i'm supposed to be asleep right now.

my eyes were burning a couple hours ago when i told june i was going to sleep.

but my mind keeps me awake.

i just wrote a new song today... and i keep listening to the little snippets i have recorded to remind myself of how certain parts will go when i finally record it.


i'm sad and lonely but i want no one to be near me. i want to drink all the alcohol there is and wake up somewhere on the floor of your fond memories of me.

i want to be able to sing without my throat hurting all the time.

i will always be afraid.

to have friends because i have been such a bad one.
to be a lover because i have been such a bad one.

everyone knows where to find me, but i feel no one looks.

my mind wont shut off so i can rest tonight... or any other night.



i just want you to stay with me...


i guess there's a time for everything, and i have no problem telling people that. i don't know the time and place for my strange feelings of belonging somewhere else.

i'm sorry you feel the way you do, and i feel helpless most of the time.
i'm sorry you feel the way you do, and i feel helpless most of the time.

i'm sorry you feel the way you do, and i feel helpless all the time.

i'm writing you this note on a napkin as we sit across the table from each other in a strange restaurant.
under the table your feet shuffle around near mine, and sometimes, they touch.
i look up at you and you look down at your water glass while trying to hold back a smile.
fingers silently collect condensation from water glasses and conversation escapes us but it's not a problem.
i keep writing.
i imagine leaving and having you ask me what i was writing back there.
then i hear the sound of glass hitting table and cold on my hands.
all that i've written to you is streaking down the edge of the table and neither of us is smiling anymore.
speechless, you stand and walk out.
because you know me so well, because you know the napkin was for you.


halfway to the car you notice the stars are out and shining brighter than usual.
you turn back to where we were sitting just minutes before and see an old boarded up building where you swore you just walked out of.

there are no stars, there are no lights.
there are no stars, there are no lights.

10 years in my pocket

i woke up and got into my piece of shit car.

as i was driving down the freeway there was a gap in the traffic and i was left in the middle with a clear view of the fastrak lanes. in the distance, i saw a hearse.
a single hearse with no cars behind it.

i sped up to see if there was anyone in the back but i couldn't get a good look.

then it hit me.
it hit me hard.

it was 10 years ago and i was watching the hearse that carried my cousin to riverside national cemetery. i almost had to pull over.... but i kept driving and trying to not lose it completely. i drove next to that hearse for a good while as the music and sounds from the world outside faded away into a soft murmur and i was left alone to watch the last journey of this hearse.

it was just me and the hearse, the traffic never blocking my view the whole ride, traveling at the same speed. the only difference was that this time there was no column of policemen on motorcycles leading the way, or a trail of cars miles long, or city buses carrying the hundreds of people that could not drive themselves. there were no crowds of people lining the streets waving hands and flags as we drove by. there were no veterans from all over coming to pay respects to someone they never met in life. no news vans, no reporters. no photographers.

all of that was gone.

the only things were that hearse and a crying boy who never grew up.  

i stopped living life all those years ago in march. i stopped participating.
i found it very hard to care about people and their lives and i became an inconsolable wreck.
everything reminded me of him and it still does. i spend all my time preoccupied with death and dying. i drink until i can't remember what happened and then i do it again.
i have become nothing in those ten years. i just sit around like an asshole feeling sorry for myself.

i see him when i'm out in public places. i dream about us.
All i wanna do is forget.
i never want to let you go.



i got to the cemetery and spread out my blanket. i put up the flag as i always do. and i sat down to clear the grass clippings off of the stone. i was alone out there for a while, then i saw his mother getting out of a car that had pulled up. she sat down next to me and laid down the flowers that she had brought. then my sister showed up too. his mother then had to leave because the lady that brought her had more important things to do.

after his mother had left, a car full of guys showed up. they walked around and finally made their way to where we were sitting on the blanket. they carefully placed flowers at the head of the stone and tried to not bother us. so i spoke to the one who was closest to me and i found out that it was the friend with whom my cousin had lived during high school and some of his football buddies.

i asked them to share stories and they were more than happy to do so. i told them that i knew all of them without even seeing them because i remembered them from the stories my cousin would tell me. we laughed and traded stories while trying to hold in the reason we were all there.

one of his friends kept saying that he couldn't believe it had already been 10 years.

we were out there for hours, talking, when a man walked up to us and asked if we would like him to play the bagpipes for our veteran. we all said yes. i knew he was going to play amazing grace, i can't listen to amazing grace (as played on the bagpipes) without crying. so he walks back slowly playing the bagpipes...playing the marine corps hymn, some songs i don't recognize, and amazing grace. i watched through mist as he played and we all tried to stand so we could see him. then he turned around and walked slowly back to his car without giving us the time to thank him properly. somber faced, we all looked at each other and wished out loud that none of this had ever happened.

after a while everyone left to go do the things that people do in life.
one guy had to go celebrate his daughters birthday.
...March 23.
my mothers birthday.
the exact day i got back from iraq.
the day i stopped living too.

