The Source

I’m an artist

I write love songs

It’s what I do

I write love songs to my friends

Love songs to the rain

I could write love songs about anything and everything

I’m just a flashbang

Brief and sudden

Lighting up the night

For a brief split second

Don’t expect it to last

Real beauty never does

Life dies

Beauty fades into the dust

But out of the dust

is born more beauty

A rose through the thorns

A Lilly from the concrete

Don’t concern yourself with time

As it marches ever on

Don’t concern yourself with age either

Either you’re alive or you’re not

This is a vacation

I’m just a tourist here

Some things I’d like to try

People I’d like to meet

Places I’d like to see

And when it’s all done

I’ll go back to the source

There is a Fire

Optimism

After so many grey days

I feel its pull

“Be happy.” It says to me.

“Get up and write”

“Get up and run”

I feel the physicality 

That once came so naturally to me

Finally returning

Like wet coals coaxed back into flame

The warmth feels good

The energy fills my bones

Stirs me to move

To finish things unfinished

And bring this

Chapter of my life to a close

Oh, this chapter

Full of wet pages

Soaked to the brink of drowning

Still shivering cold

From the wind on wet clothes

But there is a fire

Deep down in the ashes

I found the only warm coal

And blew on it slowly

Till it glowed and it glowed

Part of me worries

My clothes are too damp

Clothes woven tight with my fear and desire

I’ve worn these clothes for a decade now

I would take them off

But the wind howls

And they’re my only comfort

Deep from my core

The coal whispers softly

“Find the courage to strip

And I’ll keep you warm.”

I peel off my wet shirt

Then one sock at a time

Pile kindling on the coal

Bursts of joy as it crackles

Deep in my core

There is a fire

Feeling warm, I believe

I’m about to start a new chapter

A Leaf in the Ocean

Truth is relative

I feel everyone has their own truth

And they cling to it desperately

Whenever I watch a debate of views

I feel that they’re both right, to themselves

All I know is that I don’t know

It would be easier if I could just believe

Something someone told me

And cling to it desperately

But what’s the point?

All I am is a leaf in the ocean

It doesn’t matter what I think is going on

From the spot where I’m floating

I’m just a leaf in the ocean

All I’ll ever know is the water right around me

Ambition

I don’t want to be successful

I just want to live a happy life

Once you see it, you see it everywhere

Athletes, career-types, artists of every form

All breaking their back for power and popularity

In shows, in movies, in people around me

I pity it now

To think of the perfectly wonderful friends and homes

They’ve left behind in their quest for more 

I used to idolize and look up to these people

Who rid themselves of all “distractions” to achieve their goals

Now my hero is a man who sold everything he had

To sail the world with his brother

Along the way he picked up travellers

Bought some cameras and made a show

I look at this and ask,

“Was it about achievement?”

I don’t think so.

I think no thought was put into it

It was just the thing to do in the moment

I’d like to turn off my strategizing brain

Forever calculating the risks and rewards

Calculating the praise I might get for the effort

It’s a waste I tell you!

I can’t say it enough

If you have to make music or poetry or art

Then do it because you have to

Don’t measure the rewards

It doesn’t matter what others think 

Do these things for yourself

But not only for yourself

When I was in despair

And my music felt useless

My mother told me

“God is listening”

Humility

I guess this life isn’t what we thought it would be

I thought I’d be president by now

Or at least something important

Not only that,

But all of my friends have gone missing

Where they went, I don’t know

I wasn’t paying attention

I lost track of them in my haste to get to the top

What a waste

I made them feel foolish

Just so I could feel special

I hope it’s not too late to patch things up

Tell them I’m sorry, and that I’ve reigned in my ego

I woke up from a dream about us as kids

I remember being so kind

And gentle when I spoke

I must have changed

When I saw that carrot on a stick in front of me

I’m not special

I’m not unique

I just want my friends

And to be gentle with how I speak

I’m glad I didn’t win

I’m happy ambition broke me

I have a couple calls to make

Did I just learn humility?

The Depth of the Beauty

She says I’m to blame

For being lost in the clouds

I don’t feel ashamed

I know despair on the ground

Why be so earthy?

