heres a draft i had from december 31st

if you explain it to me several more times i will understand

someone told me i should set my mind on something

(though they never really said that)

I found out it was the new year

and i know so many songs i should listen to in the following minutes

but I always forget, resolve to remember

I wonder what changes when you see it the way it was intended



i'm lonely for lights, and new york city



i'm upset because I don't care anymore

unsuccessful

i'm in some hot water
but i'll keep the phone in reach if the razor leaves my hand, unsatisfied
i've been drinking since dawn
but i'll spend days trying to find a way to make the computer respond


you know, just in case.


it's nothing some light editing can't repair
since most times its the best it was the first time around
and we always wish we had the force we had now when we had the setting right
just send me back, i need a minute
i cant be sure

(hospital beds and razor blades, broken toes and blue bathrooms, trains to pompeii and fog off the coast,
wet dreams,
wine coolers....)

someone should tell you when you're building your life
at least then you'd know to pay more attention

i'm waiting for you to get tired of me, but it's so nice that you don't

day 2

me and the dog ate ham today. and chee-tos which i purchased from wawa. wine is gone, except for the big bottle of white in the fridge i have not opened. I was learning about german pop bands on the tv. also, i saw a red volkswagen bug that had the license plate 'IG-88'. These are my only points of interest. That, and i split my pants tonight, after the wedding had concluded and i was trying to lift things onto a cart. The sad part was that instead of being hilarious, I had to hide it from my boss because then he would just yell about my not having "an extra pair of dress pants". No laughing, except on the inside. And a quick change into some jeans that fit into a shoebox with the shoes. Friday I have to myself and I hope I will do something better than go through things and feel bad about them and then mope and drink alot of whiskey (with the dog). There really aren't alot of options.


I was thinking that it's too much pressure to be first in line at a traffic light
because if i'm not right about the whens of how we go
you're gonna be pissed
and frankly, I can't deal with you
well, not very well at all anymore
there's a clock in here that rings every fifteen minutes
and an elderly dog that is more or less frequent
and he sits, and I watch, and it's cold
and we figure it out that as soon as we have it all figured out
that we'll have nothing really to do

it's extraordinarily quiet - and it's hard to deal with that

this weekend

So, here is the place. I'm watching over my dog, watching over my parents house, in this same old chair, this same old screen glowing in the back room. One bottle of Gentleman Jack, one bottle of old vine zinfandel. Discography of Counting Crows on the speakers. In a few hours, I will walk to WaWa for cigarettes. It's such a lonely house now, full of artifacts that you find only if you search through the drawers. Shadow is sick, old, cant walk more than a few feet; i've been holding my hand in front of his nose to make sure he's still breathing. It's strange to find out you're the same person in every different setting you place yourself in, that in fact you've always been the same person, just at different points. I'm supposed to stay here until saturday. I left the dog out in the cold today for too long; i didn't mean to, i just had some pictures of blind old people in love to sift through. And that's not a metaphor - they really were blind. Maybe there is still a metaphor in there. This woman was talking about learning about love - some kind of magic word that has solved some sort of problems, somewhere. How this one old man who has been through a hell of life doesn't say it to his 'new' girlfriend, how it's such a shame, how she should leave her. Paul Simon said "some people never say those words 'I love you', but like a child, they're longing to be told." This woman talks and I eat my breakfast (a strawberry crepe), look on, knowingly nod only in my head. There are some things you can say are certain, then place in a box with the label 'yes', and never have to open again. If you dont have it right in front of you, then it stays the same as you want it to be, as good as you can imagine, just stay away. That must have been the love that infected me. I can't believe it anymore, i know all of these questions have to rock all faith and feelings for anything to stand in the aftermath. I don't oversee any of the tests.
So, I keep all of these old calendars, and they tell me everything I may have done
but all i can remember is writing it down on here
we went on our last great adventure, you falling all over the backseat
making too much noise in my new home
i had told you you had a free year subscription to free laundry in my baskets
but it's since been expired
Silver buildings, blue bathrooms, cold volcanoes
what have we done since
since you told me 'thank you for the new hope.'
sorry, i didnt mean to confuse you with my dog
i've been waiting to see you on some screen, somewhere where you might be alive
not like the last time i had some grace to hold your body.
.........anyway. my dog is old. I feel irritated and uneasy around here. I have to go to a wedding tomorrow. And hold my hands behind my back. Come to my party. I will (most likely) be there. My brother's watch is far too big for my wrist. I dont think i can sleep well in my parents bed.

