Don't read this... It's not for you!

"Rings and other jewels are not gifts but apologies for gifts.  The only gift is a portion of thyself... Therefore the poet brings his poem."

One of my favorite writers, a man named Emerson, wrote that.  He would go on to explain how cold and lifeless it is to go to a shop to purchase an object that tells of another persons talents.  Don't be fooled by the material, look instead to beauty of the soul that molds it, that nourishes it and gives it willingly to the world. Surround yourself with those whose value extends beyond accumulation of monetary gain and you will forever be rich beyond your own imagination.

Please take these opals as an apology, they are not my gift to you, this is...




I give to you, the two I knew, before you knew yourself,
A promise in a poem that I'll share with no one else.
These words are yours should you choose to share
They belong to you and have been scribed with care.

I give to you the sky of blue and all the earth beneath its view
The trees and stars, from here to Mars and the breeze that's blowing through.
A touch, a step, a secret kept, and the wondrous world awaiting too
This though, is just the start of the gift I give to you.

A tender kiss from wave to shore, a chance to breath and to explore.
A glance that's shared with passerby, a conversation for you to try
In foreign tongue, a myth undone and a mountain range so high.
This gift I give is knowing that life's limits leap beyond the sky.

No house or car or movies star will hold it's value long
No, the treasures sought by many will not prove to prolong
What's real is yours and mine, every bit Devine, and heard in every song.
The gift I give is knowing the best things in life, to you, already belong.

Jump from the platform of regret.  Live the life you deserve to love. Love the life you live.
How well do you know yourself?  Knowledge that doesn't die comes from the whispering of the soul. Propped up by the confines of sinking, stopping.

Dwell on yesterday and it will unravel the thread of your mind.  Live for tomorrow and it will never come.  A single moment only comes once in a lifetime yet it is where we spend eternity.  Swirling singing soft snow settles soothingly upon our shoulders.  The globe that confines is made of glass.  What a clever prison we reside in that gives the appearance of absolute freedom.  Make a man a slave and resistance is bound to ensue, convince him he is free and you will have a slave for life.
Passed by plastic princesses, dancing delighted at the beauty of their own globe.  Force applied to fingers, furiously finding freedom.  The act of shattering that globe, terrifying. We've been warmed for years by the fluid.  Seeking something beyond submerged security is scary.  



Movement is life.  Not even the water in the ocean can stay there forever.  We too must ascend to the heavens and be spread to the earth.  However, before we go, it's not a bad idea to wash up on a distant shore from time to time.

A stroll through the brightest parts of madness

Only by allowing the chaos of the world to enter the expansive landscape of the mind will we ever know the endless beauty it contains.  Fire parts the mountain and divides the bitter solitude of forever.




Tired is that mind that controls the legs that stand for nothing.

The greatest communicators in history have been misunderstood or overlooked by over 95% of the world.  If your voice causes just 5% of people passing by to feel your music or allow your art to touch them you have succeeded beyond measure.  If that moment sparks the creation, the inspiration or the causation of another's art, then you will be forever alive, immortalized in an endless chain of human experience.  Concern yourself not with the 95 percent.  Rather find strength in expression, find oil on canvas. 

Bobbing motionless in a sea of sharks.  Unseen by the busy eyes and frantic step of a generation on autopilot.  A minute, an hour, seems to drift.  Only two of a thousand drop coin in the cup of those in need.  

When we cease to halt and enjoy the art in front of us, when we refuse to help our fellow man our humanity dissapates.  We are once again the animal. 

After two hours 1 person stopped to view the art.  As soon as they did, three others followed suit.

Is it fear that keeps us from looking up? When one does it gives permission to others to follow. A species of followers, like fish in a flock. We buy certain brands in an effort to show others our originality.  We wear them while stepping in stride with the rest of the world.  Everyday we buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people that don't actually care.  There is one truth in life and many things that matter, none of which being the name on your blue jeans the cost of your car.  The less you want the more you have.

