October - From 10/07

I’m compelled by autumn’s subtle perfume,
to move my feet again.
On sidewalks passing, yard after yard.
The play is about to begin.
From the light, I fell as a child.
By the night as a Man I will land.

All things alive, will wilt and fall.
The crickets will quiet in number.
The chimney’s stroke will paint the sky,
as summer gently slumbers.
Our darkest depth, burns and itches.
A casting call for little witches.

Spilling out into the dusk,
the marching bandits hit the streets.
House to house demons tricking,
or maybe licking, stolen treats.
Corn stocks, theater props.
Merchants locking up their shops.

The molting trees are shedding on,
the homes that their defending.
The yellows, reds, browns and greens,
of leaves and lawns extending,
To pumpkins on porches,
with tiny lit torches.

Ghosts and ghouls and men made of stuffing,
stagnate in their wicked deeds.
Are puppets of our guilty instincts,
acting out our secret needs.
The scene of the crime is,
behind their disguises.

Sixty four and a half degrees.
Eighty nine minutes till midnight.
Old Mr. Moon, he winked at me,
an invitation of pure delight.
Into his perfect, splendid spell,
from off my tiny feet I fell...

Trick or Treat.

March of Rhymes.

Haphazardly and with surprise they land.
Some on their backs. Like bricks, gazing upward.
Some in the end, scurry to the end. To the end of the end they will find,
Their fingers will cover their faces. Their knees will meet the floor.

In thier quite, they'll coil. They'll crumble and collapse
In the darkness of desperation they dissolve.

Remember knowing the words you once knew.
Those things of golden treasure you covered.
Now lift your tired eye's, and witness falling trees.
Don't waste time folding creases, over creases.

Prepare yourself.
Remind yourself.

Why don’t you punch at the wind?
Why don’t you kick at the rain?
You don’t you fall from a mountains and bounce?
Only flesh and bone. You’re injury alone.

Beneath your golden carriage, are not your feet.
They are strangers pounding pavemet.
Some still stones in murky ponds are blind.
While crawling things, that spread they’re wings, will fly.

Defend yourself.

Moments of pleasure, Are only moments.
Falling from heaven like drops of rain.
You and me and we, lift our faces to the sky.
With mouths open. With throahts filling.

When truth is on trial, the truth is easy to see.
Subtle as the pounding rain. Simple as the deep blue sea

Now fight!

The trap just before the exit

Who would mock the mocking bird?
With fanfare in their head.
The same, subjects of shame, Broken and lame.
Vessels incomplete, with denial on their heels.

I ran to the river, with a pound flesh in my hands.
To exchange someone else’s sins, for forgiveness.
But, when I fell to my knees, only the water was there.
Only the water was there.

Who could tread on the trampled?
In view of their wounds and injuries.
The few bad seeds. The patches of weeds.
In this good garden, all things can grow.

I took a candle from the alter.
To carry some light to the dark streets.
Everything that tomorrow built,
Tethers to today’s restraint.

Hold onto the lever you conjured.
"Pixies and pulleys in full bloom.
We only imagine the physics of youth"
Will stand in balance on one tight rope.

And now that you’re older and seasons rotate,
You might learn to ignore the liaisons of hate.
The weapons of a younger man’s desire.
Guns for hire. A plastic empire.

Cheers!!!

Your liver wants it’s liquor like, toast will hope to burn.
Rotting is always a work in progress.
Into fires were walking in garments garnished,
With stitching made of fuse. How can we lose?

Happy 4th of July

The turkey and wine. The stuffing and wine. The wine. The wine. The wine.
So good to have our family gathered.
So nice to drink to old times and lost loves.
Drive safe and see you next year.

Let’s all give thanks

One drunk uncle dressed in red, with a crocked beard and a bow on his head.
On, Comet! On Cupid! Old Donner was Blitzen.
My aunt’s dirty jokes. What a trashy white vixon.
Just put the kids in the car.

Merry Xmas

Old father time never looked so good as the kids are sneaking sips of champagne.
Who’s the next? Who’s the closest? No one speaks of grandpas cirrhosis.
A toast to all the burns we’ll learn.
Cheers to this families legacy.

Happy new year.

Summer with you.

Tickle up my smothered smile.
Out from under this faux, fixed, frown.
Help me uncover this folded flower.
Petal by petal, I need you.

We need each other.

And when I’m on my feet again, I’ll lift you up.
To buttress your weak, unsteady stance. You need me.

We need each other.

I saw you chase a butterfly, until it got away.
My wings may not be as beautiful, but, I’ll let you catch me.
I’ll let you kiss me. I’ll let you keep me.

I’ll put my hand upon your heart and smell the fragrance of your hair.
Like it’s a campfire. Like it’s candy. Like it’s snow and passion and rain.
I can’t hold you close enough, too make you part of me.

But, I promise...I’ll try. Forever.

Chapter One.

You are to her, as a vulture to a dove.
Broken glass to her bare feet.
Your apatite for misere is endless. Senseless

Pressed in patterns of nails forming dresses.
Today her fashion will give way to one crouched figure.
A delicate pose for cameras unseen.

