Hooray for Hollywood

You tell me you need a friend.
The holidays are tough.

So I leave the comfort of home
and drive to out to see you.

It's Christmas night and
 I am still
putting myself together as well.

Helping you, just might help me.

I pick you up
and take you to the drugstore across the street.
It's open.

I want you to see people,
I want you to see life.

This place is as good as any.

I never had all the answers
but I can share
what I've learned.

All is Brahman.

The sadness and joy.
The loneliness and love.
The grace and the longing.

I want you to see the world differently.
I want you to see yourself in the eyes of strangers.

Connect with this world you feel so disconnected from.

If you can see the light in this place, in these people,
then there is hope for you,
hope for  me-
hope for this world.

Each one of these strangers is an opportunity.
Each an opportunity to be brave.

Be brave.

We leave, there is nothing more to teach you here.

So I take you to a place
where dreams fight to stay alive, but mostly die.
I take you to the streets of  Hollywood.

The tourist
The street people
The lights

All is Brahman.

We walk in the cold,
even on Christmas the streets are full of people.
Each one invested in the illusion.
Believing in the separation between one another.

They want the lights
They want to be close to something bigger than themselves
They want their names written on the side walks

They want to feel something is happening.

And it is.

Something is happening here,
and everywhere if you know how to see.

detach from the illusion-
let it go.
forgive
the trash of this world

Each piece of trash is an opportunity
to become the enlightened soul that you already are,
but won't admit.

you can't teach anyone to be anything they're not.
the desire to be something else than what you are, is why you suffer.

You don't need to be anything else.

Be sad, be angry, just be.

In that acceptance,
is silence.

In that silence,
will come the answer you need so desperately
and had all along.

In that silence
you will understand,
your thoughts are not you.

the past-
its gone
but what happened, is exactly the way it was suppose to.

its what you needed to get here,
so that you get there.

and even if everything
I've said amounts to nothing.

It is all I know.
It is all I can teach you.

There in the dirty street
There in a song
There in  the face of a man begging for change.

It is all you.
You created it all.

To get to this present moment.

We head back to the car,
there nothing left to learn tonight.

Outside the McDonald's
I see Marilyn Monroe's
name on Hollywood Walk of fame.

I ask you to take a picture of me next to it,
free of irony.

In the grand illusion,
and in the absence of flowers this will do.

All Brahman

Grinch Heart

"You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch. 
You really are a heel.
You're as cuddly as a cactus, 
You're as charming as an eel,"
-You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch



I have a condition.

The medical term for it is
Grinch Heart.

I'm hoping to beat the odds

And like a doctor,
A woman performed open heart surgery-

to open my heart.

Now my heart is open
and three sizes larger,
but the woman was gone after the Fall,

After my fall for her, 

like a leaf from a tree,
with only the ground to catch me.

The surgery left my heart open,
The fall left me bruised.
and now the Winter is here.

I think about the new girl in the ugly dress,
I think about the
 New Year,
Connecticut,
and if I'll ever see her again.


Home is here
I'm here
Winter is here 

and
she is somewhere else.

So, it's just me and my dog.
and this old Grinch Heart of mine.

Still open, and bruised after the Fall.

This old Grinch Heart of mine,

and body
have taken quite a beating.

Yes, 

it keeps on beating

Keeps on beating.

Jane

the last time I saw you I was blue.
I know you loved me, I didn't want to worry you.
(that's no way to leave someone)

I came looking for you.

But, I am blue.

I put on my bravest face,
to at least pretend I wasn't.

My life is coming together.
I've made changes since I last saw you.
Changes I'm proud of.

I wanted you to be proud of me too.

You were like a mother.
You protected me the best you could.

You knew me then,
You knew her too.

I wanted you to know I'm healing.
I think I can love again.

I'm sorry I never called or wrote.
I didn't want  you to worry.

But I'm here now.

You were like a mother to me,
(except you'd take issue with that)

No, you'd want me to remember
 you as the girl in your stories.

A young coquette in the 70's-

New York City
Single
Carefree

A heart breaker.

A woman who could have any man.
(before you settled for a man named Leonard)

That is the woman named Jane.

I came looking, after so many years.
but I was a couple years too late.

You've left this place too.
It broke my heart.

I'm sorry Jane, I'm too late.

