Wrap

Sometimes I wonder how bankrupted our culture is, how we do things in such morbid repitition and succession that we don't even know how we arrived there. I could make a list, and check it twice, of things that we do oh so carelessly and without an extra thought, but looking back I have no idea why we did it that particular way.

Like wrapping presents in gold and glitter and silver and little stamped Santa Clauses. Maybe this whole idea is an easy fix for everyone else, easy to see, to understand, but I look around and try to decide which paper marketing genius designed an advertising campaign to help sell his particular brand of colored paper. We are driven so much by so many different chauffers and I really don't like society taking the wheel. Well not society, but some suit or some driving force behind the next big fashion trend, the next big consumer goldmine. Here we are using and discarding at will, at an ease. And I sit here with my nice computer with my decent clothes and fashionable shoes watching my words over my shoulder. My Razor phone sits beside me.

But why? What use are these things? Because someone told us they are, because somewhere we heard that we would be cool if we did this? I don't know, I really don't. There are too many stimuli when it comes down to it. We are inundated with so many schemes that it's almost overload. When you dream about movie scenes or product placement or something that is not real, not physical, just celluloid, or cellular, or cellophane. Most of this world is a pipedream envisioned by some amazing chess player that lives in a high rise, soaking in millions watching us buy his products that ultimately do not change who we are, not beyond its thin application of base on our skin.

Now, I believe there is delicateness in this chaos, there is purpose in all this social perdition.

But wrapping paper? To decorate a gift? to beautify something that is already beautiful, giving, putting your money where you mouth is at Christmas time, sacrificing greed for (hopefully) selfless giving. A present needs no bow, nor foil or anything else. It is displayed in full glory carefully sleeping in that box. I wrapped a present with newspaper this year, and scotch tape, just to prove a point that sometimes the boxes of the world only hide the beauty that is inside. However poor the container, what lies inside is always the treasure.

And what sits inside my paper treasure chest? A pair of sunglasses for a friend.

Wow, I am so sacrificial.

A Book Made of Earth

I made a book made of earth
and took it down to the market
to see what it was worth.
And the old Russian lady
running the thirsty store
told me her quiet eyes
had never seen anything like it before.
She said, "Name your price,"
but her accent was thick
she had to repeat it twice.
And I sold it for a penny, nothing more
for it was bound by dirt
brown and bitter from the world's floor.
And the pages were of grass
taken from paths I had taken
from time, and time past.
There were no words, no story
just man made mistakes
told in their dull glory.

She put it in her window
for all to see
the display of a life once lived
supposedly fruitfully.

The Rapture and The Hatchet

Getting off of work late, or late in the terms of the working world, always leaves me in this weird middle void, feeling like I can't touch base with anyone. I try to call people, they are either asleep, ignoring me, or unavailable or perhaps raptured. That's a real thought that enters my head. What if I have missed everyone, they are gone or all dead, something horribly wrong happened and now I am all alone.

That was the feeling tonight as I drove him and phone call after phone call was denied or just rang and rang and rang. Voicemails picked up, but who really wants to talk to a recorded message of a person's voice. The last lingering moments of our lives recorded, merely fragments and frequencies in a redundant pattern, repeated over and over a thousand times. Inflections the same, idea is the same, and I have missed out. They are gone and I am here. Always here. Like the story of a the Roman centurion that was doomed to walk the earth for all of eternity. Like Randall Savage. Like Dorian Gray.

And this whole idea of trust is thrust upon me, some gift that I don't want, some sort of nasty tie that went out of fashion far too long ago. Why do we trust some people, and not some others? What makes one type of person truly noble? I don't know. I'm not sure why we can tell people our hearts and with others we hide our wallets. And I wonder where I fit into this equation. Am I one or the other?

Sad. Lonely drives past Christmas lights.

My G-d, save me from myself!!!!!!

I am the X that marks the spot
that the treasure map forgot,
the lonely alleyway
not even beggars will stay.
The ocean should take me away
driftwood with no place to lay
and take root and grow by day
to some small tree
that could shade me.
The light doesn't fall the same
I guess I'm to blame
for living in the shadows and the greys
trying my hardest to save
any face that will do
but now I murder and I steal
and take from what is not mine
and it's no big deal.
I am Cain and Abel
and Moses and David
and Job and Peter
but not Jesus.
Never Jesus.

10pm

I ate out for the first time in a long time today. Not purposefully, was supposed to meet a friend, but sometimes things just get in the way, like life, like conversations, but it's all good. I sat there, with my hologram notebook from college, with odd notes and poor sketches and immature doodles surrounding old words and ideas, and tacos. Not much else to life is there? Two couples were on my wings, one to my right and one to my left. The couple on my left, the wife or lover or whatever took forever to order her burrito with beans and rice and meat and "extra onions and peppers, please". On my right was this other couple, kind of resembling my parents, but quieter and not so full of life as they are. I am blessed, I tell you. They (my parents) have such a great relationship, almost too great when you are one of theirs sons and wonder what it takes to find such a thing. It plagues you (kind of). I secretly wish for their story. Such a good one.
But this other couple, they wore matching denim faded jeans, and they scarfed their food down with a tenacity of a rabid rabbit. Hardly any words, just open mouth, close mouth, chew, chew, chew, swallow. Rinse and repeat. I thought, "do they see me watching them? Do they know how loud they chew?" And there was another couple in the distance, they were in line in front of me earlier, in front of the onions and peppers lady, and they seemed quaint and happy. That was, until I saw him turn from her car and slam his door. I could see his door closing faster and harder than people close their doors, normally. And he slammed his car into reverse and sped out of the parking lot, not caring about the other cars in the parking lot, not caring about my car parked oh so conveniently next to him. He disregarded stop signs and took upon himself to make his own law and sped off. And the woman? She quietly shifted into reverse and creeped out of the parking lot.
We miss so much sometimes. We don't look around. I know I don't. I miss the world spinning by. Wrinkles are coming, ladies and gentlemen. Fat is around the bend. Our skin will begin to sag and our aunts and uncles that we remember being so young will be old to our children. And they won't remember your grandparents names, or how they smelled, or any of the times you had with them. It's up to us to keep people alive, not above the ground necessarily, but alive in our minds, in our hearts. That's the only immortality that we can comprehend and have on this earth.

