Served

The fires of injustice burn to this core

As the flags of greed and extreme capitalism soar

This, the soulless few

March the dogs of wrath to do their due

No humanity in their eyes to bleed

Uncaring agendas of might and greed

The fat, sloth and swine

Food for the gods, our insignificant lives

What right have you?

What right do you believe yourself to have?

To gloat in your accomplishments

Desire seeping through your maps

Does might make right?

Like power intoxicates?

Does your greed affect your sleep?

Or maybe fear of slaves turning to rage

The sheer manipulation of will

And sheep keeping their own kind in line

Push your modern opium to the masses

The divine leading the blind

And what would you do if these tables were turned?

And what would you feel if it was your children who burn?

And how could you stare into eternity

Knowing all you've manifested were evil deeds

You masters, you keepers, you owners of all the land

You task masters, you demons, you oppressors of man

Sick to my stomach, disgusted, and enraged

Never before have I felt like such a slave

Watching this turn of history's page

The end times are coming

And yes, I know I'll soon burn

But I hope and I pray

That you too will share your turn

That all you've inflicted

You'll too soon taste and learn

All the pain you've created

To consume you forever

Deserved & served

All that you've earned

© 2007 Shawn Michael Quinn

2007 Soundtrack

Pretty Girl Syndrome

There’s really no pretty way to dress this up

So I’ll not waste my time…

This is for those of you leading insignificant lives

Those who’ve never questioned

What it really means to be alive

But mainly,

Its this group of you that comes to mind:

Bred out of idealistic alignments

And born into ideal circumstances

Like demigods, waiting only for their mortal death

This day to be shrouded in pink flowers

And that glowing white dress

Pretty

Like the picture in her head

Surrounded by plastic modelesque figurines

Whose identities have long since been dead

An entire race among us

Dreaming upon that perfect day

Having been completely conditioned

A mind, a heart, a soul

With absolutely nothing to say

This image, the master

And anything outside of it, she rejects

Learning all the ways to properly respond

This idea of perfection she must project

These perfect nuclear family lives

Wrapped in gossip, joint functions and soaps

No reason to ever step out or step up

Engulfed

And any man whose ever come close to her skin

Has found it more than enough

To have simply been deemed worthy of this sin

And for her to emotionally participate

Is more than her mind needs to fathom

In this vile and primal act

Never knowing what it feels like to get their hands dirty

No man has ever called her out on her lack of ability to please

Because they feel simply lucky enough for a piece

And she’s never thought to please

Simply because she’s ‘pretty’

Chased by the boys most of her days

The mind and the flesh frail and weak

For never having moved a muscle

Always handed anything desired

Before given the chance to outwardly seek

ⓒ 2007 Shawn Michael Quinn

A Knowing

There’s a knowing

That at some point in time

Can no longer be ignored

It is no longer up to you

Because it becomes more than the word

And there’s no going back

No matter how might you might want to

One cannot fill what another lacks

These voices merge in the cavity of the heart

And all you may have planned

Can do nothing but fall apart

What you called love

No longer holds control

And what you held so close

Just doesn’t measure up anymore

The melancholy sets in

Drifts these sails once again

The comparative levels we so long for

Have become so few & far between

And as the buzzing bee’s of life distract us

From this need of silent understanding

And I’m not afraid to love

And I’m not afraid to die

But the bubblegum of this chatterbox world

Leaves me wondering how?

ⓒ 2007 Shawn Michael Quinn

Ritual

By Your Side

To lay by your side

Becoming the intertwining shades of grey

In the shadows between the void

That our naked bodies create

The light that mingles

From your glistening skin

To the surface on my twilight eyes

And all I want is to touch her

To kiss her, make love to her

Passionately.

It’s all I’ve ever wanted

All any man has ever really wanted

Needed.

