london: day one of ten-thousand

london streets teem with history

london eyes gleam with mystery

stories unfold over pints of guinness

black as night and thick as my skin is

but thoughts of you turn me shades of blue

and pints of guinness start to blur the view

of the image of you i've got in my mind

and if i can't see your face, i'd rather be blind

so wait for me and i'll hurry back

through machine-gun fire and anti-aircraft flack

keep my pillow warm and live your life

i'll steer clear of petty theft run rife

and i'll run my fingers down your arm

once i weather this mid-day london storm.

longing for you at this high altitude

give me an elbow room with a view

give me a sunrise full of holding you

give me a cot and a blanket by the beach

and two pillows, so i can keep you in my reach

give me that taste that's on your lips

give me a waltz of spins and dips

give me the life i see in your eyes

give me freedom from tis world of lies

and let me lie next to you all night

even though i can't sleep: you shine so bright

touch your fingers to my eyelids and send me off to dream

a dream within a dream brings you to be with me

and for you to be with me, i would gladly see

my shoes run so ragged that i could finally run free.

this is love

You asked me about love today, and I thought about it long and hard, and this is what I realized about love:

Love does not buy luxury cars for Christmas.

Love does not pay the mortgage on seven bedrooms.

Love does not provide for tummy tucks and collagen shots.

Love does not do lunch at Spago’s or Mr. Chow’s.

Love gives just enough.

Love makes peanut butter and jelly mouthwatering.

Love warms a too-small house.

Love makes a lumpy mattress the greatest place on earth.

Love softens the blows of hard times.

Love is a reason not to fight over money.

Love knows that everything will be ok.

Love is a two person life raft in this sea of troubles.

Love knows two hearts are better than one.

Love will get us through the bad things.

Love is just enough.

mirror image of missing you

my heart is in a cramped little room, three hours south of here.

it’s sitting on a shelf above the bed, staring in the mirror.

and it cries at its own reflection, dripping tears onto the bed.

and i can feel the puddles of its tears, collecting in my head.

i left my heart three days ago and i haven’t seen it since.

the fact i’ve cried for three straight days is no coincidence.

but if my heart sitting on your nightstand would bring a smile to your face,

i would gladly leave it there forever, and never move it from its place.

so hold it close to your own heart, and let them beat together

and i’ll be back before the calendar has a word to speak about september.

taking leave of beauty

and now i have to leave the beauty of this place

now i have to leave the beauty radiating from your face.

now i have to fly away, into the fog and rain

now i have to fly away and drown inside the pain

and tearing you from me is like tearing heart from chest

and it will be two months again 'til i lay my head upon your breast.

but i'll bring memories of you in my carry-on, memories of us,

and memories of the six days that flew by and left us in the dust.

and i'm holding you in my arms, never wanting to let go,

but our time is done, my plane has come and i am heading home.

and home is hollow when it's not filled with you

and life is hollow without someone to fill your shoes

so smile that smile that makes me cry tears of joy out from my soul

and send me letters and best wishes, and a bit of you to fill this hole

you made me whole again, now i'm heading back towards incomplete,

and i'll be thinking of you as i lie in a pub eye-level with a hundred pairs of feet.

soft-light at sunrise

lying in a borrowed bed

watching the sun rise

through half-open blinds

the soft light bathing your face

as we lie here in peace

except for the rattling of the cage above my head.

and the way that you fit perfectly

into the crook of my arm

reminds me of sundays

and an overwhelming calm

your hair flows in the sunlight

like sunlight flows in the morning

like the veil of a woman weeping in mourning

maybe we'll lie here forever

bare back to bare stomach

breathe in the sunlight

and drink up the morning

connect the dots between

shoulder and chin

over and over

until the blinds open

and the light rushes in.

los angeles union station

and now here i am again at los angeles union station, and it seems like every time i pass through here, my life starts off in another direction. maybe it's the idea of coming home that does it. the idea of seeing all the old friends who haven't changed a bit, and probably never will. maybe it's the people who i've met here. maybe it was the lady with the faded pink blouse with the mint floral print, who commended me for stepping over some caution tape to go outside and have a cigarette. "you see, you see that? that's god's people in action right there. y'all can't hold us back wit' no caution tape. we are god's people, we will trample it down." but she was so frail, i was almost sure it could have trampled her down. "and these cops, these killer dangerous cops, with they uniforms and the killer dangerous guns, they think that they can trample down god's people. haha, but that's why they ain't never gone trample us down, ya see that? boy, i know you do, god bless you, i know you do." but maybe it wasn't her. maybe it was the business man in the ugliest forest green suit i've ever seen. maybe it was him, greased back hair, smoking cigarettes like a guy with greased back hair smokes cigarettes, talking on a cell-phone: making deals that will never mean a thing. maybe it was him that made me realize that i would rather wear the pink blouse with the mint green print everyday than ever put on that forest green suit.

salvation through exodus

i'm standing all alone in the dark, staring out at nothing in particular.

i'm dying all alone, of nothing in particular.

and nothing in particular is not specific enough to name,

but it's more than enough to fill me again with pain.

and i'm so mortally exhausted that everything's completely beautiful, and that beauty completely fills me, entering my consciousness and doing battle with the ugly things inside.