When foreign things find homes in holes, too big too harbor hosts.
Where digging dares to go beyond it’s shovels and it’s boundaries.
A worn is wiggling through it’s feigned compassion.

If he spits into this cup of blood, how will surgeons find a cure?
If she leans too far, for him to hold, her belt before she falls,
Who will catch her ashes at the bottom.

The Bottom of the world.

The logic of a child can see, the sense of things our faith might be.
When our tales and stories told at night,
Fail to keep us from...

The Bottom of the world.

All we can muster...

A chamber of bad chemistry is, tricks and poses in "over-doses".
Needy blankets. Greedy pillows.
Where just beneath, unkind and blind, fools abusing fools you’ll find.
Animals copulating.

In darkness they reach, beyond their fingers, beyond their teeth.
Blankets breeding, maggots feeding,
On tasty treasures from fields overflowing into they’re own dissolve.
Where once bare feet did frolic.

The "bad" is, the "sad" is, trying to spread it seed again.
Without as much as a safety net.
The instinct. The Urge. The moment is all they know.
Anything can multiply.

Now!

All I want from you today, is to bathe your babe, with his head above the water.
Is that too much to ask?
Are you going to claim it was your medication?
Here we go again.

Who's more hurt?

Here we’re raveled, caged in this shade, where orange meets gray,
Than blends into a blanket of black. Here we are.
Beside me, you tied me, with your eye’s that cried me, puddles into pools.
From a gaze unbroken. Our emotion unspoken. Here we are.

With my fingertip, I stole a tear. I tasted the salty solution here.
The answer’s in, the dancers in, colors that collide. A ballet before the funeral.
Crash your heart into mine, a final collision. Suspending that decision.
But we both know...

Green grass, blue sky, blood red is you an I, tangled in tomorrow.
Rainbows are such things that bring, us closer to this sorrow.
I found my escape, like an albatross. In knowing what we were,
"We were" I said. As extinct as things beneath us. We need this.

I don’t want to be, the first to be, the one that pulls away. OK.
I can’t bare to see you shrivel with that distance. So resist this.
I’m still hoping there’s another way. An arrow in cupid’s reserve.
But we both know...

Father

Casper, He’s a friend of your’s?
But, in your mind you can’t deny, he’s just a tale.
Oh, misery, please send to me, an angel named "escape".

As the holy rollers, roll faster than, your hands can hope to hold,
From pebbles, too sand. Through this hour we wait.
Like patients with patience, we won’t steal the show.

Only half the way home,
But, on my next step, I can say,
I’m less than half the way... home

Witness how your knuckles bleed. See such trails, in blood they leave.
Observe these wet carpets, stained with all your toil.
Crawling up the stairs you built. See your tracks, in fibers wilt,
The hope of this house, ever being a home.

Battery and bruises win, when hiding in these closets bring,
Effects of blacks and blues, smothering fond memories.
Dear Father...Such a tangled web you wove.
All your limitations bring, all these human baths of abrasion .

One so soiled and forever recoiled. A damaged beyond repair.

Again I sail, these waters.

You asked for a tree and I brought you a seed.
Now you know, the "teacher" in me.
You started to cry and I saw just a lie.
That’s the "sleuth" in me. The "truth" of me.

You pondered the end and I told you when.
That’s the prophet in me. Don't you agree?
You're lost every day and I still point the way.
That’s the "captain" in me. All aboard!!!

So what about you?

Dizzy in the vacume of your spell.
Cast before you you hit the ground.
On sidewalks of wet cement.
For everyone to see...

I'm waiting for the dam to break.
I'm waiting for this valley to flood.
I'll be there, high above, in my vessle cutting currents.
That’s the "captain" in me. all aboard!!!

Dizzy in the vacume of your spell.
Over the tides we'll ride.
While your fingers count thier rings. Petty things.
That's the fruit of you. The truth of of you.

For everyone to see...

The Last Supper.

The lavish leaking, of once contained, lachrymose.
Is the distal pain and pangs that remain, flowing.
The bitter spice of life I find, in once empty spaces,
Makes this cake, taste, that much better.

A fork in the road, like a knife through butter.
Is a spoonful of choice, I swallow with ease.
As clear as clear can be,
Without spoil and without worry.

I’ll take the good along with the bad.
I’ll take the next corner with caution.
Don’t stop feeding me, a slice of life,
unless desserts of disaster will follow.

It’s all a four course meal my friend.

Something as Sunny as You.

Look. Look there. Behind the clouds in your eye’s.
There’s something sunny, as sunny as you.
It’s not fake, it’s not phony. It’s not a commercial at all.
It’s the real thing. It’s you. It’s something so old, it’s back in style again.

Wait. Don’t go. Don’t be afraid. It’s only that lonely face in the mirror.
It’s something sunny, as sunny as you.
Like the camouflage of a lie, or the bitter taste of regret,
Reality is often hidden by, the clouds in your eye’s.

I’ll tell you a story about, what rusts and withers, but never dies.
I’ll spin a tale, so true it bleeds and in the end it heals itself.
Some trick huh? Some magic potion, I bet you think.
All a voice needs, is an ear too hear. All the keys need, are fingers.