i don't know how to explain it and i don't try. all i can do is hold in tears and pretend everything is fine until the next time i go back to the cemetery.

i sat there for a while by myself after everyone had left. touching the cool stone and wiping tears from my face. remembering.

i played the music box that i always play and gathered my stuff to leave.
i sat in my car as i do when i go by myself and i played amazing grace on the car radio.

i looked toward the green field marked with a big American flag and remembered a time when we were kids with all our dreams in our hands like marbles we had just won on the playground that day.

then i left.

i called a friend of mine to see if she would eat lunch with me and hang out for a bit afterwards.

driving down the 15 in the heat of the day with no air conditioning i thought that i would trade my life for his. as if all this nothing i had become could be used to get him back, i would do it.

i had lunch with my friend and then we watched some episodes of the office. but time caught up to me and i had to make the long drive home.

as i left the house and got into my car i sat there for a while and let the sadness envelop me.
i sent her a text from my car...

Now that i'm out of reach i cant tell you i had a really shitty day and i didn't wanna be alone. 
so thank you for making space in your busy schedule to hang out.
i appreciate it and you for being my friend.

    i drove home feeling terrible.


10 years ago i had no idea you'd no longer be here to help me in life like you always did, and i fell apart.

i want nothing more than the impossible.

fourteen

     i had  green hair.
not only did i have green hair, but it was in these sloppy spikes that looked great when i left the house but always seemed to settle weird as the day progressed.

     the place was (and always will be) called the Irvine Meadows. It shared a parking lot with Wild Rivers, the water park.

     we arrived in an old chrysler that my girlfriend drove that i belive used to belong to her grandmother or someone who couldnt hear anymore because all the audio alerts were about thirty times louder than the needed to be.

     we took the tickets to the symphony on a whim because even though i was a turd, i still enjoyed classical music.

     It was Tchaikovsky night and the finale was going to be the 1812 overture complete with cannons and fireworks. i loved the 1812 overture... maybe because of tom and jerry, maybe because of the simpsons(episode "bart the daredevil" in season 2), or maybe because i was a nerd on the academic decathlon also.

     i had never been to the symphony before because i was brown and didnt have season tickets of course. when we walked in i was surprised that white people were not only not searched, but they were allowed to bring picnic baskets with wine and cheese -- and they did.

     i dont remember where we sat or if it was cloudy or clear outside, but i do remember an amazing cello player, and of course the overture. all of it. i remember sitting there in awe of the sound these people were making. i felt tingles down my back as the familiar melodies of the overture came and went like women that you never forget just by their scent.


i was a kid in the toy store after hours!

     i remember the cannons (this being before i could no longer stand loud noises in public) blasting their defense and fireworks shooting into the night. that beautiful night.

     i remember being so alive after it all ended that i took my love by the hand and we raced back to the car with those last minutes of the overture still fresh in my mind. i ran beside her through the masses of old people and laughed until i couldnt laugh anymore.

     i'd like to say that i won the race to the car but i'd be a liar.

     she beat me.


     ...and i dont really remember what happened after we got to the car or after, but i always remember Tchaikovsky night at the Irvine Meadows when i was in high school.

Fourteen years later i was studying for a test for college when i heard the old familiar melodies arise from my television (thats how i listen to classical music when i study now). i was instantly back in high school wearing my blue hoodie with the self-made thumb holes and pins all over it, riding in the passenger side of that old chrysler.

     in that instant i knew what i would be writing my "ode" to in Communications class, i knew i had to listen to that composition again, and again.

     i didn't have the time to download it before i left for school so i pulled it up on my phone and played it through my car stereo. as i drove i was once again alive with my old familiar friend that i hadn't seen in so long. i drove like homer simpson did in that episode i mentioned, i smiled in my car and when i got to school i did great on my test.

     ...later i thought.
     fourteen years ago i was listening to this live in the open air without a care in the world, holding hands with a girl i cared for, trying my hardest to not go to school. now i'm on the presidents honor roll trying my hardest to get into a medical program so i can get a career going here before i get too old for comfort. everything worries me. my health is terrible. i have few friends. and i hardly play music at all.

however...

That night it was 1812...and i was immortal.

First, by Ryan Van Meter

 I read this essay in class.



