subtle, Sweet San Buena Ventura

When the waves whipped my face on a brisk weekday morning, and my fiance’s bed welcomed me a warm, posturpedic heaven, I realized that I would never be able to completely leave Ventura. When I sang Lovin’ is What I Got around Luke’s campfire surrounded by friends, some of whom sang along, followed by bitching about Oh Captain! My Captain! Lindsey, that’s when I knew that the city between the beach and the hill where I almost failed out of high school, would always be my home.
In Santa Fe, the winter gets cold, the summers are hot, and mice like to run around in my dorm room. But I juggle as much as I can and the cafeteria food – the hand-made desserts and the cooked to order crepes – almost always put a smile on my face. Still, every night I lie in my bed, usually talking to that sweet woman who said she would stay with me forever, and I just want the semester to end. When Mike calls, or Kelsey, or Luke or Dwight or Derrick or Evan or Mom, I get a sense of what I left behind. I get a sense of those palm trees that you can never get out of sight, and the sunsets over the ocean that blead into the tide like a bittersweet suicide.
I am as anxious as modern conspirists awaiting the arrival of the thirteenth bak’tun on the Mayan Calendar. I want to go home, but am I still me? Are they still them? Is the place that I love still the place that I love? Will main street still run down to the ocean? I know it is not likely for that to change, but will it still invite me from the sand to the street in the same Southern Californian way?

I left home to become a man
Not knowing just what it would take.
And I’ve done everything that I can,
Everything in order to make
A life for myself from the chances I have
Been given by people I love.
But the sand in my toes, and my face gone unshaved
Is all that I now can dream of.

Subtle, Sweet San Buena Ventura.
I sing symphonies of sorrow for you.
Subtle Sweet San Buena Ventura.
Sing your sweet song for me too.

Good Music

Good music bleeds. Good music cries when it is sad, and it screams when it is angry. Good music goes beyond what the critics say. It stands tall and says “fuck you Rolling Stone. I kick ass despite you.” When the undertaker comes, a good piece of music will knock him on his ass. When the floods wash away mankind, a good piece of music will float atop the waves of washed-aways and swim before the survivors. Good music is strong and heartless while at the same time merciful and loving. Good music is a beaten dog that will not surrender to maim and mange. When the last pop tune flies off the shelf, good music collects dust in the back row, uncannily aware of its own magnificence. Music dies in the memory, and leaves a lasting imprint on the mind; good music, that is. And all this, is to say nothing of great music.
Great music is a massacre to the temporal lobe, pinching every nerve and bursting every blood vessel. Great music inspired the rise of Sitting Bull and begat the fall of Rome. Only the greatest drums served to win the harshest battles, and only the strongest horns helped to wake the most calloused soldiers. Great music suffocates when you hear it, and from sea to shining fucking sea, great music will venerate the plow and manifest itself within the mind of the homesteader and the Gold miner alike until every god-forsaken soul has the spirit within him to do whatever god-forsaken task his mind is set out to complete. Great music is a sinner in the hands of an angry god. It defies nature, right and wrong, left and right, up and down, life and death, choice and fate, depression and ecstacy, drugs and sobriety, heirarchy and democracy, killers and doctors, lawyers and saints. Great music is a cancer to mankind which we do not rid ourselves of because the pain hurts so fucking good.
Great music is the orgasm that sex can never acheive, and it is the experience that life can never physically quantify.

Live

School will come and go.
It is the lovers turned friends
and friends turned lovers
that will be remembered.

It is the hard times
and the hands held
and the cards dealt
and the money lost.

It is the tragedy
and the comedy
and the fate
and the future

Overall, it is the experiences
and the inexperience
and the experimentation
and the excrement that is thrown at us.

Life is the loud noises
and the sad silences
and the biting kisses
from people you do not sympathize with.

Life is the death of our own mental slavery
life is the enslavement of the beast of time.
Life works for those who work it.
Work lives for those who know not how to live.

Still,

Work hard,
Live long,
Kiss gently,
die strong.

Caress the back of the unknown lover
Hold tight the shoulders of a wary friend.
Kiss the lips of the life-long light-hearted.
Perhaps, your own heart will be lightened.

Climb a tree.
Or a rock.
Spill your blood
while the people around you applaud in amazement.
For your show is theirs.

Fight wars overseas,
or under sheets.
Scratch the former,
anticipate the latter.

Deny the rules.
Defy the rules.
Satisfy the soul
by drinking deep the natural liquor of life
to obtain a drunkard’s enlightened stupor.

Above all, live every day
expecting, and willing,
to give your last breath of life,
in the same world of wonder as you gave your first.

Sweat Shirts, sweated words.

A conversation I cannot hear.

A door I dare not enter.

It is a cold day in December

and the heater bill is through the roof.

I know what it means

to be alone in a crowded place.

