Bobble-Headed
It’s a Saturday, in the evening. I’m playing nice, acknowledging my partnership duties, being personable & friendly at a social event for the significant other. I’ve already made my rounds at least once through the crowd, small-talking & smiling the usual insignificant casualties of satellite gatherings.
I make my way back to the basement for another beer and breath free from the congestion. Poster boy for ‘Growing-Up-Gotti’ is sitting solo on a couch in the host’s man-cave rustling through his green-eye stash, sampling the scents.
“And what’re you doing over there?” I ask, laughing, as I grab another beer from the mini-frig.
He responds, something or other, unintelligible and forgettable, as usual…
Junior Mr. dial tone doesn’t have much of a personality yet, young & not yet having the true knowledge of who he is or why, much less the intrigue to inspire figuring that out.
Silly me, ever the optimistic one, presumes that being it‘s only he and I in the room, that this may be the best chance I’ll have at stealing a moment’s peace, for a while at least…
He returns the wackie-tabackie back to its drawer, chinning up, as if to show his in-laws that this sort of indulgence is part of his past only, due to his new role of fatherhood.
I sit down on the couch adjacent from him, twist off the cap and lean back. I notice he’s looking anxious, uneasy. He’s to & fro between looking me in the eye and looking down at the table. And then after a series of shallow breaths, it comes…
“I’m not going to stand for you disrespecting my wife.”
Taken aback, I immediately smirk and let out a little snicker.
“Uh,” I pause, swallowing my sip, “I.. don’t.. recall.. disrespecting your wife…”
“Well I noticed you didn’t say hello to her.” He blurts out, fidgeting his fingers into themselves and his knees back & forth from the couch.
“No, no I didn’t.” I shake my head, my eyes peering him into proceeding as I’m amazed (for a moment only) that this battery-operated bobble-head actually mustered up even enough drunken courage to defend his better half’s supposed honor.
“Uh, and she.. didn’t exactly.. say hello.. to me either…” I add.
“And she’s not going to.” He exaggerates, forcing the conviction through his eyelids.
“Well then I guess, I’m more than just okay with that, considering…” I twist my neck, slightly nodding.
“She has disrespected me though…” I add again, understanding the obvious irrelevance.
Funny, of the pair, I’ve always held more respect for her than him. I figure at least she has a backbone, warped as the opinions that spawn from it may often be…
A moment passes before he thinks to add, “And you know I’m partial, you do know that, right?”
“Oh,” I nod in affirmation. “I would expect nothing less of you…” I let it linger a second or two before adding, “or more for that matter.” At this point, my tone is snide but I’m on the safer side of civil.
It’s not as though I didn’t expect to sail through this evening without at least someone saying something to me about my consistency in inconsistency. There aren’t many here I expect to understand the way I see the world, especially when their heart’s interests are vested where I’ve chosen to partner.
Being that I’ve not really argued nor elaborated upon anything he’s come at me with, I sense that he’s left unsatisfied. I watch him frustrate internally before his nerve rises and he’s able to spit out the silence.
“So you’re having a baby. Everything’s different now, you realize that, right?”
I’m writhing as my smile remains intact. In his tone, I can already tell where this is headed. He’s been eyeing me up more and more each time I’ve seen him over the past year, commenting on his inability to connect with me thus far through the four years of history we’ve been forced to share.
“I know you’re a very creative person. You’re very much an individual.”
“Well thank you!” I interject unapologetically, while nodding in defiance. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He continues on as if not to lose his train of thought, “You realize it’s not just about you anymore, that it’s all about your family now, right?”
And as though I hadn’t seen it coming, my teeth begin to burn beneath my breath…
“I think I’ve got a pretty good idea about how to prioritize the importance in my life right now, and in general, typically.”
This clueless halfwit is really about to try to school me on what it means to be a man, a family man no less, 3 months after becoming a father himself, as if he knows anything about me, my background, my past, my family, or the lengths I would go to for those close to my heart.
“So then, you’re not planning on leaving again, are you?
“Uh, no, no I don’t.. have any.. actual.. plans… to leave.” At this point I’m still well behaved, why I’m bothering to be I’m not quite clear on. I can laugh at his transparency all the while. I’ve always observed his being intimidated by me, especially my interaction with his father-in-law who too holds no real respect for him.
He then proceeds to take it even further. “You know every word, every action matters. You’ve made some mistakes, and I have too…”
I know what he’s referring to and I become overwhelmingly aghast!
