Wish you could see,
the happiness that now resides in me.

Wish you could be,
pouring out your emptiness into me,

Wish you could see,
that I see everything is now a part of me.

Wish you could be.

Wish you could be.

But everything is shallowness in spite of me.

Wish you could see,
that everything is all of us, why can't you be?

The emptiness that hollows us, why can't you see?

The happiness that's all in us, why can't you be?

Why can't you be?

Why can't you be?

Wish you could see...


----
Thinking about adding some music to this one, even though I'm not sure I am quite satisfied with how it turned out--a complex idea, put simply, but perhaps a bit too subtle. I dunno, my brain hurts. I'm not going to ramble anymore at this time. Gimme your thoughts...
-AiG

The Siren Sung

Shut in, shut out, shut off,
Those lonely hearts with hands outstretched that call for help.
Watch them dragging others in with their descent.
Sweet Sirens' song makes sailors' bitter end.

Shut in, shut down, shut up,
Those lovely voices scream nothing far too loud.
Watch them giving in.
Sweet Sirens' song makes sailors' bitter end.

Picked up, picked apart, put down,
Those puzzled pieces left no one can ever fit.
Watch them drowning in the red.
Sweet Siren's song makes sailors' bitter end.

Pieces scattered, chewed apart,
gasping on the blood-stained rocks,
Watch them drowning in the red.
The Siren sung--the sailor's dead.

6/2/10

Aim, at the Water's Surface

Thoughts have turned to rocks and fallen into pockets. Held beneath the surface, drowned within the weighted absence. They may still be right here, but without semblance to their former selves.

Cut into high, just another burden bleeding out. Weight misplaced. Let it burden something else.

The water likes to run, as pockets filled, pulled pebbles into sand-like-mud. And everything's relapsed, as thoughts have turned to sand and within they have collapsed.

Cut into high, some one come and cut this burden out. Weightless place. Let it burden something else.

Stones skip the surface of a pond where counting seven ripples observes that despite their majestic arcs gliding across the water; rocks, like thoughts, still fall and sink to the bottom where they become nothing and meaningless

and then become food for something else.

A Message for the Stars

I might have failed at everything, but at least I know I tried. I've only ever known how to be myself and staring at you shining in the midnight sky with all that space around you reminds me of how insignificant I really am. Is it any wonder that the harder I reached for you the dimmer your glow became? Was it a passing cloud? Was it because your light had actually gone out years ago, but only now is it reaching me-in my time, in this place? I have reached as far as I possibly could, but still never came close to closing this distance between us. I would leave my arm extended for all eternity if it were possible, but such idealistic thinking is pointless. I have stood still and stretched and you have looked back at me and faded. It is a bittersweet conclusion, but as I turn away I know in my heart that it is you who has really lost. Stars are dead before they are even seen.

Motivationally Speaking

This is my call out to all the world's positive people: Where are you? Come out. I want to surround myself amongst every single one of you and let your leaves intermingle mine. I want to become the branches that support you. I want your flesh to be at one within me, to transform our joined skin into the bark, so that we can all become the trunk that supports us. I want to direct my energies to lifting you up and in turn be lifted in kind to higher levels of being. I am sick of the weight of carrying the burden, of always trying to push those up that always want to hold me down. So positive people step forward, and turn your leaves towards the sun. The time for self hate and cowering blind is over. Step into the light and embrace. Embrace me. Embrace yourselves. Let us all carry the weight together with our tap roots sunk firm and deep beneath the earth so that when the wind blows, we all sway.
-fin

Ladies and Gentlemen, I do believe that this now officially concludes our brief experiment with Raw: an ongoing work of ...art? Yes, I know, shocking. Especially because in the end Raw failed entirely to be anything resembling what I had intended.

Raw wasn't a complete failure, it gave me two very different and solid ideas for short stories I may or may not work on at some point. It also gave me countless ideas for poetry and lyrics, that again, maybe someday I'll go back to.

Truth be told after a week of nonstop writing, and the last two days spent simply combing over the pages and pages of abstract thought, I finally was able to make sense of some things. Not everything. I've still got a million questions, many of which make me lose sleep at night, but a small gain is still a gain.

