Andrew

You always said it would happen. And yet I was still unprepared. It’s strange how when the opportunity to meet with someone so influential, your mind…. Blanks. And then you are stranded with a goofy grin and nothing upstairs. “How’s it going? I’m Andrew.”
And the only thing I could force out was, “…Kelsey.” He shook my trembling hand and I could feel the energy flow from his fingertips. The attempted speech afterwards was barely audible as my brain was telling my mouth to open. He started a conversation about the show and we agreed that it was amazing, adding that we would be at the movie premier the next night as well. His heart seemed heavier than I expected, like he was the happiest man alive yet was holding something back. We all talked about this or that and all the while I couldn’t contain the feeling that I was in the presence of the most genuinely impressive person. After a while of my back-flipping brain trying to capture this moment, we said our goodbyes. And as I asked for a hug, he leaned in and said, “come here, darlin’. Be well.” And that was it. Such simple words. I thanked him for spending time with us, and he thanked us for standing by him through his journey.
It’s sad that we must face defeat in order to appreciate what we have. Knowing this, he is trying to spread the idea that you don’t have to stare death in the face to appreciate life, we just need something to swim for.

self portrait (take two)

She puts on her makeup for no one.
She hides.
Her thick disguise masks her from the world.
Generic smile
Genuine deceit.

She is a rain puddle,
Shallow to the naked eye,
Until your jeans are soaked to the knee.

Brushes swirled across her cheeks,
Already rosy,
Held by a rigor-mortis grip.

Learning the hard way
Swiping shadows across her lids.
Thicker and thicker.
Darker more defined.

Killing herself more and more
with each stroke.
For every picture of every kiss
She stares with milky eyes
Into the glass virtual image.

Change of brush – change of pace.
Colors dance
Grays and browns and golds marry.
But her eyes bleed black.

She looks up, taking in a long breath
Of recycled air.
All her makeup on the counter
Along with her tears.
Her dreams; her lashes
She plucked off one by one
Her shadows on a paper towel.

She dipped the brush into the water.
“Maybe tomorrow”
She said,
“We’ll paint a prettier picture.”

erase me

i was only a sketch anyways.
erase it.
the rubber shavings you can just blow away
there'll be nothing left to look at,
nothing there to remember.
maybe a faint smudge of what once was.
keep erasing,
erase the songs, the music, the feeling that you had
when you drew me.
erase the cool breeze, the rustling branches, the soft crunch you heard
when you tore me.
erase the laughs, and the yelling, and the tears that you shed
when you tossed me away.
erase it.

pretend i never happened,
erase hard,
but don't rip the paper...
im sure you can draw a better picture.

it's late

It’s late.
And I find myself here.
Trying to get things out of my head and on paper. I can't get this ticking to go away.
It’s like a bomb is getting ready to explode in my brain and everything I have ever worked towards will be painted on the walls.
Think about flowers for too long, you find yourself plucking imaginary petals in your brain, wondering "he loves me" or "he loves me not"
creating dreams then crushing them

I was driving home tonight, and I saw lightning within the clouds,
It never broke through.
I didn't feel the rain or hear any thunder,
But the flashing lights made it seem like the world was ending,
Like there was nothing else to live for besides the flashes.
And they didn't stop.
But the world didn't end.

There was one shining star in the sky tonight.
It stood out in the sky
millions of stars
but only one.

James Dean

Think James Dean.
The very definition of “rebel without a cause”
With waves like the ocean running through his hair
And the sky in his eyes.
Eager to be everything,
But stopped short.
Think James Dean,
When you remember the leather jacket that stole America’s heart.
Hung on his frame as if it were an extention of himself
The black and white Chucks on his feet,
They were supposed to be dirty.
But not caked in mud, just enough wear and tear to consider them his.
Think James Dean
When you think of his smile.
And a cigarette between his pearly whites
While he leaned on a pock-marked storefront wall.
I think James Dean,
With a playlist of memories and a sunny day in the park.
Eager to be everything,
But always stopped short.

walking by

Your grand dad left home for the circius
He was young just like me, with hope to explore
He married a girl in Virginia
She could swing the trapeze
And they could sleep on the floor.

Your mother was born in december
On the one sunny day that winter gave up.
She had warm summer eyes, that flickered like fireflies
When she stared at the world.

Why do you leave these stories unfinished
My cheshire cat doorstop with tears in her eyes?
Why do you look when you've already found it
And what did you find that could leave you walking by?

She was raised in a New England village
Then she moved to LA with her firefly stare
She loved sunset strip when it sparkled
You grew up and you sparkled, but why don't you care?

And why do you leave these stories unfinished
My cheshire cat doorstop with tears in her eyes?
Why do you look when you've already found me,
And what did you find that could leave you walking by?

These nights I get high just from breathing
When I lie here with you I'm sure that I'm real
Like those fireworks over the freeway
I could stay here all day but that's not how you feel.

