so long nothing could move me.
for so long nothing could change me.
now i feel myself surrender
each time i see your face.
i am captured by your beauty,
your unassuming grace.
and i feel my heart is turning,
falling into place..."
- josh groban

hmmm... time for church?

the tin can

RED DRESS
red dress.
whirls me around,
stares me down.

coquette smile.
do you remember...
my name...?

because i don't.
remembers yours.

another time,
another life,
another me.

you were there...
and you...

and you, and you...

all faces
with no names.
but we had some
good times, didn't we?


UNTITLED #1
duct tape
tambourine

hypnotically
melancholic

things i
never knew

about
you

making banjos
and finding yourself

striking
chords

bleeding
notes


UNTITLED#2
well you sure got my attention...

put those boots to work.
sling yourself over that guitar...

and willow-weep me a story,

honey-dripped
and silver-tipped.

full of that stuff
that jump-starts the heart,

and buckles the will.

draw the duende
out of it's slumber

and tear through
the thousand veils i'm lost in...

He

He cuts down the lakes so they appear straight
He smiles at his feet in their tired mules.
He turns up the music much louder.
He takes down the vaseline from the pantry shelf.

He is the capricious smile behind the colored bottles.
He eats not lest the poor want some.
He breathes of attitudes the piney altitudes.
He indeed is the White Cliffs of Dover.

He knows that his neck is frozen.
He snorts in the vale of dim wolves.
He writes to say, "If ever you visit this island,
He'll grow you back to your childhood.

"He is the liar behind the hedge
He grew one morning out of candor.
He is his own consolation prize.
He has had his eye on you since the beginning."

He hears the weak cut down with a smile.
He waltzes tragically on the spitting housetops.
He is never near. What you need
He cancels with the air of one making a salad.

He is always the last to know.
He is strength you once said was your bonnet.
He has appeared in "Carmen."
He is after us. If you decide

He is important, it will get you nowhere.
He is the source of much bitter reflection.
He used to be pretty for a rat.
He is now over-proud of his Etruscan appearance.

He walks in his sleep into your life.
He is worth knowing only for the children
He has reared as savages in Utah.
He helps his mother take in the clothes-line.

He is unforgettable as a shooting star.
He is known as "Liverlips."
He will tell you he has had a bad time of it.
He will try to pretend his press agent is a temptress.

He looks terrible on the stairs.
He cuts himself of what he eats.
He was last seen flying to New York.
He was handing out cards which read:

"He wears a question in his left eye.
He dislikes the police but will associate with them.
He will demand something not on the menu.
He is invisible to the eyes of beauty and culture.

"He prevented the murder of Mistinguett in Mexico.
He has a knack for abortions. If you see
He is following you, forget him immediately:
He is dangerous even though asleep and unarmed."

-John Ashbery

head for the hills

top 10 for today:

i stepped out the door and into the sunshine of my day, armed with these songs and a determined will. i came back by moonlight, breathing in the summer evening air, my head lost in wave after wave. up ahead, a new path. and this one looks as though it might actually go somewhere...

do yourself a favor and check these out.


1. Gila by Beach House
2. Young Men Dead by The Black Angels
3. Brown Eyes by Lady Gaga
4. The Season by The Dodos
5. Disco Heaven by Lady Gaga
6. The Authority Song by Jimmy Eat World
7. St. Augustine by Band of Horses
8. Blue in the Face by Alkaline Trio
9. Untitled/The Spoken Word by A.F.I.
10. Inertiatic ESP by The Mars Volta


give a little more than you like
pick apart the past, you're not going back.

run for the hills, pick up your feet and let's go.
head for the hills, pick up steel on your way.

in your brown eyes i was feelin low,
cause they're brown eyes and you never know,
i knew that it was wrong so baby turn the record on
everything could be everything but it's time to say goodbye.

somewhere in between this ocean and mountainside
i have this dream, i think of it still sometimes.
i cross the sand without your hand
i go back to where you and i began
and i was yours and you were mine
things seem so soon to say goodbye.

the ball is turning, 300 mirrors burning
through the hearts of the crowd
in the back hipsters banging the track.

honesty, or mystery?
tell me. i'm not scared anymore.

at the end of the night, we'd all seen better days.

i don't dream since i quit sleeping
and i haven't slept since i met you.

there is poetry in despair,
and we sang with unrivaled beauty,
bitter elegies of savagery and eloquence.

now i'm lost, now i'm lost.
now i'm lost, now i'm lost.

