JOY, MY GOD, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

"No one ever told me grief felt so like fear," and

this is a beauty i cannot comprehend,

and because i am but an utter failure in articulating such a thought, such a sound, i will

steal another-

('cause i can hardly see what's in front of me these days, and those days too) -

"They call holidays an option for a reason;
I heard you're coming back to life just for the fourth.
And I've been catching all your ghosts for every season;
I pray to God you won't come back here anymore.
Do you pray with Him, too?

They should deliver all my blessings
In small brown paper handbags near the porch.

AND I WISH I'D KNOWN THAT YOU WERE BLEEDING
While I sat and watched you reading with the Lord.
I read with Him, too

'Cause when you look at me,
I'll be digesting your legs.
'Cause I can hardly see
What's in front of me these days
And those days, too.

I've got to take what I'm making
And turn it into something,
I've got to take what I'm making
And turn it into something for you.
I've got to break what I'm making
And turn it into nothing,
I've got to break what I'm making
And turn it into nothing for you.

'Cause when you look at me,
I'll be digesting your legs.
'Cause I can hardly see
What's in front of me these days
And those days, too.

Joy, where have you been?
Joy, where have you been?
Joy, where have you been?
Joy, where have you been?
God, my God, my God, where have you been?
God, my God, my God, where have you been?"

JOY, MY GOD, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfO8Wa19cuI

I wouldn't hold my breath-

"Your body may be gone, I'm gonna carry you in.
In my head, in my heart, in my soul.
And maybe we'll get lucky and we'll both live again.
Well I don't know. I don't know. I don't think so.

Well that is that and this is this.
You tell me what you want and I'll tell you what you get.
You get away from me.
Collected my belongings and I left the jail.
Well thanks for the time, I have to think a spell.
I had to think awhile.

And the ocean breathes salty, won't you carry it in?
In your head, in your mouth, in your soul.
And maybe we'll get lucky and we'll both grow old.
Well I don't know. I don't know. I hope so.

Well that is that and this is this.
Will you tell me what you saw and I'll tell you what you missed, when the ocean met the sky.
You missed when time and life shook hands and said goodbye.
When the earth folded on itself.
And said "Good luck, I hope heaven and hell are really there, I wouldn't hold my breath."

You wasted life, why wouldn't you waste death?
You wasted life, why wouldn't you waste death?
You wasted life, why wouldn't you waste death?
You wasted life, why wouldn't you waste death?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8i2tOfzyfk

BU.KOW.SKI.

"it's true

pain & suffering
helps to create
what we call
art

given the choice
i'd never choose
this damned
pain
and suffering
for myself
but somehow it finds me

as the royalties
continue to roll on
in"

btw, concerning art

someone told me this once.
been trying to find my way back ever since.


"To me the self-revelation required in art makes it a horrible, binding, and bottomless commitment, and I'm turned off whenever I sense dishonesty. I like your stuff because it doesn't have dishonesty and I think you sense the horror of the self-revelation it requires. The song especially was beautiful. Commercialism is dishonesty, and most of the time, the codes and rules that define a "music video" or "movie" are only repeated because if we break them, the thing will not sell. At the very least, we must examine the codes and ask ourselves why we are operating in them."

sing me to sleep

the smiths, asleep

Everything is changing, everything is different, but it's okay-
alles nahe werde fern-
so it's okay with me now, i suppose

(really, because it must be)

'Sing me to sleep
Sing me to sleep
I'm tired and I
I want to go to bed

Sing me to sleep
Sing me to sleep
And then leave me alone
Don't try to wake me in the morning
'Cause I will be gone
Don't feel bad for me
I want you to know
Deep in the cell of my heart
I will feel so glad to go


Sing me to sleep
Sing me to sleep
I don't want to wake up
On my own anymore


Sing to me
Sing to me
I don't want to wake up
On my own anymore


Don't feel bad for me
I want you to know
Deep in the cell of my heart
I really want to go


There is another world
There is a better world
Well, there must be
Well, there must be
Well, there must be
Well, there must be
Well ...