but the ugly things have died,

victims of a half-ass suicide.

razor blades and rose petals sharply juxtapose

the bridge of beauty's nose and the shape of beauty's toes.

and the palm trees on moana divide the ocean into rows.

and i feel heaven on my cheeks when the soft breeze blows.

and i'm sitting all alone in a place nobody knows,

it's one of those places where nothing always grows.

and the nothing is harvested by less than subtle crows.

and nothing in particular makes me fall in love with you.

and the nothingness makes me want to fucking puke.

i've tasted nothing but cigarettes and coffee for three days.

and this lack of sleep has me in a daze.

and feeling this way for you

is the worst thing i could do,

so i'll drop the subject and fly away from here.

and see if love is lying at the bottom of this beer.

epitaph

your physical beauty is blinding me.

this sleep deprivation is blinding me.

your inner beauty is blinding me.

this nicotine is binding me.

now i'm the one who has to be careful to not forget what happened last time. i have to be oh so careful not to forget the pain, and i have to remember what it feels like to be rejected. i have to remember bleeding in the dark. and my memory is instantly refreshed thinking of her, and the pain is instantly renewed, thinking of her. i won't be your sad boy too. but i've been the sad boy so long, it's all i know how to do. i know i'll be the sad boy until my sad story is transcribed onto a sad piece of rock above a sad piece of dirt in a sad part of this sad world. i'm doing everything i can to harden my heart to you, but the beauty that blinds my eyes, melts my defenses. and i'm lost before i was ever found. we both know its coming and i'm as scared as you. you should probably go now. it's only a matter of time before i start adding liquid courage to liquid sadness, drowning in the mixture. i don't want to pull you down with me. at least this way you can stand on that sad piece of dirt and read the sad words etched into the sad rock and smile when you see, "i loved you enough to spare you from my love."

desert of the real

i've been staring at flickering lights flickering ones and zeroes for going on four hours. i've been meandering through a wasteland of digital destruction. i've seen your novelty technology and i have found it wanting. so i'll create a brand new matrix, one to free your mind. this is no computer simulation, this is the creation of my fractured imagination. so search your database and tell me, among your cgi blasphemy and industrial smoke and mirrors, can you find the coordinates for human suffering? if a 404 is found, perhaps you could search for a sense of the profound. did you write god into your program? what about love? what about an entire spectrum of human emotion too deep for flat panel monitors? i await with little anticipation, a day when you discover these things in computer animation. so take your glorified anime and produce a thousand matrices, composed of ones and zeroes, taking caution not to be distracted by any shiny objects.

yellow lights

i took a short walk to the end of a long pier and peered out into the night.

i felt the waves below my feet and i saw the brightest yellow light.

i saw the light draw a line across the middle of the sea

i felt the chill of the western blackness calling out to me.

and the shore-side of the ocean called out a reply

drowning out the blackness screaming, "you're too young to die"

and last night i'd have called the bluff and drowned here all alone

but tonight that yellow light steals my pain and warms me to the bone.

and the fine line between innocence and evil is drawn by the yellow light

and young love is on the shore-side, but the blackness is last night

i think i'll bask here in the glow awhile, and have another cigarette

i'll swim back to shore when the yellow light has soaked up my regret.

poolshark

take it away, but i want more and more. today's the day that i lost the war. i've got this razor, but i can't bleed and i can't breathe. so i'm the anti-social one. and i'm the only one in the twenty-four hour mexican place, sitting in the corner, crying myself to sleep. and if i could do it, i would draw the razor from my elbow to my wrist and leave behind this world so full of shit. and there's literally nothing good left here. i helped kill the last of it along with the rest of you, but i'm the only one crying in remorse. my baby likes to sleep around. i like bleeding in my bedroom: slicing through the jugular tonight. the only thing that keeps my name off the toe tag is the thought of whoever finds me. and i'd imagine that i'd look really pale to them, i'd look dead. but i've been dead for so long it would be hard for me to tell the difference. and the repititious cries of "don't be sad" and "you're a good guy" are the only thing hollower than i am. and i can't bleed because i've got nothing left inside. so take this last breath from me and sing something sweet with it. sing a requiem for beauty, sing a requiem for love, and when it rains you'll feel my tears crying for you from above.

rosarito

and these are the days of ash. these are the days of black veils and black roses. these are the days of mourning. and i think that i was in shock at first, but when i sat down to try to write the eulogy, the shock wore off all at once. and all at once the tears issued forth. and i cried a cliche ocean to form a watery grave, and look for me tomorrow stuffed in davey jones' locker. but today i'm knee deep in this jimmy beam searching wildly for the innocence you drowned here late last night. and your murderous accomplice has left you all alone, alone to take the fall. but the fall has taken you, back to somewhere north of here. but we'll be heading south to drown in mexico real soon. and a fat little man with a pot belly and a wheelbarrow will cart us to our doom. and our two colliding oceans begin to fill the room. and the water's turbid at this depth, i'm searching for the surface to exhale what little breath that i have left. and that tattoo on your back is screaming in chinese: let me lay in rosarito and feel the ocean breeze.