I wrote a book. Really.

READ MY BOOK!!!!!!!







The above is a link to a site where you can purchase it. I wrote it as a Christian who was tired of "Christian" books and novels that made what we believe in sound like a cotton candy store. I wanted to write something real, something hard and truthful, but with hope. There is always hope. So The Watchman and The Woods is a novel on the real life struggles of people believing in things that they cannot always see, as told in the story of this Town surrounded by their mortality. If you like reading, then you will like this.
It would make a great holiday treat, I assure you. And you will not be disappointed. And if you are, you can hunt me down and punch me in the face. That's my guarantee.

apart in a bar

I am always amazed at the bar scene, no matter when I go or who I'm with. The people, characters, and faces that you see are bar none the salt and color of the earth. Last night, I partook in some festivities with strangers, only partially knowing one person, and therefore I spent the majority of my evening watching, learning, and remembering how awful I am at first impressions.

There was the pretty engaged girl getting tipsy with all her friends, and guys with wandering eyes hitting an invisible wall when their eyes finally made it down to her fingers. She got up and danced on the floor, only her, twirling about, and I wonder if somewhere her fiance was doing the same thing, or waiting at home for her, or her dancing was some sad release of freedom she found.

There were the "Steve's", boys dressed up as men in nice shirts and slacks, bragging about the money they make not only to each other but to women, silent lures in a fishing hole. They used special words to describe their jobs, puffing up their selves with every breath. Their eyes roamed to and fro in the low lit bar, roaving to whatever victim would be next to their words and phrases.

Then there were the potentially future alcholics. The ones that came by themselves, haunting the corners and barstools, looking solemn, trying to escape whatever was beyond those doors. There was the disfigured bartender, who knew everyone's drinks and did his best "Cheers" impersonation.

And then there was me. I guess I fall somewhere in between all of those people. Just floating in the stage lights like some small piece of dust off the walls, caught in the brown glow, frozen in my steps. Just watching, understanding, trying to ask questions, watching them fall very short of their mark.

Just some observations.

Haunted Houses

As I ventured out in curious wanderlust at the twinkling lights, manmade and an orange hue, and walked into an old factory, done up in the stylings we recognize as what Hollywood and history books tell us is the late 19th century, and the red water and fake chainsaws circle around us, my mind being to wander as it often does. A part of us lives that fear rush, that moment where the illusion of control has melted away, and we are caught in the grasp of this horrible world, though done in make up and tattered clothes. And I think in some part of that moment, maybe the curtains are pulled back, red velvet with golden chords sinking away, and we see life as it really is, small and not in our control.

And these haunted houses we visited, to feel this way, to walk around and hold arms and hands with each other, they aren't the real hauntings. No, just a shade of some pale forms and disfigured beings, really just us without our masks on. It's funny, really. We put masks on to hide our real selves, when, really, the whole time the mask we put on is really the person we really are, ugly, sad, hurt, lost, bleeding. Reverse engineering by Halloween mask designers. Become who you really are, put a mask over your mask. Ingenius.

No, the real haunted houses are the ones that we live in, the ones with the ghosts in the closet, waiting, hiding there, memories of hurt and hopelessness, forever etched into the halls and walls of our hiding places. These haunted houses are where the monsters live, where the devil plays cards at, where urban legends cook dinner for the kids. Skeletons are buried in the backyard, mean words are spoken that can never be taken back, feelings are hurt forever, and the fears that we all hide and have are brought out from under the covers and displayed on the big screen tv in the living room. We should be afraid of those places, more so than the ones we construct to strike fear.

And somewhere, in all those black chambers and strobe lights we keep, there is hope, there is the end of the tunnel. And somehow those ghosts we keep will fade away, like childhood imagination, if we just face up to them and fear not. Just know that they will pass through you, they are translucent, they are clear. They are lies, white and black, and dead all over.

Our breath was caught in the mirror

The world is gray outside today.

The clouds with their neutrality linger just above the tip tops of the houses, and the rain falls slow, skinny prickles of cold water from some dripping faucet. The leaves are falling now, faster every day, trees are hibernating, and the green grass takes on an orange and brown blanket.

I find myself grabbing my coat more often now, bringing my old red hoodie with me when I walk outside. When winter comes, it makes the walls seem older and further away, and high ceilings seem to reach up ten feet tall. And maybe up there, maybe just over those high ceilings is some girl with long hair who will let it down and let me climb up and over. It's all just a figment, I think sometimes, love is, or whatever matter of love we have created in our market-fried minds. It seems further off than those walls and ceilings, and just a taste will make you stay longer than you should.

I miss so much sometimes, of what a steady love can bring. Fireside chats, spontaneous car rides, first kisses, sleeping in each other's arms, the warmth of their body, the cool of the air, silly singalongs, allowing yourself to be real, to live; the beauty of first love. Innocent and free, young and unbridled. Come to think of it, life in general, along with love, is so much memory it almost seems to good to have been true. I think on holding someone, holding hands, kissing, the memory of their lips in the brain of mine, and it fades more everyday, that stimulus left further and further behind in the path of life. The way it felt to have someone wrapped in you, their perfume, their laugh on your shoulder. It seems so far. And pictures don't help, just hurt, because they remind you of what was, and what seems as if it will never be.

When the world is cold, and no warmth to be found, allow Jack Frost wrap you around with his cold sheeted gown, to blot out the memory of love ever found.

What new mystery is this?

the Man with the Sun on his back.