you dont know nothin bout nothin

if you're caught between two oceans
the beach is out there, past sharon stone's garage, somewhere
down a hill or up it, possibly through some pine trees
and this side of the ocean is cold
and this side of the ocean is full

full of much less naked people than anyone
well, specifically, I had anticipated
(I had hoped for far more naked people)
but if you go as far away as you can
be specific when you tell me none of the details
so it will seem more special
when we show up at the same place anyway

it takes a few weeks for the moon to be full
if you go swimming today, im gonna fucking drown you
we ask alot of questions but they all ask
why things have got to change

when i say i said some lies to test your faith
well, its probably not okay, but i only knew it after i was done

it turns out, 29.53 days, i looked it up
(if you believe that sort of thing)
to anyone interested in waiting : please note
it's just an approximation
but i am one of those things so

shut up
and oh, have faith

everyday is still important

It’s been a real struggle to feel any one way for more than a minute. If I don’t keep track of all the things that have been, if I’m left with only what I can recall more than once per day, where am I now? It doesn’t feel right to not be able to remember everything that happened yesterday. I don’t want my mind to let go of all the details we deemed unnecessary to the big picture, I want there to be space for every word ever spoken, I want to be able to picture the curves of your body without the help of photographs I know too well. I wish I could be that strong. I’ve always been hungry for control, I’ve always worn two faces; one that speaks to itself, one that gives the appearance of speaking.
Life is what it is, not what it was.
This is hard with beer, too much of the drinking, not enough of the drunk.
Real love is like lightning – it only strikes the very unlucky twice. Each one is different, in-comparable to the rest. It’s the trying that will lead you to the corner at nite, new cigarettes burning your cold-turkey lungs, peering in the windows for her unfamiliar face, never asking, always dizzy in old city. I believe in what I have now, I don’t know what I’m supposed to call it anymore. For once, I don’t feel lonely. I only hope I’m not just enjoying what it’s like to truly be loved for the first time, and not doing the same in return. Sometimes i'm damn sure that people are dead, so afraid her death would lead me down a road I wouldn’t leave bread crumbs to return from. What is the name of the attitude that expects the worse?

This is the 7 and 10 split, and I could never collect both, maybe won’t have to miss down the middle. Old lucky seven showed her claws to me, disappeared in the smallest city I know. Number 10 with 10 in tow, each count tastes like poison every time I care to remember, but every in between the sweetest thing. What do you do to forget all the lips you’ve touched with yours, maybe you could advise me in this neglect of those we thought to love.

The latest question is this - is there anything you wish you had never learned, something you would be better off never having seen? And if, inevitably, there is - well, do you really wish that?

guitars were the key

so, i am not always this way. There is only one time I really want to write something down that is not details about what i did this morning before the literally-only-2-to-5 days it takes me to forget those and most things that occur in my life - and that one other time is when i am feeling really, really bad. And then I use run-on sentences to boot. The point is, I am not always brooding, but what i have in my folder on my computer entitled 'writing stuffs' begs to differ. Except for this:

