stuttering sam - blurb

walking contradiction - v1

i am a walking contradiction, an affliction of the mind cuz there’s never enough time for balance.  the dance between opposing sides, opposite views and two highly charged poles.  wishing to be told which way to turn in an intersection that yields both ways.  i walk the walk and talk the talk depending on the day.  i confuse people with my correct usage of grammar when i'm not dressed the part.  i play a starving artist on tv, but in real life i'm an athlete who works out just to eat. i slur words while i drink for further annunciation, i create from a slate, blank with innate trust, till the words combust from inside my ribs and out my gut onto the page, cuz i crave to communicate in such a way, i won’t play with your emotions unless i have to, not afraid to come after you if you won’t listen. 

the river

The river carries its collection of ice dancers

With the chivalry of a knightly offering

Cascading on, the crystals collide with the grace of a chandelier stirring

In the breeze, of a southern summer, far from a season remembered

The sun offers a glimpse of the time past, warm in its memory

A reflection of hues, a history of horizons harboring exquisite sets to mourn

Sparkling on the frozen veneer like sequence proud on a dress adorned

Clad for the occasion, delighted to have been invited in such distinguished company

flickering thoughts

Flickering thoughts flash like movies not yet documented, whose dramas have played and played out, un-rehearsed, raw, and uncut.  Scenes spark with dialogue you wish you had encountered, lines you would have articulated had you been prepared. 

Attempts and failures plague with haunting delight from a script you work to deny each time it arrives.  Talking to yourself as if you’re actually directing this drama. The production of being discovered all while discovering you has been the extent of this plot.  Plotting to climax at the imax in 3-D the day after avatar.  Turning yourself blue, cuz you haven’t stopped to breath through your motions, the pictures you’ve derived on the slides that continue to race like powerpoint, unneffectively. 

All because you see, you can stop the slideshow and the make believe. The scenes don’t have to haunt you if you don’t want them to.  You can choose the characters and create the context with each dawn of the new day. The past is just that, past….and long gone with all the old re-runs.  No more Saturday afternoon matinees or reality marathons.  Stop running from the guy that always has an ax in that deep dark closet, turn the light on before you tip toe into the empty room, and don’t creepin' in there when you know you are just looking for trouble.  Cuz those of us on the outside, screaming at the big screen, can’t help you when you don’t see it for yourself.  We frustratingly hold our hands out into the air wanting to shake you, but we know in the end that you’ll have to figure it out on your own or else find yourself buried next to the token blond…who of course, already got the ax.

Make a pact, to let it go…the past, and the future.  This isn’t star wars or futurama, another storyline to manifest your dramatic episodes, all because you can’t let go of the heightened fever, your thermometer rising as the plot thickens all before the fist commercial break. 

Awareness before all this ensues will help you to lessen the addiction of constant distraction, predictions of conversations that may or may never even happen.  What could you do with all your time if you weren’t so pressed to stress over all that may never even be?  Could you see with a pair of eyes that actually illustrates clarity?  How bout the inner voice you could hear when you clear the static on the blaring stereo playing in surround sound 24/7?  Would you even recognize the beat, thumping peace within you awaiting your presence and your silence?  

Let go, let go, let go, you are not those movies, you are not this show.  You are a gift awaiting inspiration, growth, maturity, vision, opportunity, but only if you are able to see past the nonsense that surrounds us.  The commercial version of how we should live.  Give your dreams a real glance, because those passions can actually be more than just a hobby. 

Even if you‘re told otherwise, each of us has our own talents, hunger...drive.  It may hurt a little it may even take some strength, but from what I’ve heard, the stinging of regret is far worse than taking the leap and letting yourself fall.  Get back up and fall again, the greatest of our kinds were the best at getting back up to their feet.  Those heroes ate their cheerios or something like it, just like us.  They breathed the same air and basked in the same sun.  Looking down the same barrel of a loaded gun that tempted failure, yet they had the courage to push it aside.  Not for pride or for fame, but for passion, fervor and need.  Heed their power of intention, take up a collection of prophetic prayers and play your cards right.  Your deck, your game, your fight.  I don’t care where you came from or who put you on this planet, we all have a mission to pursue what so few have been brave enough to take on. 

