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Old lungs and ancient breath For all of those who fell When dark hearts raged within And calculated terrors Put sanctions on our sin Floating in the cosmos To protect illusions web Living under fire Trying to kill the living dead Asked to give your dreams away And then to give your life Before you even lived it Or got to know your wife I bow on this odd day And ask to live as true Relaxing both my eyes That they might see the world for you Thank you for your service Thank you for your sacrifice No words can do it justice In some room with scattered mice I hope you feel the love The world is giving you To show us ways beyond Our limitation's view This day is to your memory I wish I could remember you but I never saw your face As the terror in it grew I never saw you smile Or play jokes on your friends never heard your stories Don't know how any of them end. But I can see your sacrifice With eyes half blind from age, When you're young you only feel it, Nothing's broken from the cage. And too touch upon surrender You had to breath thru lips of death Air that should have come with time Old lungs and ancient breath. But for youth it's so much wider Its all in realms of dreams Ears of disappointment Have not yet heard their violent screams So your sacrifice is total It's unbearable to give But that's why you're a hero And give reason now to live.

Punching boredom in the gut

Breakless

You told me I should call an album Breakless Or was it Unbreakable? Or was it Brake Less? No, it was Breakless. I used that word/non-word

(is it even a word?) And you said, “You should call an album that, a rock and roll album.” You said,

"Joe Arthur Breakless, how tough is that?" I asked Jenni, “Do you like this?”

She right away did not but I did. It came from you and it's weird, odd, tough, punk, detached, wrong, right, irreverent, reverent, silly and serious just like you. Joe Arthur Breakless Not Joseph? I wanted to ask but didn't. You always called me Joe, which I liked.

It was as if you always wanted the essence of things without the fluff. Why be a Joseph when you can be a Joe? And like a moon orbiting a planet, it was hard not to always just agree with you. When I asked you for a band name, you suggested Cooz without missing a beat. Cooz. The best and worst band name ever. I ran it by a few folks who were almost always horrified by it.

I never said it came from you and it always made me smile, your audacity in everything you did. A real Cooz. I had never even heard that word before. I had to look it up. Another word down to the essence.

I asked you one time what you thought of so and so's book.

(it was a book everyone loved) “Between you and me?” you asked. “Yes, of course.” “I don't like it much. Too much fluff, too much poetry speak.” For you poetry was simple, tough language, not a series of adjectives describing a bridge going into worlds unknown, but rather a breakless cooz punching boredom in the gut.

American Music Awards

Some dreams are simply not made to come true.

I remember being a kid watching TV upstairs in my parents’ room, throwing myself game-winning – Super Bowl-winning – touchdown passes in the end zone of their bed.

I would toss the ball and then leap for it, diving thru the air and catching it for touchdowns every time. I must've won a thousand Super Bowls this way. I was a kid living in a painful world and susceptible to living in fantasies. My imagination knew no bounds. So when the American Music Awards would come on, I went straight into that world. I would accept my award alongside The Oak Ridge Boys, who seemed to be undefeatable,

or whatever pop stars won ‘em all– Michael Jackson Mariah Carey Sting These were the low-rent Grammys and I swore or prayed to whatever God was listening that I would make it there, as I threw myself touchdown passes in a small bedroom in Akron.

But some dreams aren't meant to come true and today in the gym, I saw an ad for the American Music Awards. Lady Gaga and Katy Perry looked to be the new queens of it The fucking Oak Ridge Boys are probably still winning those damn things. I'm lifting weights now and not really throwing touchdowns. Not sure if it's failure or growth, but I feel far away from award shows and the need to be in them. Somewhere, a boy just fumbled the ball at the one yard line and Kenny Rogers counted his money at the table. My parents still sleep on that same bed in that same bedroom in Akron and I still catch the footballs I throw myself every time,

only now those passes don't appear anywhere but in the vortex of my mind. Somewhere in another dimension, me and The Oak Ridge Boys are singing a song together, standing on a pile of trophies in the junkyard of celebrity. Who knows? Maybe I'll make it there yet, but for now I'm glad I don't give a shit. Touchdown!

ghetto preachers and razor blade legs

It's hard to get the things we want

Ain't it, Alex?

We can work thru our masterpieces We can crawl out of hell into some dream of acceptance We can lift our obsessions out of damaged mental receptors And glue them to wax For the world to pawn and deal with A ticket for love

The birth of bliss

What is a dream but an avenue of salvation?

