Disarm My Grenade (Cactus Heart)

If a new world was ever created, what would you miss about the old? Maybe tonight? How the moon sat hunched over, peering down on us as we walked hand & hand down the street, talking about our past and the animals we kept as pets and the names we gave them when first met them. I had a rabbit I called munchkin and you said that was silly. We knew right then and there that we would get busy with love and drama and waiting on phone calls and staring at pictures, the only place we still exist together.

Life is like a pop song, ‘yes,’ you said, ‘I hope.’ But I am not a rock star, ‘oh, I know.’

Let’s go back to the top and start all over. With your finger in your mouth you bit on your nail and spit it out. The words tangle up on my tongue, I just can’t get them out. You said it didn’t matter, you said you didn’t care. Let’s go back to the top and chop off our hair.

I study the way your body moves in the flashing lights and pulsates to the rhythm the DJ plays and how in this crowded club we are still all alone. You caught me staring and coldly narrowed your eyes and in response I grinned a wide, white grin. Is that enough to get me off the hook? I lifted my glass in the air and toasted you from 50 feet away. You turned your back and shook your ass.

If there is a time machine, I would go back one hour and tell you a different joke. One that might make you clap, instead of giving me a slap.

If there were a crystal ball, I would know better than to wear that gray sweater.

All of our fears are here with us right now. As I sit and type the keys revolt, snap back with a black harshness. Hey, did you know that the city rotates counterclockwise? And that’s not wise, but it’s just the way it is…

There is a place in the desert with an empty phone booth. We can go there and wait for a call and watch the stars masticate the heavens. She told me I was charming, but baby, you’re just trying to be disarming so you could place a bomb in my heart.

It’s okay if you don’t agree with the end because we can go back to the start and walk hand & hand and talk about the names of our pets. Let’s let our fears subside… pin them to a cactus and head back to the city. Let’s call this love a disaster, because it’s nothing but words that keeps us pinned to this world. Let’s destroy them all, throw our dictionaries in the gutter, forget the names that cause us so much pain.

Disarm my heart, pull the pin, throw the grenade…
My best lines are split on the highway between the wheels…
Goodnight moon, I write to you, you made the best of this mess.

Slow Club: “It Doesn’t Have To Be Beautiful”

My new favorite video…

Slow Club: “It Doesn’t Have To Be Beautiful”

The camera starts on a photo of a bleak European city and dips down to a close-up of two young twenty-something pop stars in everyday clothes from the north of England. Rebecca Taylor and Charles Watson of Slow Club. She starts to bang on the drum without looking at it as the camera’s distance increases, never keeping a perfectly centered shot. They sing in unison, complimenting each other like a young couple in love, but sharing lead singer duties like a couple that knows how to make a relationship work and is experienced at getting along.

During the first bridge Rebecca gets up and leaves to the other room, shutting off the lights along the way. The camera spins around to find Charles in a dressed-up white shirt and strapping on a different guitar. He mugs to the camera for a few lyrics. She comes back in a hot black number with a butterfly-like design bedazzled on her chest and a white tutu. The camera stays with her moving through the warehouse until we’re in the recording studio. She sits on the sound board and throws a Vegas Showgirl style headdress on. He puts on a  bow tie and they return to the larger room, singing, ‘It doesn’t always have to be beautiful, unless it’s beautiful!’

They’re now fancied-up and back at their instruments, singing their love-ravaged hearts out. My favorite part is the next bridge, where they’re in front of the dark partition moved into place by the crew and confetti floats down in front of them. After Rebecca sings “It’s awful, it’s gruesome, it’s something, it’s cruel. Forever you will ask God if this happened to you,” she spins and blows glitter into the camera. Her eyelashes are so long and lovely and her face so becoming and angelic it would take the heart of 15 curmudgeons not to be charmed by her.