Another man’s voice pounds in my head

reminding me of another woman.

The essence of excess.

A tear drop my tongue failed to lap up.

The lights of the Christmas tree have burned night and day.

Another beautiful woman stretches eagerly in its presence.

People come and go, go and come,

always wearing a new pair of shoes.

Of all the women,

in all the malls,

in all of California,

I have chosen the obsequious one.

Pig tails, pony tails, buns, braids,

No child wants to be on the naughty list for Christmas.

But all Children are.

When is it acceptable to chew gum?

When you step in another man’s shoes,

would Gold Bond be advisable?

I am lost in the garrulous tones of a population gone awry.

Does anyone around me realize that I am a man of high aspirations?

We are the first penmanship to develop good penmanship by three,

and incinerate it by twelve.

LMAO

We no longer have stores, we have shopping experiences.

The cheesy Christmas music remains the same.

I want to ride a beautiful woman,

but they are all saddled by hideous men.

I write with one eye on my paper,

the other on you.

I am Walt Whitman’s soul

incarnate as an outbreak of ebola.

I can’t stand fortunate children.

They make for an unfortunate future.

Men should cry more.

Women are cruel, cruel beasts…

Whom I worship completely.

I love you, woman of another man’s fantasy.

You’ll dance with me, kiss my lips,

but tell me you are his?

It is unfair and unjust.

Kiss me one more time and profess that you do not love me.

My pain is yours, so why do you not scream with me?

If we scream together, we will scream no more.

And when we finally grow old, your wrinkles will be my joy.

Your aches will be my groans.

So let your hips touch my hips,

And I will give you all of me, all the time.

You may think you love your novio,

but I will make you my novia,

when you see freely what is true.

My writing may be chicken scratch,

but my words will ring in your ears

until the glass that separates us

is a melted, molded, sobbing mass on the floor.

I will not step over the glass because you will come to me.

And you will apologize, but I will not accept it.

Because from then on, our future will not be concerned with our past.

We will disavow the un-ashed tip of the cigarette,

and burn down the rest of our lives in the most romantic of forms,

consumed by the most juvenile love.

You to me

     A begrudging woman has captivated my conscience, making it hard to think; hard to act; hard to see; hard to breathe. Choice words and chosen expressions are my only source of consolation, and both lack worth for wear, for when it comes down to the women I set my soul to, it seems that the only source of compensation I receive for my efforts is a precursory glimpse at a relationship: the bit that makes you believe your in love, and then it cuts straight to the bit that leaves you with spit in the eye, and vomit in the stomach.

     My only hope is that the female of the species is more deadly than the male, for that would mean that my anguish will be short lived. All you women who have plagued my conscience, your time spent in my thoughts is incalculable, the true words you will never hear from a better man’s mouth are mine, and the true care that emanates from my heart, mind, body and soul, are the truest you will ever never know. I am the man who has no chance, because I have too much respect to take my chance. Chew these words, and taste the bite of a good man gone sour, for it will take a mad woman gone sane to bring him back.

Where are the stars?

Where are the stars?

A new era dawns a new way to light up the night sky.

Geysers of life’s elixir travel through copper tubes,

issuing forth like so many streams of emancipation,

there is a rhythm to their chaos.

Birds nest in a plastic tree.

Four gorgeous women sit on a bench

Is it they or the bench that is more manufactured?

The oranges, blues, and greens that pastel the horizon are not

made of the same pure elements they once were.

We are a nation of suburban cowboys.

Giddy-up.

When Sagittarius rises over the Ford dealership,

we are all going to die.

The diesel twinkie billows noxious vapors

to suffocate the Arco Gods.

6-B Oxnard Via Telephone Road.

Is their a constant ration of gum to cigarette butts at a given bus stop?

America:

“Claiming propriety over municipal waste since 1632.”

There is a strange connection between bus stops and drug deals.

Why?

It’s like a horror film looking through a SCAT Bus window;

like an HBO drama listening to the conversations.

The payphone is the purveyor of the plague.

The payphone has worn out the digits C-A-L-L-A-T-T.

Bus eleven pulls away.

I hop on my alternative mode of transportation and follow suit.

Vapor of nerd stings the nostrils.

I am surrounded by 6′ by 10′ boxes,

marked with the latest gaming titles.

If you live life through a fantasy,

achieving what you never could in reality,

and obtaining the same euphoria,

have you really wasted any time?

I salute you, nerds.

Sex, video games, and cheeseburgers

all yield the same chemical result.

But only one burns calories.

The youth of America yearn for the latest SpongeBob game.

Daddy wants to please this Christmas.

“Daddy please?…Daddy can I?”

“Maybe later…we’ll see…ask your mother.”

Halls are no longer decked with bowels of Holly,

but the blood of Christmas past.

Jesus was never a main character in a video game.

Thou shalt not engrave false idols, right?

