Los Angeles, 2005

"See you tomorrow." My hand shuts the door. My hand, so fragile and velvet. Beyond delicate. Toward the setting sun, Melrose Avenue really is beautiful in candle light. My face, as though it's holding it's breath, keeping time and all it moves, all it decays back for one last moment . It can only be a year or two before priorities force an exhale and the light goes out. The little girl I was will no longer exist, will no longer relate to who I am. She will survive in pictures the same way family pets from before my birth survive. I will no longer hold rights to swings and jump ropes. Kites and kittens gone. Left to me is, "She's getting old." Turn right at N Highland Ave. Beautiful women on the sidewalk, chatting and skating about. On their way to gatherings where bar tenders pour cups of privilege and shots of assurance. Drink up, I know how you need it. To be young and beautiful, to be given that. Turn left at Santa Monica Blvd. So many memories here. Thick, too thick. I loved his hands so much. Losing nothing through time. Strength, warmth, touch. Right at N Harper Ave. The light is red now. The sun long gone. Soon it will be night.

Spain, 1526

Cage

A Story of Confinement and Miracle

It is black, cracked. Solid. Its bars wrought and sappy with mold and sweat and all other forms of human disposal.
I am hung above the ground, swinging in the sweet breezes off the Ebro and the whimpers and prayers from grown men pleading to Allah. My head aches.
As my heart melts I slide between the bars. Head first I drip into the grout below, running as a river of human substance along, then out the aged walls. I come to rest and pool in a hoof print in the clay. I solidify and walk purposefully toward the water, lured by sweetness. My love, I am finally coming home.

The White City is Crazy

You must see it to believe it. Exceptional. Beyond belief. A city made of white. A city made of LIGHT! The money is bad here. My pockets. Oh, the void. I still smell of ash. You want more than a quarter of it? A match, a strike, a flame. But up we rise, toward the sun and the moon. And down toward the sea where there stands a ghost ship. A gift from God to an old world awash with new. Let us gather, celebrate, enjoy. You must see it to believe it.

If You Feel Like Coming Home To Me

I want Saddle Creek back.

You Wood, Sink Deep in the Mud

A harmonica vibrates that wet air. Falling on my dark, worn hand. I was born with out kin.

Are we soldiers fighting monsters? Are we artists making faces? Are we temples made for mourning? Are we lazy, on vacation? Is the world a central figure in the universe, the cosmos? Is the dialogue between us just a plague of rat-filled creatures? Is violence just a longing? Are you my life responding? Are you old? Am I young? Is this real?

Cracking Voices of a Generation: A Tape Recorder Playing Fast

I've been thinking hard about the way the young intellectuals speak in this country. Not the words they use or the subjects they choose, but the intonation and the speed.

I've watched Don't Look Back, the documentary on Bob Dylan and noticed how he and his comrades all express their thoughts in a matter-of-fact manner, with tones of "this is the way it is and you've gotta turn on too". They speak in short sentences, in a slightly angry voice, with the occasional hippie catch phrase placed close enough to remind people you're part of the new generation but not close enough to lead them to believe you're a weekend hippie. They strongly emphasize the final word in their short sentences. Instead of making lists of atributes or points in once sentence, they break it up into multiple version of their short sentence. "You don't KNOW. You have no IDEA. Your kids aren't EVIL. We are not HAPPY." The other night I watched an American Experience episode on the Haight-Ashbury community. They interviewed a bunch of the hippies living there and they each spoke the same way.

This got me thinking; what makes up our modern day intellectual dialect? The leading characteristic: short. choppy sentences with. I don't know. a kind of effeminate. almost neo-unisexual intonation. Almost every sentence is draped in political correctness with short phrases guiding listeners to believe the speaker is in no way affiliated with any serious political commitments, only pop and anti-pop politics, depending on your county. Young intellectuals have saved only the concepts of the hippie generation, all the harsh intonation is gone, lost to a tape recorder playing fast.