Bye bye
Bye bye
Bye ...'

{BUT GOD -}, or, things i learned on the edge of a Rocky Peak

in no particular order,

-it doesn't always work out. yet, it does.

-blacks are not the answer. and the color red most certainly is not.

(there is nothing like, there is nothing like, Your love)

-God isn't condemning us when He draws us back. if we are willing (or many times, if we're not) He will break us and take away every vice until we are shown He only is sufficient.

-no matter how wise or cautious you may try to be, sometimes you can't predict the pain life's circumstances can bring.

(i feel like I just died twice, was reborn again for all our dirty sins) but,
(i dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name)

-as ridiculous as it sounds, it's okay to hurt. it's okay to scream, thrash, cry, weep. it's part of life, and expression. and it's okay to be there with God. He rarely works in the ways we predicted, but we usually find later that it's much, much better that way.

-trials don't wait for you to be full of energy, financial stability and a mental hilltop to appear. They frequently come in threes. in fact, sometimes they come in tens. it's all in the reaction.

(i'm afraid of everyone, i'm afraid of everyone) but,
(what can make me whole again, nothing but the blood of Jesus)

-God likes to work in ways from which only He can receive the glory. on that note, when you ask Him to strengthen your faith/break you for Him/draw you nearer...know what you're asking.

lastly,

I am not near as strong as I thought I was, and yet at the same time-

God is stronger than I had or could have ever, ever imagined.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear

"[Pain] removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul."

--Clive Staples Lewis, The Problem of Pain

butterfly kisses
little girl dances
brushing my hair 100 times

taking me to soccer
letting me paint my room
and sitting in your big chevy

fighting about boys
fighting about church
fighting about everything

realizing the hugs are few and far between
needing the i love yous
and flying away far too many times

what can i do now
your body withers away, and i cannot save you
you touched my face for the first time when i left
i fear i've flown away too many nights

please please please humble me
humble my family
but not this way,
there's got to be another way
please don't take him
i'll do anything

the wound and the bow (Your voice has stolen my soul, soul, soul)

to strive
is to be crazy alone forever
why are some called, some not
and does He really gift the ones who are

honeysuckle's flaming blush
the creek that will not drown with black
it all is there,
and yet i cannot grasp it

why would He call and not gift-
or is it truly desire at all

going nowhere fast without a map
or even a compass to reign it in
listening to this will aide nothing
and he will not understand

[ but god ]

{ stay inside our rosy-minded fuzz }

the ordinary cafe of the world
by charles bukowski

new worlds shine in the dust
come up through the slums of the mind only
to choke on mosquito
ideas.

it’s most difficult
like eating a salad
in the ordinary cafe of the world;
it’s most difficult
to create art
here.

look about. the pieces to work with are
missing. they must be created or
found.
the critics should be generous but the critics are
seldom
generous.
they think it’s easy to
put out water with fire.

but there’s been no wasted effort
no matter what they’ve done
to us:

the critics
the lost (men)
the lost jobs,
damn them all anyhow
they’re hardly as interesting as

this ordinary cafe, this ordinary world,
we know there should be a better place,

an easier place,
but there’s not;
that’s our secret
and it’s not
much.
but it’s enough.

we have chosen the ordinary,
withering fire.

to create art means
to be crazy alone
forever.

paradise (is) lost, or, (take heart, little christy) -

"Only in destroying I find ease to my restless thoughts."
Paradise Lost, Book 9, lines 129-30

road flies under too fast
karen o screams from this lung
red ash caught in my eyelid
and i cannot make them black enough

i'm running fast without a map
not even a compass to reign me in
this is fear
and if perfect love drives that out
i have never known love before

SHALL I NEVER LEAVE THIS MUSE THAT TEMPTS
AND DIES TO FIND ME DAMNED
(it's all a ploy, and I will die before making one more play in this game)

"I have given my pain a name. I call it 'Assault.'
Assault, I say, will you please go out for a walk and
leave me alone?
Will you please go out for a walk and
get run over by a train?"