Create on your canvas, stretched out, the skin that covers your amazingly complex system.  In thanks and gratitude for what you’ve been given.  Shifting focus onto yourself, because in reality you’re no good to anybody without moving yourself forward in the direction you’re intended to sail.  Even if you can’t swim… dive in and cool off, from the heat on the streets blazing up from the concrete.  The sweltering air that suffocates in the thickness of the summer, humidity from the sweat that falls from all those sweating their pay check or their pray check. 

To buy what, happiness?  Well there sure isn’t plenty of that to go around, cuz look around, what do you see?  It sure ain’t happiness.  I see frustration and pain, poverty and mass production.  I see a lot of people focused on what they don’t have.  With the miracle of life that is their own embodiment and they see nothing.  Nothing good…no wake up to say thank you, all for a new day.  No thanks to the sun, the stars and the moon for all that they do.  No thanks to the mountains, the oceans, the trees for all their memories and absurdly abundant forgiveness. 

Instead we have stress tests because life is hard and for some, just not worth living.  Giving up their heartbeat for a chance to see if it is actually better on the other side.  Yet heaven could be here on earth, if we unwrap the gift of the present each morning, like Christmas, or Kwanza, or Chanukah or whatever the hell it is you celebrate, like a birthday, each day. 

We all have our haunts, our past, our affliction, but as we’ve learned over the years, there is no boogie man in the closet, it’s just a story that we told ourselves long ago and we choose to keep getting scared.  More frightening would be if we sat back and threw it all away, because of our fears, because of our need to be locked down to the things we’ve been told all our lives… and we believed. 

Crush the old vhs tapes and the sorry dvds, write a fresh screenplay that depicts a land where taking things for granted is impossible.  The characters all take responsibility for their actions and make choices for the greater good.  They could also come with the perception that there is no other time than this, to act, cuz tomorrow may never come. 

Where they could “be all they can be”, without a slogan from the army, because what else is there really?  They could be programmed to understand that it is all up to them and they would in fact take advantage of each breath well breathed.  This isn’t utopia, this is the potential, these choices, in us, are just that powerful.  

my muse

She shows up like she’s never left
Seducing without reason, but rebellious rhyme
Tempting my heart to beat beyond measures
Sending fantasies wittingly above the clefs

She stays a while, makes herself at home
Stunning me to trust she’ll stick around this time
Stroking my conceit, leaving me high on her glory
Soothing the angst that’s her surrogate in my time spent alone

She sweats sunshine and exhales stardust
Sauntering about in magic and mystery
Moving me to tears I don’t even recognize
Swallowing passion like poison, drunk on her lust

She shields me from the scent of fear
Shelters from the flight of failure
Harboring my hopes with angelic grace
Staging promises to nurture and revere

She smiles with scintillation, her eyes evoke serenity
Senses flattered by an adoration dismally unrequited
Escaping through the same door she meandered in
Slipping through my fingers clenched desperately

Nothing on my own to salvage
Unaccompanied in my own despair
Accepting friends in fear and failure
Gripped by the claws of a mindless binge

A blank page without ink, taunts me to a familiar shame
The pen settled near the page, too heavy for my hand
A lost appetite abandoned, nevermore forgotten
A broken heart all the wiser, she is not to blame

My goddess
My love
My soul
My dear

I sit and linger for your coveted return,
Longingly…
Devotedly, I will let you back in

