Scraps from an Average Everyday Superstar

So Long Baby of Love

Average Superstar — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 05:52:10 +0000

I’d trade everything for this:

One last last childhood adventure. One last unbreakable dream. Send me back to ignorance. This can’t be my last innocent dream. Because love is the greatest playground. I’ll stay right here and scream “Go slow.” This won’t become a haze of flashbacks that I cannot unwind.

The meaning of bliss starts to fade and passion takes its place. Every breath takes me farther away from the days when all I could long for was some perfect kiss. Tumbling through grass and flowers is replaced by tumbles between sheets of weakness. And scraped knees heal faster than wounded hearts that never stop their bleeding.

The claims we made were more sensible than the lies we make… and believe. Writing over rough drafts to life that get wrinkled and tossed away I’m realizing it was easier to dream. I could be wrong but I’m exhaling reality and breathing in my youth beofre it’s stolen by the summer wind.

Characters of me free fall through childhood. Confidently they weave my epic and pause…. before they take their final bow.

“Just lay your head back on the ground, let your hair spill all around me, offer up your best defense.”

For The Moments I Feel Faint

Average Superstar — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 04:00:17 +0000

Guilt stricken doubt knots in my throat when the days pass with empty dial tones,

And summer breezes take you farther away.

Nature’s climax is stifling in its richness.

Lost inside it, we pause for this invasive nap in other people’s beds.

Trying to squeeze the air, I drop my breath to the floor and lose track of my heartbeat.

There is nothing but dry embers, where I once washed my hands.

Tears wet my pillow instead of your cheek as I take my next dose of loneliness.

I fill your cracks with romantic anecdotes, praying it will be enough for both of us.

As predictable as you are, I surprise myself with how I cannot change a thing.

But you’ll be there in autumn’s shadow, when the earth breathes in and the world stops spinning.

I’ll be chasing days on freeways and mornings watching you sleep.

One day we’ll move slowly on sidewalks and you’ll choose to wake to smiling face,

Which will finally be enough for you.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours first. Let’s compare scars I’ll tell you whose is worse.”

I’m Like… This is Hard

Average Superstar — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 06:27:16 +0000

I’m a mess I guess. Stuck in between two chapters of the same life. The one I’m making for myself and the one that got me here. It’s been the attempt to bridge this gap that has given me sleepless nights and retching sobs while curled up on the bathroom floor. Let me back up a moment. Most people begin to write to unleash their demons because they have experienced some insane level of torture or a have a incomprehensible battle to overcome. Mine somehow seems less valid or exciting but it is as rampant as the common cold. I look around and cannot find a person who has not been touched in some way direct or inadvertent by the pain of divorce. The dreaded D word. It’s so typical and even more cliché. Oh poor little white girl whining away on some blog about how it’s unfair that daddy and mommy live in separate mansions now. Boo fucking woo. People are dying. Real hate and terror exist in this world and honestly your problems pale in comparison. Well that might all be true and it’s all a matter of perspective. However that is no reason for me not to share mine. In fact it is that very fear of feeling insignificant that has kept me from writing this down. That somehow what I’m feeling has less clout than a mother battling cancer or a child with an incurable disease. I think people tell you that to give you comfort and say “Hey, look it’s not that bad, at least you don’t have these problems” [enter et cetera list here]. So far nothing on that list has made the pain go away. I guess why I am writing is to figure out what comes next.

As an adult child of divorce I face a strange quandary. My parent’s latest fight doesn’t dictate the daily course of my life and the forming of my personality and moral fiber is already complete. “Thank God it happened when you were older” is what I have heard a lot and experienced fighting back the urge to hurl a “Fuck you” right back at the friendly stranger. It may not have as strong as impact on the pattern and routine my life but it does something to you. Something deep and unexplainable. Something that your typical sensitive privileged girl who loves where she came from can’t cope with.

Excuse me for one moment, as I’m re-reading back what I have written so far… first a radio commercial then music pumps through my window from the street below at an obnoxious volume. Some group of people. What assinine pricks think that that is appropriate when I am thinking about going to bed. I go on the deck to investigate and it’s coming from a stretch hummer limo waiting for it’s entourage before embarking on some night far more fabulous than the one that lies in front of me. A twinge of jealousy and a flood of nostalgia hit me for a time that it might have been me jetting off to some perfect night suspended in glitz and carefree of neighbors noise complaints. I have half a mind to scream at them “Turn your shit down!” then all at once it hit me. Inside of three years ago I would have been down there pumping, and if some crotch-hole neighbor bitched us out I would have flipped them off and cranked it with my head out the sunroof as we drove away, not even bothering to spend my time dwelling on a sad life they must actually have.