Charles then shoves the walls away, giving my future wife time to grab a top hat for their exit. They charge towards the camera, down a narrow hallway, laughing and sharing a bottle of champagne, spilling it everywhere. She slides under a metal railing and suddenly they end up in the street, joining two dozen revelers swinging their arms up and down to the music. They make everybody shake their booties like life is nothing but one big dance-off — despite all the lost of love. And isn’t it?

As the song draws to a close, they break free from the group and follow the jib down the English street, a strange, neo-modern building on the left-hand side of the screen, and finish on another close-up, their faces full of mirth and innocence as the picture fades…

It’s hard not to love this band and especially this song and video. They’re young, precious, and full of pop-sensitivity. She is beautiful. The track is catchy. The vibe is love-damaged — any Pisces can relate to it. The director uses a jib to dip around the room like a dizzy hummingbird as they change outfits, locations, and instruments, only using two edits that I can spot. It features dreary British architecture, and at the end an impromptu party in the street. And did I mention she’s beautiful?

The words:
“She said the sleepers on tracks have woken up
It’s the end of the line I guess our luck is up
It was fun while it lasted cause nothing ever does
Love has lost its meaning and it was wasted on us

In the electrical storm you were running wild
You had a death wish you were a child
I came to bearing a lightning bolt
If you came back as the deep sea,
I would come back as the salt

It’s like your head is stuck in a tightening vise
Your ears are deaf to your friends’ advice
Because you know that your heart will never be full
It doesn’t always have to be beautiful
Unless it’s beautiful

Okay leave now leave now if you just can’t stay
Because there’s nothing worse than somebody pretending away
The years of their youth they will never get back
So I’ll go home and practice the traits you said I lacked

Like listening to the thunder of your heart
And how with every other beat we grew further apart
Love is always going to be hard to you both
Never thinking that you’ll ever love anyone else as much

But it’s ugly, it’s ugly now yeah I know
But you never give things enough time to grow
It’s like driving through a carnival
It doesn’t always have to be beautiful
Unless its beautiful

Baby I know it’s over
Tell me (please) wait ‘til you’re sober
Now we know it’s true
The waiting never quite felt like waiting
When the waiting was with you
Baby I know it’s over
Tell me (please) wait ‘til you’re sober
Now we know it’s true
The waiting never quite felt like waiting
When the waiting was with you

So let me tell you tell you a thing or two
About how to survive when there is a me and a you
It’s awful, it’s gruesome, it’s something, it’s cruel
Forever you will ask God if this happened to you

‘Cause I’m always thinking, thinking about where you are
Who you’re with and if your mind is far
From what we do when we’re alone
Love is too much for me and now the wall needs to grow

So when your head stuck in a tightening vise
Your ears are deaf to your friends’ advice
Because you know that your heart will never be full
It doesn’t always have to be beautiful
Unless its beautiful

Baby I know it’s over
Tell me (please) wait ‘til you’re sober
Now we know it’s true
The waiting never quite felt like waiting
When the waiting was with you
Baby I know it’s over
Tell me (please) wait ‘til you’re sober
Now we know it’s true
The waiting never quite felt like waiting
When the waiting was with you”

Notes From the Ant Empire: Studying Dinosaur Bones

In the future humans may lose their voice box and communicate strictly through text. Our mouths will be little chat screens. We’ll kiss by pointing our browsers at each other. The world is becoming smaller, they say, but I still feel like an ant climbing around an Escalade… the world being large and elegant, me being tiny and out of place — but able to lift ten times my weight.

This girl asked me if a lime was a baby lemon and I honestly couldn’t answer. I realized I didn’t know for sure, I didn’t think it was, but was I positive? No. And that made me feel pretty foolish. But foolishly I shrugged it off and continued trying to plant kisses on the nape of her neck like a gardener.

The sun is full, warming a beautiful clear day. The moon is full tonight, full of romantic isolation. I’m at the coffee shop watching the cars on Beverly fly by.  I don’t see drivers but hopes, dreams, and fears wrapped up in skulls, flesh, and tennis shoes. Or high heels in some cases. How can women drive in high heels? It seems more dangerous than drivers texting while eating French fries stoned. But who am I to say? I’ve never worn high heels.

