10 things about this night

that song we used to sing
about those records she all scratched
played on my tape deck
for the first time
since I had all those records shipped down south to someone else's she


these little notes
i keep pulling out of my pockets
scratched onto pieces of receipt from taco bell
never feel like money but i keep holding my breath


i turned my bed into a desk
my desk into a tv stand for a coworker
my coworker into a pusher


my pupils are growing sensitive to the florescent lights in my house
in that they consider 
the feelings
fears
and shadows
those lights cast on all they see


when i
walk into
my house
with a bag that is brown
i feel
like that
kid from
parenthood
with all the porno tapes


instead of the beer in the freezer being left in for too long
i drank it warm


i told myself
TEN
before you go to bed
and that was hours ago


the skin is all back
on the tips of my fingers
in case you were wondering


standing in the desert
is only worthwhile
to see all the stars that remind me of her freckles


i used to write this
to the melodies of songs
that i did not write
but claimed as my own
sloppy handwritten thoughts on suicide

Texas Plates

Another long day. Nothing to mull over, or try to fix, just a long day. The sun set hours ago and nothing will be better today then this tall can I am holding.

I can see your skin between your shirt and your jeans; enough to put my hands on, to push them up towards your breasts if we are pressed full against each other in the corner of a dirty club/bar/parking lot/bed.

But I'm behind you in line at AM/PM. You almost drop your H&M sweater three times while trying to pay for your cigarettes. Camel Crushes... You say them like you've never bought them, like some poor kid outside has enough money for them but not the dignity to get Newports and save the difference for booze.

But you never drop the sweater. Because if you did I would totally pick it up. And you look briefly at me; me and my can of beer. I smile. You don't. Or might.

I'd ask your name but forget and the whole non-exchange would be ruined.

So take your Texas plates and drive out of my life.

This hasn't gone where it was supposed to. Parts are true. Parts are lies. Parts are shit. I'm just working on getting things out of my head. I need space for new things. Let us try this again. From somewhere else.

Your clutch purse holds very little space for

the 8 quarters

I am going to use to buy this beer that will just put me more into the spot in my head where

I

forget to tell you that

I would have probably thought that

you were beautiful had

I not been so concerned with if

you were going to drop that sweater and if

I was going to pick it up.

There. That is a little better.

My own bearded lady

The only explanation for

that can of man's shaving cream sitting so

proud

on your shower ledge is

that you are a bearded lady.

That's why you are always

first up

naked in the dark

growing your hair out

and so proud of that flannel.

Or you are fucking someone else.

death and my feet still on the carpet.

1.

Two weeks late the phone rings and I think I hear

tears or mine just start to fill that spot in sound

where you know there should be sound but something involved just cannot hold their end

of the bargin that is grief

and news

and condolences

and a map to someplace where it makes sense.

I fall back on the shit couch made to a bed and let me feet hang from the end and they didn't quite touch.

2.

Me.

Bill.

Smirnoff.

Tonic.

This is what you drank.

This is what you had me make you.

When I couldn't have a voice.

When I couldn't have a space.

When I had to wrap my own presents.

Those fucking overalls never fit and it wasn't your fault and that was how it had to be.

That wasn't your fault.

This wasn't your fault.

But I sat there with my best friend and toasted and drank to a man fifteen years gone.

I let my feet hang from the end of the barstool and they didn't quite touch.

3.

Random bathroom before a set of songs I felt I had to rip my skin open to get out, I'm pissing and breaking pills in half for time and chasing with beer and I get in front of a mic and sing about how all of this won't ever fucking work and you smile from wherever you are. You always smiled from that chair that you needed help out of and you fell from and yelled and screamed and cried and lost something that you could never get back. I could map that room. All I wanted was that fireplace to burn. Something. It never happened. I walked out on the deck and looked into yards of families that were what television said families were and I hated them and now I know my family was it. My family was life. Me wedged in one of those chairs, feet hanging from the edge, not quite touching.

4.

Fuck

your

middle

name

if all you ever need is

pussy

pills

and booze.

5.

You were the ultimate Booth.

Your son and grandson rolled into some sort of superhuman with shaky steps and strong opinions.

I admire your taste

I admire your swing

I admire your contentment.

But that was after the clubs, the cigarettes, the pussy, the booze, the service, the wives, the crazy secret foreign country marriages, the surveys, the second (first) family, the lies, the damage and then finally the three times I saw you a year.

