a box full of things that don’t make sense anymore

A lot’s ridin’ on a lack of rain tonight,
and the sun speaks too shy on my crazy skin.
Typewriters are machine guns for some.
Pens and swords have too much in common
when our Che Guevaras lack sadness.

There’s a lot ridin’ on a lack of rain tonight, and it’s hard for me to believe clouds break. I thought they were more fluid that. And it’s hard for me to believe in solidity tonight, when everything is punchin’ change in my face.

Me, I don’t wanna be another disappointment in your life. Ridin’ a horse, hair blowin’ towards the sunset doesn’t lure me. Let me break for you. Just let me break for you. And I swear, not a single promise will be fulfilled.

things that are possible under the wyoming sun

And I imagine the moment, when I sit in a booth with a pale green, cheaply coated diner table, across from him. The vinyl of the booth seats will be that kind of brushed burgundy, with unsightly scars. They’ll be the kind of tears in vinyl that scratch your back when you turn to grab your wallet, exposing the cheap synthetic padding beneath. The kind of seats you find in the back of one of those old Checker Cabs.

We’ll be sitting there, and the waitress will come.
She’ll call us sweethearts.
She’ll refill our coffees when we’ve already had enough. She’ll be beautiful in her age. Perfect crow’s feet like rays of sun from her eyes. Biggest smile. Diner waitresses always have the truest smiles. It’s a social enigma. And she’ll turn around, with her pot of coffee and white apron, dirty with whatever. And we’ll both notice with platonic eyes, that in her age she still has perfect curves.

And his hands will be wrinkled. Against the white porcelain cup, his wrinkles will be absurd.
And his liver spots. And his out-of-date glasses and jacket. And you know, his hunch will be so much more natural than mine. The hunch of an old man is perfect. The hunch of a young man is insecure. And I will hardly be paying attention. Wyoming girls are so distracting sometimes, and that’s where we’ll be. I’m sure of it.

And he will lean in as he talks, moving his wrinkled fingers around that porcelain cup, sun beaming over it. The sun will be too perfectly cut that day, with straight razorsharp edges on its cast. His voice will have too many rocks in it. It will stutter and it will choke. But he will talk that day. With my still smooth hands I will twist my cup and watch the dances of its cream. I will look at it all the time he talks.

He will lean in and say,
“Did you ever miss someone more than they missed you?”

And I’ll give a slight chuckle.
And I’ll shake in my bones but not in my hunch.
And there will be a moment, where the awful country music catches our ear in a strange way. And the pale green seems too vibrant. And I notice the torn vinyl is sticking my back still. And I will look up. And fuck, his eyes will be so open. Like a mirror. And there will be nowhere to hide. And he’ll lean in a little bit more.

And he’ll say quietly,
“Did you know it was okay? Did you know you were enough?”

treading on the sacred

How ironic to long for what is directly beneath your nose. I used to think richness was dictated by the object. Now I’m not so sure. I think maybe that poems and films that arouse a sense of sacredness are just pointing at that which is always there. I’ve been nostalgic for this world I’m standing in for years.

At a gas station in Fort Collins once, at dusk, looking at the mountains, I told my friend I was nostalgic for that exact moment. It was like I was experiencing it the way I remember things fondly. The scent is what always gets me, and there was a humidity that night which is unusual for the Front Range.

On a sidewalk patio, I had a drink with my friend who is a dancer in the Naropa BFA. The program is influenced by a Tibetan Buddhist lineage holder, who brought my lineage to the west. We were sitting and having our drinks, when a group flooded out the door of the bar.

I saw a girl who looked drunk, and stumbled as a guy stabilized her. I thought it was silly, and dropped it, but my friend looked surprised and excited, and looked at me beaming. What she had seen was different: a momentary dance performed by the group of college students, twirling out the door, looking in all directions as if trying to decide where to go next. I then realized I had seen this all happening, but my story about the drunk girl distracted me from its beauty.

Another time, on a beach in the Baja of Mexico, I lit a cigarette and drank a Coca Cola. The smoke caught the light in a grossly intimate way, and my sunglasses had a crack in one lens. I was too busy for that moment, and now it’s lost and perverted by my fiction.

I’m writing a poem.
There is a line, stolen from myself long ago:

…and I remember a night in Chicago,
where from my fire escape I could see only one star.
Since I didn’t have many to choose from,
I wished upon it to
“STRIP ME! STRIP ME, STAR,
STRIP ME!
‘Cause my clothes are growing holes,
and anyway
I’m sick of singin’ fiction to strangers.”