And they tell us how we should all dream big But what they forget to mention is A dream is a dangerous thing You need a dream to get thru But a dream can kill you

And rock and roll is the salvation of fools

Ghetto preachers Slinging the hash of power chord crashes And razor blade legs spreading in red pleather graffiti light She's inviting you in She's wanting you to walk her home She's trying to be like you She's trying to relate

If I could talk to you now Alex, I'd say

Thanks for showing me how strong I've been to survive any of this (and I've survived plenty) And I'd also say Thanks for the songs And sorry that they never really sang for you Or maybe they did But well I guess they didn't get you to where you needed to go Or maybe they did

Who knows?

mountain bird's retirement dream

I could never understand why someone would retire

Until retirement called me

When the thought of no longer doing what had been the central part of my life

Filled me with joy and liberation rather than dread

I knew it was time

To really consider

A life just living

No pursuit of nothing

I can go beyond the rat race just by deciding to

I can give up

Surrender

With so much life left

Be driven by nothing

Be free

Is this dream real?

Even with its thought

I feel freer now

Just to discuss the possibility

With myself feels like a break through

In a sense, I feel I’ve done it all

And in another way, I feel like it’s never really been out of the shadows

But that’s ok too

Maybe there is victory where failure loomed

Maybe I can sneak out the back door

Instead of facing the firing squad out the front

I still love music

And I love making it

I’m an optimist and so I could keep striving forever but where does it say

That a life in pursuit is the only life there is?

Maybe I’ve given enough

And all that’s left to give is to give up

Maybe that’s victory

Reaching for sanity

Reaching for surrender

Who knows what I would do or could do with my time and my mind?

I could paint but

The life of an artist is no better

Perhaps no life is good

Sitting on a mountain top lusting for God

For surrender in meditation

A dancer in New Orleans

An insurance salesman in Ohio

A lawyer in Alaska

I could still go to college

Or maybe escape to India or Africa

Assume another name

Call myself Mountain Bird and start a cult

Or else sell meth in Jersey

Or be one of those guys who wears a trench coat and has hundreds of stolen watches

and chains just inside

Or maybe move to Buffalo and become a regular in the flea market circuit

Or join a circus as a tall man

Or learn a trade like carpentry or shoe cobbling

Become a pimp or tennis coach

Or a high school math teacher

Or just go back to cooking in a diner, which is what I did before all this hoopla

Of chasing stars and dreams all over this nation and many others

I had my taste and it was good

I got further than most

And not as far as many others

But I’m proud of what I’ve put out there and I can hold my head high

As I go look for a life doing something simple

And off the grid

Disappearing into the wilderness

Of this giant-sized life

plastic meat and robot chips

A note to you, dear reader,

These are works of fiction None of this happened or is happening

Even if it happened, it didn't happen

We are wooden horses on a carousel We are bumper cars In the nudity of night In the left field of a falling light None of this happened None of this is real Now I am free to say anything

Also, anything that points to a belief

Or a belief system Is also nothing more than an illusion

For you see, dear reader,

I don't believe anything or not believe anything

Those matters are for better men than me

I'm an empty vessel

Marked “Eternity”

I'm made of plastic meat and robot chips Don't confuse me with human Don't stack any cards of belief of experience here I have no belief or experience I'm simply letting dreams fly around And jotting down interesting things I see Leave the wars and the revolution to the others I'm a bird on the horizon I'm a flower wilting in the corner I'm a rat going into a crevice I'm ice cream on the hand of a child I'm a beggar looking for mercy in the eyes of a snake

My only hope is to write it down and be left alone Don't mistake me for a person I'm a football flying thru the air I'm a fire in a trashcan in an abandoned parking lot

I'm a beer on the bar of some dive on Hollywood Blvd.

I'm the loveless monster you see in the mirror

I'm big foot baby Don't expect me to surrender Let me be free to jot down the perverted murders in my dreamz None of this is real

gods and rodents

At first they love you

You occupy heroic status with them

And they let you know

To them

You are close to a god

A king

A saint

A servant of the righteous

The best kind of being

Their savior almost

And It's compelling.

