Panic Attacks

I need a vacation away from myself
An express paid trip to someone else’s conscious
There I can sit and experience this
The ordinary thoughts of an ordinary man
Give it an hour and then I’ll realize
These thoughts aren’t all that much different

But I live in a cage and those that do not
Make me feel worthless, make me feel small
I know this oppression is a self-realized thought
But how do you beat it when it’s still there
At every corner you turn
When it’s the thread in the fiber
The makings of who you are

When the solitude subsides to seclusion
Depression and god knows what else
I’ll ask for everything but what I need or want
Because that would just be too easy

And I'll die before I ever give you
the satisfaction of witnessing my panic attacks

Hungry

Spiritual
Emotional maybe
I never thought it could get this
Literal
My stomach like the camel’s hump
Filled with fat
Eating itself

My friend told me
A terrible joke
The kind he’s good at
The kind I like
“If you look at the world
Through the eye of a camera,
You can’t help but get a bit negative.”

Good
Bad taste
What’s taste
When there’s no taste at all

This alley orphan
Devours the beans I toss out
All the while
Trying, forcing myself
To think for myself
Of myself
Not of how bad it is
But of how much worse it can get
And how it gets there
Every time
Slowly but surely
Is it unconscious
Is it conscious

I can see it
But I can’t take it
I don’t want to take it
Too afraid I’ll hurt it
Or it might hurt me
Who was it that
Morphed love into a
Burning stove

This emptiness
This void
This blackhole in my belly
There’s got to be something better than
Cheap thrills, sex, booze
Drugs, camera eye highs
But nothing’s as quick I find

After all
It’s just a life
And I’m just living it

Sylvia

a shattered splint
for a broken heart
and raiment tatters
spinning light fixtures
to dulled greys and browns
she wants to be wrong
she wants to be the crazy one
but what happens 
when jealousy 
and paranoia
is true? a man will be a 
man will be a man   will 
be a man       will be a

why
does great art
so often
lie in the palms of 
death
?

Conform or get out!
Conform or get out!
Conform or get out!
Conform or get out!

Out of what?
The human race?

Home

I realize too late
There’s nothing there
But now I want to
Put something there
So everyone that thinks
There’s something there
Won’t have to suffer
The fate I did

There’s no one answer
There’s no one belief
In trying to find something
To believe
Because I threw out everything
And now there’s nothing
But there will be
Whatever it takes this time
I will make a place to understand
Where all your dreams
I understand
Where all your fears
I understand
Where all your pains
I understand

It’s a big black world
But there’s safety here
Just don’t stay too long
The wildebeests grow fickle
And the grapes'll go sour

Whales

Out of focus and hyped up on unlove
Out of focus and the difference that’s made
The dusty camera remains on the shelf
And she sings with her mouth shut
But she sings with her heart on full blast

Out of focus and misunderstanding
Why exactly the meaning’s misplaced
The window blinds and the clarity fades
Soon it all will kill you
But we all die, so why cry
It’s just salty water running down your face

I don’t need your desk
I don’t need your nameplate
I don’t need your ideas
Or point of aesthetic
I get great shots
Without a camera
I see it all in third view

Out of focus and ready decisions
Out of focus but what does it mean
When every choice means indecision
When every rhyme is just room to save face

And how many whales had to cry
To get the ocean that salty

covered in viscous fluid, it's a vicious cycle, life's so Pyrrhic, it's barely worth the trouble, or is it?

Bodily fluids
Dripping off her chin
She laughs
The mole on her forehead wrinkles
Lipstick smeared across her face
Connecting to her nose
Her long curly blonde hair
Falls over her shoulders
And descends into oblivion

Her guy friend
Stands to the side
Smiling stupidly
With a long face
One eye is larger than the other
He wears a brown plaid jacket
A grey eight quarter cap

A thin luminous haze
Surrounds them
And outside of that haze is
Black
Besides the streetlamp hovering over them

(started and not finished because uh...... i don't feel like it. poo off ye tomfoolerers.)

Somnambulance Pt 3

It must have been an hour
I just sat there staring at the pills
An overly used plastic glass
A crack in the bottom
Slowly leaking from the melting ice

I was thinking of when I’d like to go back
Did I even want to go back at all?
Was my past really that uneventful?
I thought of childhood
It was pretty standard
I remember it fondly as most do
But I realized if I went back to childhood
I wouldn’t care for it now
Innocence isn’t all that exciting
Once you’ve seen past it

My first kiss…
My first love…
My first sexual experience…
None of it grabbed me

I’d never been in love
Let’s just say my standards are too high
But I have dated some women
I would say I liked them formidably
Enough to go to bed with anyway
But none of those were great either
My first sex act was awkward
Something I’d much rather forget

So my life has been a boring mess
Wow, I never realized that

Well, there was one moment
When I was a part of a raid
I was first in after SWAT
And I took the two big cajones out
I was praised at the office for weeks

But really now…
Killing those two guys was that good?
It felt so good I wanted to revisit it?
Nah…

But what about the night of the beach murder?
Maybe I could go back there?
But how could I go back if I didn’t remember?
I couldn’t…
Who’s to say the pills even work anyway?!

