Me and the christmas tree, nervously optimistic

I always light up
when
you're around

But do you notice?


I hope you do.



- Me and the Christmas Tree, Nervously Optimistic

Franzia and coca cola

Red
Lips like wine
Wrinkled for a second
pursed and intoxicating

darkness and drying machines
face down on the white metal surface
laughing

Giving a smirk
conversing through sight
because that girl doesn't know what she's talking about

Fill the goblet
to the Gothic brim
with Franzia and Coca Cola

My cup runneth over tonight

Daydreaming while driving home from work

Today
I thought about the day
I'm not alone anymore

The idea
of the moment I realized
I could stop searching

I felt warmth
radiating from that day
who knows how long away it is

Deep in my being
like Hot Cider

I know it's coming
I believe it as fact

The weirdest part
is I can see a face
not of anyone I know
or will know
but the face of satisfaction
of happiness
looking upon me
and feeling the same thing

People think I'm cold and negative
but I really want to be
Hot Cider

Self diagnosed insanity wont stand up in court

I thought your voice had left me
for good
Silent though it's been

And my heart jumped
like an Olympic athlete
right into my trachea

I don't know why
It wouldn't change a damn thing

It would just be change

Something i'm surprised to be frightened of
when really it's all I'm looking for these days

And what's that called?
A longing for stasis and dynamism
simultaneously

Insanity
I'm insane
Self diagnosed thank you very much

I thought I missed your voice
but my heart
jumped out completely a while ago

I think I miss it more

You don't have to remember me

It's okay
You don't have to remember me
When the sun beams come through your window
and in bed
you press play
to a song that pours
into your memory vat
all the things you've forgotten

I don't have to be one of them
it's okay, really
I've been forgotten before

There are people I haven't met yet
who will lose my name and face
in the crowd of life
so it's okay if you do too

I wouldn't hold the future accountable
So,
why treat the past any different?

Someday i'll be thrown against a wall
and someday
I'll stick

The faces in the background

What is understanding
closeness, community, caring?
Is it measured
in hugs
in kisses
I have few of these

Or comments, hits, views
messages,
higher numbers, more characters
more
I staked my life on less

What is real emotion anymore
and what does the dust on the ground
have to say
about being wiped away?

Dirt, grime, untouched, unmentioned
unloved
un-un
prefixes and negative tenses
these are my company

Downtrodden

Real

The dark faces in the background
out-of-focus
they are no less captured than
center lens subjects

So why do they mean so little?

I'd die to be a word writ by else

Write about me
Say from your blossomed depths
my name as bursts of color within

Let your mind be a catch-all
senses filled to brim
all the time

Let me know you in your words
and read me in mine

Write about me
converse your heart
trade notations in mind and soul
and beyond

I've written nearly everybody met
Sensations and brushes
Silence and loud
everything always
everybody

Ulterior motive
I'd not deny to desire selfsame

Words, they fall like stars

Where are the words
where are my words
ideas,
and thoughts
that come to me at a table by myself
in the food court of the Westfield mall

Where is my ability
i've found inability

Squeezing blood from a turnip
used to seem like a possibility
now I'm mute
and without these frail poems
i'd be crippled too

Every day is a battle that everyone is fighting
right now, mine is with the keyboard
mine is with my plans
Mine is with the words which fall into white space
so lazily

Where is the life in my words?
Gone, with so many other things
Gone, like my pastel set and drawing pads

Gone
My desire is not
but perhaps my inspriation is

So where are the words
that are ghosts on this page
that are dates and titles of the past
Everything i've already written is not a diary
but a cemetary

In vain I wait for the meteor shower tomorrow
cosmic events are not even half as spectral
by myself

And love and memory too

You can't be in love
with the past
because love can never lie
and the past
can't help it

Memory is a waterfall
cascading and majestic
missing the point always;
Clear and clean as it tumbles downward
pooling into dark water
you can never see through the bottom

The past is
a shadow
An outline of self
which was once
but now sways by breeze
of illumination
stretched and warped
by the source for which it exists
so very gray
compared to what it
mimics

And the two cannot come together again
not through tears
or quiet moments asking why
or the sickness, "what if?"

Water, once spilt over the edge
will never return

and love and memory too

Fingers in striped wool gloves look warmer when it's cold

It's freezing
don't you want to go inside
with the rest of the party?

Wine in semi clear plastic cup
he's fading fast
Does anybody want a beer?
i'm getting one
sure
no, i'm good

"I think guy's hair is so beautiful
and they don't even do anything to it"
she said.

