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.

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..

Free will has brought us here,
brought me here,
all the result of breathing.

A consequence from arrogance.
A consequence from alcohol (But not me).
A consequence of neglect.

A consequence of the unknown
explosion at any given moment
from my mother when we
were young.

My developed response
a fight or flight my whole life,
the pathway so deep
a bottom doesn't exist.

Like a deep sea diver
the lower I go
the darker it becomes.

Claustrophobia and panic  
are almost certain.

Breathing
becomes more difficult

and returning to the surface
takes slow and steady patience.

I've only gone so deep.

How much further I might go I do not know.

I'm terrified to think what might be down there.

The thought of meeting the unknown face to face is
a fight I fight everyday.

They tell me that fighting gives it strength,
it would be better to befriend it.

I try but

its hard to make friends
in the dark.

I can't stand the smell of mutton,
or the texture of liver, especially
after extended time on a dinner plate,

which meant we spent extended
time around an oval table,
my sisters and I with our
heads down, eyes averted,
no sound but the chatter of silverware.

I remember my cousin Scott told me one time
he put spaghetti in his pockets because he didn’t like
the way it felt in his mouth, he said he’d stuffed it down
and pulled it out later and flushed it down the toilet.
It made me wonder how his pants must have smelled,
but It was something I could never risk because
my uncle wasn’t a drinker, but my father was.

As the youngest of 5 I was
the only boy, and mother said
it was a privilege for me to sit
at the right hand of father,
a place of honor she said,

perhaps in other households.

For me it was a prison,
a daily nightmare of the unknown,
I spent forever in that chair
and was always the last to leave the table,  
constantly burdened by congealed meat and organs.

Begging was useless, reprieve was never given.

On a random summer night
when I was 8 years old
my father announced with disgust,

“You eat like a bird!”

It was the way he dragged out the word
“B i i i i r r d”, so distinct, as if
he could no longer contain his abhorrence,

and once the restraint was broken
his words came fast and hot,
berating me for my
non-existent appetite.

He would have done well to
understand that fear suppresses hunger,
that alcoholism doesn't
allow for compassion or civility,
and when you live with a demon
its not you who’s in control.

I wept,
and his devil burned with rage.

“You are pathetic!” he screamed.

More tears
and then my sisters joined
in a chorus of muffles,

heads bowed,
we endured his wrath with no thought
of engaging or protesting.

Eventually I heard the screen door slam
and one by one my sisters abandoned the table,
escaping to who knows where.

I kept my head down for years.

When I finally looked up I was alone.

The girls were gone and father was off
to drink beer in his air conditioned room,

and mother?  

I have no idea where she went.

For a long time I’d been
straddling a high peak,
One foot on solid ground, the other
bare and slipping on the opposite *****.

But lately I've had both feet
on the slippery side,
hands firmly grasping the peak,
feet spread out below me
spinning and churning, unable
to gather a foothold.

Though I believe I could hold on forever
I fear of eternity in this state.

I wonder what's the point?

Perhaps to not hurt those who
would be hurt by my letting go.

Or perhaps the hope that
all will be well in due time,
I’ve been trained to believe it.

30 years of scored and numbered ovals and oblongs,
constantly enumerated and venerated,
my little saints are prayers on a candied rosary.

30 years aware of where they are and
when they'd be mine.
No rest with or without.
Nothing will quiet their screaming.

so I walk
and walk some more
at all hours of the night.
The neighborhood dogs know me well,
they no longer bark at me for  
I am one of them now,
resigned to pacing fence lines in the dark.

Back home at 3am I stare at the ceiling,
legs spinning and churning,
clawing for the high peak.

When will it pass?
When will it pass?

Tennyson wrote,  "It is better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all",

though I don't think he actually believed it

and neither do I.

The end is never the end and steps become stages.
Neuro-transmissions engineered at birth are
erroneous pathways deepened over time.

Retrain the brain they say, neuroplasticity
a new age of hope, but pathways are abyssal
and unscalable, and time is running out..  

And what is life's purpose
When your deepest chasm is fear?

Therapy teaches to live in the moment
Experience keeps me seeking atonement

Those places to go to for calming the mind
Are fleeting, elusive and redundantly non effective,
Losing their ability to heal, so few to rely on!