To disappear in arms and flesh and naked skin

Whenever we can, for as long as we can

Because in those moments alone

Becoming one

It’s this feeling that brings us home

It’s through this embrace that our spirit cries

Only through these moments 

That our deepest fears subside

It’s this connection that enables the idea of love

To come to life

But love is not the same

For a man

As it is for a woman

She needs to know I am there

Warm

Ready to accept whatever her heart

Is willing to share

Her fear is not of being alone…

It is only of feeling alone

But I suppose, to her

There is no difference

She doesn’t need a man to be her friend

They rarely understand this concept

Nor its relevance

Much less its importance

Attraction, orgasm, and even the heart’s connection

Are not part of this basic underlying need

It is only how through you

She can achieve that feeling

How she can fill this void of feeling alone

How she can feel secure, held

From moment to next

This is love to her, at best

A man knows in another sort of way

That he could never not be alone

That he could never not feel alone

Although he may desire it

He knows there is no true escape

And so he loves in order to lie to himself

Just enough so that he might actually fool himself

Into believing in it

And often, he does…

This, the most beautiful of troves

But to a woman, this lie

Is forever unable to satisfy

Her heart is then forbidden

Its one loyal ability, the right of denial

And so her heart, in its silence

Creeps, slowly fading away

Even as her loving embraces

Show no inclination of loss in the day to day

But at night, as we sleep

The surface of that mingling light

Illuminates these shadows between

What once were beautiful shades of grey

But these twilight eyes now see through

These moments in time

Where I have been

Simply a warm

Body

By your side

ⓒ 2007 Shawn Michael Quinn

Goo

It’s quiet here.  No sounds.  No life.  Nothing.  Everything that’s ever been imagined is gone.  It’s vanished.  But it hasn’t.. because it never was…  No thought has ever existed.  No dream.  No conscience.  No identity.  No ambition.  No love.  No life and no death.  Stillness.  This dream was to entertain, to indulge, to satiate… It is now as nonexistent as everything.  There is no life, no consciousness.  Nothing to embrace, to accept, nor to abandon.  This breath you cling to is less than an illusion.  These dreams you call life and love and hope and suffering are dead and dying.  You do not exist.  No one you have ever loved exists.  No one you have ever known exists.  Even these thoughts you share, one layered upon the next, do not exist.  This is the sound of eternity.  Silence, the sound of nothing as it sleeps…   The sound of all in effortless nonexistence avoiding it’s own void.  You and her and him and them as well as me all only one thing, the void of eternity.  There is no heart or hope or intimacy or truth.  These dreams and fears and questions and years soak up the aftermath of the cosmic masturbatory goo.  A wet dream at best, this little blue planet we infest.  It’s all so serious, so important, so divine…  I believe in it all, really, I do!  Not even in little rants like these do I stop calling it true.  Because I do, I do!  I really want to!  It would be so sad to sit and watch each of you carrying on the way you do.  But then again either way, I’ve got nothing better to do…  I might as well jump in and become one of you.  Am I not anyway?  Well, anywho…  Something is broken, or simply something breaks.  Because in my head, I sound like Dr. Seuss.  And that’s just a little more than I can take…  It’s all become so funny, like a little nursery rhyme, or maybe a cute little lullaby.  No, probably not.  It’s just fucking goodbye.

ⓒ 2007 Shawn Michael Quinn

Roadtrip 2007

 St. Louis Arch

Mechanical Bulls & Mandals

Me & Luvey

Graceland

Mirror Of Our Mornings

Integrity?

Some ideal which seems worthy to chase


But that mirror of our mornings

Tends to show us
 our truest face


Your devils and mine


Each of our gods, far from divine


We are the slaves of these wretched beasts

Within!

Our mistakes and questions leave us

With another path

To begin…

ⓒ 2007 Shawn Michael Quinn

Lullaby

Life, that's what we call it


In each moment that passes by


In each moment until we die


These dreams we dream...


How wonderful each of them seems


How beautifully they decorate the inbetween


And each day we give life


Our life


We breathe it away


Our hearts beat it away


And our children eat it away


I can only assume that it's supposed to be this way


But I don't know what any of it means


I know there's a lot I'm supposed to be thankful for


       And so it seems


This time, through each of these moments


I have the chance to live


to experience, to dream


to build, to love


to destroy, to create


I really don't want to live in fear


Nor do I want to choose life from fears


I want to be free


With or without comforting arms to hold me


I want to be battered, bruised, and worn


I want to be screamed at and scorned


I want to laugh and lie and fuck and cry


I want to destroy all that's left to hold onto


And one day...

I want to die.

With or without a legacy behind me


Those things wont matter to me anymore


Only my experiences will determine


Whether my life was rich or poor


Everyone that's ever come


Is either gone or will be soon

And that really doesn't bother me

      but my ambitions bother me

       my fears bother me

        my worry bothers me


But I'll make no apology


I'm going to die


I welcome it... today or tomorrow


You are going to die


And I probably wont get the chance


To tell you goodbye


I probably wont get the chance


To watch that light fade from your dying eyes


But I will sing you this lullaby


And in your memory


I will probably cry



There is something left for you to learn


And I don't claim to know what that is


But I do know that only in dying


Is that understanding earned

ⓒ 2007 Shawn Michael Quinn

Beer Garden Morning After Dreamscapes

So I have this dream this morning where I go into a hotel room while on a trip somewhere and I turn on the boob tube while I’m getting settled in.  The channel it opens up to is playing one of the Superman movies (not sure which one or if the scene I saw is actually even in a Superman movie) all I know is that they had superman tied up, weak, and Otis, Lex Luther’s dipshit assistant was tossing damp dirty gray socks at him while he was sorting out Lex’s laundry…  I say to myself aloud “it must be a Superman marathon…” I go back to my things, unaffected…

