Long Time No See

Long time no see. I would definitely attest to that being true. All it took was the first global pandemic of your lifetime, and an earthquake (also your first). Now look at you here; Being able to write a whole sentence out of the words that have been jumbled bees in your mind for the past few weeks, no months, some even years.

It just all feels so surreal. I didn't want any part in this deal.
Things finally came home. Suddenly like a car crash but slow enough to watch it happen the world stopped being 'out there.' Home became a part of the world I already wasn't sure if I wanted much business in. I came home to be an ostrich. I came home to close the door behind me and leave the world behind it. I danced and hid the key, I was sure of it. I delved into myself because I am lucky enough to have a home in which to do it in.

That's a bee I can't get out of my skull. At least the bee has a home to be in. What happens to all of those who don't have a home to be in right now? What about them? The tired, the poor... the forgotten and the already broken. I think of my days in India... what will happen to them? I look at my parents and want to believe in a god I know won't be there to listen.

There the bees go again. Getting me off track. Buzzing all around. Here and there.

I just wonder when this all will end...

Untitled One

I’m a writer who never writes. I just create riddles in my head but leave them for dead. Somethings are better left unsaid. I want to create something that speaks the truth meanwhile, my mind is the jumbled pieces of the magnetic poetry set on your refrigerator door. I want something more than all these hypocrisies. Just give me a little himalayan salt and none of us will be at fault.

Nightrise.

It’s one a.m. August 7th 2017 in Healy, Alaska. Summer is fading and time is fading into the crucible winter to come. Just like it always has. In this day in age, hoping it will continue to just the same. I sat on the front porch of my little cabin in our little cabin community in the woods and thinking how much I would enjoy a nice menthol cigarette right now.

Shanty town is a place quite enough to realize how far from the world you are and populated enough to remind you that you’re not alone. Like the rest of Alaska vices and trees are easy to find here, boundless. Alaska is like the hubble surrounded by nothing but a vastness, hard to comprehend or imagine without being seen, of trees. The pines and birch reach on for days and days. In the winter for months and months. Nothing but a highway and a few roadside cafe’s and gas stations scattered along its path. Most of the businesses aren’t even open year round, only when the sun shines all day and all night. Soon half the town will be boarded up, three-fourths of the population will be gone, and the sunniest thing you’ll find is maybe the orange juice in the store.

I’m also thinking about how much I would enjoy not wanting a cigarette.

I looked up at the sky tonight and as I did for the first time since early spring I saw the big dipper. As clear as day. The seven stars laid bare across the backdrop sky, twilight hadn’t quite faded to blackness, and it won’t for another week or two at most. The sun had set in the south and as you looked behind and spun around to face the last rays of the setting sun you can see the night fighting for its way back into the sky. Almost as if the stars of the big dipper worked together to scoop the veil across the sky. At the tip of the spoon the veil couldn’t quite reach and essence of sunlight still beamed a brighter purple, to pink, to orange, to red at the brim of the northern sky. Summer isn’t done sewing winters veil.

I smoked the cigarette. Couldn’t finish even half.

I sat there for awhile. Eventually my attention was pulled towards little mr. vol as he scurried from his hideaway across the law and into his presumable food stash. I looked up where I felt I had just been. It happens so fast. Hazy  clouds covered the just beaming big dipper, while the sun drifted even further fading effortlessly into nights cool hands. The breeze blew cool air all around while the sound of a howling dog echoed in the background noise of bustling highway traffic and tired over gravelly roads. Luminescent small town echoes. The breeze dips quickly and begins to nip at the back of the uncovered arms. It drew me inside where I laid down and wrote this. Unable to write in weeks that felt like months I found myself with an empty old journal. Eventually it was three or four in the morning and this is what was left. Once it all was out for the most part, I drifted to sleep and dreamt it all again.

Take me to the Mountain Tops

My mothers always taught me to take the high road. You don't realize until you're at the peak that you're the one left with so much more room to fall, and be broken into a million little pieces. I taught myself how to put myself back together again. 