I think, though, that I’m actually sick of singing fiction to myself. The romance that lures me to my scripts is exactly what I’m missing by writing them, treading on the sacred in search of sacredness.

thoughts on things past, attachment, residual nightmares, and sacred world

I miss bob dylan.

the twostep o’the lifedance

I think I’m gonna take my lust to the taxidermy.
I figured it would make a far greater impact as an heirloom
than a way of life.
Stories toss themselves between my ears
awkward and numb
like the nats that chose chaos for a living.
I’m considering resigning from my livelihood in chaos.
I figured it’d look better on a resume
than if the powers that be fired me.

There have been times
when this world has tear-drop-kicked my head off
and over my heals.
Now is not one of them.
Now my fingers tell me they’ve forgotten
how to move in any other way than verse.
They tell me this is all a dance, to not forget,
but I keep stepping on toes.
How awkward.
So I choose to skip stones on the dancefloor instead.

I always took love as something
which could give me refuge from a made up storm.
I’m finding it is a hurricane.
It is pithy, and it is punchy,
and it is without remorse.
So I’m learning to kiss the ground
that holds me again.

sometimes it looks like the sky is really far away, and sometimes I forget what the ground feels like under my feet

we raised a toast
to unexpected shiney-eyed
heartshell wrecking balls.
there are bazookas being held here,
with their sights set on egogames.
there are triggerhappy people, too,
who tiptoe around sidelines that are made
just for fun.
I’m learnin’ the twostep o’ the lifedance,
the anatomy of buddhist minds,
or hearts,
the difference is hard to tell sometimes,
on our better days, at least.

there are somatic songs being played,
their strings being plucked by the hurricanes of phenomena.
there is a perfect white picket fence around my heart.
my yard is well kept.
I’ve got flowers and cute little statues
for the neighbors to admire,
but I never let them in.
I’m too afraid they’ll rearrange my furniture,
and I don’t trust their sense for feng shui.

I’m learnin’ the twostep o’ the lifedance,
it’s different then the one-two punches
of the boxing matches I’m used to.
it’s different then my rotary lawnmower
and spade.
I fear I’m steppin’ on toes
and my toes are already blue and sore.
I’m considering squaredancing instead.

tonight

I couldn’t write tonight. I tried, and I couldn’t.

summer dathun

There are thunderstorms here with names you couldn’t pronounce if you tried. You walk, and you feel like things might be much bigger than you thought, than you were allowed to think they were. And you could swear those flowers weren’t there before. They’ve become like the man on the train you didn’t notice until he began audibly weeping. And so you weep with them. And you weep with the thunderstorms. There’s a language here that none of us know how to speak. There are songs with pitches we can’t reach, and the sky never gets tired of putting on magic shows to lure us from our sleep.

a philosophy of rainbows

The sky put on a magic show for me last night, to seduce me from my storylines back to the ground. First, lightning. Then an arch of colors so perfect that 10 cars full of awed people gathered on the side of the highway. Then clouds that shook the most guarded bones on the front range.

I couldn’t help but think that’s it. Maybe it’s worth our time to consider that there are just mountains and grass and windshield wipers and the sun and clouds it’s casting over.

I’ve been blessed with a digger in my life; an archeologist searching for the root of suffering. When she goes, she leaves the shovel with me and I’m not used to the blisters yet, but I’m trying. Once, I wrote on a sheet of paper that, like the moth who by night continually seeks the comfort of day in lanterns and campfires, I’m constantly looking for comforts that don’t exist in the fire of the moment. I through it in a fire. I’ve given more saltwater to my cheeks this summer than I have in years.

There are two types of sadness. The first is when you look at a beautiful flower and you wish you could be the flower. It is so Beautiful. The second is that nobody else understands that flower. It’s so beautiful, utterly beautiful, so magnificent. Nobody understands that. In spite of that beauty, people are killing each other. They’re destroying each other. They go to the bar and get drunk instead of thinking of that beautiful flower.

That sadness is a key point, ladies and gentlemen. In the back of your head, you hear a flute playing, because you are so sad. At the same time, the melody cheers you up… In spite of being sad and devastated, there is somthing lovely taking place. There is some smile, some beauty… There is no suicidal sadness involved at all. Rather, there is a sense of big, open mind in dealing with others, which is beautiful, wonderful.