Next Scene:  A young woman, in her late twenties probably, blonde, along with her daughter are flying, riding on a broomstick up through the air. It feels like I’m in one of those dreams within a dream sequences…  As they’re flying, they’re talking.  I can hear every bit of their conversation as if I’m part of it… The daughter is asking the mother questions about her father, why he isn’t there, what did the mother do to make him go away?  The mother tries to explain it calmly, in adult terms, un-defensively.  The daughter doesn’t get it. They then fly past the ozone layer into outer space, and right upon reaching outer space, they can no longer fly.  They fall, separately, them and the broom, but they don’t fall back into the earth’s atmosphere.  They fall outside the earth, underneath it, and land into this strange white dust.  All the while, it’s still as though I am with them, but not physically.

Scene 3:  I am in the hotel room again.  Lex Luther and his lackies are there.  They’ve got me at their disposal.  I can’t recall how or why.  They’ve kidnapped the daughter of the woman on the broomstick, along with other children.  They need me to watch them, to keep them from being found. They leave, to where I don’t know.  MY pup Buke is with me.  The kids are sad but they like playing with Buke.  There’s also a bunch of Lex Luther’s cat’s there. They’re on the windowsills trying to stay away from Buke.  Buke, of course, is more consumed by the cats than the kids…

Scene 4:  I realize its thanksgiving. I’m with my family, both sides of my family are together as if they were one.  We’re in what looks like another hotel room, but no one seems to notice.  There are these weird little peanut butter cakes that are there for everyone to snack on prior to dinner.  I eat one… or two… My dad is with me.  I’m distracted and disturbed by what is going on in my room, the kidnapping of these children and how I’m forced to play a hand in it.  I keep up my pretenses.  I know my father would be disappointed, but although I can’t recall why or how, I know my accepting even being involved has something to do with him.  The mother of the little girl comes into the room. She has no place there but she knows who I am, that I have her daughter.  My Aunt Mike asks her who she is.  She says she’s a friend of mine.  I agree.  I realize the only way she could know about me is through Lex Luther.  He’s told her about me so apparently he wants us to meet.  He needs us to go at something for his purposes together… We exchange stares.  She’s not upset or angry with me.  Through a silent understanding, we both realize we’re unfortunate comrades.  My father leaves the room to get another captain and coke.  She watches him leave.  She looks to me and tells me; “He’s always given you anything and everything you’ve ever needed, selflessly, so when there’s something you can do for him, seldom as that is, you refuse to let him down, no matter what that means…” Without breaking my stare, I answer her simply, “Yes.”  My father comes back into the room and intuits that something is off between this woman and me.  He guesses I don’t really know her and that information combined with my underlying somber and distracted mood, he pulls me aside to confront me.

Scene 5:  We’re on a plane.  This woman is a pilot.  It’s a 747.  My father is with me.  I’ve apparently told him what I’ve become involved in and why.  He doesn’t allow me to go it alone.  The plane is full of passengers, but we’re not anywhere that we can see them or have to interact with them.  The plane takes off from Newark.  Something’s wrong.  The tower instructs the pilot, this woman to temporarily fly over the Hudson River for safety precautions…  We might crash, obviously.  She yells to my father and I to go check the landing latches underneath the plane.  We have to crawl outside the plane, hanging on with only our hands and a tie cable, and wait to see if when she pulls up the landing gear, if they malfunction.  If they do, we have to pull these latches letting them fall into the river so the plane can kick up to the next speed and we can then climb back in.  My father climbs out the right hatch.  I climb out the left.  I’ve never seen NYC like this before… I’m fascinated.  And fast as we’re going, it doesn’t feel that scary.  My father reminds me to wait before pulling the latch.  We wait.  The landing gear malfunctions, its definitely sabotaged.  My father and I exchange stares and pull the latches simultaneously.  The wheels rocket out spiraling kamikaze towards the water.  The hatches close.  We get back inside and to the cockpit.  She tells us there is something else wrong.  We need to make an emergency landing at JFK. 