My grandmother was the first one to ask me where I thought the mountains and oceans came from. I was six. I said the earth. She told me God. I suppose I feel the goddess more than most. So I left. I went and looking for something else. 

My spirit always led me to the scenic routes. Rolling open landscapes, peaks higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide, water ponds and lakes made of glass blown stars who cried for their mothers warmth and rained down in an ancient time lost in memory to most. I felt a beauty no man, no man made God could muster. They can only ever try to emulate. 

And I've lost myself there. No questions to answer. No questions needed asking. I wander and I'm lost in love with it.

Now my mind is taking the road less traveled by. Sometimes I see the footprints of those before me left in the mud after the rain. Treading lightly to not leave my own and walk alone. I see more mud and bootprints on the faces of the strangers I meet along the way. No need or drive to ask or wonder what road they're on or headed to. Mud and dirt left on them from those who have trampled on them. Blood and tears - their own and from the ones they've pushed down and the ones they've tried to pick up - encrusted around their eyes and and trying smiles. 'Let me take you to the stream so you can wash yourself clean. Take this fruit I don't need, take care of yourself out here in this crazy world we were all chosen to live, like it or not. And if you must take my flowers, pull them from the ground gently, leave just one root and petal so I can grow again after. Try your best replant them where they will help you grow.' 

Take them to the mountains so that when they fall the petals rain down on those low valley roads and create a new scene. 

Midnight Sessions

Once young and full hope, now complacent and smoking too much dope. Seems like all these big life dreams are about to go up in smoke. 

We've choked on the smoke from pouring water over our burning ones. Wondering if it's better to let it burn or wash out and drown away. Still we can't leave till we've tried. We would do the same for you - the shirt off my back and to the last breath of air on this dying space mission -  we'll give it all to you. Would you? 

This world seems to be tearing at the seems. We can't keep fighting for these dreams. Things are not what they seem. We tell ourselves things are right, but we're all too self-satisfying to put in towards the fight. 

I grew up living in a world that never existed. There's no glass ceiling. It's crashed in from the storm, shattering where the rest of us held it up. Our mothers fed us soft fictional  to keep our hope ignited and fed it till we became brighter than stars over mountain peaks. They knew there would be those who would add fuel to the flames when our fire was just right. They knew there would be those who pledged a sip of water only to douse the whole thing with no hope of respsarking. 

Some come to water the flowers and some stay, and then there are the boys who taken them anyway. Picked for a moment and gone forever. Tell me awful one don you think all flowers go to heaven? Do weeds go to hell? Let's plant this new garden and see. We'll plant seeds of our own and hope they grow. Once we figure this out, feed them to the rabbits, the birds, the bees. Nothing left for you or me. We'll burn the ground and leave it behind. 

Running off with no where in mind. Staying complacent but always in our minds. This ones grown and died too many times over. Here is where we'll be. Come find us and see. 

Bees Knees

My mind is lost in the forest and my feet are taking me towards the Skye. I'm staying here, just trying to get by. By and by we all get by.
I don't want to fly, I don't need to fight. Let me be here and rest.
One more cup of coffee, just another cup or my life will stay in standby.
All these thoughts are buzzing around where my mind use to be. I can't seem to get them out. I just want the bees knees, not up here where it's too tight of a squeeze between what's left and all those mindless thoughts. My mind is gone and my soul can't fill space where it needs to be.
I've lost my keys and tried to replace them luck but I'm bound to lose that just as fast as the rest.
I'm falling behind, or was I just too far ahead from the rest? Do I catch up or just play dead? I don't know.
No, we do know. I know. We've played dead long enough. I don't need to catch up. We need to get lost together instead. Time to get lost in the sea. This swirling sea of pine and birch with blue skies overhead. This time I promise to keep my feet on the ground and my head in clouds. I'll be making wishes until I'm found. Then I'll be gone again, moving to a new ground.

"Know the difference between those who stay to feed the soil. And those who come to take the fruits."

