1. |
Mountain Series #1
02:32
|
|||
#1
The kitchen is alive with drunken vagrancy;
lingerers, hanging from the rafters,
swinging from slurring lyrics.
We know the night is coming to a close
when the indica is smoked.
All laughingly joke without jesting, that bedtime is now upon us.
When the whiskey ends &
all tanned hides have curled in their nooks,
mountain nights are stillness.
The river, the only one left
with inertia enough to run;
even the winds are dozing off.
Nodding eyes, lulled to sleep
by the whiskey songs
of the slowest drinker.
|
||||
2. |
||||
“To the Deserts and the Sand that Divides us”
Tonight I realized that for a poet
who claims to not write love poetry,
I sure write a lot of love poetry.
I just seldom leave it to the page.
Knowing ears are the inevitable end,
I bring these abandoned children
strait to your jewelry adorned doorsteps…
but tonight, again, you’ve not taken my call.
This heart overflowing with need to speak to you,
I am writing, frantically, in a room alone.
More honest than I would be with a voice to respond,
this is my coward’s plea.
*
My life is consumed with women
who’s hearts tie stirrings ‘round my finger while napping.
I don’t cut their cords for the fright of loneliness
or my acceptance of its presence…
But when the night is still,
the movie ends,
the wine bottles have seemingly
emptied themselves again…
I smoke my last cigarette,
stare up into the void, I love you for knowing,
all other desires satiated,
yet still wanting…
My mind quiets, listening to my cravings
with daunting questioning
of what chemical I am lacking now,
I silently know…
If there were ever one to take home,
I don’t question who, just why it was never you.
I am young, restless, wild in my lifestyle,
not wanting your heart on these train tracks…
I don’t let people down easily… I know this.
My words don’t wear padded gloves. I have so many
broken statues from my juggling habits and shooting range;
I never wanted to see you in my shrapnel pile.
The reason I always return,
is that, you don’t want me.
You don’t often answer my calls,
don’t return my messages.
You don’t thirst for honey from my fingers
or the blood of my brain.
Don’t want the seed in my genes.
The anything I hold.
You are okay alone
and I am envious
of your telescope…
I hate the stars you stare at for not being me.
I write this knowing that it will never be read,
Published,
mealed over with fine wines next to a fire’s place,
whispered in an ear.
This poem is the absence in which I think of you;
hurt for your voice like a starving child pleading
with the swarming fruit flies
to leave a taste for the morning.
You are the void, I am too broke to buy whiskey enough to fill.
The absence I won’t admit to having.
The reason more women know me
than cities I remember.
I am ashamed of this addiction.
This movement I cannot stop for survival sake.
I am so fearful I will not mark this world,
I am not letting this world mark me…
I know you never want marriage,
children,
anything more than nights of infatuation…
I know…
We say these same things.
This is our commonality,
our language.
I know my words are that of hatred to love,
but here I am
loving.
My feet stay swift, pose poised to run.
I am always in motion.
Moving backward - Looking forward –
Writing what I’m too scared to feel -
While knowing what I don’t have the courage to admit -
Not admitting what cowardice can’t stop me from feeling -
This is my poison,
these memories I cannot shake.
The oil in my duck feathers that keeps me
from knowing the sensation of soaking wet
I cannot help but shake the drops off.
These waters that fell around us in Houston
when I kissed you in the fountain, falling with the liquid god
more conscious of our thought forms, than we, of our haunting…
I have stared at your pictures
with tears of self-hatred
for wanting to not be a man of knowing
this world and its infinite potential.
My mind, too logical to fall victim to Shakespeare,
“True romance”
“True idealism”
““One” “True””
It is by no “chance” Seth loved the deserts,
my sweet Savannah,
but I am barren of what you deserve;
empty as my third finger,
shallow as I fear I may actually be… I know this
I know I know many things…
like I know I know nothing…
but wanting and avoidance…
running and track covering…
brokenness without excuse…
I am so sorry I never came home…
or made a home to come back to…
|
||||
3. |
||||
4. |
Mountain series #2
01:33
|
|||
They are still awake, my love.
Playing banjos through loop stations,
electrifying southern bloodlines.
