I just want solitude
And beauty too
And if that rings true
You don’t have to give me forever
Just another moment with you
——///
Don’t let time pass you by
I know you have to go
The shadows are covering the sky
But I hope
I left you something
Good
I hope
I left you something
To remember
I hope
In this solitude
this beauty
That is you
There’s a man
Going around
Passing out promises
Gold and silver too
But the success
Never reaches down this far
No,
They won’t follow you down
And every woman I know
Works harder than two men
And they love
And they bleed
And they sew up our needs
And like Cash said
“When the man comes around”
Well, they won’t follow you down
So we fight
And we survive
Even when our paychecks
Barely make it through
What else are we to do
The silver and gold
Doesn’t come down this far
But they pass it around
With promises too
But they won’t follow you down
—-///
And I
I can’t write
My head is filled with clouds
I try to sit
But I can’t breathe
I watch the colour in the trees
And I think
About the dumpster on the side of the road where we used to get shoes and we used to get books…
And I think
About time
I hope I’ve used mine
Well
I think about the old man
Who lived in a school bus
And had a teenager for a wife
Her eyes said she had escaped something worse
A sort of curse
But I was too young to understand
Now, I think as I try to write, what good am I? What good am I?
If we can’t listen
If we look away
What good am I
And what good have I done …
A clouded head is part of Crohn’s
Just like the ache in the bones
The shouting stomach
The anxiety and the depression
I write about it but I can’t talk about it
And you’ll never see it
I guess
We all are just stories in the end
And we want what we want
And we say it sets us apart
And we expect others to know
But part of us stays on the road
Because even we don’t know…
And all we have is time…
Dear child
Don’t be
Consumed by fiction
Have we ever learned?
When will we reach over these walls
And grab hold of each other ?
Scale this pain,
“Hillary was a witch, the Antichrist.”
“Obama was not American and the Antichrist. And and and.”
If it’s not this
it’s something else
Look at us
What we swallow
What we sow
What we consume
Hillary was a woman
A human, flawed, yes…
Obama was a man, a black man…flawed, yes. But human.
Our record of self delusion and hypocrisy
Is terrifyingly sobering
But we can choose to change
I think about how many Americans have died…
I think about how many of us are sick
The hospitals are not allowing visitation again…
What will become of us?
What will history say of us?
That we bought the propaganda?
Or that we stood
And we faced ourselves
We said there is no room
For sexism
There is no room for racism
There is no place for hate
There is only room for growth
For all of us at the table
For all of us
The disenfranchised
The minority
The single parent
The middle class
Every one of us
Because we rise and we fall together
So child
Remember
It’s a job
Do not lose hope
The scientist
The journalist
The doctors
They are not spending decades
Trying to deceive you
Do not lose faith in your ability to make a difference in your community
Read
Study
Reach out
Make a difference
It only takes one…
How sad,
We were mad that she had to carry so much only after RBG passed away…before she died, we were saying things like “she better hang on. We need her.”
How sad that Obama has to get back in the fight.
But look, it only takes one
If you think you don’t make a difference
Look again.
You matter
You’re important
Reach across those walls
We are more than our differences
We rise and fall together.
And our future is waiting
– all of these streets were crowded
– money never sleeps
– the markets will never crash
– in this economy?
It’s difficult for people to grasp eternity
Because all they have-all they’ve experienced, is now…
– you think you have something to offer humanity? You don’t have anything. . . They’re hungry for a shortcut to happiness… and I can give it to them. A life without discipline. Without goals, without effort. Just do whatever whenever however, for as long as ever. But quickly. The day before yesterday.
The devil sat back in his chair…the bar was empty…this was our third meeting…
There were no cars on the street…
No chill in the air…
No ice
I rolled my sleeves up…
Drank my gin
– look, I’m a salesmen, like you, I make deals… I made one a while back…a guy wanted to be the biggest president in history…
– I don’t think this is what he had in mind…
– he’s going down in history isn’t he? He should of read the fine print. Hell, he should’ve read period.