Once, the sun never set. And man didn’t mind the sun in his eyes and he drifted to sleep, it warmed his face as he dreamed of even brighter days. Beautiful women and beautiful boys and girls played in the waving grass, tipping its green hat to the clouds as they drifted calmly by. Birds chirped in the trees, and rabbits bounded in delight near foxes digging holes in the gardens of man. There were freckled smiles and single tears. There was love and there was laughter and they both rose from the dirt like daisies stretching out to say, “hello” to any passers by.

All was right in the world.

Then one day the sun did not sit in its usual resting place, high in the middle of the sky. Man rose to find the moon had come out of hiding, and had brought darkness with it on its heel. The darkness frightened man, he was used to the only less bright places of his earth, under the trees in the fields and waning behind him on his walks. The moon brought high seas with it and uncaring rain, rain that fell in white and blue sheets. Dark storms speckled the night sky, and with it came horrible things. Lightning, which stretched its purple fingers from sky to sky; thunder, which shook the very foundations of earth; and blood, which flooded the dirt beneath the feet of man. The wind howled and the coyotes howled back. Trees fell, and the beautiful boys and girls died. Beautiful women cheated on beautiful men and beautiful men cheated on beautiful women. Tears fell in pairs now, more like armies invading a kingdom, and with these evil affairs, a new and dark and terrible thing had befallen man.
There was no hope in those days. Dark armies came from inside the forests, men painted in black shields with long metal blades that did not have ears, that did not hear the screams of its victims. Their kisses were not kind, not filled with love, only lust, only filled with their own lips and their own pleasures. Bounty was taken from the lands, the earth scorched and salted and burned, trees screaming with a crackling cry and their leaves flew into the air, orange embers flickering out just above the lightning’s knuckles. No one seemed to hear, no one seemed to see, only death, death. The earth died, the people died, the sky died, the sun died.
Dust rose in mud puddled flaps as the armies marched onward and built a dark castle, cut from the same trees that once cried tears of amber and sap now were held together in stacked pieces by their own sadness. All peoples were enslaved, under the lock and key and iron fist of some unforeseeable mad man, and the moon smiled its half moon smile, crooked, to the side, and wrinkled. And man was made to toil the land, what little was left, for the millions of armored minions. The dark armies ate dirt and laughed a hideous laugh, more like a scream than a laugh, but men could not tell the difference; they couldn't. Their chains covered their ears, blinders laid over their eyes, mouths clamped shut with bits.
The days were ever more darkening, each one blacker than the next, and the moon smiled and the clouds cried and the lightning shook its fists and the thunder retorted and the wind swept the earth with a blistering vengeance.

All was lost.

Then, from far away, one man walked with the sun on his back, a small beam of warm light peeking through the maelstrom. He was not the prettiest man, not the tallest, nor the strongest, but his will was of refined steel. He had held his ground, from behind, from many miles away, and he had fought back such beasts before. The rain punched his face and the wind pulled at his hair, yet he kept coming. The lightning tried to strike him down, but he was grounded. The thunder attempted to scare him, booming deep, gutteral rolls from miles away, and he shrugged it off as water on his already wet back. He was soaked, he was hungry, he was spent, but yet he marched on, through everything the moon had to throw at him. He marched on.
He came upon the edge of the kingdom of the Black King, and he stiffened his soft jaw, and bowed his bent back, blinked the rain away slowly, and breathed. The lord of war awaited him, surrounded by his dark army of thousands, armed to the teeth, shiny gray weapons reflecting the moonlight. And the man- this one man!- he stood right back, his leg rested on a rock, his cloak flowing in the harmful breeze, hair blown back, and squinted eyes. He took a step, the army took two, but though their weapons sharp and their armor strong, they could not account for the one thing that they did not have: resolve. There was NO stopping him, nature could not, what was man dressed up in clanky clothes? Yes, the man's heart was ill with despair, yes, he could taste a hint of vomit in his throat, but these are mere and trivial trials, nothing such as what could come their way.
Both were closer now, the Black King on his dark horses of death, and the murderers of many surrounded him, the slaves in the distant too busy to watch, their heads down, their hands buried in the salted soil. Yes, too busy to watch as one man strode up to a kingdom and declared in muted confidence that their reign was over. But not without a fight.
I saw swords swarm down, stinging bees and silver hawks with talons drawn on this one man. And they cut him, he was real, he was flesh, he was human, but his blood pooled and only made him stronger, he continued to march forth, and the armies, some of them fell on their swords in discouragement and cowardice, for how could they kill a man who lived to die? They slashed and slashed, and he blocked and parried and punched back, and though his fists were no match for spears and shields and swords, his wounds were. The will is an unstoppable force of dramatic appeal to one who has no will to begin with, They had lost that fight long ago. Lo, even the clouds and the storms seemed to have slowed up, too at awe of this bleeding, dying warrior to throw anymore from the storehouses at him.
And as many fell on their swords behind him and around him, more of the army just dropped theirs and cried, wept and wept and wept at the sight of this mangled man, now more meat than man. His right arm was gone, he was limping, using what was left of his left arm to drag himself forward towards the Black King, who begin to pull back on the reigns of his dark horses. This man could not be stopped, though the Dark King knew his weak spot. He ordered the slaves to surround him and soon the sound of chains dragging the ground encircled him. And he drew his long death blade, the Man Bane, and sliced the throat of the first slave he could find. Then another. And another. And another. Lifeless bodies dropped in thanksgiving that their end had come. And the man, the one with the sun on his back, breathed heavily and cried for mercy, but mercy had left along time ago. He wailed, gnashed his teeth, hit the ground with his so called fist, and dug his fingernails into the ground to take on this Black King.
Not many slaves were left, only the ugliest. And with each slice, Man Bane grinned in crimson. And the moon shuddered, the storms rolled away, for the will of the crawling man had pushed even nature aside. The man was now three feet away and there were three slaves left. The Black King had no teeth, had no nose, no eyes, no ears, no heart. No, only holes where such things should be. But he smiled. Somehow, he smiled in all this.
The last slave was at Death’s door, Man Bane curled around her throat. She was a sad sight, beaten and mashed up and raped, a shadow of a once normal looking young lady. But she was used, trash in the eyes of all, pitiful, disgusting. No one would love her, hold her hand, fall asleep with her in the shade of a tree- if the sun ever came back. And just as the Black King’s tendons tensed, the man with the sun on his back said,

“Me, not her.”

