it’s a candle-lit scenario; you give them your heart under a lit up street lamp: tucked up tight in warm light with the cold dark surrounding. and the spotlight is made bold by the Vivian Girls. Dancing and Dancing; laces streaming in the winds and pure white snow begin to fall. outside the wall, a dark war rages on. the girls too blinded by the snow can’t see, oh no oh my, it’s their demise. Snowball Fights and Eskimo Kisses won’t defeat their enemy, but they know hope and that in their rooms they will be queens. 7 girls with crowns on their heads and velvet against their skin. Suddenly an ash fills their lungs. Snowballs aren’t dirtying their dresses anymore. Black soot balls, pow pow pow! hit their pastel clothes. And suddenly! they’re gone. Behind window panes where you might see a slight glimmer as they bend their heads down. What a gesture!

last night i took every pillow out of every room in the house. red, pastel pink, Mayan ruin designs, bird and white, off white; every shade and tone and essence of white; stacked high around my bed. the fort became a castle. a hiding spot to a lookout tower. at night it gets lonely up there but seeing everything down below is reassuring. even if it all a dream. dreams are real. life is just sequences of dreams so random and jaunted that it seems perfectly normal. the specks of light give me hope. love is being shared, the shriek of the apocalyptic bells is only a faint howl now. carried by the wind to the top of the tower it has no strength.

down by Marc's, there's a secret scene. late at night the fishermen come out. disco suits and all. hair greasy, jackets torn, eyes caved in, sets of teeth incomplete. dont know how i ended up there; like some kind of dream. their old junkyard ships steamed in the moonlight frost, steady concentration on what the night will reel in. everyone hanging about; oil spills in the parking lot. it's where you wanna be on any such night. the tide pulls in with the breeze. it vaults you forward. warnings are not warnings, they're challenges and enticements. so go on, load up your gear, there's a sea faring adventure out there.

it won't stop raining inside their apartment. they've collected buckets upon buckets; red and shiny, blue and stout, yellow, purple, striped and polka dotted. they tried to fix the leaks but nothing worked. as if a rain cloud lived inside the ceiling fan. the constant drip drip drip. splat splat splat. a poetic reminder of life's frustration. outside a car is burning. the flames roar. the children roast marshmallows on long knives; innocence meets destruction. suddenly the children look up; they remembered. they start shouting and laughing thinking how silly it all is. they run up the stairs down the hall; two lefts then a right; apartment 36. they open the door run inside and grab every bucket they can. thirty kids or more running around with buckets hanging from their hands. down the stairs again and into the hot shining street. and in one great sweep they all lift the buckets over their head; into the air the water flies; in slow motion you can see the millions of droplets that make that heavenly elixir. it falls in a splendid curve dousing the fire of all its glory. in the sizzling remains it seems to whisper with great joy, "Take hope, you lost ones!"

we live in Dream Theater. our senses the actors our mind the audience; it's all make believe: the perceptions, conceptions, beginning and end, impressions and notions. anything can happen. forests burn and we think the world is ending. it's just beginning. the tides crash into colossal moments. they bring us deeper down to the interior of things. the earth quakes and rattles; just telling us to shake it up a little; dance. valleys: beds for our minds and mountain tops: podiums for our lungs. shout! shout! shout! louder the feeling. enliven the play!

my backyard is an indian graveyard. at least that's what the old guy said i found wandering back there; pigeon in hand, beard to the ground, wearing nothing but the cool summer's air. he said he never gets tired cause he never feels sad. there's something missing from his organs. and he would feel down about not knowing the bittersweet but he doesn't and just shrugs his shoulders. after that intersection, i sometimes can still hear him chanting; mellow and full. it stings me and my eyes water for no reason; the yearning he feels to feel. what a pure and simple desire. it keeps going even when he is far gone. like a haunting ghost. his mist constant in the forest, like the trees' eyes are watering too. and so i believe him about that graveyard.

Brasstronaut - Old World Lies from Salazar on Vimeo.

sitting on your shelf, your most prized possession; between loud and quiet; a face in a jar. it winks sometimes; gives you a sly smile. you never said how you happened to find it. but always that it was real and true. and i could tell from the dead voids where two seeing sockets should be that you were telling the truth. nothing fancier than a face in a jar. no one can touch. and one little shake, rattle, push, taunting, quake, jump could destroy the whole thing. so fragile, you just keep it covered.
but you never listen to me. i keep saying that you need to poke some holes in the lid. the air needs to breathe.