What happens when one gets broken open? Writing gets made, poets get published, and humanity gets better for one fifth of a second. "Well I was once a (man) content to be alone. Now that I have been broken open, everything has edges-"

isis isis isis black and red/fucked by the muse/if even the savior has suffered confusion is there any hope for me hope for me hope for me no,

oh but this cross,

i know it now,

i shall never leave this muse that tempts and dies to find me damned (and this muse is truly but sin)
until things make sense for the first time, because
i am so easily given (to all)
i am so easily taken (with the muse)
and by this i mean the same thing-

oh but this cross, i cannot shake it, it's there, brighter than all these tears,
more terrible and beautiful and quiet and thrashed and tranquil, oh but this cross-

it screams to me in the softest voice,
take heart, little Christy,

for I have overcome the world,

and i run run run away faster than anyone ever did,

but god -

to the tune of a little folk song

look at all their pretty faces
lined up on the wall
i think i'd like to try on that one
then i'd feel ten feet tall

all this writing in ugly diaries
was bound to take its toll
maybe we could jump the next train
if i may be so bold

oh

well i can't really understand
where i stop and you begin
you're tellin me that it's not true

and lies we breathe and beds we make
just strengthen this fool's parade
but damn i just can't leave this muse

oh

just today
just today
just today
is
all
i
know

anywhereanythingjustme

lifedance by charles bukowski

"the area dividing the brain and the soul
is affected in many ways by
experience-
some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
some lose both and become:
accepted."

w h e r e d o i b e l o n g

from the pleasures of the damned

millionaires by charles bukowski

you
no faces
no faces
at all
laughing at nothing-
let me tell you
I have drunk in skid row rooms with
imbecile winos
whose cause was better
whose eyes still held some light
whose voices still retained some sensibility,
and when morning came
we were sick but not ill,
poor but not deluded,
and we stretched in our beds and rose
in the late afternoons
like millionaires.

flee

persona. outward inward
why so concerned with death
it comes out of hiding just about everywhere now

was lying next to him inevitable
tennyson hesitates/don't spread her ashes yet

"this hope is killing you"

sisyphus pushes psyche counts
lucifer falls
but
in a world of perfection and absence of wrong what first
made him lose his balance...

rolling down and spinning round
flash of red or waiting bound
behind her veil's not sacred now
don't spread her ashes yet

deuteronomy 30

people are not good to each other

the crunch by Charles Bukowski

too much too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody.

laughter or
tears

haters
lovers

strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks

armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.

an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.

I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be.

but sometimes I think about
it.

the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.

too much
too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody

more haters than lovers.

people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.

meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.

there must be a way.

surely there must be a way that we have not yet
though of.

who put this brain inside of me?

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.

IT WILL NOT SAY
"NO"

where have you been

hold it in don't let it out
hold it hold it hold it hold them
blood stained and shattered needles lay beneath us and
someone's calling, listen to it,somebody's always calling
and there is always this danger answer-

(where have you been, Joy, where have you been,
Oh God, Joy where have you been?)

shall i never leave this muse that dies to find me damned

(joy, where have you been?)

and,

(I wish I'd known that you were bleeding while I sat and watched you reading
with the Lord, I read with Him too)

Psalm 10:11 screams and then,
and then and then

4 weeks left. i fear the fall.
she'll go on to that place again where men
only want one thing
and women, we just give it to them everytime
everytime everytime

(He says to himself, "God has forgotten; he covers his face and will never see.")