And the King roared with delight. Finally order to his disorder could be restored. So he drew up the man, and tossed the lass aside. He raised Man Bane high in the air, and with a fierce love for blood plunged it deep within the man. It broke through his back, into the ground, into old roots to pulled up trees, and stayed there. Blood, though not much, gushed from the wound, bathing the Black King and the slave girl in warm dark red, rich blood.
Little did the Black King know that with his strike he would be struck down.
With an explosive white light, the clouds evaporated away, the moon ran into hiding, ducking behind the horizon and the sun returned! It’s white hot heat burned away any impurities and the Black King rose in intense pain, clenching his fists, trembling at first, then smoking, then exploding in a dust cloud of rage and evil. His will was not strong.
And the man, the man with the son on his back, rose from the ground, wound still open, still dripping blood, Man Bane still forced inside, and he picked the slave girl up, the ugliest person on earth, and kissed her chapped lips.
She was healed, first her beauty and then her heart. He wiped her tears away with his one good hand and onto his body, and her tears reattached fallen limbs, closed up gashes in his body, and forced Man Bane to shrink back into its silver metal slab.

All was found.



The End.

You don't live less you're ready to die.

I saw a woman running in full sprint away from her car on the interstate today. I saw a log truck on fire as I passed it by. I killed a million bugs today. We pass the world, or maybe the world passes us. I watched my cigarette's ashes sprinkle to the ground and thought about the ashes of burned out buildings in WWII falling to the ground like snowflakes, no two the same, blanketing the land in white and gray.

I see new buildings being built on the horizon, and I've been told that every 7 miles the earth curves, so I expect every 7 miles there are new buildings. Raindrops must be huge to ants, they must be watery asteroids to their sand civilizations.

....



There are these two men that live in my parent's hometown. If you are from there, you might know who I'm talking about. They have long beards and are skinny. They usually ride bikes around and live out on this country road in an old green house. It has no power lines going to it, no telephone wire sticking out its side. They have a fleet of worn out bikes turned upside down in the driveway and seem to have no jobs, no fixed income, no contribution to modern society, and I wonder so much about them. I think their lives are fascinating. To live without all the things we consider needs (when they are really wants), to just be, is very interesting. I wish I had more courage to park at their house one day and just talk to them. Somewhere inside me, I believe they'd greet me with the business end of a double barrel sawed off shotgun, but for the most part I think they would be quiet. I think that's how I would greet them at my door, sadly enough.

Food for thought, thusfar all that I've said.

And now for some dessert:



Who is the modern cowboy? Other than, of course, the ranchhand or actual cowboy? Maybe truckers, but maybe they are just the modern day sea farer? I don't know. I know that Birmingham has been good to me so far. I used to hate hate hate Alabama. Everything about it. From the rednecks (which are plenty) to the psuedo cover up preps (who are really rednecks). We really all are emporers, aren't we? All dressed up in what we believe is the best, when we are really nude. We all pretend to be something we are not, to an extent. I'm just ready for my wardrobe to go up in flames.

But I digress... I've really come to like Alabama, appreciate your heritage, I guess, is what some would call it. And while I dream and long for a land of long white clouds, I am content where I'm at now, the land of mosquitos and racism, the place of the New South. We will mold and shape this place, bury our hatchets and forget where we buried them.



Let's burn down tomorrow.

I'm on Fire.

Driving through the Magic City, Tree City USA:

What is it about hills and stars and trees and forests and good music that makes you have that natural high, that good buzz? The one where your eyes wanna roll back into your head, and your head under your hair tingles, and cars' light slow down in streaks by you. That high you get when you turn around in circles with your arms out and head up watching the clouds and the sky spin with you.

Anyways, that's how I feel, when I'm there, in the moment, nothing exists, I barely exist, and all this, this thing that we are in, on, at, is just a obligatory thought, something more about happenstance then reality.

I'm at peace alot now, well, alot more than I used to be. My sporadic dark spots, freckles in my life, seem to have either tanned with the rest of my pale Norwegian body or just lessened, atrophied within and on top of themselves.

This is the event horizon of my life, of our lives. This is the very beginning and the very end of all we know. The present leaves us every second for the future which is just over the next hill we are always peaking. But like I said, I am at peace. And I've also said this before, that thunderstorms have never been scary for me, so when people say "Oh, weather those storms of life" I just kindly nod and think, "Ah, those are bad?" Because I think they are beautiful.

And maybe the storms of life are beautiful. One man's trash is another man's treasure, so goes that. One man's rainstorm is another man's waterhole. And I think that redirection of understanding has transformed deluges into paper cups. I just have a different perspective that tough is soft now.

The world is really upside down, we just see it right side up. It's weird how G-d works those things out.


Stop, Drop, and Roll.

Everything I Say is Hollow like a Dying Tree

And it echoes, it echoes.

It's funny, the power you can hold over people, the seemingly strong turned weak, becoming people who aren't even people, who are just things and faces, just names in different places. I have watched my own reflection melt away in the water, I remember it well. It was more out of body than I want to admit. And no matter what, or for that matter, yet, it doesn't look like it will change.

You heart is made of chambers, physically, and metaphorically. Four inside, countless in the literary sense. And one of those will always hold someone inside of it, even when hope is gone, and vows are exchanged, it seems to always hold them. I'm too gutless to mention her name, or too cowardly to tell her, so the closest thing to courage is by writing this thought, this one thought, about her on the damn internet, out for billions of pairs of eyes to gawk and gaze like this is some caged, drugged up panda bear.