Midnight Session #2

She woke up in a room full of people she somewhat knew. She’d be alive before then but then the lights and music actually set in. She looked around and it was the eve of 2017. There were streamers and balloons galore littered all about the floor and from shiny strings on the ceiling. Surrounded by a group of strangers in the middle of a popular but forgettable often regrettable place.

-weeks later-

You know what happened last night? I stretched. I stretched myself long and tall. Let the blood rush upside down back through my veins. My vision was blurry for twenty of thirty while I stopped the flow upwards into my my brain. Instead I lowered it down to the ground. Or at least what this laminate hardwood floor suffices as. It’s the middle of Winter in Alaska and I haven’t felt the Earth between my feet or the wind on my heels since autumn came. Only the rigid long nail of weather moving about. There’s been furred and covered, at least ankle high boots, since end of October.

Apparently there is a man down south, a man so vile the history books foretold of in its repeated rhymes and lore. But nobody reads much of anything anymore. He breathes everything I’ve held my breathe in hope for. He is the breath against mine. Against every fake-told lore of freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness I once was told how the world was. Those wacky sci-fi books and shows aren’t so far off base anymore. Everything feels upside down. There’s monsters about. Monsters we created from our own fascination. This all feels apart of a world I thought was old told fiction or over whispered histories.

I don’t want to be poetic. I don’t want to write my fancy fuck feelings and thoughts about what is going on. I have nothing to say. Any words just feed into the divisive slicing machine drenched in oil that sits in a ‘cost effective’ factory that is fed with lead streaked water. Good thing there is bottled water for sale. A man only makes so much when he spends all his time working through the grind.

 I just want to sing, dance, and drink under the moonlight day light until the sunlit nightlight.

This is not the world I was sang into it. She always sings me to sleep. We’re all just a phone call away in this day and age.

“Hush little baby, don’t you cry.
One of these mornings you’re going to rise up singing.
Then you’ll spread your wings and you’ll take the sky.
But till the morning, there is a nothing that can harm you.”

Feels like she’s spelling out my name.

Driving down the Alaskan highway half past 5pm, hour and a half past twilight, nightlight. Snow and ice covered trees and swamps rest easy. It’s not so dark with the radio up high and our bad singing voices to light the star lit skies. If we’re lucky we’ll see the sky cry colors of red, blue and green tonight. We’re not the only ones looking up to the skies thinking, ‘what the fuck is going on?’

Have spine. Stand up. No matter how far away you feel. No matter how small you know you are.  Reach for the tops of mountains. ‘The only man who doesn’t make it to the top of the mountains is the man who stands in another paths telling him which was to go.’ We can do better. Listen to the words in what your favorite Sunday alone with wine song says. ‘Rock out like the mangoes are in season,’ Anis Mojgani directs me to.

It’s been too cold even for fires. Today the sun hit my face for just a few seconds and it made all the difference in the world. Just two days ago it felt like the new year was beginning. Just yesterday it was the Chinese New Year. Today is a day from the late night of yesterday. Don’t let tomorrow be just another night. Goodnight. 

I never thought I'd realize how much I could miss the sun. No fan of hot weather desert parties, beaches, or anything much above 80 degrees. Tonight is Solstice, the darkest night of the year. We've made it this far and it's not been to bad. It snowed all day. For a moment the skies and earth all turned a spring pale pink like rose'd flush skin. That was the last minute of day light.

Are we too afraid to do anything?

Or are they not afraid to do anything?

Midnight Sessions

There are those moments where you realize where you are. The oil paintings are released from their prisons and surround around us. The mountains aren’t so far away anymore. We feel not so far away from each other, despite the the tress encompassed in every direction before the nearest town. We entertain ourselves. Things to take up the time. Charades until sometime in the morning. No sleeping just because it’s cold. There are the large rivers that winter can’t stop. No matter the river it’s never stronger than the salmon on its way home.