As embarrassing as it is to admit

You take it in

Maybe they see something know one else does

Maybe they see the truth

Sure, you can see that there is something a bit off about them

But against the barrage of extreme flattery, it's easy to dismiss

Deep mental illness for a quirky personality

Magical even

And that's the trip about mental illness

It is it is close to magical at times

They are locked into compelling vision

They see truth in a certain way that others don’t

And that's great when the truth they see in you is epic unhinged heroism mixed with a pure heart of genius and love

But what happens is

Over time

You let them down

Could be something you wore

Something you said

A song they didn't like

Your image- to them- begins to crumble

And in their mind you descend to a depth directly proportionate to the heights of the pedestal on which you were mounted

And even that would be ok

If they just wandered off and and wrote you off as a charlatan never to be seen or heard from again

But this isn't the case

Or hasn't been in my experience

Thru the wonders of social media, you can track each other

And you can see the change

Their posts get more and more freaky

It becomes more obvious that the person is unhinged

Maybe even dangerous

And then comes the attack

A comment burped up from the pit of despair

Their disappointment in you and what you've done

Another disillusionment in a world full of them

And I'd like to say that that has no effect, as obviously the person or people in question suffer from mental illness

But just as their pedestal is somewhat compelling, so is their judgment of you as a fraud

For in their way

They have uncovered a truth about us all

We are all gods and rodents

All wrapped in one

Heroes heading to hell

Flung around in the shit of existing

It's hard not to get any of it on you or even in you

Joey Ramone

No art is perfect

And you can make fun of anyone

For trying anything

The more someone puts themselves out there The easier the target But those are also our heroes Joey Ramone The freaks The ones who didn't fit

But made the world fit around them

They were easy targets All of them And they felt the weight and pain of that

And they felt its elevation too

And when they were gone They left the world changed Their spirit so great It stuck around Still changing how we thought about things

Bad ‘80s radio

Bad ‘80s radio on in the East Village bodega

Or is it good?

It's Madonna

And there are 15 DX7 keyboard layers

Along with a Linn drum machine

At this point it's classic

That's what time does to everything

It surrounds it with magic

It becomes framed by life disappearing

All the ‘80s ghosts are now dancing here at Gracefully

I rode over the Manhattan Bridge in spite of the gray skies

I had to escape my bed

It was a trap of thick dreams

Hands from the unconscious were holding me there

Giving me mad dreams

One even about how sad the feud between Liam and Noel is

And I never knew I felt that way

But we all need an oasis

Anyway this poem isn't about shit

Except what they all are about

And that's that life is a magic zoo

And no other city nails it like New York

And I want you to know that I drank a small coffee

And a whole bottle of Perrier

And I also want you to know that for me

Life is an ecstasy

Full of DX7 robots and hot chicks walking thru the Village

And also to say

I love ya and hope it's good for you too

unfinished song

Your beauty is eternal Like fire made of grace The expression of the rose All across your face Love in broken shadows Dance for you and me Bumping in the light We search for ecstasy A moment of surrender Put down the heavy cross Put down the pain of heroes Put down the things you've lost Pick up the will of mercy And sing another song To the ones who've been like you Nowhere to belong

Training Day

(this ones old)

On a Southwest flight to Portland

It's a free for all

The junkies with a baby let it wail

I'm wearing a vest made out of goose feathers and nectarines

Still wearing the noose from last night's failed attempt

But no one noticed the locket with your picture in it

Or the fact that my belt is a goldfish swimming in a race around my waste

Ant bones and mother’s milk toothpaste

On the side of everyone's mouth

Southwest

We are the cheapskates in the skies

We fly thru discount clouds

And lay ourselves in the cruddy aisles

Invisible men stand on my back

My brain is made of chewing gum

You’re blowing a bubble in me now

How do I taste?

Like raspberry and jalapeño?

Or like camel toe regret?

I've been bitten by the bug

And now I want to slave with you

Let's fly this baby upside down and come in for a drunken landing

Heroes of the final night sky

The world is ending

This is the final jab of Christ

He wants his fish back

And he's got a message for you

He says,

“Just do it”

We are coming in for a landing

We are coming here for a caning

Who signed us up for this pursuit?

Was it really so bad being a porpoise in turpentine?

Or a firefly in the belly of a ghost?

Or a gnat in the god head mound inching closer to destruction in grilled cheese?

