Refugee

At the start of break, I spent two days in DC - on the bus ride down, in between naps, I looked at the road and felt inspired. After a cigarette and copious vomiting, I spit out a bunch of random couplets and passed back out. Today, on the way to Hidden Valley, a way to put most of 'em together popped into my head - I don't know if its any good, or if they make sense as a song, but put with a verse I wrote sitting with Probes during Thanksgiving, it's something that came out hella fast, and I want to type it up.



Refugee (for lack of anything else right now)
I'm just another refugee from a small town
Hiding my fears and worries behind the tears of a clown
Fought my way out so I wouldn't stay and drown
Now I just run for refuge and seek solace in the sound

Walking and riding and watching and waiting
for a truth that may never come
knowing the burning of delicious
that you share with only some
screaming open at the road and howling by the trucks
trying to leave behidn the inner doubt that pulls and sucks
the pile of repeated occasions and meaningless fucks
there's no one waiting for me at the end of this tunnel
my days keep dripping down a dark funnel
there's no one waiting in any place I'd call home
so I just draw silent strength in the feeling of stone
wrap myself in the cold confidence of being alone
and let myself slide into the sound

chorus

as I ride i'm reminded of the beauty in dead quiet trees
parked cars and peaceful life, smoky breeze
one that whips out over the fields
so I push aside the jokes that make up my shield
let the cold take me back to another life
to times when I thought I had a wife
to all the things I ran and left behind
they hang like streamers in the caverns of my mind
and I'm reminded of all those who've been my favorite girl
we'd lie with arms curled together at the top of the world
but time flies fast and those things are in the past
and that's okay
with my head up I make my way
striding forward I still bare all trying to fing my best
and let my smile wrap around the sutured holes in my chest

chorus

whoops - gotta run, I'll finish it later

Semester Down

I don't have time to write about this semester, and I've been sleeping so much over break I don't mind (too much) that I haven't reflected on it yet. A week with eight sexual assaults; brain tumors; arms broken on video; and wildly popular metaphor races. All that stuff. For now, I'll just share something I wrote one morning during homeroom and read to my kids -

I'm going to miss you guys
So don't make it goodbyes -
We've made it through a semester
And I think it's been a treasure
People've been mad and sad
and people've gotten in trouble
a whole lot of you have made fun of my stubble
there's been a lot of writing
and way too much fighting
luckily, with (I think) no biting
and sometimes, class seemed to stretch on for miles
but every single day you guys made me smile
so thanks for the times
and listening to my silly rhymes
I loved everything you wrote
your essays and your poems both
I think you've all been awesome
and I love the way that you've blossomed
I appreciate all the happy tears
and I can't wait for the rest of the year
....
I'm going to miss you guys!
so dont' make this a goodbye
have an awesome break
and for about two weeks I'll wait
to see you again
and I'm excited for that then

Hehe.
fuck it; I type fast - I'll put up something else before I get out of here for revelry

Fossil Creek

It's vitriolic, but it's not nearly as mean as it could be. I suppose you have to know more to make it that, or want to divulge more of your own secrets. But it is the most like a three-verse song I've written; I just need to figure out exactly how long the chorus is going to be.

Fossil Creek
As I'm sitting here in this canyon, I don't feel abandoned.
I'm mad - at how long I wasa led on.

Listen.
You could've communicated better
let me know that others made you wetter
you're a better liar than I ever gave you credit
not surprised I believed you when you said it
when you said you loved me and you cared
even though your heart was never really there
but me, I wanted so badly to believe
I wanted it every time I breathed
so I guess I was easy to deceive
Every single rhyme I wrote you
was another part of me hooked onto
the dream of us fast and true
another reason to tell me what was up
to let me know that once again, I wasn't enough
but you just kept saying I love you
through a mouth wrapped around someone else
as I believed hoped and jumped
and I wrecked myself
now I've got the memory of how she screams
when she creams
it echoes in my dreams
as I watch everyone else climb in her jeans

Chorus:
so when I would lie on a beach and whisper your name
it's better to remember the time I thought we had and the truth were never the same
you looked me in the eye and lied with no shame
you'd already gone with him, you'd already came
so fuck the times we held hands and kissed, running in the rain
fuck me for thinking that when we made love, you felt sparks and flames
fuck cuddling and snuggling on the bedsheets we'd stained
and fuck you for all the ways I changed
trust escaped my grasping hands
and I ceased to feel like a man

