Posts Tagged ‘Tears’

The results of dishonesty

The results of dishonesty

There is a hole in my heart, and I can’t contain the light that is pouring out. This is the brilliance of truth and the refraction of soul. This is the damage that is done to a human being when you are betrayed, blinded, backstabbed, and belittled for trying to be more understanding than is humanly possible to be. The Froggacuda has held his enormous, razor-sharp, whiplike tongue long enough, and the slings and arrows, the sticks and stones, having come from all quarters, determine that the defense of the 360 degrees is back by popular demand, and must be enforced with the unpredictable and uncanny gusto that is the Monster from Red Lake.

This site has been populated with what I once was and, apparently, what I still am made of: not snips and snails and puppy dogs tails, but fifteen years of poetry, ten years of making music, five years of DJ mixes, and one month of unemployment later, I am sitting all froggy on top of a pile of meaningless (to you) shit that perhaps someone will wander through and find a gem or two amidst this midden heap of detritus. Although the catharsis of inputting and then burning all of my available poetry journals is healing, it tears a lot of scabs off of present and historical wounds that should have been viciously expunged with a gallon of Bactine and a scalpel when the damage occurred in the first place. Except that I am a coward.

I don’t know why I am so creative; why I am able to pour my guts out on the kitchen table and read your fortune in them like some sort of Street Shaman or modern-day Gypsy — to help you, only to stuff my innards back into this ridiculously fat and out-of-shape barrel-like body of mine, smile, pat your head, tell you I am alright, and send you on your merry way with a little bit of Murdoch perspective to think about. It’s what I do.

I am so brave when it comes to telling the truth to other people. In my own private hellish closet where the real me lurks and shakes his fist at a world that I never asked to be a part of, I tell myself I am making the best of it. I live, I love, I breathe, I get up in the morning, I go to work (when I have it), I get shanked by friends, family members, acquaintances, business partners, bosses, co-workers, Sunday drivers, wives, fuck-buddies, Internet personalities, and the population at large, and it all it really makes me want to get this thing called life over with. That’s why I am trying to smoke and drink myself to death like a modern day Charles Bukowski. What is the point of all of this happiness and misery, anyways?

Seriously, what is a blog for besides spitting ridiculously self-centered screeds to an unsubscribed and uncaring Internet where my body of work will be lost as another couple of drops in the ocean of half-formed content scrabbling for purchase or publication like so many Lovecraftian half-formed nightmares populating the craptacular pages of the 21st Century’s equivalent of pulp fiction: WordPress.

I was going to wait until I had everything I had ever done (or at least kept and found again, only to be re-humiliated by rediscovering it) pumped into this overblown MySQL database before I started ranting again, but enough is enough, and the tongue must be let loose to rave in the dark as an orgy of one. It is terribly frustrating to understand that the highlight of my life is the eulogy I gave in a shadowy, barely filled cathedral for one of my best friends Bela Feher, who I miss like an arm or a testicle (he’d love that) even now, and I DAMN him for falling off of a big rock and leaving me here to struggle through this bullshit they call life while trying to console myself that I can’t die fast enough and that his wisdom, magic, and sarcasm is still contained within every ray of light from the hole in my heart.

[ original image courtesy of www.basehead.org ]

Mute

Posted: December 12, 1995 in Poetry
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I wish that I was mute
So that I could learn to listen.
Then my eyes could fill
With the tears of untold secrets,
And my pen could carve
These feminine curves of poetry
Into Goddesses like you.

One lone onion
Singing in the kitchen,
Singing in its red net bag,
Singing on my cutting board.

He’s singing “Faith”
By George Michael:
Faith will keep him
Whole and untouched.

My beef stew simmers nearby,
Watching and waiting.
I hide around the corner,
Knife in my hand and
Tears in my eyes —
His brothers and sisters
Made me weep.
George Michael never makes me weep.
Wham!

Devils

Posted: January 24, 1994 in Poetry
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they’re the cries of burning cities,
cities burning now,
cities that have burned before,
and cities that will burn again
or are waiting to burn.
No one sees the twisted faces
in the smoke from the corner store
that neighbors used to frequent
for cigarettes and milk;
we’ll all walk past the couple
sifting through the hot ashes
that evaporate their tears
before they disturb the soot.

