Lament of the Phoenix

From a distant mountain

looking down upon the past,

I witnessed the great tornadoes

that haunted me so vast.

Within this recognition,

I set my camp and fire;

rustling feathers, I gathered twigs,

and set them on my pyre.

And on that very evening,

asleep amongst the stars,

I dreamt of those tornadoes

which enclosed me in these bars.

When I awoke, I knew it true,

these tears could never heal,

my memories so deep and sweeping

would forever color blue.

Missing Pieces

He sits upright in bed staring at the white wall, thinking about life. About how he wants to hit snooze again and forget he's alive. About how he knows he's going to get yelled at for being late again. What does it matter though? He doesn't care about his boss; in fact he barely even cares about his job. He barely ever shows affection towards anyone these days, head turned to the ground, eyes lonesome. He feels like a part of him is missing, like someone reached inside his chest and pulled out the piece of him he tried so many years to keep a hold of. He looks at the world differently now, the expressions on faces, the smiles he knew were never real. He tells himself the dream will end soon. He laughs, wishing every morning has never made it come true; he asks anyway. Stumbling out of bed he kicks through the clothes on the floor deciding which skin to wear today. Arrogance, fear, depression, he keeps kicking, grief, pity. Pulling fear over his head he knows grief is not far behind. Fear for what? Fear for living, for his dream, for the next morning when he wakes up kicking the same shit, asking the same questions. Grief for what? Grief for the fear he has walking through the halls seeing smiling faces, for the part of himself he lost. Where did that go anyway? Maybe it was too sweet and time melted it away in the heat of the days. The long nights with endless dimes and blank stares. It was only a matter of time, he thought, before it dissolved away.

Saved by the Storm

I walk outside and fire up a cigarette. The vivid display of nature in the sky reminds me that some things in life are still beautiful. Taking a drink of my beer I cough from the desecration of smoke traveling through my body. It pushes deeper and deeper until my mouth begins to salivate and I think of all the nights puking in drunken pity-parties. I can taste the salami sandwich I ate two hours ago as the insides explode from my body. I'm not even drunk, but still, I get sick. All the thoughts no one will appreciate drip from my lips leaving a remorseful taste in my mouth. I feel my body getting hot as another crash of thunder lights the cloudy sky. The rain cools my fever and assures me that I won't combust tonight.

Ink

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1071804/

Jamin Winans’ new film Ink plays with the classical dichotomy between good and evil. While seemingly linear in motion, Winans has a tendency to make his audience work for the meaning behind his films. Ink takes place in a world where several planes of existence are present. In the “dream world” the Storytellers and Incubi reign supreme. The Storytellers are responsible for good dreams while their darker counterpart, the Incubi, conjure nightmares that people of the “real world” experience in their sleep.

The story begins on a wild yet forthcoming tangent by introducing two of the main characters of the story, Emma and her father. We are then driven into the main theme of the film where we are presented with the abilities of the Storytellers and Incubi and their unique gift to give people the seemingly impossible through the imagination of the dream world. And thus the tragic hero Ink comes to the forefront; a disfigured and socially unadjusted wanderer of the dream world.

It is Ink’s belief that by taking a child sacrifice to the leader of the Incubi he will be saved thus making the final transition into becoming an Incubus himself. What Ink does not yet know is that the journey from one child’s bedroom to the lair of the Incubi will be long and distraught and full of challenges both morally and transcendentally.

With a soundtrack written by Jamin Winans himself and a screenplay co-written by his wife, Ink is a truly mesmerizing journey through the enlightening moments of the human experience. This is one film of 2009 that you will not want to miss out on.

Voices of a Distant Star

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0370754/

"Voices Of A Distant Star" is a unique take on romantic relationship torn apart by duty and growing distance to each other. In this case it is the distance of light years, which separates a Mech-Pilot in outer space, from her lover on Earth. Only through SMS can they keep contact with each other and the further the girl travels into space with a fleet of spaceship looking for alien aggressors, the longer her messages take to reach him. Following Einstein's general Theory of Relativity she also ages slower in relationship to him, but the true love they have for each other only grows through the hope of reuniting and sharing their emotion to the fullest.

Aurora Hues

"Sometimes I wish I was blind,"
says the man that can see.

Where sounds become sight,
and towers are trees.
I wonder if color would remain
Aurora hues on a black satin sheet.

