Upcoming Shows Part 1

Friday, June 25th
7pm
Team Feature At Lost Souls
Hosted by Teneale Bender
124 West 4th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013-1308
(this venue is in Harlem Place alley between Spring and Main)



Wednesday, June 30th
9pm
Team Feature at Zanzibar
"Reflection"
Hosted by Joshua Silverstein
1301 5th Street
Santa Monica, CA 90401




Thursday, July 1st
9pm
Team Feature at Elevated
Hosted by Chris Wilson
@ Eveoke Dance Theatre
2811 University ave
San Diego, CA

Little Big Dreams

Build a fort in my heart.

Keep your television, just give me the box.

Remember when playing pretend was more important than reality.

Grow old with me.

Create a lifetime of adventures that nobody needs to know about.

Let everybody know.

See me.

Look into the blender I mix my emotions in.

Drink me down.

Tell me which flavors are your favorite and which you never want to taste again.

Seriously.

Hold me up to the sun and squint though me.

When your eyes do not tingle electric
You will know what lengths I will go to shield you
From anything that might harm you.

LA Slam Team

Last night I slammed onto the LA Slam team via Brass Knuckles @ Kaos. I came in second place right behind the lovely Nikki BLAK and am joined by fellow teammates Judy Holiday, Mr. Poetic, and Daniel Weingarten. It was a hard fight to make the team and I am so thankful for the challange, the people, and the words. We're reppin LA at nationals in August! Kill it!

Fell In Like With A Girl

You found me
In the light
At the end
Of the tunnel

Drenched in new church
Pulling bicycle kicks from
My claims to being champion

You asked me if I was a holy man.
I said, “Not anymore.”
“Not anymore,” I said
Now
Now I just pray my heartbeat into better poems
And admire the moon for her perfection

That was ok with you
That was ok

Said you couldn’t imagine
How much perfection it would take
To earn the love of God
So you didn’t imagine God

Your brain worked like that
Always dealing in absolutes
Like gravity and red wine and ketchup

Though neither of us danced
We did around our fears
That night
Researched phobias
Split the firewood in our sides
With the axe of our laughter

When I had to wake up
2 hours after
Our first kiss
Every yawn that followed
Was worth it.

You were worth it.

And I told you I thought
You mumbled halos better
Than any angel wore them.

Told you I saw sunsets in your awkward
Even if you ignored them

And that I knew that you were not broken
You just weren’t standing tall

That’s when you spilled
Your guts like a mostly
Empty water glass
Told me how
Somebody hadn’t caught your heart
When it fell for them
And it broke into pieces
Like scattering schools of fish
Trying to breath life
From those few splattered drops
Left evaporating

I held your hand
Said I was never very good at catching things
But that I would learn
I would get bigger hands
I would try

You sat quite
I wondered what you were feeling

Told me that you kept your feelings
Like state secrets.
You’d have to kill me if you shared them

And then you left

I’d gotten used to the way your fingerprints blurred my vision
So now that you’ve gone, things are coming back into focus
Or something like it
And I am realizing I woke up too fast
Got dizzy
My smile claiming narcolepsy
When asked why it keeps lying down

When that excuse no longer fools anyone
I will blame sushi
Because we never got to
Or the window that stopped your forehead
Before you could gaze down onto the floor
Or Eiffel towers that only serve food from New York

You’re the only one that’ll get that
You’re the only one that has to

And you,
Though you only walked my line
For 8 weeks
You reminded me how much fun life can be


So that night when you decided to go
I tucked a note into the fold of your coat that read

You’ve got to give your heart permission to love again!
And maybe a little wiggle room to grow…
I know that
We’re all runnin’ from something, we just
Don’t have to run alone.

I Wish I Spoke To The Moon

the wind blew into the harmonica of my bones. my entire body sang with parachute vibrato. showed me just how much i don't miss any of it. wondered if that was sad. knew that it was not. knew that it was simply new. the band carried me out past the borders of midnight. no more placebos called prayer. no more letters to the moon.


all over i was broken. i was whole. i leaked anvils from my pores. knew that that sweat was just my skin learning to let go. memorized the weight and how it made me feel full and happy. letting go made me happy and full. my arms, that at one time held the world, were no longer full. they were free to know things. i was free to know.


i knew then, what i still know now. now i know two things. the first is that if there's one thing worth protecting, it's your heart. the second is that if there's one thing worth risking, it's your heart.


some days I am not sure which to do. some days i’m just not sure.


sure of vast ocean in the difference between right and real. some things are only ghosts living beneath the floorboards that we lay each time we start a new. those ghosts never had a name. never had a chance. we just made them up like paper dolls filling in for the friendships we hoped would not pass. but they passed like a flatline. they passed like a day. beautiful while it lasted. but most times temporary and gut wrenching mean the exact same thing.

