The Voice When Everything Else is Quiet

I tried to fly. With body against my bike, pedals turning furiously, I put my head down and when I looked up, I had taken flight. The streets were silent, nearly deserted in the night and I made them mine. After a while I stopped noticing the wheels beneath me completely, and simply turned miles. I imagined the ghosts of the day wandering the sidewalks and parks, and tried to listen to the words they might say. Hobo’s and homeboys and ever color collar, they milled about mostly oblivious to one another. I fly through the lights, through ghostly visions of traffic jams and lovers holding hands, around the occasional tourist out searching for sights.

I turn into the circle at break-neck speeds, sure that my wheels are just about to betray me, and then I balance out, the curve back around is gentler somehow, but I keep two fingers on each brake with a bit of measured doubt. I catch the eyes of a late-nighters, perched on the center stairs. They all seem to look right through me, barely aware I’m there. Watching the movement rather than the object, the motion rather than the person.

I came around a corner and caught a couple making out. Well-past closing time it made a little sense, but what happened next, I still have trouble figuring out. When they saw me, riding quietly down the road, I caught their eyes for just a second or so. I wanted to say hello but before I could say a word, the man put his arm over her shoulder, and they shrunk further away from the curb. I just laughed at it at the time, but had trouble getting it of of my mind.

As I tossed the bike over my shoulder to retreat to my apartment since the night had gotten colder, I wondered what my new-found neighbors think of me. I thought about the night-owls, probably still perched there on the stairs, and the things that they must see. I thought about that couple shrinking away,and, if asked about me, what my friends would say. I make my way through the mess that in a matter of days had become my apartment.

On the couch, nearly passed out, I remember a thing one of my old friends from a few lives ago used to talk about. He explained that getting high was like becoming aware of this guy in your mind who’s up there controlling everything you do, and it’s his voice when everything else is quiet, it’s that guy you sometimes get caught talking to. Sitting alone in my apartment, stoned from exhaustion, I wonder if he’s right.

People argue over what separates human from animal, from the fact that humans can think in the abstract to that that they can consider God. Essentially the same things, but vastly different when you get down to the brass tax of what they really mean. Differences on that subjects aside, it seems to me, that it really could be, this little fellow in your mind. Our eternal narrator, a voice entirely internal that doesn’t doesn’t sound a thing like the occasional orator, or are we just not yet aware of theres. Could our pets be pondering philosophy behind I our backs, could we eventually outdone by the free-time of cats?

It seems doubtful that anything truly conscious of its freedom would really willingly put its fate in the hands of a teenage human. Yet, remembering that couple on the sidewalk, and the words I didn’t really need to hear them talk, I can’t help but think about the trouble it’s caused us. It seems outlandish to imagine, that passion might be better off without ration, as just a moment to moment indulgence of curiosities, and marking territories, the occasional humping of things. Somehow it sounds a little utopian to those who always work every weekend, and spend full dollars of their time on a 2 week return of a dime; before taxes.

In the end, though, I liked falling in love, even the part about falling out. I like walking around in the rain, to try and make sense of all the pain, even when I never do. For all the stress it sometimes causes I like going to work and helping people with their problems. I’ve even found ways to love school, by understanding that it’s not about something they print on a fancy page, but the way you make what you’ve learned into a more powerful tool, and no can ever take it away. These days I like trying out my wings when the opportunity arises, gives me time to consider the bigger things like the heroes inside of us, and why we try to hide it with silence.

(adj): Without the power of sensation and motion or feeling; insensible

She watched me, waiting for an answer, inching ever closer, but I had none. In fact, if I were honest, I just felt numb. I had for years, but it had been hard to pin down. I couldn’t begin to explain it to myself, so how did I expect it to sound? When I was young waiting was all I could do, wait to be eighteen, wait to be twenty one, ‘just wait for life to find you.’ Yet there I was, by numeric names an adult but still waiting on something to happen, still hoping for some change to come my way. Selfishly squandering my time on exclusively the ideas born from my own mind. I felt confused, but wasn’t aware of the conundrum, I felt lost, but couldn’t tell I had left my home. I felt like I was waiting on some answers of my own that might never come.

In the meantime I had to attempt to explain my cold nature with things, that it wasn’t a matter of falling or not, stalling or not, playing a game, or chasing a dream, it was only this numbness I still couldn’t define; a hollowness that could strike at any time. I was never good with apologies, and I hadn’t gotten any better it seemed, watching her try not to cry. She asked me why I hide, and I told her I didn’t know. She asked me why I kept up the walls, and I told her I wasn’t really sure. She asked me if I’d ever get better, and I told her sometimes I still really hope so.