i know how to play the guitar. You’ll notice this is not something I say with pride, but neither with contempt or sadness. This is because, mostly, I am not very good. Not very good, in this case, meaning that a) I am not in a band (where even if you can't, people assume you can, indeed, play an instrument (this is before they hear your "demos") and I am thinking this would help to verify ones self-worth and sense of goodness at said instrument), and b) I cannot do a megadeth solo. “So,” you are saying to me, “You don’t actually know how to play the guitar.” Untrue. I can aptly play any song that contains chords. And I mean solely chords. And I mean the easier chords. I am no laughing matter around Christmas time and also at your local church’s youth group. Sometimes, when the chords are trained-monkey simple, I will do the thing where I play one part loudly and then the next part slowly, to make the slowly part mean more to those who are listening. You can be as good as this if you start playing right now, and then stop five to ten minutes later and repeat as necessary every two weeks or so. I have some recordings, they include my dog
So. Once, I was in New York. And not the city. I mean, like, the mountainous region where your cellular phone won’t work unless you stand on top of a car with a roll of aluminum foil in your other hand and while you do this you see in the distance a deer and a turkey standing close to each other, and your nature instinct tells you that these two woodland creatures could never be friends (other side of the tracks and such) and then you realize they are made of wood and when you squint you can see all of the bullet and arrowmarks which were left by the hunting club whose cabin you are staying in for the weekend. Anyone who is anyone knows that when you are in a place called Rome, New York, you are there for a thing called Point Rock Jam where men who are older than you set up lots of instruments and seem to play each one of them proficiently and do this thing called ‘jamming’, which sounds a lot like a Jimi Hendrix song, which, eventually, is what it actually becomes. You go here with your friend who has a relation to all of these Men (nothing funny, this isn't your family), because you like it when the hills are actually alive with the sound of music and you like roaming free through the woods, shooting guns which have never been licensed in any American state, and sleeping in a tent. The thing you do not like is bats. Bats are, in fact, the devil.

I found this today. It is, as you saw, two paragraphs. Two paragraphs that, far as I can see, have no relation to much of anything, least of all each other. But, oh, the point they prove.

I can no longer remember where I was going to go with this. i will work it out.

let's have fun times

hello. i staretd doing this. against my better judgment?? i used to do this on an aol profile page and two people read it only sometimes, so i guess i have nothing to really worry about. Will I keep up with it?? Who knows.......................



I have become all things to all men so that by every possible means I might save some

What a shame it is how we lose all the things we used to work so hard to keep together, what a shame that we cannot retain all the relationships we invested so much time into building, how things need to fall away, how the ground always needs to be cleared to make space for something new, but maybe never ever better than what it was. What a pity that we need to miss some things, some things we will never get to taste again, some people we will never get to hear their words in our ears again. Never, ever again. Don’t tell me life hasn’t always been cruel. What a shame it is to have to live a life longer than anyone you’ve known, to have to live any life at all, away from anyone’s eyes we’ve seen.

....(just) lie down with me

November 19 – all the things we’ve been put here to do, hoping there’s still so much more left for me, but then maybe it might be al(l) right to call it a day. Someone should tell you when you are making your life, so that you could pay more attention. If you’re afraid, well, just know you don’t have to. We didn’t have to ever be anything. What’s the point in making something wrong or right, why not let someone else do it for you?

I lost my luggage, somewhere in san Francisco.

This split in my lip, I’ve been doing my stretches, dabbing away blood,
Feigning interest in too many people’s words for an excuse to hide behind
My fingers doing all the thinking, my fingers can do all the thinking (I don’t mind)

Late in the Saturday we went to the cemetery, and the children are still sleeping in.
We can’t coax them out, no matter how many toys we bring

I never wanted you to get comfortable here

Mom and dad just hoped if they never showed you might come looking
They never thought you’d settle in so well
It’s no surprise - someone dies
But the how can take your breath, the when can shake your head
You better leave before dark, they lock these gates behind me everytime
Sorry I couldn’t stay, thank you for inviting me in too quiet for me to hear.

But yes, these big blue pills, they’ll start to fix the problems you need two hands to count
I’ll be having all the fixings money can buy