We find ourselves shedding tears at the same time that we are smiling. We are crying and laughing at once… Isn’t it wonderful? A flower needs sunshine together with raindrops to blossom so beautifully. For that matter, a rainbow is made of the tears falling from our eyes, mixed with a shot of sunshine. That is how a rainbow becomes a rainbow–sunshine mixed with tears.

-Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Riotwalker

Partly because there are people who were once very familiar with my poems, mainly in Chicago, who have not heard me perform my new piece,
Partly because I haven’t typed out the piece until now, and because of my excitement of the way it looks and reads in print,
Partly because I’m worried I don’t know how to write when I have my life together, and I want to post something beautiful anyway,
Whatever the reason, I hope you enjoy my newest spoken word piece, Riotwalker:

………………………………………………………………………………………………….

riotwalker

If Chance calls, tell her I’m out watching Nostalgia.
He keeps putting photo albums up on the news stands and
can’t seem to keep up to date. He doesn’t know why.
Just like Jealousy
doesn’t know why locking his lovers into chastity belts
never extinguishes the flames from his cheekbones.
They should get together.
Let’s try and keep ‘em away from Pride though,
’cause that guy,
he strips off the skin from Self Esteem, wears it as a costume
and that kinda shit grosses me out.

And as for Hope…
Ouch.
Me and that flaky bastard have been playin’ phonetag
for over two decades and sometimes
I wanna give him up.

Which reminds me of Attachment.
Yeah… Attachment,
who cries things like TAKE ME
TAKE ME, BABY, TAKE ME ’cause,
I’m not whole without you.
I would be if ya cut out the W
but I know ya don’t have scissors for that kinda stuff.
He says it with Persistence.

Persistence,
is taking the anxiety of a mother who can no longer help her son,
stickin’ it in a printing press and stamping it
over, and over, and over
onto back issues of faith.
And folks, I hope it’s not too late.
‘Cause I keep tryin’ to talk Suicide out of himself.
He keeps jumping in front of cars on the freeway
but they keep dodging him and
they’re scared, too.

Because Fear
walks the way riots do,
Molotov cocktails for biceps and a chest like a bulletproof vest,
windows fall with his footsteps and I heard him comin’.
Because I was caught by Truth in a desert full of pillows.
She gave me oceans,
carefully crafted from bags of the bolts and nails
it hails when the clouds shutter for us,
but that doesn’t change the fact
that I’ve been trappin’ thunderclaps in my pillowcase.
I’m savin’m for dull dreams,
for streams of unwatched thought,
for the knots
that bundle up in my torso every time I think I’m not enough.
I’m fucking enough.
Yeah,
Love told me so.

She tied together every character of this song with a chain,
each link being a different moment I actually showed up for.
It’s how I stand before you,
so wrecked and shaking in my nervousness I freak.
It’s just that lately Confidence has been singin’ me to sleep.

i.am.becoming

tenderness (TEN-der-ness) noun.
1. a tendency to express warm and affectionate feeling
2. a pain that is felt (as when the area is touched)

Come here.
Sit by me.
With every contraction my muscles make,
I want you to move in closer.
It’s a tough razor’s edge to walk
to let you rub my insides
without my insides giving in
but I’m ready to learn to walk it.
Push me out there,
like a chick outta the nest
who never knew what these awkward limbs were for.
If it wasn’t so cheesy to use the word “flying” I would,
but the truth of the matter is that I’m learning
the language with which space holds me and

it holds me well.

call me out

People are complaining about my recent lack of posts. For this, I apologize, and feel compelled to explain. In accordance with vows I’ve recently taken, which I’ll not go into right now, I’ve been forced to look deeply at my intentions in every action I take. I am now ready to step back into writing, but only after thoroughly investigating my intentions in doing so. Therefore, I am making a request, and giving any readers the right, to call me out if, with my writing:

1. I am bringing you into my drama needlessly.
2. I am babbling about my own misery or excitement, without an evident reason.
3. I am sloppy with the feelings or beliefs of others (this includes: CEO’s, Hummer Drivers, Texans, Enemies, Factory Farm Employees and Owners, and Everyday Assholes)
4. I am manipulating you.
5. I take that one back, I’m allowed to manipulate you into enlightenment, if I can find a way to do so.
6. I am being contrived
7. I am trying to seduce you.
8. I am being unrealistic with myself about the nature of reality.