I’m the one with the pitiful life. It’s not me that’s bothered by the noise, its my circumstance. The fact that I have to get up at 6 am to go in early for the job I don’t like so I can leave early for a dentist appointment that I will have to copay for through my insurance is enough to make any twent pissy. Twent has got to be a word to describe that age post teenager pre adult. Or adult struggling with loss of teenager identity. Fuck. I can’t believe I’m such a huge crab. I stop myself and continue writing and I listen to the music play “When I Come Around” and “The Scientist” before that big black car glides away. I snap back and sit here and ponder what is missing. What do I want to try and get back? What did I do in youth that was so wonderful so deliciously sweet that I can still taste the nectar of indulgence and freedom just beyond my grasp? The reality is we did absolutely nothing and everything. We just killed time waiting for life to start and it was incredible what we filled the space with. Now that life has started there is no stopping it. It’s waiting in line for a ride that makes you sick. You spent all that time in the queue that when you finally get up to the chair you don’t think about it you just get on, not realizing that standing in line might have ben the most fun you will have all day. As the ride starts to get you sick you think to yourself just hold on it will be over soon enough and I can just sit still again. Fat chance dummy, this extreme life roller coaster intends to make you her bitch until you are too feeble and tired to stand. And when it finally lets you off you will have to use the handicapped exit anyway.

This is all quite sad, but mostly true. I am about finding new ways to taste nectar and squeeze juice even though the fruit is not as readily available. It’s a re-working of priorities and a general slowing down process. I’m used to always working toward something, completing a task, finishing a project. Now life is the project and I don’t want to finish any time soon.

“Waiting for the rain to stop. Destination: beautiful. Seems that I’m still waiting for the sun.”

Soon Gone

Average Superstar — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 04:35:32 +0000

Summertime in a broken sunset, freezed forever in my memory. And the clouds go racing past the velvet colored sky. Oh Father Time did you used to be so evil? Chasing me and my feet are running. Crashing through the surface that’s everything. Come away, come pretend.

Pretend that time will never find us, and we can catch our breath. That we can’t smell the rotting of the fruit we never picked. That the skies won’t cease their raining, unfailingly delaying the future that’s ahead. And pretend that this won’t be the last time we’ll be friends again.

The past is close behind us. Why will he forsake us? Maybe he’ll mistake us if we hide beneath the sheets. I can’t see where I’m going the sun is in my eyes. Wake me up and tell me that all this was a dream, and I can live this life again. This doesn’t have to be goodbye, if we can make him bend.

Let’s pretend that time will never find us, and we can catch our breath. That we can’t smell the rotting of the fruit we never picked. That the skies won’t cease their raining, unfailingly delaying the future that’s ahead. And pretend that this won’t be the last time we’ll be friends again.

Seize the moment, seize the day. Night will soon be coming. As I sit and think I hope that I can bring myself to take a piece of you with me and maybe… We will live this life again. Oh, I cry as summer dies and the sun goes down in my eyes. Go ahead, my friend.

For my amazing friends, that showed me the world and taught be to know myself.

Between Clothes and Skin

Average Superstar — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 04:19:35 +0000

In that space between

Clothes and skin

Desire boils, blooms

And simmers in its place.

Clothes and skin

Shed like rust

In a chemical bath

When we stand too close.

Shed like rust

Beneath the sand

And stand behind

The crumbling sand castles.

Beneath the sand

You walk halfway

And drive the rest

Running, until empty.

You walk halfway

and run the risk

Before we change our minds

And lose our way among the thicket of lies.

And run the rest

Let the record play

As we pause for breath

In that space between.

“You write the words and make believe, There is truth in the space between; Sometimes a lie, is the best thing.”

Our Years

Average Superstar — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 05:06:26 +0000