With work and money

And all of the misery

That comes from not seeing

The depth of the beauty

Life is the purest and most perfect treasure

Numbers a waste, for you cannot measure

The sound of a songbird

The smell of the rain

I could live life

Over and over again

But I wouldn’t work

I’d only be still

Each and every life

My soul would be filled

No cause for action

No ambition or duty

Pause and take in

The depth of the beauty

The Road

On the road feels right

Everything about it feels right

It’s good to go, and even better to come back

What an incredible way to experience life!

Step out on the road and you get swept away

The journey takes over and you get dragged along

From town to town, with every sense of “the moment”

It’s all over so quickly, as you knew it would be

But was it worth it?

Of course, every penny!

Was the time well spent?

Better than anything else you could have been doing.

The thing about the road is

It teaches you, it gives to you 

And it makes you feel more at home than anywhere else

My Aquarium

I missed my aquarium

The small fish bowl where I relax and make art

My home, where everything is in its place, so quick and easy

My desk, my piano, my teapot, and my stove for cooking rice

What a perfect existence

Why should I ever leave?

I have so much to say

And I can say it from down here

No interference, no disturbance 

No one projecting their energy at me

I must work to pay the bills and eventually the credit cards

And eventually after that the student loans

But while I am in my aquarium

Life is pure bliss

I only get dragged out every couple of weeks

For some useless social obligation

I say useless because it’s always trivial

I can’t discuss what I’m working on 

For fear of making other people self-conscious

Of their own lack of progress in their projects

Or even a lack of projects at all

Finally, it’s over and I’m back in my fishbowl

I can swim around aimlessly to the sound of classical piano

I can write and read and move my projects towards completion

And I am happy, because it feels important

Even if it is useless, as I suspect it is

I am happy.

Sea Breeze

It often feels like people are pulling me in different directions

Leading me the way they want me to go.

I want to board an 18th century ship

And sail the world for 1000 years

I want to feel sea breeze on my face

And the taste of salt on my tongue

I want to blaze a trail that no human could follow

Be alone for miles, with no thought of tomorrow

Every day should be the best day of our lives

We wouldn’t grow tired of it

We’d fall asleep, longing for tomorrow

But then, in that moment, just before sleep

We would feel pure bliss and complete satisfaction

That is what life should be

Sea breeze

For eternity

Wisdom

I only have the times before

I don’t have anything more

The real beauty’s evaporated

My morality has left me jaded

I stumble in a haze, blindly through life

Each day like the next, dull and boring

Maybe it’s tough, maybe it’s easy

Still I feel, destiny missed me

I used to have passion and fire and drive

Now I’m running on fumes

Am I even alive?

What took the fuel out of my fire?

What stole the matches from my desire?

Was it love or drugs or giving up hope?

Did I burn too many bridges or smoke too much dope?

I think it was wisdom, that all sacred word

That they use to describe an old man on his porch

Why is he wise?

Cause he does nothing at all.

How can he fall, when he takes no risks at all?

 Wisdom is learning to stay away from what burned you

Clean up your act, get some virtue, get a cat

Take things slower, don’t feel so much

Become a little colder, with clever sarcasm for a crutch

Congratulations! You’ve learned life’s ways!

Now there’s no more fun to have

You know the end to every story

Congratulations! You’ve got wisdom in hand!

Now you’ll never take a risk

And you’re dreadfully boring

Going All In

Nobody blames you for going all in

As long as you win

As long as you win

Nobody blames you for going all in

As long as you win

If you don’t it’s a sin

Oh, the shambles of ambition spent

Shoot the moon, miss, crawl back to the womb

Money buys, logic lies

Beat on the wall till you build a good tomb

Failure means your reason lied

Victory would’ve made that world sour anyway

To live is to be unsatisfied

To live is to risk it all

Too many stories, so little glory

I lived the fantasy, not the reality

Serious wagers, made in trust

Serious forces, just don’t budge

Big things, don’t change easy

Organic matter like us, decomposes quickly

So do what you will, if you feel you must

Jack and Jill and a bucket of rust

Have no more choice than you or I

The stars align, the fates decide

So feel free my friend, to go all in

And if indeed it is a Cardinal Sin

Let Heaven forgive you, as I already have

For pleasure and pain, weren’t made to last.

