Colours (day 2603)

It is sadness as the day grows
We build walls between us
Habits that never meant to do wrong
But collided mid-space
Like an astronomical war.

I used to like your little ways,
The way you put on your socks
And lit candles
To burn them all the way down
What happened to my colours?

Colours by Ned Tobin

Down Turned Reverberations (day 1912)

You know, it’s ok.

It doesn’t matter that the sky seems to fall when you stretch your eyes wide at the beginning of a new day. It doesn’t matter that the tangle in your heart matches the tangle of your long, curly, brown hair drooping about your itchy nose as you fling from side to side with a worn out cactus shirt reaching down to the same legs you rest your morning coffee on.

I’ve found a reason that doesn’t rely on these silly momentary things. I’ve found the silk road, pock marked by moths with an unsettling history that left a lot of sad pages in the brown covered diary I’ve never re-read. I’ve begun to maneuver this silk pressing just as I would walking through busy streets or desert, dry mouthed and heart fleeting as beats reverberate off of every single thought.

It’s ok.

It’s a revolution that cannot get taken away, it’s the dull side of a newly sharpened axe. How many rows have you planted to become the star lit sky we all look up to; arms are better for hugging then the cold glass walls modern giants embed their soldiers within.

You’re not the only one with down turned memories of what we could never see, never hear, never even share from the distance we watch each other from – but our morning smells seem to remind us of nothing but the closeness we have; but evening silence is a feeling we so easily forgive.

It’s ok, and I’m never really very far.

Life That (day 1231)

This isn’t my coming out chant
This isn’t my remember the good ol’ days rap
No, this isn’t the kind of shit you’d expect from me
Where soft glow combines with a real desire
Spreading out like wings

No, this is a truth experiment
This is raw discussion
Morphine true-isms
Blisters spreading about the exposé
Peeling back: non-relent

You see, nothing’s been hard
No part of life’s been a chore
There’s never a day gone by
When I’ve been forced to stare at the walls
So uncomfortably spread that rot is my vice

There’s a dollar sign around my halo
With uncomfortable silence when bills drop on bills
There’s a memo on my desk
Reminding me to keep track of the present

This all fails to phase me
Rolling around in steel balls that shatters silently
When haters start slinging their gorilla lyrics
Hiding in my deepen’d billfold
And there’s glass, there’s glass scraping little lines
Across my weather strengthened back

Yet, I’m not your typical chump
Squealing my daddies gold in rubber exhaust
I’m a hustler crushing pimp
Not a player pickin’ easy cherries
Playing a role, playin a mother fuckin role
Buying into a toll booth
That flips my hard edge into
Magnified chocolates and fluffed pillows
And a silk god damn flower

I take opportunities in the present
The big rolls that die hard
Rise and fall, and rise again
It’s my game, I take two dollars
Exchange them into five
Because I’ve been bred well
Learned from the best
I’ve taken one-two-three strategy
Added on my own strong fourth

Funny thing about this mastery
Is the only competition I find
Comes out from where the wolves hide
From the silent arch ways
That reach out and bite when you turn your back and hide
I fight it, with intelligence…
With awareness and exposition

Omnipresence is not a myth
Omnipresence manhandles the unaware
Blissfully slouching at the solid wood table

Lofty Wedding Plans (day 1050)

Could you Amaretto my incomprehensible stiletto? Deep soaked truths brushing up against the blue moon life story that shared Tom Waits and Miles Davis equally between the two top sheet stuffed mattress in a good lord rented room.

The walls were left bare; freedom and shit. Fucking expressionists and their lofty ideals pulsing rapidly amongst soiled novellas and empty chopstick promises. How did I get here. How did I find this spot from outside in? I left little spit smears on my way here to keep me from wanting to know the way back, to keep me from guessing at a way back, and to keep the collectors hot at my rented room door.

The walls never left me wondering for too long, they’d start dripping some smear mold juice as the clock told me late. This was after I’d fucked the last resort out of my head and told my mistress to make herself at home, to which she calmly replied she was at home. I was the guest. I was the visitor in this white washed world trying to jam my heart out in broad brush strokes and feverish memories. Not ones that were lucid, the ones that came and convulsed and controlled and regurgitated out my heart like lofty wedding plans standing alone with a big bill and an empty passenger seat.

Cause fuck brothers and sisters. Fuck their abuse and consumption and interruptions and impressions. I’ve got Miles Davis really laying me low when I need the time off. You’re not the legend I thought you could be, but I’ve sure left out a piece of the past like left over cum spots in a 17$ too good too remember night.

Daddy left me here. He was two dollars short on the rent cheque, he was two days late coming home when I held mommas starving and overdosed fingers, left the biggest hole in his smallest of hearts where I put an industry of lifelines and bagged political statements I had prepared for a two minutes long deposition. I wasn’t ruthless as I counted on my fingers the number of deadbeats I had written letters for, I wasn’t ruthless as I blew elitist smoke up the child-like innocent faces of the wide eyed yuppies.

Now dare tell me why my maidens eyes weren’t bloodshot. Why hadn’t the tears soaked through her indiscriminate and perked speedbags that kept me looking like wild Jack, wild Dad, searching for the red room. Red Rum. Fuck. Red room. What kind of luck should I bring down on such an innocent vixen? Such a loudly laughing white swan budding in my autumn garden. I’m not a troubadour. I’m a fucking junkie.

Protest Poetry (day 975)

What was the arctic before it became an oil well?
What was a forest overrun with trees?
What was my name before I was a sibling?
What was my right before I’d been stamped?
Did I come straight from a hologram?
Was I brought home on a road?
Whence and where from did the light come?
And the warmth, did it come before gas, painted and housed within four block walls of a thousand pixels per inch?
Where did I walk to before a wood chipped trail led my way?
How did the day fill before the calendar?
Can a city be a city without city lights?
How did one tarry about a late night corner before floating electric drones showed I was withing safety?

Because dammit, I’m starting to wonder
Is there any point in the quest?

What is the point in stuffing our bellies?
Where did the idea of nik-naks come hither from?
How did function get replaced by aesthetics?
When did choice become demand?
When did want become a dire need?
Why did our brothers and sisters turn from extensions of ourselves to examples of our desires?
When did we lose all of our trust?
And where has my community resettled?
Where has my tree grown its roots?
Where is my moon?

This is a protest poem

Crowns (day 414)

Nothing can compare to those golden crowns
The ones that rest behind the steel gates
Behind the thick glass walls with laser beams
Nothing can even match the shine they have
Or the sheer awe they inspire
Especially when freshly polished
Directly beneath those strategically placed pot lights
Nothing can quite make the cut when compared
Things come close, real close
But in the end it’s always those crowned jewels that
Capture the essence of every boy out there
Enough so that even the jesters turn their heads twice