The Poetry of Obsession

Bloody Led Zeppelin, that’s who.

I want to be consumed

I crave utter absorption 

I want to make love to it

I want to be swallowed by this heavy wall of dissonant sound oozing from the box

The inexorable mess of intertwining cables 

Jammed into fuzz pedals & phasers 

Rings so metallic and so

Human 

Stumbling, fumbling, my car don’t start

Ripping the strings off my bad guitar

Breaking the face of screaming amp

In dreams I am 

Falling down the jagged jaw of a coal black serpent

And it’s wholly unsettling, but once you 

Let go

The ride is so smooth 

And

Now I’m lost

Now I’m shattered beyond repair 

But it feels like the cosmic safety of an orgasm

~The poetry of obsession~

I am singing

But really I am howling

Mama I can make myself scream just like amp!

This is my worship

This is devotion

This is pure

This is raw

This is rapture

Light leaks through my darkness

But who tainted the name of darkness?

I call this freedom

I guess I’m just

making love to myself

High priestess, hi priestess, high

So fucking high

Brains

Photo from Woodstockings.

When I close my eyes

Rocking backwards in the night

No hands are holding me

In the glow of the TV

Future is drunk and blurred

Darling can we have a word?

Know that I’ve been a child

The universe is never mild

It hurts to think about 

the simple times

The way we were

Though I have always 

kept you in my chest,

An introvert 

The road is never easy to be loved

You lose more than most

Who keep their fingers from 

tossing a throw

You’re scared and it shows

The road is never easy to be loved,

But when push comes to shove

I hold my brains bloody in my hands.

2D 2gether

Photo from Woodstockings.

Has this holographic world 

In which I play god with my thumb

Overridden the art of truly getting 

To know one another?

Text me your handle and 

I’ll stalk you for an hour 

To see if all checks out:

Your style, your wit, your dreams,

What you ate for breakfast.

The presentation—is it too calculated or not enough?

By the end of my exploration I am either

Totally in love

Or you’re just another number.

Either way, you can be completely sure

That it’s just a projection

So take no compliment or rejection—

Always a fragile image captured through

Repulsive apparatus 

This is a circus ring

In which we feed the fears like rabid lions

Parade our crippled oddities for  

The sick thrill of likely validation 

Faulty guru in starry robes sits atop her throne, 

Toting sponsored bytes of advice 

Tickets are free and hours are eternal

At least until the app crashes

And you’re stuck, marooned in your own

Narrow construction of reality

They say it’s just an illusion

But if I am simply pressing buttons 

To capture my life, 

At what point do I become 

The fantasy?

Am I just a quivering mirage?

Holographic avatar?

Have I become the 2D?

Well, fuck it, I’m addicted,

Let’s be 2D together.

You say loneliness is killing you, 

And I know,

Because it’s killing me too—

A romance for the modern age

Garth's Boulder Gardens

Photo from Woodstockings.

I met a man in the desert yesterday

Of far greater years, eyes glistening like hot coals

Amongst boulders, still pools, stretched cowhides—his crystal palace.

I asked if he had a lover 

And he looked at me, dead-on, and remarked,

“The divine did not present me with a partner in this life, and believe me, I wanted one”

I felt my skin turn on fire 

And thought,

God, I hope that’s not me. 

This woman, so endowed with gifts,

Fists full of dreams, songs, and poetry—

What is it all for, if not for love?

Everyday I must cool the fire of my yearnings

Through the expression of these gifts 

So I wonder if love’s withholding

Might be a mechanism to fuel my inspiration

Still, I ask that it won’t be lifelong.

Trust that I am content to be alone,

I go to shows and sway my body to the music

And see the stars imprinted under the black of my eyelids

I take myself for drives

And dissolve into dizzied passing landscape 

And spin myself the mantra that the world is my home.

I soothe my own fears 

I know my place in the cosmos

And I cook a damn good meal

But is it too much to want to hear a man whisper baby in my ear

At the closing of the evening?

I never wanted that 

Until I became too familiar with this sullen, fragile hour,

When primrose sweeps velvet curtain over the sand—

A time that seems to dissolve my defenses.

So for now, I’m star-crossed alone

Maybe I’ve drunk too much of the Kool-Aid, ingested too much Shakespeare

As much as I try to remain detached, 

This zen monk

Who feels nothing,

An empty vessel through which all of life flows,

But does not catch,

I am still a human

Complex and confused

I feel everything, 

And I want to be loved.

Still, I want a love that comes to me

Not teased from stone 

Not pulled upon a string 

But one that walks towards me of it’s own accord

In great swaggering steps across

This torrid land 

Where it’s sung that “freedom rings”

True Love is Making a Comeback

Photo from Woodstockings.