For now, I think this piece is a perfect and fitting conclusion for this experiment, and I hope you all find it the same. I'm going to leave you all with this very beautiful quote I was lucky enough to be shown, because it fits:
"Make yourself as small as possible. Then grow."
-Unknown Source

Raw: An ongoing work of... art? Brainstorming Part 1

Just for the record I've gone ahead and added some of my own notes as I did my nightly transcribing from the notebook to the screen, so when you see something like [this] [know that it is just me adding commentary. At the end I do a little wrap up called... Wrap Up: Trying to make sense of it all... yeah, good luck with that one.]

11/30 approx. 3am
Once again I can’t sleep, I have to get up in five hours and run for at least a mile to prove to myself I can, then I have to more work; guess I’m on borrowed time right now.
Did I ever tell you about my pirate-ninja dream? It was pretty epic. That’s the weird things about dreams; most people claim they can’t remember them, until come the ones they really can, then someone gets hung out to dry.
Too many thoughts, can’t slow them down enough to grasp a single one.
[Here things are finally starting to come together and I can begin to glimpse a cohesive whole, so I’ve snipped some things that are simply not ready to be revealed. Author’s rights of course. ;-P]
11/30 approx 11am
So I ran a mile one point five, maybe, tops. It was less then I wanted but exactly what I expected. I could have gone harder, but what was the reason I wanted to?
Now I’ll enjoy the day while waiting to get out on the water
…just filter up through all the bullshit till it’s like oh yeah? This is what I have forgot.
…everyone’s got their own demons trying hard to eat them up… if winter never ends will you ever see my spring?
If this is all we have is there nothing left to bring?
…everybody’s dreaming we’re all just in different states of waking up… Tell “Kirk” to bring us cigarettes please, and tell him I’ll reimburse; it’s just one more barter/trade example spun in different verse…and why is it you always have something with you; you don’t need and why is it you never bring it with you when you do?
[snip snip]
… just want to throw myself outside the window and let myself feel left alive; anything must be better than the dead I feel inside… So I’ll run and I’ll smoke, I’ll quit and I’ll choke, live this life of self destruction long enough to… to…
I spent the better half of the day barefoot, trying to get back to my roots… because the world’s so misaligned that we spend all our time staring back at space, and never seeing much
[snippity. Here’s a tease, structure and form for… FnLinLO]
…and finally after a chaotic morning I’m on the boat again still just trying to figure out from where the water it all began…
…you’re exactly what I’ve always wanted, but never really got; the point just keeps repeating—the world and it’s whole entire lot is ground beef mixed up, jumbled, scrambled and forgot.
[snip, some notes on how I would restructure and begin to edit this process tonight that you don’t need to see.]
…I can destroy my feet I can destroy my knees; I can destroy my legs all the way through to my hip; but it’ll never prove because it is the one connection that we missed; and I realize it’s just life’s wavelengths struggling to coexist
A Writer’s Daily Checklist
-hats are sacred, never lose a fucking hat
-sunglasses are always good
-a plethora of cigarettes to always have on hand for you to smoke.
-water, water, water
-run two miles at 6.a.m.
-kayak, live, and
-WRITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
P.S. And somewhere along the way… die.

…and I take a toast for ocean sorrowing, morose I whisper, ever succinctly spoken regret; ‘Yeah, Ocean… here’s to that’ and quickly flick my cigarette over starboard to the ocean now begat. Forgive me ocean, I want to whisper, please forgive me that… and I realize it’s just the artist’s dilemma universally begot / he arrives before his time arrives and is just as quick, as he is, as is, forgot.
11/30 approx. 4pm Good bye to November
…it is going to be rough working with me tonight.
-and I found myself in water lounging making time come stand and be forgot
-it’s the entire ninja-pirate complex that is so quickly all forgot we all are either, either neither are, they all are or they are not?


[WRAP UP: Trying to make sense of it all: whew… that’s not even the half of everything I got written today, I think it’s suffice to say that I almost have enough brainstormed material to start coming up with something a little more cohesive. Which, even though it has only just begun, would mean the end of Raw: an ongoing work of… art? Well, at least it is bound to at a certain point eventually, become less Raw and will have moved up to whatever it is that comes next, Almost Prepared maybe? (I could use a catchy jingle here wordsmiths, if you are reading ;-P), Anyway, I’m not going to devote anymore time to brainstorming ideas tonight, because, truth be told, we could spend our entire lifetimes brainstorming and never get anywhere but a whole bunch of good ideas. It’s easy to get caught up and overwhelmed. I have some ideas for how I’d like to transform what you’ve been following over the last couple days into a story, I’m going to be letting those ideas percolate over the next couple of days, in the meantime we’ll ride out the brainstorm process a bit more and let you linger over just how extremely grotesque it is in the beginning of the arts. See you tomorrow for Raw: An ongoing work of... art? Brainstorming, part 2... oh did someone mention audio clips? ;-P]

Leave me something.