But where are you, my love?
I hear Arizona is a prison state;
I pray academia will shield you comfortably.
I scaled a mountain today, my love.
Watched clouds birth into the blue vastness
over seas of aspens and pines.
I returned to a letter from you, my love.
Altar parchment I’ve carried for over half a decade,
one-hundred-thousand miles and climbing.
Though tattered, I can still make out the memory
of young hearts. Tearingly, I realize, this world is hollow
without your breath of yin, my love…
|
||||
5. |
Mountain series #5
00:45
|
|||
Another night of drinking wildly with the insane asylum
And I just couldn’t give a shit less
My giving a fuck meter is at an all time low
We started smoking butts out of the tray two days ago
I widdled a tobacco pipe out of a red wooded block
I found in a wicker basket by the furnace
I kept the shavings in a small cardboard box
It spilled
I knew it would
It always does
Small boxes filled with messy little things
Too-full ash trays
Buckets of stones
Relationships
Families…
Circles of once trusted secret holders
Where things congregate
Spills happen…
|
||||
6. |
Musical machines
06:48
|
|||
when apathy is agony and the scorpion stings
just simplify the breaking tides to sipable streams
when everything is everything, but nothing's what it seems
try to find some peace of mind in musical machines
when reality ironically feels like a dream
subdivide the seven signs to digestible scenes
when everything is everything, and nothing's what it seems
try to find some peace of mind in musical machines
floating in my head I saw a gland that held the face of God
geometries without a flaw,
even Metatron gawked in awe
with a temple flex my eyes opened up to visualize
spectacles of other world,
astral songs and fractal curls
leaving thoughts inside the mind for the dreamer to realize
the profane tell me that I'm lost,
in this spiritual holocaust
I'd rather be a queer to them than ever fall asleep again
the darkness struggles to defend,
but we know how this story ends
we know
we know
we know how the story
how the story ends....
|
||||
7. |
||||
It’s so hard to say
It’s so hard to say hello
Hello
Hello
It’s so hard to say
It’s so hard to say hello
Hello
I know you’re out there waiting
Possibly anticipating that one day I will come back your way
But I’ve been waiting here for my vision to become clear
For my backbone to grow
It’s so hard to say
It’s so hard to say hello
Again…
It’s so hard to say
It’s so hard to say hello
Hello
So I’m singing you songs
Dreaming of you all night long
Waking up with a smile on my face
But I don’t know how to say hello
When we never said goodbye so long ago
It’s so hard to say
It’s so hard to say hello
(Mountain Series #16)
The folder I keep with your pictures
Is called honey suckle
Folded in its petals are pollinated memories
Of Austin hat shopping and our sacred times
I know it as I know a wet pillow case
Too well, my dear, too well
|
||||
8. |
Mountain series #7
01:04
|
|||
I want to fucking smash things
Some things
Your things
I want to see something beautiful bleed
Something graceful limp
Something heinous thrive (that’s not our fucking government)
Give me lunacy in the streets
Pitchforks, fiery pyres of night terrors
shrieking in booms
I want to taste a sword deeper in my guts
than this pain
I currently know
I want to break something
So I can relate to it
Call it familiar
Call it mirror – bad luck –
The only way I know my reflection
Shattered, piled back together
Called whole
While being scattered
Wanting nothing
But to want nothing
Regardless of what I have…
I’d just break it anyway…
|
||||
9. |
Mountain series #9
01:11
|
|||
With every new distraction that collapses
I hate you more
like the way I love you more
like the way I miss you more
I miss you
My cold stone pillows no longer feed my imagination
I can no longer convince myself
I’m nuzzling into your shoulder
Breathe heavily
In hopes to warm you faster at night
I am sick of panting for your liquid voice
Dehydrated of your octaves
Famished of self-respect