When I’m woken by traffic in the morning, make my coffee and get rolling, I’m not so sure anymore. Ducking down alleys still wet from some unnoticed rain the night before the sun paints the bricks and the sky some strange shade of orange, blue, and gray I wonder what we need anyone else for anyway. If it in any way distracts you from witnessing this beauty painted all around us every day. These are my moments, and I should divvy them with due discretion; we don’t get as many as we’ll want, and I want to cherish every second.

All I’ve ever seen from the game was pain, even when we started calling it love, it would lift me up for a while and just leave me feeling numb. Which is why I didn’t feel a thing when my phone rang at 3am, I knew the bars were about to close and my place was close plus we both knew each others names. Why not? I thought, it’s all the same. We didn’t have to be together to enjoy a little surrender, but of course I was wrong.

She asked me what I was thinking, as cigarette smoke strung its way out my window and I sat watching. I tried to tell her but when I opened my mouth only silence came out. There was nothing on my mind, nothing but the average passing of time so I told her that, post-scripting that I was fine. She hugged me but I predictably felt little to nothing.

As I lay sleeping that night I dreamed about a dark-haired girl with bright blue eyes. We were dancing and I was wearing a smile. I couldn’t hear the music, I’m not even sure any was playing, but we rocked back and forth slowly in time to something. I had the strangest sensation, and it was gone upon waking, but I remember it felt something like sailing mixed with success, like learning to fly for the first time and not worrying I’d forget. She wasn’t there when I woke, because she knew it wasn’t what we were anymore. Playing into my master plan to wind up alone.

Someday I’ll regret these things, someday I’ll look back and wish I had hung onto the people who I had been lucky enough to have come my way, but it wasn’t today. Either I’m determined to drive myself into the ground, or there really is something I’m still looking for that I’ve not found, but what ever it is I’m simply not giving it up now. This emptiness I wake up with, this hollow feeling that I’ve somehow learned to live with, is what I’ve made of my life, and that may not be right, but I can only do as much as my will allows me and I’m willing to admit some things are still beyond me. If you start out numb, I’ve found, then the pain can sort of feel fun.

Dancing Down the Line

I watched her dancing out on the canal. Tiptoed and quiet she managed to keep the beat somehow. I didn’t want to disturb her delicate balance so I stood back too watch in awe and silence. Spin after spin she seemed locked to the ledge, blessed to never be drenched but equally disparaged by what the other side had to offer, she stepped each angle equally. Turned each ankle deliberately. As carelessly strung as a marionette her arms moved in great sweeps beside her body, fingers toward earth, then shaking to the sky. She never once lost the rhythm and I never saw her open an eye.

When the song was decidedly over, she slumped, suddenly sober, and came to join me. She said it was just a ploy to make time seem slower, when I tried to tell her how beautiful she had been. She explained that since she got older, things rarely moved her, and she was looking to get it back again. She said she didn’t care that all the dancing I did was in my mind, she told me she could see it in my eyes, and that was fine. Some people have to do it inside.

Carefully conducting myself I asked her how she knew it was dancing that I was doing. She laughed and asked if I knew exactly who I was fooling. Her feet grazed across the ground like there were wheels on her feet, and her shoes barely made a sound as she walked away gracefully on a carpet of concrete. I never saw her again, except through stories from friends, who happen to catch her somewhere out dancing on the line between here and there. Death’s jester, dancing against time, though some of their words weren’t quite as kind.

Sometimes when I catch my own eyes in the mirror, I wonder what she saw. If I lost it, if she made it up, if it was ever there at all. These days the music fades more quickly, and I seldom find reason to dance. The songs always end before I find the beat, and I’m never ready when they get fast. Yet it crosses my mind from time to time, how quickly time ticks when we don’t take the time to just exist, and enjoy the freedom to dance down the line slowly, even sometimes blind.