-AiG.

Fear and Loathing near Los Olas...

Admittedly things have been a little moody and brooding over here the last several days. Well, The three day grace period is over so I can't keep wallowing for myself. I do however, humbly, ask that you deal with it for one more day as I post the drivel my mind cooked up yesterday. I'm leaving everything unedited again, raw and rough around the edges, because well... I'm feeling a little raw and rough around the edges myself.

The Last One Month
So the last month to you, you were sitting and blue, you were stuck in the ground, you didn’t know your way around, and the last month to you It was all that we knew you were stuck and confused, and the last month to me wasn’t quite sweet(quite that way sweet but it was) it was great, it wasn’t beat, the last month to you was all that we knew, with everyone shelved up with regret and confused, and I’m sorry to say it came to be this way, I’m sorry to say, I never knew you, anyway.
And the last month to you was just a drowned out scream, the last month to me was a short lived, fleeting dream, I just want to say, sorry that it went down this way.
So the last month to you was hollow and used and everything showed up eventually.
The last month to you was hollow and blue
the last month to me I held hallow’d and new,
and the last month to you haunts in your memory
like a drowning scream
and the last month to me I held too closely
like trying to grasp the waking dream
While the last month to me,
was a good month to be,
by your side.
While the last month to you,
after the bullshit problems and struggles
everything died.


...and I see another cycle like in the way that things began; to the that they are ending / ending in our hands; and words they seem so fleeting; so easily forgot; upside down and all around; a mixed up jumbled lot; said and said and just as easily dismissed; the words and feelings just keep running, run the entire gamut.


...you have to grow, to spread your leaves and fly; otherwise you will be stunted and poignantly maligned; you'll find yourself ne'er growing, and to be predestinely-declined, those friendships ever going; are so delicate entwined; that those things are ever fleeting and fade before the mind / can ever make sense of the truth...


"I know what she means... but I don't know what I said..."


...too many thoughts are still a reeling and the glories they all fade; a distant safe word never spoken and the habitually inlaid; why is it my mind is only spoken when my thoughts of sense cannot be made? I guess it's a product of devolving... or forever growing?

Fort Liquorhell... dreamily going from the last best thing to the next worse thing waiting for that real thing that doesn't really live. People just keep going giving, given, take, get, and 'gin. No one really knows just what they're doing not until the end; when everything in life was realized and the next phase can begin.
-fin-

Maybe someday, I'll be able to make sense of all this myself.

Black Friday

Another sleepless time last night, words scrolled past my tongue, but every time I tossed and turned I failed to catch a single one. The morning comes so slow and cold, the memories and words once spoken I am trying hard now not to hold, but the thought that keeps on circling is that everything's gone wrong. If I could first correct the world, perhaps then I could write this song, but I can't even find my own meaning, I am stumblingly behind. I guess I cannot really fault you, only hope one day you'll change your mind...

---

I don't know what's up with all the rhyming lately, I keep trying to break away from it with my writing and keep finding myself only capable of communicating in this flowing rhyme and meter style. It's been a bit aggravating. Anyone else ever find themselves getting stuck in a certain style even after it feels long played out?

Thanksgiving Grace

Thanksgiving Grace: An accountable tale of one nothing’s Thanksgiving. Pre-edit.
[The following text was written at various points throughout the course of the day of 11/26/09 They appear before you unabridged and unedited as transcribed directly from the block of wood upon which they had been painstakingly carved]
Dear (G/(g))od,
I am the scum beneath the earth/ the world beneath your feet/ the mysterious stranger in the night, that you wish you could meet/ I am the sun, the sea/ the sky and clouds/ I am the evil underneath/ I am the feeling, I am the pain/ I am the cold November light/ I am your heart’s desire, but your mind’s already took flight/ I am everything and nothing, I am nothing, not at all/ the only reason I’m still going is that I continue still to fall./ I am standing here and screaming you are waiting for me to disappear/ I am everything and nothing/ I am nothing if not here. And I’ll just keep on falling/ falling till the world will clear…
….And now I’m watching the rain come in/ drowned, out wasted/ where did time begin?/ Buzzards circle something dead again/ and the voices blur into the background/ and I find myself alone in my own head/ again, it’s empty ,wasted, drowned dead/ Found myself self loathing and hating all I’ve done/ Such is life it bears repeating/ before they end cycles must first have been begun…
…And someone talks my ear off/ and I connect it’s just life’s cycle epitome’d again/ and everything worth loving is fleeting/ and the bad things never end/ and my thoughts and focus just go reeling/ and I remember things begin/ and everything will end.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Thanks for the tough year.