So why do you leave these questions unanswered
The circus awaits and you're already gone
The cheshire cat doorstop with fear in your smile
What makes it so easy for you to be walking by?
what did I do that you can't seem to want me?
And why do we lie here and whisper goodbye's?
And where can I go where your pictures won't haunt me?
What makes it so easy for you to be walking by?

Not Me

faces fit together like a puzzle.
i always liked his hair down.
but not me.
her.
train ride to nowhere.
falling asleep.
my soft pillow shoulder.
reflection.
but not me.
her.
Bathing suits and swimming pools.
bath towel.
a boy.
a girl.
but not me.
her.

wake up

i'm going to ride this plane
out of your life again
i wish that i could stay
but you argue
but more than this i wish
you could have seen my face
in backseat staring out
of the window.

i'd do anything for you
kill anyone for you

so leave yourself intact
cuz i will be coming back
in a phrase to cut these lips
I love you

The morning will come
in the press of every kiss
with your head upon my chest
where i will annoy you
with every waking breath
until you decide to wake up

I've earned through hope and faith
the curves around your face
that i'm the one you'll hold forever.
If morning never comes for either one of us
then this i pray to you, wherever.

I'll do anything for you
this story is for you
cuz i'll do anything you want me to for you
kill anyone for you

so leave yourself intact
cuz i won't be coming back
in a phrase to cut these lips
i loved you.

The morning will come
in the press of every kiss
with your head upon my chest.
where i will annoy you
with every waking breath
until you decide to wake up.

catastrophe

She took his hand in hers with a rigor-mortis grip
Love drained from her fingertips and swirled down the drain in the tub. With head slumped, tears and water danced down her anger line. Her spider veins. Her crows feet.
She recalled when everything was mistletoe and sunflowers. Now just a memory. A tattoo painfully branded to the back of her eyelids. Every moment asleep or blinking began and ended with her genuine smile and her generic deciet. Her heart on a platter. His seed in another. Her exploded veins and tear ducts. Her laugh lines were a permanent photograph of better days.
The curtain falls. The colors dance. A good dream turned lucid where she is the director, actor, and producer. Still the same ending where the bad guy takes the prize.
This is where we live, honey, get used to the letdown. The anchor is down, you're not goin anywhere. It gets old fast, but there is no detour. Think you can make the best of it? Think again. Soon enough you will be just as broken and pathetic as as the rest of us. Its just a small matter of time. Grin and bare it as your grey matter shuts down and finally you will be welcomed into the world of the living and dying.
Better than dreaming.

faded

The skies fade to black
Faint cries faint
Deathly afraid of the dark
Toss...
Turn...
Fog crept from under the bed
Filled the room with smoke.
Run for the door...
Fall to the floor...
Fade to darkness
Blackness
One by one by one by one by one by one
This or that?
This and that?
This IS that
Everyone is everyone... everyone is you.
Flip flop
X-rated death
Flip flop
Suitable for children
Deathly afraid of the dark
Children's cries fade
Fade with the music
Fade with the sky.

Angels in America

Harper: I don't understand this. If i didn't ever see you before, and i don't think i did, then I don't think you should be here in this hallucination because in my experience, the mind, which is where hallucinations come from, shouldn't be able to make anything up that wasn't there to start with, that didn't enter it from experience in the real world. Imagination can't create anything new can it? It only recycles bits and peices from the world and reassembles them into visions. So, when we think we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives it really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable..


Belize: I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. Nothing but a bunch of big ideas and stories and people dying, and then people like you. The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate.

nothing, i guess

Nothing.
Like emptiness but without the space in which to be empty.
Like uncertainty but without the option of being certain.
Like hollow, or indifference.
There is nothing worse than nothing.
Nothing special, simply ordinary.
Imagine slicing open an X over your heart and saying, “here, please, pour your salt into my gaping wound, so that I may feel something. Anything.”
Like a forgotten pair of socks lost in the laundry abyss.
Like a ten year old teddy bear, once a childhood friend, now a place keeper for the corner.
Feel nothing, have nothing, want nothing.
To have a sentence worse than death.
Because death offers a relief, where as nothing offers… well…

In order to feel we must let ourselves.
And in order to let ourselves, we must realize that we should smile because we deserve it.