If I were a film director I would wear a beret. If I were a French artist I would wear an ascot. If I were a thug I would wear my pants below my ass.  If I were dead I would wear a frown.

My friend likes to take pictures of the food he eats. He puts them on Facebook and people comment. They write things like, ‘Yum’.  Or, ‘save me some’. It’s rather strange, but who am I to say? I take pictures of strangers with dogs in sweaters, weeds slipping through cracks in the sidewalk, and elevators. There is a really great elevator in an office building on Wilshire by the museum. The elevator should be IN the museum.

It’s so easy to fall in love, yet so hard to get up afterwards.

A girl across from me smiles after catching my distracted gaze. Does she know I’m writing about this moment? This shared experience of ours, strangers colliding for just a second, then parting, like confetti in the bag before it’s let loose over the ticker tape parade. Does she know I study people from afar, like paleontologists pouring over dinosaur bones?

Now a woman is running down the street waving a sweater in the air and another woman is turning around with a surprised-and-then-thankful expression on her face. Simple acts of humanity warm my heart, like the girl with a colorful leaf in her hand and the man with the French bulldog on a leash. One could be a bitch and the other a total asshole, but in this Californian glow everybody is perfect.

My posture is poor; it’s from artofstarving. I need to learn how to sit up when I write. I’m just learning now how to stand up when I walk and not drag my knuckles and grunt.  My maturing is a slow process. I’m 34 and a long way from heaven.

Sparkly phones are a deal-breaker. Trench coats are creepy.

I give my playlists weird names: This Is How I Feel, Plaid Dress, Loving the Cringe. Things like that. I like Cowpunk and Brazilian Samba and Sad music.  I do depressing things like listen to Elliot Smith when it’s raining after reading Ezra Pound, but I’m the happiest person I know. It’s strange how that is.

I wish I could wear fedoras but I have a giant head and a long, skinny neck, so they make me look even odder. I’m building a fetish for fashion and accessories. I go shopping to relieve the boredom of mundane monotony. I have a gigantic closet to store away the banal ennui of my life.

If God his or herself gave you a key to all the churches in the world would you go?  If all the altars were made of candy would you take a piece home?

There is only so far you can travel before you realize you bring home everywhere you go.  I watched America’s Funniest Home Videos eating a burger in London. I was in Australia chasing a Kangaroo listening to Kid Cudi. Ipods, Smart Phones, and Kindles allow us to remove ourselves from any authentic experience. You didn’t have a good night without a picture on Facebook to prove it. There is no more Now. It’s now and preserve it for later. Now but somewhere else. My friend won’t go anywhere without reading Yelp first.  I dated a girl who took 50 pictures of herself a night, probably more. Everywhere we went it was like she was on a permanent photo shoot.

I can’t be sure but it must be funny hat day at the synagogue – no, that’s not a yarmulke joke – I’ve seen multiple men wearing clown wigs, or brightly colored ‘dreadlock’ headpieces. At first I thought it was just one isolated cut-up but now that the fifth person passed wearing something ridiculous on their dome I can safely conclude there is a theme going on.

It’s getting dark, the sun is on a flight to Australia. The moon is on the way to its velvet throne. Night or day, the world is beautiful and elegant, like a princess’s tiara. Like a Shakespearean sonnet.

I want to dance with you under this disco ball moon. Let’s get down to getting down! I want to write poetry in the air with my flashlight, highlight the heavens with my words. Let’s free our souls and watch them fly away like birds lighting for the skies.

Build a Lighthouse

I am not your tightrope walker. I can barely stand on land.
Don’t tell me anything. I want to know as little as possible.
I’ve already forgotten your name.

Your heart is disembodied, and dripping down the wall like snot.
“God, that’s disgusting,” she says, “why must you talk like that?”
I don’t know. I wish I did.

