Stop Signs

Its all stop signs, its all lines that shouldn't be crossed,

Its all interpretations that have been lost in translation,

Even when the meaning has been embossed on something that redefines stop signs.

Something that erases and redraws lines for all the times curiosity gets the better of us.

But until it gets the best, we test the lines, until it gets the best, its all stop signs.

And then there's you.

And I wanna kiss you, so bad, I'd be willing to cut off my own head and just throw it toward your lips.

And you would be well within your rights to just swat it to the floor.

But I'd redefine hardcore, lying there at the tips of your toes because god knows I'd be trying to figure out some way to roll towards them.

And maybe thats crossing the line.

Maybe thats a little creepy. Did I mention that I like you?

And if I knew you better than I do I'd probably know that creepy isn't the way to go so hows this?

I wanna kiss you, like a traffic jam. I wanna move slow. I wanna stop and go like I know at least I'm moving towards you.

And there's no use weaving through the gridlock because every clock keeps ticking and tocking.

If only theres time for all the amazing in between thats been seen and heard and each word has passed between us like somewhere with someone to go, and I know I hardly know you, so lets go slow.

Like a turtle with a purpose.

Lets not miss a single minute, because every sixty seconds contained within the nearly two hundred times I've tried to coax each smile to bloom into a laugh

And the exact science of math can't begin to calculate half the time it would take to make misery turn itself into a punch line.

One thats willing to mine past silver and gold just looking for something to tell you thats never been told.

I wanna hold you like mine were the last arms in the world. I want them curled around you like the red and white stripes on a barbers pole, I wanna give you a lump of coal for Christmas and tell you in a million years, its going to be a diamond.

And will you wait for me 'till then?

Because thats when I'll be evolved enough to melt all the other brains of men on earth.

And maybe I've got a shot if all that remains are two gazelles in the Serengeti plains and me.

Of course, if you're willing to make sweet sweet love with animals... I'll totally understand.

I'm good like that.

I'll band together with whatever vegetation is left living.

Me three weeds and a rubber plant will spend thanksgiving saying how grateful we are that you're happy.

I want you to feel like that banana peel in a Charlie Chaplin shoot.

Cause its you that brings the house of this heart down.

Its you thats the Chamber of Commerce in a town thats got nothing to offer but everything everyone can't find everywhere else under the sun.

I'm done with all of the every-that.

I'm done thinking about where it is I'm going, I'm figuring out where it is I'm at.

And that has got to be beside the one who will stop me from trying to calculate the sum total of someone, as if this biological calculus has ever done anything for me.

Other than be the something that keeps me seeking to solve problems that don't exist.

Like a swat team sharpshooter with cataracts, I've missed the point more times than certain Americans have been elected to the Oval Office.

Which is always... once too often.

And lets face it, sometimes... two times too many.

But this time, I'm willing to pay interest on the penny for your thoughts.

Mortgage my mind, finance an expedition that will be find me a better way to get to know you, because I've read through the short story of my life and found that your name stands out on the page.

Your slightest look unlocks the tumblers on my ribcage.

And you can gage my sincerity when I lift my heart towards you and tell you in a million years, we will be less than dust. The slightest gust will blow it away.

But you'll have to listen to wind chimes say that you're still worth waiting for.

Don't tell me your not beautiful.

You're the kind of beautiful the blind would see if we could figure out some way to give them three seconds of sight.

When you tell me your not gorgeous I wanna pop out your left eye, and show it to your right.

Worth crossing whatever distance it would take.

Worth building bridges just to make a connection.

Because I've been secretly stealing stop signs. Repainting traffic lines so I can only go one way.

Because as far as I can tell, dedication is the better part of foreplay. And I admit it I am committed to everything I've done, I did it to make you smile because its been the largest part of a long while since I had someone do that for me.

You feel like comedy after three years of being on the bandwagon of calamity.

And I can't be bothered with the tragedy of not trying to get to know you.

I've been through enough wretchedness to know that some flowers can still grow through garbage, and you make me wanna take up gardening.

I've seen sadness drain the spirit out of this history, but the worst is yet to come.

Anyone who took the time to get to know me knows I don't run, partly because I'm not athletic, but mostly because thats life and I've met it head on.

I've gone the distance more times than George Lucas has looked at jar Jar Binks and thought, "FUCK".

And until I fit the bill, I will still fill my days trying because I'm yours. From the bottom, to the top.

And I'm not just saying I'll be here for you, I'm saying I'll never stop.

IKM, TML

In my last mourning I realize, I've always been the nothing I feared becoming...

I am the Wooden Doors

When all is withered and torn
And all has perished and fallen
These great wooden doors shall remain closed. . .

