your words

it’s funny how they feel so hollow now.
they don’t mean the same thing as they once did.
they feel different.
and i just blotted them out.

home

The wind blows harder here at home.  I suppose it’s the way the mountains funnel it in and shove it through this place.  Whatever it is, I know its different than the way it whips around in that college town.  As of late, my days have been drained into its misguided holding tank, never to be seen or felt again.

I was happy to leave there and I thought I’d be even happier to come back home.  I was in a sense, things here feel real, less contrived, and I’d missed the feeling of knowing exactly what it was that I was looking at.  It may not be beautiful, but at least it’s honest, and that in its own right is beautiful. 

The way I feel here, even with the wind wrapping itself around my neck, I know it will not last.  I know this because I know myself.  The road will beg for my feet like a pack of wolves.  And I will succumb.  Because this heart was not made to beat in one place but to break amongst the rivers.

i've got to break what i'm making and turn it into nothing

i went searching for christmas lights tonight.
and i all i could think about was the dark.
the lack of light that seems to consume everything.

i thought about how these streets will be well worn into the souls of my shoes before my time here is through. and familiarity breeds contempt. that scares me because i am already struggling to fight contempt off. i can't imagine how it will feel once i become familiar with all of this.

i thought about God and how i'll never be able to please Him in the ways i wish i could. how i'll never be the person i so fervently wish to be. but in His eyes i know it is enough. i just can't feel that sometimes.

I reread Robert Herrick's To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time this morning and the first two lines keep circling in my head: "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old-time is still a flying". This time i have to spend in this place, in this world, is short and the time i have now while i'm young is even shorter. there is a whole lot i want to do, and now is the time to do it. i refuse to waste my time and put things off, to repeatedly set aside the things i actually care about in order to fullfill what is required of me.

and this has been a whole mess of things.

i don't even want to know why things are the way that they are anymore.
i don't understand. and i'm not going to try to these days.
it just is.

and in the midst of it all i have to be okay with it.
because the alternative is just too depressing.
and i won't let myself give in to that.

r.i.p

morbid. it dug in.
like a cancer
some might say.

yet it never started off small.
it was always something worth working at.
what was i to do
but dig
when the shovel
was so strategically stitched
between my fingers.

so there i lay myself to rest
in the sallow sunken ground
hollowed out like a holding place
for a coffin.

and here i will wait,
until you hand me my tombstone.

let the orange embers in the fireplace remain

how.

much.

longer.

the night it cuts like daggers

tortured artist.
cliché, i know.
i hate the way it sounds
the way it feels behind my eyes.
but it's there,
and it somehow fits.

they say it worked
for Sylvia,
Charles
and Anne.
that is,
as far as their work was concerned.
but my mind wanders to the night
when the wind picked up
and the silence rolled out of bed.

i don't always want to lay here,
alone,
and sleepless
consorting with the dark.

i've heard art imitates life,
but i think it imitates truth.

sometimes i'm not quite sure
what i should do with the truth
that crouches behind my heart
like some sort of dark beast.

i hope to GOD i don't always write like this.
one day i will conjure up words
that mothers will read to their children
in the light beam of gardens.

and it will be beautiful
and nothing will hurt.

Gregorian Chant

last night we were more than mere men.
a heaven-like-earth hung from our hands
as the paint trickled down.

the twang of country music
swept over our heads
while we knelt on the carpeted floor
laboring on paper altars.

even the stars themselves
slid a sideways glance
down our way.

a lapse in time
like a blot on this page.
my friend,
it shall never be forgotten.

Dies Saturni xxii Augustus MMIX

it's coming.
it's coming like a storm
beating against the barricade
that keeps this city safe.

it's busting in the door
that leads to the room
where my secrets are stored
neatly stacked in their respective cupboards.

this heartbeat inside of me pounds
and leaves the room for restless dreams.

all of me belongs here.
planted.
in
this
place.

but somehow it's become high time
that i pack up all of me
and leave
this
place.

because it's coming.
and it'll never turn away.

inhaling these sodden summer days
listening to leadbelly
and drinking southern style real brewed sweet tea.

i'll miss you when the morning comes.