You used to be what you’re not anymore. As different, as night from day.
You once said, "broken glass is so beautiful".
Now you’re on your hands and knees, cleaning up the danger.
Looking up at me like a nun in a strip club.

Don’t think what smells can’t be you. Put your robe and gavel away.
Remember when you bathed in the rain.
It still doesn’t matter who’s watching.
I think I saw a little smile.

We all know, the world seems tarnished. Maybe we’re just getting older
Children still laugh and play away, the way they used to laugh and play.
Children still bounce across battlefields.
Yes, I saw it. A smile in disguise.

I think it’s coming back to you, the memories of what you used to be.
There’s no reason not, to keep a little, dirty joke in your head.
No reason not to just say "OK".
Not unless you really like who you are now.

I don’t want to be a kid again. Buy I’m not ready to retire.
We’re not counting every penny but we’re not giving it all away.
We’re going to incorporate, some of this and a lot of that.
The "this" will be control and the sum of you, the "sunny you" will be the "that".

The inevitable swell of sewers in rain.

You’re the fortitude of strangers, waiting in lines that never end.
Spitting on fires burning, in barns, where horses gave no warning,
To the silently subsiding, structures of straw and timbers ablaze.

All the edges twisting toward, the smokey, cool, collapse.
A perfect pile, dressed in gray. The aftermath that passes, as ashes.
You’re the absence of rain. That struggle in vein.

Nothing collects, in our puddles and pools, like the taste of our waste, we leave behind.
It’s the evidence of our filth. The stench of who we are. Our ejaculate, immaculate.
It’s the gift too ourselves, we give too each other.

What Sodium Laureth Sulfate, could wipe this clean?

Our PC’s so PC, their built by politicians, who puppeteer our mathematicians, like magicians.
The mix of man and machine will blend, till the difference is just a memory.
Our veins will be wires, our brains will be tired. Our thinking, as quick as digital.

Faster and faster, the image repeats. More and more, we are never complete.
Upload. Download. Restore and delete. Were becoming the things we create. How great!
Soon our pets will be talking, and "run away", is what they’ll say.

What leash or cage can control a beast so big.

February 1984

This cold dusty floor of an old, abandoned, bus, is aspirin to my temple.
My visible breath, echos as bile. A simple reminder of what I left in the snow.
Across the field, my parents are believing, that I’m believing, in some warm church.
My fellowship now, is with the silent, lonely, hour long lie.

I break the warmth of self implosion, to raise my arm and look at my watch.
A gust of icy air, whistles through a broken window,
and releases a single white feather from somewhere high above.
I see it swing and sway and fall. It mocks me with it’s purity.

Sunday morning and my head is warning, the worst is yet to come.
Alcohol is a fair weather friend. The temperature is 29 degrees.
In a junkyard. In winter. In defiance. I find myself alone. Again.
I search my clothes for a lighter and only find cigarettes and a bottle cap.

All this suffering to avoid the suffering, of a ritual I despise.
Some good intentions, spoil the magic of discovery.
So I’ll shiver for an hour more and heal myself in this frozen, yellow, hospital.
Rehearsing my words for when I return.

All the things I put in my pockets, are better friends than a feather falling.
So I send it back, to start over again. With the strongest breath I can muster.
It’s time to pull myself up and follow my footprints home.
God can’t be imposed