AS THE SPRIT WANES THE FORM APPEARS

try
bleeding is believing
i saw you crawling on the floor
why
bleeding is breathing
you're hiding
underneath the smoke in the room

i saw you falling to the floor

my lullaby hung out to dry, what's up with that? it's over

can't play well enough/can't sing high enough/can't scream loud enough/can't run fast enough/can't be slim enough/can't be wise enough/can't love pure enough/
can't hurt hard enough

some men never
die some men never live

but we're all alive
tonight.

and truly, i don't weep, do you?

(i just hope he doesn't tell anybody
i'm not pretty)

something real.

I am not in a highly emotional state, in fact, though I am weakened and feeble, I must and will contemplate-

I'm not sure I've ever felt a love in this exact sense. There have been the few times where I've been close to leaving this life for good, and I felt him near to me as never before. He held me, and told me to take heart, because he had overcome the world. And now I feel him again-this man who all my life had watched me grow, and waited patiently for the day that I would open my eyes and see him there, and open my heart to him. It's been hard most of the time. I'll never understand why, but for some reason I've always preferred another man-even though I could feel him with me still- watching me longingly from a distance somewhere. Even when I moved with the other in the dark, where there was no light to be found and I was sleeping with the lie, I could hear him in my head-saying come, come take what I have to give-you don't have to offer me your body-I will love you for free, and I'll never leave you. All these other men promise the same, but they all go. They take you and leave you there alone. They touch your skin with a seduction despair. But I never have forced my love on you, because, see, my love doesn't do that. I cared so intimately and deeply for you that I could not bare to have you without your consent. I'd give anything to have you seek me. I'd even do this-when my son was born to me, I made it my will to crush him. It is the hardest thing one could ever do-to turn your face on your own child-but see Diana, that is how much I would give to have you near me. I grieve each day you run away. My heart burns and aches unending as I witness how you give yourself to these things...these books with ideas that leave you empty, these men that leave you broken, these knifes that leave you bruised...all of these things you hide behind. But why? What are you afraid of? That you will find the light I have hidden inside you? I want to be your Abba, I want to protect you like a Father. I am here, I am here always. I have written for you that when my son died, he saw his offspring-that's you. As he hung there, and as he felt every hopeless and degraded woe you have ever imagined-he saw your face, your tears and your cries-and he did it for you.

I hear this man-this beautiful man who's never, ever hit me, or stolen things from me, or left me alone-this beautiful man...saying these things, to me. The best musician I could ever desire. The most vivid creator. The brightest intellectual. The greatest mind one could ever, or ever not, imagine. This beautiful person wants to have me fall in love with Him. I don't know if I could do it...I'm so used to my habits and my sodden distractions here, who knows what could happen if I lifted my eyes and gave it all to Him? It's terrifying...but truly, something deep down is struggling to reach the surface. This vulnerability, this disappointed and disenchanted soul, something saves me. Something reaches down where I cannot breathe and gives me life.

I will lift my eyes up.
I will trust it.

"For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed,
but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,
and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,' says the LORD.
'Oh afflicted one, storm-tossed and not comforted,
behold, I will set your stones in antimony,
and lay your foundations with sapphires...
In righteousness you shall be established;
you shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear,
and from terror, for it shall not come near you."
Isaiah 54:10-11, 14

a thought on suicide-

"How can one fail to feel the basic relationship of these minds! How can one fail to see that they take their stand around a privileged and bitter moment in which hope has no further place? I want everything to be explained to me or nothing.

And the reason is impotent when it hears this cry from the heart. The mind aroused by this insistence seeks and finds nothing but contradictions and nonsense. What I fail to understand is nonsense. The world is peopled with such irrationals. The world itself, who's single meaning I do not understand, is but a vast irrational.

If one could only say just once: 'This is clear,' all would be saved. But these men vie with one another in proclaiming that nothing is clear, all is chaos, that all man has is his lucidity and his definite knowledge of the walls surrounding him.

All these experiences agree and confirm one another. The mind, when it reaches its limits, must make a judgement and choose its conclusions. This is where suicide, and the reply, stand."

-Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

After the know, September, 2009.

see this flaming torch it burns me so
see this ashen ember grow
when this fever child is running sham-ed
eyes are bleeding red

see this rotten log crumble above me
see my palms up to the sky
Eastern winds are blowing violent
when the oceans are all dry

Oh daughters hide your faces softly
mothers shield your sons
when red skies burn and fevers blossom
will we make it past the end-

see these bruises pushing on my eyes
see my spirit broken fade
children's wails and empty caskets
leave you wanting where he laid

Oh daughters hide your faces softly
mothers shield your sons
when red skies burn and fevers blossom
will we make it past the end?????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I'LL MAKE MY OWN DEVICES

"THE ANGER THAT CAUSES THE SHAKE AND THE CRY IS FOR NOTHING BUT THIS:

I DON'T NEED YOU OR YOUR SELFISH SODDING SATURATION
SATURATION OF THE CULT SATURATION OF InEXPERIENCE
Saturations of WHAT!
(this anger, i know, will lead to the phlegmatic destruction, but)
EMPTY NOTHINGS SIT STAGNANT BETWEEN YOUR EARS
GET ME OUT OF HERE BEFORE SOMETHING FALLS
BECAUSE IT CAN ONLY BE YOU OR I
WE CANNOT COEXIST MUCH LONGER, OR I WILL FORSAKE IT ALL

i will make my own devices because everything that this stage is offering me is
ALL FOR NAUGHT
there are the ones, the few, that would have me sane
and the Real? Well he's far away-
And since I cannot find it, well, I'll just
MAKE MY OWN DEVICES
FOR WHAT ELSE CAN I DO,
WHEN I AM THE ONLY ONE I CAN TRUST?
HOW CAN I TRUST HIM TO CATCH ME?
(and don't spit your remedy here, babe)-"


"So we all
Are growing old
And it's getting old

Pressure on
Our hollow bones
And the (varicose)?

Suddenly
We decompose
But we're not alone

So we all
Are growing old
MAYBE WE'RE SEALED IN SILENCE
And maybe we feel a guidance
Maybe your own devices
Will keep you afraid and cold
But I

Memorized
Your smile lines
From left to right

(Candlelight)?
And childlike
Reaction time

We're allowed
To expire

So we all
Are growing old
PULL OUT THE FEAR of silence
And put out the need for guidance
And put out your own devices
And don't be afraid of the cold

And we sing, sing, sing.
Fight, we fight, fight.
We cry, cry, cry.
We slide, slide, we slide into the light?

Pull out the fear of silence
Put out the need for guidance
Put out your own devices
And don't be afraid of the cold
Afraid of the cold
Afraid of the time
You've got no where to go but here.""

"But oh Savannah,"
BUT GOD-

how do i get back to where i was (when you were smiling)

(don't just sit there and shake your head, just close your eyes.
it's all you can do, isn't it?)

Patron Saint, are we all lost like you?

Take what you will, what you will
And leave. Could you kill, could you kill me
If the world was on fire
and nothing was left but hope or desire
And take all that I could require, is this love?
Or am I on the floor over-desperate?
Hold hands streaming of blood again?
And then take full weight of me
Guard my dreams, figure this out,
It's me on my own. Helpless, hurting, hell.
Will you stay strong as you promised?
Cause I'm stranded and bare.
Meanness is washed up and all that I have
is God. Take this and all,
Then grace takes me to a place
Of the father you never had
Ripping and breaking and tearing apart
This is not heaven
This is my hell.

why doesn't anyone in Noro sleep

Little light lead us through the night
And if we die burn down the forest
Chariots, carry us
Distances we don't care to walk

I'm on my way to hell
I'm on my way to hell

Why doesn't anyone in Noro sleep
Are they all just scared of their dreams
When they lay down their heads down at night
What are they haunted by
Why won't anyone just close their eyes
Could it hurt them to rest for a while
Do they need their friend to be a lover
Or their lover to be a friend