The Forgetting Room

One of the first to inspire me in my pursuit of the arts and an art-filled life was Nick Bantock. Accomplished author of "The Griffin and Sabine Trilogies," "The Venetian's Wife," and "The Forgetting Room," among others, Nick Bantock also illustrates his own works. As an artist, he works with mixed-media, focusing on collage, assemblage, found-object art, photomontage and more. Putting things together in ways opposite to the typical, mixing not only materials, but ideas and styles, his works draw you in. Into the chaos. And the order. And that realm where the two coincide, each dependent upon the other for their very existence.

I have always had a strong appreciation for the things we human beings create. Art. Music. Literature. Theatre. Film. Dance. Architecture. Things born from that ancient and universal need for expression. For communication, for understanding. That hand reaching out for another. That person that sees it, feels it, lives it the way you do. And this partnership of shared experiences and the need to connect, is yet another product birthed from that secret place, somewhere deep. The 'duende' perhaps, that all artists must wrestle with. My sapling interest in the idea of mixed-media art years ago, has grown today, into a full-fledged desire to produce works that bridge any and every type of artistic human creation together. A mix-tape/painting/sculpture/book with working lights and functionality. While I have had more progress in the way of let's say "pre-production and planning," I do have a few finished pieces that will be up for viewing and critique as soon as I can harness the reigns of this devil box. In the mean time, enjoy these works by Nick Bantock from, and inspired by, "The Forgetting Room."

beaten and unable to beat

how ridiculous
to continue in this vein of self-torture
given just enough to cling to,
just enough to seal it shut
knowing he is a fool for the dreams he has,
and dreaming them still

breaking hearts and breaking bottles
broken words from beautiful mouths
starving ears lapping up the poison
that craving that won't be pacified

so seeing the beauty he owns the pain
over and over and over and over
refusing to learn the lesson
just for the chance... for the chance

perfect men and perfect skin
perfect body, perfect smile
passing over something 'blemished'
refusing love
surrendering fulfillment

everything wanted but somehow not enough,
surely there is another who has it all
the pretty bow and the pretty soul
with perfect teeth and perfect beliefs

it would be too easy... so we make it hard
it would feel too good... so we stand alone
it would be too right... so we make it wrong

so then, a piece for you... and for you, and you
and what is left but something beaten and unable to beat
and nothing. nothing for him, and nothing for anyone.
how many fractures before the glue won't hold?

it's a tired game, played by tired men
who want nothing but to hunt for something
that is right in front of them.

welcome mat

so finally, having solved my writing crises - which involved three things consecutively: 1. absence of the necessary tools, 2. an utter lacking in terms of knowledge and understanding of those super-fantastic artificial brains-in-a-box, and, 3. the itch from the dime sized hole in my soul whose void most recently housed, and regretfully expunged, whatever i had left in the way of patience - i see myself fit to begin this journal. fit. so long as the definition you hold for that word includes at least three of the following: experiencing loss of motivation, disinterest, having a strong desire for sleep, a strong-er desire for yet another gloriously selfish and deliciously self-destructing hit, and lastly, the increasing need to urinate.

i'm a perfect 5. so then, yes, by my standards and yours (hopefully), i am in fact, fit. super-fit. famously so. and in being so super-famously-fit i will attempt to explain in excruciating detail (as is my style) just what it is that makes this boy tick. this boy. me. a server with a heart of gold and a fount of emotions that more often resembles a coop of chickens just off the chopping block. me. a lofty head, jam-packed full of dreams, hopes, and the artistic dust and clutter that's been gathering its troops for the past twenty-nine years - always threatening that fatal attack that will unleash the flood and take back those lost countries of song lyrics and painted realities, those cities of hand-made delicacies. me. a gay christian, with a pair of hundred-pound cement shoes.

you see, what i'm trying to do here... what i'm trying to prove, is this... that, on the eve of that ever-impending doom that assigns itself to the ripe old age of thirty, i have something to say. something that will mean something to you. something that will mean something to me. you see, what i am efforting to show is that, yes, i have accomplished things. yes, i have indeed learned... and re-learned. i have experienced. i have lived. i have survived. i have grown-up, matured, and marinated in my own juices enough to write it down. or what i'm really trying to do here is convince myself of these things. maybe i'm just laboring my way up the ladder, rung by splintery rung, heaving my load, trying to make it to that next step, that next purgatorial level of self-fulfillment. and maybe i have nothing to say at all. i guess you can be the judge of that.