2012

Take the time, make sense
of everything that is not
the way it should be

Half a page of scribbled lines

Who you gonna call?

There's a song, one of my all time favorites, called "Chingari koi bhadke". Musically brilliant, but what makes it special are the lyrics. It talks about the little moments of irony in life that leave you helpless.

Chingari koi bhadke, to saawan use bujhaye
saawan jo agan lagaye, use kaun bujhaye?

The rain will put out the fire that a spark ignites. But what of the fire that the rain awakens?

What do you do when you feel lonely in a crowd?

Where's my Vicodin?

Pain comes in all forms. The small twinge, a bit of soreness, the random pain. The normal pains we live with everyday. Then there's the kind of pain you can't ignore. A level of pain so great that it blocks out everything else... Makes the rest of your world fade away, until all we can think about is how much we hurt. How we manage our pain is up to us. Pain. We anesthetize , ride it out, embrace it, ignore it, and for some of us the best way to manage pain is to just push through it.
Pain. You just have to ride it out, hope it goes away on its on. Hope the wound that caused it heals. There are no solutions, no easy answers. You just breath deep and wait for it subside. Most of the time pain can be managed, but sometimes the pain gets you when you least expect it, hits way below the belt and doesn't let up. Pain. You just have to fight through, because the truth is you can't outrun it... And life always makes more.

When you burn enough bridges
its hard to find, among the charcoal and ruin
the trail of breadcrumbs you left behind
now just pieces of blackened toast.

When you flip from the A to Z's
of your phonebook, till the numbers are a blur
and all that remain are pitiful stories of loved and lost
and sadder still, of never loved at all.

When you fix the squeaky fan, the leaky drain
the lingering doubt, the flimsy self worth
When you fixed it all, do you see the cracks
in your dreams and in your world?

Do you smile then, and breathe smoke?
and run and scream and push closer.
So close to the edge that you're blind
to the futility and the fear, to everything but the moment.

Reach for me in the dark. Set me free.
Hold me closer so I have naught to fear.
Fight for me as I did for you, but if you cannot,
don't ask me again how I am.

Falling Awake

Eagle in the dark
Feathers in the pages.
Monkeys in my heart
Are rattling their cages.

Found a way to blue
And another ghost to follow
Said "it's only up to you"
And that's the hardest pill to swallow.

You never get to choose
You live on what they sent you
And you know they're gonna use
The things you love against you

One foot in the grave
One foot in the shower
There's never time to save
You're paying by the hour

Slipping through the bars

Aware of the danger

Of riding in the cars 

Taking candy from strangers

And it's never out of hand

Never out of pocket

I'm supersonic man

Do you wanna buy a rocket?

I could learn to play the game

I could learn to run the hustle

If I only had the brains

The money or the muscle

In the name of my

There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, oft times with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoc, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see. Of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know.
Then they get a taste of battle.
For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in. but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die. Fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they've been gutted by an axe.
They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that's still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat. Their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.
If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they're fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their goats and steal their chickens, and from there it's just a short step to earning off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize.
They don’t know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they're fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world...
And the man breaks.
He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man.
Beware of broken men, and fear them . . . but we should pity them as well.