Money

The earthquake of production

Matched by hurricane consumption

Is the metaphor of money

In a twist volcanic eruption

Money is the egg that hatched

Production, progression, and valid oppression

Money takes and breaks your eggs

Fries them in a government pension

Money built us towers

And took us to the moon

Money found the silkworm

And spun it into doom

A man was quietly tending his crops

When his neighbor came and said

I’ve got this gold and the merchant said

He’d trade gold for all his bread

For in the city, the people were thrifty

And souls had a weight in gold

For in the city, the merchant could use 

The gold in a hand he’d fold

Then he’d return to the farmer who’d found

He could trade his crops for gold

He bought a mule, a wagon, and a tool

He later was forced to sell to a fool

The fool had more gold, bought all the man sold

When his magistrate uncle came for taxes long owed

The man had his land and the clothes on his back

He planted a crop and swore never to crack

Never to sell a thing to a soul

And never to buy anything sold

Only to live by the sweat of his brow

Leaving gold for the fool, with the green copper crown

The rat quit the race, the ox quit the plow

Trading comforts for freedom, never to bow

Rotten Apples

Over and over we work for reward

Only to see we’re worse than before

Remembering a hero long forgotten

A soldier of fortune, whose apples turned rotten

You wonder what turned that dashing young steed

To a stallion chained to a 90 pound wagon

He gallops and trots to see people arrive

Returns and re-trots to give others a ride

A handful of meal is all that he’s offered

Though he’d rather partake in rotten apples

Now bittered and softened

A Eulogy for Pete

It’s good to see you look better than the last time

Even better to hear you speak from the heart

Everyone expects you’ll probably die soon

Too much pain in one life for just one heart

I wrote a song using lines you spoke in that film

I like the romantic language and it makes good poetry

You chose to be a libertine, what a shame, what a pity

Trading a life of misery, for poetic eternity

The legacy you leave can’t be what you’d imagined

Too many fractures for a linear story

Bury him with Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison 

Or at Victoria Palace Gates, as Britain’s favorite son

Achilles the Artist

Today is the day I set sail for Troy

A guitar and a bag and a book full of songs

Is there any more noble a quest than mine? 

For surely it interests and pleases the divine

I shall choose to ignore the 21st century

And set a course instead for truth and beauty

A compass and map are all I require

And The Smiths and Nirvana, for I am their squire

What will become of my Vice and my Virtue?

I think as I shiver and wait in the cold

Anyone with reason would abandon this lunacy

But I know in my heart, fortune favors the bold!

Wilde + Keats

For the vast majority of humans, 

Their vices consume each day, until their days are spent

For those that are virtuous,

Their virtues consume each day, until their days are spent

The only escape from insignificance is in art.

For art is beauty, and beauty is truth

And the only significant thing is the truth.

An artist seeks significance by finding the truth

And presenting it through beauty.

A true artist becomes significant.

The Walk

She sees me through the breeze

It’s just so commonplace

She is scared

Convinced it’s pointless

We’ll never make it

She’s oh so shy

She never talks and

I only lie

Are we walking

On seeds or rubble?

Am I older than my face

Or younger than my words?

Show me the depth of all things

I say,

Happiness, peace,

Oblivion, the beauty in sadness

Had I not met you

I might’ve fallen back into my old ways

I walked a satisfaction-less walk

With no aim or direction

I threw myself headlong into the world

Like a fool

You brought me out of myself

And left me beside myself

I ran

I couldn’t understand

I resembled what I tried to mock

No period of bliss between us

A simple transition to

Unsettled wanderings and agitated pacings

Don’t suffer my pride my madness

I am your poison

My misfortune is my own

We have to be happy

If love is good,

Believe in it

If it is evil,

Recover from it

You and I see different

I wonder who is living in the real world

Where once my steps were sure

Now I walk the determined but aimless walk

Of a child who thinks he is a man

Le Boheme

Busily the people bustle about

Hastily they hustle and scrape for a living

“Look out below!” comes the shoot from above

The getting is good when the Gov. feels giving

Down the Rue de Descartes

Is an old forgotten well

Where a man sits and drinks 

Alone, by himself

Thinks on the ships

Full of goods at the harbor

Nutmeg and sugar

Tobacco and cloves

Flicks a penny in the fountain

Finishes his wine

Clicks his way down the cobblestones

Lost in his own mind

Makes his way to the Seine

Where the shopkeepers barter

Sees the money changing hands

Decides he’ll go a little farther

Finds a little peace 

On the emperor’s old street

The cobblestones as quiet 

As the Belle who haunted Keats

Pausing near an alleyway 

He hears fantastic sounds

Laughter and elated

Merrymaking abound

Cautiously, he approaches

Turning ‘round the bend

A lively pub awaits him

“Le Boheme” is what it read

He enters surreptitiously

Glancing to each side

No one minds his presence

For so lost they are in life

The barmaid calls him “Dear”