I'm grinding out all the memories of you
Smashing out the bits of us, because I'm fucking through
if there's any worth keeping, I don't have a clue
I'll flush 'em all down the drain
good and bad gone just the same
all clean ripped out of my brain
cauterized cleansed and thrown away
murder the moments to build a new day
because looking back, there's no way of knowing
if the good times were just when your lies weren't showing
i'll never know if those times really mattered
and I guess I could be flattered
to be one of the bugs splattered
on the windshield of your life
impaled because I believed right into your knife
silly hick who thought he'd found a partner and a wife
now I know better than to cut my strings
to freefall for love or emotional things
so keep my parts I've already locked up my heart
thanks, I guess, for the lessons learned
and the scars burned
If it weren't for you
I might slip again into something fake true
so forget bending my neck
and the ache in my chest
I'd rather keep what's left of my pride
than give someone else access inside

Chorus

Like a fish with hooks in my cheeks
and a pole in my mouth to pull me in
I was a junkie chasing a race
I was never gonna win
You smashed a hole right through what I thought I knew
The kryptonite for my belief in love, baby, that was you
The straw that broke this camel's back
Ripped my heart right off its tracks
See, strike one was the girl in my hometown
for nearly three years we fooled around and held it down
but she just wasn't the queen to wear my crown
second was the girl with the wicked guitar
had plenty of dreams that we would go far
but when she took a year off
I was too chicken and soft
didn't think I could make it
and decided to break it off
a horrible mistake I don't get to take back
etched in my heart is her name on a crack
and then there was you
the third I thought true
you cheated on me and betrayed me
laughed and out of pity laid me
kept me hooked thinking you still wanted me
but all you really did was laugh and taunt me
I don't want your silly poems and your stupid lyrics
they're not apologies or answers so I don't want to hear it
you were right, and I was wrong
the girl who didn't wear thongs
who stuck around for way too long
proved to me love is barely for songs
and that relationships are a joke
bound like burning bridges to end up in smoke
now I know that never
is a whole lot more likely than forever and ever
soon as you meet someone on whom you can depend
know they're set to betray you in the end
so forget saying thanks for reality
or teaching these facts to me
come to think of it, you were just a bitch to me

Chorus

Written - with morning beers in a canyon, waiting for everyone else to wake up for the adventure walk; after Christmas eve shopping in a bar, and at home on Christmas Day.

I think the chorus might just be the lines that start with fuck; maybe I could have a bridge somewhere, too:

I don't know why I tried
when there were so many other guys
I don't know why you tried
when there were so many lies
I don't know why we tried
when we should've just said goodbye

...quiet, slower, spoken? I think it depends on the beat I put together.

Anyway, the memories really do come fewer and further between. Last night, unbidden as I was falling asleep, I had a really vivid one - the way she looked back in my dorm, her eyes glittering and her lips pursed in a slow smile, the day I took her blindfolded to that restaurant and Pilobolus. I suppose, in my mind, there was love and passion that day, but probably not.

You never really know. I don't think all the shit happened that could have, but there's no denying the serious possibility. If someone holds you and tells you they could never lie to you, and then you find out two years later they could easily do just that, there are plenty of questions.

That birthday dinner was a week before she got with Josh. A week. If her words then had some truth, I'd been boring and unalive for awhile, and I guess that would include that night - boring, unalive, without spark or shine. More likely, she met him and thoughts of me strayed.

Or maybe what she said was real - who knows. I won't.

The most sympathetic view I can come up with for her in us is that she was just young and confused, maybe uninvested, unprepared, or frightened.

The sympathetic view fits with some things - not with her spending a week fucking her ex and then spending two nights with me, but not wanting to tell me anything because "it would hurt me too much." That's not "inward," it was just deceptive and self-serving - it let her do what she wanted, without having to see me in pain.

Her poem said I took the long route out of getting over her - really? As opposed to her way, the short route? I gave a fuck; I believed; I lost my faith in things by the time it was done and I was hanging on like I was dragged behind a bronco in a bad movie.

