#chakazard

[chakazard]

Please be here for a while

As if anyone has any choice

Staring at the lights

Feeling just on the wrong side of futile

There's never any need

Lies breed pain and blood

And without your energy

The heat might consume

Everything that's left

Grind up your uncertainty

and spit it at the fuckers first

But please be here long enough

Please be here for a while

[chakazard]

And in this corner...

society has declared itself the enemy

of everyone who’s battling eternally

“Money beats soul every time

Just stay sick to make that dime”

and carving us into micro tribes of one

All the lights are flickering except the one’s that’ve shattered

Don’t try to tell me feelings don’t matter

Broken hearts and wallets frozen shut

If you’re not furious I think you’re nuts

There’s got to be a better way to run a world

You’re not your job or your possessions

you’re not a lover friend a more distant relation

you’re a person all your own

maybe it’s time to put that first

When we can barely drag ourselves out of bed

Some lose battles with their bodies

Start to turn against their heads

And they try to justify that any one don’t deserve bread

There’s got to be a better way to run a world

[chakazard]

On opposite sides of the battlefield are impatience and impermanence. Like the only way to stop yourself from wanting out of here is the realization that here is nowhere to begin with. Sitting up with a start after hours of insomnia frantically researching ways to slide into the pool of good behavior. Comparing the sounds that can pass through different kinds of trees so I can build a helmet through which only music can pass through

[chakazard]

Sun in an empty Monster

This room is so cluttered it’s not worth writing about With the boxes that recently held barely worn shoes and this year's razor if only it were empty But these oddly shaped walls are the only ones I have to hold my aura so I'm thankful the same Because I am compelled to be contained and I can't shake the memories of how good it felt when I was free to spit all my deepest thoughts to anyone I barely knew and even my secrets went out to seven or eight people and I don't know why I don't talk to them all anymore. But it can't be proper in this century to speak of things so freely. But I cry for the interactions (a word, a nod, a signal, a little breath) because it's the only way I've learned to ask for anything (not out loud).

One thing you can't learn from biology is not everyone can breathe the same air it's out there and the things I think keep me alive I've barely even tried but I know it's not enough substance for anyone I've learned to care for so I stay here and I gulp the local oxygen and always look like I'm drawn by a different artist than my surroundings and it's either draw attention or pull on the mask against my will. So every day more details get filled in and I pretend that's what makes my headache and not the change in seasons and my weak sinus cavities because I can't admit something as mundane as my body brings me so far down.

So we go to our different corners and draw our ideal spaces and there's barely anything in common. Mine's like pieces of different puzzles pulled forth in a time machine and yours is pristine and fits anywhere but here. So maybe we should leave you say and my knee jerks and says how could I, I'd be alone forever, but what's the difference when you can't pick up the phone anyway? So maybe we should leave and set up posts in a new city or state or country only I can't consider because when I was a child I couldn't handle change and now I can't tell anyone who knew me then that it's changed even though I've been burying those feelings since I was sixteen and figured out the name they gave me didn't fit right. Never been to Chicago. Never been to Cleveland.

But you say it's too late to change and I've never made my beds so I'll have to sleep in what's here. But if it's too late to change why am I still breathing so I breathe until it clears me but only for a minute because I'm still not being heard and I'm still not being open and it can't be too late because I'm still breathing. I'm still in my thirties I can still try to invent me. I can still figure this out but I might need some help.

[chakazard]

Conversation

I tell a lot of jokes about playing with words and with genitals

But my favorite joke is the one that makes me cry

It's the distance between my heart and my actions

It's the words that form in my chest but before they reach my teeth they inevitably die

It's having a heart that cares deeply for hundreds of people

And having a mouth that struggles to manage a "hi"

I want to talk about why bad art still matters and faraway planets

I keep defining myself hoping that if you know where I stand it will suffice

Because talking out loud makes me feel naked

And I'm the one wearing long pants on the hottest day of july

And weeks go by between minutes when I remember

Im not avoiding you it's myself I inadvertantly hide

Every time I sit to write lately I'm only more honest

Which is impressive considering my lifetime aversion to lies

And I don't know where to stop but it doesn't matter if nobody's listening

I could go on forever if the conversation has only one side

[chakazard]

I got lost in between a memory and a dream, as Tom Petty sang in the great You Don't Know How it Feels.  Inferno, the  newest single by the Felice Brothers, makes an attempt at a crude map of that same territory. 

The human brain is a mysterious thing.  Some moments stick in there for the rest of our life, sometimes the context is utterly lost and we're left with scents and shadows.  The characters in the song are teens at a movie.  The time seems hazy.  I can't tell if this is a memory, a dream, or a retelling, and I don't think Ian's narrative voice does either.  Unimpressed by Jean Claude van Damme, they leave early and smoke a cigarette.  I can just see the parking lot of a movie theater, smoke billowing on a cloudy night as the endless what next?  rolls over our heads.  I've been drawn so deep into the song I can't guarantee I'm not in it now. 

The harmonies on the choruses are real goose prickle raisers.  If ghosts could sing.  I mean the song is absolutely beautiful.  Taken apart, the music and lyrics could each stand on their own as works of art.  Together and i am brought to tears.