Swishing like they do, ever present,
forever would they fleet.
I ponder if noise would become
just a new way to isolate--

tone deaf to the gradual onset
of inessential claustrophobic shadows.
Sometimes I think, as I close my eyes,

This is how the World should really be.

Breathe

It sneaks in through flaired nostrils

teasing bloated thoughts.

They fight with wands of thorn

getting hotter, and faster.

Swirling in circles it collides with dormant demons

coaxing them to arise for battle.

Shrieking down into charcoal lungs

it steals what's left of dense smog.

Heart beats faster.

Need air—breathe.

It squeezes and grips at the center.

Tingling down to limp appendages

constricting muscles.

Blood pumps harder.

Tense—breathe.

Body suffocating,

mind unable to ward off the attack,

it spirals in, sinking deeper

leaving claw marks on porcelain lining.

Gasp—

Breathe.

A Moment Divine

That kiss; that kiss - burnt on my forehead
with a sweet salty hiss--
collaborating our unwieldy tryst -
a place where lovers meet
to wetten their lips.

But this place--it was not divine,
even though so sublime--
so surely it would end with time.
The clock beats softly
enter-ing with its chime.

And it did - that tryst,
sigh away with its bliss--
melt astray in that moment divine,
lost -

in the ticking of time.

Some Distant Past

She puts me out like a cigarette

then flicks me to the curb.

One last puff of smoke and I'm gone,

careening out the window at ninety-five--

thirty over, that's not so bad.

But you could count the ticks on the speedometer

like the lives that disappeared

from the wreckage and the swerves--a finger

or a mash fisted honk. It's all the same,

just another figure in the rearview.

And a figure could be anything--a white

laced lie or some homeless bum

she gave a dollar to. Maybe in the carnage

there was beauty, not so much that I could see--

I saw faces melting together,

forging a river into a distant past.

Some left behind forgotten world

that existed only in my mind.

"I think I'll join the Peace Corps," she rambles.

Instead she moved to Australia

and learned some foreign language no one

would understand. Came back with an accent

and a hiccup in her step,

but her eyes were still the same

across a game of beer pong and store bought

rotisserie chicken.

I played a song on a mix tape from another time;

she said she loved it--

but she never kissed that album

and whispered, "Thanks for making this."

Tucked in a Flap

You were there when I first learned
how to kiss - tongue twisted
in the closet, one hand on your hip.

You said, "Wait,"
so we waited.
We talked of things--tried to analyze

our dreams--massage oils,
and favorite places
to press our lips.

Before too long we were tangled up
in ways only a gymnast would understand.
Later that night it was my room:

bottom bunk. You said your favorite moment
was when the candle flickered
in my brown burnished eyes.

Then summer came and you were gone;
home driving Rusty to your favorite spot -
that waterfall, your secret oubliette.

It was never the same after that,
you're two-thousand miles long gone,
tucked away in a flap
of someone elses back pocket.

Another Tool in the Shed

"You're tryin' to kill the ball" he yelps;

a child, I tuck my head not knowing the difference

between a swing and some forethought terminology.

He walks along the edge of the wood searching

for white dimpled balls that the minister's of this game

had lost but never found as I stumble sideways,

left and right again winding a zealous path to victory.

That day ended like many before it and I came home,

to his home, where I would take his favorite four wood out

to the pasture and try to forge my baseball swing

into something more to his liking.

Eventually the head from that club busted loose;

it probably went further than the ball did,

but he uses it as his walking cane now so I guess he never minded.

Maybe he just wanted to show me

that I was there with him all those lonely nights where Grandma

would be sleeping in my bed instead of his.

It's just another tool in the shed now, I tell myself.

Like the snow blower or rototiller--why you need one

when you have a tractor the size of a truck

and blades once wielded by horses was beyond me.

He takes his bottom teeth out as I sit on his lap,

watching half naked men wrestle around in a roped ring.

"When will I be able to do that", I giggle.

Older now, I mow his lawn and weed the garden--

he's got a zipper scar down the center of his chest

and sits in that same chair nodding in and out of sleep mostly.

My room has changed--no more childish games,

instead there are books to study and dreams that seem within reach.

During the summer we'd split wood in the side yard

for the coming snowfall--"Take a break,"

he'd say and hand me a glass of water.

Wood splitter - another tool in the shed, like the hand axe

and wedge that came before it. There's always something

that precedes something, always a lapse in time from the here

and now. I understand I may never be able to take my teeth out

like he did that day; but I also understand just like

that snow blower or hand axe and wedge, I had become

just another tool in the shed.