What I really admire was the way you pointed, while holding your vodka drink, at whatever was wrong.

You always meant those points.

And I always mean to keep my feet where they reach.

They are mostly gone. 1 & 2.

1.

Some television with knobs

two

sits in the corner and protects me

from the poodle that is going to attack while

I dig my nails into a carpet that runs

under a wall and into a house where

I

Alone

decide I need pink chalk bullshit medicine for my tummy

and the oozy insides of some long prickly leaf to dull the burn on my skin from being outside

chasing cars

little girls in skirts

and this boy who has a toy I want

and a nest of wasps that some poor kid would die from fucking with in the movies.

Don't make fucking eye contact with the poodle.

Steal the soap from under the sink and pour it into the gas tank of my lawnmower

cuz we all need some goddamn bubbles

and that girl in the blue skirt will only look at me then.

Blonde hair.

Big grin.

Boy muscles.

Pushes that lawnmower so fast the bubbles don't even fucking show up.

The blue skirt girl doesn't either.

She is mostly gone.

They are mostly gone.

2.

"What about your frustration levels?"

Buy a lunch you can't afford and steal

french fries from a guy you admire for reasons you will never

admit or understand but appreciate that his plan is a plan and your plan is not dying.

"Or you'll have an emotional breakdown..."

Let tears well up enough that if you didn't have glasses on someone would ask about them.

The glasses, of course. Not the tears.

Keep the glasses.

Avoid the questions.

"We're good on trips, right"

There was a video of a river from really high up with no sound.

Be that river.

Be that video.

Be that answer to the question that says which person you know will be the mostly like to..

"You call at the worst times."

You can count on your arm the things left from that very first

house,

You.

Some combination of money, love, cat poison, personal safety, old age, the environment, social improvement systems and your own bullshit ideals leave just you.

That house is mostly gone.

You are mostly gone.

I is for Inventory...

Your flowers have been safe
for fifteen to twenty years
stories packed away in boxes
lining the ceiling of your home.
Forget that they catch your prayers.
Forget that they muffle your cries.
Forget that they block your path to heaven.

Keep those boxes full of
exes, letters, dresses, dreams,
pvc pipe, brushes, photographs,
recipes, lovers, and my best wishes.

Move them from house to house
to house to house to home.

Cross out the names,
change the labels,
mark everything as X-MAS LIGHTS.

My heart keeps rhythm with
the lights blinking on your tree;
One and Two and Three and Four.
Breathe.
Repeat.

9/26

Following through on that promise for Earth Day...

You decide the title, it will be better that way.

Birds of Paradise
have flown away
or rotting and falling
to the ground.
I'll leave them
for the gardeners
or the neighbors
or anyone who cares.
See, I am a lumberjack
a calloused soul
with downed trees lining
the map of my past.
Small, tall, dead
they all fall at my will.
I wish them death:
it is so.
I wish them defeat:
easy said and done.
I wish them love
and gnash my my teeth.
Not today, not ever
always the last standing.

The phantom message

I have been finding paint everywhere. On my chair, on my mouse and on my thumb. It is all different shades of blue. What this has to do with that, I am not sure. But this rogue paint keeps distracting me from the thoughts I want to put down.

Put down like a sick dog?

Yes. Definitely.

I am a fan of baptisms. These include the ones on little babies, who have no say, but usually cry. I enjoy the irony. This also includes my own baptism on Palm Sunday some fifteen years ago (at least). And it includes the multiple baptisms I have performed on myself, none of the religious or the sexual (zing!) nature.

See, I am a fan of rebirth. I am always looking out for some conversation, road sign or person that will disrupt my life so much that my only natural response is to baptize myself, hoping to come out better on the other side.

It has happened in an ocean.
It has happened in a tub.
It has happened in a shower.
It has happened with scissors and barber clippers.

I get too entirely wrapped up in shit that sometimes I need to shed whatever person/place/thing that is binding me to that moment.

Why all this? Why tonight? I thought everything is going great?

It is. But there are patterns of thinking, and they do not do me any good.

So I am giving them to you, internets, that you may do with them what you will. (That shall be the whole of the law)

As for me, I am taking a shower and leaving the thoughts and behaviors that I don't need anymore to circle the drain.

No more finger crossing.