She condescendingly told me that she "understood I would need to villainize her" or some such shit like that - I didn't need to villainize anyone else I dated, and I didn't realize that villainization was some necessary part of a break-up. (Was it for her? Or is that just for humans who are unfortunately bound by emotions?) It's funny - yeah, I villainized her; because she spent three months letting me think she wanted me and loved me while she had no such interest, that she spent those three months telling me cutesy things while fucking other people.

And that's what's interesting, now - it isn't whether she fucked Josh and Tony or whoever else, or just kissed them, or nothing at all - it's that I'm sure she betrayed me in some way, and that seems like enough. If she was "involved" with Josh, I'm sure there was more than kissing; whether that meant they were fucking behind my back or that he was the one she went to when she needed to talk about shit, it was still horrible - especially since she wouldn't talk to me about things. Tony - who she fed in Dod, who she'd change her underwear before she went to have dinner with his parents, while I spent months wrapped up in play rehearsals - who the fuck knows. And anyone else?

Fuck it - I'll never know; she couldn't even bother to tell me why it was she stayed with me. Of course you would stay with someone you didn't love or respect; it's inertia, it's not wanting to be the one to do the breaking. All she could do was send me some song - the point being "Hey, I'm aware you're in pain?" "Or, haha, she's off and doesn't care anymore?" or who-the-fuck-knows - and some poem where she acted like I would be confused by metaphors, implied that getting over me took nothing at all (no surprise there), and that she'd always given me her all - as in, not telling me the truth for three months.

Oh well X-p
(and her poem wasn't bad; it just wasn't what I gave a fuck about haha)

It was nice to put that into typed text that isn't scrawled in notebooks -there's something clean about putting my poems and songs on here. I wrote almost a whole song on the way to Hidden Valley to go tubing (I wrote the song out and most of this before we left).

I have a lot to write about school and break; but I'm heading to the South Side soon. We'll see. Pot roast calls. :-)

Fartin' in the Shower/ Fuck You, Rudy

Man – it is so tempting to restring my guitar and sit up all night by candlelight being absurd. It occurred to me that, with no power, I can’t get out of my apartment complex, so I can’t really drive to school. I can, of course, hitch a ride; but it seems so much cooler to just say “fuck it” and play around. Of course, this candle blows, so I wouldn’t be able to restring my guitar, play on my laptop and make beats – it’s going to die in a few – or anything else, so that will keep me slightly sane. I think I’ll just type up this song, and if the power’s still out, go wander around the complex and the area for a bit with a Fat Tire and enjoy the views. J

This song is one I rapped a cappella at VybeLive, the hip-hop open mic in downtown Phoenix. I was sick nasty nervous, and I went way too fast – but I got a lot of love afterwards, even out in the parking lot, from people telling me I had skill. It felt so good – here it is:

Fuck You Rudy / Farting in the Shower
Farting in the shower
and it smells like the ocean
seven beers in
and I’m moving in slow motion
Looking down past my meat
to check out my feet
and the way that my toes grip the floor
Drunk I wonder why we’re so sure
that we’re something more
that we’re so evolved
that we’re so complex
we don’t know what’s next
stop and look at ‘em
check out your feet and check out your hands
stop a minute and burn up your plans
cuz life’s just a stage
and we’re all the dancers
never met the director
don’t know the answers
We’re just mammals looking for some tail and some love
now and then looking up to the sky above
cuz we all need help and advice
on how to make it through life
We don’t know that what we do with our day
is worth it
if we’ll look back and say
that we’re proud
of what we did and who we were
and we know we won’t know for sure before we go
before we’re dead and dust
and to no end it fucks with us
Me? It pisses me off

I admit I’m neither macho nor machine
I am addicted to the monster eyed green
That spoils the meat it eats
Or even more the fire that burns in my veins
When I’m caught out of turn
or caught in my pain
and the one so alike that ignites my skin
when I’m slammed in the throes of that perfect sin
or the kind of romance where you lose yourself
and I for one don’t think I’d prefer anything else
I’m fed and I feed this monkey on my back
fires and monsters more addictive than smack
and what’s fun is that you have him too
and I really, really want you to let him through

