











The lights of the evening sunset, run across my car as I drive down 280 in this, a concrete city… a city that was called a magic city…
Only now it’s beginning to rain…
The colours run…
We vacationed in lieu of breaking up …
That’s what I think I wrote somewhere …
Channeling Didion… “in lieu of divorce…“
We went swimming in the ocean
We went swimming in heated pools
In ice cold pools
The sun and the sand burned our skin
The riptide and current and salt
The pools
Cooled us down in the evening
I didn’t drink
I am still sober here
I am trying here
Trying not to run
Trying to face something
The thing inside myself
The fear outside myself
I am trying to write again
A true sentence
Without delusion
Just a truth …
We stand on the outer edges
Looking in
On ourselves
Waiting on a drop
An echo of cutlery on the floor
A raised voice
A shadow of something we’ve thought we’ve seen before
A reason to leave
To return to familiar loneliness
To return to something else
I am 32 here
Soon to be a father
What will my son learn from me?
What did I learn from my father?
Without trying ?
Between the spaces ?
Between the sentences ?
The silent places …
Let there be a hope
A space for truth
A space for patience
Let there be a space for love
For love
For courage
Don’t fall with me
Don’t
Just stand
In this silence
The beating heart
Words on paper
Light in sunset
Across June
32
Becomes time
Time is fleeting …
Oh son …
We are not infinite
We don’t get all things back
We try to stand cautiously or chaotically
Live live live they say…
Or fear fear fear
Even trying not to make a mistake – you will…
And trying to live as tho you want to drink every wine …you will be drunk and lose the moment and memory…
Just stand patiently and be prepared for opportunity …
And ride with the sunset…
Know who you are…
Know who you are
-E
30 for 30
———
“When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll—
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to know
It is well, it is well with my soul.”
These words were penned around 1873
Horatio lost his business and a fortune in the Chicago fire of 1871 and his four year old son to scarlet fever … sending his wife and daughters on vacation across the Atlantic thinking it would be good to get away, their ship sank, killing over 200 people including his four daughters…
Later passing over the same spot…he penned these words…
“When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll—
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to know
It is well, it is well with my soul.”
I want a gospel
That tells me
It is well,
Whatever my lot,
It is well,
In the good times,
It is well when I’m poor,
It is well, when I’m anxious and scared…
It is well…
It is well…
Whatever my lot…
It is well…
Not just on the top of the mountain but down here in the valley
In the place I’m in…
Peace…peace like a river…
-E
#nationalpoetrymonth #30for30
Why write?
And to what purpose?
If the god idea is on the outside of the known universe
Then a creator is on the outside
Of their structure of work…
Or the structures of society…
There are no sharp edges
No walls
No ceilings
You can create whatever you want
But why…
There is a feeling –
And like most things- it’s lonely and likely,likely, a minuscule group and not the reality…
But there is a feeling at least for myself…
That it’s an Instagram society
And we must purchase
Exchange something from ourselves
To attain something – a special key – to unlock ourselves ….
But I don’t think we are a puzzle …
With pieces scattered throughout the universe …
We are whole…
Right now…
And there is a feeling- a pressure- that it must be
Insightful
Inspiring
And useful
——
Again…
Imposter syndrome is likely my culprit here…
If architects build structures
And landscapers lay foundations
And gardeners set tables
Artists
Are the emotions
The colours
The sensations
The memory
For society
Imagination is so important
It’s doesn’t even have to be good or great
Just show up
Even if you sit there 250 days in a row and don’t build anything
But on the 251st day
You do
You’re an artist in and out of season
You matter
——
The older I get
The less I am impressed with people
headlines (they sell stories)
There’s nothing new under the sun
We gripe on our parents
Our children will gripe on us…
We feel important and like we are doing a great work
but we all will grow old and slowly fade into the corners of rooms
Possibly becoming punchlines, ignored and suddenly we will understand how our parents possibly felt
And
There is nothing new under the sun
It’s so easy to just fall in line and be an echo
I could write about how lovely my wife was until we divorced and then it would be so easy to say she failed in the marriage and crucify her…
And most people would be ok with that
It’s easy to occupy an established place until you step out of or over a perceived line and then you become a punchline or headline and are reminded of your place
There was a writer from the Middle East
She wrote me once and asked me to keep writing …
I read her work
And all of her writing was about losing friends in school
And bombings
And religions
I thought what it must be like
To be surrounded by religions
And people selling you something all the time
Maybe we are just another echo when we pray…
I have doubts
Like a flood
But I think about her a lot
And I – I believe in art
And so I ask
Why write?
To build
Brick by brick
Forget about what you think you know
About headlines
About social media
everything is marketing and nothing is as it seems
So …again…
What are you saying and why are you saying it?
Who are you saying it to?
Why do you want to say it?
What happens next?
——
– E
1
You think the Apex of all pain is losing a parent…
You tell yourself, ok, this is it…nothing could hurt more than this – (losing a parent or a divorce etc)
And then you lose a brother…
And there’s such fresh pain
Pain you can’t even understand
It’s just there…
In such a way
That it feels so unfair
it levels the field
You feel
Cheated from something
You don’t even understand
——
2
There’s no order
To this madness
You think
Ok, there’s parents you’ll lose
You prepare for that
But losing a sibling
Is so different
Whether you’re close or not
You really understand the brevity of everything
It wakes you up
From the grind
From the hustle
And you look around you
And you see
How quickly and randomly
All of this can go away
——
3
This funeral home
Where our father was
Where all of us end up
Through our history
Whatever we may do
We end up here
How strange that
We won’t be living
This ache
This invisible target
We really don’t know
—-
4
How complex
How layered
We take things so personally
I remember losing our father and I thought it was all so personal
And it was
In its way
But there is always hurt
Beyond what you see
There is always layers
There are years
Entire decades
Of complexities and issues
That we know nothing about
It’s all so blurred
The lines
We think it starts and ends with us
A moment in time
But it’s layered
Traits, ethics, work, talents, looks, pain, old pain, new pain, life …
I lit a cigarette and I smoked it
I probably shouldn’t have
But I wanted cheesecake
And didn’t have it
And I felt that I was overthinking
——
-E
Regardingsamuel.com
Ethan: Well, we made it buddy.