P.S.
And we will always haunt each other/haunt and not come back/ because human mechanics won’t allow our universe to work just quite like that…
…Lot’s more talking and I hear… what? What… do… I… hear?
……………..turned out to be a pool pump…
P.S.S
And an unexpected blessing from you makes me think I won’t be sharing this at all/ who wants to hear a nothing screams before he falls?...
…and simplest connections are laid when I realize it is not my lighter that I’ve been hording, nor is it my friend I made.

We were founded on a nation of slackers is it any wonder we all seek only to destroy ourselves? And we are heading for a war.
…And it’s freebird I relate to on the water once again and it’s just another dying cycle/ things have ended/ things begin.
…Silly City gal and City-Country Guy, always looking ahead or looking behind, but to what’s around us we are blind.
…Dude what are you doing over there with that knife?/ I’m trying to sharpen a pencil… in the dark… with a knife… so I can write… in the dark… with a pencil.
…And as I pass you by, U2 starts playing “With or Without You” So I crane my neck to catch a glimpse, or perhaps to even say “hi”/ instead my eyes see nothing and my lips whisper a soft goodbye
…So I spent the day at long, lost pondering, my heart’s thoughts a mess when I come home late at last/ to realize I should be thankful, thankful stones were even cast.

If Adam were a Serpent

I guess I'll just go away and fade back into my place beneath the rocks. Where coldness and loneliness combine with warmth and happiness to make a picture perfect, empty hollow gray and turns blind eyes away from the light of day where they cannot see it is their own venom upon which they feed. Poison for poison's sake to drown that throbbing, aching need. I guess I'll just slither back and fade away, leave you alone, fall back to when we both thought we were okay, a time when things were simpler didn't worry about the way... With problems numbed behind our empty cups and the world a distant haze, the voices they don't scream so loud, they blur amongst the days, the loneliness is so much easier with an empty, hollow head and everything is so much simpler when your drowned out, gone, or dead.

Beneath the Sky

I haven't forgotten the blog, or abandoned you. I've just been very, very busy. I could keep you entertained with a list of excuses, but really, I don't feel like writing them, so why should anyone want to read it. Instead here's something I wrote today that will just have to suffice until I can put the time and thought into blogging once again.

There was a wind and the water made waves
lapping on our legs as we discarded clothes,
and our voices sang in laughter
drowning in the stars above
and for just that moment we were alone in the world.
Salt-sprayed lips,
unspoken words,
sealed with a kiss,
dancing amid the waves naked and alone.
And the stars themselves they mirrored us,
tiny and alone to our eyes,
blanketed by space and city glow
bouncing their light just to say hello
as we played beneath the sky
in the waves and the wind,
looking back like stars and wondering,
'where did we begin?'

New Song

So I felt a little creative and came up with a new song. I plan to be upgrading my recording equipment soon so that I can get these songs online for your listening pleasure, but right now I'll just have to give you the lyrics.

I got a little black book
and it's all that she took,
I got a laundry list of
complaints, let's see.
I got a little secret and
it's so hard to keep it,
I got a laundry list of
things to be.

And it's all understood,
but I don't think you could,
though I always knew you
where going some where
and it's a little secret,
I don't think you could keep it
so tell me how's the view from out there?
so tell me how's the view from out there?

You got my little black book,
and it's all that you took,
but I got your laundry list of
complaints somewhere.
And it's a little secret,
but it's so hard to keep it,
so tell me how you fake it from there
so tell me how you fake it from there.
-6/5/09-

I'm thinking of titling this "Laundry List" but I haven't decided. Sometimes titles come easily and other times they don't. I'm not so sure what's stemming all the angst to be found in my work lately. Maybe I'm going through a quarter-life-crisis or something. Maybe it's the trying not to smoke thing. Who knows? At least it's something, I can work with angst, and certainly it's better than a dry spell. What are your thoughts?