When the heart is a grave filled with blood
And the soul is a cold and haunted shell of lost hope
When the voice of pride has been silenced
And dignity's fires are but cinders
. . .their grandeur shall remain untainted

It is this grandeur that protects the spirit within
From the plight of this broken world, from the wounds in her song
I wish to die with my will and spirit intact
The will that inspired me to write these words
Seek not the fallen to unlock these wooden doors

Arise to this Mourning

No blood red sky,

no colour left in this world,

these halls shrouded in black,

halls of dust,

so empty and cold.

Thy Light

Remove society from this world. Remove every idea, thought, dream, and hope and retain a world left untouched. Replace the sun with utter darkness, replace sound with silence and emotion with apathy. Now take this unscathed world and place upon it Paulo, a damp, cold basement, several instruments, and utter solitude. This is exactly the type of atmosphere Thy Lights second demo evokes on us. Utter solitude. This album takes us to the deepest parts of our minds we never thought existed, to doors never noticed, rooms never lit.

This demo is one of the few that I own that can create such an atmosphere that I honestly need human interaction afterwards just to know I'm alive. The beginning of the demo opens with a beautiful piano passage, a bloodstained door opening inwards revealing a downward spiral of stairs. The sound of boards creaking and trembling as you begin your descent, the unknown darkness entwines itself around you, grasping and clawing at your body as it drags you inwards. Sorrow engulfs your mind, your thoughts clouded by endless dreams of desperation and pain. The piano introduction sets the mood, like a perfect movie trailer it foreshadows what lies ahead instead of presenting the forthcoming material. Like the calming of ashes after a midnight blaze, the fuzzy reverberation echoes in the darkness as the introduction comes to a close. A trepidation of senses, an exorcism of aesthetic qualities, the deprivation of hope and meaning. The second song is magnificently spell bounding and probably the best song of the demo. A mournful atmosphere only attained through death, a recording of such despair and hopelessness, I cannot understand how this man is still alive. He perfectly conveys his elegy, his cycle of life, the futility of dreams and ineffectiveness of human progression.

Instrumentally, the album is quite simplistic. Drums are nothing worth noting, simple beats repeated throughout never once overbearing the song or playing too subtle. The guitar tone is perfect, cold and bleak, melancholic and mournful. The melodies are beautiful, the solos are haunting and prodigious, and the overwhelming emotion strummed into each note is breathtaking. The vocals are in a world of their own. Harrowing shrieks of desperation and grief shaking the very facade you cower behind, your mourning walls collapse. They are honestly the single greatest part of this demo, absolutely devastating in every aspect. His hatred and solitude being channeled through his voice into the very depths of your soul, wrapping itself around your heart and thrusting itself inside. They sound human, not superficial or blatantly altered in anyway. The production is what you'd expect from an underground black metal artist, but not horrible by any means. The fuzzy feedback adds to the atmosphere of desolation, as clean production would absolutely destroy it.

A despondent aggregation of isolation and reclusiveness, this demo is beyond words. It is more than a simple black metal release spawned by children with face paint and black clothes. It is the story of solitude, the effects of loneliness, and the garnered respect for the minuscule moments of our lives you attain. When presented with something so dead and cold, you can only look upon yourself and your environment differently, relishing in what little you have in your fleeting aggregation of moments. This is the demo for those moments. This is the demo where you realize what life is truly compromised of. Go on, open the door.

She's Puzzled By This Incessant Pressure

I wouldn't bother with these questions, if I didn't sense some spiritual connection...

Might I make a revision?

...If I didn't still sense an emotional one?

Maybe the wee morning hours are playing tricks on me.

Hope is becoming a thinner sheet of ice to tread these days.

Even sprawled flat I can feel the cracks forming.

Still, however ignorantly optimistic, I no longer fear what is held within the depths beneath.

Maybe I will make it across after all.

Morningrise

I am awaiting the sunrise
Gazing modestly through the coldest morning
Once it came you lied
Embracing us over autumn's proud treetops

I stand motionless
In a parade of falling rain
Your voice I cannot hear
As I am falling again

Devotion eludes
And in sadness I lumber
In my own ashes I am standing without a soul
She wept and whispered: "I know..."

We walked into the night
Am I to bid you farewell?

Why can't you see that I try
When every tear I shed
Is for you?

For every two letters you type..

Mine are lost.

JO/The Summit/Compaq Center/Lakewood Church

Thank you for "Jubilee"...

...and of course redundance.

Reminiscence

And again we are silent.

Everything we have built crumbling beneath our feet

The rubble upon which we try to stand,

Unable to support the weight of so many years,

When we thought we were free.

When we thought we had found everything we had once aspired for.

You have collapsed within this, ready to rebuild,

Somewhere distant. Away from these nightmares.

And I have fallen beyond hope.

Milestone!

Now if only you could see it.

Two and Twenty Misfortunes

The human race,

The deterioration of the spirit of man,

Man, undermining himself,

Causing self willed, self imposed, self evident...