It's endearing when girls say things like that
like there is a part of them
that's deeply in love with the male form

And not just the
Buff, hot, muscular arms
And all the other insincere desires
which can only amount to empty lusts

And people wonder why they fall out of love so quickly

She has little red dots on her face
from Girl Talk
And they look like ruby jewels
embezzled on a crystal face
telling me it's time to go now

A step, a step
the ground
the sidewalk
my car
the Glendale Freeway

Lamenting the long drive home
not because I think 30 minutes is forever
but because i'd rather the distance
wasn't so great

Dinosauria, Me

I've decided not to pollute this old blog with my short stories any longer.

From now on Speaking Without Audience is strictly poetry. All of my new short stories will be on my new blog called Dinosauria, Me. Right here http://dinosauriame.wordpress.com/. Hopefully the 2 or 3 of you who have ever read something of mine will check it out.

I will also put my new blog in the links of this page for future reference. ENJOY! :0)

The half-mast drunk eyes

No more deja vu
Circular occurrence
is the worst kind of death

I looked into the eyes of my friends
and knew
we weren't anymore

A sad revelation

Notes from an IPod Touch Pt. 3: Theme of coming up short

My Nemesis

My nemesis is tall and thin
Not goofy
Appropriately funny
A "joy to know"

He makes right decisions
The kind I would hesitate to make
And he doesn't try too hard
Always charming and clever

He has goals
Plans to achieve
And is realistic about them

He is everything I am not
But it's not what he is
And what I'm not
That makes him my mortal enemy

It's how he always gets the girl I want
without fail

But then again
He's the one they wanted anyway



Forgotten and Hidden

There are a lot of vast empty spaces in the world
And I occupy one
And feel it in my core
My heart
These dirty lungs
They fill with the beginnings of
deep sighs
No relief, just anxiety really
Crunching disappointment
Alone
This word that seeks me out
To smother my sense of trust
In positivity and hopeful feelings
Gone missing with my friends
I feel abandoned in this bed
at 45 minutes past 12AM
with the sounds of trucks on the 210 freeway
echoing off the San Gabriels
who even now spy through my window shades
The faint whoosh,
like a constant reminder
That people will pass you by like a long haul rig
In the darkness I feel my weight
my size
And I'm embarrassed to exist like this
With such fervor that I purposely shut myself off
in this isolation chamber of a room
Go Away
I think when somebody calls
But I want them here
I wish to God that I won't be alone
and it consumes me
A kind of paradox
Enveloped by emptiness
While I sing a song for no one to hear
And hope, beyond a reasonable measure of realism,
for someone to join me in the
chorus

In bluntness,
I am the song

The tragedy of the left (past tense)

God, it's a warm October day
isn't it?
The heat wrapping around
like a ribbon
or maybe more like a noose

Not everything is doom and gloom
the sun still shines
for the time being

Nobody has a clue what you want
until you speak up
That's the beauty of thought
it's secrecy
and there are no mind readers

Each person is a story untold
a novel unrealized
a poem without verse

And existence as a whole is really just humanity
trying to pry details from the authors
so we can hear another good story

In that way
everyone is a writer
sitting at their keyboard
while they walk through life

The good ones often keep it to themselves
While the desperate ones put it in type

So even on too warm days
prose is in the air
when it's just another ho hum afternoon

Writer's block could never happen in reality

Summer weather forever

"What's not to love about the weather!?"

By this point I had a look on my face somewhere between shock and annoyance. Why were we arguing about the weather? Who cares, forget the weather, that's not the point. The weather is never the reason to have a conversation, unless you're a meteorologist, and really even then.

"Tim that's not what I'm saying at all, the weather is fine for what it is. It's just a combination..."

"No, you said why can't we have distinct seasons like other places," he interrupted. "Where else on earth can you have mid nineties weather in October? I could go to the beach on Halloween while the rest of America is stuck inside getting warm."

I gave up. There was no sense going on with it. I sank back into a chair while he stood red faced and triumphant that our disagreement had produced no viable base for my supposed view.

"Listen, I like the beach as much as everybody but don't you get tired of summer by the fourth or fifth month?" I pleaded as a last ditch effort to stalemate him. "I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just a little sick of it."

What I didn't say was that I was tired of this place.

I saw a few of my other friends motion to each other for a smoke - a mute hand gesture like a horizontal peace sign kissing the lips- and decided to follow.

Outside the warm air was calm, dead, like the doldrums in old pirate stories. The doldrums represented a certain type of death. A lack of breeze, a lack of movement. Dead in the water as the saying goes. They each lit a cigarette and I asked for one myself.

The smoke hung in the air like spindly webbing and the nicotine hit my bloodstream after a few puffs.

"You feeling good Evan?"

"Yeah I think so, man."

There was a few moments of silence and peace. But peace, like a nicotine buzz, can only last so long.

"Do you ever feel stuck, Sean?"

"All the time Evan, all the time." he said.

"What do you do about it? Because it's all I think about anymore." I said.

He looked down at the ground and sucked his cigarette to the filter before flicking it out in a plastic painters bucket. For a second he just smiled at me, holding his breath.