White Couch Serenata

Poetry and myself aren't very good friends. We sort of just randomly happen to be in the same room, then there is an awkward glance or two. At some point we share a beer and talk about superficial things that have happened since the last time we saw eachother. I ran into poetry the other morning in the kitchen. Strange

I know the sun has set
and is closer to rise
despite all my best efforts
I still feel my hand on your thigh.

I can hear the sound of your dreams
as they dance towards me down the street
alone on this couch by the window
I look out towards where you sleep.

So right now I wish you good night
right now I wish you good sleep
right now I wish you all the joy in life
you get when we fall asleep.

twenty days...

A friend of mine started a blog the other day. He told me about it. I like it. It reminds me of those days a couple of years ago, I wouldn't say they were better, or more exciting, but they were different. There are routines, and they change. There are constant faces, and they change. There are pets, kitchens, jobs, loves, fears, desires, destinations and dream vacations, and they all change.

This lack of writing is really frustrating, and I'm the only one to blame. There are hundreds of unused minutes in every day. If I string them together I can find all the time in the world to do anything.

In honor of my friends list, a list of things that have happened to me in the last twenty days.

1. I smashed my finger.
2. I saw mostly naked pictures of a co-worker.
3. I won a party.
4. I celebrated a birthday for someone I couldn't pick out of a lineup.
5. I rode bicycles to a bar, and back.
6. I cooked Falafel.
7. I got Noam Chomskitty high.
8. I wrote a song.
9. I made a mix.
10. I slow danced in the kitchen.
11. I received a large tip from a man with a leprechaun voice.
12. I surprised a friend in Long Beach.
13. I went back to SDSU.
14. I got into a shouting match.
15. I made pigs-in-a-blanket.
16. I saw a new band comprised of 2 people I really respect and a third I should.
17. I saw Andrew Jackson Jihad at a punk house, for the second year in a row, and made new friends.
18. I have a new President.
19. I hung out with a wonderful dog named pancakes.
20. I failed at making Magic Rocks. Sorry Imperceptible.

Tonight, I will listen to a friends radio show, drink beer, cook spinach enchiladas and kiss a beautiful women.

I am busy, and happy.

wordless wednesday. the first blogger to show up in geography class.

slouching towards 30...

If there was a hill, and i was my twenties, well, now I am on the back side of said hill. Sunday I turned 26. Monday I recovered. I'm closer to 30 now than 20. That's what happens, right?

I've been in the process of neglect. I've neglected my bike, I've neglected my reading, I've neglected my cooking and I've neglected this. So, for probably the 17th time I'm going to make this thing more regular. I spend a lot of time sitting around watching people become chefs, best friends, fashonistas, sluts and drunks in a little box, I should be able to tear myself away for 15 minutes and throw together some picture with some anecdote about Noam Chomskitty getting neutered or throwing up arm in arm with a girl on my birthday. (That's the new Booth birthday tradition, two years running!)

Imperceptible was nice enough to send me some stuff in the mail. I'll take some pictures.

Hide your VW's I'm feeling frisky...

Blogging as an existance

I would love to blog for a living. But I would get to distracted by fantasy football, death cab for cutie youtube videos and waiting for checks in the mail to get anything done.

I just wanted to post something today.

Sleeping Houses at Dawn

Tender eyes and hearts close and pound,
silence deep enough to drown,
Proud words and turning ache
swearing just for swearing's sake.
Wrong turns and blinking blinkers
taking place of abandoned winters,
Shorter skirts and warmer hearts
begging for this to start.

Glasses sweat and empty out
fears and hopes and loves and doubt,
No equal level and no familiar gauge
to finally feeling one's age.
Glowing blue and yellow days
now batting, Willie Mays,
Your father's face evolves
to fit all of us involved.

Still some smoke holds on
to the horizon at dawn,
And visitors leave flowers crossed
where the innocence was lost.
We count the paper for it's worth
and pray it stretches over earth,
fills our every need today
or makes us hate to run away.

what? welcome back? - mix

The interweb has been restored at my place of dwelling. I moved my computer into the "band" room, so now I have a new window to look out of. The house is full of new faces. Not really, they just pay rent now ;) Yesterday it was something like 100 degrees, so Bert, Stephanie and myself bought squirt guns and had an old fashioned water fight. Shits tight. In honor of the return of the internets, I made this little mix. Its for Imperceptible, because I've missed her virtual self. (p.s. the Tim Barry/Chuck Ragan/Guy from Lucero show will own everyone!) And Henri, because I like him. It has some different things on it. Enjoy.

