The brain is a pretty rad little doodad. Sitting atop your neck, buzzing with blood and budding thoughts like an apple tree in spring.
I think it's fascinating that we're still quire clueless as to how it really works.
There's one particular part that still fascinates me, namely, memory.

Memories are the cranial equivalent of keeping a diary or writing in a journal. a collection of feelings and happenings of days gone by and words once said.
There are a few journal entries, if you will, that stand out to me. Ones I made with a girl... let's call her B.

If B were here right now, I'd look her in her big brown eyes and ask her:

Do you remember?

Do you remember the divine way the curves of your body fit into mine was we lay in an amorous embrace amongst the blankets and downy pillows?

Do you remember the way I told you a million times that I loved your hair. Your angelic, graceful hair, even though you thought it was too long and too messy?

How we walked through the forest for hours, talking about nothing and nonsense, and how we sat on a log for what seemed like eternity until I manufactured enough courage to finally kiss you?

They say that elephants never forget, and every time you cross my mind I feel my nose getting a little longer and my skin turning a little greyer.

Do you remember? Because I sure as hell do.

Do you remember how adorable you looked in those pajama pants of mine that were about a foot too long for you because you forgot to bring your own?

Do you remember how we sat on a bench and watched the birds flit from feeder to feeder as the sun waved us a crimson farewell?

Do you remember the feeling of your lips upon my lips, and the simple fact that it is impossible to properly describe that in any banal combination of 26 tired characters?

Do you remember the bittersweet intermingling of the smells of my eighty dollar cologne and your forty dollar shampoo?

Do you remember the way we looked into each other’s eyes? The vast universes of possibilities leaping from neuron to neuron behind those irises?

Wonderful memories. Pleasant memories. You couldn’t ask for anything better than these kind of memories. But there’s more. And there’s a reason why they’re just memories.

I remember the way the blood drained from my face like your used bath water circled the drain in my bathtub, and how my heart went on strike and stopped beating when you told me we couldn’t be together.

I remember how similar the crunch of the leaves and twigs under our booted feet sounded to the cracking and shattering of my sanity as you drove away on that sombre day.

I remember all of the dreams my brain pumped out of its pitiful pineal gland in a futile attempt to travel back in time.

I remember the empty spot in my bed and the gaping and gushing hole in my heart that still exists
To
This
Day.

But for all of these melancholy memories, these rotten ruminations, the beast of anger has yet to rear its matted mane.

In fact,

I thank you.

I thank you for this sadness, this regret, this longing, and this acute absence of rage,

For it is proof that I am alive.

I thank you for this sorrow, for this awful ammunition, for inspiration to machine masterpieces from the melancholy.

For what is light without darkness?

What is life without death, and love without loss?

So thank you.

I look back on our shared seconds not with eyes full of misplaced malice and fury,

But with gratitude.

Because even through tragedy

The heart survives.

There was a time of peace
Now a distant memory
These battles have left me wounded
Alone and scarred
Here lying on this ground
In the end, I realize
I was not against any other
I was only at war with myself

It burns. So deathly excruciating.

It's like a never-ending, heart wrenching feeling, that separates all other emotions, all other pains, and all other scars apart.

That feeling of regret and fallen memories, colliding with each other and dragging you down so low that Hell appears to be Heaven.

Why? Why after so many years?

After so many others have managed to steal my heart, even if it was just for a moment.

Why? Even though I know those days are over, that they could never begin again, that there will always be a broken link and I will always shatter, fall, and crumble once more.

Why are these emotions still here? Why do they linger like a black cloud, suffocating me and chaining me down like a wild animal?

I know that you are only a memory, so then why are you still here?

Why do I think about you, dream about you?

Why even though I know all of your flaws and your undeniably inexcusable actions do I grip at my heart and say "I still love you"?

Even though time after time I have told myself the very opposite.

Time and time again I have banished you from my life and yet hoped there was still a chapter left of this dark story.

Why after so many countless times where I have been defeated by you, where I have fallen once more for the ****** games you play,
twisting your black fingers around my spine and seeing how far you can go until it breaks?

Why do my forsaken eyes mistake you as an angel, when you are the devil himself?

