runes

The ditties I write are but eulogies
Of things I once loved now long gone
Engraved by hardened men's hands Upon cold jagged granite,
Runes strewn across perfect green manicured lawns.

Marigold daisies like your eyes pushed to sight
As corpses of dreams regenerate the soilIn their tectonic right.

I suppose this to be the thing
You always understood,
So as Orpheus I'll trek
Through fire- and ice-wood,
Valleys of shadow-sea-
To bring you back with me
Where the light beings frolic
In the wide-spectrum-band -
For mustn't Death and Tragedy
Walk always hand-in-hand?

I heard a story you might like,
It goes as such:

My fiddle player fell [to his death] into a well.
To retrieve him I sought to speak with Lucifer,
And thus traversed again the rings of hell -

The Goblins bade me turn away, laughed in my face
At my plight and did my fate foretell-
And Jareth, so cocky and keen once he was seen,
Gave me a task when pledged I my soul to sell;
He spake, "Travel the depths to the Hall of Mirrors,
And bring back only the perfect shard."
And I suppose his jealousy now arose,
Thusly towards me his heart grew quite hard.
Then, when he saw all I'd done to retrieve the glass,
He scoffed at my completed task, and asked,
"Haven't you figured out yet, dear,
What you've truly chosen to sell?
See the True Love that you seek in that mirror-piece."
And, of course, all I could see was myself.
"Little time," quoth he, "on that green earth have you now,
So if you'd like to hear the fiddle played,You'd better soon learn how."

He then gave me my heart's violin and bow,
And I returned to the light burdened to know
That never would I behold again
My handsome holy grail of men.

My lovely Mademoiselle de Mort,
You know I love you dearly,
But must you kill all mortal men I love
To help me see myself more clearly?

Dan.

Oh, it's no big deal, really. A familiar feeling. Easier, though. I mean, I didn't even meet you that long ago.

There is that brief moment that happens, cause it's fresh. Where your name pops into my head, or something comes up that we talked about. Something you were going to help me with, some plan we made half-heartedly. Then the, "oh, right. I guess that's not gonna happen now" moment of realization. The first day I cried a lot, but the following days where I normally would have been inconsolable I was pretty much fine. Still surprised, but fine. Maybe because you didn't burrow into my heart enough for me to care, or maybe because I've become more resilient. Not sure if either is all that comforting.

I was looking forward to it, to some relief from my furrowed brow and grief-stricken mindset, even if a temporary superficial one. I thought, maybe this would actually work. It seemed different. You seemed different. It's better this way, to not ever hear you make the promises the others only ever ended up breaking.

I think of you everyday still. The frequency wanes... It's all I can look forward to in light of what transpired; that a stranger will bring up a film we watched together, a comedian you showed me, the tiny town where you grew up- and I won't linger too long on the aftertaste of the mention of you. Just, you know, the real part. Your crooked smile, lazy eye just behind that swoop of hair. How your jeans fit over your hips, your bowed chuck taylors, your ridiculous cackle.

Now that someone else gets to enjoy those inanities, I guess I don't have to.

I love you. And when I say it, I mean it. It's not apologetic, or consolatory, or conditional.
When you said it to me I didn't know whether to cry relieved tears of joy or punch a wall. I'd almost rather smash my own hand then let you keep breaking my heart.
There are days when I'm okay with it all, and then there are days when I fall to pieces- and wish that you'd never kissed me, that you were just still the boy who'd look longingly in my direction for too long at parties. I can't remember the last time I ...
The hope was pleasant and peaceful, now there's just gray tumult. And, oh, it hurts and tires me so to be but sea-foam in your wake...

this i know

After years of affliction, hitherto a short lifetime of remorse and chagrin, my roots are planted, and not in sorrow, but in hope. My swaying sadness is just a sometimes sour affectation of my somber psyche, but it does not define me. When I've broken, I've been renewed. When my brain told me to not go on, I did it anyway. When it tried to persuade me to not love or let in again, I did. Over and over thus haven't I swelled and collapsed? And not in just one way, but many?

Of course there will be those cobwebbed corners. The stow-away compartments of dusty dreams it took so long to slough away from the forefront. Of course you'll never know the girl on stage. Of course I am a delicate woman. And of course you would be the person I would love to tell about the darknesses, the sweepy dreamy mists I hide from the daylight. The unnameable fears, the macabre romances with dead songs, eulogies of the incarnations I have been. Of course I would want you to know about the weaknesses- because I want you to know the closest to my present self as I can share.

I am not my words or songs- they are merely an apostrophe of something I maybe once had been, a veil engineered by a ghostly unseen monster of a previous swirling Fall.

