A Relic From 1977

Rifling through boxes full of the remains of my youth and I found this, written when I was 14. Bear in mind I was listening to a lot of folk music at the time.

I'm not going to listen to your lies anymore

I'm not going to let you turn me inside and out

It's the end of the road

 The door is closed

The punch has been thrown

You've scored a knockout

It may seem odd, it may be contrary

To what you were hoping to find

But I've torn down my defenses

 I'm open to attack

The victory is yours for the taking

It's the naked leading the blind

I'm not going to listen to your lies anymore

I'm not going to allow you to tie me up in knots

It's a new day dawning 

And I see the light

Of the sun or an oncoming car

Either or it looks to be a million megawatts

It may seem cruel, it may be heartless

Then again, maybe it's par for your course

With a heart as cold as yours

Dying for attention 

But lacking in substance

One only has to question the source

I did not write any notes as to what motivated me to write this at that time and my memory is dodgy. I think it was written about either A. Crice or some other teenage crush.

Man, I peaked at a very early age.

The Land Of Abandoned Hopes & Dreams

It's out there somewhere, the repository of billions upon billions of hopes and dreams.

Some of those hopes were for reasonable goals that were quite achievable - such as finishing up a degree with only one semester of college left, or completing a novel and only needing a chapter or two to finish.

Only to fall short of the necessary drive or ambition or self-discipline required.

Some of those dreams were not flights of fancy or wild, impossibly improbable aspirations - such as the vision of a new, larger home for a growing family or a new car to replace a beat-up old clunker.

Only to have the marriage fall apart or the loss of a job eliminating the funds necessary for the new endeavor.

Those are the kind of things that happen every single day.

And have been happening every single day since the dawn of time.

There Are A Lot Of Crazy People About

There are people alive today who think we live in the worst possible times.

Those people are ignorant.

I do not mean "ignorant" in an insulting manner, I mean ignorant in a they-just-don't-know manner.

You know what was common a thousand years ago? 

The world was ruled by titled aristocrats, from the heavily walled castles of Europe to the thatched huts of Africa. These aristocrats may have been referred to by different titles, but they were aristocrats nonetheless.

And you know what, in essence, an aristocrat was? 

They were people who ruled by force. That's it, that's the beginning and the end of the definition of aristocrat. They had the might, so they had the right. Cross them and die.

Basically, a thousand years ago, everyone who wasn't an aristocrat...was a slave.

It didn't matter if you were black, white, brown, yellow or red...a thousand years ago, if you were not an aristocrat, you were a slave.

Think about that. On every single continent on this planet, in every single country/kingdom, the vast majority of the populace were enslaved.

There are people alive today who believe we are all slaves in one way or another - slaves to the grindstone, slaves to the wage, slaves to the ruling class, etc., but that is just bullshit hyperbole used by people to exaggerate ones discontent with the current state of one's life. 

A thousand years ago, it was real slavery, as in the King, or Duke, or Chief, etc., gets to decide every single day whether or not you get to live in a certain area, or work a certain job, or even live to see another day.

That's abject slavery, and all but the ruling class in every land throughout the world, lived under those conditions.

Plus, no indoor plumbing.

Big Little City On The Prairie

The Monolith On Estes & Dartmouth

There is a vacant lot on the corner of Estes & Dartmouth in Lakewood that I drive by from time to time. This morning I noticed something a little out of the ordinary in the middle of the field.

It is a block of concrete in the middle of what looks to be the concrete foundation of a handicapped accessible yet-to-be-built building.

Or maybe it's a concrete pedestal for a soon to be erected large sculpture. 

A very large sculpture. 

There are no signs or plaques around or on the monolith. It's just sitting there in the field, all by itself.

I have to believe there is more coming, at least in the way of landscaping. Most people who go through the trouble of erecting a monolith usually go the extra mile with some nice landscaping. 

I am half-tempted to put the Alien Bob mannequin in the middle of it, and I am completely surprised that something of that nature hasn't been done already.

Seriously...I can't be the only one tempted.

Articulated Expectations

What do you say after you say "How are you?"
And the reply is "Never worse."

