Same Man In Reverse (Yes)

I can't sleep.

I'm eating a Popsicle
under the heating blanket
The curtains are open and little silver rivers run down the window.

behind me a cat drifts off.
the room is slightly dark.
the whirring of a few fans and the blinking of several tiny lights.

and somewhere over the water
another room is slightly dark
the whirring of a few fans and several tiny lights

in the broken dark glaze of
the moonlit window panes
sleeps the same man in reverse dreaming of mirrors and haze

the room is filled with books
but knowledge floated here before

the past is made of downy cotton
the future is full of claws
and out there in the universe
the sky is full of stars.

RIP DADT / Fuck You John McCain

I should have known what total fucking idiot he was based on his choice of running mates but this has solidified it. Fuck you John McCain. You make old white guys look bad enough, so can you please just shut the fuck up? You are 80 fucking billion years old and the world you are trying to make decisions for isn't even one you will spend much time in-this is MY world now-and after me if will belong to someone else-so stop acting like its YOU that will be inheriting the place. Its not you-its some 12 year old kid in some small mountain town in west virginia who loves his country and is just discovering that he likes other boys.

Your outdated morality clause is expired. You are the rude party guest telling people the dinner party is over while you are being excused from the table. Your service to this country never gave you a right to warp it's basic fundamental rights. If you cannot figure that out perhaps its time to step down and let someone make decisions who has a real stake in this world, not someone who wants it 'the way it used to be.'

And DADT? Don't let the door hit your tired ass on the way out!

Hatred Into Beauty

Like an empty blank canvas
with a fresh and open wound
The only pain I ever knew
an actor taught to bleed
where the blood once congealed
a row of flowers grew

When The Rain Falls (Space Bunnies In Love)

when the rain falls
just before the snow
wash away all the leaves
with cinnamon and vertigo
tastes of felted seams
fly by astral travel
I'm sitting by my data bank
waiting for your call

vacation in Atlantis
step into waves to
watch the rain
pools of fire, mercury exploding
the colors of victory
paint beautiful losers
someone you could smother
as the rain hammers
taps drummers in thunder
like a hundred dancers
in a musical just for you.

there is nothing else to do today
but sit around drinking tea
reading over old postcards
with pictures of the sea

gathered tattered remnants
of lifestyle magazines,
fast cars
superstars
they belong to you
big man, clothes like a king
protecting little kid dreams
graffiti on bedroom walls
every word saved to sing your
song, you can tell
every night
when the rain falls.

On Sigur Ros

"Only music this beautifully far out could fit a film so full of fantasy."

on the video for Glósóli

Uncredited Starring Role

You came out of a day dream
changed things I always
thought would seem
unfathomable, improbable
from the wreckage of
my destroyed ego
but I had to let go
of the handrail
cast a different sail
standing here through torments
setting up one big long shot
why do you think I'm still here
filming this movie?
you can follow along
but there's no plot...

You can be anywhere
that I'm going this evening
follow me like the moon,
worship me in heresy
and behind that the skies
anyplace at all
full of monsoons hateful waiting
burnt forms reflected
on disintegrating clouds
with storms that change your view
and you fall in love,
like ancient statues
are said to do
who could predict this?
from weather to season to icy solstice,
no one had ever seen
angels with wings like you.
---------------------------

couplet thingy
(I've always had a thing for sound / who made your ship run aground?)

Status

Well, I have been neglecting my postings here and at the other blogs because, well, the darn computer with all my files is still down-and it had about 12 things I wrote but haven't published that I was hoping to put up soon. that goes for the artwork and photos too. sucks.

Thankfully my back is continuing to improve. I may grab a bunch of older poetry and songs(I wrote a lot more of those back in the day than I do now) and post that up from the other Mac-I have a few favorites that it think have held up well over the years. There are pieces on that computer from as far back at 1997 so that might be fun and interesting. Maybe I'll do a retro week where everything that's posted has to be at least 10 years old? Perhaps...

Oh, and I love Bob-my life size teddy bear. Yep!

For Bob - where the magic happens

Just a bridge away, but never very far...