“Do Not dare talk to me about mistakes! And do not assume you and I have anything in common, whatsoever. You’re a monkey from where I sit. Because if you really believed you’d actually made a mistake, you’d have some character by now, but you don’t! I’ve never beaten my woman, or anything close to it! I guess you think that because you beat the shit out of your wife that you’ve learned from your mistakes and you’ve since been forgiven. That’s what’s wrong with you fucking Christians, especially you ‘born again’ Christians. You naïvely convince yourself that your God’s absolved you of your sins and that you’re suddenly some new and better person because of it. Well guess what! You’re the only one who has the power to absolve your sins. Why would God help someone too lazy to help himself? And the only way you could actually ‘absolve’ yourself is by going inward and finding & acknowledging why it actually happened so it doesn’t happen again! But that’s impossible for you to contemplate because you couldn’t fathom taking the time even to find out who you are because you’re too chicken-shit to realize that you don’t know who you are. And you’re too oblivious to admit that you don’t have a clue, so how could you ever actually get up and go do the work. You’d rather claim you’ve submitted to your ‘Lord’s will’ so you can play powerless to it. And to think, from what I’ve heard, you’ve had an understandably shitty life, or at least a shitty family past, which to me, at least from past observations, can often have one fortunate side effect, that it presents you with a life that could have/should have created some actual stand-up character in you… But I guess it’s like they say, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t…”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He interjects. “What about my family?” Everything I’ve said has become lost in simply mentioning his family. I’m surprised at this point that he hasn’t hit me yet, considering everything I’ve so provokingly just spewed upon him. I guess bringing up his past shocked him enough to give up the meat-head testosterone aggression.
“It means that you have no personality! No mind of your own! There’s not even the slightest bit of substance in any of your opinions. You walk around at each one of these gatherings nosing up to people trying to make them like you, outwardly flaunting an array of second hand personality traits, like a ghost coasting under the guise of a personality comprised of what you perceive is the best of what other men’s ideals and beliefs are. Even in ‘confronting’ me just now, if you could even call it that, you’re completely transparent! You so long for the approval of these people that in hopes of making them think you’re someone of substance, you’ve taken on the most worthy cause you could come up with, ie: ME, the ‘creative guy,’ the one who’s ‘left’ more than once. But you don’t really know me. You don’t know the circumstances for my leaving. And you don’t care to know. Admit it!”
“That’s not true Shawn. The last time I saw you, I said to you in front of everyone that I wanted to get to know you, that you were the one person I couldn’t connect to yet.”
“Exactly, in front of everyone! Just like I said.” Like most people, give them enough rope and they hang themselves, he walks right into making my point for me…
“Exactly, in front of everyone! Just like I said.” Like most people, give them enough rope and they hang themselves, he walks right into making my point for me…
“And the reason you’ve always felt that way around me is because I’ve had to consciously search for something worthy within you to sympathize with just to find some level of common ground with you but to no avail! So if I’m forced to talk to a person in the same way that I apologize to a dog after accidentally stepping on its tail, then it’s beyond obvious to me that there’s absolutely no reason for me to try any harder. I’ve shared space with you for over 4 years now and I’ve waited, given you more than once the benefit of my doubts, but again, nothing! So no, I don’t try ‘connecting’ to you. And that makes you extremely intimidated by me. You feel transparent around me and the resentment obviously builds… So what do you do? Tonight you actually think I’ll let you get away with attacking every aspect of my character due to your insecurity in your lack thereof, and under the guise of being the ‘concerned’ and ‘protective’ family member… Are you serious? What’s most funny is that you don’t realize you’re not even family here. You’ve married in, and you’re nothing more than a satellite, not unlike me, in this regard ONLY… [I clarify] You do realize that no one here could give a shit about you, right? I doubt even your wife truly does! The only purpose you serve here is to stand on the arm of your wife so she doesn’t look like a whore who got knocked up on a one night stand, and probably to pay your due physical and financial support in raising the child. Now don’t get me wrong, they wouldn’t want to see either of us ‘satellites’ run over by a truck, but otherwise, we are of no consequence here. And after having accepted that, realize that on top of their basic lack of concern, no one here likes, much less respects you. And why? Because you live your entire life from the neck down!”
“What? From the neck down? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ll give you the minute to try and wrap your mind around it…” I laugh mocking his impotence even further…
“Look!” He shrugs off my riddle. “All anyone can ever expect of me is consistency!”