Table tops

Gingerly, I walked the stairs, not promising myself I would make it. I asked of him only one thing. "Walk beside me and catch me if I fall." Looking back, I’m still not sure if we were going up or down those stairs.
The calmness of his voice was in contrast to the storm outside the window. Behind him. Beyond him, the rain was pounding that glass in rage. It was my rage. There were doctors and nurses and random feet passing mine in haste. His suit was gray and when he stood, I saw a single drop of red. He put his hand on my shoulder and said. "I’m so sorry... If there’s anything I can do." I lowered my head and wept like a child.
After that, it was a few days before I saw him again. It was the funeral.
It was quiet. So quiet, you could hear a pin...gently inserted into a cotton swab, Underwater! We sat together on a stone wall watching from a distance and I thanked him for sitting with me. I took a small bottle of "Makers Mark’ from my coat and offered him a drink. This old man sitting beside me. Nearly a stranger, he was to me and nearly a stranger he thought of me. But somehow I knew, we we’re brothers in his moment. Orphaned and abandoned. He took a drink and passed the bottle back to me with an sickened and trembling hand. "Ohh, That hits the spot." I said. He had a hat on and I couldn’t see his eye’s through the shadow on his wrinkled face.
We left before it was over and found ourselves in the house of pain. My aunts home a few blocks from the graveyard. It smelled like flowers and food and my uncle Ron. The buffet was on the table, the menu was bad food and despair. In the kitchen we quietly talked . Uninterrupted by the repetitious words of sympathy and the meaningless gestures of insincere compassion. Things were regurgitated and dispensed like phoney cash in a game. Things like, "I’m so sorry." and "If there’s anything I can do."
I remembered those words before. His words. That day. Why they meant so much more to me than, and so little now I can’t explain. Maybe because I knew he meant them. This kind old man who left his peaceful world and voluntarily entered mine when everything was collapsing. Dissolving.
Was he a priest? A saint? A ghost? Was he even real?
We sat across from each other and started talking about things that would remind me of the occasion. Wouldn’t remind me of the mood in the next room. I said, "Do you think I should be in there with the rest of them." We both glanced into the living room and saw my cousin Ken standing in front of everything else. He was telling a joke. He was laughing like he just told the funniest joke in the world. "No" Ben said. "I think they’ll be alright for a while."
We spread on that table, our bones like a fable. The poetry of two as one. Exchanging stories of comedy, tragedy and the ironic intersection of the two. It seemed like he knew exactly what to say and he knew when to say nothing at all. "God, I don’t even know your name." I said. "It’s Ben." he answered with a chuckle. "Hi Ben, I’m Paul." "I know" he said and than he got up and searched the cabinets for something to drink out of. He pulled two glasses out, one small and one large. Than he looked at the large one, set it down in front of me and asked if I still had that bottle in my coat.
We talked for about an hour. Drinking and getting drunk. All the while, ignoring the traffic coming and going for ice and beer and questions like "Is there a bathroom back here."
There was a long pause in our conversation before I got the courage to ask.... "Ben, I’m not sure if I want to know the details but, I need you to tell me what you saw that day. I need to know what you said to them. I remember seeing you before you pulled me out of the back seat and I saw you saying something to my parents. Were they still...What did you say to them? Did they talk to you? Did they say anything?"
He looked up at me than looked back down with the fingers of his left hand rolling on the table top. "Not now" he said. "Maybe someday but, lets just give it some time. OK." I started to prompt him again and he shock his Head and said, "Not now."

After that day, everything was chaotic. All the legal stuff and the details of the will. I had to pick a grave stone by myself. I thought of calling Ben just to see what he was doing. I was curious about who he was and his life. Now that I had a chance to get over the pain and initial shock of losing my mom and dad, I wanted to know were Ben lived and if he had a wife or kids. I felt so bad for not calling him sooner but I’m sure he knew what I was up to.
Two weeks after the funeral I did call the number he scribbled on the back of a napkin in my aunts kitchen. A woman answered the phone. "Hi, Uhm. I’m Paul Tanner. A friend of Ben... is he home." The women said. "Hold on please." "Ben, she shouted. "Ben...phone." and few seconds later I heard another line pick up and I heard Ben’s voice. "Hello."
"Hi Ben. It’s Paul..."
I heard a click on the line.
"Ben" I said. Without a reply.
Ben was gone.

Just when you thought it was over...

Coagulation embarks upon, it’s journey to heal, the gap you revealed.
In hesitation to us all.

Lemming.
Despisal.
Cog.

I reached the mountain top. I spat too far below.
To hear the echo, of when it hit your head.

You wept.
You bled.
Red.

Warm and flowing. Without the prize of knowing.
Why you fell at all. Why you leapt unnoticed.

Your savior.
Your hero.
You

No one carries your bones to the throne.
Back to where you started.

As a God,
You sat.
Alone.

You’re ashes are as empty as, the embers of the timbers you had.
When once as a child, you lit them.

Pointless.
Useless.
Waste.

Rachel, is all of us.

Rachel found a way out of this hole. Through a door marked "DO NOT ENTER"
Deeper down, a spiral staircase, descending till the light was nearly gone.
Into a tunnel of dirt, that narrowed. A tight squeeze, getting tighter.
When every breath she drew, became a wheezing, struggle.
Dragging herself along, till her nimble, fingers bled.
Not in hope, But with pain and desperation.
She found the bottom, the bottom at last.
Where a cold and heavy pistol was.
And etched in it's muted metal,
Were the lonely words.
"Now you're Home"

The cloud behind the silver lining.

What is high above, our petty pangs, and catastrophes imagined,
Are things, with wings, too heavy to fly.
So they fall.

Where far below, a shadow grows, around us as we play,
Apocalypse pending, our silent doom descending,
On us all.

Don’t confuse, in complacency, the daylight for security.
One feather falling, will surly be followed by more.
The sun is only, in your mind.

A fading rose, as dark as night, becomes as black as blind.
What’s worse than all the things you’ll lose,
Are the things you’ll never find.

A tiny, speck of light

Tonight I looked up at the sky, and for nearly an hour, I pondered that enormous thing before me. As wide as my horizon would allow and as deep as forever. The dark expanse that flickers with countless stars and planets, illuminated by our sun. The wonder of it all. It is truly humbling to take it all in with just a morsel of thought.

I focused on Orion.

Orion is to me, the most instantly recognizable constellation of them all. Hovering above, with points of light, like pins in a giant map. There are many soap opera like stories all connected to Orion. All the other great constellations as well. Wild stories. Mythologies. The ancient people of this world made them up thousands of years ago to explain what they could not understand. What they didn’t know, were all the things that science has taught us since than, about the world we live in and the world beyond. We now know, that these childlike stories are not true but, back than, they believed them. They all believed them. Well not all, but most of them did. It makes you not only think “How could they believe these ridiculous stories” but, “What ridiculous stories are we still believing in because we don’t know any better”?