Pours him a pitcher of red

Sits him at a table

And this is what she said

“Le Boheme is the place 

For artists and thinkers

To come when they’re done

With their art and their thinking

It’s a fun little joke

That we play on the Gov.

Where we accept that we’re poor

And will always be so.

We make our own wine

Bake our own bread

And the music we play

Is pure bliss in your head

Let the shopkeepers hustle

And scrape for a living

The getting is good

When Le Boheme does the giving”

She left him alone

To take in the scene

Came back in an hour

To refill his red

He smiled at her

With a smile that said

“Thank you, I love you, 

Can I take you to bed?”

She smiled at him

And looked on the scene

Where the artists were

Cheering and laughing and dancing

The thinkers were sitting and drinking and dreaming

And the music was flying and falling around them

She bent to the man and kissed him to his core,

Whispering “It’s not me, but Le Boheme you adore.”

Le Belle Reve

The day starts fast

I work and I labor

Pausing only to list

The tasks I am able

To finish with work

Like a busy old clerk

With no direction

But dissatisfaction

In such a haste

With no time to waste

Lonely I pace

Alone in my race

When caught in my stride

I see her beside

A building I know

An alley I’ve seen

I cross to her side

I make myself seen

Her skin is soft

Or softer than cream

Her eyes dance around

They twinkle and gleam

I’m under her spell

I know what I mean

Taking her hand

Having no plan

We run down the alley

Into a lost land

Step out on a mountain

Majestic in beauty

High on a slope

And so far to sea

She smiles a whisper

My eyes do believe

I let her take lead

To see what I’ll see

In time I adjust

And weary of lust

I check my surroundings

What can I trust?

I’m on a beach

With my woman of dreams

She wades in the water

Says we’re a team

Tells me she loves me

Says it’s to be

Says not to grieve

For she’ll never leave

Lost in her stare

And so unaware

I have no measure

Of how I got where

Complacent and lost

In eyes so soft

I have no motion

I’ve drank of her potion

Reality grabs me

And then around me

I see what I need

I need what I see

My eyes they arrive 

On a lonely blue sky

Empty of stars

And so unalive

Dropping my gaze

To meet with her face

I see the same sky

In her weary blue eyes

She walks on the beach

No footprints she leaves

She walks on the water

And dives in the sea

I beg and I plead

I swim out to sea

But she never surfaced

Why did she leave?

I dive down deep

The ocean floor I creep

I search under rocks 

And old fallen trees

Till the life leaves me

I search and I pray

Till I become free

Under water so grey

I wake on the ground

I look and I see

There’s no one around

No one but me

Alone in an alley

That I’ve never seen

Alone by a building

That I’ve never been

I think on a dream

Fragments of scenes

Skin soft as cream

Blue eyes with a gleam

Strings & Keys

Strings in my arms, pull strings on guitars

The music is sent and received by the stars

Fingers are keys on pianos you see

Our body’s an instrument, not a machine

Keys play fingers, pedals play feet

Performers get played every day on the street

Whether they see it, whether they don’t

The stars see them and give them a home

If only I knew before it was over

The head of the strings was really my shoulder

If only I’d seen the strings and the keys

Maybe the stars would have sent it to me

Maybe I wouldn’t have died in my sleep

Maybe this all wouldn’t be just a dream

Now I never can know where I am

I could be blind, stuck in Hell

Stuck in stereo, moving in motion

Am I in limbo? Or is this Heaven?

I tell you this only to set you apart

So run to the hills and string up your harp

For nothing they teach you, and nothing you learn

Can fly from the stars, straight to your heart

So pick on your lute, send me a tune

I’m up in the stars and I’m ready to groove

My strings are now your strings, my keys are your keys

So tune me and play me and make me believe