why? why don't you ever stay?

because you're constantly groping door knobs, your constantly propping open doors, my hands don't feel normal if they're not empty. my hands feel broken when they are full.

would you see me like a helicopter? could you remind me of my wings? i remember that i flew here but i cannot recall what with. just that when i’d landed i’d found no honor among thieves. in a room full of innocence i knew there was nothing that hadn’t been stolen to get there.

the only difference was i had stopped pretending like I wanted to be found. knew that i already was and, at the same time, never would be. never again would i be angry with somebody who’s not even paying attention. no. i won’t waste anything beautiful on them. it’s nothing they won’t miss.

these hammocks of rain in the sky mean nothing. these hammocks never stay. i have fishhooked sunshine into showing its face before. today may not be that day. today is the day i wring the dust out of my choke. i’ll wish and then. i will start tomorrow morning and everyday since and everyday since and everyday since then.

Splash

Empathy
Is when you stop feeling deeply sorry for someone
And start wearing their scars
Like birthmarks

All red, rash, and sore

I’m reminded how Eli buckled
The eve
He heard
We had spoke.
In the months that followed
Made himself a broken bottle bloodbath
While managing to remain sober.
There was so much red splatter
On his words
I had to wonder what had died
And if we’d ever find it.

We did.

Mary Anne never said much.
That’s not to say
She never talked. Constantly
In the mood to take her
Ghost off
And strike it like flint
Against the skeletons in her closet, hoping
To spark life. Death
Feels so cold
In the hands of a daughter
Never held by a father.

My hands were no substitute.


Often, Sarai would try and remind herself
That there are rivers of beautiful music flowing through her
On nights she had a hard time hearing it
She would play her wrist like a violin
Using a bow made of razor blades.
To this day she still bleeds out of tune.

Listen close enough. You’ll hear it.

Like their pain is
So deep in your eardrums
You back break dances baselines
And melodies
Are the only religion
You feel comfortable calling your own

(Nhat Hanh once said,)“Only your compassion and
Your loving kindness are invincible, and without limit.”

So break me invincible.
Until I am bullet proof enough for both of us
Until my prayers cut the strings that have your hands
Bound behind your heartbeat
Until I can un-break all that’s broken in your home
Until I can
Raise the death out your bones
Break me


When mill workers in Ahmadabad, India
Were left starving families
Mahatma Gandhi adopted their hunger
Into his body as he starved with them
Till his skin clung to his ribs
Like a mother cradling her still-born fetus

It is said that when Ghandi fasted
Entire cities left their lamps
Unlit at night
Uniting a nation in the darkness of injustice
And the subsequent fight to take back the light

I’m still waiting
That one day
My eyes would adjust

Teach me how your hallways feel in my dark

On 9-11, Muslim extremists
Flew planes into our buildings until
Two towers dropped.

On 9-12, and every year since,
East End Muslims have gathered
To mourn every life lost
Because they believe
The quality of human
To be a stronger bond than
The division of hate

It’s left me whittling a hunch
That all of us
Got big broken angels buried in our back yards
Waiting to be dug up
Waiting to be held wingspan
To each other
Find sanctuary in the chapel
Of our collective scars

Break me invincible
I am willing to risk
You smashing my heart

Cause sometimes
The only place left
That we still feel
Is music
Knowing we need more.

Sounds waves
Come crash
On the reefs barricading our love
High tide’s in our throat
Fears cast in the sun
So the ripple that swells
Comes welcome,
Though fast
Don’t skip me like some stone
Build us invincible
Just
Like that splash

feast.

i tasted one of their chocolate fireflies.
but it didn’t sit well with my bloodstream
so i tore the rest to stars.
moved a mountain in your name.
apologized later for not asking you to help.
opened gates with prayers shaped like keys that
i swallowed not that long ago.
you are kaleidoscope in sunshine,
binocular in rain. and
i am sure you know where i left myself last.

Firecracker

All this
For you
All this
So I could crawl up your steps
Dig my fingernails into the orange-peel-ing paint of your banisters
Former golden gates
Form forgiveness in the palm of your kiss
Peel poems from your scapula

It’s where I read the story
You scribbled on the face
Of a boy named Beloved

He grew up dragging through a machete field
In Zimbabwe,
Stumbled up to a landmine,
Believed it a radio,
And tucked it into his mouth.
Beloved… he’d met God at the river many nights and
Wrestled him for a chance to feel harmony inside.
Knew he couldn’t miss this, teeth clench and all

Carrying war on his tongue, he
Returned to his village
And while trying to share the blessing
With those he loved
Felt his prayer ripped from his lips

There are those of us
We know the painful explosion of opening our mouths
How violent it feels when we breathe
Deep breathes
We mangle angels when we speak
Because our heart beat keeps beating it’s way out of up and out of our throats
In the form of butterflies bearing boxing gloves
Beating their wing covered fists
Against our ripples. Bruised hurricane.

