I'm Not There Yet

(Panorama from Nocturne, 2009)

Jeffrey said it was silly to believe Thomas was still alive. It had been four days out in Washington, so far and so deep that our compass serve as digging tools at most, and fail to even do the task well. Jeffrey was looking pretty good to eat, but I held on to the last of my will to survive with the both of us intact.
The passing crows seem to be waiting for one of us to fall to call the rest of their flock for a feast, but our bones still supported our weakened states. The spit in my mouth grew to an acid and thinned to drool from the side. I tried daydreaming, bikinis and surf, mounds of food, stupid with grease and excessive flavor. Jeffrey hated me, and would tell me this every time I gave him the look of hungry for fellow. I hated him because he hated me. Perhaps Thomas' body would've united us both in relief, but now it was too late, we had no hope.
There was a time when I could say I was a brave man; a sensible and reasonable person, but those times were tested, and the walls to my strength have been breached. Fallen to a dreary state just before zombie, I call my fellow, and tell him a story all so close in resemblance to our scenario.

John and Walter found the Greenberg river that runs for a thousand of miles from Washington to Southern California. Their recognition usually ends there, but what they endeared was every 1409 miles of that river with pain, and unbearable weight upon their shoulders. What was forgotten to history was that their horses and ox were eaten for their own fuel, and they had become savages as wild as coyote, feasting on raw flesh, and berries. With their clothes ripped and half nude, and their eyes sunk to their skulls, what kept them as outsiders to the beast was their journey. John and Walter, close to insanity, without a human outside their pack for six months carried out their passion of discovering the start and end of Greenberg. And perhaps today their fleet doesn't strike amazement but the cities that were settled on the Greenberg would not be, and those families and businesses would be nonexistent without their efforts.
I would like to think that John and Walter, without hope, had something that could be even beyond the shimmer of hope, they had their drive, their passion, and their strength to broaden their spirits and wills to survive and conquer. Today, I feel the spirit of such explorers in my attempt to survive, without hope, with just my hands and my feet, and my friend.
An eagle pierces the sky and catches a young crow midair, the sounds of struggle carry off beyond the treeline, and I can hear the sound of running water, and for a moment there I feel free. Free.

Untitled

(Untitled, Return to the Abandoned Island, 2009)

*sometimes it's the lack of words that speak more than if anything was spoken at all.

New State of Mind

(I Wish I Could Take Your Sadness Away, from Reminiscence, 2008-2009)

You're tired, and I'm restless. You're a tomato and I'm a tomato pronounced the other way. When thrown: we'll hit the wall, or we'll hit the floor, we'll roll, we'll splatter, and what we won't do is turn sun-dried. We were made to last long, but we won't because it is better to smash a new vessel with a full and unopened bottle than an empty one. We'll become the fade to black that romantics fancy over sideburns and bitter bastards. Call a road, home, I'll fit the stick with all I'll need in a tied bandana (red and white checkers). Smoke, drink, fight, and lose everything we made only to learn once we lost it all we have each other. Blow smoke in my face and you'll get slapped, pour beer on your pants and I'll get punched, break your heart and you'll break the bottle in half, and fit me with the rest.
We have made our terms, we're blind-sighted, and marching. To an endless step, and in the high noon. Pistol wiped, pussy wiped, crazy and alone, each other, and desperatos, eat the dirt, and I'll drink the worm. Crazed; the smell of your breath in my mouth; the quicksands of your eyes, and how is it you're suppose to survive again? To give up, my body to your science, my cause for your affect, and the rest we can forget until we meet again. We're on a fifth time going, and I'm all for sequels, Sidekick.

How To Say Goodbye

(Daniel Before the Ocean, 2004)

It's an end of something. Something stops. No longer able to change and what is sadder to fade away in memory or to fade before you? So many moments frozen, at a standstill, and I wait almost to expect to see you again. Perhaps I still don't believe, with all the evidence before me, I feel like I'm being fooled. I don't know how to address death, and I'll never put your face on it. To me, you're still alive, you're still living a life, and more than ever, you're living a life at its fullest. We'll receive postcards in the mail from all the locations you've been to, with excerpts from the stories you have created with strangers along your travels. Paris will never look so beautiful, Tokyo filled with shimmering bulbs of a city that never sleeps, you'll share it all, but for now, you're gone, away, on some adventure. Where to next, Daniel.

Rest with the most peace you can ever find, you'll always be a Shananaganger.

Shadows on Parade

(October 28th, First Sighting, from Nocturne, 2009)

There's that feeling when listening to a new song, a beautiful song, for the first time or whenever you listen to it afterwards; a feeling of intense emotion, unplaced, and now, without a face. Yes, this feeling was once you, but now, I don't know, it is just a feeling, and I am alone on it. I can imagine you up, I can create you from every love of my life. I'll scrap away and cut the fat right off the best of times, the best of yous.
Placed in wooden boxes, burned black, and smokey cigar smell, I left you here for too long. The ground beneath my feet hurts, and I jump to a moon-less sky only to never return to where I came from. I have forgotten, I have been misplaced. Hidden in the grass, sunken to the depths of an absent Hades, it isn't much warmer here, but there's no wind. The forest grows in my empty shoes, the animals piss on my clothes, and I grow fur from back to toes. Creature I am, craving the flesh of deer and the backs of coyotes. Oh, this tree is right for my body, so I'll take it apart and form one branch to another until I am lost in what I have done. What have I done?
Half-off the bed, half-awake, slipping over just before I fall back to dreamy beaches, glistened and nameless, to each I have called some sort of paradise. To each useless now as my dumb eyes see skies of dark and shitty, I say I really hate this city. Take me away, to cabins lost in forelock tails and fallen trees. Quiet be a name to call this place, dark-dark with shotgunth sky, let's just sleep here for a while, arms for whatever, dead and heavy, light and floating.
Before I change my mind, before I turn stubborn, and wonder off with thumb in suckle and boy blue. With a cowboy voice, I say here we go, rumble in the gut, I say it once more, and that's that. So are ya with me, or against me, terror. scare, or fear not, for we can have each other, for however long this song last.