Over the years, I’ve collected facts about this amazing set of stars, but tonight, something pushed me to explore this mystery a little more...Well, Maybe not pushed me. More like, pulled me.

I got out a few astronomy books and went to my computer for a belly full of fun facts, but, as I fell deeper and deeper into the enormity of it all. The size of it all. The distance of it all. Something knocked me over. Something impossible to ignore. It was something that made everything I knew, seem so much smaller and yet somehow, so much clearer.

It was perspective.

If you look up at night, and find Orion’s belt. Look down a bit and too the left, and you will see three more stars in a line. That’s Orion’s sword. The center star in this group, is not a star at all. It’s actually a nebula. A super huge stellar nursery that is spinning around in the quiet of space and will someday form a star or many stars. It is more than thirty light years across and one thousand, three hundred and fifty light years away. It’s massive but, it looks likes a tiny speck of light. And the reason it’s only a tiny speck, is because it’s so far away.

It’s, Now, I know you think 1,350 light years away is a big deal, but, we have no idea how much of a big deal it really is... None of us do.

The light that we see today, from this tiny speck in the sky, has been traveling toward us at 186,282.397 miles per second or 670 million miles per hour since the middle of the 7th century. That’s over 5 trillion miles in one year. Than to think that this tiny speck of light is over 30 light years wide. It’s unbelievable. It’s all so unbelievable

We can only think in terms of what we see everyday. What we know. Like a car going 70 miles per hour, or a baseball going 100 miles per hour. Maybe the speed of an airplane. (Several hundred miles per hour). But none of us, NONE OF US, could ever comprehend, the speed of light.


These stories of Gods and mythical beings, originated in Babylon, Mesopotamia and Greece, thousands of years ago. Long before Christ. Long before modern recording devices and video. Before books and photography. Before the advent of the scientific method of testing and repeating the test over and over again. They were passed down from generation to generation as oral stories when we were intellectual infants. Years latter, the time when that light first left Orion 1,350 years ago, new theories were prevalent in the world. These new theories of science were now associated with witchcraft. It would be considered blasphemy to even utter something contrary to what the church taught.

Still, the truth was being unveiled. Everything we thought we new, was slowly revealed as just stories. Born of fear and ignorance. To pacify our deepest fear of existing alone without the benefit of answered prayers and mystic intervention.

We are the pioneers. We are the aliens visiting other worlds. We are the monsters and demons that lurk within our dreams. The devil isn’t killing us and God isn’t saving us. We are doing both to ourselves. There is no Boogeyman in our closets. Just pedophiles with video cameras. No miracles of holy water. Just doctors with antidotes in plastic tubes and metal needles that we created. No biblical wrath. Just volcanos burping and oceans warming and cooling.

The only thing we have to fear, are those old stories still lingering in our churches, synagogues and mosques. They are difficult to let go of. They are still the opiates of the masses but, we are learning. Growing. Figuring it all out.

We are no longer the intellectual infants we once were. Our sophomoric musings have served us well but there is so much more to learn. There are real answers are in everything we take the time to explore. With open minds and honest hearts we will find them. Every student of life is a scientist discovering their world. Studying. Researching. Fresh new minds with fresh new ideas. On the edge of a new drug to extend our lives or learning to land a craft on a distant planet. They are my heros. They are the ones that are really going to make a difference. For all of us. That young man or woman, up late at night studying by the light of a desk lamp. That dim little light. That tiny speck of light.

Repeat offender.

Part after part, I pieced you together.
Not the way a “tailor” would, with care and concern.
Nor like a “surgeon” could, with attention to detail.
But, more like the precision, of a old blind mortician.
Fumbling through what he’s done before.
A thousand time or more.

Methodic and robotic, removed and unapproved,
By the drunks that claimed they knew you better.
The greedy. The needy. The bugs below.
Biting your hem and pawing at your patience.
You gave in, so I gave up.
And that’s how much you mean too me.

Rag Doll,
After the fall.
Worthless to all.

I picked you up and took you in.
With your broken vessel of hope.
Your Karma, your faith, your crystals and cards.
Your steady hand and oozing gland, of adrenal energy.
It sickens me.

Citizen optimism.
Champion of tolerance.
You lost the battle and you’ll lose the war.

But still you’ll cry...”Forgive them!”

To volley that emotion, and prey it never fails.
Is a pipe dream.
Of fools.
In gutters.
Unknowing.

My Petition.

Once I preyed, for a raging, dark, tornado. Something so big, we’re forced to start over. Something to take it, all away. ...And all I got, was a fucking rainbow. Should I consider that, Your reply?

Then it got hotter, hotter than the sun. Everything felt heavy. Even the dead, were sweating.
The birds all stayed in their trees. ...And I thought to myself, Is this a test? What’s next?

When it rained, my umbrella was like a band-aid on a knife wound. Even the fish were drowning. I never thought we’d see the sun again. Is this a sign? Should I run and hide?