"I just wait it out," he said finally as smoke flowed with his words. "That's all we really can do I think."

We all came back inside again. I wished they would turn on the air, it was getting uncomfortably warm in the living room with everyone else.

Sometimes the doldrums would last only a few days. The wind would pick up and the sail would furl with the power of the air. Pushing onward toward the goal, with minimal time lost. Other times they lasted for months and even if the breeze finally arrived it was too late. At what point do you get on a raft and row; hoping to hit an island or another shipping lane? The hardest part would be watching the ship blip out of existence as it crossed the horizon. The last comfort zone, a bastion of relief and familiarity no longer within reach.

Sometimes it takes a deadly calm to realize it's time to make a move. And that was the day I decided, for sure, not to wait it out.

When you become one with the chair

This is me waking from a dream.

This is me weary eyed and aching. Always aching. Always staring down, watching my chest rise and fall -checking to see if this is really happening. The years, they stretched by. Some yawned, others blinked. Now they count down.

This is my chair, in a dark room. Broken down cushions. Worn corduroy into shiny skids were i'd been for so long. Creakiness, the rule, not exception. The fabric smells like me, has become a part of me and together we watch the Television set.

The room is dark with late afternoon blackness. Sun peering through the blades, like a dog watches through chain linked fence. Wanting to come in, but knowing the unshakable certainty of boundary.

This is me adjusting to white light. For a second, I am being born. Sensations I'm not supposed to remember are coursing my synapses, playing over and over and over in my mind.

"Honey, they'll be here in 10 minutes, I just spoke to them on the phone."

"Okay, I'll get up. Could you turn out the light, though? It's giving me a headache."

And the lights went out.

This is my peaceful 10 minutes. Everything I'd worked for is here with me. The house, the furniture, the photographs on the wall, the television set, this chair. All of it my own and of my consequence.

I sit up. I'm not so strong any more. Like the rusty tools that stare at me from the patio, our capability does not necessitate our use.

The knock at the door - and tapping below that.

I am 75. Why did the years skip me over? To be young when I went to sleep and geriatric upon waking.

"Grandpa!" they all say and I stand up. A pain shoots through my body but I smile and hug them.

"Don't be so rough with Grandpa kids, he's tired."

"Watch what you say son, I don't feel any older than you do," I say.

"Come on in the kitchen, dinner is just about ready."

They leave and I exhale. In the other room, plates clash and silverware jingle - in my room bones grind and cancer cells multiply. The pain is excruciating. I feel like I'm dying. This isn't right. I'm not part of this life yet. To have lived the story and forgotten the arch - it's nauseating. And I break down. Slumping into my chair which is part of me. I bite my hand, blood dripping and tears well up, but I feel nothing. I see my degree, framed and set above the mantle while I black out.

Then dark.

This is me waking from a dream.

Negative

"A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house"
-Matt 13:57



The only way I can think to describe my life back then would be "drunk on unhappiness". Maybe it was a product of growing up on post hardcore music or Woody Allen films but it seemed like there was no spring to the winter of my discontent.

The worst moments were the late nights. A bright computer screen and the looming, nearly audible, grind of time passing and being wasted. Waking up late because, hell, why not? Staying up late for the same reasons and perpetuating a dull existence.

I wanted so badly to give it all a reason - to say that the small things, the insignificant experiences, could be a microcosm for bigger things. Thinking I was struggling for my art. But in reality I was just like rubber soled shoes on melting ice. The worst was imminent, all that was left was for fate to decide if i slipped or broke through.

I thought I could write something important back then. Grow into something worth listening to. I would look at my favorite stories like arrows pointing to the tidy slot my voice could fit into. I have no idea why that thought popped into my head. The notion that I had a chance and the blind hope in a phrase like "making it."

I was watching TV with my parents one early afternoon. A recorded late night talkshow that we could all agree on. I always talked when I watched TV. It might have been when I was most conversational.

"You're always so negative Evan."

"But this band is a joke, look at that guy, he's seriously convinced that he is a cowboy."

"Don't you have anything positive to say ever, son?"

"They can't play more songs, I guess that's a good thing."

"See? Listen to yourself every once in a while, not one good thing comes out. Nobody likes hanging around a critical person."

I was the accused in my own home -though, as they saw it, it was their home and I was still living in it. A sentiment which was at first unsettling but it seemed like every day I felt more like a guest. My parents were probably right, I was being negative, even prodding them a bit. But the more they derided my behavior, the less I wanted to tone it down.

"Whatever, I'm just saying-"

"That's the thing Evan, you don't have to say anything at all."

"You're the one that asked me why I was laughing. I mean the guy has two slide guitarists. And the sound is so cleaned up, it's a wonder they didn't just play the track over speakers while he two-stepped around the stage."