Thank you. There are comment boxes at the bottom of every post.

there are children carving poems into their family trees, and I am still lonely

For the nights we’ve stood hunched over, drenched and sticky in our egogames,
For the hairs pressed between the pages of my journals in the shapes of words saying “Remember that time you gave in,”
For the clouds of smoke we puffed out and called Truth, only to watch ‘em disappear,
For the year
that we all spent tryin’ to chip the paint off our walls, lookin’ for that color we used to love so much, only to find it is ugly and out of date,
For all the hurricanes we tried to catch with butterfly nets,

I am takin’ the leap. Double-back-flip into a cannonball I’m takin’ the leap.
‘Cause I heard there is a mother, whose blood type is lonely,
and a father, with the anger of an eight-hundred pound wolf,
but they gave birth to a daughter who only blinks once an hour,
she’s so caught up with this world. I think she’s holding us all together.
All I can give her is my breath though,
and same goes for Maria.
Remember Maria? She was the janitor at your high school,
dancing with her paint brush on the gymnasium floor when no one was lookin’.
I think she’s holding us all together.

To be continued.

strange love (or: how I learned to stop worrying and love people truly)

A black cat crossed my path today, but I feel untouchable. It’s funny the way things work sometimes, the way a heart, completely exposed and raw and touched by the coarse and sharp edges of this place can feel so protected.

I found a catch in everything I’ve ever done. I found a catch in all the glowing parts of my experience. It’s that once they have all come to fruition, I have to give the fruit away. I find protection there, too.

winter dathün

Just so y’all know, I’ll be on retreat and unreachable until January 12th. Happy New Year!

unconditionality and naïveté

I can think of nothing heavier than an airplane

So chapped and windburnt you’d think she had freshly escaped a frozen desert, so polite and safe in conversation you’d think she was lying (she was probably lying), she raised an eyebrow at my educational background. They always do.

I won’t go like them. I don’t know how I’ll greet my burnout when it’s comin’, but God knows I won’t go like them—with white knuckles, grabbing so tightly on to what I’ve always taken for granted.

I couldn’t stop watching her knee. It was shaking so violently. Her knuckles really were white as she grabbed her husband’s hand as if to tell me one of them had a deep fear of flying. I couldn’t tell which one, but everyone on the plane was getting nervous at that point. Every six seconds, the window switched from being completely filled by Chicago, to being completely filled by the sky. All the heads bobbled in unison as we hit the hot air pockets or whatever gives a plane turbulence. I don’t understand that kinda stuff.

She was so convinced we were gonna die, and I couldn’t stop watching her shaking knee. We were comin’ into Chicago like an earthquake, like it was Bring Yer Kid To Work Day and the pilot was lettin’ his son land it.

I looked at her ear, her 60+ year old ear, and I wanted to lean in and say, “Forty-five percent of plane crashes happen during landing.”

I looked at her ear, her 60+ year old ear, and I wanted to lean in and say, “You’ve always done the best you could.”

I said nothing.

I can think of nothing heavier than an airplane,
I can think of nothing less likely to fly.
-Saul Williams

gaps and lack thereof

I found ten Buddhist books in a box this evening from when I was naïve. I don’t think I was naïve I think I was right. They all make sense to me now, at least enough to trust what brought me to them in the first place.

The TV’s blaring downstairs. No one cares about your intimate relationship with your tenth, fourteenth, sixteenth years, you’re pathetic.

I found a crumpled picture tonight, with the woman who took my virginity’s letter on the back. She said a good picture of her is rare, Facebook begs to differ or maybe I’m lonely.

I found a dreadlock tonight. It was the only one I didn’t throw into the wilderness, sitting in lotus in the Animas Valley, chanting for impermanence.

This evening I found a dried rose I couldn’t get rid of if I tried. I hate flowers.

I found a cap tonight. The kind of cap that goes on the top of an eyedropper. When I was sixteen I threw it into grass after taking four drops of acid. Two weeks after that I was discovering Buddhism as a result, and I was smoking a cigarette in the grass, and I looked down and I saw the white cap. It didn’t look as much like a tooth then and I became obsessed with sanity.

I’m obsessed with sanity. That becomes clear as I stumble across more photographs of all the people who I’ve been drawn to in my life. I only understand now that I’m drawn to their sanity. It holds me like nothing else can.

The gap was filled tonight. The story is complete. I am grateful.

pit stops for humble people

If you’re ever driving along I-80, and the Nebraska plains have painted your upper eyelids with lead, and your ass is sore, and your back’s got pieces of scrap metal in it, hold out just a little bit longer. On the north side of the interstate, right by the west exit for North Platte, you’ll see a metallic, bullet shaped diner beneath a pink neon sign reading, “Penny’s Diner.”