My stomach, a sack full of vibrating jellyfish
The tremble, the sting, they’re electric pens
Writing out the reasons why
Creativity is the closest we will ever get to God
In this life
While it’s the promise of the next one
That keeps my hands working
Keeps my throat sturdy
Keeps me spilling my veins
Onto the page
Even though it gets messy

Keeps me waking up dead
Weight
Almost can’t remember my name
Almost forget the way your voice tastes
Like honey

So
From this day forward
I refuse to beat you just because I feel ugly
My words rattle because they groan holy
Don't remember the last time I felt that way
But remember the last I felt you

It was when I watched a man
Stand on a stage
Pull the shoestring from his very own shoe
And use it to hang a guitar from around’ his neck
Said he’d use the strings from his own heart
If it were all he had left
Cause he knew he was made to play

He then turned into the room
And unhinged a melody that
Sucker punched me in the very last spot I felt surrender
My hands clenched so tightly
My knuckles became white flight
And I realized
That in order to make enough room for my religion
I had changed the shape of my prayers

What once were gigantic saber-toothed tigers
Became mere house cats
Blind mice at best
Remembering they were wildebeests
In the jungle beneath my bed

I used to believe in God
The way I believe my mother’s cooking.

Now, I still believe in God, but some day’s
His eyes look like run on sentences and my mouth isn’t strong enough
To read out loud, for that long.

Hold me to your word. See where we don’t quite line up.
My silence is not a protest
It’s just me trying to figure out this thing called trust

See
Father
I find it hard to trust you
A man of your WORD
Hard to trust you with ALL of my heart
When EVERY man in my life
Up until now
Has found small reasons
Big enough
To slip out the back door
Just when I got comfortable enough
To stop assuming they would.

I think it may be me

But I’ve been trying to beat the snow
Drop the rain, make it home.

Wondering why my prayer buckets keep coming up empty
When I dip them into your wells
And why the only harmony I find
Seems to blow up in my face

But on those days
I think of Beloved
Lost most of his face
For the taste of a dream
Yet not one day’s gone by
Where he regrets letting that landmine
Crawl between his teeth
Cause he says
If that bomb hadn’t
Of blown his mouth off it’s hinges
Then the bass drum in his chest surely would have
And that every explosion
Is an answered prayer.
You’ve just got to choose to feel it that way.

[excerpt]

Father
I find it hard to trust you
A man of your WORD,
Hard to trust you with ALL of my heart
When EVERY man in my life
Up until now
Has found small reasons
Big enough
To slip out the back door
Just when I got comfortable enough
To stop assuming they would.

I think it may be me.

How Lovers Leave Their Mark

There were initials
Carved into the wooden flesh of the bridge
Stretched out like the spine of a story book
Held creaking over the waterfalls

Every letter was separated by periods and plus signs, littered with romantic art work
Each was the first in a sentence that told of
Broken hearts, first kisses, surprise puppet shows, and hide-and-go-seek me if you love me Check yes if you do. Don’t call if you don’t
And never say maybe cause my love is worth more of an opinion than that.

The cool breeze shivered me stupid
As it crawled out of the east and crashed
Into my skin with the secret fury
Of amateur lovers, hiding dynamite between
Their chest and the wedding rings tucked into their shirt pocket.
Thinking it would be safe there when in fact
Nothing ever was
But we slept better thinking it would be

That summer I got lost in the eyes of a girl
Dropped bread crumbs along her secret paths
Went running through her gardens
And at some point the sparrows came hungry.

I was a boy.
Never thought about being a man.
I knew that one day I would have to
And the day I realized that
I left my childhood behind.

I never got back.

priorities.

It’s easy to make God a priority when you’re paid to do so.

I did.

For 5-ish years.

That’s not to say that it wasn’t genuine.

From start to finish of my time working with the youth at Mountain View, my eyes were set on God. Not to say they didn’t waiver from time to time, but no one is perfect.

However, when youre paid to teach kids about God it’s easy to slip into a groove without even realizing. And there’s nothing wrong with the groove unless of course something brings you out of it.

Like for me. 3 months ago I stepped down from my position there to pursue some other avenues.

Here I am 3 months later and I am relearning my faith. What I mean is that God was the number one priority in a rhythm that I flowed in for 5 years. But not working at a church any longer, I am having to find a new rhythm. In having to do so, everything has been mixed around. All of my priorities are jumbled.

For the past couple weeks it has been all I can do, and a lot of what I can’t do, to hold onto my faith as I navigate a new rhythm of life.

Many of my friends have been great. Letting me know they are there for me, and giving me the kind of space that a kid who likes to learn the hard way often needs.

