everyday lives a life

Frameworks - Old Chokes

Withering in gardens left dry. I’m still soaked from their old chokes. Oh, what a mess I’ve made now. Oh, what a mess of things I’ve made. It’s such a shame; all that dirt couldn’t grow. I put the blame all on the shine and less the soil. We must wilt away if we wish to someday grow, but I’ve wilted and waned over and over. The soil is as far as I can go. That night I lied awake thinking over things. So fixed and quick to burst into blame at any loss of control, without sense of self. It shrouds and distills; it stings and it welts. Though all our plans were dense with trees, I discerned only leaves that were brittle and creased. As I just lied awake overthinking things, life still went on with or without.

Mahria - Lights

Woke up the garden, ate apples one more time. Had too many questions, saw too many lights. My other Father; carry me from brightness. I love too much, care without purpose. The day that shines down is my one alone. Nothing else to live for, I’m in my only home. And where were you? I don’t want you. A fissure crackles from the other side. Had too many questions, saw too many lights. Took my joy for my own, spent my time on life. Now the freedom I’m feeling comes from inside. Burning the garden I hear the fire. My body is warming, the sparks fly. And all those questions, and all those lights. They’re burning too.

I Hate Sally - Anna’s empty conscious for the blessed

I could not stop for death
So death grabbed onto me, picked me up by the throat
Dropped down, last time to see
Did you walk left or right
At the country forks crossroad of life?

Not me, not me
These can’t be my words
How could, how could
Heaven forget and hell be so sure
My old school yards passed
By the churches I’d prayed
By a prison wall sign
Who’ll come visit these graves?

Dust, wait cause everything is fine down here I swear I’ll fear and
Pay more, pay more
Yeah but the time has come, your sales were good you sold your soul and
Had more, had more
Hold on it isn’t fair you conned us all, you were not real
We rejoiced and rejoiced
You are the stupid ones with epitaphs that don’t mean anything at all

I’m not the anti-christ nor angel
Scorpion or saint
But I bet you can relate
You laughed a lot
You cried a lot
You had enough

Raise your cup
Safe from sins
Burn the cross, bury the dead
Raise your cup
Saved from sins, blessed heart
Blessed, blessed
Left for dead

Birds In Row - Lovers Have Their Say

We could have saved them one by one. All the lovers left all alone. We could have killed them one by one. For putting beauty into vain words. Something is missing, when no more candles could light the dark. When no more roses could add some colors. When everything around smells like someone, who disappeared into your mirror. We are the saviours of our dignity. We are the leftovers of crucified generations. Made out of murders and of abuses. Digging the gap no churches we are the sense of all no name rebellions. We are the quitter and the rejected. We are the betrayal to a two thousand year old question.

“Edward Benz, 27 Times”

I heard the old man’s voice break, stutter once then stop it. I heard
A sentence started confidently halted by the sudden absence of a word.
Stumbled and he sputtered trying to find it back, something once so simple gone now. When he finally gave up
told me, “Aw, it’s like hell getting old.”

When you came into the store, did you know you’d show me your scars?

I had a heavy heart, he carried a door, it’s shattered pane all wrapped in plastic and he asked if I could fix it, come by a little later help him put it back on hinges. “See, I’m far too old to lift it and it’s not for my house,
It’s my son’s.”

When you opened up the door, what is it you thought you’d find?

(Nobody flinch)

Later I came by and backed into the driveway. Got out to find him waiting there to lead me through the side yard to back behind the house where the door frame stood empty and helped me keep it steady while I hammered all the pins in then later on the porch we somehow got to talking, he told me of the house and how is son is schizophrenic so they purchased it for him, the medication working and they figured it would help him fit in–help him lead a normal life.

But the pills made him sleep too much. And he couldn’t keep a job as a Result so one day he just gave up on taking them.
And that day she had called you, he’d locked her outside of the house.

How quickly did you get there? And what were you thinking while walking up? What fears flashed in front of you, taunted you, walking to unlock the door?

I remember it, Ed. That story you told me came back clear tonight here while writing. And you should know the feeling never left me–the weight of my heart–when you showed me the scars on your arms, when I looked in your eyes and I heard what you said how you probably would’ve died were it not for to care for your daughter and wife. How he drove in the knife, still your son.

How you seemed to look through me to some old projector screen playing back the scene as you described it on a movie reel, as real as the minute when it happened, that memory moving behind me. That moment that changed you for good.