But it's not. It's just how I feel.

I had a dream last night. She was in it. We were at my uncle's house, and she and I were good again. She had blonde hair, again. and We were older, I think, or maybe younger but just wiser. And she was spending the night in the trailer on a bench made of splintered wood and I came and laid down with her and spooned, and I felt her small lungs give and take air at will. There was a green itchy sheet, but I didn't mind. It could have been made of razors and still I would have laid there. Then we were up and she was outside in a circle of strange friends with backpacks and big purses. And they looked at me like I had leprosy, like I should yell "UNCLEAN!!!" at the top of my lungs. And she said, "I have to go now." I asked, "Why?" She said, "Because you're a dick."

And she left. I woke up hurt. Because I know the dream spoke truth.

This part is very true:

In those early hours of this morning, I wished that G-d would send me back in time, at first to the very beginning, then towards the middle, then towards the end. I wanted a second shot, another chance. I pleaded with Him, "Please let me go back and try again." I feel like my best shot back then was subpar at best for someone out of my league.

I remembered all of this just to make sure that to keep it in perspective, to try and forget it, but remember it at the same time. Life is funny, G-d is funnier.


What in the hell is going on?

It's Quiet in the Countryside, Except for the ever passing Motorist.

I've been making a lot of observations about the world as of late. I'll sit outside when it's drizzling and feel the rain tap on my skin, soak my shirt, feel the weight of water in heavy clothes. I watched some cows meander the other day, I think all cows do is meander, maybe run for their lives when it appears dangerous, and they seem to move as I figure dinosaurs did. But then it dawned on me that only science and TV tells me how dinosaurs moved. What the heck do I know about Jurassic migratory patterns or anything for that matter.

Living in the present and the present alone gives you a very dangerous naivety. All that knowledge you have acquired melts away as the rain washes it down. Just sitting there, existing, barely thinking, just feeling, taking in with your five senses. I can smell chicken houses in the distance and that awful smell in some weird way reminds me of home. I smell that sweet aroma of chicken shit and it just makes me think of long afternoon rides home after football, your body too weary to move, your brain to hot to think, and this long invisible cloud of chicken farts sits like a fog in the middle of the road about a mile away from our house. And chicken shit smells like home.

And I see nothing really, dark gray clouds sitting just above my head, sitting on top my head, laying around, passing through, always changing their shape, maybe to confuse some cloud police or something. and straight ahead of me are pastures, rolling hills of green, the greenest green somehow made more green by the dimmed out sun, by the dark clouds, by the moisture in the air.

I hear cars passing in the distance. No one really honks out in the country, just waves quietly, solemnly and stoically like Eastern Island statues reaching out to one another. Something about country folk, their quietness, their carefully chosen words, their knuckle worked to the bone work ethic, their crow lines sliding to their ears. More like a Rockwell painting than people.

I think about Jesus alot when I sit here like this. Not about his sacrifice, or how He isn't dead, though so many think I am stupid- inadvertently so, anyways. Just how He was normally. How much He must've stunk, what Arabic sounds like, how many times he was cut before He bled out later in life. And then I think about me, little ole me. The one who calls chicken shit home. What I've done, what I'll no doubt do. How silly I am, how dark I can be. And how in darkness the light shines in me.

There are birds chirping in the distance and frogs making their bellows. Some crickets are chirping and I see something move some grass in the distance. Maybe it's a deer coming to drink water by the stream. Or maybe it's a lion, out of its cage, come to devour me.

Either way, all I can smell is chicken shit and I am at peace. I am at home.

forget where you buried the ax

"The Ocean, the Sky were blue"

Cars run through the valley
Filled with smoke
And children rode on
Coughing so not to choke

I just breathed.

There was music
In the distance
And the band played on
And babies cried
And the sun marched on.

I just watched.

I lost an arm
Then I lost two
And then both legs gone
The ocean, the sky were still blue

I just laid there.

A pot full of dirt
Where seeds used to be
Just became dirt upon dirt
And never a tree to shade me

I closed my eyes.

And walls decay
As walls will always do
Men went off to war
Never to return to you.

I just died.


"Ducktails and Iron Presses"

Ducktails and iron presses
Smokestacks pour out
Upside down gray dresses
As they blow up casually.
Belled curves and gawking eyes
Red, electric, flashing bright
Do their best to try and disguise
Their betraying hearts,
Their white noised lies.

And women, like factories
Just produce more of the same
Red faced ideallyic
Half attention driven
Half naked ashame
The wind with quiet eyes
And nonsensical silent hands
Just lifts those skirts
High into the trees
Or drops it down low
Down to the ankles
Down to the knees
While the green flushed leaves
Hide the innocent knots
Of onlooking trees.

North and South, East and West

My grandfather kept several video tapes for my brother and I and him to watch when we were little. There was Cat Ballou, there was El Dorado, and there was a baseball bloopers tape from ages ago. And I remember one announcer in particular saying, "The sun appears to have set in the East."

That's the one way I remember which way I am going if ever in time of lost travel. Good direction is a hard thing to find nowadays. Like man has lost his way. Used to, people knew where their way around, didn't need to ask which was was north or south. They could feel it in their bones, could draw maps with the stars in the sky. It was an old man, the man of history, the man forgotten now, it seems. Only remembered in fairy tales and in countrysides.

Sometimes it is good to take a trip and not know where your are going. To pack up and head out, your destination a question mark and not an X on some map. Half the adventure is wandering around.

But I miss not knowing where I am going. Drawing a line in the sand with a crooked stick. Send me from A to B. Let me meet wary travelers on the same pilgrimage.

We all seem to have lost our way.

The world seems sad. Painted faces, clown smiles, ways of acting out happiness in the same manner and fashion as we see imitated before us, driving in our large cars with our windows rolled up, to keep the sad world out.