One or two people have wanted to do the “Christian thing” and remind me of different scriptures and spiritual proverbs in hopes of establishing a sort of spiritual lightning rod to their, or what they would refer to as our, cause. This, by the way, is a horrible thing to do with someone who is doubting the presence of something because the do not want to be reminded of that “something’s” words of wisdom. I don’t want to be told I don’t have to hurt or feel guilty because Paul says so. Sometimes we just want to feel what we feel. Its part of the process. “Stop crowding my guilt. I worked hard to feel this way and I want to enjoy it for a minute, damnit!”

But that’s okay. I forgive you. You’re forgiven. That’s the beauty of following Jesus…

With that all said. Tonight Buzzy spoke on priorities. He said that when Jesus was asked (and that was key that Jesus was asked. He did not just demand this of people) he said the greatest commandments, aka. priorities, were to love God and love people. They were goals, tasks, or a resolution. They were priorities. They were the constants even when the rhythm changes.

And something made sense. Of course my priorities would shift stepping out of what I have known and into something new. Investing in Jr. High kids, preparing Sunday messages, being on time to staff meetings… none of these are number 1 priorities for me any longer. Now I have new priorities. But I was reminded tonight that the constants are 1. God and 2. People. Period. I'm no longer paid to prioritize God by default so now, I have to make, not more effort but, new effort in order to so.

Regardless of the state of life; regardless of the trials, temptations, or learning experiences that may come, those are the top 2 priorities. They are obvious and yet, as I am learning, oh so easy to lose in the shuffle from one rhythm to another. So, keep your eyes on your priorities and make sure you know what your priorities are…

In the process of finding new rhythm under the umbrella of constant priorities,
Nick

Short Poems

Dear Sir:

I love you

I love you like I love Cheez-Wiz

I really don’t love Cheez-Wiz that much

Sure as hell not enough to write a poem about it

So I guess I don’t really love you all that much.

Fear of Consequences:

My step dad is the only person I know

Who worries that eating food might make him have to poop

Seriously.

Uninvited Guests

Stop crowding my guilt.

I worked hard to feel this way and I’m going to enjoy it.

Alone.

Last of The Believers

We were the first out of bed in the morning, we were the last of the believers.

We were drunk on hot cocoa,

Present hunting, seasonal dreamers.

We were held up Gospel hymns in our midnight Sunday dress

The cold weather punched us dry in the mouth

Split our lips like fire wood as we burned that candle down

To bass lines played by little drummer boys behind the railroads of our ribs.

Our lungs slowed like toy trains running low of battery as we

Fell asleep in our beds and visions of sugarplums danced in our heads

Because we did not yet dream of being whole.

We would watch the snowflakes drop like good graces from heaven and wondered if God ever got cold.

Wondered if mistletoe really worked.

Wondered at what age we might get to find out that it really does.

Carols would swim through the air, those musical fish,

I wrapped my wrists in tinsel because I knew the life

Flowing underneath was a gift.

Knew that my eyes were more sacred than the things they lusted after

After the storm came, there were snowdrifts everywhere

Slopes so big I pretended they were polar bears

And pricked my fingertip with the needlepoint of my imagination.

My blood dripped Coca-Cola red down onto the icy white fur

And for the first time, I learned how terrible it felt to ruin something perfect.

Lately, I’ve been carrying all my questions in a manger.

Wondering how the wise men got a north star that led them to a savior

While the only signs I see anymore are the ones that keep telling me to “STOP”

But I wasn’t able to stop the cold, so my innocence became a frozen pond

I broke the blades off my skates and hid them in my voice box

So all the words I speak will come off sounding sharp

Yet, I still seem to be returning to places in my life where the

Ice has already proved too thin

I’ve ended up in shock more times than I will ever admit

And I never quite learned how to unwrap a gift

So I just end up tearing beautiful things to pieces

I’m having a hard time telling the difference

Between a blessing and a curse

So this Christmas, I’m asking my angels for a better radar

So I can learn what it feels like to fuck up in reverse

I want to get it right

I want to feel like a tree that has never known a crooked star

Want to come to you carrying warm light bulbs in my arms and a crackling fire in my heart

Want to be able to hold all my guns without hearing

You say, “Be careful, you’ll shoot ya eye out, kid.”

This Christmas I want to see snow angels in my Mother’s eyes

And hear conviction in a voice that belongs to any of my Fathers

I want to feel like I’m becoming a good son alongside other good sons and daughters

It’s just that, I keep on forgetting how it was this all started

But I’ve been picking up signals in my broken receivers

Angels trying to remind me that

We were the first out of bed in the morning,

We were the last of the…

bleed the page

This will serve as my primary means to shares my poetry, stories, and a few other odds and ends. I appreciate your support, subscription, feedback and spreading the word as I am looking to take my writing to a wider audience in the upcoming year and beyond.

big love.
nick.