Santa Monica

I guess we drank wine, I don’t recall but a Polaroid tells me we did.

I lost track of time, all around me the world continued to spin.

Not like you were mine, I just talked to you when you came around.

I guess it was kind, of like two kids on a merry-go-round.

You wrote me a letter, from Santa Monica in June.

You said you felt better, and that you thought I’d like it too.

Come in December, and we could write poems in the park.

Then there was that blizzard, that left New York alone in the dark.

I was alone in the dark.

I guess that it’s time, to burn these memories you left behind.

I never did find, a more honest friend or a beautiful mind.

I hope that you found, the world that you set out to see.

And know that I’ll be, singing this from across the sea.

Her Beauty Unfolds

How lively and cruel

Mother Nature can be

How honest her birds

Who chirp Chickadee

Her hawk soars majestic

Through winds over sea

Her beauty unfolds

Without you or me

The Tides of Mankind

There is a certain understanding

In the misunderstanding of mankind.

And it’s this misunderstanding

that propels us forward, like a ship

of titanic proportions does not idle

but cuts through waves, and flows

with The Tides of Mankind.

My studio by the sea

The incense

Cigarette smoke

The neighbors next door racket

The dirt, the grime

Reminds me of Grove Street

And Mac, sleeping

Angelic snores from a lofted bed

Where I sat, idle in the morning

Last nights memory a circus

Holding my piss, hungry

Waiting for Forest to finish his shower

So as I could relieve myself

And head back to Long Island

Where I’d dream of dying

In my studio by the sea

Left: Mac, Right: Me looking down the hall at Forest, BK 2013-2014

Eye of the Sea

It all just felt so dull sometimes

Uninspired and too common place

That I’d do anything it took

To convince them otherwise

Mixed up I believed fire could walk on water

Then became the fool to my own dirty tricks

Until she told me the eye of the sea

Could never be lost or found, but that

It was always there, brilliant and dazzling

And that, it was waiting inside of me

Rorschach Test

Funny, how a song

sung over the years

can seem, so foreign

even to me, with a chorus

not even I can relate to

any longer than it takes

to finish the mornings

cup of coffee, spilled

to form a Rorschach Test

no longer necessary

to indulge or engage,

just enjoying the view

from a bridge overseas.

The time between collision and capsizing

There is something very scary

about imagining a life without flaw,

as if insecurities were a sin

you could merely pray away?

There’s something cynical in that,

something dangerous.

Something I haven’t the heart to feel,

it’s something impervious.

Because with great peril comes

an even greater awakening, an awakening

which floods the veins with frozen certainty

as the waters eating the Titanic.

It’s the time between collision

and capsizing, which we find ourselves

relieved of our blind faith, knowing

with grave admiration, the life

we’re living, is all we have.

July Reflection, 2020

You just have to live.

Being sober’s

as overrated

as being drunk—

nobody wins.

You just have to live.

Topanga

Halogen yellow bursts

of light, turn signals

burn bright, through

white lines of Topanga

Morning sunrise, her and I

up all night, we rise

like silhouetted tree

under the belly of LA sky,

gaze upon a sea of fog

clouds, shower faint

hallucinations of

spontaneous future

Travel

October. Topanga Beach

The slammed door and the silence

The slammed door said I’m hurting.

The silence said I’m scared.

The walls between us listened

when no one seemed to care.

The portraits on the wall,

oh how they seemed stare,

where deep within night

the stars poured ever clear.

The door knob turned eventually

as silence did it’s head,

the sea between us parted and

the portraits went to bed.

While all the world was sleeping

with all their monsters fed,

the boy and girl slept soundly

no sooner had they met.