Sometimes it’s hard to find myself,
camouflaged and hunting fears by
hiding underneath the lilypads.
Like fear is going to to assassinate the Froggacuda?
But the memory is that if that is what it is:
a feeling lost and sunk in the swamp it was born in;
a beautiful first and last of its kind,
bred from books and desires and pirate gold,
from lost helium balloons and forts under acacia trees.
The Froggacuda is nothing without
one poet of keen eyes and quick hands,
a child catching frogs in the bog alone near dark
with a flashlight and an overactive imagination
full of Dungeons and Dragons books and Lovecraft stories.
Nothing is the Froggacuda without the puppeteer
who makes the teeth snap shut
and the eyes roll,
the ears perk up and the lungs breathe.
But nothing is the puppet-master without
those teeth, eyes, ears, and lungs
beating, breathing
in his self-esteem, his soul.

Playing Hardball

Posted: November 14, 1993 in Poetry
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The tears come hard and fast
mimicking the sound
of the sheets of rain
blowing over the cab of my truck.
They pool in my lap
and get cold running down
my legs, in my shoes,
cheeks caked with salt
from the crying,
wind chasing tears
from the corners of my
eyesockets.
And all I can do
is keep my head in my hands
and ask: why?
why?
why?

Patience is a hard
virtue to come by these days;
in many ways I thought
I had it down,
downtown, thinking I’m the clown
that, no tears in my eyes,
I’d surprise somebody
with the everything that I am,
a quick little flim-flam
and she’d be happy and high as a kite,
for everyone advertises
as the right guy (nice try)
but I am the drug that only I can supply,
and I love to treat
you like you ought to be treated,
in my eyes
and it’s not that difficult
in this day and age of phone-fuck romance
some people should take the chance.

Four Hours, Thirty-six Chances

Posted: November 6, 1993 in Poetry
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I spent four hours
reading and rereading
these private journals
of people who I do know,
I don’t know;
and then, done,
I wept,
looking up at my orange lit ceiling
(I still can’t stand white light)
and my room smiled at my tears –
refracting them into stars and faces
– wiping them out into galaxies
and creating fantastic places
without my normal, everyday fears
where I felt wise and understanding;
understood, undemanding;
freely given, thirty-six chances
to let them know they are my stars
and they are all shining
for living and not dying;
the wink while I waver,
and when they waver,
I am so proud that I
have the courage
to wink.

[for my Zen colloquium Fall 1993, CCS, UCSB]

Chanting

Posted: June 14, 1993 in Poetry
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you’re going to scream at me
but I’m chanting I can take it
throwing words like
broken mirror pieces of me
beating the pinata of my disguises
but I’m chanting I can take it
breaking accusations over my head
scalding me with tears
that I never wanted to bring to you
on the silver platter
I thought would do you good.
the stars I plucked
to put on your brow
have rotted and turned into
pumpkin seeds;
it was my sleight of hand
that placed them there
and your desperate want to believe me.
now you’re a whirlwind
of shattered stained glass.
I’m chanting I can take it.

Migraines That I Don’t Have

Posted: May 15, 1993 in Poetry
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you know I hate to leave you
when there’s that buzzing in your ears
that means your headache’s bad
even more than otherwise
because so miserable
and so fragile, in pain,
you look more like an Angel,
saddened by the world’s tears.

Rain Song

Posted: April 18, 1993 in Poetry
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I
I pray for rain nowadays when I see
Those dark clouds splayed above me, threatening.
I can’t always tell what rain will fall
Or what tears you’re crying to comfort me.
When the sunset’s burning and crowded for space
In the sky with your pain so apparent,
Your heart is tearing apart with these questions,
No answers; let it all fall as rain.

chorus
Go out and bathe and dance in those streetlights,
Let the nighttime come down as ink
With the rain, all your pain, it’s your tears, all your fears
And frustrations – they’ll leave you
Soaked and alone crying out for the joy of the rain.

II
Can you see the sky and how it mirrors your eyes
And your tears as they’re streaming down your face.
Do you think I can stay here and wait?
I’ve got to get up and play, get soaked and catch cold in your rain.

(chorus)

bridge
These heavens will fall like thunder but water
On you, so alone in your misery.
Drenched to the skin look within at your shine
Be an Angel and cry and it clears you inside
Just like the rain.

III
So when this storm has passed and
All the fury of lightning’s been spent,
Your strength may still ache but you’ll dry and be fine
Then maybe you’ll learn how to pray for the rain.