– if you’re confident enough people believe anything…
– the old rules don’t apply, the game is changing. I’m collecting souls. You still think there’s hope for these people? They made their beds. How’s yours?
– I sleep fine.
– are you sure? That’s not what she says…you do see her don’t you? Tell me, how is she?
“She” was a figure who appeared in my door…every night…since I was a child…I would wake up and she might rush toward me or float away.. this tall dark figure…or she might just be mumbling over and over again something I could never break.
I ignored this statement
– there’s a changing of the guard, I still believe in people, in free will, in peoples ability to change. And to choose, so yes…I think our tomorrows are better than today.
– you really don’t learn do you…if you give people the option to grab what they want now? They will take it. People don’t change. Even if it’s against their best interest. They will gratify today and suffer tomorrow. They like to feel like they have options, so they come and go and change their minds a lot, but they are really just circling around their individual grave… never accomplishing much, never really loving, never really growing, just talking. Loudly, about nothing, just themselves. And the world suffers.
If I can keep them distracted and self indulgent, they will gather and fight and self destruct. Arguing about nothing. Consumed with themselves. Feeding this appetite. It’s almost more than even I can take. I hate this whore of self. She drinks the blood and has no discipline no plan…you do know,she’s older than any of us…she’s been here since the beginning…I don’t know, I might have to kill her.
– I didn’t think you had it in you.
– I’m a guy with a plan. That’s why I need you. I can’t do it without souls. I need a statement.
I drank the rest of my gin…
When I set my glass down he was gone.
I looked down to see an envelope…
I put it in my coat…
It was raining.
The streets smelled like sewage.
The city wasn’t pretty.
It reminded me of how I felt inside.
Jfk was keenly curious and aware. He traveled Europe and observed politics on the ground. He didn’t have to use historians, he saw first hand the propaganda machine.
He understood the importance of image.
Being a war hero, and ill himself, always in poor health. He somehow presented a positive energy and outlook that was contagious.
He was the blue print for a new brand and structure of politics.
His ideas were shaped from experience.
He was understanding, because he knew people consumed what they heard and saw. He understood the importance of democracy, that it had to work. It was the last best stand on earth.
I can’t help but wonder sometimes, how odd that we recall the death over the life. The women over the veteran,
Deeply curious about political history
He wanted to understand.
I want to understand
If this is the last best stand on earth …
What am I living for ?
What am I leaving ?
Most people want so desperately to be told what to do
And they don’t even know it
Not even when you tell them what to buy
They don’t know what they want
Or that they need something
Until we sell it to them
They don’t know who to vote for
Until it’s sold to them
What they believe
Until it’s sold to them
Ads
And images
Propaganda
It’s what we consume every day
I unplugged
This site is my only social media right now
Until after the new year
My head is in a fog
I never read
I want to write more
And really create
But I’m angry
I’m confused
I feel like we have more in common than we have differences
But now
We are constantly pitted against ourselves and against eachother
JFK understood things needed to change
We didn’t need a hand out
We needed a hand up
So we could get ahead
And so we could give back
We had a responsibility
But I wonder if we even know what that responsibility is
I ask myself if we even remember what a dream is ?
Or are we so deep in the mud
That we are fighting only ourselves now ….
I want to believe in a tomorrow
I want to believe in us
Because of us
We determine our future
And we can decide today
What we are building
Can endure
Tradition
Requires repetition
We have to start somewhere
Why not here?
Why not now?
Why not us?
I woke up this morning
With a released breath
I didn’t realize I had been holding…
Holding for four years.
Waking up every morning afraid of what the headlines would say
What tweet is out ???
What world leader is laughing at us?
–////
The changing of the guard is underway.
As a Democrat…who read Reagan and his letters and his journals and the same with the Kennedy’s and studied the Clinton’s…
We need a new change.
A real change, another hand up for the People. And real opportunity for everyone.
I am so proud to be an American,
This moment speaks to all of us, every one of us. Democracy works. We do not want to change these foundations.
