the moments before art happens
are Agony.
like giving birth,
you're forcing out this potential for greatness
pushing this creativity
out of tiny pores in your skin

you feel like you're exploding.

brain battles heart
inner turmoil erupts
just like the layers of your skin want to do
and it all plays out to the soundtrack of
"i can't do this"

pain of birth, of explosions, of erupting
for some it is all too much
too much to bear that
we let our fear

take Control
and we cave.
put down the brush, the pen, the music,
and we step away
into regret, into sadness

the moments before art happens
are Agony.

pop songs made us feel *****
so we coerced ourselves into penning curse words
and eating them in a closet we thought
had been Anne Frank’s- only that war had been across the
Atlantic & our grandfathers now only knew military agents
of strange orange colors.

we’d pin up torn-out posters & record some daily static to replay
wondering if our laughter could insulate us forever
or if our mother knew it hurt us too when she would sleep all day.

now I just eat apples (you tell me they make your mouth itch)
& when I worry- its just a thought of you, hating your thighs and
feeling lonely.
now we talk of how evolution kills off too many
unable to weather clamoring silence; empty mirrors.

at bedtime, our father would read us Aesop's fables with pensive eyes
& an antique ego he kept from his ancestors’ childhood
so we learned long ago that
clarity comes
(but at a solitary price).

He's on top of the mountain
Pulling me up

I'm on the ocean floor
Dragging him down

I cut the rope
And let him go

He's up in the sky
Soaring
Flying
Finally free

I'm no longer his anchor

old as time, and poetic as rhyme:
old grey heads waiting to chime
like carrion birds hungry for crime...

Some spend their life wanting glory;
repeating the past, their fathers worry,
until the mask of death ends the story.

But I will not be so shallow
to rend or to waste , fallow,
that which guides our fate towards that shadow.

Glare deeply into the eyes of war,
prepare your heart to end the score,
to end the game, and those wanting more.

we are all rocks. we are built up over many years, influenced by our surroundings as we weather and erode as part of the conditions we are subjected to - the trials that we are put through. we are compressed by the weight of heavy loads. we will be weighed down by our heavy hearts, and crushed by forces of the universe that are bigger than us. we are made up of many sediments, fragments of other rocks. the influence of others. we are the composition of everyone whom we've met, and their impact on our lives. some people leave larger pieces of sediment, while some are smaller than a tiny grain of sand. but they make us who we are today. and we never die. we live on for millions of years, you and me - these rocks are the physical imprints of our spiritual souls on the earth, because everyone affects something in one way or the other. we may not believe it, but believe this: we have the power to change the world - just by being here. we are a part of the bigger picture, a series of rocks that make up part of human history. wherever you go, you will have made your mark. be it just a tiny dent in the soil, or a boulder that fell from a mountain - realise that things would be different if you had not been what you are and gone where you've been.

Shoot the stars and shoot the moon,
shoot everyone and everything you knew!
Im gun crazy..

Aim for the heart and aim for the head,
aim where ever it needs lead!
Im gun crazy..

No one is left to be or nothing to see,
shot everything in sight but it seemed it was meant to be..
Im gun crazy...

it is an honor
to love
and be loved
by you (only you)

i wanted a hippie van
and you wanted to make me happy
so you took off your Vans and grabbed a marker

we wrote "don't worry, be hippie" on the fabric until our fingers cramped