Must I continue to have hope, wishing that I could try again, even though I know you're going to once more watch as I lose all sight of the truth?

Sinister and vile as you are, relish in my delusional state, knowing you have me in your claws which scrape at my back and leave scars that not even God could heal.

Do you even know how disgusting, how sickening and maddening it feels to know that you can't even see the pain you have inflicted on me? Sure you can see the bandages, but are you really that blind to the truth of their nature?

How deep these scars truly run? How badly and desperately I screamed and begged for help inside as you dug your claws into my flesh and carved them out yourself?

Can you not see the depression, the hopeless battered soul seeping through my eyes?

I pretend I am strong. I live every day breaking at the cracks and somehow manage not to collapse into a pile of broken pieces.

Tears are dried out and the ache of a heart that has been stomped on so severely that it bleeds gray is only a small burden compared to all of the rest.

I walk on a path where there is a light just in reach, but the path vanishes once you have come close enough to that hopeful light that you can brush it with the tips of your fingers.

Do you have any idea what it feels like to look in the mirror and have to remind yourself every single day that you were never good enough?

That you are a wasted canvas, painted beautifully at first but then crumpled and thrown out because you never had a chance at being satisfactory.

You will never understand that my own emotions are poisoning me.

You have grabbed at my throat and shaken me so violently that I am unable to move, paralyzed in shame. Paralyzed in sorrow.

And yet, as I look into your eyes, I am mesmerized by your face, I fall into a trace, trapped in your spell. Trapped in this deadly cycle.

You have dragged me down into this pitiful thing. This choking, lifeless relationship where I struggle to stay alive while you climb higher on your pedestal.

And despite my previous errors, I willingly fall into your hands. Blinded by the false light you shine above your head.

When I was born I asked the doctor, how he thought he did?
He recalled,
"Exquisite, it was a perfect delivery."
I rebutted,
"Then why am I still attached to the umbilical chord?"
He snipped me away from the tangling sheathe preventing me from exploration.
I leapt off the crinkling hospital bed paper and onto the goose-bump extracting tile floor.
Playfully bobbing my head as I walked into the world whilst giving the blonde doe-eyed nurse a crumpled note arranging what time I would pick her up for
dinner that night.
--Nurses enjoy being taken care of too.

When I was in preschool my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up.
I told her, "I want to feel the love of a woman who makes me happy everyday and loves me for being me."
She under cut my desired fate, "That's not a something you can work for."
I whispered in her ear, "I know you have never felt love from another person."
She began to cry.
I told her, "That tears are just water for her soul to grow."
She got married later that spring after the rain had stopped,
--Her soul grew enough to show.

When I was seven years old a neighborhood bully stole my bicycle.
I cried for four minutes.
I was angry for about an hour.
Instead of telling him that my dad could beat up his dad
I began to wear my helmet everywhere I went.
I shouted to the other boys in my class,
"I had an invisible superb-deathly speedy-extraordinary-intergalactic- bike."
Two weeks later that same bully gave me my bike back.
As he relentlessly rubbed his knuckles into the top part of my scalp I thought nothing, but that this is the reason why my Grandpa went bald.
Then he muttered through his wheezing breaths of anger,
"My invisible bicycle was much faster than anything your ***** daddy could have bought you."
--Dad's, they love hypothetical fighting.

When I was eleven years old two airplanes hit two buildings in New York City.
I did not understand.
I asked my teacher, "Why would God make evil people?"
Through her tears she explained to me, "Some people are just born evil."
I shouted under my breath, "People are not born evil...
implementing ideas in the sponge of a youth's mind is what is morally corrupt and evil!"
--Corruption is the first cause of terrorism.

When I was fifteen years old I had my first real serious girlfriend.
I did not understand, again.
I exasperated to my father over drinking our first father-son beer,
"How do I know when I love a woman?"
He nostalgically took a drag of his menthol cigarette and as the smoke made it's way through his nose like fog in a canyon he said to me,
"Whenever you look into her eyes and know that there is nothing you wouldn't do for her, that is love."
Before he could reach down and crack another pilsner I told him,
"Dad I look a little lower than her eyes and that is where... everything I would do to her."
--Hormones are a *****.