Depth of Your Shadow

On the first road home, I rolled on, straight through the night
down country roads, that only I know, and there ain’t no light
as this black snake winds, I lose track of time, and my place in it all
one more time, down these old yellow lines, finally put an end to it all
I swore I’d never be here again, as a favor for a long time friend

still circling the runway and now the fuel’s running low
still driving down this highway with nowhere left to go
I thought about the bouquet and the futures we throw
I saw the beauty in gray and the depth of your shadow

stopped at the traffic light, hypnotized, staring off into the night
I can taste the ocean, I can still see the motion, of you out dancing on the tide
hands on my shoulders, we got busy getting older, and liked to call it love
but when it was over, the truth that I owe her is, love’s not always enough
and I swore, I’ll never be there again, as a favor for a long time friend

I should’ve come back, I know that, this just wasn’t my home
but in my place in town, I still kept you around, in frames next to the phone
I thought one of us would call, work through it all, but we never found time
and after the wedding, I found someone steady, and got you off my mind
because I swore, I’d never be there again, as a favor for a long time friend

(Chorus)

As I was leaving, the thought occurred to me, and I couldn’t leave it alone
about the people we need, the ones that we leave, and the ones we call home
still dressed in black, I stopped to relax, at that place where we used to meet
I couldn’t help but wonder, as I listened to the thunder, what she’d think of me
all the darkness I found, while chasing her shadow around, had made a better man out of me
that a promise once made, to find my way out of the shade, was the only light I could see
because I swore I’d never be there again, as a favor for a long time friend.

(Chorus)

I tried to write this song more than a few times, and it always got too dark for me. I don’t like the idea of anyone in my life dying, but I felt like there was something to be said there. We live our lives so quickly, and inevitably, in the process we lose some of those who mean a lot to us. When we find out we lose someone for good, there’s all this lost luggage hanging around, with nowhere to go. Things you wanted to say, words you wanted to explain, or things you wanted to do. Even knowing that they would’ve been without me, I don’t know how I’d handle hearing she wouldn’t get to see those things we naively dreamed for ourselves. When I heard she was getting married to him, the guy I caught ducking around the garage, I wanted to get mad, or maybe even cry, but what I settled on was a smile. One thing we realized, or it might’ve just been me (one of those questions I never asked), and it was the toughest thing to learn was that love isn’t always enough. Sometimes you just have to admit it and give up. I don’t believe you can just un-love someone, but the conclusion I came to was that you learn to show your love in a different way; by making sure that love isn’t in vain, by going ahead and making the changes you promised to make anyway. Because somewhere along the line you realize that real love, was the truth she gave that you didn’t always like, the brilliant way she mapped your mind, and it doesn’t always have to last a long time, and when it’s over, you one day wake up one morning to find that you’ve lost another soldier in the battle for your life. I was simply happy to discover that she had found another to help her win that fight.

For EDL

Redesigning My Smile

Beneath flashes of heat lightning I watched her drift to sleep. I sat with myself for a while just staring at my feet; smoking cigarettes and drinking warm whiskey, both cheap. I wanted to wake her up, tell her to run for her life. I wanted to tell her that this bed was already empty long before she came along, and it didn’t need any friends. Instead I inched my way across the glass silence, and found my way outside, confident somehow that she wouldn’t mind. The fragile state of things had shattered a long time ago, though I couldn’t really tell you when, and ever since it seems like the devils best angels have all wanted to be my friends.
Watching headlights bleach the street every few minutes, I wondered about the nights I had witlessly wasted on survival. With all the adventures unfolding all around me, anything but living on the edge tasted a bit like wasted time. Twenty steps ago, though, wasted time was the furthest thing from my mind; but she lay sleeping, and I’m out on the porch, pacing circles in the night. I thought about how she got to me, and if she’d be the last. I thought about how every joke I said made her laugh, and the smile she inspired me to redesign. I wondered about falling for someone who fell for me, without really trying.
Somehow the train that is time had caught up to me, so I accordingly allowed the whiskey to find me a seat. It never occurred to me that we were truly turning pages when we penned these tales of trial runs and testing toes, even when the water wasn’t really warm, we jumped straight in. I let myself leaf through my life for a few minutes, tried to tie together the tangled roads that had ended up with her and I together, but they wound in ways I could no longer conceive; and the stranger that mapped them I barely ever see. I wondered what her book was like, how much her preface resembled present chapters but couldn’t claim any real conclusions on my own.
History’s hard small talk, and we’d aptly left it to back stories, anecdotes, and left the rest to introductions and deeper discussions. Still she spent the past few weeks multiplying her mention in my personal pages, and making reoccurring appearances on my day dream stages through shear smile alone. Maybe it was just another chase, and in the end we’d both find ourselves some better place, but for now I was happy to have a beautiful story to sign with my own name for a change. I felt like I stood open handed, eyes closed, with everything to lose, and still smiled.
Somewhere down the road, I know I’ll look back on the pages I clumsily penned and laugh for one reason or another and that serves to, at the very least, remind me to remain humble. Easing the door open, as quietly as I can, I find only more reasons to stay that way. I tried to take a picture in my mind, so that when things got hard again, when the shadows darken my days, and I feel like I’ll never win again, I could look back and remind myself of when I stood smiling, open handed with closed eyes. She’ll probably never know what she taught me that night, too much of a stranger to simply see the change in my eyes, we’ll surely simply keep up the chase in the morning. Go back to being friends that make each other horny, but I’d like to tell her sometime of the truth I found in her sleeping shape. The graceful way she made me realize that there’s more to life than just direction or objective.
Without exchanging dreams or fluids we’d found a reason to wake up with a smile. I hadn’t stumbled upon something so reasonably beautiful in a while. Maybe she’ll never need to learn the lessons I spurn, maybe she’ll never have to face the demons I struggled to embrace; maybe that could be my gift to her: a world where love isn’t just a word. If I called her mine, maybe I could make her life more beautiful than mine.