But I'll remember you as that girl in New York.
You'd have broken my heart even then.

Escape Velocity

I had to get out of town.
As far away from myself as I could.

I had to make a run for it.

There is a dark gravity trying to pull
me in.

I can feel it closing in.

I can out run the pain,
if I just drive fast enough.

I can reach Escape Velocity.

For the first time,
I knew what to do.

I was not running from you.
I was running to you.

Split

The three of us stand in middle of the parking lot,
with a bag full of loot.

We're gonna split it up three ways.

One for you,
two for  you...
One Two Three for me.

Were gonna split it up and part ways.

Today is last day
I work with them.

They are kind enough to make it last just a little longer.

In the past I would slip out,
(Quietly)
like a thief and make a getaway.

No-

That's no way
to say goodbye to friends.

I want to stay here as long as I can.

But.
the bag goes empty.
Its time to go home and other places.
Its time to split.

Later I will treasure, this shared plunder.

The Physics of Pain

"Hold my head,we'll trampoline
finally through the roof
on to somewhere near and far in time"- Pixies



"Energy can neither be created nor destroyed"
It just changes, like people change,
like minds change.

I suspect she has decided to keep moving.
"An Object in motion will stay in motion."
While I stay here waiting.
Unsure who has left and who I expect to return.

"The greater the mass of the object being accelerated,
 the greater the amount of force needed"
But you don't have to force him to go.
Just starve the poor bastard.
He will grow smaller and smaller.
As you grow further and further away.

Beams of light poured out of me uncontrollably.
I call it love.
I busted  my heart wide open.
I "broke it" myself.

I've never wanted to be alive,
so badly before.

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
What I know is coming next, will be pain so perfect and complete,
it will not matter who has left, or if they return.

All that matters is who has remained, remains.

Lovely Riah

(B Side)

" 'I'm just a boy with a new haircut'
And that's a pretty nice haircut"- Pavement



Zahra cuts my hair and tells me about Morocco.
I make her laugh.  So she tells me about the
time an elderly stylist cut off some guy’s eyebrows. She makes me laugh.
She teases my hair as she cuts it.
Making sure it’s just right. She says she loves Elvis.
Shes says who wouldn't.
She turns off the clippers so we can talk.
By the time she is done, she is proud of her work.
I ask for her card but realize I've taken out my phone.

I add a little something extra to her tip.
She unleashes me onto an unsuspecting world.

I feel fucken cool.I look fucken cool.
So far one person agrees.

20 Questions

They sit there pretending to care.

I'm not going to pretend.

Not this time.

I've interviewed for promotion so many times.
Each time believing I was the best candidate.

Maybe I wasn't,
but
If I don't believe it
how could anyone else.

Of the five women in the room
only one of them speaks.

So I only speak to her.

This isn't an interview,
this is goodbye.

I have nothing to prove.

Why me?
Whats so great about me?

It's not that you wouldn't believe me,
even if I told you.

It's that there's nothing to say, they see it.

(No nothing as petty as what 

My chromosomes dictated)

It is something 

Unspoken-

I'm everything they're not and
that alone is more than enough.

Elvis poem #135

“When he shook it and he rang like silver
He shook it and he shine like gold
He shook it and he beat that steam drill, baby
Well bless my soul, well bless my soul”-Gillian Welch



They say he stole,
that big ol dumb beautiful hillbilly.

They say he was the brains behind the whole thing.

Him-
In between getting bossed around by the Colonel and his mamma,
pulled off the heist of a century.

He stole the rhythms, the soul and the blues of the music he loved,
He stole from something beautiful that they say didn't belong to him.
He stole lightning, and smuggled it out in his pants.
(Hence all the shaking)

And that's why you should not enjoy his music-
Its counterfeit
Artificial
Full of high cholesterol  and saturated fats.

So cover your ears.
Ask for your money back
Repent

He's a thief.

Somebody call the cops.

Throw him in
the Slammer,
the Poky,
the Hoosgow-
and throw away the key.

 (But Fuck it)
You know he’s just gonna Rock out
in that Jail house.

That's what he does.

It’ll be a fucken party.
It'll be you and me and Bugsy and Shifty
and everyone else
"Guilty" of having a guilty pleasure.

We're gonna stick around and get our kicks.

"That's alright now mama, anyway you do."
That is, if that's alright with you?