When I said this was a map I wasn't lying.  The way home from inside a dream is always barred, Dark and Overgrown.  Phrases of shaky uncertainty line the lyrics (I can't make sense of this, I fail to understand).  And who's that singing?  I think it's Kurt Cobain but I can't be sure.  I'm not sure of anything my senses can't recall.  Is this what it feels like to be an adult stuck in a teenage memory?  Everything sounds foggy and sleepy, the chords and those ethereal harmonies do not exist in the waking world I am sure.

The teens become birds, swans not owls, but things are still not as they seem. Into the fire they go. Swept into some other world. Is this waking from the dream? Getting that high school ring and finding yourself in the drudgery of adulthood? The loss of the idealized young relationship? You wait for that last chorus, expecting another round of Kurt Cobain, but it could be someone else doing something else. But it never comes. Instead we hear an angelic twang as the song doesn't even fade but ends, so abruptly and seemingly prematurely, as only dreams do.

My general recommendation is to seek out anything Ian, James, or the prodigal Simone Felice have their names on, but this one is special. Go listen now and see what half remembered dreams and miscoloured memories it brings to your mind. Then go write about it. I promise I'll read it if you do.

[chakazard]

Explain the tension

The feeling that breaks

Behind my eyes

When songs and stories

Hit that searching longing

Defiance

Nowhere home

The enemies inside

Consolidate against

The invasion from without

And salute one finger

Burn all bridges

Turn self inside out

Because at least

Your fingers did the turning

Safety and wholeness

Be thrice damned

And the train

Is always just about to come

Ticket or no

You know there'll be a seat

Sing it with me now

Til nothing is separate

Except that which has been

Forgot

[chakazard]

This town eats dreams

And I've been living here for so long

I don't know if I've ever had any

This town eats dreams

Building up its appetite

In the strange transformative hour

When the sun gets stuck

On the way down

Under flourescent lights

The bitterest alchemy

Dreams shredded into pulp

And me more bitter than the next

Because I had none to start

Or else they're buried too deep

Under other people's handwriting

I don't know how I got here

I don't know if I was ever anywhere else

I thought I would be safe

I never had any dreams

None in the safe pouch of attainability

Not even in the miscolored stretch of transcendence

But that's for another time

This town eats dreams

And I thought I would be safe here

But it snuck a claw into my brain

And now I can't escape

Returning every week

Trying to rotate my eyes

So I can at least follow the sun

No chains to climb out of here

And swing like the triumphant spider

Diminished by scissor

Diluted by copies

And no map out of the frozen land

This disguise is so thin

But nobody ever sees through it

I almost want to shake them

The shape the colors the lacks thereof

Dull in the way

That only fake things are

But you never see

Even when the sun hits it

Time moves forwards

But they dont tell you it moves backwards too

They gave me a name and

They checked a few boxes

And they drew and fit me

The way they were told

But none of that was right

And none of it was me

If it had been me would I have had dreams

And would they have pulled me out

Before I got to this town?

Always intangible

Better than speaking in the wrong voice

You can hear it in the language

When you pick words for sound

More so than meaning

And they told me which way was up

And I had no reason to doubt

But now I don't trust anything

Unless I'm told to

Time moves forwards right?

And boy becomes man

But what if that boy never does

Was he even a boy at all?

Where did he end and I begin

When did I know who I am

A nice shiny star on the calendar

I can point to that date

And commemorate the turning over

Of correcting and forgiveness

It was not the fault of anyone

That I was misnamed and dreamless

Time moves backwards

I exploded into being in adolescence

And whatever existed before

Was a precursor in the wrong dimension

Shaking scrabble tiles out the sky

To spell names and nouns

Tumbling over definitions

I'd need a weapon

To collect one I could live

Proudly and shine on the wall

On the other side of the sun

Is this the reason I am a collection of enemies

My flag has a hammer a pentagram

A sickle and yes 50 stars and some odd stripes

I never denied where I was from

This is the land where anthems grow

And hands are clasped

Twelve eyes on me

And not a one gets the shape right

They squint and try and erase

The parts they see that just can't be

I wouldn't say I was hiding

It's nature's cruelest camouflage

Begging to be seen

By not known

Not even by my other sides

Keep the front to itself or pay me back

My eyes are the moon

My hands the stars

I am dirt I am sky

Do not deny me the chance to be both

My shapes are multiple

My voices malleable

This town eats dreams

And shits out screams

That possess our voices when we are alone

Sobs leaking out our eyes when we least expect

We must build ourselves up

Clasping hands

Doors and windows facing east

Asserting our existence

As parts that reflect the whole

The air we breathe in

Remains air on the inside

Connecting us to what is outside

Striking the notes in the appropriate order

And singing resounding harmonies with the past

This town eats dreams

Steals smiles

Maybe it stole mine in the present

And swam back to scoop them up

From the past

And that is why I think I never had any

The possibilities could swim

Between the ears forever

This town eats dreams

And locks us in shapes

Freezes us in cubes

Little train cars on a dead end track

But the shapes of half formed dreams

Leave an impression on us

And we can use that to ignite something

Hopefully