Self destruction.

The Crickets Have Arthritis

It doesn't matter why I was there, where the air is sterile and the sheets sting. It doesn't matter that I was hooked up to this thing that buzzed and beeped every time my heart beat like a man whose faith tells him gods hands are big enough to catch an airplane, or a world.

Doesn't matter that I was curled up like a fist protesting death, or that every breath was either hard labour or hard time, or that I'm either always too hot or too cold. 

Doesn't matter because my hospital roommate wears Star Wars pajamas, and he's nine years old. His name is Louis, and I don't have to ask what he's got. The bald head with the skin and bones frame speaks volumes. The Gameboy and the feather pillow boom like they are trying to make him feel at home 'cause he's going to be here a while. A man who just smiled the first time I see him and it feels like the biggest lie I've ever told. 

So I hold my breath because I'm thinking 'any minute now, he's going to call me on it'.

I hold my breath because I'm scared of a 57 pound boy whose hooked up to a machine because he's been watching me and maybe I have him pegged all wrong like maybe hes bionic or some shit. So I look away, like I just made eye contact with a gang member whose got a rap sheet the length of a lecture on dumb mistakes politicians have made. I look away like he's going to give me my life back the moment I've got something to trade, I damn near pull out my pack and say 'cigarette?'. 

My fear subsides the moment I realize, Louis, is all show and tell. 

He's got everything from a shotgun shell to a crows foot and he can put the all in context, like 'see, this is from a shooting range', and 'see this is from a weird girl'.

I watch his hands curl around a cuff link and a tie tack and I realize that every knickknack is a treasure and every treasure's got a story, and every time I think I can't handle more he hits me with another story, he says ' see this is from my father', 'see this is from my brother' ' see this is from that weird girl', 'see this is from my mother'.

Took me about two days to figure out that weird girl, is his sister. 

Took him about two hours the day after she left to figure out he missed her. They visit everyday and stay well past visiting hours, because for them, that term doesn't apply. But when they do leave, Louis and I are left alone and he says 'The worst part about being sick, is you get all the free ice cream you ask for. The worst part about that is realizing there is nothing more they can do for you". He says 'ice cream can't make everything okay".

And there is no easy way of asking, and I know what he's going to say but maybe he just needs to say it, so I ask him anyway, 'are you scared?". Louis doesn't even lower his voice when he says 'Fuck yeah". 

I listen to a nine year old boy say the word fuck like it was a thirty year old man with a nosebleed being lowered into a shark tank, hes got a right to it. And if it takes this kid a curse word to help him get through it, then I want to teach him to swear like the devil sittin' there takin' notes with a pen and a pad, but before I can forget that Louis is nine years old he says 'please don't tell my dad". 

He asks me if I believe in angels. And before I realize I don't have the heart to tell him I tell him ' not lately'. And I just lie there waiting for him to hate me but he doesn't know how to so he never does. Louis loves like a man who lived in a time before god gave religion to man and left it to them to figure out what hate was. 

He never greets me with silence, only smiles and a patience I've never seen in someone who knows their dying. And I'm trying so hard not to remind him that I'll be out of here in a couple days smoking cigarettes and taking my life for granted. 

And he'll still be planted in this bed like a flower that refuses to grow, I've been with him five days and all I really know is, Louis loves to pull feathers out of his pillow and watch them float to the ground. Almost as if he's the philosopher inside the scientist ready to say 'its gravity that's been getting us down'. 

But the truth is, there's not enough miracles to go around kid. And there's too many people petitioning god for the winning lotto ticket, and for every answered prayer there's a cricket with arthritis, and the only reason we can't find answers is the search party didn't invite us.

And Louis, right now, the crickets have arthritis. 

So there's no fiddles, no music, no symphony of nature swelling to crescendos, as if we could bend halos into melodies that could keep rhythm with the way our hearts beat. 

So we must meet silence with the same level of noise that the parents of dying nine year old boys make when they take liberties in talking with heaven. 

We must shout until we shatter in our own vibrations, then let our lives echo, and grow echo, and grow echo, and grow distant. Grow distant enough to know, as far as our efforts go, we don't always get a reply. 

But I swear to whatever god I find in the time I have left, I'm going to remember you, kid. 

I'm going to tell your story as often as every story you told me, and every time I tell it I'll say 'see, there's bravery in this world". 

The 6.5 billion people in the world curled up like fists protesting death. But every breath we breathe has to be given back, a nine year old boy taught me that. So hold your breath. 

The same way you would hold a pen when writing thank you letters on your skin to every tree that gave you that breath to hold. Then let it go, as if you understand something about getting old and having to give back. Let it go like a laugh attack in the middle of really good sex, the black eye will be worth it. 

Cause what is your night worth without a story to tell. And why wield a word like worth if you've got nothing to sell. 