Having No Voice But Speaking Nonetheless

Flattened, like a salamanders tail

Fragile, like a CEO headed to jail

This time the act was too egregious to ignore

A conspicuous wariness 

That revels an untrustworthy nature

Once upon a time

You could have turned a blind eye

But that time has gone by the by

It's all too much 

For one to have to carry

It's all too much 

For you to feel sorry

Nevermind

Is the only word 

Worth saying

When you are asked 

What you were thinking

About the direction

The ship was headed

Before

It started 

sinking 

The Well-Dressed Man Standing In The Vacant Lot Looking Skyward

His suit was custom tailored
He was dressed to impress
Despite the fact there was no one present
To be impressed 
Tilting his head skyward
He strained to make out the major planets
Pretty sure he could see Mars
Thought the one to the left and down a little
Was Venus
Made him feel as if he was part of it all
To know that
The empty bottle in his right hand however
Made him feel as if he wasn't

The Worst 5 Seconds Of Somebody's Morning

Usually on Fridays I don't have to leave for work as early as I did this Friday. Usually I leave around 10:00. 

But this wasn't a usual Friday. 

See, due to circumstances that are really not worth the retelling I had to go to the warehouse this Friday, and I had to be there by 7:30am, as a 53' foot trailer full of the finest home furnishings available in Denver was due to arrive at 7:30am, and my presence was needed to assist with the unloading of said trailer.

So there I was driving east down the 6th avenue expressway at 7:00 in the morning. Traffic at that early hour was horrible, as it always is from 6:00am until just past 9:00am, Monday through Friday.

 And gamedays too, when the game has an early start. 

It was a herky-jerky, stop and go drive, as the 6th avenue expressway is interrupted by exits and onramps every half mile, which means the fastest one usually goes is 25 mph, and the average one goes is about 5 mph.

I was in the far left lane, which is regarded as the passing lane in Colorado, though during the morning commute it's generally recognized as the "my exit isn't for at least another two miles" lane.

Suddenly I heard the loud chirping of tires on asphalt made by a vehicle braking hard, and I turned my head toward the far right lane to see what could possibly cause someone to need to brake that hard in such bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Just as my head was pivoting toward the source of the chirping a mid-sized SUV in the far right lane (two lanes over from where I was), which was apparently the vehicle that had hit the brakes hard, was rear-ended by another very similar mid-sized SUV.

Mid-sized SUV B could not have been traveling at more than 10 mph as it hit mid-sized SUV A, but plastic seemed to fly everywhere as the two vehicles collided. I saw smoke immediately begin to spew forth from the engine compartment of SUV B as that vehicle came to a sudden halt, and as I turned my head back towards the direction I was driving I caught a glimpse of the shocked face of the driver of SUV A.

All of that happened in 5 seconds or less. 5 seconds. That's all it took to make two people's morning really crappy.

Made my morning seem bright and cheery by comparison, despite having to drive my beater truck due to the battery in my newer truck being dead, and especially despite having to drive to the warehouse so damn early in order to help unload a 53 foot trailer of some very heavy furniture.

Heck, it even almost made the work day that followed the unloading of the trailer more bearable, despite it not coming to an end until 9:30pm this evening.

Almost, but not quite.

We All Fall...Eventually...Gradually

A most irresistible force
    A force of incalculable patience
Invisible, though formidable
Rewarding
Yet punishing




                                       Time


The redeemer
   The unblinking judge
The leveler
The inescapable
Without cause or creation



                                        Time



You have only so much
   And no way to acquire more
The cruelest of fortunes
Is too much on your hands 
And no means to save it for later


                                  

Before The Skies Darken

Standing on the beach at sunset 
Looking at the reflection of the sun on the water
Looking down at his toes 
As they sank into the sand
Wondering what she meant 
When she said she didn't understand
Why he had to go before this thing 
Got completely out of hand
Couldn't she see he was never going to be
The man she thought he was
The man she said she knew he could become
Couldn't she see he was 
Always going to be exactly what he was 
Nothing was ever going to change that
No magic spell would ever lift that curse
It was a gift bequeathed him by his father
The father he had never known
His was a fate set in the bedrock beneath the waves
From the moment he was born until
The end of his days

A Pedestrian But Nonetheless Most Unusual Dream

A bus stop. A typical bus stop on a busy street with five people there waiting for a bus. Two people were standing and three people were sitting on the wood and concrete bench that was situated next to one end of the pole the bus stop sign was attached to.