It's quiet outside. I hate how much I like it that way.

Love is a line

I can't seem to recall the amount of people that I've met that have been hurt, are hurting, or have hurt someone. Rarely do I find someone nowadays who is completely green and happy and sweet and pure, in the sense of love. Is it Hollywood, her way of telling us stories through silver screens, impassioned tells of impossible love? Is it us watching our parents and trying to recreate or reanimate or reinvent what we see as love? Those feelings, all of them, are such an odd thing to behold.

Watch someone with it inside them, it's like a virus, a beautiful virus infecting every inch and every cell. Itching the skin, making the pours sweat, stirring up butterflies in a stomach. That's one feeling. But there are so many others. Maybe that's why love is so hard. It's not an easy emotion, it's not confined to only one dimension. It encompasses every one of them.

I took a Scientology test last year just for the pure fun of it. They had a machine, which was basically a battery tester with clamps on it, and they rigged it up to me. They asked me questions, simple ones like, "Are you happy with your life?", "Are you in love?", "Is there something missing out of your life?" And I answered all of them amibiguously, half because I just wanted to see their reaction to such vanilla, but also I found their explanation for such a device pure rubbish. They said it was an emotion machine, it could detect whether or not someone is happy or sad, much like if they are smiling or tears are falling. And I remember chuckling to them, just thinking, "Oh how love is so complex and simple." I smiled. I think I was in love with love.

To the broken hearted, hold on. Stitches will come, casts will be made, bones will be set. The doctor is in.

I am Your Footpath.

I was walking in the park today while so many took naps and dreamed of civil war engagements, and it felt more like the sun was taking a walk on my head and on my shoulders. But I was still walking in the park, an old one that not alot of people go to and for good reason. It's in an inconvenient place. Out of the way on a weird 8-way intersection. I found myself in it, though, and as I walked about on the footpath I came across a section of pavement broken in half. And I wondered what monster, what strength could destroy such a chunk of concrete. Concrete is one of the toughest things made, hence the reason there were concrete bunkers in case of nuclear winter. It's a porous object, but one whose pours never completely fill up, allowing energy to be absorbed by it. Anyways, this nuclear bomb blocker of a substance was broken before me, and to the right of it was a tree, not a large one, but not a small, either. and Below the concrete and just to the other side of the tree was a root sneaking beneath the surface.

And then I figured it out: the root, the tree itself has destroyed this walkway. Inch by inch, year by year, tree ring by tree ring, it pushed on this block, and slowly and surely it decayed it and made it weak. And I found it kind of amazing that nature in its methodical way showed man what it thought of its way of walking around.

In other news, I started thinking about drawing a picture of myself and what it would look like. For some reason I am clinging to a rock, and the background has a lava-esque light to it, and I am limping forward, one knee down. I am much more muscular in the painting, my hair a tad bit longer and unkempt, but there is one defining factor I'd want to accentuate: My scars.

Great and many, long and small, sutured and open, faded and new. Gaps where Parts of me should be. Almost like a classic Greek statue, chipped and damaged, but with blood flowing through it, with pain and life and death and hurt and tears all stained on it. Because it's the scars that define us, that sharpen us, that make us who we are.

Like that mixed up, haphazard walkway I went down today. It would have never caught my eye unless the helpless tree would have grown in the only way it knows how, and the bystander broken laid over it. Our scars are not too different, making us stand out from the run of the mill pieces of sidewalk.

Victim Vs Villain

What robs us (men) of our original intent and context? What makes us seemingly become either cold or clammy or melancholy? Why, in this Christian world of Jesus, David, and Job, do we find so many either extremely timid men or over macho ones? I suppose it's a question that many don't really bother with or realize that they ask themselves every morning and every night, that it plagues them like boils, just underneath the skin.

We arbitrarily come to such a road unknowingly, either guided there by our own misery or by others who see it fit to grow us and lead us in only certain ways. Let's not be coy and let's not be cowards, but it seems rare that a man is grown and defined and refined by the age of 30. Now, this does not mean that he should give up or walk out on such a role.

Well, it seems that man himself can find his role leaning towards victim or villain quite easily. You are either the passive, quiet, "ok, whatever is good with you" kind of person, or you can be the "my way or the highway", super- *and most of the times overly so* decisive one, the gung ho lieutenant whose skills lack way behind his charge into battle. Neither are right. Neither can be the way we were truly meant to be. One is a dick, the other is a powder puff. How can I speak so lowly of either of these positions?

For one, I have been, to an extent, both of them leaning to the right or to the left, whichever way would find me the most attractive to the crowd presented before me. I'll be honest, it will wear a kid out. To not properly assume the right role for the right reasons, being who you were created to be. It will almost kill you, like you are swimming against the rapids, but you are no salmon, and you are tied down. How far can we make it before we start breathing water?

This will destroy you. These obsessions, these longings to be this way or that way so that person X will find me attractive or group X will be lead by me or see me as good and giving and great and as a leader. Take heart, take a chance, take some time to sort yourself out. Don't be the Zodiac, and don't be the homeless man with a 1000 excuses. All wrong motives and they lead nowhere, just circles. Always circles. The world is full of circles.

I hear men yelling at each other outside. It's like the whole world is mad. I think we might all explode soon. Good.

The bird returned to sleep in its egg.

It's funny, getting ready to move to a new town thinking about the comfortability it might bring and all the questions, what ifs, and whys and hows that come with it. Many of you know, but many more are about to find out that I am moving to Birmingham, Alabama for several reasons, but for the most part it is for me. I am doing it for myself, a move that is not dependent or reflective of love or treasure that I have hidden in some field in North Alabama.

But with all of that, with miles and new faces and new jobs comes a frightening reality: restart.