I deserve it, I realize.
I deserve to smile, to feel, to love again and again and again.
I need to lift myself up instead of squashing myself down.
I need to know that I can make a decision for me, not for you, and not for him, and not because I feel that I have to, but because I WANT it.
Its my turn.
And I refuse to be ordinary.
And I refuse to feel nothing.
Anymore.

murder

You can easily end a life with a single pluck.
Time will be destroyed.
White blood drips from the severed limbs.
The product,
although beautiful and proud,
will only last a few days before the life is completely drained from its body.
The perfection will remain till the sun goes down,
then the petals close in serenity,
and the blossoms shrivel into nothing.

love is like oxygen

the greatest thing
you'll ever learn
is just to love
and be loved in return

an understatement

i held her head in my hands as her bullet hole pumped red.
although it all happened so fast, it was very defined.
i hadnt done anything to stop my hand,
lifted the gun and with a loud crack, she exploded.
she held my unborn baby in her tummy
it would die today too.

she told me that i didnt have to do it.
she said i could take it back
make it right
it could be someone else... she could change her fate

she spoke, and as i was too distracted to listen, english became tongues
there was one other in the room. telling me to run
to forget
to leave them behind and flee
and as the devil on my right told me to run it stifled the voice of my shoulder angel.. so i turned.
And as I turned, and began to run a force stopped me and pulled me in closer to my victim of love. Hate. Rejection. Fear
And her forehead split down the center and shot out two bullets.
The bullets I had released into her.
And as I felt the cool tingles of aproaching death, she whispered
"You don't get off that easy"

lullaby

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the lord my soul to keep...

...eyes flutter shut and breathing slows
I hope in dreams your face it shows.
But dreams they seem to disappoint
As in them lies a hollow point.
No face I see but darkness still
And hear my cries no ears will.
As tears fall and wake my eyes
I hear in me a part that dies.
And all I need is a soft embrace
But nowhere to be seen in this place.
You've vanished far beyond these sheets
And I cannot hear your soft heartbeats.
So sleep deprived I slowly drift
Back into my nightmare swift.
And I pretend to hold you near
And to press your heart against my ear.
To hear the rythym of your beat
To drift me slowly off to sleep.
I find it hard to wake from my slumber
Because a lonely day does quite a number.
So here I lay, not warm nor safe
And here inside my cold heart shakes.

So now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the lord my soul to keep.
And if I die before I wake
I pray the lord my soul to take.

good will hunting :)

So if I asked you about art,
you'd probably give me the skinny on every
art book ever written.
Michelangelo, you know a lot about him.
Life's
work,
political aspirations,
him and the pope,
sexual orientations,
the whole works, right?
But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells
like in the Sistine Chapel.
You've never actually stood there and looked up
at that beautiful ceiling;
seen that.

If I ask you about women,
you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites.
You may
have even been laid a few times.
But you can't tell me what it feels like to
wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy.

You're a tough kid.
And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right,
"once more unto the breach dear friends."
But you've never been near one.
You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his
last breath looking to you for help.

I'd ask you about love,
you'd
probably quote me a sonnet.
But you've never looked at a woman and been
totally vulnerable.
Known someone that could level you with her eyes,
feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you.
Who could rescue
you from the depths of hell.
And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her
angel,
to have that love for her,
be there forever,
through
anything, through cancer.
And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in
the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could
see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you.
You
don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something
more than you love yourself.
And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody
that much.
And look at you...
I don't see an intelligent, confident
man...
I see a cocky, scared shitless kid.

You're an orphan right?
You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been,
how
you feel,
who you are,
because I read Oliver Twist?
Does that
encapsulate you?

shooting star etiquette

Over the past few days I have seen three shooting stars.
Three.
I have been taught since childhood that you always take the opportunity to wish on a falling star, because who knows the next time you will see one?

So I witness these stars falling from the heavens and I can't help but wonder...
.... what are the rules?
What are the specifications that a wish must meet in order for the gods to deem it worthy of being granted?

As I pondered what wish I should make I wondered...
....how long do I have to make said wish?
If I wait too long... will my wish not count?
If I don't make my wish in time, will I be able to make the same wish later?
If I start to wish and I start bumbling and mix up words in my head, will it be too late to start over?

And as I mumbled and fucked up my wish I thought...
...how are the wishes sorted out anyway?
If one star is bombarded with thousands of wishes at once, who's wish comes true,
Or is it more than one?
What if the wishes contradict each other and the star has to choose between the two, what is the deciding factor?

And what are the guidlines of a wish?
What are the rules or boundaries that make a wish acceptable to be wished?
What if my wish would have granted one person I cared about incredibly happiness... but would bring nothing but pain to another?
What if my wish wasn't politically correct?
Would my wish even be considered?

And as I decided my wish probably wouldn't even count anyway I thought...
....why give up on something, an idea since childhood that brought so much happiness?
Why stop an impulse of wishing on every star that falls
Just because maybe that wish won't come true

So i closed my eyes and wished hard.
For what, you ask?
I can't tell you or it won't come true.

the new year

so this is the new year
And I don't feel any different
The clanking of crystal
Explosions off in the distance
In the distance

So this is the new year
And I have no resolutions
For self assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions

So everybody put your best suit or dress on
Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
As thirty dialogues bleed into one

I wish the world was flat like the old days
So I could travel just by folding a map
No more airplanes or speedtrains or freeways
There'll be no distance that could hold us back
There'll be no distance that could hold us back

So this is the new year
So this is the new year
So this is the new year
So this is the new year...