Separation of church and game play.

No one in this store has a girlfriend.

But they all speak clingon.

Does anybody have a pencil?

An after hours education in the halls of an institution.

Why are the Gatorade bottles locked up

while drugs pass freely from hand to hand?

We have made our schools for the handicapped,

and the pen cap chewers.

Have I learned more now in this instance of trespassing,

than in all my culminated days locked within an institution?

These benches are cold in the November air.

But my thoughts are warm; my belly full.

My mind is jumping from place to place;

a teenager on a shooting spree.

The un-ashed tip of a cigarette will become the unsolved mystery

of the fire department.

Children should not play with matches,

but they should learn to shoot a gun.

This is what I’ve learned from school.

Why is their not a school of graffiti?

The urban art is the last true writing on the wall.

Though it is dark,

the stars still refuse to shine.

The modern American lives in a perpetual twilight.

In the day we dwell in doors,

The cities light up the night.

The earth illuminates,

extinguishing those heavenly flames

and becoming a physical metaphor for atheism:

Man has closed heaven until he has satisfied his urges.

In the morning we will all attend church as if nothing has happened.

To skate is not a crime,

but to ride around the mall causing mischief

while your baked out of your skull…

Is fun.

I don’t smoke pot.

But if I did…

I’m sitting in a gutter behind Lowe’s,

and I can hear rats scurrying in the bushes.

There is trash all around me,

and the freeway is in the distance.

Am I living now?

Happily?

I see one star beyond a parking lot light,

and feel that it deserves interpretation.

It is a desperate, dying breath from God,

trying to speak to me.

Volumes have been written about his message,

but he sums it up in three words:

Love Everybody Unconditionally.One day I will.This urban Jungle is a unique blend of concrete and industrialized plants.

Everywhere I’ve been, I have seen a palm tree,

but not one has thrown its leaves at my feet.

Grass blades spout from the sewer.

I see the forest through the trees,

which is the sole benefit of clear-cutting.

My fingers are cold.

My Joints; stiff.

I am dying.

Slowly, I am dying.

And old fat man is skating with a beer in his hand.

He is a slave succumbing to alcoholism,

The driver of desperate men.

What is the penalty for drunken boarding?

DUI

I can use a drink.

I will return here another day.

Hip-hop flows from a solara

like water from a faucet.

Rough and easy.

It quiets down, and so does my writing.

Rap is the voice of the urban poet,

and the urban poet has no name.

World ‘round the same struggle is fought,

but no one words it the same.

Classical is cliche’ stimulation for infants.

Rap is the edge of an angry people.

Polished Punk.

America has a new song to sing to.

The urban rhythm is an expansion of the mind;

a war waged on a multifaceted front.

We have all defiled the same soil.

You cannot write of life from a roll top desk.

Experience is the law of the written land,

America is the youth of the world,

rooting its experimentation in the unknown.

I too, sing america.

I sit aside my darker brother at the human table,

He does not mention yesterday.

Today, I pledge my life to the cause of humanity as it lies in the cracks.

Tomorrow, we will have our exodus.

The lights will go out,

and the stars will return, bringing with it the religion we have blinded.

She’s beautiful, and she laughs at my jokes!

The Tramp and the Gamin

A woman of no Earthly likeness

SHE’S BEAUTIFUL AND SHE  LAUGHS AT MY JOKES! What more could a man want in a woman? Hell, she doesn’t even have to be beautiful, but it’s always a nice touch, like hot chocolate syrup on strawberries; a delightful warm, with a chilled core, insatiably tickling the pallet of the most refined culinary critic. And what’s more but when all the world pressed at her and wore her delicate frame out, stretching her outwards to the farthest degree of the infinitesimally dismal, she found away to snap back, and make time for me; giving me a smile, and those seven heavenly numbers, which – being mine – would make me the bane of many a teenage romantic’s existence.

Now it may be the desire of the reader, for it is certainly wished by me, that a picture in words be painted of this magnificent specimen meld from the cast which God set aside until it’s most recent creation had completed it’s time on earth, at which point, opening a position for yet another one of a kind, who will, nonetheless, never be the same. But my desert rose shall remain a mystery until the revelation and proclamation of my inflamed emotions can be exclaimed above and beyond the wall of cowardice that hinders every man’s soul from saying what many individuals long to hear. In short, do I have the balls to tell this woman how I feel? Not yet, but those seven magnificent numbers have given me hope, possibly clouded by false pretenses. But nonetheless, hope.

Woman whom I speak, your name shall forth-with from my lips be beauty. The dire consequence of my love being fear, I will pray for the strength to conquer the savage beast which tames my soul; the Delilah to my Samson; the hand over the iniquitous minister’s heart. SHE’S BEAUTIFUL AND SHE LAUGHS AT MY JOKES! What more could a man want in a woman?