Like a tiny window in a prison cell,
Only a little light is let in but not too often, transient,  
Crossing your face for a moment but then gone.

More so a reminder
Of what might have been
Or may never be.

Mountains can't be climbed with moments.

Dreams dissolve quickly upon waking,
The harder you try to hold them
The quicker they are gone.

I wonder if they are real at all.

Small victories in a multi-faceted war
Do not define sobriety.

More demons to conquer

The worst for last perhaps unbeatable.

A kindergartner in his bed
a man outside his room,
his face against the foggy glass
a stormy night… no moon.
A lightning flash within the dark
the boy sits up and cries,
the hooded man with dripping nose
looks straight into his eyes.

When morning comes his mother’s there
her eyes are mean and wild
“You ***’d your bed, again!” she said,
“you stupid little child!
You’re much too old for rubber pants
but what else can I do?
Now put them on and go to school
I hope they laugh at you!”

Some fifty winters later and
the figure still appears,
where once a hooded human
now a demon in my mirror.
He’s not afraid of being seen,
the man I am now knows
his presence here is absolute,
I live the life I chose.

He comes to see me every day
when noontime hour is near,
a surging angst from deep within
my fifty years of fear.
My closest friend since way back when
my mother said I lied,
I could have said I was afraid
but never even tried.

She wouldn’t have believed me anyway….

I met my demon as a child
at midnight in the rain,
I swear I saw him smile at me
from through the window pane,
with water dripping from his nose
and eyes like burning coal,
a flash of light revealed his greed
and then he took my soul

They are both gone yet my siblings
go on about how they are missed,
exaggerating their legacy
with each passing year.

I try to search my mind for happy memories
but can only conjure the demons they gave me.
How different might I be had
my parents never been tormented.

But perhaps they had no choice,
maybe the swine did not drown
what Christ intended to drown and
instead emerged from the sea of Galilee
and entered soul after soul down through
the ages, passing from one generation to
the next until they met my grandparents,

and then dished a double dose
for mother and father.

Early on my father tried to drown them out,
his favorite method Black Label,
and that’s when the spirits took him;

spirits fueled by spirits.

And what if for me
those years had been kind?
Raised on warmth and tenderness
instead of fear and loneliness?

I only know that the fear held me
back from total stupidity and
served as a great motivator.
A fearless me would have died
a thousand deaths instead of
the 2 or 3 that I endured.

So now I’m in a place where all is well.
I’m on the other side of the ****.

But without the ****, well,
I just wouldn’t be me.

How true my creator knew me then and
knows me now, weaved all the pieces
of back then into the completion of tomorrow.
He sees my life like a drone sees a vehicle on
a winding road, what’s over the hill and
from where it came all at the same time.

Today I choose to only see what is right before me,
and right now those ancient demons are silent,
softened a bit by mindfulness, therapy, love
and the passing of parents.

In this moment I have no time for
the memory of any of them.

Mother never had a chance with him,
a dry alcoholic, worse than wet.
His mind contrived to twist and convince
and manipulate her into submission.
His unrelenting oppression
resulted in her subsequent depression.

We would see snippets of who she used to be
or who she wanted to be but they were
constantly stomped upon by his pestering.

His ideas became hers,
but never sounded like hers.
  
In no way am I claiming
she was innocent in all of this.
She lacked the will to
stand up to him... Perhaps conditioned
by their 50 years together, rooted in a time
when women didn't object.

When I think back now
I can only feel sorry for her
even though she was far from a loving
and attentive mother.
She had many demons to fight
and little emotional energy left for children.

Any memory I hold of her,
especially ones of her smiling feel oddly fake.
As a young child I was attuned enough to
recognize her smiles as forced and unconvincing.

And now she is gone

And he sits alone

I do not speak to him very often
Because I have nothing to say.
His influence lingers deep
and I hate that part of me.

He used to call but thankfully no more.
He offers no apology for the way he is,
and I am smart enough to not trust him
with anything concerning the way things were.
I have no desire to encourage more abuse.

I only wish that for my mother’s sake
that he were the one to go first.
Perhaps allowing her a little freedom
from a lifetime of him.

On a recent and rare call he told me
he still speaks to her as if she’s there.

Even in death he will not leave her alone.