fridge poetry

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Avoid you

"what do you think you are, some young hip thing"

meh

I hope its apparent that i'd like to know more.

3

desperate headboard flutter

I was a lover

Brown
Storm
Eye
Ground

open heart surgery

showing you rightly now

they're never going away

Evidence

What court could be superior?
What time could be better?
When falling down.

Just...

A Cinquain

Ms. Salt.
Intelligent, beauty.
Clumsy, hysterical, sparkling.
Like her too much?
Divine.

Wishing never changed a thing.

thank GOD

I just saw Erykah Badu's video for the song "Honey" for the first
time... Thank GOD. I've always really liked her, but that video feels
like it left me with the minty afterglow of changing my life while
maintaining my sense of self.

Plus, it was just funny as hell. Proving lovers are the best satirists.

teaching?

It's weird passing through my old broad ways and avenues. A teacher asked me last week if I had ever taught before, because it seemed I could clearly remember what it was like to be a kid back in those uncomfortable chairs. I took it as an immense compliment, but more striking - I hadn't even thought of it. I pass through my eight grade experience every day, taking the same bus I did then. And it's filled each way with the children from that school who now occupy my old seats and terrorise my old teachers. How could I forget really, what it was like to be there? It surrounds me everyday. The plucking sound of strange afterthoughts filling the echo space between the walls 'round my brain. Wishing to be unseen, but noticed. Talked to, not down to. 

Funny enough, I find something is true for these little ones the same as it is for the septuagenarian set. I can't talk to anyone my age. I've never really liked my age set. It's not the generation I wanted to be a part of. I wanted the nineteenth century, where it was all right to be a little obtuse. As long as you had the gravitas and brut brilliance to surprise them in the end. That's always been the object of my learning curve. Slow, but sweetly entranced by the thoughtful and serious side of life. I've always been able to get on much better with those whom clearly had set in to or were well past their mid life crisis. Two of my best friends are 52 and 57.

But here I am getting on perfectly well, and in fact, rather enjoyably with these lovely little splendours - none of whom have exceeded the threshold of 11 years. I think most people in between are so worried about everything facile that they have lost their intrepidity and thirst for new states. There's no competition in high school, but setting a timed task before a second grade class is liking tossing a skirt steak into shark infested waters. They voraciously devour anything you give them. And they are still refreshingly without sarcasm but posses some of the most biting wit I've ever heard. 

I've never taught before, and I still haven't. They're teaching me.

working music coming

So I held myself up all weekend, except for a brief Dmetri Martin interlude with my fav Josselyn. The result: a slate of new compositions. One is currently being mixed and it's acoustic version will be on www.theblueavenue.com by the end of the night. The rest are being packaged and purposed for new album material. I'm excited to finally move some of it forward after a few months lyrically hibernating.

And for me dad, I included a bit by a commentator you've become familiar with recently in one of the tracks. "He knew when to cut his losses. Nothing became his life like the leaving of it."

Light lost

The stars,
They hang over this city.

When they wobble and weave, you know tremmors in your gut. And the
price that you find while falling, is a fearful fit in such an
uncomfortable shape..

In my embarassment, I might forget to poll my self together, and for
whatever I did - I don't know how I did you so.

See, there's these stars.

And they hang for days in the passing night.

They reduce distance and pull it tight around the face of the earth.
And the time that blesses your silent sleeping body is more than I
could keep.

You see? The stars?

They're falling.

Morning sky

There's just something about the skies of Los Angeles. Sometimes, I
think they're all that hold me here. Sometimes I think they're the
best reason to leave. But there's no denying that they're beautiful.

Slate Grey Monica

On my way
Work is Waiting.
The ocean is dark today,
and the weight is fading.

The air, it smells like jet fuel
And your heart, the beats ring
Like thunder claps
over the waves

Capital Change - state of the day

It's raining here in Los Angeles. The travail of living off an ocean I
suppose. It certainly makes travel... Interesting.

So, my friend and I are working on a white paper for another campaign.
Its good to be back in it, working the ideas and making them fit and
lithe. The total net effect is always a question mark, but we want to
help. We live in a sort of political wilderness here in California.
For once, we're more than just an ATM and an afterthought. And it
makes me feel a little more like I own this state, that it really is
the state I was born in. Here I am, trying to help, to make something
more and contributing on a couple levels to a few different campaigns.