I sat for hours attempting to construct the perfect sentence.  All that came to mind was the vast expansive beauty of her eyes, galactic in innocent shine and size.... Perhaps I will try again tomorrow.

Tired is that mind that controls the legs that stand for nothing.

Trust

I felt the sound of the world and smelled the heat of the sun
Reached my hands to the stars and seized the life from one
I used a lariat to harness the body of an idea
then took a breath and with it exhaled out all my fear.

I found in truth that there is wine, a shifting paradigm
A loosed tongue, a life undone and lost a love Devine
I met my mistress Minerva toward the ending of a circle
She reassured me that nothing rhymes with circle

Snowball fights in August.
They happen now and then
They bring you clean and clear the soul of all the pain that it may know
While Bending the branch of time again.
Snowball fights in August
Not as uncommon as you may think
You've got to go a-ways, I know, but the feeling is distinct
Of taking shot from friend or foe
Of a snowball thrown in August and the place you'll grow to know
Cause for a snowball fight in August the highest mountains you must go
Or find yourself flipped upside down in a land that's down below
A snowball fight in August is a thing you otta try
Cast away those shackles and live before you die.

What if where you're going is where you've always been
What if all your about to be's are really your remember when's
What if you could see a bit of hope in me
What if money's not the end

How can I open my world up to you
How can you start to trust me too
How can we start to be free
How can you speak out while she's holding me

Loved and lost and loved again
It's true I drank away my only friend
I can't begin to see the hurt I've caused
Because of you I stop and pause

We'll breathe a breath again one day
We'll watch the children laugh and play
We'll sit and sing the song
Of all the right and the wrong we have done.

We get so few

I met a moment
She touched my world
I let her go
She stole the cold of my soul
But I let her go

I made a memory
As Water molds the stone
I let her go
Never felt at home
When She let me go

I missed my mark
An arrow crests the wall
I found her here
A drop spark on fire falls
I let her go

Thoughts in a van

The moon and stars,
A muse for hours.
A lite that lingers
loving like an artists finger's.

This place, still wild...like the heart of a child.
A dance, a day, a night to play.
A chill so real it's hard not to feel
So cold
and alone.


Never stop embracing that child from within.
Sing a song, write a poem, do a cartwheel in a park far away from home!
Live for today, tomorrow is a myth.  The who we are not the what we have becomes our greatest gift.
We have this moment to achieve a better version of ourselves, to rise and fall, to do it all, to place our fears upon the shelf.
Feel the sun grabbing at your naked skin, run and play throughout the day and never grow old again.
And never stop embracing that child from within.



I wrote a poem today and said most of what I wished to say.
Though It became a challenge toward the end ...
to make it live, to make it fly, to watch the words ascend.
It wasn't till I stopped trying that the words they came to me.
A lovely lesson learned in letting life's mind live free.



I want simply to sit here all day long and write a song that proves that we are not gone.  That we remain the same, no less humane, not just avoiding but removing all our pain. The people who I speak with have many things to say, some are good and some are bad but most have forgotten about today.  They gather for tomorrow like a squirrel in an autumn chill, people have forgotten that this moment is all that is real.  The size of your TV or the name that's on that degree mean nothing to me.  You see, these are the things that keep us from being truly free.

How Far I've Come

If you only knew how far I've come since the day you walked away.
If you only knew the hardship in being cast astray.
If you only had the heart to stay,
You'd see how far I've come, since the day you walked away.

The who I am, the what I know continued every day to grow
Every part of me better than the one you used to know
For all the times I waited, and when you didn't show
The who I am, the what I know is from the pain I pushed below

If you could see how far I've come would you still have left me then?
Would you know that my potential had not yet begun to begin
When I think of the strength your leaving's left me, I just have to grin
If you only knew how far I've come maybe we could start again.