"You can't even do it Evan. What happens when you have a wife someday? she wont want to listen to that kind of talk all day."

I just ignored them. I wasn't rebelling because there's no point in rebelling in your 20's. I wasn't even trying to make a point. Really all I wanted was to be left alone. If I couldn't be listened to in my own home then why would anyone else care to?

"Fine, I won't be negative, I'll just go upstairs."

And then I left the room.

Harvest Moon

I really needed this
I thought
sitting on the icy metal walls
of my truck bed

A starless night
without breeze
and clouds loitering in the valley

It's that time of year again
I'm lonely and cold
the cold I can stand though

Three months to the finish line
will I make a sprint for it
or roll into another New Year's
dreary eve?

It's so quiet and I feel like
I own the whole valley
and everything around me
nothing less
and nothing too

I shook hands with a flower
the other night
her petal extended and I looked her right in the eyes
Her name lost in a meadow of others
But it's her image I can't shake

I kept thinking
she's so pretty, she's so pretty
and she was

So much so I forgot myself

I'll never see her again
Just another memory
I wanted to scribble down while the inspiration was still warm

My suburban epic

I

Settling in and restlessness follows
Don't hate your life
change it

No copying, no fretting
someday things might work out
(no guarantees as well)

Life as a ballet
pirouetting around the cafe
dress up for no reason
A dress code at work
is dressing up for no reason

What's the occasion?

How much perspective can a quarter century provide
most of it spent in suburbs
so little material
for art
ha!

I can weave in and out of great sayings and prose for eternity,
At best, the influence is like dust on my jacket.

II

The plastic rumble of trashcans being pulled across a driveway
is serenity here
it is the zen of gated communities
Speedbumps and fences and pool keys
Are penance for sins
not yet commited

The religion of suburbia
is suburbia
Waking up to the buzzy chain drive of a garage door
and watching mid-level luxury cars line up for the long commute

Lexus is the chariot of our champions
Mercedes, valued more than many fine steeds
Waxed on weekends
while kids splash and make noise in
over chlorinated pools
that claim 5ft is the deep end

There's an ocean of near infinite abyss
they may only hear of in passing

III

Doubt is a powerful foe

He works the body
all week
when the moment is right
and the pain is dull

THWAP!

A sucker punch to the face
In the form of an insult
It's hard to take criticism from
a faceless, nameless, gutless
tactless,
information superhighway
troll

So much of the computer screen is white
but there is no purity to be found here
Only victimless crimes

Lies and truth kitted together
as one tapestry informing the world
A world lost unto itself
Everybody knows everything

Maybe so many are so sad
because they discovered how disappointing
"Reality" really is

The gospel according to Google
and all the reasons I am fearful of failure
Doubting Thomas must be
the patron saint of the Information age

IV

Love is a game of hide and seek
I just hope I haven't counted too long
and lost all chance of finding it

I know, I know

I don't feel sorry for myself
Nobody likes that in a young man

But hear me out
Allow me to describe it from a true outsiders perspective

There is a confidence
exuded in some of the elderly
oft mistaken for stubbornness
They make moves
only deliberately
they say things with little thought
of impact
They could care less about what anyone else thinks

Behind the years of wear and tear
they figured out that it's not what everyone thinks
that is important
they know it's impossible to please all people all the time

but anybody who's ever had a kind grandmother
or gentle grandfather
knows they'd love you with the same propensity
for the rest of the worlds opinion

Here's another reason

When one who has loved
has finally lost
there is a tangible piece of them
that is visibly gone
A crack in their cup
which leaks
all the time

without fail, when love fails
so does a positive outlook on life

How much more affirming must it be
to have that missing piece

A strength I know nothing about
One which I envy and have not possessed

I may be whole

But those in love are greater than the sum of their parts
and there are few miracles so obvious as that

V

Despite the lacking

There is beauty left in life
And in that I am grateful

My name is my own
whether or not I make one for myself
in other's eyes

There are things I may miss
and others which will surprise
But the suburbs will never keep me
So this is my ode to that which blandly entraps me
tonight.

Stories tall and city blocks wide

Stories on top of stories
stacked so high
the neck strains like a creaky crane
to see them

Stories on top of stories
the Mayor of Strawberry Fields
Peace and love and ten percent
play "Everybody must get stoned!"

The LES, where less was more
where people danced
because they wanted too
and pretty girls smiled
tainted roses from red light

we were all developing pictures
of a memory in chemical fog

And quiet
the Queensborough bridge on 58th
waiting for the green lights to fire
without luck

but feeling tranquility on the edge
of a brooding storm of activity
worth more than
any JPEG could ever show

So much to see

An island that beckoned my return
the moment she was shrouded
in the clouds

I witnessed much
but knew so little
I think there must be gems
on every block
unnoticed

Now home.
But still far away.