Final Scene:  We’re in the kitchen area of the airport bar.  The woman is on the phone screaming at someone about the plane not being properly inspected before takeoff.  The FBI comes in.  They know sabotage was involved.  They sense that I know more than I am saying.  I could tell them about Luther, but I don’t trust whether he might have paid them off, and if it’s a trap or not.  I say nothing.  One agent looks beyond frustrated at me and another looks at me with a sinister eye of approval.  I now know I did the right thing by saying nothing.  My father is still there, silent, behind me…  The woman’s daughter comes into the room and she hangs up the phone hysterically elated…  The end.  The larger plot was never revealed… Until maybe the next episode…

Something about that bohemian beer garden draft… so vivid the dreams every time… hmmmm, I’m thirsty ;)

Exorcism

Basically, I just want to exorcise this energy. Every time I think about this era of my life, I'm drained, completely. It was one of the most difficult times of my life, between having moved to a new school, this drama, and all the drama with my mother and family. It had to be just about as hard as anything I've ever faced, aside from the death of my mother and presumably when my parents split up when I was five or seven years old. I want to exorcise it, get rid of it, and expel it from me. Every time someone from this period pops up on this godforsaken site, I'm pulled (mentally, emotionally) right back to it, with all these little details I wouldn't have remembered previously bubbling up within me, refreshed, renewed, and turning me temporarily again into a regretful, angst ridden, teenager dreaming of homicidal maniac style tasteless fantasies… 



So what is it that I'm not facing, not letting go of? Because each time, I feel like that 15 year-old kid, pulled into historic dramas, feeling angry, hurt, sad, rejected, regretful… Do I bridge the past to the present and kick the shit out of them? Will that make me feel better? Or do I forgive them? I ask myself, am I still going to feel this way when I'm 90 years old? (as if I'd make it that far) This bullshit happened over 17 years ago… What the fuck? How can this still be affecting me, even in this way? I was wrong to betray this, at the time, new friend, these new friends in the way I did. I know this. I know it was fucked up. I know it makes me a 'bad person,' a fucked up friend. But I'm far from that same 15 year-old fuck I was back then... But why, when brought back here, am I still so angry, especially if I am the one who was fucked up? What is this injustice I feel lingering? Why would I feel so justified in kicking the fuck out of these people, in smashing their heads in? I know, I know without any proof to back it up, I know beyond a shadow of doubt that I would feel 100,000,000 times better if I just threw down with either one of these two fucks… win, lose, or draw… Shit, I'd even take them both on at the same time knowing well I'd get the piss kicked out of me back and forth, because it wouldn't matter to me… It'd be closure. And it'd be long overdue…



Is it half penance, and half revenge, with a sprinkle of justice atop, on both sides of the spectrum? Is it love? Is it fear? All in all, it feels like love, warped as that may sound… Its not fear. The only fear involved here is that of a would-be dying man not wanting to carry this ridiculous adolescent drama with him into whatever it is that comes next… But that's hardly a fear. It'd be just as ridiculous then as it is here… It's more about the indulgent waste of energy… Because I know at the end of a few beers.. or a bloody brawl, that I'll look either one of these self absorbed cock suckers in their eyes and know, amongst the varying choices of lives; past, present, and future, that this kharmic energy is finally fucking freed… And maybe this is exactly what I need…

Aura

The Last Dance

The mystery

The one thing she’ll do anything for

Mother’s little girl…

Something to dive into, to conquer

Something no one else could know

Something naughty, her life, her own private little show

There’s no way you could ever own her

No way you could ever even know her

And your secret is safe with me

Your history is a lie

Like the lie you live

And your love, an illusion

Nothing you could ever give

All you could share is the body we see

And what lies behind the eyes

Is that same eternal mystery

You’ll hang onto your souvenirs

Under your bed in a box you covet

And any man who looks inside

Will understand he could never begin to know it

This or any man who shares your bed

The closer she lay beside him

The further away she is in her head

And she’ll take everything you could hand her

Knowing she’ll never allow you to understand her

Simply wanting to possess you

If only to categorize you

And she’ll let you take all that you want

Casting the spell so it’s these that will haunt

Waiting impatiently for the day

You eventually give up all your charades

For the idea of her unconditional love

With a hopeless prayer and belief

That what you are could really be enough

But then she’s acquired you

And any mystery is now gone

And all that’s left is all that you are

Your age, and your names

Your history’s meaningless, all the same

And just like any other man

Its whether you fit into this fantastic master plan

After having handed over all your power

Left by her, devastated and devoured

It was nothing more than a game

That you played all the while, all the same

And like the better of most

You went for broke chasing that ghost

And ended up losing all you gave

ⓒ 2007 Shawn Michael Quinn