This Season

The only comparable time in my life
to this time in my life
was when I lived in my Dad's garage
at fourteen years old.

He had a new wife with two girls
and the garage was carpeted with
a patchwork of carpet samples
and it was winter and I was always cold.

But instead of watching TV in the house
I secluded myself with a parka
and fingerless wool gloves
and taught myself a programming language
and made a disturbed and complex video game
I wrote 20,000 lines of code in four months
and distributed it to my peers
on 3.5" floppy disks.

Then I discovered girls
which launched 24 years
of infatuated distraction
of selling off my truths
of yielding over and over
until there was nothing left to yield

I wrote an 80 page ebook in 5 sittings
just now
and in that time came up with
three ideas for other ones
I know that no one really cares
only the market will be my judge
and for that stark measurement
the truth of value that tells
I am very grateful

My drive for this is like lava flow
my yard is growing over
and I'll eat rice and garbanzo beans tonight
not because of poverty
but because I don't want to leave the house
It's like I'm a mile away from the Grand Canyon
or on the last five mile stretch
of a 100 mile bike ride
or on the last ten minutes
of a bloody four hour black belt test
the journey always brings meat
and I know how to journey
like an untethered bandit
who leaves everything on the mat
and I'm about to eat

Until I'm full.

Recovery

You don't get this far
without having to recover from something
nobody is spared
suffering comes to all

The key is
can you forgive over and over
can you love when it isn't perfect
when you're hurt
can you love your enemies
or the enemy in the person
you choose to love

That's the anvil
where the hammer of cosmic judgement falls
can you love without a thought of yourself
can you sustain it like sunlight
while the light burns through your cloak
and reveals all of your sicknesses
all the logs lodged in your eyes

Or do you retreat back
to the simplicity of self
where the mirror is ever clouded
and love comes with ifs and whens
cursed with the impermanence
of the fallen nature
of all people.

Can you give without conditions
or do you wait
for eternity like you deserve it
like it doesn't cost you everything.

Saturday

This is almost perfect

sitting here and cranking out pages

the horizon in sight

the vanishing point opening

the land I've always held in vision

with patience and faith

With tripped out ambient Celtic music 

on my Roku Pandora app

the breeze blowing in

the cold mushroom pizza and Tecate from the fridge

my liquid mind

unleashed and unencombered

wholly undeserved and focused

I know I'm stubborn and willful

and this is why

it always works

I will have my beautiful life without limits

because dark times don't choke my spirit

my spirit can't be choked

failure is the best teacher

and I love living and failing and getting back up

I am one of those people that wouldn't waver

at the moment before my execution

The only thing that would make this better

is the woman

who is doing a similar thing

in a house 12 blocks away

and when I see her in her tiny house shorts

and her hunting lion eyes

I know that we'll be doing this together

someday

when the timing's right

when I conquer all of her doubts

  

Love and Words

The broken screen can't stop me
I'll do it all right here
with what I have
I'll stay up late
I'll fail and succeed
use the workout app to get fit
have zero overhead
stay put
upload little fishing lines
into rivers of billions of dollars
I don't need much
I just want to stay put
and go anywhere I want
I just want to be heard
and vanish
I will stay in love
and I'll stay alone
until a new order is created
out of thin and sublime air
a new foundation built
until my dreams are flesh
and land and erected wood.

On Writing

I think finally
I'm alone enough to wrap up these things
the 130 page book
the 120 page book
the thousands of words of stories
the swim upstream
the slapping of the space bar
this work takes so much space
lost gold bars of space
single bar stools of space
where you don't smile back at the woman
who saw you come in
you keep your eyes dreaming
vanishing away
into the pin point
where this progress is all that's left
this desperate watching
the spiritual vacuum
of non stimulation
and putting your back into a boulder
until you finally get it rolling down hill
usually when we're around 40.

I want a typewriter

My sunburn is hot
from my day of being on the river
with a bunch of pirates

Old men with long beards
and small tan dicks
young pot trimmer women
with thin panties and armpit hair
with their dates who had beer bellies
and friendly faces

Piles of weed were everywhere
like watermelon and pita chips
a Mexican family
with gang tats and toddlers
one of the Mexican gangster women
just climbed up on a rock
and layed out on somebody else's
beach towel
thug moves

The Yuba River
has to be one of the cleanest rivers
left in America
and I can't help but appreciate
the lawlessness of the foothills
how the libertarian West
hides in pockets like that
like tribes in the Amazon

My phone isn't interesting to me anymore
because the only person I want to look at
isn't really on there much anymore
she's taking a break
from social media and me
she'll be back though
in her time
I'm done worrying about it
I'm going to do what I want

So I blocked out my trip
to Mexico with my truck and my sons
with any luck we'll get face to face with whale
and I'll show them the good life
how it isn't really that hard
by spear fishing dinner
and getting us a casita with AC and a pool
and all I'll do is write and eat
and drink tequila and be generally
expatriated

This season where
there's nobody to torture by being myself
and nobody to love from afar on my phone
really calls for a typewriter
I'd like to clack out love poems
all over Baja
leave them in hidden places on good paper
send them in the mail
drop them in prayer boxes in churches
write some to Mary
write some to the sea
fire them out with the report
of a heavy old small caliber rifle.

Sell them
get paid in faith.