I do not believe I had ever dreamed about a bus stop before. 

The memory of the dream isn't very clear and I did not write down any immediate notes when I awoke from the dream, which I usually do.

All I'm sure of is I was one of the people standing behind the bench waiting for the bus, and I was looking down the street as if the bus was approaching.

The other people at the bus stop with me had indistinct faces, almost as if they were department store mannequins with little or no real features.

The bus approached and seemed to be brightly lit inside, as if there were floodlights pointed up and out inside the bus.

And that's it, that's all I remember.

I hate riding the bus, so I wonder what sparked the dream?

The Unnecessary Lighthouse

What The Hell Do You Mean, "Strike One!"?

At some point in time, Probably a couple hundred years ago, somebody picked up a stick and said to a friend (or maybe a complete stranger), "Hey, if you throw a rock at me I bet I can hit it with this stick..."

Thus, baseball was born.

Stop It With The Starting

One of the more consistent things my mother ever said in response to us complaining that we never got anything we wanted, or that our friends had something or other and we wanted it too, or that we were hungry and that we wanted something to eat, was...

"Shut up and be grateful you have a roof over your head."

Direct quote. Probably learned it from her parents.

Leaving The Geography You Know For The Geography You Want

He'd saved up three thousand dollars in the last year
And that was after paying off every debt he'd had
That would be enough to get him out of here
Here, this place, this crowded charmless hellhole
          The place he would call home for the last time
His youth was wasted here, he told himself once again
      Determined now not to waste his adult years 
No more time to waste 
               Watching wasted friends wasting away
He was not the dreamer that so many accused him of being
He was not a schemer that even more accused him of being
                   He was a planner
                   An astute, meticulous, careful planner
He wasn't making a rash decision, not acting on impulse
Research had been done, preparations made
It had all been written out, and then what was written
               Was rehearsed
               Dry runs were made
               Walk throughs in slow motion
It was now, there would be no never
And so he loaded up the last of his luggage into the trunk
Climbed in behind the wheel and buckled up
                                                     Safety first
Driving through the neighborhood for the last time
Reinforcing his decision to leave
The overgrown yards littered with car parts
                         The homeless junkies pushing shopping carts
Trash blown up against falling down chain-link fences
Like Hippies trying to crash Woodstock in '69
        The usual collection of regulars 
               Smoking on the small patio outside the bar
Someone he knew waved at him and he instinctively honked
Last time he would do that he told himself
Soon he was on the interstate heading south 
He smiled to himself as he drove with the windows down
In two days he would be as far away from the hellhole
                                                           As he had ever been
Far away in miles and even further away in his head
He worked hard for this, he prepared hard for this
And soon he would be living the life he'd always wanted
At the Fernwood Institute for Creative Sandwich Wizardry

Just A Musing, A Thought, About What Heaven Might Be

Think about the first time you ever heard your favorite song.

Think about the first time you ever read your favorite book...or poem...or hell, your favorite paragraph or even sentence.

Think about the single best nights sleep you ever got. 

Think about the single best run you ever went on, or maybe think about the single best day you ever spent on the couch watching television...

Or think about the first time you ever tasted your favorite food...better yet think about the first time you had the best prepared dish of your favorite food...

Try to imagine reliving whatever of those single best moments/sensations/emotions/experiences over and over and over again...without having any memory of having lived them before.

Your first real thrill
Your first real love
Your first real excitement
Your first real comfort
Your first real confidence
Your first real belief
Your first real satisfaction

Over and over again...without ever feeling like you had done it before.

Maybe that's Heaven. 

Something I Wrote When I Was Young (And Much Too Serious)

All I ever wanted you to be was part of me

Part of me

All I ever wanted to be was part of you

Part of you

In time we became each others hated enemy

Hated enemy

Not so funny how things work out 

Things work out

No one is to blame though it's just how it goes

How it goes