used to be

I'm a cannibal
An unhealthy animal
Who yearns to die
On his own damn time
You're head's out of reach,
Baby, so is mine

I don't want to frighten you
But it's something that I'll do
It gets easier all the time
And I want to make you mine

I want to spend the night with you
You are many, I am few
You are like 2 thousand strong
Why can't we just get along?

I'm a bucket
You used to fill me with your rain
I gladly would be filled again
But that's understood
Since you drained away
I feel like I'm no good

9

Here I sit in my broken chair, my wings are broken and so is my hair.

song 953

Wish I knew how to startle you tonight
Your hair's a mess
Your eyes are glazed
And your lips are stained with wine
You attracted me because
Your heart is dark like mine

Redemption means get wrecked tonight
Because you're fed up with the times

So lonely was I, living all my talk
Searching down those avenues
I always had to walk
Processing my soul
I never felt so dim and stark
Beaten down those avenues
I always had to walk

Come back

So dark, so sad.

You can apply that

The ideal thing...is to listen. Because it's not a given that you do listen. Not all musicians do. To learn how to be open to what is actually taking place as you're supposed to be playing. Think of those great Eastern players who can breathe in through their nose and out through their mouth. You can apply that. You are listening to everyone else but playing at the same time. That's something to work towards. It's like any technique. You have to remind yourself constantly of the basic laws that are going to make it work.

-- Eric Clapton

fill this Internet

harsh simplicity

a metal hairbrush
a metronome
blood in a dumpster

insanity

cockroaches the size of large mice scale the chipped and filthy walls of a rented room in the city
now and then lighting aloft to hover in nauseating partial loops
on crude scissory wings

the room's occupant, naked but for dirty white socks with holes at the toes,
stands shivering and sexless erect on his bare gritty mattress
in the noonday sunlight streaming through the room's shadeless windowpane

to corral one of the bugs
with a red plastic cup
of the kind found at keg parties

the skin of the prisoner's palm thrills beneath the dungbeetle's dank crawly feel

he slips it live into his mouth
swallows

it is almost too much to bear

he feels a stirring
in the soft tissue
just beneath his sternum
and thinks of how he too
was once just a fetus

E7 riff

revised

You got way too many questions in your head
And yet you are not question-fed

You think too fast
You learn too slow
I'm talking about you
But also me, I know

You wear plain clothes
You got plain hair
And you expect me to care
I do, but let's be fair

I love you
But we're both just squares

So chain your heart to my bed
I'll carry your picture in my head

Maybe someday we'll be wed
And be together when we're dead

G riff

[this is an old old one. found in old notebook. silly shit]

I'm going out to where the ends of the earth meet
I hear they feed you there
And you can find a place to sleep for cheap

I've got my bag packed, I'm ready to go
My broken hands by the door, you can have them tomorrow
I won't be needing them where I'm going to go

Your pantry is empty.
I ate all your food.
It was not nourishing
It was not good

Please don't be sad
I'm only teasing
Nothing is hard
Everything's easy

I'd ask for one more game
of cat and mouse
One for the road
But these cats are old
And the mouse have all
left the house

I remember when you said it was cool to be righteous

allow

Fundamentally a slacker in the low cycles, that'll never change. Wax and wane, bi-polar ambition.

Need to adhere to a certain sense of whimsy. Get whimsical about past failures, past shortcomings. Really, it seems like that's all that's left sometimes.

The germ, the insistent impulse to do the thing will never leave. No matter what you do; slack off or get down to work. So might as well work. And not worry. Serve the trance.

When the thing starts to take on a life of its own, then and only then can you really run with it. A certain workmanlike discipline however can be thought of as a learnable attribute. Perspiration. Anyone can do it. A matter of choice, nothing more.

Take action. Be hard-headed.

Practice.

intercalafragilistic

Again. Try it again. Just once more. You can do it.

Snow, the willing snow. Dream the willing dream. Transparently. Dream hard, walk gently. Say gently. Do gently.

Frozen mind. My mind. My mind is frozen solid. But my heart plays the blues all night long. Strike, reverse, switch back.

Don't think. Bear down. Do right. Do what you should do. Do it right. Observe a few rules. Have some fucking discipline.

Everyday. You need to do it everyday. Whether you want to or not. You know you want to. Plus, you can do it at work.

Cry the willing dream. Walk gently in the snow. Go gently where you have to go.

Roethke. Dylan Thomas. Don't want to be too much like those guys. Except in meter if I could. Never mind that.

Winehead. Could be the name of a guy in some book. A book that I write. Like that's going to happen. Why can't it happen? It hasn't yet. But so haven't lots of things, and they can still. If I want it to and I want it, too.

No one cares, no one knows. Except me. OK, quite a few people care, but they don't know. A couple of people know. One or two and me. This is ridiculous.

Lottery winner, already near the apex. People getting blown up, getting wasted daily -- all over the world. Smarten up. Being an artist is over-rated. It's a curse. I've always fancied myself an all or nothing type of guy. But who knows if I really am. I'm clever like the moon. I'm here half the time. It's all about percentages. It's all about the horses.

The million yard gaze, the drunkard's eye. I've seen you, boy. Never let me drink bourbon; Scotch I can do. Drink rum and rage like a sailor said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw I hate drinking diaries. I'm cutting down. I'm cutting down bodies from the trees. Laying hands. Sending them back out, long past the fields. Aint it something

It's always something -- and it's always some bullshit. Truer words never were spoken to me.

No, we don't have Diet Sprite. This is bar, not a fuckin candy store.

Transmit the narrative. Going to be 35 in about a week. Drive the speed limit. You better stop fucking around. Except fucking around is what I do. OK, but write it. You can write some of it here. At least to get you started on your way. Slap yourself around a little. You can take it. Pick those feet up motherfucker.

Why can't I just blog like a normal baseline college-educated North American slacker with pretensions to this and that. I woke up, my head felt OK, I dithered my way thru morning exercises and a shower, I shoveled the driveway and let the dog run out back, it was snowing like a bastard, our plumber was coming to thwart a toilet that no amount of plunging would help, I drove to work, I put down an enormous deuce that I'd been saving (see: toilet, plumber) in one of the far remote bathrooms because when it's a bad one you don't want to potentially get busted inflicting that on the guy who sits in the cube next to you or any of your bosses, I ate a Lean Cuisine [Chicken Mediterranean] for lunch and an apple and a minor fuckload of Hot and Spicy Cheezits, I should be cutting down on me drinking but it's Friday and I'm probably going to get lit tonight because chief among my favorite pastimes is getting lit and zoning out listening to me old iPod. Next week however I'll be back to my new thing which is no drinky Sun - Thurs or Mon - Wed or what have you, when you go for about 4 days in a row dry you start to get terribly lucid and anxious to write, by you of course I mean I, and since lucid and writing and not unhealthy is what I want to be I should probably start. Normal blogging, I say. That's what the fucking people want don't you know. No they fucking don't. Hey at least I aint

I'll say it again. This is ridiculous. I don't believe in Beatles. I just believe in me.

So, this is what this file is for. What an Internet, what a world, what a world. You can call me Mike. Mike R. Okozzum.

Good thing you don't have to be funny. Or I'd be livin in a box. Under a tarp.

I wish I was a German Shepherd