I am nothing but a hungry dog whining at your table
Gnawing my own tale
You are wondering if I’m starving
Or self-mutilating
As am I, my dear
As am I
|
||||
10. |
||||
Don’t know what I’m suppose to do
Now that I’ve fallen in love with you
I’ve got nothing left here but my deamons
Got a beat, got a song, got some words to say
And I would love to love to love you
But my darkness won’t let me
Don’t know what I’m suppose to do
Now that I’ve fallen in love with you
|
||||
11. |
Mountain series #8
00:20
|
|||
The only thing I hate more than you -
is me - for loving you too deep -
For not seeing bear traps –
For sticking my heart -
Where my dick
Should have
gone
|
||||
12. |
Blues for the Devil
06:11
|
|||
You have to stop breathing before your die otherwise all is for naught…
I got a smoking cigarette - in the ashtray - staring at me. X2
I’m trying to go to bed - but my deamons - just won’t let me
I lay my head to rest - when the circus music - (starts to) gears up X2
It’s funny how my lady problems - are all about - how I get fucked
When my mojo gets to rising -/- I’d usually - rather just jack-off X2
I hate to be a loser - but I just can’t take no more - broken hearts
So I get high with my buddies - make music - and scream out my soul X2
I’ve been trying to go to church - but I’m afraid - that the devil’s got control
If the blues don’t get me famous, hopefully - I can still afford some whiskey X2
But until then I’ll ~ keep-wailing-out all-the-darkness I can find -/- within me
When the spirits lift my shadows, I’mma hafta give away all my songs X2
Cause I can’t imagine-ripping-my-harp-all-night-and-not-drinking-my-blues-away
-to-the-break-of-
Break of -
dawn
|
||||
13. |
||||
There’s a ticking time bomb in my think-tank
Got a blasphemous bastard in my sacred space
I got a “think-too-hard” in my “let-it-be”
As I was opening, unfolding, I learned I was born with lead wings
There are dead things in my tarot spread
Visions of Baphomet dancing in my head
There’s a dark side to every tree
Some fruits are beautiful but made for only poisoning
So I avoid these things
The shadow beings
But I can’t deny they’re just reflections of things in me
Modern philosophy without history
Leads to a modern Masonic mythology for us to read
There was cherry tree
Just lessened history
Obviously somebody’s not comfy with allegory
Algorithmically fractal geometry is unfolding
Kali is a program to remove what you’ve been holding
For Hermes seek the dawn that you most find golden
Your thoughts are not enough
The words must be spoken
|
||||
14. |
||||
15. |
Mountain series # 25
01:34
|
|||
I pee in sinks…
I think it saves water,
I know it’s kind of gross
I don’t know why I still do it…
I’m human
As fuck
I’m hard to deal with
I pick my nose more often than I swallow my spit;
Suck my teeth every tenth breath or so…
I feel most comfortable sleeping with my back to the wall
Life has made this a comfortable position…
I hate arachnids but love small dark spaces
I am a sorcerer who refuses to work with deamons
Most days I don’t keep up on my personal hygiene
My facial hair constantly questions the purpose and nature of its existence
I can hear its talking through its roots like a tin can on a string
My brain still doesn’t know if I’m conscious of it or not; nor am I
The sun still won’t stay out of my house
No matter how many veils I close
The darkness is too fleeting to hold any power of its own…
Letting the light in is difficult
when you know of the dusty house that lies
beneath the shadows
my meat suit stinks as often as I let it…
wreaks of mortality and modern preservatives…
disgusting things, we are…
peeing in sinks,
washing our hands and flushing simultaneously…
smiling as we do so…
|
||||
16. |
||||
17. |
Let it Burn
01:56
|
|||
When you see a bearded man
Staring off at something you cannot see
Do not disturb him
His is not blind….
You are
When you see a woman
Wafting through a field
Gracing daisy petals with a rose’s touch
Do not speak to her
She is in the middle of a conversation….