There is so much to say and yet the words I am able to craft here will never be quite enough. Plainly put in the most direct way, a friendship has died. It was as pure and important as faith in God. As all-encompassing and soul crushing as first love and as beautiful and brief as a shooting star. This goodbye like so many that I have had to make in the past two years is tearing me to shreds. Mostly because with it I am having to say goodbye to a part of myself that I love. We shaped each other and we became who we would be and sealed where we came from all in one indiscernible loop. We were driftwood when we found each other, lost in the sea of adolescence searching for an identity and somewhere to belong. We sanded ourselves the same way and we built a fortress with each other and soon these three pieces of driftwood were pillars in the sand. Marking our places on the shore firmly and proudly, our eyes set west toward the brink of the future. I am suffering a heartbreak to look back at my teen years that were woven from hope and drunk on possibility and that were so sure of themselves. Those years knew what the world said about time like them, that they would be outrun and forced to grow up. But our years new better, our years were invincible and we would never end. Those adults were fools that lost sight of who they were when they were closer to being themselves then any other time. Those people that let the relationships that shaped them dwindle and fade like a fire after dawn. Those idiots didn’t have what we had. We knew it then that something between us was special. We thought about getting a matching tattoo to notarize it. But then how can you sum up what it was that we had in one image or word? We didn’t need it and we never could decide. I think I stayed true to that intention as best as a wooden post can stay unaffected by the incoming tide. I’ve sustained some gashes and graffiti and I’m a little warped beneath the surface but I am still more or less in the same place. That post that planted itself beside me that Thanksgiving break all those low tides ago was made of something different. Not so deeply rooted in what I thought was an eternal beach deep, she uprooted, traveled away, was stripped and refinished and made into a mast of a shiner ship that sails by me sometimes but never stops to get out and stand with me facing outward looking at the horizon for all the worlds beauty and promise. It wasn’t just the two of us there. There was a third stake in the sand yet again made of something entirely different. She is standing facing outward like me boasting her own with splinters and bird droppings and other things. She still is in view though a little ways down the beach now and tonight as the sun set we saw the fancy ship sail out of sight for what might be the last time. We watched it for awhile even though in the ship’s silhouette we could no longer distinguish our friend from it’s mast and sails. It is an entirely new thing she has become. What can you do as a post in the sand? Not much but feel the water rushing in and out rooting you deeper to the place that you have come to be and hope that your friend is happy. I find myself wondering if now I wish we had gotten that tattoo. At first thought it seems like a good avoidance of a sure regret, but I don’t know. Under all of life’s scars and markings I think it would feel good to know that it is there.

“We were standing on the hood of your car, singing out loud when the sun came up.”

Sunburned Freckled and Blind

Average Superstar — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 04:07:49 +0000

Take one breath that’s true before its lost to shadows and intentions go black. Underneath dangles a selfish mirror and your flawed fingertips trace my paper thin skyline. Don’t captivate an illusion of it all. Even floating high with ecstasy I can’t fade into you. Why must I miss you when I don’t think you’re forever? With you my foundation shakes and my truths reach beyond the furthest corner I have ever been. Right and wrong have never been so gray as my body and mind hemorrhage apart. I want your touch soft as petals and as fast as you can go. But I won’t let you pass over me like a warm and pounding wave. Because there I’ll be sunburned freckled and blind from stinging sand as the tide goes out. You, yourself are mesmerizing and tend to get lost in moments. Besides that there is a difference between lying and listening. Your long face comes to mind, so misunderstood. We were strangers with glaces and you claim just a dance away from eternity. You forget the bittersweet taste every time it rains. Tonight is the impostor, leaving tomorrow to ache. I try but I can’t weep. Not because you should, but because everything is deeper now.

“This is the deep and dying breath of this love that we’ve been working on.”

My City

Average Superstar — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:22:26 +0000

From my view atop my bluff on the edge of the city, there is a distinct silhouette of palm trees and twinkling bulbs. Where props collide with painted backdrops. Out my window, from this hill, somewhere between heaven and earth, natures pulse is muffled by speeding cars and bright lights. It’s been hard to sleep in the city that is always awake. Here, daylight waits behind the push of a button, and palm trees never go black. The frawns rustle, but refuse to bend away from their warped stance. I smell them growing immediately upward, stretching as far away from the streets as they can muster, while remaining rooted among the chaos. As silent giants they whisper but mostly listen, and photosynthesize with fluorescent light, tinting their leaves neon. Above this urban, suburban desert, punctuated by anorexic trees, I lose touch with what proper trees are supposed to look like. Thick pine forests make these manicured skeletons look sick and phony, like creatures made for mockery. Underneath them I trace the maze of freeways beneath the shade of the moon. Mixing and matching the colors like my favorite Lite Brite pattern it all seems so small and amusing. This night, the chokehold is released and the city exhales. At the edge of the western world each tree marks the spot where dreams are buried. From this hill, where palms perch, looking down on those who have lost their maps, I hide from morning. I would tell the man asleep on the corner to wish upon a star, if the bright lights would let him find one. In this crowded place, my skin has never felt this lonely. But above the tangled houses, it feels close enough to home. My mother’s voice echoes in my head like a bad joke: “I don’t know how you can live in LA.”

“At least I have her love, the city she loves me.”