The disenfranchised and minorities have been watching our leadership,
Our children our daughters…
They have watched as some of us have made excuses and stood by our guy, as the ship sinks in the water.
If anything, we’ve learned the importance of representation…
We’ve seen the hate and the weaknesses
The hypocrisy
The dark underbelly represented
But it does not speak for all of us…
They say we accept the love we think we deserve… this moment …
Every little girl, every wife, every one of us …who is in a situation where we feel like we are not represented…
Can now look at the White House…and they can see representation…
And know,
That they deserve more
They can achieve more…
They can dream …
Every one of us…
—-////
I’ve always listened to stories
And I’ve always prayed
And my faith
My conscience, my patriotism, does not allow me to continue to be silent.
I know the importance of voices and representation.
I believe we all can dream. We all can reach for a better opportunity. I believe in dignity. In decency, in leadership.
I believe in a better tomorrow…
For every one.
Not equal outcomes but equal opportunity.
In the stories that make us
The history that shaped us.
We rise and we fall together.
—///
I am always overwhelmed by elections
I’ve seen the flags
The shirts
The hats
And I’ve heard the mental gymnastics
I’ve seen it
But what it speaks is the algorithm
The bubbles we are living in
We have to reach across that
We’ve lost touch with ourselves
And we have a president who stands for nothing but himself and is loyal to no one but demands loyalty…
He’s simply appealing because he appears flawed and human
He’s sinful
And we see ourselves in him
Or we see a father
Or husband that we never really worked through…
That narcissism…
One issue voting?
Pro life?
It’s not going away…
They won’t vote it out, not completely
It’s what keeps too many republicans republican…
I believe we have more in common than we have differences
—-///
Again, I’m proud
You should be proud
Be proud
Breathe
It’s ok to be happy
This is historical
This is a win for every one of us
Regardless of political persuasion
Our future is brighter
We are still a shining city on a hill
And yes, yes we can build a better tomorrow for all of us.
We all have a moral duty
A personal responsibility to our communities and our nation
Our families
To be an example to our children.
To give back.
The eyes of the world are upon us.
And while some of us have been duped
Or played so hard a mental gymnastic
That we cannot back pedal
It’s ok
Because what we are building
Is better for all of us
Our small towns
Our cities
Our churches
Our city halls
Our hospitals
Our schools
Our work places
Our tomorrows
This. This is the America I believe in.
It never went away
It was here
In all of us
It just took us a minute to catch up.
-E
I think we forget
What it was really like
Two wars
A collapsing economy
Faster than the Great Depression
The month he took office
We had lost 800,000 jobs
Just in that month
Within a year
We had jobs growing instead of losing
Tech and globalization
Education and healthcare costs
Economy bubbles
Heated
By investors
How do you build something that works for everyone?
One wife
A reader
A picture of the american dream
The promise that you could
Work hard and reach any dream
But we were not ok with that
How do you figure out a way to process truths
Facts?
If we live through
Algorithms
Through a phone
That build on our biases
Polarizing us
Watching only media that puts us in a bubble …
How do we value truth ? And facts ?
Character and honor
This is not Reagan country
This is not Kennedy country
This is not Mayberry
They would not recognize us
They would not be proud of us ….
Human decency and respect and empathy
Should be base value
But it is not here…
What happened to the values that carried us here?
The basic values
Be honest
Be kind
Treat everyone with respect
Work hard
What happened to us?
How can we
Return
Would Christ still say
“Forgive them for they know not what they do?”
When we say things like
“We knew what he was.”
“But.”
If my ex wife or a woman is vulgar
Or loud
It’s wrong
But if a man does it
It’s presidential
How do we come back from this
We are so divided
And how
Can we pray ??
When we say things like
“This man was put here by god,to stop communism…”
I thought we wanted smaller government ?
This is not Reagan country
This is not a shining city on a hill
We are unrecognisable
But
I still believe
In the seeds
In the ability to believe in ourselves
And our communities
We can return
And we can
Meet the cause
Should Christ have refused the cross?