Than the ground shook. and everything was splintered or split. There were ashes in the air.
Is this all you’ve got? We can beat this.

My dog died in April. And that sunny sky, quickly turned.
From blue to gray. The clouds came rolling in and brought with them something beautiful. Something I once preyed for.

A raging, dark, tornado.

What took you so long?

Goodbye.

Who’s this? Some benign little creature, crawling closer to us now
Every time that we inhale, every single, solitary breath.
He is listening.

Every day in the sun,
He’s is killing us
Every time we cry.
He’s hurting us.
So why do anything?

Outside, the wind does blow. “God, I feel alive.”
Rains must fall, leaves must fallow.
Why can’t he leave us alone.

What gifts he’s given!
From the bottom of his empty heart.
Gifts, that fade like flowers.
Gifts, that fall apart.

With gifts so cold,
They’re harder to bend, than to break.
With gifts so old,
They’re better to give, than to take.

Words, so soothing,
They’re kinder to kill than to spare.
Words so moving,
They’re starting to make her not care.

I wish it were sooner.
Just before, those rocky cliffs,
He walked her too, in deception.

He pushed her too far, she fell too fast,
She hit too hard, for her breath too last,
Long enough to say goodbye.

Two of us/half of them.

Godless, on this, terra to the core.

Where below, a cauldron bubbles.

The heat, on our feet, isn't burning,

But, we still know it's there.


So, follow me down, this narrowing vein.

Along the serpents, spine we'll ride.

In a murky surge, of warm debris,

To distal points in motion.


Curl up with me, till we become,

A single fetus flowing.

Over jagged bones, contorted.

Red, Red... Roller coaster.


We'll hide our eye's and cover our head,

From blue lightning and loud thunder.

If you are deaf, than I am blind.

That's, half the noise...and half the color!

James Maynard Keenan - Orestes

Metaphor for a missing moment.
Pull me into your perfect circle.

One womb,
One shape,
One resolve.

Liberate this will.
To release us all.

Gotta cut away, clear away,
Snip away and sever this,
Umbilical residue that's,
Keeping me from killing you.

And from pulling you down with me in here,
I can almost hear you scream.

Give me,
One more medicated peaceful moment.
One more medicated peaceful moment.

And I don't wanna feel this overwhelming,
Hostility.
Because I don't wanna feel this overwhelming,
Hostility.

Gotta cut away Clear away,
Snip away and sever this,
Umbilical residue.
Gotta cut away Clear away,
Snip away and sever this,
Umbilical residue that's,
Keeping me from killing you.
Keeping me from killing you.

The next..Again.

With your ear to the ground and your breath on hold.
The next generation, approaches.
Stampeding and leading a false revolution.
So shake their hands and take your bow.
Cause that’s what’s you do, with something bigger than you.

Their flames untamed, will consume the world.
Their blaze unchecked will devour.
Prophets of change, It’s all the same.
So hope you’re lessons learned, they’ll heed.
Cause that’s what’s you do, with something bigger than you.

We’re only embers burning, beneath a blanket of ash.
Stained bones, alone, and waiting.
Bleeding and receding in fear.
So say goodbye and turn away
Cause that’s what’s you do, with something bigger than you.

The tragedy of sand...

If a bus full children crashes, and all 23 of it's tiny, innocent passengers are killed; that's a tragedy. Of course, it's a tragedy. No one could argue that the impact and despair that will follow such an event isn't. But, there's something much more tragic ahead.

The real tragedy comes much later. Years, decades, even centuries later. It's as unseen and immeasurable, as all the sand beneath our feet. Between our toes and extending beyond our view. It's endless. Those countless tiny fragments of rock, beaten down so small they resemble, one, continuous plain. A volume so expansive, it's overlooked. So, without a thought, we tread upon the numerous, as one.

Seldom recounted in the novels of the day or on our stages or in our movie theaters. We never talk about this greater tragedy. It's rarely noticed and lies in the infinite and arcane details of our collective history. It's enough to bring us to our knees, and so easy to ignore.

I'll use, for example, just one of those 23 children's lives to illustrate my point.

Let's give a name and a story to one of those children on that bus. We'll call him Sam.

Sam was sitting somewhere in the back, next to his best friend Brandon.
Sam loved animals. Especially his dog "Puddles". He gave Puddles his name because, as a puppy, Puddles would play in the puddles of rain that collected in Sam's back yard after a storm. Sam had two older sisters and a mom named Cheryl. Sam's dad died when he was only two. His family was very close and they all loved each other very much.
When Sam died it shook the community for months. With grieving and despair, everyone who knew Sam was deeply effected. Even people who never met Sam sent cards with handwritten notes relating their sympathies. All were united in their loss for Sam. For a while, flags were flown at half mast and a plaque was placed in the hall of Sam's school telling of his friendly smile that would forever be missed. It's in that solitary word "forever" that the rest of Sam's story unfolds with the worst of tragedies.
For a long time after Sam died, Puddles waited by the front door everyday around three O'clock, the time when Sam used to come home from school. He would lift his head and raise his ears as the bus drove by outside. It never stopped. When the sound of it's engine faded, Puddles lowered his head to his paws and let out as sigh.