In The Sour Grass Field


there lay my face on your wrist
like a heart on a sleeve

painstaking.
sweat brow.
pen strokes.

you held your arm out
in the blazing summer sun.
"look," you said,
"it's you."

how dear you were
in that moment.
with great crashing pride
you viewed your handiwork

talking.
talking.
talking.
you were always
talking.

libraries of words
falling off the shelves of your mouth.

drawing.
drawing.
drawing.
you were always
drawing.

and now,
this image of me.

like a brand upon the brain.

you thought it'd
be there, to
remind you
of
me.

but not all things
can be as they were first intended.
the rain eventually lets up
children abandon their red balloons
prisoners come up for paroll
and ink fades.

I was witness to this.
first on your wrist.
and then in your chest.

SS General Slocum

i see you there.
excreting monsters
and rabid animals
from your soul

the iv drips
you cling to the needle
like a naked child
clutches its mother's chest

you let forth mournful moans
and harranging screams
a broadcast of the nightmare
your existance has become

i see you there.
no longer dancing with the devil
but collapsed in his yard,
what a sad waste of a heart.

it's getting late
and the black sun is crawling
to the other side of this world
it's become hard to make anything out

but don't worry dear,
i can still see you

first attempt at stop action.

happy birthday dear sir.

October Revolution

you kick and scream
banging your bloody knuckles
deeper into your cardboard city.

the townspeople crawl out
of their well manufactured houses
a blank look of awe
sweeps across their dirty faces.

red sky
smeared with black and gray.
your jaw falls open
out falls bombs like fire
down to the city below.

hot breath.
you whisper into your own ear:
here comes my october revolution.

-Lyon

I haven't had a good, hard, eye watering laugh in far too long.
why have things been feeling so bleak lately?

school i.d. signed "Ozzie Nelson".

The other day i came across these old photographs of my father.
it's odd imagining him in a life outside of what it is now.
it's all that i know.

the boy in these pictures is just as much a part of my father as the man he is now.
i wish i knew this boy.
i wish i could say "hang on tightly to what you have now, becuase you'll slowly loose it without even realizing it and it's too beautiful of a thing to let go of."


but it is what it is.
we all grow up and leave things behind.
sometimes i like to think i'll never loose my rowdy innocence,
but maybe one day i will, and i won't even realize it.
just like that boy in those old photographs.

here's to you Bradley Wayne Lyon

there's no sensible words to describe this really.

or a way of making it a thing that is understood.

i think that i like myself better, alone.

misunderstanding seems to follow me like a pack of hungry mutts, but i'm okay with that i suppose.

it's really alright.

i become lost in my thoughts, in my books, in my art.

and it's really alright.

i find comfort in the little things.

and in the Big Thing.

He makes me feel like a little thing.

and that smears a smile right across my rascal of a face.

oh how He loves such a wretched little thing like me.

the smell of cheap smokes and an old box of black licorice whips.
you spit out gunfire and breathe in coal.
scumbag etiquette and dark comedies, thrown down from your pulpit.
the cult of motherhood despises the rusty bucket in which you spat.
but i know you better

-lyon

i felt like hell,
old rotted wood
gangrene of the depth

so i let it go,
i let it all go

it tumbled down,
laying naked and bare
at the toes of grace

with gnashing of teeth
and a stutter in my steps

i heave myself onto the deck
and hoist the ever stubborn sail
known as work

the rain washes it all away.
chess board wiped clean
with one triumphant sweep

queens and pawns
landed in the same inevitable heap

the rain takes it away
casts it into oblivions gutter

worms wiggleing
not with fear,
but with great hope

the rain leaves me
with only my hope

"Everyone is rich,
and everything is beautiful"



I saw that on a magnet yesterday.

and i agree with it and reject its truth simultaneously.

Holidays are over, carried out with the drudging march of ants.

I'm not quite sure how i feel on the topic of new years resolutions, but I am sure that at some point in my life i will pinpoint what my philosophy on them is.

So for now i have come to the simple resolution that i will begin to use a purse.


I'm tired of loosing credit cards and other crap that i am supposed to deem as important. So I got a nice leather bag to fulfill the duties of keep stuff from leaving and i also happened to find a first printing of Anne Sexton's Live or Die. So Premium.

-Cheers