life: acoustic & amplified

Love, like fire, can only reveal its brightness On the failure and beauty of burnt wood.           – Philippe Jaccottet   

Everyone is having a hard time. Everyone is insecure. Everyone is hassled. Everyone is tired–we all need more sleep. Everyone wishes he had more courage, more money, and better social skills. Everyone wants more glamour in his life, and we all desperately need more laughter. Few can figure out how they ended up living the life they lead. Don’t be misled by flippant talk; it’s a battle for everyone.
🔥

– Joshua Halberstam​

the flesh covers the bone  

and they put a mind  

in there and  

sometimes a soul,  

and the women break  

vases against the walls  

and the men drink too  

much  

and nobody finds the  

one  

but keep  

looking  

crawling in and out  

of beds.  

flesh covers  

the bone and the  

flesh searches  

for more than  

flesh.  

 

there’s no chance  

at all:  

we are all trapped  

by a singular  

fate.  

 

nobody ever finds  

the one.  

 

the city dumps fill  

the junkyards fill  

the madhouses fill  

the hospitals fill  

the graveyards fill  

 

nothing else  

fills.
—

Alone With Everybody by Charles Bukowski

in the world between worlds

where the shimmering abstract

holds all the secrets within us

words are absent

no scripture exists

there are no definitions

as there is no need for such things

in our eternal knowing 

we are ever-being known

the mystic colors of God fill us

unseeable in this earthly realms obscured vision 

they hold us there 

where we don’t need to be understood 

or understand anything

we are simply

all we could ever hope to be

we are the lover and the beloved

eternal love

eternally loved 

complete

You in I

I in you

one

until the scab scraping 

demand of this waking earth

this illusion glazed moment we choose to serve

pulls us completely blinded

into a day in a life

pushes us ass-backward 

into the harsh reality

of jaded time

of hard-earned, hard-learned experience 

of continually disappointed expectation

of broken hearts, once tender

of broken dreams, once beautiful 

broken everything, once whole and healthy

and instead of fighting for our very lives,

we put away our dreaming space,

as if it were somehow the wrong

we decide we’ve learned the truth – 

that love hurts –

though what we’ve learned is trickery –

because true love sets us free

and so we surrender to 

the soul-sucking zombie apocalypse of our addictions,

our chosen favored forms of slavery

as the children of chattel always do

not knowing our vast worth

our royal bloodline

our supreme destiny

we clothe ourselves in useless, flimsy armor 

our only known defense. 

we use fools gold 

cheap drug store variety,

Madison avenue, false-advertisement protection, 

these rabbits feet of proclaimed luck,

these traps of anger, arrogance and pride,

against the barbarian onslaught

of what we have been brainwashed to accept

as important 

the carnivorous eating of our flesh

by the demands of our own complex making

focused only on our foolish collecting of silly objects,

overrated treasures and pleasures 

as we ignore our need for love

choosing instead to battle

the cannibals salivating at every corner

waiting for us to stumble and weaken

so they can take our place at the top of the illusive list 

of whatever sort 

we have entered into 

as our arena of competition  

eventually they will toast to their victories over us 

with our own fresh, falling blood

pouring from the golden goblets we ourselves had taken from another 

we accept it as normal

as we attend to the business of forgetting 

who we are

pretending to be full

as we starve to death

in order to get just a little bit more than those waiting 

for what will never satisfy any of us 

lusting for salt 

even as we faint from dehydration 
we live, lonely, in empty mansions

forgetting all that makes a house glow

is the home light burning inside of our other to warm our bones

in order to impress those who will never truly know us, love us, or want our best to be honored 

in order to arrive at the end of our hourglass 

dragging what we will not be able take with us…
we trade our chance to be truly remarkable

to create singular intimacy

we see our chance to find gardens of happiness,

to build something as mind boggling as the seven wonders,

and we choose to ignore it

as we continue on.

too busy, too consumed,

to stop for a moment,

just one moment,

to take off our shoes,

fall down and worship…

to allow the lover into our heart –

as though love isn’t important enough for the likes of us

why do we go about wasting our opportunity here?

how can we awaken to the highest and best within ourselves?

how can we choose to lay our hearts bare in vulnerability?

how can we empty the deepest motes of fear and isolation?

why do we trade love for ash?

why would we ever do such a thing? 

why?

Let us return again to where we began…

the joyous place of our belonging

to the passion and wild danger inside our freedom loving hearts

children on Christmas morning 

full of sheer wonder and excitement 

at the beauty of who we are 

passionately in love with our created uniqueness

the fullest colors of our self unleashed

living worship eternally under vast blue skies

shining from our highest place, 

with the extreme audacity, 

the sheer wonder and glory

of our calling as love

pure love

I in you

You in I

as we 

the many

become 

the one 

💞

Amy Lloyd (AL)

Many of us seek that which we will flee if we find it. I have seen this time and again, both in myself and in others. We seek, we search, and then we find a calling or a relationship that is a perfect reflection of our yearning and we turn away and go back to seeking, almost as though the light of our true-path was too bright for us, too vulnerable for us, too real for us. This is a pattern that we have to recognize and heal or else we will never stop looking for what is already there. True-path is not always around the next corner. Sometimes it’s right under our feet…

🛤

  Jeff Brown

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.

~Erich Fromm