Ben and I are sitting side by side in the very back of his mother’s station wagon. We face glowing white headlights of cars following us, our sneakers pressed against the back hatch door. This is our joy—his and mine—to sit turned away from our moms and dads in this place that feels like a secret, as though they are not even in the car with us. They have just taken us out to dinner, and now we are driving home. Years from this evening, I won’t actually be sure that this boy sitting beside me is named Ben. But that doesn’t matter tonight. What I know for certain right now is that I love him, and I need to tell him this fact before we return to our separate houses, next door to each other. We are both five.
    Ben is the first brown-eyed boy I will fall for but will not be the last. His hair is also brown and always needs scraping off his forehead, which he does about every five minutes. All his jeans have dark squares stuck over the knees where he has worn through the denim. His shoelaces are perpetually undone, and he has a magic way of tying them with a quick, weird loop that I study and try myself, but can never match. His fingernails are ragged because he rips them off with his teeth and spits out the pieces when our moms aren’t watching. Somebody always has to fix his shirt collars.
    Our parents face the other direction, talking about something, and it is raining. My eyes trace the lines of water as they draw down the glass. Coiled beside my legs are the thick black and red cords of a pair of jumper cables. Ben’s T-ball bat is also back here, rolling around and clunking as the long car wends its way through town. Ben’s dad is driving, and my dad sits next to him, with our mothers in the back seat; I have recently observed that when mothers and fathers are in the car together, the dad always drives. My dad has also insisted on checking the score of the Cardinals game, so the radio is tuned to a staticky AM station, and the announcer’s rich voice buzzes out of the speakers up front.
    The week before this particular night, I asked my mother, “Why do people get married?” I don’t recall the impulse behind my curiosity, but I will forever remember every word of her answer—she stated it simply after only a moment or two of thinking—because it seemed that important: “Two people get married when they love each other.”
    I had that hunch. I am a kindergartener, but the summer just before this rainy night, I learned most of what I know about love from watching soap operas with my mother. She is a gym teacher and during her months off, she catches up on the shows she has watched since college. Every summer weekday, I couldn’t wait until they came on at two o’clock. My father didn’t think I should be watching them—boys should be outside, playing—but he was rarely home early enough to know the difference, and according to my mother, I was too young to really understand what was going on anyway.
    What I enjoyed most about soap opera was how exciting and beautiful life was. Every lady was pretty and had wonderful hair, and all the men had dark eyes and big teeth and faces as strong as bricks, and every week, there was a wedding or a manhunt or a birth. The people had grand fights where they threw vases at walls and slammed doors and chased each other in cars. There were villains locking up the wonderfully-haired heroines and suspending them in gold cages above enormous acid vats. And, of course, it was love that inspired every one of these stories and made life on the screen as thrilling as it was. That was what my mother would say from the sofa when I turned from my spot on the carpet in front of her and faced her, asking, “Why is he spying on that lady?”
    “Because he loves her.”
    In the car, Ben and I hold hands. There is something sticky on his fingers, probably the strawberry syrup from the ice cream sundaes we ate for dessert. We have never held hands before; I have simply reached for his in the dark and held him while he holds me. I want to see our hands on the rough floor, but they are only visible every block or so when the car passes beneath a streetlight, and then, for only a flash. Ben is my closest friend because he lives next door, we are the same age, and we both have little brothers who are babies. I wish he were in the same kindergarten class as me, but he goes to a different school—one where he has to wear a uniform all day and for which there is no school bus.
    “I love you,” I say. We are idling, waiting for a red light to be green; a shining car has stopped right behind us, so Ben’s face is pale and brilliant.
    “I love you too,” he says.
    The car becomes quiet as the voice of the baseball game shrinks smaller and smaller.
    “Will you marry me?” I ask him. His hand is still in mine; on the soap opera, you are supposed to have a ring, but I don’t have one.
    He begins to nod, and suddenly my mother feels very close. I look over my shoulder, my eyes peeking over the back of the last row of seats that we are leaning against. She has turned around, facing me. Permed hair, laugh lines not laughing.
“What did you just say?” she asks.
    “I asked Ben to marry me.”
    The car starts moving forward again, and none of the parents are talking loud enough for us to hear them back here. I brace myself against the raised carpeted hump of the wheel well as Ben’s father turns left onto the street before the turn onto our street. Sitting beside my mom is Ben’s mother, who keeps staring forward, but I notice that one of her ears keeps swiveling back here, a little more each time. I am still facing my mother, who is still facing me, and for one last second, we look at each other without anything wrong between us.
    “You shouldn’t have said that,” she says. “Boys don’t marry other boys. Only boys and girls get married to each other.”
    She can’t see our hands, but Ben pulls his away. I close my fingers into a loose fist and rub my palm to feel, and keep feeling, how strange his skin has made mine.
    “Okay?” she asks.
    “Yes,” I say, but by accident my throat whispers the words.
    She asks again. “Okay? Did you hear me?”
    “Yes!” this time nearly shouting, and I wish we were already home so I could jump out and run to my bedroom. To be back here in the dark, private tail of the car suddenly feels wrong, so Ben and I each scoot off to our separate sides. “Yes,” I say again, almost normally, turning away to face the rainy window. I feel her turn too as the radio baseball voice comes back up out of the quiet. The car starts to dip as we head down the hill of our street; our house is at the bottom. No one speaks for the rest of the ride. We all just sit and wait and watch our own views of the road—the parents see what is ahead of us while the only thing I can look at is what we have just left behind.

Signal Hill

a video i made from a time lapse test that didnt go right.

 but it ended up working after all.

(watch it in HD...do it.)

when you are suffering, everyone wants to watch.

"Some children died the other day
We fed machines and then we prayed
Puked up and down in morbid faith
You should have seen the ratings that day"