tonight

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

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tryin’ to chip the paint off our walls, lookin’ for that color we used to love so much, only to find it is ugly and out of date,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.

winter dathün

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

right now

vote

wednesday

I fear restless farewells will cover my windshield in splatters on Wendesday.

better than photographs 1

Experiment.

 barack obama iraq war iran move into iran olympics hillary clinton ron paul John Mccaine election delegates poems poetry 

Slam as a Peak

Writing is the only constant, aside from change, that strings the events of my life together. Throughout my life, I have been a swinger. I have swung up and down into different passions, and I feel that I have pursued each of these passions fully and without restraint. It’s what I do.

My first passion was guns. 

It’s a terrifying thought to me now. I have become adamant about non-violence, a practitioner of Buddhism, a vegetarian, and an activist against war for years now, but my first passion was guns. I had 23,000 toy guns that were stashed all over my house, I would fight off the evils of burglars and ghosts in my every waking moment. 

I then went on to magic. I ate, slept and breathed magic. I always had a deck of cards in my pocket, I performed for family and friends, I won second place in my first stage magic competition, and first place in my second. 

Other swings included escape artistry, musical performances, acting, miming, backpacking, unicycling, rock climbing, fixed gear cycling, film making, DJing, Spanish, electronic music production, Japanese, drum circles, travel, new-age spirituality, gems and minerals, espresso and most recently, perhaps, slam poetry. What has this all done for me? Nothing, really, except giving me a whole lot of material to write about. And so I’ve found the string which links all these things together: writing. 

Writing is now becoming my predominant passion, which makes sense. A gorgeous manifestation of writing has now been pronouncing itself boldly in my  life, and appears to be the climax of the things I’ve learned, called Slam. 

Many names in the slam movement say that the difference between spoken word and other art forms is that spoken word is an art of exposure. You are not presenting yourself as an artist, but presenting yourself as yourself. This, in my opinion, gives us an exhilarating opportunity for a pure and genuine catharsis. When I perform, I feel completely naked and disarmed. This vulnerability, in my opinion, is absolutely necessary for truly transformational art. 

Slam now stands as the peak of my swinging passions. I feel that throughout my life I’ve been searching for something that will allow me to unfold into the world, and I believe that spoken word poetry, and its competing counterpart, will help me achieve this. Word.