Welcome Back - Mix - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GC6HFFMO
Dear Chicago - Ryan Adams
Paper Planes - M.I.A.
Jackie - Scott Walker
Candle In The Wind (Ben's Song) - Andrew Jackson Jihad
We Are Wild Stallions - The Riot Before
Burn Guelph Burn - The Sainte Catherines
To Hell With Good IntentionsvMclusky
graveyard girl - m83
Drunk Mouth Kitchen Smile - The Lawrence Arms
All Alone In My Big Lonely Apartment - Bomb the Music Industry!
The Lazyboy 500 - The Falcon
$4 Pabst - The Gunshy

200 - mix

I love that numbers like this get us all sentimental. This is my 200th post on this blog. In high school I had a crude diary on a free server that I had to code everyday and upload. Then I had a couple other blogs and misc things. This one was started less than a month before I moved from Lancaster to Sacramento. It survived the move there and back. I think for the most part I did too. It stayed with me through the pretty consistent chaos that has been the last year. Everything on here is wordy, except when it's not. It's sad, except when its happy. It's boozy, actually, pretty much always. One of my favorite things about blogging (besides the invitations to orgies at my own funeral) is putting together a mix for an occasion, sorting it, uploading it, and sharing it. If there is any occasion, this is one, so I put 13 songs that are just killing me softly (and sometimes not so soft). There are some older stuff, some newer stuff, and some surprising stuff, maybe. It's about this blog, the stuff I've written about, the stuff I didn't write about, and the people who still check this out. Brew some coffee, put some booze in it, browse through some of the older posts, before I knew what labels were, and enjoy. I'm actually listening to this mix as I type this, and it's pretty fucking good. Have a good chinese new year, even though I'm a few days late.

200 - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=3FPI56CD
Joining The Army - Lucero
Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe - Okkervil River
I'm Sorry for Saying I'm Sorry - The Arrivals
Silver Lining - Rilo Kiley
Personal Slump - The Weight
The Wright Wrong - The Wunder Years
Red Alibi - Sparta
Never Get To Know - Paul Baribeau
God Deciding - Hot Water Music
The Condition - Defiance, Ohio
Song for Dennis Brown - The Mountain Goats
That's What You Get - Paramore
Hot Knives - Bright Eyes

i am very excited for this

My computer is working. Swimmingly. Bill and Crystal just spent a week here, and I was black-out drunk 6 of 7 nights. It was good times indeed. (They are actually still here, their flight got cancelled after 6 hours of delays, so they are staying by the airport, I think.)

The first official duty of blogging will be to do the future music meme from Imperceptibility.
Rules are simple. Be honest and use shuffle. I will be doing this "live", so here we go! (I'll be making a playlist to upload to, because thats how it should be)

Q: What does next year have in store for you?
This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) - Talking Heads

Q: What does your love life look like next year?
Candy Cane - The Loved Ones

Q: What do you say when life gets hard?
Lonely Girls - Lucinda Williams

Q: Song that reminds you of good times?
Cattle and Cane - The Go-Betweens

Q: What do you think when you get up in the morning?
Confession - Drag the River

Q: What song will you dance to at your wedding?
#1 Defender - New End Original

Q: Song that reminds you of your first kiss?
Prove My Love - the Violent Femmes

Q: Your favorite saying?
Restless - The Broadways

Q: Favorite place?
Mosh For Jesus - Dillinger Four

Q: Most Missed Memory?
Suburban Myth - Less than Jake

Q: What song describes your best friend?
Overtime - Lucinda Williams

Q: What song describes your ex?
Truth - Drag the River

Q: Where would you go on a first date?
Mole - The Mountain Goats

Q: Drug of choice?
Blue Valentines - Tom Waits

Q: What song describes yourself?
Flashing Lights - Kanye West

Q: What is the thing you like doing most?
Cupid's Choke Hold - Gym Class Heroes

Q: The song that best describes the president?
Bloody Resolutions - Crass

Q: Where will you be in 10 years?
On the Picket Fence - The Good Life

Q: Your love life right now?
Three Summers Strong - Hot Water Music

Q: What is your state of mind like at the moment?
Clueless - Pinhead Circus

Q: How will you die?
How Low - Against Me!


I like the way that turned out! I had fun reactions to some of the songs, you know, the ones you forget are on your computer. The lyrics for some are better than the titles, and it flows nice musically. I'm going to make breakfast burritos while I get this uploaded.