OPR (Check In – Check Out)

Dig your heels in
Kick start your hog
Boot up your computer

Ready yourself for the fight of your life
Transcendental meditation a key
Bliss awaits us when we dive

The clock struck midnight
I did not recognize its chime
The director screams Cut
And pandemonium arrives

When I sit down to write
I don’t set out to be optimistic,
Pessimistic or realistic it just happens
Or it doesn’t either way the cards must be
Shuffled and dealt

I live in a glass house, windows covered in
The steam of my own breath
There are no honor killings
It’s not paradise but we do our best

I will try to be more understanding, open minded
And kinder to the enemy within
When I was born I screamed, “I’m just a patsy”,
But no one seemed to hear and it still seems that
Way today

She sits in her room on a chair near the T.V.
Like the caterpillar sitting on the mushroom
It would appear she has all the answers when
In actuality she possesses no useful knowledge
About anything

If all we do is find fault in others what’s the point?
If we’re not contributing anything other than collateral
Damage why go on?
“Theres blood in the streets, its up to my ankles
Theres blood on the streets, its up to my knee”*

Charlie May 20, 2007
*”Peace Frog” (Morrison Hotel) – The Doors

Screened In

I escape into music and movies
My entire life a one act play
Where the hero and the villain
Are one and the same.

Forced to choose Pro-Life or Pro-Choice,
To believe in either The Immaculate Conception
Or the Big Bang and I’m not entirely convinced
Either one represents anything more than another war
On a consciousness I no longer can defend in good
Faith.

I’ve been asked where I was when the world began
And I answered right here scratching myself like some
Primate too smart for its own good. I’ve been asked what
If any regrets I have and I admit taking my cat Apple Cider
To the APL is one of the most regrettable things I have ever
Done.

I escape into the Internet and creative endeavors
Aware that what I have to share no one may actually
Care to hear. I’m screened in with the knowledge
Suicide is not an option nor has it ever been.

I’m muddling along with an identity I’m not quite certain
I any longer trust or believe in.

Charles May 18, 2007

Gettysburg

We are bleeding
Don’t care how over the top that sounds
We are bleeding like stuck pigs.

No one gives a damn
A higher consciousness thrown out with both the baby and the bathwater
A highway of diamonds mined and left barren.

Our minds diagnosed with brain cancer
Our hearts ridden with lost causes and misanthropic mind games
Our love for life traded in for conspiracy theories proven all too real.

Gimme some truth?
No longer can it be separated from cloak and dagger wild-goose-chases
Gimme some truth?
Why so you can placate it until it no longer represents anything but a misguided Sermon on the Mont.

We are bleeding from the outside in
You say the situation is not yet that desperate
And I say to you the situation is beyond desperate and has been broken and out of commission long before you hid yourself in an ivory tower with all the amenities necessary to keep you and others like you solvent for a thousand years.

We must arm ourselves
Gut instincts and bullets only thing that will now get some actual results
Street philosophers and castaway professors must extract themselves from their tenure and breathe new life where only death remains
We must find a way to dial back the rhetoric and push through this once hallowed now haunted and forsaken burying ground.

Let’s save the world now.

Charles May 18, 2007

Passion

I’m a prisoner of a war fought within.
Spending too much time inside my mind
And not enough time in this body.

I’m tired of my reckless behavior,
Tired of going against the grain
Tired of watching so many movies
Knowing exactly how they will end.

They poisoned our pets
Next they’ll come after us
First they’ll round up the artists,
Philosophers and hopeless romantics then they’ll
Come after the educators, Jews and Christians.

No one is safe from this self inflicted wound,
This stigmata we once believed noble and without
Vice. You can only live for so long alongside a
God Complex before it consumes your life.

The false-poets and false-prophets told you this day
Would come, stood in the center of town going on
And on about the end of the word and the beginning
Of silence.

When ends refuse to meet and static electricity no longer
Raises the dead what will it take for us to finally wake up
And pay attention to this monster we created in our own
Image and then so blatantly ignored.

Charles
May 12, 2007


Enemy Combatant

media soaked in blood
fear used as a tool to rule the ruling class
war on drugs
war on terror
doesn’t mean anything
empty words
empty promises
blowing in this american wind

media soaked in piss
the president of these united states
giving unto us a golden shower
as the vice president deals in black gold
and blowing away anyone who dares
question his police state politics or
questionable business practices

i’m tired of all this doom and gloom
tired of a golden horizon just out of reach
tired of words like freedom, liberty, democracy
having come to mean nothing and I’m sick and
tired of the apathy we as a people settle for everyday

i can not watch the news anymore
too much of a heartbreak
can no longer stomach the political twisting
of words and bodies as we become more deeply
entrenched in someone else’s problem, someone
else’s headache

we didn’t create this mess
we didn’t vote for these war mongers and war profiteers
we did not sanction all of this blood spilled in the name
of what? in the name of who?

too many trapdoors
too many tongues wagging and flags waving
as we go an extra mile and in fact only become
mired in more shit and amputated limbs

we’re shooting at the wrong people, killing the wrong bad men
we must turn the rifles on ourselves, burn our own villages to
the ground before it's too late.
Charles May 12, 2007

Living Proof

I feel most alive when writing
It’s just that way
So it goes..

Questioning everything
Is this sentence too long
Should I use a comma or semicolon
Why am I working in another kitchen
Ready to blow out my brains with the
Realization that the greatness I believed
Was around the next bend is just another
Stuffed shirt, another painted sunset.

I don’t feel displaced when punching the keys,
Don’t feel so out of my element or wishing I were
Some other place. The other day I took a walk down
This street I use to know when a teenager, my friend
David Molinaro lived there with his Uncle Lou, sisters
Sharon and Linda and her daughter Melissa, it was a
Time of experimentation and confusion, a time of alliances
Formed and then forsaken.

Living proof that our dreams can work for or against us
We know only as much as we’re designated to know the rest
Is made up as we travel down a highway of silhouettes and
Shadows. Kneeling next to my bed reciting The Lord’s Prayer
I hear my voice in the darkness as both a stronghold and a vice.

Charles
May 6, 2007

Jesus Wept (2007)

Crawl inside the Earth
True sacrifice outlawed
Crawl inside benevolence.

What part you playing
A sheep in wolves’ clothing,
A pragmatist with no common sense

Crawl outside Heaven
Do you wish you were younger,
Crave money or a quick fix

Will you ever be happy,
Curiosity quenched, gluttony sanctified

Crawl on your hands and knees
His Father mistook him for someone else
Crawl inside the Sun and burn.

Charles
May 2, 2007

Potential

There are lines
There is a face
There is a body

I am driven
I am possessed
I am ready

There are limbs
There is a tree
There is a forest

Potential purrs
Potential barks
Potential howls

There are lines
There is a face
There is a body

Charles
May 1, 2007