One of our new favorite songs plays in the background. You are living in the middle of Alaska during winter. It doesn’t feel as vacant as it appears before true sight. Only far away lessons of gold mines lost in inversiouness sight. The pits of the caves reach too deep beyond sight. A reflection of a show-side gimmick resort nestles at the very end of a long windy road. The fact that even wifi exists here at all is an anomaly to few. This anomaly is often not thought or or taken advantage of by most of the paying crew. But that wifi is what we all rely on to maintain our connections with all the places except here. The rest of Alaska seems far from here. Alaska seems far from the country it belongs to. Far from the whole world. It’s a place where winter shuts you in. The mind becomes a telescope as distant between here and there grows as wide as can be; hoping that continents might crack.

Summer rages in summer knowing no bounds. But we should only sleep when the day is done. Then so it does up here. The light falls and everything besides the land has to continue on. The light of the moon shines bright again from early in the four o’clock nightfall, then again in the late ten o’clock morning dawn. Time balances itself. Always.

Then finally I see it is time to die down. Lets the winter fall in. The sun always rises again.

When the Levee Breaks

It’s 1:40am in the morning the night that Donald Trump won the election. The presidential candidate that spewed nothing but historical hate speech and bigoted hate speech through his entire presidential campaign.
“It’s a joke,” they said.
Unless you’re gay.
Unless you’re Muslim.
Unless you' have a real  issue of where we're headed and contemplating it just gives you a heart ache and a head ache to think of it.
Unless you’re Latino.
“I just got out of this prison cell,” Mercury said, we’re all singing now.
Meet somebody to love.
Meet somebody to love. 

It’s hard when you grew up on love and compassion for the conditions for others.
Is it?
What a time to be American, they all said.
What a day to get fired from your shit seasonal job.
Unless you couldn’t handle it.
David Bowie knew the pressure. 

It’s a terror knowing what this world is about. 

Will tomorrow give us a clue what this world is about?

No.
There’s better things out there than this. There has to be.
Watching good friends scream “let me out.” How many do you know, do you listen?

Not enough. 

There is never enough.
It’s hard being told that the world is rainbows and compromises, and butterflies, and that’s all. Sadly millions and missed targets will come into play.
What has happened in the last twenty four hours?
Beer and pretending that what we’ve let happened isn’t happening happen.
The mother is crying.
You have the power.

What power?

The power of voodoo.
Who do?

You do?

You do.

Back to the Magic Tree House

I remember riding on the backs of beautifully spirited boys motor bicycles. It was India, it was Rishikesh. The banks of the River Ganga to our right, the highway soared up high into the vibrantly green mountainside.

I remember seeing temples both below us and up above. On our way 20 miles north for a few bottles of that Old Monk, the finest of Indian rums to make the dry holy city of Rishikesh a little wet for the evening.
Popped off the back of his bike and all the town boys starred like the the town boys did no matter where I was.
On our way back with the booze I remember the motor bike boy yelling as we turned the corner before Rishikesh, “Hide the bottles, no fines for me today.” We spent the rest of the evening in the magical tree house laid next to the river. We drank till the sound of the monkey’s didn’t spook us anymore. We drank till we dipped in the beloved river of Ganga under the moonlight on that warm summer night and become old monks ourselves losing count of how many times we submerged under the cool flowing waters.

I remember it like was a dream from yesterday. Was it? No, I have the scars and glowing memory of being there.

Now I’m awake and worn in the ends of some middle of nowhere in Alaska. The days are blurred but now with less hash and less Old Monk. Beer turns bitter and the whiskey makes you angry. From up here you see all the things come and go everywhere else. Impermanence use to feel so much more uplifting. Yet still there is no where else I’d rather be. Everywhere else down there in the ‘lower’ states seems rotten, crude, and withered beyond its stretching capacity.

Still there is no where I’d rather be than here just trying to get back there. To my land of milk and honey and beautiful things. Of bright glowing wander and mystery.
Still there is no where I’d rather be than here. Just wanting to get back to there. 