Dancing with the devil

Staring out quietly into the grass I tangled with demons who knew no fear of prayer. She watched me, completely still except for her hair, rebelliously dancing in the wind. Following her smile I felt inspired to shake these stones, to feel alive. I dreamed of dancing blind on the tops of great cliffs while the devil played music behind, listening to her recklessly flirt with me over a few beers and a bottle of cheap wine. I’d have told her so, but my words felt dumb and bland next to the things she must have once held in the palm of those hands. I smiled instead, and watched with measured wonder while she confidently convinced me I’d never need anybody the way I’d need her.
Telling stories of the the things we tore apart, we inch our way closer to each other blaming the rain that never came. When skin first finds skin we pretend not to notice, until there’s barely any space left between us and there’s no excuses left. She asked me what I hoped to find, when I let her eyes finally meet mine, as if it were the only question she had on her mind all night. I wanted to lie, for the first time, I wanted to lie. I wanted to tell her that all I wanted was someone to spend the night with, someone to help me shake the daily weights, who’d go back to her place and then might not call, but I couldn’t.
Seemingly content with my silence, she just brought back that smile and kissed the side of my face. We’re beautiful, things, I think, all of us out here on our own. All of us searching for our history while making it, and doing the same things for our home. We ride these roller-coasters through regrets, success and loss, the magic of finding one another gets so easily lost. Watching her brush her hair from her eyes I remember my favorite reasons for life. To bear witness to the uncanny stillness these moments can command on a night, to dispel demons with the inspiration from a beautiful girls smile and to find the time to dance to the devils fiddle, even just for a little a while.

Walls

I have to say I’m sorry, because I’m not sure what else to say. I never dreamed I’d become this oddly twisted mess, a maze of walls so tall, you could never find your way in. The worst of it, the real trick of it that you can’t see and I don’t really talk about, is that I built these walls so tall that now I may never find my way out.

Till The Water Runs Dry

Two young convicts sitting on the railroad tracks
they say, this train ain’t going nowhere, and there’s no going back
all my life’s been fightin, all my love’s been rage
never had a girl of my own or a friend my age
I’m so sick and tired of being tired and sick
paying off my preacher & giving my soul to the rich
I never hurt nobody, but here I sit
they took a good year of my life for a couple lousy hits
I ain’t got nobody but myself to blame
this ain’t no race, and it sure ain’t no game

Chorus:
I wanted to tell you, the one thing I learned
when you’re playing with fire, you’re bound to get burned
as for me, I’ll keep running, till I learn how to fly
yeah I’ll keep swimming, till the water runs dry

A lonely Juliet sitting by herself on the fence
her hair blows wild, and her eyes look tense
she says, “this deck I’ve been played, ain’t got no kings
and the Jokers here all say hateful things
If I had half a mind, I’d just hold my chips
tell that damn dealer I don’t need no more hits
cause I’ve gambled some of my best years away
and I ain’t go no one, but my self to blame

(Chorus)

The quiet pachyderm patiently waits his turn
as the last of several meetings, finally adjourn
he thinks, I ain’t done nothing, but try my best
but I’m still workin in this circus at the same old desk
I guess I must’ve got confused by all these one way streets
and I’ve surely come too far now to try and retreat
now the high wire’s on fire and all the clowns left town
but there’s money in the meter, and faith all around
I ran a damn fine race, but played another mans game
but I ain’t got no one but my self to blame

(Chorus)

What You Learned Here

I’ve always wondered if maybe I fell in love too young; worried that I might have stumbled onto too much to early. If I was really honest I’d admit that I still have trouble finding what I found with her since we said goodbye. I think I always knew we’d lose each other in the whirlwind of the real world, but I don’t think either of us really ever felt like letting go; until we had to. When I was younger I used to worry that we can only fall in love once, and that I’d never feel that way again. I wrote this because I used to worry she felt the same way, and if I could have found the right words, this is what I would’ve said when she found him. Hot off the presses, and already in most of the band’s ears, tell me what you think….

