(There's) Always Room for Superlatives

“All of the empty wants to hold you. It feels better in your blush.” 

The walls have eyes, and people can be brilliantly anthropomorphic.

I’m still out of breath from how beautiful this poem is. 

Horsehead

When I rode off into the sunset
there was no blackout
or camera behind me.
I did not recede into the distance.
I was still very much present
with what I had left behind.
My horse was thirsty
from how far I ran him.
And your God as my witness
I ran him
until I rode into town here and realized
I am not the end of a movie.
I am done playing sunsets for lonely.
My best days are the days I see clearly
so I had hoped
to come clean here perfectly
for you and the whole saloon
but there is no polish on the table tonight.
Expect rough spots then
when I show you my cards.
These hands we were dealt
may splinter.
The spades could get under your skin.
I was livin’ with’m under my skin.
They were diggin’ up into my film strip.
I was ridin’ with’m stuck in my heart.
It is work to ride head up and holy here.
It is painters with slack in their brush,
painters all jacked up
on stampede dust
just tryin’ to get it right.
I’ve been trying to get it right.
I’ve been learning here how to grow larger
than the monsters alive in my dreams
swinging a crow bar
out of my whistle
and grand pianos out of my rust.
I shot typewriter keys out of cannons I keep
aimed at the bandits alive in my trust.
There were bandits alive in my trust
come to burn down the verbs
left alone in my blood
barkin’ like dogs in a combine.
My horse head sweat
like a war on a land mine
jawbone chomp at the bit
like a bear trap telegraph.
I know I look
like a bleeding dot
by now from where you stand
where there is mad dash
and such wild west
and it is raining down locomotives on a horse
who might not have a name
but who carries a trough in his chest
empty as it may be today
from feeding bandits disguised as the Pony Express
comin’ up spades and splinters,
my workhorse spittin’ out hammers and ink.
There is a colony of bad fathers
who built this place
still alive in the way I was led to think
like a snake
who can shed his own crucifixion
or a midnight rider
who leaves his beast
under whip of the daylight sky.
It’s why I looked like gallop cursive
when you held me under the horizon line
to magnify
every single silver screen I stole
riding high on my filthy electric whale
like a bullet through a junkyard ghost.
Ya know, I don’t care to be good, Sheriff.
I care to be whole.
So read what it says in my buckles boy
Take your sunset out of my rise.
I will not send you sailing if you came here to drive
and I know you came here to drive.
That’s why it reads won’t give up on your saddle
like I wrote don’t give up on my life
like I’ve been
typing my name
on a horse I drove
through the desert as sure as a river he ran
and I swear on my shadow
he wouldn’t turn back
no matter how much slack I typed into his neck.
Not everyone wants to go home
to get the sunset painted back into their bones
to have the law with all that slack in its love
pretending to save me
you don’t need to save me
I already did that myself
when your god as my witness
never turned up
there was a typewriter
buried alive in that horse
I rode to get out of the flood.

Incredible #streetart in #London

explore-blog:

Laconic history of the world in a typographic map of the world based on the most common word in the Wikipedia page about the respective country’s history – a literal take on cartography as power and propaganda. 

Genius.

The common year is two-thousand twelve, though it’s less commonly known as 5773 according to an ancient agricultural lunisolar mapping of the universe still used by some. 

This year, the common year, showed no sign that I was - am - Jewish. 

I used not a single candle in celebration. I built no sukkah. Dipped no apple in symbolic rivers of honey. Searched out no chametz. Spent no oil in remembrance, no day in fast, let alone in a Synagogue. 

It was not with intention, but rather indifference. My life has been blessedly filled with occupation. I sincerely love my work and my life outside of it. I eat well, love incredibly and have a freaking adorable kitten. With the many goods, there is of course a balance. All that time allots for limited moments of reflection.

But the other day, oddly enough on the quasi-religious holiday of Christmas, I had time. And I felt it. I felt a loss.

There’s been pangs passing by each holiday where I see my connection to a big picture idea of culture slipping away. For the past year I’ve watched, acknowledging the loss, noting it passing by. 

That’s when it struck me.

Most believe you’re born a this or a that, but a year of distance between me and my past makes me focus on the more experiential fraction of the equation. A religion - even if just focused upon as a culture as I will - is a practice. 

I don’t call myself a musician or a cook. Quite similarly to the dusty guitar in my apartment or the unused pans in my kitchen, its only through practice that I obtain that accompanying sense of identity that these tools can offer me. 

I have not practiced being Jewish, thus I do not feel it. 

The profound moment in my end-of-year calm, the one that has me writing again, is that I care to keep the skill. Not because I have to, not because I fear a god’s or parent’s wrath, but because I wish it. 

And there’s something profoundly liberating about identity reclaimed.  

The beautiful #Christmas present from my wonderful woman. Note the words throughout. #jellyfish #art #quote