AK 2

Sometimes you’re wake up and you’re 23 years old. How many of those 23 year olds wake up middle of fucking no where Alaska. Literally, most people have never heard of where you are and if they have it’s because they want to fuck under the ‘aurora’ northern lights to produce the most intelligent son. And this in only the 2nd time you've woken in the middle of nowhere Alaska, just more north this time.
It’s 6 degrees on the reg, 35 is a treat in disguise. Everything re-awakens as if it were Spring, but Winter hasn’t even begun. The fresh snow melts like the ravens are returning in mass.
This is why we’re all so confused here. Stuck between hibernation and rutting season. +2 Alaskan points if you know what rutting season even means. You’re guess it bout right. The fiddle feels your frustration. 35 isn’t even the beginning of what’s grown before in these dead months, or what’s to come. Hallelujah bye and bye you won’t be able to fly away. Just let the next one buy you a brew to see how far down they have to wait for the next, you don’t even ask them to fall in line.
That touch on every girls waist, the unwanted one but not nudged away one, that each has felt and known, but who doesn’t like a free beer kind. The ones who offer, ‘I just want to buy you a beer’ is the first line but the true intentions are hidden under that newly frozen snow line.
First time I met you it wounded my heart. 
The banjo is the only thing that makes us feel the valued few much of anything.
Look at these nails I carry on my hand. Kept up with intention.
Gospel sounds more real in the dead degrees. Like sick loving lines.
I was serious before your attention and intentions broke and became clear. Like ice with all the fish trapped under there. 

Smalls

I bet when I was around three the word ‘small’ comprehended in my small unscathed brain to be ‘not big.’ That dog is small. That other dog is big. The big kids meal? Who would want a small kids meal when at the age of three you’re being sold on the idea that growing up, being bigger, brings you better outsourced manufactured goods …

At five velociraptors were small, triceratops were medium, and tyrannosaurus rex… well, he was a big fuckin’ dinosaur. You don't realize the downfall of his arms until Jurassic Park 3 came out, but eventually he still wins because the original always wins. I recognized that not all small dinosaurs were the same kind of small, but they were certainly smaller than the medium dinosaurs. The largest dinosaurs were all their own kind of large; take a look at the brachiosaurus compared TyRone.

From ages five and onward to the later part of elementary school the use of the word small, and its other sizing labeled adjectives, continued to be just that: adjectives. Words established by other humans long ago to help with more than just communication amongst individuals. To define boys, girls, and drive-thru menus. 

to be continued…

Asshole

I would rather be an honest asshole than an unscrupulous saint.

Perhaps We Will

The nerves kick in before the storm to come. Losing your breath happens in the same rhythm that the heart quickens and things begin to move fast and slow. They swirl together in an unmoving vortex. The great unknown lies out there; calling past, present, and future names deep into it.

These are the places we live for.

Who are we? The daring, the divided, the cast out lone wolf - the one that would not bow to alpha - the solely self praised omega, the only pup of the great divine female.
That is who we are.
The dreamers who don’t know where they’ll end up when the sun goes down and the moon rises high.
The fearful. Those who run away from pleasure and pain, seeking something they’re afraid to find.
That is who we are.
The sad old men who can't seem to pinpoint where it went wrong.
The lonely widow women wondering if she should have fled across the sea before the sea washed her up.
The damned and the saved are just steps from one another in this vast place. It’s not a rare sight to see one step across the thin, cracked and broken line and into the other side. It wouldn’t be a life lived if they never dared to try a different life.
This is what we are.

"But there is so much more to become," they whisper.

This vast places holds us all in but never keeps us here. The mountains rise and fall just as the men who climb them have done for centuries. Nothing grand stays high for long. Just like the rotten and wicked forest will one day drop a seed who will one day bear the saving fruit.

Perhaps one day we shall all feast together on that fruit. Perhaps we won’t. Thou mayest - we may or we may not - the choice belongs to us. 