Simon: We did?
Francis: Frashasha! (Plays drums)
Ethan: This is our 300th!
Simon: Oh boy! What’s a 300?
Ethan: We’ve been through a lot together…
Simon: Here’s a sniff back…I was saving that one…
Ethan: it was funny.
Francis: I’m buying you both a jokes book…
I didn’t know what to write
Was hung up on a line
I knew the world was bleak
I had experienced moments of happiness
But
I’ve always been engaged
To suicide
I just never got the vows right
I can’t explain that either
The claws in your back
Controlling you , grooming you, like a puppet
Rivers of blood
The parasites in your ear
Driving you mad
The blindness
The mad years
——-
Six strings under
Filled with earth
Void
Of soul
And worth
——-
I dreamed about the time they gathered all the art
No laws were broken
Only changed
And called it worthless
Censored
How dare artist make so much money for lines across a canvas
While the working man starved
A child could do this, it doesn’t even give anything to society, it doesn’t lift up…
—-//
Let me tell you….
Religion says to deny yourself
Culture says to conform yourself
Art says to free yourself
If there is gods or god
Yes
There is a madness
But there has always been an autonomy
A breath of a prayer
A single drop of ink
A line
That cuts the page
It speaks life
While you believe you are dead
It speaks hope
While you believe you are hopeless
It is art
It is autonomy
It is your voice
It is your vision
It is yours
Significantly yours
——
I kept thinking about these things
And I kept dreaming them too
I didn’t want to lose parts of myself
I didn’t want to lose any of myself
Maybe this is what you write
When you think too deeply
Maybe this is what you write
When you don’t know what to write
-E
There was evil, and there was memory and who knows when you first meet either of the two. He knew he saw her standing in the woods in the dark when he was little. Her black dress…long hands…
That was when he saw the lights in the sky.
He saw her again when he was house sitting for his grandfather after his grandmother died. He could hear her long dress moving through the hall at night. Always just catching a glimpse of her entering the rooms.
The night his father died, he saw her through the window, sitting in the rocker. He knew then he had passed.
Maybe it was when he drove the long drive to his father in law to tell him he couldn’t love his daughter anymore…
He saw her then…
He kept hearing the words
Sick in the stomach
Weights around his neck
“You’re not the victim here, if you do this, it will end in destruction, you’re on a dangerous road.”
“He’s just lost. He’s lost.”
He sees her now, every night. In his door. Just like he did before…
She just stands there and then floats away. Sucking all of the light and air out of the room.
Who knows when you meet evil…
There was also a different figure
Blonde red hair
Blue eyes like stars
And fire wings
She was there when he had a seizure in a ditch
She was there, reading, when he was in the hospital, she was there always…
But lately she just smoked and made fun of his poetry…
He wondered if he would off himself
Or where any of these were headed
He wondered what any of this was…
If he was going to lose everything
If anything really ended in destruction
If he was even good
Really
He felt empty and numb
He wondered
If it was really possible to run out of time
Because he felt everything ending
And
What any of it was about
I know you feel like nothing
I know you feel like you’re overwhelmed
On your own
Feel it
You’re doing better than you think you are
Alnitak, is the brightest class 0 star in the sky ….found in Orion’s Belt…
1,262 light years from earth
Your light
Even overwhelmed
Even isolated
Is like this blue super giant
I know you think there are thousands just like you….
But this is you
Keep going
You’re doing better than you think you are
You’re unique
You matter
And when I look across the city
When I look across the room
When I look…
I always see you
I don’t know how not to…
-E
We didn’t have time to watch tv
But something in the gut was happening with me…
Born under a military flight zone
Just another small town
We watched the towers fall
We watched the world change
Every generation has its pain
You’re not broken
You’re not in pieces
You’re just bruised
You’re still whole
You’ve just been kicked around
—–
The middle class
The working man
The single mom
Take the hardest hits
But they can’t stay down
They get back up
With both feet on the ground
We’re just out here
Trying to find some kind of peace
—-
I had a cousin
Couldn’t take the pain
Shot himself
Just to get away
—–
I don’t care what you think of me
All I need is my queen
But if she kicks you when you’re down
If she only takes …
Then fuck, brother ,
You’ve got to know when to leave the table ….
Know your worth
And don’t accept anything less
—–
We still have room for growth
We still have overcast skies
But we’re still out here
Working through the pain
Trying to figure out how to explain
What the kids are seeing on the internet
When we go to sleep
—-
I had a friend in Tennessee
No where to go
No where to be
Barely holding on
We are not divided as we seem to be
Everyone is hurting
Living in these broken towns
No work to be found
Bills abound
And rent ain’t cheap
Son what am I supposed to do
How am I supposed to sleep?
Oh god now, oh my god now,
I don’t need a bailout
I need a helping hand
Is there still a foothold for a dream?
Is there still room in this heartland
For a working man
I’m just burning down these roads
Working
Burning
Hoping
That tomorrow is gonna be a cool cool morning
For a new dream
And let me tell you
Oh my god now
Oh my god now
Is there room for us in these small towns
To get born now