<3

Because my cat's kidneys are worth $60

Usually I don't go gaga over pet accessories, and for years these sorts of things were made out of plastic and cost WAAAAY to much money, upwards of $150. Josquin has, since being put back on dry food, taken to also drinking from the toilet again. This is not something I want him doing even though I understand that cats are instinctively drawn to running water because to them, running water equals "fresh" water and is therefore more desirable. My guys are both swishers in that they swish their little paws around in their water bowls-to clean them-but this often dirties the water, ironically making it taste not that great. in the wild, running water would carry that away. Several people on Catster have said they used this or another model from this company to get their cats to stop using the toilet with what appears to be very good results. The one reason I know they will go for it is because I once had an indoor fountain that eventually had to be moved outdoors-because I could NOT get the cats to stop drinkning out of it, and that was scuzzy water too! just the fact that it was running made it like Superwater or something. plus they loved drinkiing from where the fountain had 'falls' which is almost exactly what this little device has. I could keep it in my room and get rid of having the cats food and water in the kitchen.

Plus, its kind of cool looking and being made of stainless steel means it won't break.

From a cat forum suggesting only 'cruel' pet owners keep their cats indoors

My two 12 year old males have always been indoor cats. I live in San Francisco on a very busy, heavy traffic street. My house is back up against a densely wooded area full of raccoons, skunks and other feral cats not to mention the occasional crazy drifter that sleeps in the trees. This is not an area where feral cats live long and I often hear their fighting and losing. It would be far more dangerous to my cats if they were outdoors here. Both cats have gotten out once and in both cases they were terrified and clung largely to the immediate area near the house they knew. They have windows to look out where they see bugs, people and other animals just a few feet away. They get fresh air on a small private deck full of plants(not poisonous) which is cat proofed. they are not devoid of contact with the outside world. The bigger factor is making sure the cats are active, happy and eat right. Sometimes people take their pets for granted-or lives are just busy-and don't give them enough engaged play time and affection. That is the bigger factor -I think- in whether a cat is healthy and happy indoors. Cats are remarkably adaptable but no matter where you keep them, both options have pluses and minuses. I think its a case by case basis as to what is best for your pet and realistic for you.

Lemurs In The Ruins of Alexandria

his soul blindfolded
her body in a cage
drown our sorrows
as did Iscariot
at the haunted cafe
they love to see through
lost in the deserts of persia
where women dance for you
and they serve amnesia.


I thought you liked
your honey spiked
which way to the exit
you just sent a sext it
midnight view over look outs
left my watch in your back seat
waiting for a miracle
as the clock keeps
a beat..

bent over in the garden
we bleed on the roses
afforded a view
and a few thorns too
lemurs wake dreamers
rented room in Alexandria
absinthe makes his bones
shine right through you
too much to fondle
in the flickering light
as it dwindles

we don't have to make it
all the way to cloud nine
pull off the path
won't have to wait
just one place over
and a lot less crowded
on cloud eight.

Unfinished / Obvious / Violence(theme)

Dad are you there?
Yeah, I know
you never answer
but take a look at things
the state of things
would make you think again

the well oiled machine
drifts into stasis
erases the achievement
of those lost in the past
no mountain escapes antiquity
the end of all things
nothing is ever
built to last

when I look in the mirror
half of you looks back in
the split second before
the lights go out and
I look away

could you tell me
when the other bookend
is coming for everyone
I'd trade places with you
but that's beyond on the pale
and you're trapped
in a metal book
instead of floating
on the sea with
a thousand sails

from a father
to a child,
who is knocking at the door,
would you come and see?
the shadowy outline
there at the doorway
is it really me?
let those tears roll
paint memory away
you can make this energy
whatever you need it to be
but its time
to let it all go
like a madness halo
like an angel melting in the snow.
-------

thank you vini for violence*

Spaceman Down

was going to post something on facebook about my family and realized it sounds too sad and would likely only elicit sympathy responses, or worse-more comments from my sister and the rest of the 'family', neither of which I want. It just has not been a good day today. the only daylight I saw was through the window in the bathroom. thinking about food makes me feel like throwing up. Otherwise I spent the day in bed, pulling the covers over my head and wanting the world to go away.