Things Continue to Move On

The midnight sun starts to catch up. Vitamin D overdose starts too become apparent in the faces of all the lost and drunken millennials, the old time bartenders, and the dogs who run through the town — drunk on their existence. The songs at the bar start to repeat themselves like every other Tuesday that rolls by. The sound of morning birds meshes with the trees through the late night sunsets. Things continue on like this. On and on and on and on. The tears, the laughs, the vomit, crazy dance moves become apart of the weekly ritual that everybody is participating in — on their own time — at the same time.
Some days the only escape is to stick that hitchhikers thumb straight out and into the lane — hoping for a respectable yet enjoyable ride to wherever you want to go. The song on the radio is something different that the repeat.
Nahko always playing in the background of the mind no matter where you are. Reminding you; “Bless other men, investigate your mystery,” it is written, “I know I’m ready, big message heavy. Gotta learn to carry what comes to me directly.”

Like spring after every winter the midnight sun gives way to the real deal. Autumn kicks in — harsh and heavy — with the ever glowing moon. She stands her ground when the seasons begin to change. Demanding her time to shine in the dark of night. The sign of the moon means the leaves are changing. Trees prepare to go to sleep with the bears. This busy bustling town starts to quite down and become cold.

Remember these moments. Notice these changes. Sync with the things that don’t shy away from change, from the night. Choose which wolf you allow to howl at the moon tonight. Prepare to dream something new for the coming seasons.

Things Continue to Move On

The midnight sun starts to catch up. Vitamin D overdose starts too become apparent in the faces of all the lost and drunken millennials, the old time bartenders, and the dogs who run through the town — drunk on their existence. The songs at the bar start to repeat themselves like every other Tuesday that rolls by. The sound of morning birds meshes with the trees through the late night sunsets. Things continue on like this. On and on and on and on. The tears, the laughs, the vomit, crazy dance moves become apart of the weekly ritual that everybody is participating in — on their own time — at the same time.
Some days the only escape is to stick that hitchhikers thumb straight out and into the lane — hoping for a respectable yet enjoyable ride to wherever you want to go. The song on the radio is something different from that daily repeat.
Nahko always playing in the background of the mind no matter where you are. Reminding you; “Bless other men, investigate your mystery,” it is written, “I know I’m ready, big message heavy. Gotta learn to carry what comes to me directly.”

Like spring after every winter the midnight sun gives way to the real deal. Autumn kicks in — harsh and heavy — with the ever glowing moon. She stands her ground when the seasons begin to change. Demanding her time to shine in the dark of night. The sign of the moon means the leaves are changing. Trees prepare to go to sleep with the bears. This busy bustling town starts to quite down and become cold.

Remember these moments. Notice these changes. Sync with the things that don’t shy away from change, from the night. Prepare to dream something new for the coming seasons.

No Where Now Here

Feeling lost in translation with the world around isn’t the only problem she has.
She has lots of problems and she chain smokes to not think about them. She’ll smoke even more if the weed doesn’t come in. She’ll wake up in the morning and feel the tar in her lungs and regret every drag she’s even taken. Go over all the mistaken mistakes, things she shouldn't have said, things she should have said better, things she'll never say. Think about all the gone ones, afraid for ones to come. Disconnected connectedness. Conundrum to her mother, herself and most others.

Repeat the cycle for three more days. Add in a few deep breaths. A beer - or three - and maybe a walk alone if the cards favor her that day. Lucks not a strong suit.

Stuck in between that place of wanting someone to just have a conversation with that isn’t about feelings, family, or anything else within the walls that have been plastered and duct taped together, and wanting nothing at all. To be left alone, seen as a passerby stranger. But then the night time gets quite and is just as loud as all the voices at the bar. Chitter-chattering all through the night.
If only her dog was there.  

She gets crazy and manic and reaches out then lashes out the next second. Like a wounded animal who doesn’t know where the pain and love begin and end. The red bird sits on her windowsill and she’s reminded that simple is beautiful. Anything beyond that is too heavy and should be thrown away, disregarded, pushed away. Not knowing what to want, not wanting anything.

She’ll just ramble on until she’s there. Then leave once she’s gotten there. Never wanting to be here. Never wanting to be anywhere, except for over there. No where for awhile, moving onto now here. Now here she is.