A Prayer

Average Superstar — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 05:10:09 +0000

I prayed just now, like I haven’t prayed in months maybe even years. It was simple and repetitive but I have never felt so immediately reprieved and I know what asked God for will be answered. There is somewhere between mother and father where daughter lives. Bridging the gap between human and divine, between creator and nurturer. It is the same distance that Jesus bridged when he walked the earth and brought the hope of peace to two very different worlds. Jesus was maimed and suffered and ultimately sacrificed himself so that that connection between God and his people could be sealed. I don’t fancy myself a martyr and I wouldn’t dare to describe myself as Christlike, but I have never felt so certain of my purpose as I do now in this light. I am the connector of two worlds, the peacemaker, the sacrifice. What I feel in my heart in this moment comes from my being, my essence, my God. The thing that makes me up inside which is derived from mother and father. That is why I trust it and why I know that is right. Just like Jesus, I don’t have answers to all your questions but what I do have is the way. I asked God in prayer tonight, over and over again, to use me.

It’s so simple, what I saw inside myself as the answer. It’s so obvious that it is easily overlooked. Forgiveness.

It is the way to God, to light, to happiness, to freedom. It is the one power that Satan cannot possess. God can and humans can. It is the only thing that sets us apart from every other creation. To deny that gift and power is to kill the spirit. It is a power that only exists when it is exercised. The reason divorce still has a suffocating grip is because the vices are overpowering this one state of grace. Pride – the hurt of being made vulnerable by the person you trusted for your whole life. Jealousy- of the life that has been taken from you and of the other person’s successes that you no longer have the privelege of sharing. Adultery- that caused the pain felt when a marriage is no longer holy and what sealed the decision to leave the covenant. Sloth – and denial, the very laziness and refusal to accept the problems at hand and deal with them appropriately. Gluttony – filling your plate of life with new, more distracting things and relationships and using them as a distraction and escape instead of solving the lingering issues with one another. Greed – to receive more and more than the other as a way to get even or to create balm to your pain. Anger – perhaps the most real and prevalent use of these ills against one another that lives inside of you even if it is buried deep and kills only you and the people that see it.

Despite these seven evils that seem too big to tackle, the one power over all of them is simply the gift that Jesus brought to this earth. That same thing we heard every single Sunday of my youth as a distant refrain. Forgiveness. You might think I mean giving that gift to someone who is harboring these evils toward you and forgiving one another, but my challenge is far greater. It is the way of God and His path out of the darkness in your life. More importantly than forgiveness of each other is the forgiveness of yourself. Think about that for a whole minute before reading on.

If you think you have done so and your life is not exactly where you want it to be, then this grace is not complete. Try again.

It is the most vulnerable, holy and difficult state of mind to grasp. How do I forgive myself for this? Without that, you cannot expect to forgive anyone else. It is the most pride swallowing siege against the war of anger and hate and betrayal that has built up inside you. It is the only medicine. Forgive yourself. When you are able to that, the relief of worldly burdens will lift and God will enter your heart and replace each vice that has taken grip of your soul and the circumstances of your situation. The reason that things have not worked out the way you need them to is because you have not yet delved deeply enough into this personal journey of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not a word you simply utter like magic, and it is not something that can be done while thinking of anyone else. In order to forgive yourself you must first confess and acknowledge each wrong doing that you know in your heart you have committed. It must be felt because it is an action, a motion that needs to issue from an energy source. You will know when you have been able to achieve this because things will be set right and you will feel free. I know you both are not free. My prayer for you both was that you are able to reach this place of peace so that a reconciliation with one another can be made. I no longer burden God with such selfish requests. My prayer for you that will continue all of my days until you have found it is that you are strong enough to get there at all.

Forgiveness is the path to enlightenment, and when that is achieved you will hold all the answers to know what to do.

“Better is one day in Your courts than thousands elsewhere.”

A Stranger in the Same Room

Average Superstar — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 02:58:18 +0000

Take your drink with mannequin hands

until you break apart.

Smile through teeth that scream

‘Cheese’ as we stand apart.

As the camera clicks and the moment dies,

like a wasted butterfly,

I watch you search outside this place,

for a genuine moment apart.

Dangled bait on a plastic pole

you stretch for them but I can see you.

Six kamikazes deep,

you are blurry and bleeding apart.

I wrote the expression on your face

in a tragedy once, where I was the star.

If it ever gets made,

I’ll save you a part.

I was finding a way to feel

that solitude behind your eyes,

but I am still looking to un-glue my heart.

I can offer you a dance,

an escape between frozen moments.

Where I soak in your salty breath

before the crowd pushes us apart.

“Ain’t the same when it’s up that close, make it rain, I’m makin’ it snow”