Two years went by; Cheryl put away some of Sam's pictures she had lining the mantle in the family room. Sam's sister Missy stopped using his favorite T-shirt as a pillow. It slowly lost Sam's unique scent and one day, she gently folded it and placed it in a box on the top shelf of her closet. A forgotten relic of a someone she cried herself to sleep over for years. She would beg God to spare her this pain by letting him come back for just one more hour. Just one hour, so she could tell him how much she loved him and missed him. An hour to tell him she was sorry for breaking his bike. An hour to hug so hard no one could take him away again. Even if he said, "Stop it Missy, your crushing me." She wouldn't let go. An hour that would never come. Eventually, Missy became a mother to a boy she named "Sam" in memory of her dead brother.
On the five year anniversary of Sam's death, A benefit was held at the local Hall to establish a scholarship in his name. The scholarship would be for the high school his father went to and Sam was hoping to someday attend. Relatives and friends told stories of Sam that brought him back for a brief time. His sister Julie recounted what a great swimmer Sam was. "He loved the ocean. I would sit on my towel and watch him dive into the endless waves for hours." She was never afraid for him. He was strong and smart. She thought he might be a professional swimmer when he grew up.
Two more years passed and life went on. The new babies and new styles. New jobs, new pets, new homes. New everything, but Sam. Than, one night, Sam's uncle Todd, mentioned Sam during dinner. Everyone turned to stone and all those memories started to come back. To break the awkward moment, Todd turned the uncomfortable silence into something mundane by adding "Cheryl has a funny laugh too." Everyone present tried to hide the pending flow of emotions by laughing at Cheryl. Cheryl, looked up and forced a laugh.

In the end, we can't prevent the gradual disappearance of Sam's memory from our lives. No one is to blame for forgetting his smile and not keeping his legacy alive. Life marches on. Like it or not. That flash in our minds eye, of this little boy and the way he used to say the word "library". The way he played with his dog and the way he looked at his mom and said, "please, please, please, let me stay up for just one more hour."

Still, the tragedy has not reveled itself as the darkness it is. It extends it's bony fingers, beyond the muted sounds of funeral bells and sobbing mothers. Beyond the photographs and scrapbooks hidden in dark and dusty closets. Beyond the weakening grips of fading ghosts. Of old report cards and locks of hair between news clippings. Slowly this darkness rises as the backdrop of our lives. The real tragedy begins to shows itself to anyone willing to revel in it's undeniable existence.

Sam will live on, for maybe a generation or two. Maybe. As an old picture hanging on his great nephews wall. At best, he will live again in a handful of brief and broken stories. A memory that will be truncated by a fire, that takes the last living relative of Sam's, who actually knew him. Along with his picture and a birth certificate, that finally erases all that's left of his precious life. Gone forever.

When, at last, all that remains of Sam, is a name in stone and a line of record in some government file, he is gone.
We are all Sam. In waiting. All of us. All the Sam's and all the Missy's. All the faces in old pictures. All the echoes of laughter and all the footprints in sand. Reduced to fleeting memories.

If Sam were born yesterday, or a thousand years ago, It wouldn't matter. Only a handful of each generation do something worthy of such endurance. Such permanence. Most of us however, dissolve into oblivion. Below our bare feet, on the great washed beach of life rest unrecognized. And that is, "The tragedy of sand".

The saddest thing of all, is not the memory of those we once loved. It's forgetting them.

YOU...

I'm tethered to this dismal thrill.
This glorified ride. This thorn in my side.
With headache and heartbreak,
The spindle's turning.
I am nauseous and I'm burning.
This spool...my spine.

With such great occasion, when light may bend,
It's telling in my favor.
For shadows will peal and dimly reveal,
This puddle of urine, I hover above.
So I might know It's warmth.
And only guess It's flavor.

My broken hands are bound,
Too high above, Too chew through.
With ropes that now I hang from.
And from my throat,I'll soon hang from.
The throat from once I sang from,
This solemn song for you.


Four leaf clover.
I'm standing on my luck again.
Walked right over,
A buried treasure in the sand

No lightning strike. No lottery.
No angel on my shoulder.
No magic in these cards I hold,
Just things I should have told her....

You're my favorite pillow.
And your kiss, tastes like a smile.
Let's make this moment last forever.
Let me hold you for a while.

You're everything I waited for.
So time, is just our friend.
The way I feel, about you now,
Will last until the end.

Forever...

Sunflowers

Some lesser than us, or so we perceive,
Wheelchair resident, is spitting seeds.
From his motorized, mechanized, tank in motion.
His open wound bleeds.

Trickling down, to dry and lifeless ground.
His blood, the summer rain.
To moisten that soil and the tracks of his toil,
An oasis born of pain.

Behind him unseen, the acres of green
With orange and yellow rising.
A soldier from, some foreign field.
Never realizing.

Every stripe of red and white,
Every star in blue.
All the things he sacrificed.
He gave to me and you.