If the world were a piece of fruit, would you take a bite?
Would the pit be like a peach’s? Hard and big?
Would your life be like the seeds of a strawberry?
Numerous and edible?

Please don’t eat me alive.

I went to sea and saw the sun rise over the Caribbean.
I dipped my feet in the water and watched the fish eat.
I joined the navy and flew my country’s flag.
I stood on stage and sang till my heart hurt.

When the music stops the dancers fall down like
marionettes without handlers. Their lifeless bodies
clutter the dance floor like corpses in a graveyard.
I step over them and gingerly beeline for the bar.
I tell the bartender, “make this one a double.”
The lights stop sizzling and the air-conditioned air stagnates.
This dance makes no sense. I finish the drink and order another,
in spite of it all, waiting for my ship to come in.

“Have you built a lighthouse?” My inner voice asks…

I wrote a billet-doux on the back of a tourist brochure
and buried it in a potted fern. The concierge came over
and offered me a day pass to an amusement park.
I rolled my eyes until there they were nothing but egg whites.
“My life is a roller coaster,” I wheezed, “and I’m no fan of cotton candy.”
The man returned to his counter and glared unapologetically at me.
I dug up my promise of love and left the hotel, into the hot heat of the day.
Everybody was smiling and laughing and hopeful.
I tore up the letter and threw the pieces into the perfect day.
The shards of love falling around like confetti in a dandelion breeze.
My head felt heavier than an atom bomb.
And I had done it to myself.

Some words you speak prick me like a needle, little nurse…

The Periphery of Science

What if Hitler was just trying to be Charlie Chaplin with a thinner mustache? Or Charlie Chaplin snuck away to Europe and was actually Hitler?

The rain falls on the sidewalk and pools into little puddles of insects, cigarette butts, and hamburger wrappers — it makes me think the world might be washed away over night while I’m sleeping and dreaming of another life, one much softer and gentler. Have you seen the way light plays on Faberge eggs? The way the shell doesn’t reveal the insides, but you and I both know it’s only yolk there, makes me think that behind every Rembrandt is something a kindergartener painted.

I met a bathroom attendant tonight who knew the breed of the bird on my sweater. He was singing along to a Tina Turner song, one she sang while Ike was raising hell in the other room. I ate a mint and we talked about the music. He told me the bird was a thrush. His voice was soft like velvet.

Some words make me cringe…

We judge each other by our jobs, the clothes on our backs, the curl of our lips when we throw epithets at each other. Fuck you. Well, fuck you too! We hold hands and knives and bottles of booze. We hold each others hands like pinless grenades.

Is there an eternally cool side of the pillow? If you keep flipping it over forever, will you evade the heat permanently?

I love every one of my friends. I love you. I love the blond waitress at the local bar — although she never brings me the correct change. I love my enemies, especially because I don’t really have any… hate is not a word I deal with. It’s like receiving a 6 in blackjack: nothing good comes from it.

It’s 3:29 in the morning. Rain is plopping on the window pane. Like tiny, soft gunshots.  Do you like the taste of blood? How about green tea? Some people like the smell of gasoline, some people gag from it…

People say life is short, but it seems fucking long to me! However, 24 hours are not enough hours to the day. 10.5 gallons is not enough gas in my tank. Somebody threw a bottle at my windshield and cracked it the other day. Just my luck. My shitty Karma, I guess.

One life is not enough for all I want to do. Write 16 novels. Fall in love 32 times. Write 64 songs about how life is not long enough for all I want to do. I guess I have to live 8 lives to get all my living done.

I’d have to live on the periphery of science to fulfill my dream’s ambitions.

Love and music is nothing but mathematics.

Do you ever wonder what becomes of your fingernail shards once you clip them? How long until they disappear? I clipped mine and two shards landed three feet away, in almost the same location.

I wonder what the world record is for longest fingernail shard flight… there should be an international tournament to see which country’s citizens can clip their fingernails the furthest. I have a feeling India would win the gold. Fingernail cutting and spelling bees are their strengths.