And he drove to the house and pulled into the driveway. Got out to find his wife waiting, frantic. She’d come by to check, found that pillbox was empty, went out to the pharmacy to fill up his prescription and came back to a locked door and could not get back in. She’d knocked and she’d knocked but he wasn’t responding.

You put the key into the lock and turned it. Felt the bolt slide away. Slowly open. Went into the hall, his son held a knife, standing off in the shadows, lunged forward and tackled him. Stabbing him over and over and breaking that window. He fled up the staircase. The ambulance came, stitched and filled him with blood while the cops took his son with his wires so tangled his father was a stranger.

And I sit in my apartment. 
I’m getting no answers. 
I’m finding no peace, no release from the anger. 
I leave it at arms length. 
I’m keeping my distance. 
From hotels and Jesus and blood on the carpet. 
I’m stomaching nothing. 
I’m reaching for no one. 
I’m leaving this city and I’m headed out to nowhere. 
I carry your image. 
Your grandfather’s coffin. 
And Ed, if you hear me, I think of you often.
That’s all I can offer. 
That’s all that I know how to give.

Dollores - Doors and dreams

Listener - Good News First (To Numb The Pain)

Another shooting on the southeast side. This a drive-by, mid-day,
Outside of the bus stop, by Fuller and Franklin. Or near there.
Not far from the park. About a block from where the other shooting was last month.
Or was it last week?

Shots were fired from an SUV heading northbound, Eastown,
The target a rival but they didn’t hit the target this time.
They hit a kid we think had nothing to do with it.

And I travel backwards through time and space and I disintegrate, become invisible.
I want to see it where I couldn’t when it happened.
I want to see it all first hand this time.
I want to know what it felt like.

So I float behind police lines, reconstruct the scene in fragments of memories.
I want to know what his mother looked like up close, I want to see her leaning over his body.
So I float there, transcend time. I want to capture it accurately.
I want to know what the color of the blood was spilling out from the tarp onto the concrete.
I want to write it all down so I can always remember.
If you could see it up close how could you ever forget how senseless death, how precious life.
I want to be there when the bullet hit.
And the crowd poured out as the shots drowned into siren sounds, out of there houses now
And over front yards, all the way up to the place where the police tape ran to mark the crime
Scene. Everybody trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening,
Of what was going on between the ambulance and all the cop cars.
Everybody gossiping, “Whose kid got hit? Where’d it hit him? And who could’ve fired it?”
Everybody wondering, “How did it happen again? And is he dead? These children. Our kids.”
Everybody wondering how far they were from where the victims lived.

And I visit them, their houses. Inside my dream I visit them.
My spirit, soaring high and high up over King Park, leaves the crime scene, travels further back
Till far before the shooting, through their windows, to their living rooms.
I see them younger this time, playing games and doing homework.
All these marks of youth soon transformed coldly into stone for fights and stupid feuds.
For ruins wrapped in gold. And cruelly I recall why I have come: To find a reason. But
There cannot be a reason, not for death, not like this. Not like this.

Three days later they made funeral plans. The family.
Three days later a mother had to bury her son.

Not far away the shooter holed up in a hotel near to the highway with a friend and the gun.
That same gun. He’d fled immediately but was identified by witnesses, his picture on TV.
Only 20 years old, they called him “Grandpa.” He was older than the others by a year,
Maybe two.

And he was safe for awhile until somebody saw him there and notified the authorities
Who surrounded the hotel, first arresting an accomplice while attempting to flee,
Then chasing him up the staircase to the floor where he’d stayed. He closed the door hard
Behind him, locked himself in the room.

They could’ve kicked in the door but knew the gun was still with him
One he’d already used and so they feared what he’d do.
I floated up through the window of a room to the West.
I hovered out to the hallway, tried to listen in.
I heard them trying to reason, get him to open the door.
His uncle begging and pleading, half-collapsed to the floor.
He preached of hope and forgiveness,
Said, “There is always a chance to rectify what you’ve taken, make your peace in the world.”
I thought to slip through the door, I could’ve entered the room,
I felt the burden of murder, it shook the earth to the core.
Felt like the world was collapsing. Then we heard him speak,
“Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?
Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?
Can I ever be forgiven cause I killed that kid?
It was an accident I swear it wasn’t meant for him!
And if I turn it on me, if I even it out, can I still get in or will they send me to hell?
Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?”
I left the hotel behind, don’t want to know how it ends.