My Personal World, Part 24: Relativity

Bass banging out a blistering back-beat,

Hoping against hope to hold the high point

Of the dying week,

The ticky-tack ticking-away of time

Siphons, slurps, slips, sags, slides, settles,

Into a slow leak.

My Personal World, Part 23: The Haunted House In My Head

I don't remember the names, just the notes
That fill my head and my bedroom with ghosts,
Which is neither surprising nor quite the usual.
I'm left wondering if I'm really delusional,
If the chords wore shortcuts down in my head,
Or if I'm just easily (musically) led.
Keep the mix right, watch the ghosts coalesce;
One wrong song, they leave with unwanted gentleness,
Drawing back into the darkness, dancing dirges
To a second-rate soundtrack.

My Personal World, Part 22: Baggage/Around the World in 8 Tracks

If I am ever really known, then I am known to travel light.

I lost most of my memories along the road one night.

The bumps were bruising, the memories too heavy for my mind.

I think those twist and turns were also too much for my fright.

I last saw my shame on the way down a pass on I-90.

It couldn't keep up with so many bad decisions at high speed.

I might've left my marbles just east of the Mississippi.

They didn't weigh me down; I just didn't want 'em with me.

I'm not an accountant, but still, I don't fight

The influence of tastes past on my future, my life.

If I did, I'd need insurance no agent provides

For the times high-flying, erratic-steering memory collides

With the steady, ceaseless, high-speed driving of a beat,

From my most recent metal, and back to oldies.

I'm not really known for traveling heavy.

Nevertheless, I carry most of the music with me.

My Personal World, Part 19: Bittersweet Time Machine

I remember the first time that rhythm caught me.

It didn't exactly hit me in the head.

It was nothing nearly so violent as that.

It kind of grabbed me under the arm

and yanked me a quarter-turn around.

If you want to pick nits,

It was an illegal block above the waist.

Today, again, that same rhythm caught me.

It didn't exactly pull me to the ground.

After all, this isn't the first time around.

It kind of got in real close, face to face,

Until I let it take me by the hand

and lead me right back into the other moment.

If you want to pick nits,

It didn't leave room for the Holy Spirit.

I wonder when the rhythm will catch me again.

I wonder how gentle it will be next time.

Will it remind me of the winter, the couch, the friends,

Or the tragedies of the spring that followed behind?

Will it come with a caress or a kick?

All I know is that the rhythm is finished,

and it left me at least a little bit tired–

Perhaps not of it...

If you want to pick nits.

My Personal World, Part 17: Ten Words

It takes forty bars to get stuck in your head.

Those are memories ears don't forget,

But sometimes it only takes ten words to know

That a new song I hear echoes ten years ago,

Hitting bittersweet chords, a new graduate's theme,

Two songs nothing alike but they bring hindsight-dreams.

They both make me feel young. They both make me feel old.

They alter time's flow in my personal world.