Do you ever sit cross-legged so long that your legs fall asleep and you practically fall back down when you stand up? Or stand up too fast and get light-headed and almost pass out? It’s like meeting God and having nothing to say. I once fainted on a crowded train in Boston, came to with a crowd of strangers staring down at me. It was frightening and embarrassing but at least I got a seat after that.

I met a girl last night with lips like caviar. The band was playing loudly and passionately. We shouted into each others ears to be heard. I  got there early because I’m friends with the guitarist. The place was empty and I ate Fish N’ Chips. When I left it was so crowded I believe I consummated a few relationships on the way out.

“Love…” she told me with a shrug, “kinda makes me cringe.”
“I don’t know, I’m kinda craving the cringe,” I replied.

Is the moon your friend? Does it affect you at all?

Do you sing in the morning, my little thrush?

For a Rainy Day

Rain falls, cats and dogs, the gutter’s clogged, your mother calls.
She’s on the phone, but you’re all alone, listening to the dial tone.
You’re in a soft place, off in space, remembering her gorgeous face.
Minutes tick, the fuse is lit, burning down the wick, nothing sticks.

I’m sometimes torpid, sometimes vapid, my heart beats rapid
when you’re standing close, nibbling on my ear like a rabbit.

The water runs down the street, carrying with it oil and blood,
like our own little George Bush war, the curbs flushed with it!
I peer out the window, loving/despising everything I see.

Come with me, let’s take a trip through this town,
wear your oversized glasses, smile your lovely smile.
Everyone we meet thinks thoughts just like yours,
suffering exalted beauty, celebrating numinous horror.

I bleed sweat. Sweat blood.

Neil Gaiman gave a talk at UCLA. I didn’t attend.
Rhett Miller played at the troubadour. I didn’t go.

Call  me on my cell phone…
give me cancer.
Buy me a drink…
ruin my liver.
Love me…
cause me despair.
I want to be hostage
to your heart!

The rain continues to pour, I continue to gush like a flood.
This heart is itemized and you lost the receipt.
These are the best days of our lives and I want them to end.
They clamor at the castle wall, begging for a glimpse of your dress.
Lucky you!

I was born  frangible and fragile.
I was raised in a graveyard by wolves.
I was baptized in a jar of lemonade and lyrics.

Razorblades floating down the street now.
Homeless too.
The whole city is floating down the street.
Flushed out to sea.

Won’t you grab hold of me, and pull me down with you?
These sheets undulate with you and me underneath,
won’t you interlope in my world for a second, a minute,
a lifetime perhaps?

I promise to be good…

Blood on The Street

A homeless man was reading from a torn book, wedged between the bus stop and a brick building, he had a bushy white beard. I walked by and smiled and he smiled back, like we shared a secret.

I went to the bar last night and they let me stay till 3. The bouncer kicked out a guy who sported a Jewish afro, but I think that was incidental to the incident. The bartenders were beautiful and kind. I wanted to stay there forever, in the dimly lit room, nursing an Amstel Light.

Yes, I drink Amstel Light.

The moon is a heartless thing tonight, made of chalk and fantasy. I feel like dancing around a bonfire and freeing my inner pagan. I feel like shouting your name at the top of my lungs. I want to tear apart a steeple and turn the wood into a dance floor to boogie with the Lord.

There’s blood on the street.
There’s fire in the heat of the sun.
There’s a person I want you to meet,
he has a bushy white beard and calls you son.

When light won’t reach you, you have to learn to love the dark.
I drove on the grass and tried to put the pedal to the past.
When your home’s on fire, you have to jump in and swim with sharks.
I fled from the city and followed the heart of a girl so wise and pretty
she makes me look like something inhuman.

I’ve been thinking about Bob Marley today, for some reason, how he was a beautiful man but not really a good husband. He died indirectly from stubbed toe he suffered during a soccer game that turned into melanoma.  Such a simple end to such an elegant life. His last words to Ziggy were, “Money can’t buy life.” He was right.