But the who I am and the what I know now belongs to someone else
Their faith in me has summoned something surpassing worldly wealth
The day you walked away was the one I moved toward health
The who I am and how far I've come belongs entirely to myself

life is single handedly the most painful, beautiful, horrible, amazing, gut wrenching experience.  Like you, I have one.  I have one chance to be a better version of myself each day.  I have one moment that is in no way encapsulated.  I have one moment to scream that I love her, I have one moment to be the best of myself and not judge those that have fallen below that same line.
I often miss the mark.  I often come off too strong or not strong enough but I can say that never, not once, did I give less than my everything.  This is our chance to inhale, to breath the viscous, stinking hell that is life. Somehow we have been given autonomy.  We are our own anathema, we are the plauge that scars the face presented to seas of waves that could no better support us than they could a leaf adrift.
This life cuts small, cuts small adrift in a sea of sharks.  Life is in no way our demise.

the novelty exists in those poor souls who have little more to offer than a pretty face.  a flash of flame that has little hope of greater contribution.  longevity is in no way a product of random occurrence.  character runs deeper than the shallow depths of ones hair, it transcends the trivial curves of taunt skin.  money, prowess, sex and deception are the coins that seem to trade hands.

I'll walk until my feet are bleeding

I've seen things, man. I've seen 14 countries in the last two weeks. I've seen a women do things with a Ping pong ball that defies every college anatomy class I ever attended. I've seen the inside of burning buildings and barrel waves alike. I've seen two wars and all the hell they bring. I've saved lives and taken them. I've seen the apex of human kindness and cruelty existing in my own heart as well as in others. I've seen the finish line of several Ironman races and the inside of an octagon. I've seen seen a women selling weed brownies at sunset on a beach in Costa Rica while doing a yoga class with half a dozen Scandinavian women, yes I bought a round for the group and indulged. I've seen a Beautiful blonde Russian women invite me for a naked midnight swim off the shores of Thailand. I've seen strangers open their homes and their hearts to a homeless, unemployed veteran. I've seen the inside of a jail cell and broke bread with heads of state. I've been kicked out of bars, universities and countries. I've stowed away on trains and jumped from planes. I've loved and lost and loved again. I've lived enough for a hundred men. The life we get, we get only one. I refuse to stop living till the living is done. We get one chance to cast away, the dirtiest word you can ever say. In your life only one thing can stop the go, it's your fear of living and that foul word, no. If hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul, the only way to keep it flying is to answer all invitations with an enthusiastic, "Let's roll!"

I don't want to loose your hold on me

People speak of talent.  There is no such thing as talent. Quite simply there is a person that worked harder than you.  People use the word talent the way they use the concept of divinity.  Talent is an explanation for how someone could be better than I am.  God must have done that.  God didn't do that, the collective hard work and experience of an dedicated person did that.
People call Mark Ziya "talented" every time he picks up a guitar.  I know better.  That man has no talent.  That man sat angry in front of a Johnson Millennium amp, guitar in hand, until his fingers bled.  He doesn't have talent, he has something to prove.  Stop giving credit to talent, start giving credit to agony, start giving credit to being the smallest kid on the bus, start giving credit to the part of you that would rather die than come in second.  You are talent, you are capable, you are your own hero!

I gave my everything

truth is a spurious devil.  

Truth tells our febel mind that it is correct.  A sinister whisper falling on the footsteps of an


What color are your leaves.  Is it your autumn or your fall.  In what particular circumstance and fleeting attitude are you embracing this day , this season?  Your truth is no more relevant than the color of ink on this virtual screen.  What you possess is the greatest farce of the human race.  Lucid is the dream that you are in, real is the play unfolding before your delicate, feeble mind.  Your truth is no more or less collective reality than that of Hitler's.


How much do I know?  I know all that I have lived.  I know all that has been told to me through a perpetually jaded filter of a life lived by those with regrets.  I have a lifetime of tainted and otherwise corrupt memories salting the streets of my feeble mind.  I have little more than a drowning chance of knowing what truth is than any mislead creaton which exposed themselves to the realities of humanity as any other.  I know no truth.  I know only what has been feed to me.  I know only one more thing than most, I know that I know no truth.