(Because)
I'm on my way to hell
(Well I've tried, God knows that I've tried)
I'm on my way to hell
(One time, Two time, Three time again)

Sitting duck
Running out of luck
And I got stuck on the train crossing
How am I ever gonna know peace
How will I ever see the light through the trees
I wanna burn down everything we begun
I wanna kill and eat my young

(Because)
I'm on my way to hell
(Well I've tried, God knows that I've tried)
I'm on my way to hell
(One time, Two time, Three time again)
I'm on my way to hell
(Well I've tried, God knows that I've tried)
I'm on my way to hell
(One time, Two time, Three time again)

I'm on my way to hell

Jesse Lacey

i swear i'd do anything,

and these tears are falling, not because of what i have done because of what i continue to do-

how many times, how many circumstances will approach that do invite me to share myself-
no, not share, give

how many times will i lose myself for someone's music, their feel,
their philosophies of pain

/Nietzsche and Kierkegaard continuously fight for my soul/

"My words will tear new scars where the old ones used to end.
Will you be wounded again and do you remember?"

i live and learn, and don't learn.

all will be well, but God help me-
these scars will not heal,
they continue to break and glow
and the nerves are raw...

Danse Macabre-

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

-Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

(Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche or Kafka? Whom shall I pay the most heed?)

Listening to Totentanz, and tomorrow will be reminded of the light by Tchaikovsky...

sono vicino la ferma?

(I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.)


Friedrich Nietzsche

gasoline

for he has not despised or abhorred the afflictions of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him-

when these violent delights meet violent ends-

(C#m, tell yourself as you're searching the ground, nobody cares, nobody cares-)

"If affection is made the absolute sovereign of a human life, the seeds will germinate. Love, having become a god, becomes a demon." (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

Abba, Father, Daddy, King, -

How does one battle not the plights of circumstance, but the inertly fallen curse of love? To be in want of affection? How, indeed? For it is not the condition, situation or incident that is my demon, it is the ghost of things had, things longed for; things remembered violently that angst me. It is the inner core of a struggle against the give-love, and the need-love, the selfishly and selflessly created hurt in a masochism of hope.

This hope is killing you, Diana.
Well, dum spiro, spero- As long as I breathe, I hope.

And Neitzsche...Hope is the worst of evils, because it prolongs the torment of a man...

Dearest friend, you were so alone, and aren't we all-

Bipolarity. Perverted dichotomies of what should be and what is. The wheels in my mind will always turn a certain way, whether I will them to or not. It's inert, I can't change it, but I can't accept it, I won't forfeit myself to this legion, even as they all scream my name in regards to the lack of solidarity and curse of HOPE-and then, what is left?

The same as you: more confusion, torment and hopelessness than when I began.
b u t g o d -

(hope
in God, for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God)-

are your wonders known in this place of darkness-oh God, but they are-

(and i've lost who i am, and i can't understand why my heart is so broken, this rejecting Your love)-

ALL SAID AND DONE I STAND ALONE, ALONE, AND IT'S BETTER THIS WAY

all said and done i stand alone
amongst remains of A LIFE I SHOULD NOT OWN
it takes all i am to believe in the mercy that covers me

god(please)damn this black night, god(won't You)damn the daylight
it's too much to bear my load and your weights too
i can't hack it, i remember now why selfish happens

what.i.have.set.before.you.is.not.too.difficult.for.you.

God you have given me intellect, you have given me choices, you have given me
resistance and a way out, escape route-
but these agonies show no light in the end of this drain
all i have is the fading light deep inside, so dim i can barely make it out
you've robbed me of my senses, i pray that when all external perception fails and fades
You will still be there, throwing traffic cones in my direction, screaming
LOOK OUT, THE END IS NEAR, DON'T GO, DON'T GO, DON'T GO,

and somewhere, someone will be violently whispering
with the purest voice

take heart, little Christy,
For I Have Overcome The World-