Oh California!
How my heart burns for you,
how beautiful you are!

The greenest trees and the most picturesque beaches.
The soft sands of the desert,
and the rolling slopes of the foothills.
My body, my mind, my spirit, all belong to you, oh Great and Wonderful! California.

Your hills are on fire,
scarring the beauty of your curves.
Your rivers run dry,
suffocating the green into brown.
How my heart cries for you! Oh dry, oh burning, oh how relentless this war against you, oh California! And there is no relief in sight, winter promises no respite, and the summer will be long and tough and dry like the ones before and before and before.

Oh California!
How I tremble, how I shake in awe,
your sun burns a bright orange,
smoke fills your sunsets,
even fire cannot detract from your beauty!
Oh cleansing rains!
Oh cleansing El Niño!
Oh how I beg you to save California!
My California!

My roots go deeper than that of the greatest redwood, California is my home, and not the most fearsome of fires could cause me to leave, not the fiercest and most ruthless of droughts could scare me away!

Oh California!
Let my tears be absorbed by your thirsty soil!
Let my body one day feed your hungry crops!

Oh California! I am yours, to the very last.
God bless California!
God bless the desert and the mountains!
God bless the foothills and the valleys!
God bless the beaches and the forests!
God bless my home and spare it from the relentless.
California is my God, and I hope she hears my prayers!

Long ago,
there lived the most beautiful princess and her name was Ornia. She was loved by her people, and she loved them back. On the day she was to crowned queen a terrible cancer appeared in the heart of the mountain she called home.
She prayed to the Spirit of the Sun and the Spirit told her the mountain is sick, because there is not enough love being returned to it, only love being taken from it.
Ornia, feeling her heart heavy and bursting with love, crawled through many cracks and fissures in the mountain until she reached the center.
There she released her heart from her chest, wove the vessels into the cancerous ones of the mountain and cured it.
Still, silent, she lies there, feeding the mountain love.
The people so loved her and recognized her sacrifice they named the mountain after her: Calif-Ornia.

I guess my first girlfriend and my mother were right in coloring me a hopeless romantic.

You effect me so deeply,
you're thousands of stone throws away
and I can still feel you choking me.
I miss you
like the low tide misses the beach,
only I don't have the nautical reassurance of knowing I'll see you again.

You're childish, rash, and prone to injuries; physical and otherwise.
You're so many beautiful things and you're a few ugly things and I wouldn't trade you for the greenest grass, the sweetest peach, or the everlasting nothingness of death.
I'd trade my assurance of death for your touch, for your whisperings in my ear, for your hairs in my bed.

I hate myself for feeling like this,
I'm disgusted in myself for writing this.

I wanted to tell you about my day today, it was wonderful, it was magical, it was sober and I did not grieve your absence; in fact, I didn't note it.

The sadness comes in waves.

My sister is a fantastic writer.
She started writing as a way to cope.
She misses our grandmother's house,
for quite some time that was all she could write about.
She wrote about the looming, gentle, green pines that swayed over the small pond and the way you could gaze at the water and see not only the pines but also sky, just as blue and white and occasionally yellow and orange and you could could see it just as clearly whether you looked down or up.

Now, she writes about God,
or god, (although I don't think she believes in a 'the God')
she writes about the cold mist from the bay that warms up by midday but there are no pine trees.


My grandma became sick.
She became very sick of mind,
although her heart has never failed,
her memory failed her and anxiety overcame her.
She couldn't live out on the ridge anymore.
She couldn't take care of those twelve acres and the horse and the donkey and the dogs and the very small cat named Po that only came down from the attic very rarely and only to eat. She couldn't take care of these things and herself and my mother and she couldn't have laid a bigger hand into molding my sister and me. Through many an ear yank and many a promise of the wooden spatula (a never kept) she forced and graced upon us respect; for the land and living beings like, love, for the land and living beings alike, and a humbleness before the beauty of the land and living things alike.


My grandmother now lives in a gated community. Her condition has stabilized through trial and error using psychoactive drugs. Her understanding is lower and her anxiety is much higher than when she lived on the ridge but the doctors don't want to make things worse with experimentation and my grandmother doesn't want to either.


My sister's words always bleed of the page and I can see the pond and the trees and our tan bodies and the dry red dirt, and I'm thankful she has this affinity. I'm glad she can play scenes from our childhood out as if from a movie.

his heart poured out of his mouth,
oozing and beating it bounced off his guitar and into the crowd.

blood sprayed from every orifice,
it was in our eyes,
it was soaking our shirts,
it made its way into our hearts.

from one heart to another.

love songs fit for a queen and young jewish girl alike, music transcends.

hail slowed us,
and only two were fed before.
but we made it.
we made it through high school,
wet made it through hard times,
and we made it reno.

the love that was given to us from the mouths of trumpets,
love that was sliced open upon a saw,
heart beats that pounded from a drum,
we returned.
we returned to the stage that which was given to us ten fold.
we spewed it from our mouths, we spewed it from every pore on our legs and arms.

we drowned in love,
we drowned in red, gushing love

and we loved it.

On the day of worship the Temple filled.
It had been three years since the Messiah left, and nobody had forgotten.

The Priests of Tek dawned their red robes
and Father John Misty took his place at the altar, his heart heavy yet full of chagrin.

He clears his throat,
my fellow children of yonder Year,
my sisters of Sand,
my brothers of Dust,
my lovers of Greed,
here now what I say,
for I speaketh not.

for now speaks The Shrike,
for now speaks The Lord of Atonement,
your God of Pain,
your mystifying Excellence of Death.