--fucking Rudy.
Rudy defined for all the world a man
as someone who can
walk with kings and never lose the common touch
one who neither friend nor foe can hurt much
if at all
and that shit leaves me appalled
if your lover’s untrue
if that wouldn’t kill you
if the betrayal of a friend
wouldn’t leave you at wit’s end
you weren’t really in love
where was the potential for pain?
It’s true what they say if you risk
nothing that’s exactly what you’ll gain
and the same goes for friends
if there’s no one on who you depend
then there’s no one to care if you meet your end
If either of these are the case
the proof left when the curtain falls
Why were you here at all?
I don’t know what this life is for
There’s very few things I know for sure
But I belive that if you love someone
you should let ‘em know
and if you hate ‘em
fuck it, let it show
we’re all together in this mess
and life’s too short to guess
how everyone feels
more than that, we’re blessed to feel
to risk to gain
to trust and lose
to feel some pain
be forced to choose
to live and learn
to breathe and burn
if you live your life and never shed a tear
never just needed a friend and a beer
then you missed the reason why you’re here
I might not seem like an expert on the subject
jumping out the shower and dripping wet
eating waffles with pb and j
slugging tequila plain
still crusted with soap
and looking straight insane

But here’s my closing thought
as I return to rinse
That since we can we ought
If we want the bull for the horns
enjoy the rose for the thorns
smoke from bridges burned
and cold shoulders turned
nights wasted in fights
tears poured into beers
as much as
victories made
sex and pink lemonade
enjoyed in the shade
the smiles and time spent with friends
and the hug of family at journey’s end
I mean – we only get one shot
why-the-fuck-not?
But, I’m too drunk to keep chasing that thought
though I’m feeling enthused
so I’m out the shower
dripping and stumbling
and searching for brews

Damn. That fucker was epic – maybe I could just plug choruses in between the early breaks, but a short instrumental bridge with no lyrics in the last break – in between two really fast, short-phrased sections. Hmmm..


It was interesting how I used to revel in every emotion, and sing the praises of the thorns on the rose, and don’t now. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve recognized unhealthy psyches and emotions in myself, and sought to clean myself of them, or because I’ve decided pain sucks, post-Emily. Maybe it was a new level of style and pain, so I decided it sucked? Or was I “growing up”?

Well – shit. I’ve thought for awhile now that “Hey, you learn from your mistakes – means monstrous ones must be full of lessons,” but I don’t really stress that anymore; now I just feel pretty peaceful. So we’ll see – maybe I’ll come back to digging on pain, or perhaps this is a permanent, valid realization that pain sucks.

I still like the concept of being emotionally free – I just feel like I’m much more emotionally independent, and less free. Maybe there’s less opportunity to be so, or need to, or simply less opportunity to exercise it, living, working, and knowing with a bunch of overworked dedicated teachers. I love the sensation of self-reliability – it’s so strange that feeling self-reliable feels completely different from the cocky confidence of when I was oversexed and under emotionally developed. it’s quieter. It’s nice; and I don’t feel any of the “fuck, is being water just cold and dead, or simply lividly boring” that I stressed in mid-senior year and post-thesis. I simply feel relaxed and no longer aroused to respond to annoying or distressing things. Sometimes I just feel stony, and I wonder (and hope that it’s not) that it’s simply closing off to the world, that stoniness. That’s why I want to wait and see if being free and self-reliable, emotionally, can coexist. They seem like they would naturally go together - except perhaps, when you’re self-reliable, you don’t even stress the inherent opinion-of-others aspect that I feel like creeps into most popular conceptions of being “free,” of being the happy hippie. Perhaps, instead, it’s the self-reliability and confidence of some solo nomad in the wild (not, of course, that I have any absurd notions of macho-Jack-London-self. That image pops into my head and is just laughably far out to me.), and so you’re free in a way that is simply an aspect of being self-sufficient. Or maybe being free means similarly, that you don’t even have self-reliability in a way that we typically conceive of it – you simply are, and exist, and do not stress practicality in a Zen way that doesn’t even ponder self-reliability – coasting along and enjoying.

Which came first, the freedom or the self-reliability? Guess that’s kind of the odd tangential question there, just to check out far abroad I’m wandering at this point.