When I was twenty-one years old my mom told me I couldn't come back home after I graduated college.
I begged her to give me time. I will make it, I promise.
I shouted in the driveway with all my belongings she had neatly placed for me to pack into my car, "How do I know when I am ready to be on my own?"
She didn't have to say anything for there was a brown envelope on top of my neatly folded clothes; that mysterious folding method all mom's know but I
could never seem to figure out,
"Son, you won't know. You won't know until you are poor, hungry, cold and exhausted everyday from trying to make something of your life. The character
you will build will help you later in life when you have a family of your own. I promise. I am not a tyrant, I care too much to see you widdle away here with me
in obscurity and waste all the dreams I know you have. I love you my baby."
--Mom's, even though they don't cut the umbilical chord...they cut the umbilical chord.

Sit back. Relax. Take a breath. Take a minute. Take a hit. Take a drink. Take a sting. Take a shot. Take a line. Take a day. Take a time. Take a mental Picture. Take a pill. Take something you've always wanted. Sit back and chill..

Sit back, watch the ashes, their crumbling down.
Keep your head in the sky. Keep your feet on the ground.
Keep your buzz going. Don't ever come down.
Keep your face smiling and don't ever frown.
Keep the toxins flowing. Keep your head held high.
Keep your thoughts clear. Stop wondering why.
Keep your hopes up. Drink that whiskey and rye.
Keep moving yourself forward. Live life 'til you die.

Sit back, watch the ashes. They fall to the ground.
Take a listen to the birds, its a beautiful sound.
Take a minute, sit back, watch the world go around.
Take a look at the sky, so vast and profound.
Take a drag of your cigarette, and let yourself go.
Take notice of your freedom, and let the wind blow.
Take off your winter coat, go with the flow.
Take off your mask, let your true colors show.

Sit back, watch the ashes as they land on the earth.
Feel the rediscovery, and feel the rebirth.
Feel the wind on your fingertips, for what it is worth.
Feel the world, what it is, it's incredible girth.
Feel yourself drift away, feel the grass on your toes.
Feel the sun on your face, feel the wind as it blows.
Feel the love in this world, as it blooms, as it grows.
Feel the light on your soul, see the beauty it shows.

Sit back, watch the ashes, their coming, their due
Realize, though, that it's beautiful too.
Redo all of the things, that you love to do.
Remember there's people that truly love you.
Replay all of the memories that make you smile.
Revisit your best friends, and chill for a while.
Resign from your deviance, cunning, and guile.
Relax in recumbence, sit back, reconcile.

The ashes will soon, cover all of this land.
Theres nothing to stop it, no curing command.
Theres someone who loves you, so go hold their hand.
Theres a shortage of love in this world of demand.
Theres only one thought that comes into my mind.
Theres nothing new out there, theres nothing to find.
Theres everything I need, right here, am I blind?
Theres people who love me, people of my kind.

So the world can go ahead and crash down around me, I'll just look Away. I'll just take a look at the things I love.  I'll just take notice of the beautiful Day.
I'll just take another shot, I'll just sit in the beautiful green Grass. I'll just look up at the sky and let the ending pass.
I'll just be sitting with the people I love, and we'll be letting our true colors Show. We'll be feeling the grass on our toes, and letting the beautiful wind Blow.
Get ready to watch the rest of the world fall to pieces. To watch the ashes fall. Prepare for the Show.  But Don't worry...Just Sit back, relax, and let the last of that beautiful wind Blow.

____

Fall with me. Drop with me. Drop like the rain descending from the pregnant clouds overhead.  Fall like an avalanche, free and uncontrollable. Fall like the waterfall, endlessly powerful.  Fall with the world, but not in disgrace, we're falling like leaves into a beautiful place.  We're falling into eternity… discomforting but true. So enjoy the descent, it's the least you could do, for out of this fall comes a beautiful view...