Should
Our fathers
Refused to storm the beaches of Normandy?
We’ve never been here before
Because we have
Technology
That we don’t even understand
And it’s using
Our own weaknesses against us
But we keep looking for an intruder
Liberty has fallen
We shaved her head in the marketplace
A spectacle
For the world to see
And they will remember
How we’ve acted
What we’ve said
And how we defended ourselves
And reasoned and split our minds in half ….
How do you back pedal?
You can’t
Like
Trying to find the census Russia smudged
Because it showed the unnatural death count
In the 30s
So they shot the census takers
Here we are 33k deaths in the US
Masks
Shutdowns
Businesses closing
How do we move forward ?
What happened to chivalry
To classic badassery?
To rising to the challenge ?
Leadership?
We are more than masses
Blue states,red states, we are more…
Our parents lost jobs in the first recession
They lost homes
We are survivors
We are Americans
Is it fortune
Is it all of these years?
All of these tears
Clutched hearts
I know you’re leaving
You’ve got a lot on your mind
Let me know
What I can leave you
To remember me by
Let it not be
pain
Let it not be truth
Let it be soft
Let it be understanding
Of the complexity of being
Becoming
The sun is setting
And we all are just chapters
In this book
Death is real and random
The earth is burning
I never said much
But I remember your touch
When it was soft and real
I know you’re hurting
I hope I left you something good
To remember me by
I’ll tell it to you
The best I can
You may not believe
But it’s the best as I can see
—///
Everything seemed to go from bad to worse
Atleast that’s the way it seemed
We kept fighting
That’s just the way we came up
It didn’t matter how things went down
No body from Washington
Ever followed us anyhow
And no one could sing the blues
Like the working man
The women
From my mountain town
—-///
They talked
In their high places
Of promises
Gold and silver too
And see
Them communist
And see them fascist
They’re all just left and right
Different fists
Of the same beasts
Coming out of the ocean
–/////
Nobody ever follows us down
There’s a woman
By the river
She washes her children’s clothes
And there’s a man hanging from the tree
And you can hear the hymn she sings
No one can sing these truths
Like the eyes of those who will remember you…
—///
Well god is on our side
So long as everything stays right
And power and greed
And corruptible seed
And dylan played it well
—-///
And we will rise
And work today
No matter who fell
We will rise
And we will die
And we will grieve
No one follows us down
No one follows us down
—-///
I set my e yes s toward the burning sun
And pray to God above
No one
Knows these truths
Like the working man
The hungry man
The woman
The mother
The wife
And no one
Ever follows us down
We will remember you well
Casting hope
Like light
Upon the water
—///
Thoughts on aging in the coming age
It’s cold, 39 degrees. I turned on my heat this morning, I’ve tried to not think about it. But like the moon landing, I couldn’t help it,
I think…
What must it be like to go so far. To only find dust, and isolation?
for four years, I’ve tried to watch and observe…
I was married, I’m now divorced…
Women without men are an idea, women with men are a complication…
We altogether are a complication. A mood in itself.
We post on dating apps, photos of ourselves in Egypt and camping and we want a man with a car, a house, a job, a pleasant disposition. And he has to make us laugh…
But he’s too short, he’s too round, his eyebrows are too thick…
I can’t take you to Egypt, I hate camping…I like my solitude…
I haven’t played a video game since 2004
Can I just cook you dinner, play a record, dance with you and tell you, you’re the nicest thing I’ve ever seen?
We want absolutes
But we want to be accepted
But we have requirements
—///
You reach a certain age, maybe it’s just me…
You reach a place, you take stock of your life…
What have you really achieved?
Are you what you want?
How does one maintain faith?
It feels so far away…
How did the astronauts handle
Something so grand
Becoming “fake.”
How does one live ….
Age to age …
—-///
Tuesday
We vote
I’ve watched
As we use an algorithm
I’ve watched as we do not talk
To each other
I’ve asked myself how our children
And our youth will remember this
What have we taught them
Shown them
What example
What do they consider presidential?