Anyway, DAMN. The fidelity is shitty, but the Thrice B-sides I downloaded during class are phenomenal. Plus, they segued straight into the remixes of Lux Aeterna I have, which are completely redefining relaxed happiness right now, the intensity of the song notwithstanding. I have not had such a complete, interesting – at least to myself – self talk in awhile.

My laptop’s dying anyway – I’m getting another beer and going to enjoy the outdoors (rainy as hell or not) before bed.
12:26

Potential

(written last night at 11 with no electricity)

Football, weight training, socializing, teaching, lesson planning, ASU, writing, beatmaking, picking guitar back up - all of that seems like an impossible list.

But I want to do all of that, minus the first two, hands down. And talking to Kentucky tonight, and hearing about the first two, made it sound like a wonderful thing. Granted, I don't think he does much besides work out and play; dealing with ED kids, his life is basically crisis management, and avoiding getting stabbed (unsuccessfully - albeit with pencils and pens) all day, he doesn't really have to lesson plan. But fuck it, let's dream the impossible.

I just dealt with my last ASU classes for the semester, and went out with my cohort; life seems unimaginably free and wonderful right now. I can't imagine what it's like to teach and not simultaneously spend nights working on Master's, but it's gotta be so much better - tonight seems like a small inkling of that.

It's storming like a motherfucker in Phoenix right now, and has been for a good 14 hours - we just lost power in the apartment. It makes it kind of fun. Can't post this, have no light whatsoever in my apartment, just this glow - what a good eve. The perfectly smart decision would have been to go to bed as soon as I got back; the horrible decision would be to restring my guitar, or open up a music making program - I feel that in that case, I would be up for hours, creating.

I won't go nuts - can't download any more b-sides; I'll just sit and enjoy this beer and type up a song. I'm strangely happy and content at this moment - life seems so full of possibility and potential right now.

The Bits

(just looked in my written posts; I wrote this post several days ago, during my prep, and never did hit post. I forget what I was going to add - guess I'll put it up now. I was driving home today from work to ASU, and I think I might rip part of Aceyalone's "Everything Changes" and JMT's "Death Messiah" to make a backbeat - with some drum fills - as a beat for this, rhyming or not. I think the opener and closer for the latter would be a great lead in and final fall out, and good for in between lines. We'll see)

It actually hit me when I was walking out of my door to work yesterday morning, that "Farting in the Shower/Fuck You, Rudy" and "The Bits" were practically at complete odds with each other. I liked the statement in FITS/FYR, but I suppose the last few months may have changed my perspective on the matter - I'm coming around to the value of scorched earth.

Anyway, my level of production is going crazy - I went through my last three notepads, and started copying out smaller rhymes - that weren't part of any particular song, just jotted thoughts - into a new notebook, and organizing them by idea, so I could maybe string them together, or use the ideas and metaphors in them. That started taking so long, that I typed 5 single-spaced pages, just based out of the last notebook alone, after I'd stopped copying by hand.

I'm enjoying that fact. Anyway, I wanted to put up "The Bits" - I wrote it at home, a day or two before Thanksgiving, in one sitting, lying on the couch with my sisters. It was one of those trance writings, and it was interesting to me, because I made no attempt at rhyming. I haven't written a non-rhyming poem in a long, long time - "The Bits" is interesting to me both because of that fact, and because immediately after I wrote it, I began to write some other non-rhyming, but more song-structured items.