His light was so bright it couldn’t last that long. He was 36. I’m almost 34. It makes me wonder what I’ve done with my life. Jesus was 33 when he died. Do I hold any light at all?

There’s fish in the pan and it’s hissing loudly. The Grammies are on in the other room and I can hear my neighbor watching them too. We live in little boxes and wave at each other from ten feet away. Sound travels through walls, melts into the atmosphere like a voice singing a lullaby to a sleeping child. Are we living in a dream?

Are we just tourists in our own world?

There’s blood on the street.
There’s fire in the heat of the sun.
There’s a person I want you to meet,
he has a bushy white beard and calls you son.

Laundry detergent mostly comes in concentrated form now. Soon there won’t be the former weaker traditional strength. Will the fine folks at Tide and Cheer still put 2x stronger on the bottle? Or will we just accept that laundry detergent is more powerful than it used to be and leave off the unnecessary qualifiers?

These are, sadly, things I think about.

I was watching a bunch of mindless television, trying to unwind before going back to work on Monday morning, watching Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab, and I noticed that they kept showing commercials for animal rescue, with shots of hurt and sad-looking animals and a sappy soundtrack that tugs at your heartstrings. Tragic canine countenances. Tenebrous feline faces. As if Celebrity Rehab isn’t depressing enough already.

If the world were a ball bearing it would be smoother than the smoothest man-made ball bearing. If a spoonful of the sun was brought to Earth it would scorch everything around it for one hundred square miles.

Here’s Bob…

Like a Caged Pet Without a Wheel To Run On

What is that I see?

A question at the start of my poetry,
a cold, dark and gloomy sea,
laid out flat and flawless in front of me
stretching to the end of my divinity.
I love this blue globe I roam
far from the beaches of my home
where I watched the waves spit and foam
listening to people bitch and moan.

Sweet Heart,
We can fall in love at a
Truck Stop.

Baby Doll,
We can break it off at the
Shopping Mall.

Sky dive, mountain climb. Set sail.
Let’s derail the train of thought you were caught
claim jumping the pot I came to watch
the hangman work.

Everybody is staying afterwards
for milk and cookies.
My best friends are ballers and bastards
and bookies.

My life is like a Spaghetti Western, but I can’t figure out
if I’m the lone sheriff or the scruffy-faced villain.
Or maybe I’m just the prostitute in some whiskey saloon.
A player piano wailing away ghost-like in the corner…

I can’t figure out if I’m a hipster, an intellectual, or a fool.
I have an ironic sense of irony and listen to thoughtful music.
My pop culture savvy is as sharp as they come. (Fist Pump!)
I’m a foodie. I blog. I play Frisbee on sunny days.

Have you ever laid awake,
feeling the thoughts in the back of your brain?
And keeping them there,
like a caged pet without a wheel to run on,
made you feel like God,
but it was only your own brain you were controlling?
Still, nobody can say you didn’t reach for Heaven!
This usually only happens the day after drinking,
in the throes of dehydrated torment,
my head throbbing like a rowboat in hell….
I bury my brain into the pillow and keep my thoughts
at the back of my skull, like a caged pet shitting in the sawdust.

She told me,
“You act about as natural as the color of mother’s hair.”
But I had never met her mother.
“If you’d only walked in my shoes,” I said,
not really knowing what it means.

You, baby. You, baby.
Choo. Choo.
You’re my greatest derailing.
You’re my greatest derailing.
Choo. Choo.

“Epic” Rains In L.A.

It’s been raining in Los Angeles for a couple of days and tonight it’s supposed to come down in “epic” and “biblical” and a few other “insert overblown adjective here” porportions…

You know what that means?

Fish are running the L.A. River!

Thanks to LAist for the picture, check out the story here.

Stay dry, Southern California.

RIP Jay Reatard: It Ain’t Gonna Save Me Either

RIP Jay Reatard…

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