if you can

If you can, you must
And if you can’t….trust
That there’s a will and a way to play the game to save face
Replace all the damage done, see the lives won, loves lost
Those who came across true passion from words and worlds passed
Mysteries crashed, timeless echoes from masters, who had all the answers
Of how to survive and thrive on honest energy, loving daringly
The person within who was created divine
From a place we can only find when we take the time to let go
And grow into natural beings, and be for the believing
Take no survivors, for it is us we are killing, shilling for shilling
Our actions speak volumes, voicing how come
We just can’t break free from our demons
Our reasons to hide or bribe our guides
Our distractions, our lackadaisical reactions
To coming to grips with the gifts we’ve been given
Despite the prisons we lock ourselves in
Afraid to bust open the cell walls of our story
Our delusional glory, the good and the evil, the comedy, the tragedy,
Our play playing out, our minds caught in deserts drought
Of monotonous manifests, socialized disenchantment
The way we were taught and all that we bought
The systems, the lies, the uttered cries we will never forget
As we regret getting lost on this set of our own show
Our lives being told by a narrator who doesn’t know
You, a director who never met
Yet, he knows all the jokes
Listen, as he provokes this all to stop the madness, stop searching for happiness
Create it as it was given, hidden in blessings of talents worth addressing
Motives worth unfolding, years of hidden holdings
Drop the façade, wad up the script, the costume, your false lips
And meditate on a new beginning, levitate beyond these sold out endings
Make a mark worth making, strike a path worth creating
Open your heart to your dreams and your soul to your drive
Act on salvation, be patient in your creation
You came from a purity worth recognizing, a perfection worth glorifying
Remind yourself of your divinity and the infinity of the power you hold
Working in accordance with life’s true goals
This is your warning, your wake up from death’s mourning
Open your eyes to the possibilities imaginable, the pursuits available
Neglect is not an option, regret, only a past emotion
Make yo’ momma proud, step beyond the crowd
And unfold the wings desperate for air, the petals awaiting unanswered prayers
For sunshine and lust, the harmony that has been hushed
Begin…today, right here…now
If you can, you must…and if you can’t…trust.

breath of awareness – for the american lung association

Don’t know what you got until it’s gone, as joni mitchel would say. A play on words that can’t be heard until they’re the last. The last word or the last verb: to breath. Just a breath of fresh air that we forget is so vital. A sign of sincerity in the recital. Gratitude toward each inhale as a reminder that our lungs are still fighting. A job that goes unrecognized as we unfamiliarize ourselves with their existence. Or until they stop working that is.

The chest rising and falling in a remarkable fashion. Without choice, without voice they do the job they’ve been given. Twenty thousand times a day, on average, they obey without contemplation, or compensation. They show up on time and punch in before we ever know they’ve arrived. A loyalty we might not ever understand, cuz we forget to give praise, or even a raise for a job well done. A promotion on the notion of life well breathed.

Maybe stopping to smell the roses or the hint of rain in the spring air. The suggestions that go unmentioned. The moments that go unnoticed. The exhale lost in a startling breeze, the howling wind in the bending trees. Still nothing. Ignorantly…we don’t know, nor do we perceive, what we got until it’s gone.

We pollute are lungs and take each breath further for granted. Disenchanted by the gift of each gasp. Each powerful inhale as the oxygen is transferred to our bloodstream, like a mountain stream offering life to all its tributaries. Without boundaries it gives, gives, gives and we just take, take, take our lungs, our air, our breath for granted. Like we’ve actually been granted the right to do so.

Choking on smoke we invite in. Standing in the cold, shivering for one more drag. Unconsciously…obviously. Otherwise why? Why would we poison our position on survival? For a revival not until the hospital when we finally wake up. Crushing what we’ve been so fortuitously granted, by the heels of our own shoes. Tossing them out the windows as if they were worthless and now we’re breathless. Not stunned, not taken a back, just breathless. Because we couldn’t see the gift in us.

Many are denied this gift without ever taking it for granted. Without ever dragging denial into their lungs. Still they battle disease. For those people, often children, we should be ever more pleased. That we’ve been blessed and give our best to recognize what we’ve got before it’s gone. Before it’s our last, or before it’s a struggle. Before we are coughing into our fists in a fight to stay alive. Before we drown our allowance and forfeit our hand we’ve been given. We should stop and listen.

To the life in each breath. Watch it rise and feel it feed our bodies. In each exhale revere the genteel expulsion of waste without haste to cleanse our systems and keep us running smoothly, or just …running. A jog or a stroll, a race or a marathon. We have a lot to be thankful for. Be mindful, don’t destroy. Your body’s not a toy to disregard when a new one arrives. Be grateful, you are alive….and breathing.

Cherish what you got before it’s gone. joni mitchel without a song. Whistling a new tune. A skip in the step. Breath thanks…so fresh and so clean, clean…consciously, purposefully, just breath for awareness, breath for justice, breath for the peace in all of us.