Triangulation

Posted: April 17, 1993 in Poetry
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one tear that came from the corner of my eye
balanced on the dry skin of my cheek; I
picked it up with my thumb and forefinger,
a prism of sadness in which your picture lingers.
I drew my eye near carefully enough
wondering if the force of my gaze was too rough,
then placed this halo in the sky as a star
to mark my Bethlehem: to let you know where you are.

Untitled Poem #146

Posted: February 11, 1993 in Poetry
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I am free of ties to glide the skies
and romp and play like a colt in a field
of clouds and grass and care no less
for life is a packet of sugar I eat
while chatting with a pretty girl
on the sidewalk where an ice cream cone
has fallen and looks like crayon or chalk
the color of strawberry milkshakes, easter eggs
and we watch the rain come in and get us
wet and warm and tropical release of angel’s tears.

[for Dawn Spinda]

Laura Moore in Red

Posted: February 5, 1993 in Poetry
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I
damn you and your love;
wouldn’t it be so much easier
if one of us hated the other.
I can’t hate you,
believe me I’ve tried;
I curse and strain
but I just cry and cry,
crying out for lost love:
to be able to love
and forgive,
forget.

II
I could drown in the tears I’ve cried
about loving you: I hurt inside.
the touch of your fingers, your time
are promises, memories from my mind.

III
I was clear, free from the haze
that characterized my early days
of loving and living, doing my forgiving
of all the hurt that’s ever been done to me.

whatever I need, stays.

IV
I slide from place to place
as worry gets ahold of my face
to sculpt away. I can’t stand
the tentative way you touch my hand,
that pleading look deep in your eyes
makes my foolish heart soar and dive.
I’m holding all my hourglass sand
in the useless sieve I’ve made with my hands;
the more of it that trickles away,
the bigger grows that personal haze.

I am still here;
encased in steel,
frozen in flesh;
I am still here.

the I, the me, and the one and only:
Michael, an Angel, this quality,
definitely the most beautiful man
regardless of position and opinion.

building and building my building,
my self: a tower of faith in feelings.
I’ve mortared each brick and laid each beam,
chosen the colors, welded the seams,
sweated past tears, made real my dreams.
I have constructed my cherished monster
and wobble like a weeble but I don’t
fall
down.
I doubt and I die
every day
sometimes I cry
and fade away,
but I’m always stuck with myself
so I’ve chosen to stick it out
until the morning after.

I’ve got to strip and scrub and look in the mirror
I get misunderstood and filthy bad-mouthing myself;
the more I scrub the more I bleed, feeling clearer –
addicting, this hurting and cleaning myself.

in that soulless mirror
is my only true friend
and he’s true as far as you believe him.
weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.
I won’t scream anymore, I won’t make a sound
on finding my construction falling apart
snapping cables in the storms of my heart.

there is nothing that can ever take me away
I’ve done too much damage already.
twenty-one years old, a missile heaven-sent
and where god has thrown me I’ve made my own dent
to sit in and scowl or wave to my stars
as they streak by in the night, fireflies in jars.

A Dream of a Ship

Posted: November 9, 1992 in Poetry
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I sag into my bonds,
bound to this wooden chair
with water from my eyes
six inches deep on the floor.
I feel all alone on a ship
gently rocking, back and forth,
water rolling, sighing
from bulkhead to bulkhead.
my head is down
and my hair is in my face but
if I was to look up,
my pupils would birth stars;
they would burn their way to the sky.
my hands are tied with
my own intestines, wetly coiled;
every movement
wrenches my stomach
in dizzy circles, hollow
like an airplane ride.
the chair holds me up,
gives me something to be tied to,
roots me to the deck; an anchor.
my mind hurts from
holding these stars,
squeezing my eyes shut and bearing
the sting of gas
leaking through my eyelids.
sails snap in my ears;
I grow a mast for a spine,
grasping handfuls of air
through canvas fingers.
I grow old and feel my hull
rotting as it surges
through these black waters.
I grow very tired from dreaming
of the sound of surf
on rocks, a shore.
tired from creating all this magic
for no one to see.
below, I flash open my eyes
and stand forth from the chair,
wet bracelets hanging
from my pale chafed wrists,
and I climb slowly to the salt air
of the deck of my ship.
I balance on the railings,
ignoring the spray of rain and sea,
and the call of oblivion
in the depths of the ocean,
my mother. finding strength
after strength after strength and
whittling them into kindling,
like so much driftwood.
teetering on the edge of falling
from the railing into myself
forever, I like being here:
I am myself — I have nothing but me
and my starry eyes and
my wonderful rotting ship,
intestines around my hands
and an emptiness in my stomach.
there are no more tears to cry
in the hold of the ship
for the toys I have lost
when I was younger,
refusing to grow up,
to grow old.
nothing can destroy
my beliefs; without them,
I go. I would let all the stars
that I have created
stream to the skies,
shrieking for me,
for what will become of me,
a bag of bones, a sack of skin.
I remember my stars;
they will remember me,
whispering my name
through the nighttime.