The teeth of swingers, like coins falling thru your skull, from the top of the Empire State Building

We are coming in for a branding

We are the dead and defeated trying to sing for Baton Rouge

Here on Southwest

We pick our own seats

It's disgusting if you think about it

In my chest is a cow's heart

I'm swimming in rivers of milk

As the sneezes on this devastating flight

Are like a symphony of sickness singing the Beethoven in my pants into a coma

Over my friends shoulder I watch the Brian Jonestown Massacre doc

Antonio wearing white and kicking in the head of angels

The fat dude behind me coughs like a timpani drum into the back of my head

And I guess there is really nothing to regret

Except for everything

Filled With The Magic Of You

Sometimes I go to your thing on Wednesday night You hold court there In beer-soaked song

Friends and acquaintances from all walks of life Come thru and Its become a New York thing

A West Village thing A scene Filled with the magic of you The easy way you sing And invite us in We could all take a lesson from you But then again you're not so much a master or a saint as you are An angel of the night With the key to surrender Floating just above you And I wonder if you notice it there Once I thought I saw you reach for it but I can't be sure Tho the next day you had a purple bruise covering your back So something had changed Maybe decay had set in Or maybe you were just being born But anyway, your thing on Wednesday night

I always come for you Did I tell you I love your songs? And the way you sing A drunken whine, euphoric and needy Assured and content Fixed, but searching in a basement down the stairs from the West Village hustle You, a preacher to the damned,

Who thought they were coming to save you 2 I want to do great honor to this life Don't you?

It's such a tiny and precious thing How can God see it from the stars? Our tiny dramas. Or going to get coffee Our bliss The care we cast on one another Our betrayal How we've been betrayed But isn't that our drive? Isn't that for who we sing? For the nameless opportunity we are granted here? To sing because we can

To stretch my mind to liberate truth To find myself and inspire It's all so useless But then nihilism is even more useless And you can deny the existence of God but you cannot deny the opportunity we are given at every moment to become God Or a fully realized vision/version of the cosmos exploding into itself

I heard on a podcast that there were many Big Bangs And many universes outside of this one and that in fact everything that is possible is happening Somewhere we are kings

Somewhere else we are gods looking over ourselves Judging and damming ourselves, offering salvation for anyone that could believe in us 3 Remember when we wrote that song about smoking meth in a Red Roof Inn while smoking meth in a Red Roof Inn? Things like that make sobriety a regrettable thing For as dark and deranged and dangerous as that might be Are we not seeking one more chance to be kids? Free in the unhinged grope of laughter, feeling like time has no place

And dreams are things that rain from red roofs and crawl on dirty carpets Where a thousand feet scatter to find the drug of surrender

4 And after all Love and nothing else Rock and roll

The Rolling Stones Your feet stink But baby, you're my best friend.

Even As The World Comes Crashing Down

When I went home Many buildings were broken down

Where I bought my first guitar The window shattered Bricks of graffiti I saw old dreams wander past me drunk and homeless When I went home It's not right to say there was no home But home had changed My parents were still there Yet they never woke me up for the parade I drove thru the night From Red Hook to Akron Eight hours in a van alone

Time to reflect on the woman who was giving me a hard time Time to contemplate insanity And retell stories to myself as I tuned in old blues songs and swerved over wet highways

I was there in time for the parade but I took a nap and they never woke me up It didn't matter I survived long enough to come back home To see it dying To see it changed I am lucky for that And even my father and I

Having an easy rapport

We drove around on the fifth looking for a car wash And we never found one that was open or big enough So we just took the van home and swept it out Cleaned out the old garbage Renewed it's purpose Helped it come and stay alive In this decaying place I took a picture of my folks

Walking with umbrellas in the light rain

The light breaking thru trees in the distance

The ecstasy of love coming thru That we are here To see this Our happiness and bliss and survival unified Even as the world comes crashing down

The Dream Called Eternity

The nuns are crack whores The preachers are beggars The street is a church in the kingdom of the lost I'm just passing thru And not much of it touches me It's a show for me I guess But I don't own it I remain detatched I see jesus He's raping a widow in the corner He's stabbing a leper with a snake He's mugging a child with sadness in his eyes He's saving us all again By being the worst among us I see jesus and think to run But make myself look

I saw him defeated and weeping He lost his mother He had no brother He was made of sticks He was burning He was fire. And then he was smoke And cinders And finally ash. And then he was an eagle. And then a cactus And then a tree And then I opened my eyes And he was inside of me In my heart His finger poking out Until it burst in my chest Like a balloon Or a pinata for the celebration of my soul And then I was defeated And weeping I had no mother No brother I looked up And saw that you were looking at me I became sticks And started to burn