I get to meet new people (which I love) and I get to see new things (which I adore) and I get to go down new roads (which I need). But they don't know me, and I get the choice to let them or not. One thing that this past year has taught me, which I wanted it do and didn't want it to at the same time, is growing up, being a man, making decisions, taking roads, being in charge, being bold and honest and gutsy and stupid and falling and getting up and fallingt again. It has taught me to say what I feel, to really love people, and that I can invest in lives and not because someone is watching me or it makes me look attractive. I am doing things because of me, for me and for G-d. I am more free than ever before.

At the same time, though, I walked into a church today, though it felt more like a marketing campaign for Jesus, that he needs to be sold to kids today because our generation and the one under us have such an attention deficit disorder that Jesus and G-d must be flashy and artsy and smooth and modern. Lights flash and many thousands of dollars are put towards the sound system and people seemingly clap and smile and act like everything's fine. And I wonder if it really is, that maybe I am just this dark spot, this little piece of cancer that appears normal, but really infects those around him, and soon I'll have killed most of them. I really feel that way, that I am the struggling believer in this sea of tranquility. But the preacher preaches, he is a seminary professor who talks on Gideon and how afraid he was, how he didn't trust G-d, and I identify with him, thinking about this new place, these new people, my old sin, my dirty rotten past, and the thing that covers it all. And I am refreshed and I am worried all at the same time. What a war.

Sometimes I wish that everyone in the world, at one time, would stand still. And all at one time we would take one step back just to see, that maybe, just maybe, we could stop the world from spinning that somehow our gathered momentum and our togetherness and we as one could pause time and even take another step back and another and another until maybe we actually could travel back in time, spinning the world backwards. And flowers would turn into seeds, and birds would go to sleep in eggs, and my heart would be mended and the stitches would wind themselves back into a ball and the trainwreck that feels like my life sometimes would go back to the first train depot.

In my heart I wish such things, but in my head I know these things to be impossible and quantum physics and thermal dynamics and all sorts of science clogs any kind of romanticism from reaching my mouth and my eyes and the rest of my face. The awful truth is that I am more wretched that i could possible imagine but I am much more loved than I could dare dream.

And all of a sudden that black spot on the map doesn't feel as dark anymore. Maybe because it sees more of its own, or maybe because it sees that the light is coming. Indeed, it has arrived.

Grind

Millstone to wheat, driven by some sickly mule, rolls inch by inch pressing down on what was in a former field. The heavy disc, scarred and scratched from years of performing the same service ever-so-carefully consumes all the innocent wheat chafe in his path. And the mule, blinders on, tied by nothing more than a fancy string to this old grind house, shakes its feeble legs, watches its coat waste away, all because it doesn't understand the simple complexity of knotsmanship.

Sometimes it feels like we can be either one of those three: millstone, mule, or stalk. We either are doing the grinding ourselves, pinned to a wheel turning around and around, not earning enough nor understanding our real worth. Or we are the mule, held by what we see as an insurmountable force, impossible to escape, at least in your own mind. So you are bound to what appears to be slavery, pushing forth whatever persons can't see the value in their own labor. Or you are the grain, like a farm girl tied on the railroad tracks, kicking and screaming and hoping and waiting that rescue will come, but that train is getting closer and those wheels is spinning harder. You are the victim, your fate set before you in your fellow brothers and sisters of the wheat field, their destiny crushed out before them.

But what is the truth in all of this?

The truth is that work is good. It is a good thing for a man to labor and to labor well. Nothing can compare to sweating on your brow, to feel your forearms tighten and tense with each and every move you make, to watch the dirty run between your legs as the shower water chases it to the drain. If a man is not careful, he can find that he loves work, that it empowers him and satisfies him in a way that nothing else can. And this is true and this is false.

Another truth in there is that we do have roles to play, roles laid out to be. "Everything that happens supposed to be, it's all predetermined can't change your destiny. Think I'll sit back and wait and see and I'll get to where I'm going."(Conner Oberst) Yet you can't just necessarily just wait around for it. Destiny and fate does not move to and fro seeking solitary and sediment people. Those people that wait on it have found their destiny and it is to become like the Thinker Statue, always posed in thought, wondering. But our roles are proactive, unlike the victimized wheat that cries out for help. If you play the victim long enough, then maybe that IS your role, but a role none the less sad and lonely, only joined by others that always believe they are the victim to this world, to this mill house. We are not chained to these roles forever, so take heart! Their will be a day, perhaps it has already come, where we shall be freed of the roles that the world has placed on us, and the role of victim, criminal, or foe.

One day the Grinding will cease, and the house will be destroyed, whether by revolution or time, vines slowly growing up the sides of its wheel housing, wood splitting and splintering. Termites, those slow and tiny little bugs, the guerrillas and rebels that will help release your soul. And future generations will pass by, wondering what that old building lurking in the distance used to be, and why it is so haunting still. It is where we give ourselves to work, where our souls are sold for so little and our only benefit is bread.

But thanks be to the Vine and to the Termite, the small and steady growing and feeding parts of nature that tear down those false buildings, that release the entrapped animals, that twist around the mill stone, causing it to seperate from the grind wheel and roll out the door to freedom, that carry away bundled wheat in the heat of the day, for it to fly and flee as the wind wills.

Like Children Dressing in Our Parent's Clothes

This world is awful.

War. Famine. Prostitution. Boy Soldiers. Child Molesters. Pestilence. Tornadoes. Earthquakes. Heartbreak. Death.


What good in this world could we ever put in any hope in? When things are stripped away and down and out, what is there left to hold on to?

We are a broken race, a destitute people. I can feel the mighty, yet small, hand of the world tensed back, waiting to destroy every single bit of me. Every inch except for the last one, the one that Valerie talks on in "V for Vendetta":

Our integrity sells for so little, but it's all that we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free.

And with no reason, that shaking fist is held back, for sometimes reason I do not understand. Maybe once or twice, it has been allowed to press upon me, and the weight behind it, and the ensuing pressure enough to break most bones, to snap them in half, for marrow to seep out. Yet we hold on, we stand fast.