Remember the morning you woke up
tried so hard to crash face up, and tow the line
remember the time we nearly broke up
thank God someone finally spoke up, to read the signs
Remember when it was ours to explore
two and a half feet from the floor,
but we don’t dream like that anymore

It’s like writing eulogies
for your friends and apologies
won’t help you now, won’t you please sit down
if this is the end of innocence
and from here life is all business
then just turn this car around
because we’ve come much to far
through the silence and the dark, to not dance to the sound

Chorus:
someday we’ll drown in these faces
and never come up for air
we’ll get lost in these races
that never seem fair
too old to change places
still young enough to care
baby try to forget, what you learned here

funny the way it feels
like living your whole life on your heels
then slowly balancing out
it seems like the best moments you steal
but if it all rolls like a wheel
baby our chance is coming round
but if we happen to change direction
let the death defy description
but still sing the same songs aloud

(Chorus)

what would you change
what choice would you arrange
if the tables were yours to turn?
would you twist the fists of fate
play God for just a day, and laugh while the building burns
because there’s no time like the present
to get lost and later regret it, without really being concerned
though I know you’ll never forgive, the beautiful thing we wrecked
I hope you’ll forget what you learned

(Chorus)

My Fear of Heights

As the last bit of dust finally settled I watched headlights travel the nearly naked streets of a tired city. There was a numbness, the kind that can only come when all facets of self are at such a desperate impasse, and it was spreading its way across my worried mind. Haunted by too many apologies, driven into a corner by too much compromise, I’d been traveling too many tired roads these days myself.

The feeling came upon me by mistake, a momentary misstep in conclusions and I quickly found myself wading through a lifetime of refusals and retries. I felt alien in my own skin; lost somewhere between the face in the mirror and the voice within, I struggled to find where I fit in. My mind retraced my past efforts to redefine my name and the time I spent chasing the dreams that I’d never hear from again. Experience had taught me that those moments were what made me unique, like the tangled branches of some aging tree; yet I still felt left behind, waiting for the right chance or the right time.

There were too many terrific stories to tell to claim that it was wasted time; but truthfully we were wasted, most of the time. We developed an addiction to the moment, to movement, to constant motion, desired nothing less than the sincerest of emotions; but when we found ourselves, adrift in this huge ocean, someone passed along this notion that we might be lost. We started wondering if we should’ve crissed instead of crossed, maybe paid more attention to direction instead of just meandering off.

Then I saw them, dancing next to the water, as if nothing really mattered. The nearly naked children of summer out laughing at the way I lived my life. Chuckling at the demons I chased as if they had long ago banished theirs without a fight. In the last few minutes of daylight that remained they only chased each other. Dressed in whatever was left after a relentless summer day, they were the explorers of simpler things. I found myself daydreaming about what it might be like to sit waiting with them for the rain to come; sharing storm stories as if survival was something I was doing for fun.

Tonight we’re just trees blowing in the wind, building and breaking ourselves limb by limb, reaching towards some heavenly fate with our arms stretched thin. Every day waking up, silently wondering if we’ve gotten any closer, simultaneously worried about the prospect of getting older, and restlessly bearing the worst of the weight on our burdened shoulders, we keep climbing higher. Atop my roof, later that night, I considered myself for a while and the concerns inherent in such great heights.

This is where I chose to make my stand. This is how I chose to fight. Whether I win or lose, it’s the battles I choose, that make this thing I’m doing into a life. I’ve poured everything I’ve got into becoming something that I’m not because I haven’t forgot where I came from. I still see the stains of my parent’s blood and sweat on anything given to me, because without their success and without their regret, I simply would have never been me.

I’m envious, sometimes, of those whose days move like candle wax, melting into each other as they anonymously pass, but I believe that I was born with a task. Nothing divine, though I’ve questioned various Gods from time to time; more simply an urgency to see to it that my name isn’t wasted, that no chance goes without chase and no truth is left until it’s faced.

When you climb for such heights, to someday stand amongst your grandest dreams and not have to fight, you’re bound to fall far more than seems right, far further than what seems fair. But just to walk in the shadow of our dreams, to me it seems, even if it’s just a journey and I never really get there, hell, at least I was headed somewhere.