Go there.

Let the waitress take care of you. She’ll call you things like “sweetheart” and “honey.” Smile big and tip well, and the rest of your trip will run smoothly.

things I tend to do in open spaces

1. The designers of this place got it all wrong, ‘cause they put walls between us, and the doors in those walls have locks in ‘em, and the locks work and there’s too much damn space in here for me. I get vertigo from it. Give me somethin’ smaller.

2. I hope you don’t mind if I throw pieces of what you’ve given me into space like rice at God’s wedding, ‘cause I’d feel selfish if I kept more than even a breath of it for my self.

3. Oh, ya need space, ok. Yeah, I get it. Me too, actually, I was just about to say that. Umm, it’s just that lately I’m jealous of the space that you occupy, ‘cause it gets to hold you like that. When I’m drunk, I still dream of you and in the dreams you’re saving small children from falling chandeliers and things.

4. From when I was younger until not so long ago, I often felt that I was wasting everything I consumed, including the space I occupied. I no longer feel this way.

5. I’ve got better things to do now than chase you, but still I still chase you. Okay, I don’t chase you. But a space has been made now where the book of us is standing like a tree right in front o’ me and I can’t help but want to climb it and hang from its branches.

Let’s tie a rope there and make a swing.

right now

vote

of detachment and of broken things

There is a priest. When he leaves confession he doesn’t feel release. He leaves with a stomach full of broken promises, and of broken dreams and they’re sharp as hell. Exception after exception after exception after exception we are lured further from the blood of this place.

Let me dive in.

The world is bleeding for us, and I’m sick of us never even showing up. I’m sick of us always expecting, from all the world’s strong spots, while its weak spots are screaming, crying for our eyes.
We are pushing and pushing and pushing at some kinda roof, and we don’t know how to break through. Folks, I think that’s how we’ll break through.

for a pair of antlers

My 18-wheeler has a circus act in back. When the road stretches big, n far in front o me, n my eyelids get weights tied to em by the lashes, I’ve got Juna there. Juna, the queen o the pitbull underground, queen o the truckstop microyard, queen o the road kill. Juna keeps me goin sometimes.

The freaks only leave the trailer for their shows. They can setup a tent quicker than I can shift a gear. They shift gears quicker than I can pitch a tent when a college girl’s in the passin lane. They covered my truck in lights. At night she looks like a goddamn circus herself. Every edge n corner’s got a light on it. The sides o the trailer’ve got all kindsa crazy carnival shit on em. Oldstyle carnival too. I like it, even though the other drivers always point n laugh bout it. The only time I found any troubles with the freaks is when the deer came.

Buck. Big one. 16-pointer. Late at night, everything’s a deer. The bushes are deer. Rocks are deer. Abandoned cars are deer. The deer picture cries wolf too many times, n when you see a real one, you barely react. Barely at all. So this 16-pointer’s ass gets taken out by my grill. His whole hind legs missin, scattered and splattered all over I-25. We painted half the goddamn freeway red.

The thing was a beauty, still alive, wailin n shit. Juna found a chunk of his leg and just gnawed all happy on it. I went over to her to give her a pet n think what to do bout this buck, when the latch to the trailer opened. They never came out ‘cept for their shows, so Juna n I were curious.

When one o the freaks, Mr. King Clown, saw the deer, you wouldn’t believe what he said. You wouldn’t believe it. Still with smudges o paint on his face, sweaty from bein in the trailer, he said they needed the buck’s antlers—horns he called em—for a costume.

This is reservation land, I told him, ya can’t take pieces from a dead animal. A goddamn crow could fall outta the sky into your lap n you’d still hafta call the phone number. They usem in ceremonies n shit.

He didn’t listen. Mr. King Clown can never listen. He walked right up to him to grab his new horns. The buck was still wailin so I went to the cab to grab my buckknife. Didn’t wanna do it, had to though. I’d done it before, but never this crazy. Never even close.

I did what I had to do n closed the latch for the trailer. I found the paper in the glove box with the Indian number on it. Toldem where the two bodies for their ceremonies were. Juna puter head on my lap. I pet er as we drove on along the stretchin road in front o me.

a chain is there

hesitation dropkicks me sometimes

boulder

I like the wailing of the trains at night here. The horns bring me back to my bed, back between my sheets, with the pillow holding my head, back from Chicago, from the girl, from travel plans to Mexico.

The train horns bring me back to Boulder when I start dreaming again.