Most of us knows what it is like to be heartbroken, to be wounded. We are, like I mentioned earlier, a broken people. We cover it up, mask the bruises with rouge and eyeliner and coats and ties, and we tell ourselves in the mirror that, "everything is okay, everything is fine." But it is not okay and it is not fine. Look at us! Wandering like zombies, shuffling our feet towards some dream, towards some manufactured princesses and cookie cutter houses. They are all cliffs, really, all just holograms and mirages waving in front of us on hot gravel at the edge, bidding us to do its will, to take another step forward and another step out. We, with scars from our heads to our toes, with lashes from past beatings, with knife wounds in the back and open chest cavities where our hearts used to be, we can feel the breath of the hot day, simmering and sizzling our lives away, but there is something deeper, an old magic, a deeper yearning like a cool breeze, a mountain snowcapped in the distance. A place that we feel alive at.

A place that makes us feel so small, yet so large at the same time. John Piper says of this: nobody goes to the Grand Canyon to improve his self-esteem. Why would they go there? The reason is that deeply written in the human soul is that we were not made to be made much of, but to make much of God.

We are a broken people, charading and moonlighting in silly capes and cowls, but there is hope, there is love. And that love can fill us up, can unwrinkle those old crow's feet, can loosen that scar tissue up. It can break down the walls of doubt and misery and lifelessness that have encamped themselves in that place where your heart used to reside. It is a love too big and too bold and too bright, so bright that it should consume everyone and everything in one bold white light, but it does and it doesn't.

But how can we, dusty and discarded, carry such love inside us? " 'But I'm so small I can barely even see how this great love can be inside of me?' Look at your eyes they're small in size but they see enormous things." (Aaron Weiss)

We in and of ourselves could house no such thing, but it diminishes itself somewhat, it came down in the form of man, a second Adam to our first Adam, bled and dead, and breathed life in us anew. Diminished but still perfectly magnificent. We can take in the scope and breadth and depth of a mountain with our small eyes. How much more so can G-d, perfectly grant us His Sweet and Perfect love through His Son?

We are a broken people, we've tripped over our own feet too much, and made a mockery of anything that could be considered sacred. We have tipped our own scales, but in this, there is a beauty and a plan. And we, in our own ignorance and blindness, miss such sweet things. We are broken, but we can be healed.

Lean, brothers. Lean, sisters. Wake up, Oh Sleeper!

To the Broken,
Our wounds will be bound and healed by Love.

Status Whoa

I was asked last week why I only had one pair of shorts. I simply replied, "Because it's the only pair I need." I think the retort was taken almost ridiculously, like "How in the world can someone only have one pair of something?!"

Good question.

Why do we own what we own? What's the necessity behind our articles of convenience? Why do I have a flat screen TV? Why do I own video game consoles? Why do I dress like I do?

Gah, there are so many roads to travel down with this idea, there could be more to talk about than I could even exhaust. Somewhere right below American consumerism, there is a wolf and he is black and invisible and clever. And he lives in you and he lives in me. It is that part of us that wants to devour technology, fashion, automobiles, every thing that tells us that we've quote unquote "made it." There is a credit card for people who can spend over some insane amount called THE BLACK CARD. There are dinette sets made for every demographic possible, and catalogs 600 pages thick to help moisten the palates of the working class and nonworking class alike. And we get sucked into it. We like it, we want it. We(I) want those new shoes, those sweet jeans, that cool album, and the list can go on and on and on.

But it is wrong. Our status is not dependent on what we look like, who we dress like, what our houses look like, and what car we drive. That is the status of people who need masks and who cry out for mercy and for love. The world wants to tell us that we are fat and unattractive and unloved and disgraced unless we get those things necessary for popular survival. I'll give a dollar a day for a child in Africa and call that mercy and call that giving. But how dare I! And I'll spend the rest on super sizing my meal or buying a beer. There is a balance of frugality and decent stewardship, but I think we go overboard one way or the other, telling ourselves we are really better than we are.

There was once a man who had a sandwich sign that said, "What's wrong with the world?" A man saw it, and the next day wore a similar sandwich sign beside the first sandwich-signed man. His was the answer to the question posed:

"What's wrong with the world?"

"I am."

In every realm of the world, in ever sense, we are fakers to some extent, wishing and wanting people to accept us because we do this or that. Because we are too good or too bad, or somewhere in the middle. And everywhere people wear clothes that identify them with a certain subculture of people, whether they mean to or not. And I judge those differently from me, like I am some superior Nitzche master race. Like I am some Wagnerian man. But I am not. I am afraid, I am alone, I am sad, I am poor. But I pretend some of those things don't exist, and the rest of it I find my position and my status and my acceptance in something better and bigger than what the TV or what my friends or what some woman could say to me, could whisper to me at night. I am loved unconditionally and for no reason by G-d, through Jesus Christ. He sees me as perfect and beautiful and strong and as a man and as a leader, so even when I don't feel those things, I can strive to remember those small words that he whispers in between hurricanes and volcanoes. And those will send me through, will push me past, will help me hold on.

So my final thought is this: Your status in this world, what this world calls you, what you have made yourself into, it will all fade away, whether quickly like a falling building or slowly like a dying star. But it will be gone, and you will be left alone. "Every living thing dies alone," Roberta Swallow says. I'd say she is pretty close to the truth. In the end, none of us are doctors or patients or priests or brothers or fathers or soldiers. We are all just humans, stripped away of everything temporal. And that is when the infinite will takeover. So, I suggest if you are tired of what this world calls you, even though you might be physically beautiful and popular, still this world will call to you in a way that you will never measure up to, there is One who calls you all good things and ask in return for nothing. You don't have to dress the part, you really don't. You don't have to act the part, you don't have to look like anything at all. All you do is just be. Soak in what it is to be loved unconditionally because G-d came down as Man and died for you and for me.

That's all the status we need.