Honey Trails

You're pretty and I'm less
beautiful day by day wondering
what it would be like to kiss
the creases in your lips.

The salt drips from my mouth
aggravating--aggravating the sweet
scent of honey I sense from your presence
not here nor there but somewhere.

A trail on the beach from your honey wand
leaves me walking in circles, chasing
stray ghosts in the sand as they wash
away in the supple underbelly

of crescent moons
crashing against the shore--

Under the Covers

There's a blanket over my eyes and I peek
catching the stare that seductively shivers my knees.
Bare and empty it seems,
lonely and longing for dreams.
So I cry and I weep,
reaching and pushing the blanket from me.
"Go away!" my voice softly screams.
But the blanket just laughs and tightens its squeeze
leaving just enough room to let in the sweet breeze.
But the stare it remains, pure and affectionately,
petrifying and constantly beckoning me.
And I freeze as the shivers still rattle my knees,
longing and praying for bitter release.
But my heart is not strong enough to stand up and leave.
So I fight and I struggle to try and break free,
while the blanket continues to grapple at me.

Tabula Rasa

She reads me like an open book -
a story not quite finished.
Her pen makes scratching noises
as she writes; quill on parchment -
chisel to stone. What will she write?
How will I unravel or,
how will her story go?

"Remember when you zipped me up
in a duffle bag and locked me in the bathroom?"
Yeah, I remembered; sort of.
"Will you add songs to my IPod,
PLEASE - we'll go see a movie; I'll pay!"
"Yeah sure," I droned.
I loaded up her music machine,
but movie day never came.

She was on a plane by then -
plastic speakers in her ear
from music – or a movie.
Cell phones troubled attentive stewards, so –
no texting aloud.
I wish I’d gotten her that journal.

I stumble into her room -
she's there of course, only in pictures:
cheerleading, tennis, her high school diploma –
a wooden sign carved
"Step-On-Me" from shop class
centered above her television set.
I didn’t even give her that name – my stupid friend did.

Her Dad spends more time around these days;
a casino jockey - life savings lost on
Lucky - a horse that made fourth place.
Diamond Jim’s is what he calls it –
an arcade for the elderly and addicted
to be more accurate.
His bright red Corvette parked in front
sticks out like an apple in a basket of bananas.

I wonder if she’ll write about him,
while I twist the green suede journal around in my hands –
no need for wrapping,
it was beautiful the way it was.
My fingers trace the ancient symbols
stitched on the front flap
Wabi-Sabi
as I turn it over to reveal the blank pages.

The Prodigal Son

But he answered his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”
“My son,” the father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” --Luke 15:29

Horizon

The knife of a painter
stuck with charcoal black and a tinge of white
the horizon meets my view - a
black hole, with nothing left but emptiness.
One tilt of my head would reveal every
star for miles, but the line holds my concentration--
comforting and calm at ease with itself and the world.
To disappear into his darkness would bring serenity, erasing
the days tribulations - the thought of a mind's impasse--
the headlights from oncoming traffic
suck me back down to the center of my world, where
unanswered resumes and broken family ties
are the stars in my back seat and the
road ahead is the tunnel to my elusion.

Sculpting with the Gods

A leaky faucet.
I wrap my hands around it.
The moment seeps out
through my suspicions.
I clench my fists and
try to contain it.
It still drips.

A flush of rose - a shade of ivy,
entangle to form a gray.
Concrete gray.
A conglomerate sludge, flowing
like half-hardened lava - turning black.

Too thick to pass through
the holes in the
drain, it collects.

With the impending eruption
beneath my palms, I feel Apollo
forming around my left pinky.
I glance down to find Daphne's bark hardening
like basalt in the sun's reflection. He quickly
brushes the leaves from her breast
to feel her warm heart
still beating underneath--

sculpting a miniature Bernini.
My own rigid entanglement
to divine upon, until times end.

Suffocate

I felt the heat from the flannel pillow below as I came to.
The sweat gathering on my neck sent
a shrill chill crawling down the rest of my body.
My eyelids part in a squint
for fear of what I might see.
The shadows still swirling on the slanted ceiling
jostle me back into my slumber.

I have full vision now - I watch as
they scrape away from the stucco.
With free reign on uncanny repose,
faceless figures silently claw their way down to the center,
grasping at something much too delicate.

I close my eyes and whip my neck back.
My head pitches from side to side trying to escape
the lucid departure.
Finally, my eyes spring open,
and the ceiling is bare--