I am not a wounded dove. I yearn to be loved, I long to belong. But the desperation you sense is not in the desire of the attainment, but in the wait. And that is inevitable, and nigh. Because I am whole, and giving, and open. And whoever is worthy of that scope of tenderness will meet me there.

Ides of March (lyrics and explanation)

I finally thought something might work out alright
but then it died during the Ides of March.
Birthed in November to brave the Winter,
only to fade before the Spring got its start- now

I have to bury one more thing in my backyard
once again this year during the Ides of March.

Just 'cause I'm used to getting double-clocked
doesn't mean I'm yet steady as a rock.
Termination doesn't always follow expiration...
Does my "Key to Tragedy" even belong to a lock?
'Cause now

I have to bury one more thing in my backyard
once again this year during the Ides of March.

It might sound like self-pity but I'm starting to worry
I might be immune to Love,
because despite how much of it I dose out I still doom
everything I touch.
And these short-lived tragic-love-affairs
are getting to be too much.
And I just don't know if I'll ever grow to a point
where I can say when I've had enough.

Is it necessary?
Must I really bury one more thing?





****************




I'm kind of banking on the fact that no one really reads my blog so it won't be a big deal if I put up the blatancy of these lyrics for the couple of people that would really care or appreciate it. Fingers cross'd.

Yes, as the website says, it is about my dog-child (Ulalume) dropping dead when I least expected it, but Fate and I have an interesting way of brushing up against one another... or, I guess, I'm just always watching for when it crosses me, and I take note.

In December 2008, I went through a major breakup with someone who was also in a band (A band with which one of whose songs begins: "Bury me in your backyard...")- at the time we both lived in L.A. After a few months of silence and separation, we found ourselves fraternizing at SXSW 2009 in Austin, TX, and by the end of that, we, at least, burned off some of the bitterness. At most, in my mind, we were on our way to possible reconnection or the happy medium of making peace. Upon our return home the Universe shifted our worlds dramatically and I lost him a second time, permanently. We both moved to separate areas of the country and never (really) spoke again.

My area was Austin. The Monday commencing SXSW 2010, Ula died. When I got home from my day job lunch-break, my "brother"/platonic-lover Joshua James, his band, and the guys in my Austin band were already smoothing over the dirt of her resting place in the backyard of my house.

Needless to say, I sort of lost it. I made some irrational decisions in the moment because I was distraught, namely. Gigging every day at the busiest time of the Austin musician's year, with all my friends and label and management in town, plus working my full-time shitty-day-job was stressful enough... losing Ula was a serious emotional blow for me, and would have been at any time of year... but why exactly a year after I had to bid farewell to my last human love?

Nuclear meltdown: Everything I touch turns to shit. I can't keep anything. I can never be close to anything. I'm doomed to be alone and destroy everything good that ever comes near me. Oh, yes, and all of it uncannily timed to remind me that I'm destined to never feel as though I belong to something.

So, I quit my job in an irresponsible way, drank until I turned blue, and wept on my knees in the freshly-turned-over earth of her burial site (with one bare hand in the ground and the other clasped around a handle of Jameson). Oh, yeah, and went through a lot of tissues and slammed a lot of doors. This went on for a while until I took my old buddy Memphis (my acoustic guitar) out there during the day on the 17th and wrote "Ides of March" in one sitting, wearing precious Ula's collar around my wrist.

I still miss those Sweethearts (terribly, in fact). However, all I can do at this point is say, "well, I learned something." I'm not any closer now to finding a home than I was at either of those times, but at least I now have a better idea of who I am and what I want. I just wish Ula were still around to benefit from a better me.

Bessie is my new canine companion and she keeps me busy and entertained. I of course would like to find a new human love- I'm very much trying to be open to it, with horrible results. I just can't help but wonder if I'm just self-prophesying my loneliness, or if I really do just "doom everything I touch."


*************


All I have is a picture in my mind how it would be
If we were together.
Let's pretend that you're far away
Let's say you write to me,
And you promise in your letter
That you'll come home
Home to my heart.
When you come home,
We'll never be apart.
If I keep dreaming of you
And believing it's true,
Soon you'll come home
Home to my heart...
If I believe...

- Anne-Marie's Theme from "All Dogs Go to Heaven"

like silver paved streets flooded with gutterwater

Heavy-hearted and empty-handed
Night after night you leave me stranded
Moon's light soaking the railroad ties
And I can't hide the starglare in my eyes
From someone that is made of it
My love's drowningdoomeddisaster's writ-
But how could a Gatekeeper like me help but sink
Into the very pools from which she'd vie to drink
Beryl oceans that don't seem to be misplaced
Just cause they're set in the bezels of your shadowed face
The ocular cavities of which so ethereally fit
A passion like mine- that mirrors it.