steve said C-R-Y
[in hidden eyes]
thee, tears may arrive.
striped little boy I envy your dress
AND your innocence.
(shrieking) PAINTING,
blowing multicolored bubbles
through your paintbrush…
I Re-Collect
we begged lightning with fish from the solstice
[once upon a time]
when batteries ceased to function
drums only drums and howling,
croaking, baying;
Fucking with the night in
flickering candles, canvas cloudwork
[fists full of earth]
mystic corrections of our skin, in chalk, in earth
blood leaking from my ears
as we listened to the sacred sound of the wind’s whip
[lashing the backs off the trees]
you and I and fish, standing on a mirror, looking through the grass
into the heavens of lightning.

Little Things

Posted: July 12, 1992 in Poetry
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I think I shall
take refuge in
my little dreams
of apes and frogs

little dreams of
big-eyed fish,
shedding tears never
seen underwater.

little dreams of
stands of trees
who whisper together
to protect me.

little dreams of
pools of color that
geyser happily
when I come to visit.

little dreams of
stars that know me
and of clouds that wave
as they pass by.

little dreams of
talking and
being heard when
I’m all alone.

little dreams that
I dream like birds
to wall out
the other dreams.

I think I shall
dream little dreams
of precious things
that love me.

I will sing you a song softly
of a little girl I remember dreaming,
who would wink into the faces of
the flowers to see them smile,
perfume tickling her nose all the while
as she would wander secret places.
this little girl I did love
as I seemed to quietly spy
from the trees into which I’d climbed
as a boy, eyes opened wide.
dreaming her leaving colored footprints
skipping in the parted grass,
laughing like the flight of a butterfly.
and I’ve been dreaming ever since that time,
drugged with memories more precious
and sparkling than her diamond tears
of happiness when she chanced to find
the too-shy boy in the tree tops.

Hoka Hey

Posted: November 5, 1991 in Poetry
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A candle
Burns
With a certain virtue:
Demon, saint
Hesitate;
Damnation speaks
I am
Revealed in
Flickering shadow
Heaven
Slender shining
Tear streaked
Patience beast
Dancing
To the sense
Of smell
Sing praise
To the arch
To the pedestal
Nod the fire
Dream the sleep
Of kings.

Untitled Poem #104

Posted: February 11, 1991 in Poetry
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He hit her
Across the mouth
With the back of his hand.
I could taste her blood;
Run, salty tears
Her lip bitten, hurt
He stood over her, threatening
Displeased,
Tensed to kick her.
He did.
Sweet Jesus;
I can’t watch,
Disinterested and clinical.
I can’t look away somewhere
Pretending not to see it happen.
The party when on;
He picked her up
And she followed him away.
I bet she has before.

Emulation Three

Posted: January 5, 1991 in Poetry
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Oh, what can I do?
Ah, distracted again
as I leave quickly to the night
on my mind:
signs of you,
sleeping peacefully in dreams,
fears gone.
cheaper than anything,
even free
have and hold you forever
tears gone,
rarer than the blue magic moon
even you
grow thoughtful,
aching for someone you should have.

Emulation Two

Posted: January 5, 1991 in Poetry
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I grow somewhat sober.
Saddened jesters
never paint honesty:
tears, tears
over my bent wings,
fallen angels
plummet past sparrows.
fears, fears,
waking dreams;
dreams of
half-parted lips.
spilt milk from many things
ah, do you mean no?
oh, all my trust!

Emulation One

Posted: January 5, 1991 in Poetry
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fears, fears
rarer than honesty;
even angels
grow sober,
cheaper than sparrows.
have to earn wings.
ah, can I say no?
tears, tears
as I gather my things;
even jesters,
sleeping dreams,
aching for kisses…
signs of…
oh, do I trust?

Sand and Sea

Posted: November 13, 1990 in Poetry
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I walked alone to the beach
To write poetry in the sand,
Just to have it washed away
By a wet and watery hand.

I stayed to watch the tide come in,
Salt tears ran down my face.
Not because my poem was gone
but for the beauty of the ocean’s embrace.