The Bits

I feel - I think - there were bits
of amazing, of passion, of love
but the aftertaste of latent contempt—
in that shitstorm, I can’t find them
you cheated
I cheated
you cheated
I cheated
we cheated
we quit
and we stayed anyway
maybe the bits kept happening
but I choked you off
choked you out
I was bitter
and you tore me apart for it
I kept you from what you loved
and fell for a Manhattan lesbian
but you got me back, well and good
you sent me heartfelt notes
said you needed to hear my voice
through a mouth wrapped around someone else
and while I thought of your kittens
and your hands in my hair
you laughed and bared it for everyone else
kept me hanging –
on the little bits that still cared
and if it wasn’t on purpose
you still knew what you were doing
it was still a summer for a fall
a quick trip past the bitter end
ammonia to clarify and erase whatever bits
I might find in the pictures of your face
staring intently from my phone
the ones I haven’t already deleted
so that when I think of Spain and
concerts and the road and my bed
sheets soaked with sweat and spent
grasping passion and your glowing eyes
full of laughter and love and hate
it’s all dimmer
whitewashed and going under
sands of grit scraping away
grinding the bits to zeroes in my mind
it’s not that we failed
it’s that we tried
long after we should’ve quit
all those precious little bits
are floating in a river of shit
and I’m pleasantly, painfully washing it away
the jealousy contempt fear
self-hatred love wonder passion
all together all gone all together
it’s so much simpler
just rip the bits out
cover, scrape, cleanse
take the lessons learned
like scars from a scrape and use them
know them
more poignant than silly ink
take them, and leave the bits behind
all together all gone
all gone, all together
scrape, wash, cleanse, bleach
gone
a river of shit
wash it away
so you don’t have to pick anything in it
you don’t know what’s worthwhile in there anyway

3 am yummy

Been a bit since I put something up; just wanted to end my night in a sweater and boxers and a haze, deliciously writing and typing as I find myself doing lately. --Not a sweater, but boxers or nothing, naked and writing, inebriated or wrapped in smoke and curled in blankets spilling and spitting and thinking and writing.

Gotta talk about fall break, about red glows and beers; meaning to talk about poems - have a half-written post with "The Bits" in it, and need to put up the accompanying "Fuck You, Rudy"; need to talk about teaching - about the difference between rapport and respect, about the sexual assaults in the past week, about brain tumors, about inspiration and self-failure versus fucking up because you didn't try, about Seattle and San Diego and KIPP and Portland and Denver and Colorado as a place and Albequerque and Brooklyn and Southern Manhattan as wonderful places, with better salaries and resources and accountability and more fulfilling teaching experiences - and most interestingly, the talks with friends about charter schools and moving to Seattle together or Brooklyn or other amazing places, and laughing over dinner when you find out every carload of people had the same conversation en route, as we are all at similar points of frustration and success and despair and glee and desperation in life; and my most recent musical selections which are rocking my shit: Thrice B-sides, in addition to the Beggars album, which are rocking my world, poetically, thematically, and musically, the Thrice album lyrics remolding my mind in terms of their flow; Them Crooked Vultures, with Dave Grohl on drums, John Paul Jones of Led Zep on bass and keyboards, and Josh Homme of Kyuss and QOTSA and Eagles of Death Metal and whatever else on guitar and lead vocals, with absurd rhythm and melodies, full of massive pulsing purple sexual rhythms and orange-red percussion piercing it in a fabric perfect for oral sex and lyrical inspiration; Michael Buble, Paramore, string remixes of the themes from Requiem for a Dream, jazz funk, metalcore, French angst techno, Citizen Cope - with "Son's Gonna Rise" rocking my car-drive and home existence every ten minutes - all of these songs, a random melange on my current list, along with others, as well as a Thrice Christmas half-mix, with a cover of Carol of the Bells that melts every aspect of my being - all of this shit deserves a writing in this thing, and in my journal perhaps.

It's weird what I pull out a pen for and what I write on here for. Sometimes I think it's completely random (except, of course, when I type out a rhyme on here. It's such a different funk and flow, typing words from finger-taps as opposed to small-motor manipulation a pencil on a page), and other times, I think it's a mathematical progression of what I'm thinking - like this morning, stoned and walking into ASU, ready for flowers to grow from my eyes - and many times, it's just a matter of efficiency: Sometimes, I can manipulate a pen, others, the best I can hope for is hunting-and-pecking letters on a keyboard, and that determines where soemthing gets written.

Anyway, funny how it happens. Typing is faster, but feels less authentic, and is rooted to laptops at the simplest (minus one of those bigassphones), and I prefer more than anything the sweat of things scribed in my current book. As annoying as the moleskine (or whatever this thing is) may be, it's nice to have something new to remind me of the $1.29 notebooks I've burnt through, now piled in my room.

I need to pass out - writing, conversation with good people in other places - that must wait.

Good night, good luck, good love, and god bless - it's a wonderful, cold night, and I can't wait to curl up and enjoy sleep in it.