Something came over me
A sweep of depression I guess
I thought of what little I had to live for
And downed all four pills
Within seconds though
I’d come to my senses
I induced vomiting
And covered the trashcan
And part of the floor
With beer and stomach acid
Noticing the four pills back on the floor
I felt a surge of drowsiness
And collapsed into a black out…

Untitled #3094

One day there will be happiness
Nothing but infinite, clear, white, perfect
Happiness
And we will not take it for granted
Because we will have known the other side
The only doubts will be the thoughts of
How we don’t deserve it
At all

Unrealistic…

But impossible?

(I am a BIG fat optimist at heart. Don't believe anyone that tells you otherwise. Myself included.)

Brazilian Woman

Fell in love with a Brazilian woman
Always thought she’d be Caucasian
Maybe Asian
But things are strange like that I guess

Love the way she sambas
All by herself because I can’t dance
Maybe one day I won’t be the wallflower
If there were someone to wake me it would be her

Fell in love with this Brazilian woman
She shakes, she shakes, she shakes me
My eyes rolling to the back of my head
She’ll never know the amount of love I have for her
Or should I say amor

Amor, amor, amor

Fell in deep with a Brazilian woman
She broke my heart before I could say hello
Oh well

Você era o melhor
que eu nunca tive

Somnambulance Pt 2

I boarded up in a random Motel 8
Off the side of Needles Freeway
The electricity was out
But I didn’t want to draw any
Unnecessary attention
So I just sat there in the dark
Trying to devise a plan

I’d taken the idiot road and run
Not showing up or calling in
Would not go unnoticed
And I realized that about an hour in

I’d finished off a six-pack
And was now formidably dazed
I was chewing on the left over ice
When the lights and TV flicked on and off
The split second image on the TV
Was of a man lying in a bed with a drink
Somewhat like me but not completely
It was eerie enough to bother me
But eventually I gave it up to coincidence
Or the booze messing with me
Probably both
Then I rolled over and fell asleep before I knew it

When I woke up
The lights and TV were on
But this time for good
I slowly rolled over to switch the light off
And saw a face in the window
Startled and with a throbbing headache
I looked away for a moment
Then looked back
It was gone

There was nothing remarkable about the face
Just a white male, with buzzed hair
A round face and big lips
He wasn’t smiling or scowling
Just looking
Needless to say, I was spooked

I reached around the desk for my gun
But the remaining bottle vision hindered me
Stumbling, an empty beer bottle
Crashed to the floor
That having woken me up further
I quickly edged my way to the door
Unlocked it and peeked out

I saw three men talking
Standing around the hood
Of a corvette
One of them was the man in the window
The other two were black

The booze taking hold of my nerves
I found myself angrily approaching him
“Why the hell you staring through my window?!”
My speech was slurred, but I didn’t care
I was at that point where I couldn’t
“Calm down,” he said softly
Looking me square in the eyes
But still with no expression
The two black guys seemed to be getting a little nervous
Now I was right in front of him
My stomach acting up a bit

“Are you five-o?” one of the black guys asked
“Do I look it?” I asked, snarling
“No,” the two said simultaneously
“You just seemed interesting is all,”
The strange white man cut in
“I thought you might like what I’ve got.”
A deal? Oh jeez, I thought
I could bust these three right here and now
But for some reason I didn’t want to
Maybe it was the booze
Maybe it was the fact that I’d committed a murder
And my priorities had changed
Probably both

I was never into drugs
I smoked pot a few times in school
But nothing hard
Just not my thing I suppose
But now it wasn’t sounding too bad
Maybe it’d take the headache away

“What do you have?” I asked
“I’m glad you asked,” he said
His composure never waning
How the fuck can someone be this calm?
Maybe it’s the drugs…
Yeah, maybe that’s it…
“I just got something new in.
It lets you go back to places in the past
And linger there.”
“Oh?” I questioned, puzzled
I’d never heard of anything like that
“Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Why wouldn’t they?” he asked me
“Think about a moment you’ll never forget.
Your first fuck. Your first kiss.
Your first love. Your first kill.
Whatever you want. You’re there.”
“Doesn’t sound that great to me.”
“Do you want some or not?”
Finally he was cracking a bit
A little impatient, huh
Maybe he was coming down or something

“Alright, I’ll take whatever.
Two doses I guess.”
“Good man,” he said.
He handed me these four green capsules
“Mix those with water
Then think about the moment you wanna go back to.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
I paid him and went back inside
This time I shut the blind though
So I wouldn’t catch him staring at me…

(continued…)

Somnambulance

I see or hear about murders all the time
But the other night it was on the beach
No less than 20 meters from my door
They excluded me from the case
In lieu of special interest
Most of the heads are newer though
And don’t even know the seniority I hold

It must have been two weeks later
When I woke up on a highway
The blaring of a car’s horn must have taken me
I was alone in the grass in my robe
Bare-footed
It was wet and cold
I got an aching feeling
No one ever told me I sleepwalked

When I got home
(Nearly 2 miles away)
I sat and suddenly remembered
The hazy dream based on an experience
When I had to shoot down a dangerous suspect
The night of the murder

I decided I had to get a look at the scene

When I arrived I noticed
The print in the sand
Bare-footed
I went through the police tape
And placed my foot within the print

An exact match

There had to be some kind of mistake...

(continued… maybe.)