We Are Who We Are

I just want to be in a car right now
on my way to anywhere.

Tiny American towns
with lazy Sunday afternoons
call me away from
may air conditioned office rooms.
Sometimes I see these four walls
as my living tomb,
but there's fresh air somewhere
and a nation in bloom.

Wind and sand
stings our cheeks
the happiest red
that burns for weeks.
There's nothing in front of us
except miles and heat
and we sing with the stereo,
a little off beat.

We're on our way to a place
we'll never see again
unless we truly are the lucky ones
every now and then
There's an ocean that isn't mine
just around the bend.
"Mine is better, but
yours can pretend."

We joke that we don't know
how we wound up so far
from our rooms and basements
and our dingy corner bars.
But we've known all along
because we are who we are.
I want to see a snow-faced boy
and I want to hear a little guitar.

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Feeling tired of being at home. I want a road trip that's more than just an over-night, but...I have - like - a job now. Downgrade. Haha...well, not really, but it makes trips tougher. Today, I missed driving through desert. Weird.









"Do you know -- who I am?" - Ummm...all my friends.

"I want to hear a little guitar. I think it's time to put the top down." Counting Crows Raining In Baltimore

"Lullaby for a snow-faced girl is what I'll sing, watching you, the whole time." Kevin Devine Lullaby For A Snow-Faced Girl

While Oceana Weeps

Humans are skin and bone
and blood and bite.
Our roots dig deep
in uneasy soil.
Like weeds,
we strangle.
A choking planet,
red in her face,
glares up at us
with bloodshot eyes.
"You told me lies,"
she shouts and cries.
I shake me head;
my hands are tied.
While Oceana weeps,
we multiple:
a spider's egg hatching
with seedy spawn.
'We are pretty parasitic,'
said under-breath and parenthetic.
I liken this disaster
to Revelation
only faster.
And there are no pearly gates.
What is the proper fate
for a species programmed for hate?
For beings who need bribery
to have principle?
Even martyrdom means nothing
without sex.
Oceana rages;
she curses and spits.
She's begging you, please,
to find your wits.
But her tears will flood
and her crust will cave in
before we recognize
the mess created.
When the sun stops turning
over our homes and huts
just say, "It wasn't me;
the bitch went nuts."

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Told ya I'd be posting quickly!

And yes, I know it should be "'It was I; the bitch went nuts," but the bystanders in this poem aren't very bright anyway.

This is another poem about the need to be better to each other while (meshing in the Apocalypse...for good measure). It's about having to open your eyes and stop making excuses. It's about the need to stop thinking about Life in capitalistic terms. Whether you believe in Mother Nature, God, or non-of-the-above, it's about the reality of a dying planet and the need to actually do something about it...things that are very doable if only people were willing to sacrifice for it. There's an "I" in the poem because I think a lot of people (myself included) want to help, but haven't really made a whole lot of progress because of disenfranchisement (i.e. what can I really do? and is my small contribution really going to help when corporations won't commit to making any contributions at all?). I don't know what the answers are. But it's about having to do SOMETHING.

[By the way, I recently found my draft for that 'Apocalypse' poem I was working on a year ago and...it's a lot better than I remembered, so I may get back on that one soon.]














"These tides sweep us out of reach." Sparta While Oceana Sleeps

"And you were too busy steering the conversation toward the Lord to hear the voice of the Spirit, begging you to shut the fuck up." Pedro The Lion Foregone Conclusions

"The bitch went nuts. She stabbed my basketball. And the speakers to my stereo. She called me 'cunt,' but nothing prepared me for what I found when I came home. Oh and I made my own bed. I lie in it. You lie in yours. You lie, you lie, in yours. But they want more, they're at my door with torches. Please leave me alone, you know. Just shut it. Just shut it. Just shut it. The bitch went nuts." Ben Folds The Bitch Went Nuts

The Way My Pen Fell

We don't talk as much as we should
most days.
So when the breeze blows
I mistake it for your voice.
You were real once
and you used to glow,
but now I can never find you
lost somewhere below.
So I turn to what I know:
a happy hypothetical in verse or rhyme.
I only write half
of every thought on my mind
because the rest is hard to translate
and I'm at a loss for time.
But my muse is hiding
under a smoke screen
and a dirty mask
so my limerick
turns blasphemous fast.
This isn't the story
I intended to tell;
this is just the way my pen fell.

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Expect a few new poems in relatively quick succession. I can't promise that, but I've had lines building up in my head for days and I can't mesh any of them together, so they'll all wind up being separate works.

This one is about people who disintegrate.



[For Jess...I have a new one: 'disintegrAAAaaaaatioooon.']







"In the days when you were hopelessly poor, I just liked you more." The Smiths Half A Person

"So you think it out on paper, hypothetical and safer." Kevin Devine This Box Is Empty

"You know you're walking around with a mask on, and you desperately want to take it off and you can't because everybody else thinks it's your face." Dr. W. H. R. Rivers via Pat Barker Regeneration, page 242.

"When you set the table, when you chose the scale, did you write a riddle that you knew they would fail? Did you make them tremble so they would tell the tale? Did you push us when we fell?" David Bazan When We Fell