Who here can be saved And what am I saving them for Or who? Who counts the souls lost in rotting bodies? And who believes in a God that abandoned us to ourselves? How can we save ourselves in the folly and cruelty of this place? How can we be redeemed and why should we care to be? What motivates faith but the need to surrender a will that's driving you mad? And if that's all there is then what choice do any of us have? We face oblivion starving, How is it heroic to say a prayer? We face infinity without an answer, How is it victory to say I don't believe? We are terribly small things But we are like seeds And within us lives the infinite We mean nothing and are already gone forever But within us The dream called eternity

Dinosaur Salmon

We all just want to collapse like a lung on this side of nowhere. To be forgotten and ostracized but then redeemed by the models of the world. Our faces hurt in touches of beauty lost like snowmen melting in show biz culture coming in for a landing in tarmacs of fire. We all just want an escape route laid out for us with fur coats jumping in rows of diamond jumping ropes endless fucking in champion rain and the rock and roll star hierarchy pinnacle pointing like a pyramid to the top of you. We all just want to swim in blood to be unknown mercy in the dance of those that came before in the music of surrender a note to remember. Can we not be that? One note sung by a mountain one note sung by a giant salmon (dinosaur size) swimming up stream so the others don't have to. Salmon Jesus, the savior of fish. We all just want to eat his body to bite the pink flesh and swallow to make sex and survival one to be hung up no more but free. To set madness free, theirs and ours. Let the lunacy dance on the moon. Hide it in caves of cheese and set a thousand rats free on the skull of Hercules. Let him recount his failure for eternity. We all just want red dice and snake eyes blue prints and mob scenes bus visions and the hope of the homeless the mad decaying kind which gets cold and hot at the same time as we bloom into something even God didn't see coming.

Whats it like living in New York?

(this question posed to me in a written interview)

It’s like my big brother

or some odd grandparent I’ve never met but seen pictures of,

or like a parent that’s a best friend

a stern, but respectable father

a mother who’s proud, but whose love must always be won.

It’s like a deviant friend who pushes you into risky situations

or like an enemy reaching for a knife with your back turned.

And all over the streets

many ghosts of the many past lives

contained in the disco incarnations of anonymous celebration.

You can see former selves running everywhere

like clones with different faces and names

kids drunk and turning over garbage can,

lovers drunk and making out in a park

or street-fighting punks with Bic and safety pin tattoos.

The buildings, like ancestors and pinnacles of awareness,

looking over it all unmoved and unimpressed, having seen it all before

but with the titans of history cast in rolls you barely fill

as they barely filled those that came before.

Each generation is less eloquent than the one before

less romantic

less refined

or maybe that’s just my imagination.

But the Lower East Side has turned into a frat party from Thursday to Sunday night

so who knows?

But what’s it like living in New York City or Brooklyn?

It’s like being trapped in history going forward.

A river of culture where the only way out is thru and

where it comes thru is the streets of this city

an unforgiving temple to the grace of creation and toughness of pushing thru.

There’s no place else to go

and no place else I’d rather be,

except maybe Mars,

but that’s here too.

Just before dawn

when the streets are empty and only the real freaks remain

as the nuclear sun shines red on uncovered shadows

whispering lines you can hear

from the dead who still have something to say.

Because this place is a ghost town, too,

but only if you’re tuned in to its frequency.

Because here

you become an old factory

a derelict building

an abandoned garage

where homeless dreams come to sleep

and get born and consumed.

They are literally everywhere

and they come to life thru you

as if the city blooms thru you.

It’s voice is your voice.

You are its moving manifestation

an urban pilgrim

a beat warrior

a jazz runner

a living scholar of need and how it reaches thru you

to the sky of great art

to the ears that bleed song.

The city whistles a tune

from steam coming thru the manholes in the street.

It’s beats are jackhammers digging up the pavement

making bike paths

and two-ways where there were one-ways

opening up the flow

in and out of your head

and in your head

nothing but buildings

populated by organizers of insanity

or thought police.

Voices of your ancestors,

people you never knew,

coming unglued in your dream

turning into rats and running into heaps of garbage as you walk by

holding hands with your future

romancing your past

walking here again alone.

The streets love it when you do that-

when it’s just you and the city

making plans for where to go next.

Living in New York,

like a marriage to the mob;

once you’re in

I mean, really in

you can never get out.

Currency of Love the video coming soon! Photo by @spencertunick

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