It Sounds So Soothing To Mix a Gin and Sink Into Oblivion

And deal with it then. Patience, you are a valuable ally. One that has profitted me something beneficial. Even among the venerable assembly of characters from the long shadows and uncertain light. I'm thankful for my recent time amongst the pines, figuring all that is to be figured, with those who make the figuring consistent and accurate. At least, from my point of view perspective is everything.* So it goes. I have goals. Wrote them down on a 3X5 notecard and stuck them in my wallet to carry in my back pocket at all times to remind me of effectual perspective. 2010, here I come...I hope you're ready. Degrees of certainty notwithstanding.


*And also, immediately listen to Telekinesis. Songs are Coasts of Carolina and Foreign Room.

Giant Ghosts Of The Winter Drift

You are a friend of man.
And my thoughts are left to picking battles.
Unequivocal discovery,
Finding you in the realm of love.
As words from the old bard,
"What's in a name?
That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet."
Your presence is so overtly significant,
These feelings have not yet been named.
Spinning and shining from where things are,
And where they're supposed to be.
What will be,
Never will be.
I can't convince myself you're really there.

Through life's rich pageant,
I dance with you.
If only fleeting and timeless.
A great commission for touch and embrace,
That which you cannot possibly possess.
Scared.
Sacred.
You have my sympathies.
And to whatever devil or saint you accompany,
When you're not roaming unchecked in my own reverie,
I raise my drink to the contenders.
Never will they have faced such an invisible and unconquerable foe.

I only posture when necessary.
I only parade when asked.
Risen,
From the ice world.
Where you've grown oh so cold.
Where you live oh so cold.
Embers only dying now,
From a fire long ago.
With a knife in your belt,
Stabbing for my soul,
You are no friend of man.
Taken,
In the night.
Like an aviator's baby boy.
With no steps through the door,
Levitate across the floor,
With the cold wind in the lunar light.
I tire more expediently than before.
Yet, the mind loses no step.
It is the crime of the century.
Profoundly significant confusion.
I am terrified,
There will be no conclusion.

Why did you find the most sentimental of lovers?
May it haunt you as you haunt me.
So what can you see up there?
Where no one exists.
How does it look up there?
Hovering high above.
On the pedestal where I've placed you.

It Ain't Gonna Save Me

Blood splattered in Pollock-esque brilliance when he split his temple with the business end blade of that black Flying-V guitar.
"Ahhhhh fuck all...here we go..."

Mania, like a tornado, starts picking up alarming velocity in shoulder to shoulder proximity. Beer cans start sailing like Spitfires at the heads of the bandmates as they scurry off stage. It was all out war. Mortar rounds lobbed from the crowd, drumsticks like bayonets, a mic-stand makes an effective mallet, bass guitar like a battering ram, punches thrown...haymakers, sweat, blood, misty breath in the freezing cold, bouncers rush in with veins bulging out of their neanderthal foreheads. Spontaneous fucking chaos. I'd seen it once before in some sanctimonious Nirvana documentary when Cobain splintered the skull of some poor hooligan like he was a Chinaman driving a railroad spike. You drink too much, you embrace anarchy, you get your eyes crossed by a 3-inch-thick plank of glossy wood and nickel-wound strings; swung maliciously by the long-haired shrieking demon you just paid 20 bucks to pound your ass into raw meat, all the while accompanied by a fitting soundtrack. When cornered, wild animals go to great lengths to vacate the situation. Human civility notwithstanding, punk rock musicians are no exception.

She bought the tickets. She asked me to accompany. She was wide-eyed, hairs on the back of her neck stood up straight. Electric air, charged and fused with hysteria. A bit hypnotized she was, you might say. Pure wonderment and primal fear. I quick-scanned the room, found the easiest exit to usher her out, clinched my fist in my coat pocket, turned my beer bottle upside down (a fitting armament to sink into some wayward animal's jugular, should it come to it), grabbed her arm and ushered her to higher ground as a defensive maneuver.

We are on the Austin360 A-List the next day. We look like we belong there. The first time I saw her, she was dancing in the middle of a brightly colored hoola-hoop, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a wonderful bar, in the middle of warm lights reflecting off the middle of her small brown-haired head.

We walk past two delinquents with their faces smashed and pressed up against the window of the cruiser, being read their rights. Dried blood down the face serves as an unfortunate reminder that you do. not. fuck. with. punk. bands. in. Austin. Texas. She trembles a bit at the two poor rioters and the shape they're in. She puts her arm under mine and rests her head on my shoulder as we walk past the ignorant youthful anarchists. Inconvenienced policeman in 28 degree weather means handcuffs and arrests. Arrested. Arrested and thrown in the clink.

She looks up at me from her scarf and pea coat and tells me she has fun with me. Arrested.

I seem to be arrested.

All is lost. There is no hope for me.