Life wasn't what was expected
We sat around thinking we would make something of ourselves
That we would drive nice cars
Have big houses
And a career
We had virgin minds to the real world
We would wake up every morning with smiles on our faces and such big enthusiasm
Thinking everything would be okay and we would go the right way
But that was all until the next day
When you woke up feeling not the same
And then that's when it all hit you.
The world wasn't the same
There was all this pity and shame
And you walked right its way
How could you let this go?
You don't even know
So what was life now?
Nothing more than just frowns
Sitting up all night thinking "how?"
So that's how you chose to live life
Because now you had the mentality of "why try when we all just die?"
And you wait and HOPE that there is a turn somewhere at some point
But you sit and hope only to find out one that there's no more
But that wasn't the same for your neighbor next door.
Because while you were living a rundown life
He was living the dream
He made it big.
And then that very last day
You finally figure it all out.
Life's what you make it
And every action has a consequence
But by then it was too late
Now all you have is nothing but shame
You do nothing but hope
Because hope never leaves us
But instead of hoping for your life to turn
You hope for the worse
For the day it all goes away
So you can finally
Rest.

Oh how I'd love that
and from a San Francisco organization no less
a month in the Santa Cruz mountains, no less
the most liberal city in America no less
and last year's winner has his picture displayed
and it is not innovative or interesting or shocking but all too predictable
Like something I saw how long now has it been?  twenty five years ago...
how many times have I seen this picture
a white guy, looking very much the suffering, creating artiste
handsome, like an actor, but not an actor, a creator of meaning
of art, and he can't smile, but looks away from the camera
mimicking an ad for J. Crew
it's amazing how only white men can write about the important things in the world
and the background, how many times before have I seen it
a graffiti sprinkled nowhere in an urban jungle
somewhere where preppy white guys never go
street art, street communication created by people
who don't see this concrete as an exotic backdrop for their egoistic posing
but as a part of their lives, as part of their meaning, their world
and he stands there, in front of it,
Mr. Screenwriter, the gulf of culture separating him from that background
spans the entire country, or an entire universe
but the implication of the picture is: he is home here
this is who he is and he can emcompass everything, since white men
as we know, have a magic ability to understand and synthesize everyone
all genders, all races, all religions
the rest of us are merely stuck in our own myopic little worlds
of gender, race, socio-economic status
but these spanner of time and space and human difference, they can be anyone
they can understand and represent anyone
So I look at the picture
and think, I could apply, but I'm busy during the blissful month of the residency
but how dissapointing, that I feel looking at this picture, now online of course
that it is the same picture that I looked at over twenty five years ago
pinned to a film school wall
in Los Angeles, in New York, in those edgy more conservative places
and it is the same guy.  the white screenwriter artist who will write about me
and others and it will be a lie
and we are excluded.  all the rest of the human race.
but what he writes will be exalted as truth
when I know, that no matter how time he spends wandering
the foriegn worlds of ghettos and genders
the one thing he knows, the only thing he knows how to write about is
white guys, because he is no superhuman
he is like us.  He will write about white guys and there will be
more films about white guys, who are supposed to represent all of us
but they don't, because they are only human,
and can only represent themselves.

As fast as ocean sweeps the bay
legs of crescent carry away
a sea of wonder won't reject
the sweetest moons you collect
in the palm of your hand soft as peach
slender spine strains to reach
the sun in the sky too far for advice
on speaking to creatures fragile as ice
because the sweetest girl, dear Josephine
shielded by blue instead of green
has a smile painted upon the wall
of the museum fortress she dare not fall
because the places you venture will seem
only to exist before in your dreams
never so lonesome as an unshared bed
cluttered with thoughts of remorse instead
slamming doors in the old broken home
cover the windows high with stones
when travels far and wide resume
remember your home is always the moon.

The morning breaks through the clouds
and the sun hits the green in the hills
so right,
like a scene from a foreign movie.
The main character embarking into unknown,
captivating rocks cradling them
as they ride the train to new lands.

Steam from the heat of day
rising and mixing with the wind and the breath.
So full but so silent,
only nature's stories.

But it's not far away
or a place I've never known.
It's home.
And I can't believe it's mine.

Feed me your sadness
and I'll scoop it up in a spoon.
Like a fresh bowl of ice cream
I'll swallow it whole.
It'll descend into the gut
melting away my insides.
I'll let it dissolve everything I need
if it leaves you solidified in my sight.

His nights are restless, endless dreams
of young men climbing ladders.
The ones who stop to fix their vests
are left below, row after row
there seems no end, distorted faces,
silent screams through bottle bottom glass.

Twenty winters wishing that
the dream might finally end,
he tilts his head and looks at God
above his bed, a crucifix upon the wall,
his Jesus hangs and bleeds for sins
of lesser men but for him there is no comfort,
he can't escape the scene of drifting death
and flotsam, sailors drinking blood
from swollen corpses, greedy
in the eyes like the sharks
that encircle them.

When daylight comes
still no relief, he sits among
his salty sheets and chokes
on waves of guilt. Deceit
will always be his master,
every day no different
than the rest
except,
today he’s had enough,
the dead,
they will not cease their torment.

Twenty winters waiting
but the dead won’t go away.

The boys who stopped to fix their vests
The man with gaping wound in chest
The burning wreckage going down
The screams of those who soon would drown
The oily water thick as mud
The utter chaos, flesh and blood
The rabid thirst he could not quench
afloat in pools of human stench

He goes outside and lies upon
the grass, a Navy Colt revolver
in one hand, a toy soldier in the other,
he puts the gun against his head
and pulls the trigger.

Twenty winters

Twenty winters

Rest

I drink till the moonlight sinks deeply into my covers,
Where time has no mind, and no side-effects to gather.
May I sleep better than the days before,
Never to watch my ghost drift away towards the door.

Some raise their glass to the sky,
Some to the clink of another,
But I and I, bare and dry,
Give pity to my nerves without a bother.

As I turn the pages of a new novel,
Where the moon swings with the stars,
Soft and jovial,
Like towards an infinite inclinations of a son and mother.

Friends holding the cracks within my hand,
Sucking the toxic liquid from my skin.
We walk together among the wallflowers covering the land,
As a single, sole thought of entangled vines that we suspend.