Honorable ?
Decent?
What is life?
What does a leader look like?
Empathy?
To our children
To the young people
To the rest of the world
I think about how I grew and changed
And what I have been impressed with
Over time
And my heart has ached for so long
For the young people
Globally
For what the new leaders
Across the globe
What impressions are we leaving
What are we saying?
—///
Tomorrow and I feel
Really
through most of December
The world will be on its toes
The money making machine of american headlines
—–///
But how do we go from here?
We’ve screamed
We’ve marched
We’ve demonstrated
We’ve left our kids at home
We’ve thrown more work on them
We’re gutted
Outed
It’s not the degrees
It’s the regular jobs that carry us
The ones we looked down on
It’s not the student debt
Or the bank account
It’s the ability to stay calm
Under pressure
It’s the ability to process information
The ability to think
And make a decision
—-///
Something is amiss
within my faith
—–///
Within myself
—-///
I seek solitude
—-///
We used to have Hollywood as a job
Now it’s a bubble that tells us what we should do,
Social media
This algorithm
Marches
demands rights
And puts our vulgarity on our forehead like we are screwing on the table at thanksgiving…
And vulgarly demands that the family and the world be ok with it…
It leaves nothing to the imagination.
We can’t miss a paycheck
If we do we are homeless
None of the people I know
None of the minorities I know
Are even resembling of this nature
—////
Yet we continue to use the algorithm
When it doesn’t even reflect us
We say everyone has shown their true colours this year, that’s just not true
Everyone has always shown us their colours…we just didn’t want to hear them or see them…because we wanted them to be what we wanted them to be.
The algorithm simply shows us what we want to see…
We wanted the same for us too…
This is the crisis…
The crisis of ….
Of humankind.
—-///
To be without faith
Without honor
Without drive
Without ambition
Without privacy
Is to be empty
Void
Surely there is something left of honor
Of privacy
Of respect
Of character
Of faith…
I do not know
I look to the sky
And I pray
But I can’t find anything
You see
Truth is something we are meant to discern not the media or the newspaper or social media or apps
Or smoke signals
But our eyes and hearts and minds
—///
What is presidential?
What is decency ?
What is character ?
—///
I envy the self that writes this and does not know of tomorrow or election results or headlines
So much of our government relies on the honor system
And if it is abused
So much can go away and be re written
And we understand so little of this
—-//
Space is cold
It’s vast and it’s dark
And so is my heart
It began years ago
In small stages
Small misgivings
I wanted a family
I wanted a home
I wanted to love and cherish and be loved and cherish
I wanted to take care of someone
To have this purpose
And
Now
I only want this solitude
To disappear
To fade away
To understand what purpose is …
The world is raging
I hope we can find ourselves
I hope we can stop for a moment
I hope we can look up
And ask for help.
Death is real and random
We are but a moment
And hate
And greed
And this crisis
Is too much
Maybe you reach a certain age
And it happens to everyone
Where they feel like the new generation has everything wrong
Only
Now
Right now
I feel like none of us are ourselves
I feel like we’ve all been duped
Even the best of us…
Maybe it’s just me….
I feel like we are in a bad dream
And the acid rain is falling
And the church bells are ringing
And the boots are on the ground
And the ashes are drifting like snow
From the ovens over the ridge
And
They are about to show us the ovens
Used to cook our brothers
And we are about to hold napkins over our mouthes and breathe
“I didn’t know, I didn’t believe….”
“But…”
And
I fear
What reason did we have to build this machine?
What purpose?
What crisis
How did we get here
—-///
You reach a point
And you ask
What have I really achieved
I’m not any of the things I wanted to be
I’m still empty
I’m still void
After such ambition
Of youth
Do we look back
Only to see the void
Quiet
Coldness of life
And see
Ourselves?
We can’t stand the silence
We can’t even sit with it
We can’t even walk with it
Or drive with it …
We can’t sit with ourselves ….
God help us.