Father Misty reached into his black robe and drew forth a small child.
What life may have been left in the infant was destroyed when Father John Misty stuck the unmoving body onto the red spike protruding from the altar, the spike entering the body through the ****, and reaching an inch from the soft skull.

Father John Misty's voice took on a lower town, yet softer, not forgiving, yet all knowing.

This child has a name.
This child is Jesus Christ.
This child will grow as if alive.
And before the rough congregations eyes the child began to grow on the spire. The limbs first lengthened, than filled out. The child's chest expanded and the head grew bigger. Father Misty then hoisted him off of the spire, and set him, bleeding, before the congregation. The body began to shift, jerky movements before the skin appeared to bubble. A low gutteral sound began to emanate from now full grown man. He lifted his torso and head up and looked at each member of The Temple of Ten individually.

He spoke

I am your savior,
I am unfruitful death,
I am unwarranted pain,
I am money being cheated from the desperate man,
I am the brains taken from a lobotomite,
I am the destruction of a hurricane,
I am as dead as the gasoline you **** for,
I am as dead as you are.

I am Jesus Christ,
this is not the first time you've seen me,
this will not be the last.
You are allowed to die now.

And they did.

Let me write my love
On every wall
I will paint entire
Cities with your name
Every metaphor a
Thinly veiled attempt
To describe the stars
In your eyes

Let me compose symphonies -
Conduct orchestras and choirs
To sing your praise
Every note an ode to
The way the moonlight
Caresses the curves of your face

Let me put brush to canvas
And I will command
Every hue
Every brushstrokes
To reveal the secret
Of your smile

And if you let me
I would dedicate
my entire life
To master every art form
If it meant I could accurately convey
The feelings you stir within me

I know back roads and bonfires.
I know pine trees and rivers.
I know parking lots and cigarettes.
I know trailers and trailblazers.

The day I was born I was wrapped in dust,
it coated my skin and made me sneeze.
I was laid down on a bed of dust and my nose began to bleed, it hasn't stopped.

In school we'd throw a tennis ball against a wall, we'd run through the field, we didn't have swings, we didn't have a soccer ball.
We read from dusty books, we inhaled the words and dust alike.

In high school we drove fast down back roads. We drank beer and started a fire. We swam in the rivers and smoked doobies on the rocks.
These are the things I know.
I know this small town, I know the people in it, I know the trees and I know the back roads.
I don't know heartbreak.
I don't know alcoholism.
I don't know anything that is not covered in dust, I don't know anything beyond this valley.

I spent some time today with two beautiful people.
Together, we did disgusting things; we smoked cigarettes, we spoke about our experiences in abusive relationships, and we tried to spit on cars driving by.

I looked at the clouds and I knew you were upset. I looked at the clouds and I knew I loved you. In that moment and in this moment I love you. I love the boy we were with and I love his father.

Human beings are the only creatures capable of committing evil because we are the only ones who have an idea of what evil is, therefore we are the only creatures who can choose to be evil. Humankind is the only species to ever enslave a living creature. We've done it to every animal on earth and we've done it to our brothers.
A lion mother killing a baby antelope is not evil. The same lion mother ripping the esophagus out of an antelope's neck is not evil.

I think I may be evil. I think I've caused people pain. Pain has been dealt unto me and being a man who respects and strives for fairness, I have dealt pain unto those least deserving. I love you like the moon loves you (as the moon must) and this makes you least deserving of any pain and you're in so much pain, you're in so much pain and I caused you pain two years ago and men continue to cause you pain and I brought you that cassette to try and put a bandaid on a two year old **** that has already healed and I hope it's enough

I remember the night I graduated from Olympus Mons Military Academy.
I remember what my father told me,
the "one hundred percent true story of the creation of mankind."

There was a being who lived on Venus, all alone he lived, so alone he wasn't even sure he was living. This being had no name, but they had a heart that beat and a mind that thought.
He lived on a Venus that this universe has never seen, nor will ever see. Space and time are fabrics, but even the finest of linens have space, impossibly small amounts of space and within them universes. This being lived on a Venus woven into the fabric of time itself.

This being prepared a torch,
fueled by matter the likes of which humanity knew, but has forgotten and will never remember.
He lit this torch and carried it through the fabric of time.
He spoke to beings there about time and he did not like what they thought of time and so he took the torch elsewhere, abandoning the others in a perfect nothingness.

He took his torch to Mercury and asked the beings there what they thought of space.
He did not like what they had to say about space and so he left them in their chaotic abundance of space.

Dissatisfied, he traveled to the furthest edge of the universe and looked Beyond. He asked the beings there what they thought of space and time.
They did not answer.
He asked them what they thought of existence and they told him to stop speaking.
They asked him what fueled his torch and he refused the answer.
They grew angry and decided to try and strike a bargain.
They told him they'd reveal their thoughts on time and space if he reveals what burns his torch.
They told him time is only within his mind and that space is a projection thereof.

He fled.
He fled to earth and dropped his torch there, and it burned to the center of the planet.

He returned to the fabric of Venus and thought for an impossible amount of time and willed time and space to cease and yet he could not.

After, he willed himself to cease existing and he did.

His torch stopped burning with him and humankind was born from the ashes, they crawled from the center of Earth and wept for their creator.

I asked my father what this meant and he told me to stop speaking, and asked me what fuels my torch. Once I answer that, I will understand.