Peter Gabriel - I Grieve

It was only one hour ago.
It was all so different then.
There's nothing yet That's really sunk in.
Looks like it always did,
This flesh and bone,
It's just the way that you would have tied in,
Now there's no-one home

I grieve...for you
You leave... me.
It's so hard to move on.
Still loving what's gone.
They say life carries on.
Carries on and on and on and on.

The news that truly shocks, is the empty, empty, page.
While the final rattle rocks, its empty, empty, cage.
And I can't handle this,

I grieve for you.
You leave... me.
Let it out and move on.
Still missing, what's gone.
They say, life carries on,
They say, life carries on... and on... and on.

Life carries on, In the people I meet.
In everyone that's out on the street.
In all the dogs and cats.
In the flies and rats.
In the rot and the rust.
In the ashes and the dust.
Life carries... on and on... and on... and on.
Life carries on...

It's just the car that we ride in.
The home we reside in.
The face that we hide in.
The way we are tied in.
And life carries on... and on...and on...and on.
Life carries on and on and on.

Did I dream this belief?
Or, did I believe, this dream?
Now I can find relief
I grieve.

Day 62

My name is Terri Steele. My husband was Jim's brother, who recently killed himself, as you all know from Jim's writings. I have been trying to cope with the new emptiness in my life by spending my time reading through Jim's journals and trying to understand what it all means.
I'm not even sure if anyone will ever read this. If any of you even exist. Jim once mentioned his, "underground army", but, for all I know, this might never be read by another single soul.

Back when Jim stated getting sick, he told me I had to keep writing to all of you If ever he couldn't. I promised him I would. So, If you are out there, you should know the truth.

Over the last six months, my relationship with Jim grew to be something I never could have predicted. Through our e-mails and conversations when I visited him in person, we became the best of friends. We often talked about Randy, and over time, he started to heal that hole in my heart and that give me a reason to get up in the morning and put my make-up on. Coming to see him was the only reason I had to keep going. We laughed about the holidays at his parents. We remembered together, all the good things we shared. We remembered all those little things that one person might forget but, together, we could fill in the blanks and paint a complete picture of how it was.
After a little while I stopped crying myself to sleep. After a while my heart began to heal. And than, Jim ripped it all open again. Deeper and wider than ever. Now I am too broke too fix.

When I read his words, I don't see them as the words of a crazy man. I never saw Jim as some paranoid nut bag who was afraid of the world and too insane to carry on a normal conversation. The fact is, I've never met anyone in my life as intelligent as Jim before.
He sometimes scarred me because he was so smart. He knew so many things about the world and politics, but he just couldn't really put it all together without seeing the worst in every situation.
I kept up with his condition by talking to his nurses and his doctor, Dr. Baum. It took some time for us to figure out what was making him so sick and I think without all of us working together, it would have remained a mystery.

There is something you should all know before I go any further. Last Monday, James Kenneth Steele died at 10:31 pm when his organs failed due to acute toxin (poison) from exposure to lethal amounts of Benzene. A known human carcinogen.

At Jim's funeral, as I walked past the dozen or so attendee's gathered outside the church, I kept hearing the word "Ionic" being whispered about as I walked to my car. Even my mother-in-law used that word at the hospital and though it hurts so much to tell you of his passing, But, the irony of Jim's story is something worth telling to prevent the same thing from ever happening to any of you.

What was, in the end, the cause of Jim's death, was the large amounts of Benzene he unknowingly ingested from all of that rain water off the roof of his apartment building he was drinking to escape what he thought was killing him. In the end it did. The roof of his building had recently been sealed with a tar that is spread to prevent leakage and one of the main ingredients in this tar is Benzene. Small amounts of that Benzene were being released into the rain water and Jim was drinking it for weeks, maybe months.

Jim never knew that, what he thought was preventing his slow death, but it was actually killing him.

I have done my own bit of research over these last few months into Jim's theories about the government trying to kill us all for some crazy reason and I don't believe it. I know you are all thinking I am one of them right now but, I'm not. I'm just someone who has lost her world and has no one to cling to now. It hurts so much I can't put it into words . I might never get over losing both of them. All I can do is try to stop those of you who followed Jim to think about this:

Please, Please, I'm begging you, If you are out there and you believed what he was telling you about the government trying to kill you, and not to drink the water... He was right.

"Don't drink the water"...

Terri Steele

The Mystery

If ever a sign, from God there might be,
It’s the smile of a child.
It’s the rain...
When it begins and when it ends
What it destroys and what it defends.

It’s why that apple, from on that tree,
Tastes so good to you and me.
It’s all that’s green.
That feeds and shelters. That freezes and swelters.
And still comes back again.

It’s the sun that’s shining, to keep us from,
The cold of space, that goes on and on.
It’s the stars.
That shimmer and glimmer. That rise and fall.
The endless spectacle, that thrills us all.

It’s the satisfaction of every breath.
From all we take and all that’s left.
It’s the air.
Ubiquitous and unappreciated
It keeps us alive and keeps us related.

It’s all of us.

Alone and yet together.