Dealing with my family has become impossible. My mother has now come to the place in her addiction/OCD/Hording that the home she lives in is no longer habitable, nor is the house the business has been in habitable-the house doesn't even have a working kitchen and only one toilet and no shower or bath. The house she lives in has one working toilet and a bathtub-each one in a different bathroom. the house is full of dog poop and urine smell from the dogs she doesn't clean up after, unsanitary levels of bird dust from the 20-30 birds which all still live in the house, which she also doesn't seem to be cleaning up after. Add to that moths which live off the waste bird seed the birds throw out of the cages and on to the floor and what is left of the carpet. The rebuilding from the fire she caused has never been completed so there are holes in the walls, the ceilings and floors in both homes. There are also holes in the walls in every room of the house-not from construction but from rats and mice which have for years come from all over the neighborhood to feed on the birdseed as well. There is construction debris all over the house, the backyard and what is left of the garage. But wait! there is more! Have I neglected to mention she has been shopping pretty much non stop since the mid 1990s? And not things she needs or has ever needed. Two very rare Limited edition Eames' Rosewood bentwood screens(at $7,500 a pop) and a solid walnut stool, also by Eames($900) sit in the dust caked boxes she bought them in 14 years ago having never been used or even enjoyed. Of course its hard to enjoy them when they are surrounded by 47(and counting) large danish floor lamps, 12 full dining table and chair sets, 7 headboards(for beds she doesn't have), hundreds of troll dolls, thousands of christmas ornaments(though she hasn't had a tree in over 16 years), and hundred and hundred of cardboard boxes from orchids she has bought that sadly, mostly die in the boxes they come in because they never actually make it into the greenhouse-one I helped build over a summer as a teen. Not that it would matter as she has not properly cared for it and just about everything that isn't epiphytic is dead. This is how she lives, day in and day out. She spent the insurance money from the fire(she caused)on ebay instead of finishing the repairs. So she took out a loan(at 64) against the house itself to 'finish' the construction. She should have just repaired what was there and left it at that.

But if you read this far you know THAT would be too easy and pragmatic. Instead she decides in the middle of winter to totally expand the house, moving the front out 10 feet and expanding the kitchen by 3 times its current size. Then buying a $5,400 refrigerator when a $500-$800 would have been overkill. As it stands now the house is semi-finished and really, if the truth was told, not safely inhabitable. and she is out of money, even claiming to my sister that she is broke, not paying her bills, not taking care of her animals.

Funny...last week she managed to spend over $1,000 on ebay on what? plants, more furniture and...wait for it...xmas ornaments-even though last week she sent out an email saying she wouldn't be having christmas this year. Which is like Siran Siran saying he won't be visiting his homeland this year. of course she didn't send it to me directly but through my sister.

That would be my sister who has for the last 16 years lived in the THIRD of my mother's homes paying $600 a month for a 4 bedroom house. a house that should rent for $2,400 or more. In fact she was saving so much money she was able to buy a car-but not just any car-a limited edition Pontiac trans-am millenium model, a sports car. Shitty on mileage but horrendous on insurance. Of course because my sister was working for my mom and her partner's business she got ALL that gas paid for-for free! All she had to do was pay the car payment and even got a reduced premium because my mom added her to the company insurance policy. While she was getting paid $24 an hour!! She lived the good life, partied, went to Vegas, went on trips with her friends and got two purebred dogs-pomeranians. I later found out she was also doing the same thing for my brother who drove a cadillac, lived at home and made good money working retail-she even paid his credit card bills

Oh yeah, I should mention that during this time I was living in my car or sharing a flat with 5 other people, eating Ramen noodles and ricecakes and making $8 an hour-barely getting by. When I asked my mom that christmas if she could take me grocery shopping(I was literally starving, eating at Glide memorial,etc) her reply was "Well, things have been tight with the business, could it wait until after the holidays?"

That year the company posted revenue of over 2 million dollars.

she kindly offered to fill up my gas tank-not out of her pocket but from the business' account. I accepted but later regretted it as she never forgot to remind me of that fact for years and years. So I got $22 worth of gas and my brother and sister got thousands and thousands of dollars of free gas, insurance, food and free AAA coverage, costco cards, VIP tickets to see Phantom, you name it.

Oh, I would have gotten a costco membership too-Susan even gave me the card with my name on it-like everyone in the family got. However, when I went to use it I was told the card was no longer valid-at the register with a cart full of stuff.

Me: the account is closed?
Agent: No, it says here its still open.
Me: then why doesn't my card work?
Agent: Well, only your card was canceled.

I didn't understand so the nice agent turned her monitor to face me and there it was "Account holder J Davis called to terminate card: Steve Davis from account". So she didn't forget, and it wasn't a clerical error-she did it on purpose. Why?

Why? yeah, why. Here is why...because years ago I recognized what was happening with her OCD when it was just in the early stages. Everybody knew something was wrong but they were all benefitting from her so everyone told me to mind my own business- mom was "fine" and I was the homosexual weirdo who had no right to tell other people how to live their lives. When I turned 30 I finally broke down and tearfully told her how concerned I was about her, her life and weather she was happy or not-because to all concerned she clearly wasn't happy. That I loved her. Her response will stay with me until the day I die.

"fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Its my life, my money and my business. I am perfectly happy. mind you own fucking business and stay out of mine."

Sigh....

Now here we all are roughly a little over a decade later. My mother is almost broke, the houses are in shambles(including the one my sister lives in)and her physical health is fading. She claims as many hoarders do that "the stuff' she owns prevents her from doing anything about 'the stuff' in her life. My brother lives out of state in Texas("as far as I could get away from this family")and clearly wants nothing to do with Susan or I and thinks we should leave mom to her own devices. And where is her partner of 30+ years during all this? Like all dysfunctional people he kept enabling her until he too realized what was happening and started drinking to numb the pain of having to deal with her, her constant nagging and belittlment-and her rage. Now he, after 50 years of smoking and 4 heart attacks he can barely manage being alive and Susan-who thinks of him as her dad-thinks he will die soon because he has resumed drinking. now the fun part! my sister want me to 'fix this'. situation.

My sister has made herself out to be the martyr but she is far too immature and emotionally volatile to handle the situation appropriately. She sends email after email attacking me for not doing enough NOW, YEARS after I was the only one who said she needed help-even going as far as trying to get the family to hold an intervention at the time. Now I get attacked for trying to reason with Susan. Her emails have wonderful supportive statements like "You need to get up off your ass and start acting like you care about mom-I can't take care of her all by myself!!"

and at the same time stabs both Stuart and I in the back in emails to Mom that include things like "2 weeks ago i reached out to my brothers...YOUR SONS n was flatly denied when i asked if they can help u. When u are ready to stop trying to control everything n accept help let me know."

So she's passive aggressive, hostile, angry and immature. Wouldn't YOU take help from her? yeesh! But I have to help "fix it" even though I tried and tried for years otherwise I am "just like stuart". My FAVORITE person in the whole world to be compared to-excuse me while I light my face on fire! As if! If anyone could be said to have done LESS than Stuart I haven't met them.

And its the holidays. Yay! right? well, I'd like to be all sunny and ice cream but right now its just darn near impossible. Getting out of bed to change the cat box is about as much energy as I had all day today. The apartment is FILLED with storage boxes of various fullness. every surface has glass nic nacs on it-my beautiful birchwood shelves sit cluttered with packing supplies and more of Mark's crap as does my standing bookshelves. Even though there is room for more books I now have to store stuff in my room because I can't actually GET to the empty spaces on it. The kitchen is a mess and almost too disgusting to cook in-making a meal there means I have to scrub everything before I can even start to cook-I even keep my pots and pans in my room because I got tired of reaching for them and having my hand come back covered in greasy dust. I can't get the mildew smell out of the bathroom-what the fuck is it about chinese families and carpeting bathrooms?! I'm a very clean person-a neatnik-so I spend almost all my time at home in my bedroom-with the door closed. I am broke because work has sucked this year more than any other and I just can't seem to find a full time job. What jobs are out there I am either not qualified for or over qualified for and with everyone else out of work...its not been great. i could really use a break from it all, really.

And yet, behind me sitting asleep on the bed are two cats-one of whom almost died this year because I was too broke to take him to the vet-who love me no matter how fucked up my family and my life is. And then there is Bob, who I wouldn't have made these last several months without. and Friends-I have some really great ones. So much to be thankful for-I just wish there wasn't so much rain right now.
-------------
Oh, and I just pulled a flea off tweed. Great! now I fleas to deal with too!

Animals / December Sun (history)

the pig smiles
behind me
been sitting on the chair
all day
while I slept
dreaming of you

---------------------

that's not the fashion
these days
you put a patch on
the path from
here to there
from here to eternity
black and white movies
double indemnity
multiple identity
one person in the past
someone else tomorrow
and yet another year after
year will always produce
another one its no use
introduce you to each one
sax and violins
fill in the spaces where
clocks tick
but turn their faces
towards history

I repeated a section of this earlier in "trap" from a few days ago. I just liked the cadence and it felt right to use it here again.

not saying goodbye

when we said goodbye
all the potions became drank
empty bottles
wobbled and
fell down
cast my gaze
back to years ago
the milltown express
crashed through the
gates of disention,
my childhood depression
not letting on
half-hedged bets.
this is my life
not saying goodbye
too much wine left to drink
and the rum
and the vodka
one more glass and
I love ya madly
let it dry on the sink
the picture of your mother
she is dead
on the wall in the background
so who cares what she thinks?
(*unfinished)
==================
A true artist will never stop