Fall with the leaves. Fall peaceful and slow
Forget everything that you don't need to know
Form truces with enemies, befriend every foe
For now is the time to let everything go
Forbidden are thoughts of a peaceful demise
Forsaken, the image of peace in disguise
Forgive all the subtle and meaningless lies
Forego a renewal, re-open you're eyes

Fall with the Rain drops, now finally freed
This is the beginning of the end indeed
This peaceful decline may be just what we need
This fall from our old withered branches of greed
This pressure discharged… our old ways replaced
This wind now uplifting, this beauty embraced
This Government Tangle, this Empire, erased
This Is the End of the struggles we've faced

Fall with the Waterfall, Establish your voice
Pro-life… Pro-love… Pro-strength… Pro-choice
Protest your opinions, don't let them devoice
Progress now possible, so revel, rejoice
Provide the necessities, laughter and love
Produce something new, something unheard of
Proclaim your new freedom, and wake with the dove
Promise to fall with the rain from above.

Fall with the Avalanche, plush and severe
Don't let the ending take hold of your fear
Don't forget, there's people that still love you here
Don't let these people, your friends, disappear
Don't be afraid now…  The grass is still green
Don't take your eyes off the beautiful scene
Don't let your colors be shaded unclean
Don't let the distance grow vast in between

Fall with the ashes that cover this earth
Be Born Once Again, re-discover rebirth
Believe in true beauty, for what it is worth
Beware of this world, its incredible girth
Below you are roots from which you can grow
Beyond the Horizon is the end as we know
Belong To A Bigger Picture, go with the flow
Become something less…  Sit back… Watch the show.

Fall with the ashes, but not in disgrace. Finally we can escape from this place. The government gone, the Empires erased.  We can Fall with the raindrops, with beauty embraced.
Take off your masks, let your true colors Show. Let the sun shine bright, let the moonlight glow.  Revisit your best friends, Let yourselves go.
and let the very last of that beautiful wind blow…

She lives a quiet life,
she tiptoes around,
she whispers when she speaks,
she hardly ever makes a sound.

Although her words are quiet,
her mind is very loud.
She has so much to say,
but no one listens for soft sounds.

She's an invisible girl,
who doesn't want to stand out,
she just wants to be heard,
without having to shout.

Sometimes the loudest people,
aren't saying much at all.
Empty words and promises,
just leave their mouths and fall.

But whispered words fly high,
and catch peoples attention,
they're intriguing, so amazing,
but only when they listen.

So look outside the spotlight,
because often the real star,
isn't anyone on stage,
but the mind behind it all.

Spending intangible dollars at the mercy of my ever growing appetite,
Instead of buying my ticket out of this perfectly advantageous country,
Which focuses solely on my beauty and money.
I neglect my inner advice telling me to drop it all and run,
To where I can breathe and focus on God,
Promoting a healthier way of living and improving humanity.
Momentary hope that unrealistically characterizes perfection
As a quality that I can mentally download and miraculously make the above, true,
Never seems to linger long enough to actually induce action,
Which leads to disappointment draining the motivation essential to recover my missing pieces,
Which pushes me to crave cash I don’t have, to pick up that dose,
That hushes the unwarranted guilt that seduces me into thinking that I’m not incredibly blessed,
And that I can’t handle what I’ve been dealt,
Blurs the doubts I have about my abilities, my self- worth,
Forcing me into a state of content that awakens my creativity,
While vaguely being able to make out memories of let down led by myself and my mother,
Who was a part of what was never good enough for my idea of a perfect family.
I’ve wrongly accepted that a mediocre life-performance is to be had while following the crowd,
While obsessing over flaws that are negligible to my true purpose in life,
And with that I’ve become stifled by the decision to remain effortlessly stuck.

I signed my life away
A week ago today
I took a pledge to be a warrior
To serve my country with pride
I am proud of this
I need not your approval to be the man I wish to be
For I will be my own
Traveling my own path
Finding my own me
I have finished the part of my life to try to impress you
To try and make you proud
I am done expecting you to be there for me
The cracks are too easy to fall through
I hope one day you will wake up from this slumber
We will talk about our lives while we fish for lost time
The bobbers on our lines dancing on the water like ballerinas
The man I am becoming
Ignoring the child inside
Screaming and pounding
For my daddy