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.

july 6, 2007

six simple days of serenity, and in a flash

perfect visions of days that could lay ahead

of more elevator joy rides than either of us could stand/enjoy

hot nights in busy cities, tossing and turning

(forgetting the heat and the sounds in the streets).



but who needs electric, LED-Lighted, luminary, numinous

visions psychadelic in their beautifully innocent splendour?

progressive paradigms shifting like the pavement in front of the hotel

after hours of sweating, spinning, butterflywingswhirlingwildly inside



new feelings in an old body dismissed/disused

now, after these six simply serendipidous days

i am left hungry without any desire to eat



the butterflies slowly fading away



their flashing light wings crumbling into week-old,

forgotten confetti.

but now i wish to see and share some light- i believe the end, my love, is fin'ly nigh.

you led, then left, me down a darkened path
by which i'm finding difficulty coming back.
you were always the better writer,
and certainly between us more the fighter-
and the more blind i was to the ways of your wrath
your grasp on me only grew tighter.

i defended you defiantly
cared for you maniacally
yet in the end, you did your best
to ruin a chance I had at happiness.

you sucked me in with pitiful pedantic pleas for pardon
every time you fucked up -
so now that rusted hinge has hardened so
that I must simply leave this CellarDoor shut.

i've tired of the mindgames, helping you up
because you don't want to tie your shoes.
and don't you think, too, now, that it's high time
i've taken up a different muse?

Could it ever have occurred to you
that perhaps i'm done with seeing blue?
that i'm looking forward to another hue, void of you,
after all the bullshit that you've spewed?
What was i thinking? Feeling responsible for your worry
for your pain, the detriment i caused you, the guilt you never paused to hurry?
Now it's so plain to me-
your thoroughly ruminated ruse
to give me the sweetest gift: a key-
whose power over me you'd just abuse.
Well, your crooked arrow's aim was true,
you locked me down in Hell with you.
I'm ashamed it's taken me so long to see
that you don't WANT to be set free-
you would never come back up with me,
and your cherished memory is but an apostrophe
of something and someone i truly hope i used to be.

i think i can say now, safely, that enough is enough-
and before you can spill anymore,
i've got to try to start cleaning up
all the blood that you've left on my floor.

the soothsaying summer slights the slack

On again, off again, jiggedy-jig-
Apart, then together to slaughter the pig.
The thrill of the kill is the sun's own these days
And has singed what to nothing, I wonder,
Since we've wandered opposite ways?
I can't say I've ever beheld you in summer's light-
My snowflakeladyvertex of twinklingstarryfrostbite

You and I will never be.
Even when I offered myself willingly
You said a Wolf you thought better,
Thus this Keeper's tether was frayed and severed.
And, you know, when e'er you flit away from me
I am set free from Satan's key.
Or perhaps I've learned, since we last adjourned,
That Tragedy does not need its key
For its floodGates can open Endlessly
Through the tiniest wound that can be found in me
Whenever it sees fit rather easily.

I do hope to find that that Cavalier will be for me
That fork who'll not maroon me to mere foam upon the sea-
That someday I'll sing on legs that stand
And not just of that old mutation of my hand,
That rope that once tied me to you.
I swear, someday I'll bid you adieu.

Someday one another's Spades' jack
Won't shovel out the heart of the other's jill.
Someday if the wolf-in-your-mind climbs onto your back
You won't want my oilblood to spill.

But what do I know?
Perhaps I shan't remember
That I'm only kicking up some reaper's dust
That will cloud our vision come September.
So continues the countdown,
Here's the two of the three,

Before the next swirling fall sinks its teeth into me.

ducklings.

I'd convinced myself I'd never want to show this wretched world to one more soul who'd have to hang his head so low to know such simple joys and tragic pains one must see to believe... Yet the Love in it is what makes up the core of me-

In my young-old age I've tired of these petty wars I wage, and I've learned from the mistakes I've been much too wise to make. Wouldn't I rather be a thing I always wished I'd seen? Devote my life to building that which was always denied to me? Breed some brooding ducklings? Teach them how to fly away and love freely?

In time I want a backyard barbecue where everyone I now know has paid their dues, and my husband's singing with our kids while I play catch-up with my friends. What are the means to that end?

I think at the finish line I'd prefer an empty nest than finish my life knowing it was full of emptiness...











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