He asked me why 

I wouldn’t sleep with him

And I said it’s already hard enough to 

Get out of bed in the morning.

If honesty makes me an ice queen

Then so be it,

I’m frost-bitten.

Would making love now just be

Making love to my own ego?

I find everyone to be such a pure reflection

What I love in myself turns me on 

What I loathe in myself repulses me

And, what I desire to be, 

When gleaned from another 

Patches up holes of lack

With the flimsy architecture of

A rubber bandaid placed over a gunshot wound. 

And still I crave this lofty ideal,

One that actually satiates none of these 

Baser cravings

I heard true love is making a comeback.

Weekend Flame

The classic lovers tarot framed by House of Intuition in Los Angeles. Seemed fitting for the words.

I could get lost in someone for a weekend—

some fellow whose eyes scald like fire,

and leave me burned

we could hole up in my ramshackle apartment

where the walls are still bare and bed is stripped 

and listen for the ocean in a seashell

and dine on boxed angel-food cake in bed

and sway to records in our underwear

and captivate each other in silence 

and 

having deluded myself into thinking I’d be found

I’d find myself more lost, still.

These days, the poetry has withered for me

it smells forged, it reeks of Hollywood gutters

an emptiness pervades nearly every meeting,

the familiar fragrance of desperation clings to “romantic” encounters

I am removed, my eyes drift

there is a scent of tuberose 

wafting from the summer yard

a reminder of 

the frequent comings and goings in early years

a wondering

questioning of the return

the naive aching

wanting to be held like a child

then

and

now, still.

So, now that even my old flames have faded

I have to ask myself: what’s next?

if not this craving, then what?

if not some great godhead, some study, some lofty exploit

some laceration of myself

I lie in a stripped bed quivering 

charged, an unexplained electrical inferno.

I could get lost in someone for a weekend—

some fellow whose eyes scald like fire,

and leave me burned,

but I’m too honest for most—

a certain taste, 

grown too weary of pretending.

And now, if I turn my hands over, 

they are already midnight (of my own accord)

no stars, no illuminated Los Angeles night

blackened and steeped in my own ashes,

seems the only thing left is to rise.

Five + Twenty

Title inspired by one of my favorite songs, “4 + 20,” off the record Déjà Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. A reflection on what it feels like to be a quarter age, in all of its chaos.

so this is the time

now I’m a quarter-age

and what do I have to show?

never a dull moment

always a question

a hazy confusion

a perpetual hustle

the breaking of an illusion

I had tried to seal my heart in early years

—a wabi-sabi sort of deal—

fragile, laced with golden lines,

refined, of museum-like appeal

but, when the hour comes for tea and treats

the surface cannot hold

ooze from the cracks like gunshot wounds

the water’s getting cold

I heard it on the radio that “love comes to everyone,”

but what about for me?

It would be with great remorse in this life

to turn around and see

that I forgot what it means to be free

yes, I was just too busy,

and too consumed by fear,

I was just counting the years,

and floating on a bed of tears

so this is the time

now I’m a quarter-age

isn’t this when we stop to grow? 

the manic stretching of the limbs,

but, it appears that’s just for show.

seems my mind expands with every blink,

it’s a constant readjustment of what I feel

a game of fallen barriers

a lowering of the shield 

now immersed in constant confusion

they say: darling, it’s just an ego dissolution

so wave goodbye to old delusion

and accept this blood transfusion

of novel quandaries with no conclusions

but perhaps that’s just what it is to be human

with this grand capacity to theorize 

swimming ‘round a fishbowl

while believing that we’re outside, 

as if we’re laying under infinite skies

we pray our legacy might crystallize

although it seems algae on the tank 

still forms our greatest enterprise

but hey, maybe we’ll get lucky

and things will get Malthusian

we’ll overshoot our source of life

and halt our evolution— 

no more questions

no more hustle

a lobotomized elusion

but, doesn’t that just sap out all the fun

of releasing self-imposed solutions?

so I let it fall into the night,

my need for all things proven

and peeling down the window,

I can sense that I’m just cruising

Lover's Eyes

Friends always told me not to

Look for myself in another’s eyes

Muddied reflection might just

Bite like bitter fruit 

I know

Might be something to grow you

But bad advice,

Just another vice 

If I could show you how you’ve

Shaped my world

Well, surely I’ve shaped yours

You know no hours,

Yet time is your friend

Your soul is aching

You’re playing pretend

In the dark, I searched for answers

From the heart

That’s not mine

I guess it’s just another 

Way we trade ourselves

For the praise of another

Posed as a lover

It’s just another day, 

Control yourself

If you can fit to the moulding 

Get used to folding

Friends always told me not to

Look for myself in another’s eyes

Muddied reflection might just

Bite like bitter fruit 

I know