15 tapes over 15 years, moments and
occasions, vacations and holidays,
one per year in 60 minutes or less.

I took them to a little shop downtown
and got them back as DVD’s,
then I gave them to you at Christmas.

I kept copies for myself
but I have yet to watch them
for fear of forgetting the reasons
it all went to hell.

You told me that you often get confused
between what's real and what's on TV
and about whether the events you remember

are actually being remembered,
or are they just being recalled from
watching the DVDs?

Maybe that’s why you
don’t remember the same
**** as me.

Maybe you believe that if it’s not in
those home movies then it must not be real,
and therefore never really happened.

What you are not realizing is that everything
in those home movies is a wanted memory.
There are no jagged edges and
no accidental recordings,

no scenes of betrayal,
no secret relations,
no sordid behavior,
obsessive compulsions,
no sick fascinations,
her ephebophilia*,
no lack of affection,
no painful rejection,
no moral transgressions,
no threats of her leaving,
no demon possession.

instead

what you see in those movies is just
a compilation of best behavior.

The absolute truth is that you live with an
evil so dark that you question your sanity,
as I did for so many years.

The juxtaposition of  
her sensational gas-lighting^ with
the pleasantness of your DVD
dominated memory has caught you in
the vacuum of her black hole.

When you exist within the proximity of
such overbearing darkness you tend to
attempt to create your own light to live by,

but your light will never be bright enough
until you create space between it and
her vacuum that constantly snuffs it out..

Just know that I will always love you

and all I ask is that you take note of who it is
behind the camera lens of those memories,
and who it is that created them for you,

and maybe one day you'll understand all of this,

because I know that I don't.

I lost my first
wedding ring
that summer

we floated
on inner tubes
coupled together,
drinking ice-cold
beer in the sun.

A flash of gold
and it was gone.

I lost the boots
my father wore
in Vietnam.

I lost the first
pocketknife
I ever owned.

I lost my mother.

I lost my way
in college once,
watching heavy snow
smother the foothills
and switchbacks,
watching mountain
birds turn wide circles
above rough canyons.

I lost track of time but
found my father’s gun.

Winter will always
sound like the whir
of a cylinder spun in
an unfurnished room.

We live in a house
without ghosts or
previous tenants.
No one has died
or sold their soul
here,

and no one has done
unspeakable things
behind closed doors
here.

No one has endured
flaming words,
burning skin,
kicks and shoves
or broken bones
here.

There are no
spun dust dead cells
come alive as
night prowl swirlings
here,

and no manifestations
of such.

No leftover lives
here,
nothing left behind
here.

only peace
and quiet
here.

But not back
there
when I lived with her
before I lived
here
with you.

Back
there
she said I went crazy
when the neighbors asked
why I slept on the porch
there.

It would have been crazier
had I slept inside the house
there.

What happened
there
was worse than
the worst thing imaginable.
I would forever be changed
by what happened
there.

She let evil enter
there
from across the globe when
mother Russia sent it in
the suitcase of a boy.


When I met you
I knew
my porch sleeping days
were over,
whether
here
or
there,
quite frankly anywhere.

Our first house
was 50 years old
yet we were only
the second owners.

Family must have mattered
there.

The ghost was different
there,

not frightening, not angry,
more nostalgic,
he used to sit out
there
on the porch
in my chair at night,
sit
there
looking sad,
like he missed the place.

He didn’t mind us being
there
and I never felt threatened
there.

On many occasions
he knew that I knew
he was
there,
but he wouldn’t engage.
I felt sorry for him,
sitting out
there
all alone.

For a short while
we lived in a house
north of town.
We lived
there
before we lived
here.

The ghosts
there
were more like what
you’d expect from ghosts.

First it was
the hogs in the attic
followed by
the children in the night,
it wasn’t unsafe
it just didn’t feel right
there.

Someone wasn’t happy
there,

so we left
there
and came
here
and built this house of love.

Now we live where
there
are no ghosts,
at least not in the house.

Instead
the history in my head
is what haunts me.

To move it out,
to delete it
would mean to be dead
or maybe lobotomized,
so no thank you
I think I’ll learn to live with
these
ghosts.

These
that aren’t
there,
or
here,

they still are.

My father is 85 and tells me
that they prey on your weakness
when you get older.
He cannot even speak of them
for fear of being institutionalized
or put away, or deemed insane,
but I believe him when he tells me
that they come to him at night,
and although he cannot see them
they sit on his bed and remind him
of all the mistakes he has made
in his lifetime.

I look at him
and I can see his pain.

My ghosts tell me its what
I have to look forward to.

Wrote this back in 2013... Wanted to bring it forward to today, August 22,  which would have been Layne Stayley's 50th Birthday.


It was simple at first
I did it on a dare

There's a certain easiness
to difficult dares
when senses are dulled
by alcohol and fame

show me how
that color tastes

It was like
biting into the sun
it burned my tongue
and nothing else
would ever taste the same
or be the same
it calmed the storm
of daddy leaving
it was as if my
new found Catholicism
was a purgatory from where
I could see the bright white
pearly gates of heaven
and feel the chill
of their snow clad bars

colder than
the coldest winter chill

one night in a dream
my father told me
to meet him at the gates
and from that point
I went every night
but he never came
instead he died
and when he died
my dreams died
with him.

bury me softly
in this tomb

I continued to go there
night after night
I desperately wanted
to believe the gates
would lead to heaven
because in hell there's heat
and this place was cold
so cold with no sound
and no light only darkness

I would sit in the cold
for hours, losing all sense
of time, obligations
responsibilities, shivering
and sweating at the foot of
the gates, obsessed with the
furry luster of frozen pearls
the sound of silence and
the subtle shifting of
the weather

holding rare
flowers in bloom

a week, a month
a year would pass
the snow began to slip
in clumps and tumble
to the ground again
and again and again
and then
all hell broke loose
the heat was hot
the gates were gone
and I began to run
but

every path
led me to nowhere

the blue cold went red hot
and then turned black
I tried to leave that place
13 times I left and
13 times returned
there was nowhere else to go
no place to call home
I burned within my sick head

I wanted to peel
the skin from my face

so hot
I was bleeding for you
soaked in sweat
my calloused heart
would not ask for help

serenity
was far away

my hands were bruised
from breaking rocks all day
far from the chill
I couldn't remember
anymore anyway
so desperate
for a glimpse of snow
it all came down
to this

I could not live apart
from that place
and I could not live
within it

so tonight

I will marry the two
the here and the now with
the there and the then

mix the snow with the fire
mix the snow add the fire
mix   snow  with    fire
mix   snow  add    fire

snowfire
      
snowfire
      
snowfire

momma
I am burning
momma I am cold
mother please save me
don't leave me alone
I see you but
you've come too late
can you hold me anyway?
whisper in my ear
I'm so sorry mother
I haven't bathed in 2 weeks
momma come hold me please

I'm down in a hole mother
feeling so low mother

I'm so cold mother
come save me
take me home
mother
I am dying

mommy
I am dead
sit with me
in silence
sit with me
I am dead

mommy I'm scared

black is all I feel
so this must be how it feels
to be free*

mother
I am dead

In Memory of Layne Stayley
born August 22, 1967 died April 5, 2002
Re-Dedicated today on what would have been his 50th Birthday..