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.

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 And his out-of-date glasses and jacket.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?”

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.

I miss bob dylan.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.