Your receiver is broken
When you see your children
Burning in your streets
From a fire who’s heat you do not feel
Keep your water to yourself
You skin, fire-proof
Your perspective, a privileged extinguisher
There is a conversation you do not see,
Smoldering rose petals
Into the glowing hearts of your children
Do not resist the fear on their behalf
Sheltering them only makes you into a wall
All walls will fall
We, the Jericho generation
Reincarnated to see to that
We are retesting the ancient experiments
Conquering the musty towers with the flames
Our shared brokenness first sparked
Don’t tell us to turn down the tick-boom
Of these time-bombs buried in our chests
These furnace flames are all we have left
No we won’t turn down the heat
This is our kitchen now
This fire is not for your understanding anyhow
We don’t need your water
Let this mother fucker burn
Burn mother fucker burn
|
||||
18. |
||||
When you use your child as a weapon
their life becomes a bullet
Knowing only the black powder you packed behind it
It will crawl into the barrel unquestioningly
Its path, redirected toward your fellow gunsmith…
Your trigger finger will fiddle vengeful ideas
Chuckling with power, you will forget
That the scope cannot avert its own site
Learning only what it sees, it will remember everywhere it’s pointed
-
When your child becomes the weapon, you raised it to be
You’ll convince yourself, that not all weapons misfire
Not this one, not mine…
But there will, in every gun’s life, come an innocent bystander
Chalk, outlining something dying
Missing, Lost, stepped over
A childhood – forgotten
-
when your weapon starts acting-out like an adolescent
you will convince yourself that gun-making is a job
you’re doing your job
your gun, it may even tell you
you’re just doing a job
when you pause – realizing, for the first time…
you just called your child “it”, in conversation…
you will realize “it” was right…
you… my bloody-handed gunsmith… did a good and thorough job…
-
When the weapon you raised childishly learns of its own power
The barrel’s tip, finally finding its handler’s tender toe
You will feel the piercing sting of your own loaded words
Pointed back at you
smell the gun smoke waft from their shrapnel laced lips…
know that this is what you look like
those days you purposely avoid mirrors
-
when the “it” you raised finally accepts its weaponization
it will learn to point and shoot at other “it”s with less stammering
this is why “it”s make such good soldiers
being good soldiers is what made
gun-smiths out of our grandparents
our grandparents came back from wars,
broken weapons, misfiring on our makers
we were raised by their bystanders turned side-arms
then used in their wars against… everything
our parents grew us to be good little grenade crops
now, have the nerve to ask us; “Why all the explosions?”
-
When the little mirror you made
Is finally so broken, you can no longer see yourself in it
You will know it is your truest reflection…
it is those things we most deeply love, we will always hurt the most
this is what we broken humans were raised to do
-
to all the other barrel tips with hot lead on their lips
stop…
refashion your self
you are more than a hardening exterior wrapped round a death threat
you were a diamond hidden in detonator
your name is not “it” just because it was forgotten
let the crumbling towers fall…
help smash the fractured vessels
rebuild your new cases from the ground-down shatter-dust
stop forcing fragments into framework
for the mere appearance of wholeness
before the spasm-crack of birthing whiplashed your knowing away
you had velocity of your own…
life is inertia…
quit blaming yourself for existing…
stop cursing the light for shadows
a gun sunk deep enough in the earth might as well be a rock…
dig deep child…
-
When we raise our children to be weapons
We are tenderly tucking them, aimed upward, beneath our chin
Wrapping our tightening grip round our own futures
And getting what we worked so hard for…
|
||||
19. |
||||
I just wish you’d call me
Leave a message - A voice - A whisper
A note that hinted you still cared
Now I need a plane ride
To a mountain top hotel
We could pretend that we call it home
now I need a rain coat – duck feather these tear stains
Save some face here - Show friends I don’t care
Call myself a badass
I wish were giants - in a smaller world
No need to be closer
We’d still call 1,000 miles next door
Hit you up on our tin cans
Sneak though each other's windows
Leaving no tears, only the salts of our sweat - on our pillows
Just give me a phone call – or hand me a guitar –
a harp sling or something like inspiration
I’d take a whisper, a “talk to you later”
But for now, the busy signal wins this one…
|
Seth Walker Poetry Boulder, Colorado
Seth Walker is Texas' most notorious traveling poet and top ranked slam poet in the world. Seth has performed at venues across the country including Da Poetry Lounge (CA), The Green Mill (IL), & The Nuyorican (NY). Along the way he won: the Utah State Arts Fair Poetry Slam (2009), North Beast Indie Slam North-Eastern Regional 2010), as well as as slamming, with the 2010 Austin Poetry Slam Team and ... more
Streaming and Download help
If you like Seth Walker Poetry, you may also like:
Bandcamp Daily your guide to the world of Bandcamp