I'm not, nor have I ever confused myself with, a significant player in
my field. But some work is finally paying personal and developmental
dividends. I'm anxious and excited and satisfied.

But its still raining, and I've a feeling its going to be a long night.

_______________________
John Massey

(Sent from my mobile)

Avenue of Hope

"For the man with the morning in his eyes"

Small laughter

Sometimes its the little things

stars are presents

Last night, I was walking home from dinner with a friend. We looked over the horizon and coincidentally saw the new moon behind a whisp of clouds. Then I turned my head upward, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, there was a beautiful present star field. I could see Orion and Ursa Major and even the faintest hint of Mars. It was a gigantic and full field, but they were stars. I can't remember not seeing a purple sky at night in this city. It's been that way forever. And then by chance, there it was.

It was beautiful and it stunned me.

quick update

So I've become a precinct captain for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

That's not time consuming at all. And there's the work. Lots of that. Which is good.

I'm tracking some new stuff for "CONFIDENCE/COINCIDENCE" on some weekends at the beginnings of the mornings.

Too tired to write too much... sorry.

Providence?

Oh, Iowa. How you've consumed me.

It happened rather quickly. Nancy and Hoyt arrived a few minutes before me to the bar in Santa Monica. One of California's blogs was joining with an organisation called Drinking Liberally to watch the returns. I came in and before I could turn my head around to count the faces, MSNBC had called it. I felt the hand on my back, clapping it. I ignored the swirling thoughts and looked up into the eyes of ascending hope. He's an elegant charm about him, I said later that night... after discussion of Alpha Girls and Vassar Boys, and an impromptu gathering of the ignorant tight-ass club of Santa Monica Liberals. Dinner on the promenade and the rush of impact on the geometry unfolding as we stood there living it - Kucinich, Biden and Dodd out, Richardson would follow suit before the end of the night.

Barack Obama.

The bump will fade, and the glory will dissipate - but for a night, as it did once before, the United States did something remarkable and good. They rejected on both ends of the ideological spectrum the triumphant imperialism, the braggadocio and insipid naiveté of our wandering time in this dessert these sixteen years.

This country is always waiting for some thing, some one - to ignite the substance of things hoped for, while all too often ignoring the evidence of things not seen. It would seem that briefly, they took up both and gathered between their teeth the reigns of an instance of providence.

way back machine: 1986

So, while I was in New Jersey (*shudder) I took a very thorough trip through my history in documents (audio & visual). I have plenty to share, but I wanted to get this out because it seems worth it. 

This is me in 1986. Riding a toy bike. With a bucket on my head. It's a brilliant picture. So, clearly I was cooler and smarter when I was three... And I'm sure that's not surprising to anyone... but I think it's lovely. It's my fathers doing, the bucket. And any other day of the week I'd probably try to make him feel bad for lobbing a bucket on his three year old son's head... but then I remembered that we share the same knuckle-head sense of humour and that it was hilarious. So I sent the pic to my other hilarious acquintance (Fatty) and she gave me a good piece of advice. As I'm in the middle of working on my new album (I know you all can't wait for it (*shifts smile upward in delusion)) ... she suggested that it should be the cover to my next album. I agreed immediately... I'm still shaping up the set list and need to make the principal recordings on about half still, but the title has already been decided: "Confidence/Coincidence". I don't know entirely what that phrase means yet, but:

I think me and my bucket fit it's theme perfectly. 

for tracking purposes

hello world. so, this is my new years resolution. My latest attempt to keep some sort of regular dialogue going having to do with my life/friends/world. 

Usually I start and then things get busy or I use this as some artistic jumping off point... obviously I should leave that sort of thing for... you know, real artists. 

So this will be a regular old venal blog, except that hopefully it will involve more people and be a better chronicle of what some have told me is an interesting perspective. I'm hoping this will be the clearing house for the events/experiences I want to make available to ridicule/interest/insight. I hope someone has something interesting to add at some point... 'cause jesus, i don't think anyone wants me to go on too long by myself. 

PS. also, i'll try not to be too calculating or reserved (i.e., a politician) when posting... so ya'll can keep me real. Or at least try too. You know with all this morbid obesity, I'm prone to making insensitive and selfish remarks.