People drop pennies down a wishing well as if the cost of desire is equal to that of a thought, but if you've got expectations, expect that others will have bought your exact same dream for the price of the hard work, hang in, hold on mentality, like ' I accept and challenge so challenge me".

Like I brought a knife to this gun fight, the other night I mugged a mountain, so bring that shit, I've had practice. Louis and I cracked this world wide open, found the prize inside, because we've never lied to ourselves. Never told ourselves it would be easy or undemanding. Never dreamt of anyone handing us anything so we sing in our own vibration, and dare angels to eavesdrop and stop mid flight, to pluck feathers from their wings, and write demands that gods hands take the time to catch you. 

So even if god doesn't, it wasn't because we didn't try. I don't often believe in Angels. 

But on the day i left Louis pulled a feather from his pillow and said, 'this is for you'. 

I half expected him to say, 'see, this is the first one I grew'.

Metal4lyfe

Discrimination

Justice isn't justice, it just is..

Your entire body shakes when you laugh, as if your sense of humour was built on a fault line,
And the coast of your heart falls into the ocean of yourself, and I am left looking for this Atlantis.
Left looking for this place that exists in stories told by old men who were there when mathematics assured them their willingness to believe was greater than their determination to dismiss.
I'm left looking for Atlantis. Regardless of the scientists that insist my efforts would be better spent unearthing clues to where the wild things went.
Try as it might, faith can't put a dent in fact. So we must settle for watching science reenact the world. As if the universe is curled around this globe, and if we consider the universe is never ending, then we are not even a microbe. We are like a death threat from a pacifist, we're nothing. But the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that "nothing is fo shizzle".
And the interesting thing about that is it ensures the principle itself can't even be a fact.
But we still act as if this time, we can see the forest through the trees.
Regardless of the soft wood lumber levees, we fall in line like reforested pine.
Its all straight rows where everything grows a little less wild and a little more hum drum ho hum, we come from the mentality that rarely sees the horror in symmetry, or the beauty in non-conformity.
We insist that for us, everything must be clear cut. But what about philosophy?
What about the tree that fell in the forest that no one was around to hear, its a little less clear, and a little more deep. Deep like, if Oprah Winfrey farts in a bathtub and no bubbles come to the surface, is there an alternate universe where the price of gas is cheap? Possible, but we can't prove it.. Anymore than we can prove that light can move fast enough to stop a monster hiding in a closet. We deposit our faith in fear, and clear our minds to the possibility that maybe we as adults secretly sometimes still get scared of the dark.
Things that go bump in the night.
And I can't prove that I've ever loved anyone, but despite the smoking and the overweight body I want to grow old with you.
Go through muscle and joint pains to the point where every time it rains we can feel it in our knees. Get arthritis so bad that every time we move we sound like two bowls of Rice Krispies.
We're all Snap, Crackle, and Pop.
But we still take the time to stop, and take the time. I'm looking for Atlantis.
Letting faith turn this fiction into fact, as if I've dragged this missing continent for decades and all I know so far is it's somewhere underwater.
I'm looking for clues in those blurry photo's of UFOs and thinking, if aliens are so smart, why don't they start making their spaceships look like airplanes?
That way we would just point to the sky and say "An Airplane, how commonplace. And not at all suspect."
We are all shipwrecked on this idea that everything has to be explained. But maybe we just need to believe that lemmings jump off of cliffs to prove that they love us. And sure, that sacrifice is as empty as the box of condoms politicians used when they thought they could fuck us.
But its nice to believe that somebody up there cares enough to plummet onto jagged, backbreaking rocks in an attempt to tell us, we're beautiful. Tell us that as far as life goes, our fingerprints are like snowflakes. We leave them on everything but they melt in the time it takes to touch someones tongue, but if we're lucky, maybe we're remembered along with the sunken cities of a lost continent.
This is to each child who is a monument to the ones who came before.
Maybe the best we can hope for is that those we leave behind will find comfort in knowing that we're born out of love, and not science. That biology explains the how, but love explains the why.
So in the event of our death we hereby bequeath all of these words to you.
And they are only meant to say uncertainty is something everyone goes through. And there is not much in the way of proof, but believe me, we loved you.
We held our breaths for your first step, your first word.
We laughed when it finally occurred to you, lemons are sour...
This is for every time love becomes the finest minute in the darkest hour.
This is for those scouring the streets wondering where the wild things went, for the believers who lent us their madness. This is for everyone we miss.
And this is for the children who are lost. Sadness is nothing more than the cost of being able to smile once in a while.
And grief is the trial we stand to offer evidence that your fingerprints were left on our hearts, and our skin. And in terms of proof, love can be demonstrated in giving.
Our lives consist of the efforts we give in swimming towards a lost continent, where you are rumoured to be living.