“And that’s what I mean. You pride yourself in ignorance, denying taking yourself even a step further, even as you long for their acceptance. And you wear these things upon your chest like some deranged badges of honor, as if you long for these ridiculous ideals to prove your worth. Every aspect of your existence, your job, your marriage, your spirituality, and every one of your relationships, each is lived from the neck down, only, and your head just bobbles above, floating there, looking fucking stupid! And you wonder why no one here respects you. Why should they, simply because you’re now ‘family’ to them? Maybe through your veil of perception that’s enough, but not to me, and apparently, not to them either! God bless them! Respect comes from the heart, period. It can’t be regulated and distributed via loyalties, laws, and definitely not liaisons…”
With this, I stand up from the couch. He’s staring at me dumbfounded and drunk, silent. There’s no sense in attempting to engage myself intellectually any further with someone like this. Tomorrow he’ll continue on his meandering path as he always has and he’ll write this off as nothing more than an uncomfortable intoxicated conversation… And that’s more than okay with me…
Harder Than Easy
And you find me as strange as the truth
I'm as guilty of judging as you are
But the difference is I don't judge you
You believed in your fairy tale endings
Now you find yourself down on your knees
Like a rock that's been changed by the ocean
Or a shipwreck lost out at sea
Sing me a love song, I'm your man
I will always love you the best I can
In our story of riddles and poems
Every word that you speak tastes like stone
Like a melody sung by a jester
Some are stolen, some are your own
At the end of the day when you're lonely
After begging to be left alone
You can look at this world as your kingdom
If you want you can make me your home
Sing me a love song, I'm your man
I will always love you the best I can
Hold me close, don't let me go
I will always love you the most..
Like A Coward
Like a thief in the night, you just slipped away
You simply cut the cord and released your hold
Granted your last fantasy, your life’s petty wish
Aligned in your mind, that only the good die young
But you died like a coward
In your sleep and alone
In the springtime of the lives
Of the seeds you’d sown
As if to avoid paying your depts
To never be confronted
To never have had to admit
All the ways you chose to submit
To your fears, your insecurities
To the alcohol, or your precious indulgences
To the scars you left
But I feel no almost connection to you at all anymore
As if no part of me could have come from you
Light years beyond your pathetic delusions
Like the years that have passed since you passed
You’re further and further away from me
Even my memories of talking to you
Of your voice, of your presence
Of your touch, of your scent
And of your sickness…
Now I watch your image unfold
Like a photograph, into stillness
It translates into one word only
…Weakness
Like that of your feeble attempts
Or your warped delusions
Of how it would be better for us
Were you to take us with you
I imagine the words falling from my tongue
I imagine what someone would think of it
“My mother attempted suicide many times
Of which, at least 3 times,
She tried taking my sisters and I with her”
There aren’t really words for the taste
That knowledge leaves you with
What right did you believe you had?
We were your responsibility, not your property!
I can hear the everyday excuses
Of children having children
And sickness brooding more sickness
Yet these experiences, each of your choices
Have weighed upon me, impressed upon me
And who I have become
Who I had to become, because of them…
Moments of absent control, darkness
Shining throughout my quiet emotional tides
Throughout the everyday moments in time
Throughout even the would-be happiest moments of my life
These repressed memories having finally shined through
My illusions, and my delusions have begun crumbling
Creating what can only exist
In the minds of the righteous
Dreamt up in the mind of a little boy
True only to a repressed and protected me
But to everyone else
Nothing more than cute little fantasies
That of my imaginary saintly mother
And many of my adulthood ideals…
Ridiculous afterworlds of perfection
Dreamt up utopias
These worlds live in my writing…
And through my therapeutic obsession in writing
From the context, to the content, to the writhing extents
In the heightened polarity of the pendulum, ie: my extremes
The passionate hope and longing for freedom
In every one of my waking dreams
My lack of trust in a conspiring world
To the vanity of my paranoia
My many varying attempts at control
I now know why I never felt safe
I know now why I never feel safe
Because “I’ve Always Been Crazy”
And yes, I guess
“It’s kept me from going insane…”
Yet simultaneously, I feel this weight on my chest
I look down, reminded, to see
This small, heavy, golden pendant
And it takes on a new meaning
From the desire of a reminder
To some strange badge of honor
But still, its there…
Like everything in me
That’s ever been a part of you
Floating here
ⓒ 2009 Shawn Michael Quinn
Greece Trip '09
Amazing Sunset
Greek Twilight
Ruins of Aliki Village
Aliki (little salt lake)
Athens watching
Dogs of Freedom
Yosemite & Sequoia Trip '09
California sand dunes
Yosemite
on the way to Sequoia
Sequoia
on the way home
No True Knowing
Can you feel it, sitting there, lurching?
Waiting for you to ease up
Even if for only a moment
If only in those dark hours of the night
In that deepest of sleep
It has something to show you
Something to whisper in your ear
An image you have reason to fear
But something you see every day
It even comforts you
In moments of mild despair
And through the lens of your perception
It’s a memory that beacons
Like a guiding light
So why is it that you’re afraid?
Is it because you know
That it’s what you see
That makes you blind
It’s the way you define yourself
That makes you a slave
That takes away your freedom
To simply be
But you crave that admiration
That image that inspires
At least in your mind
But daily you fall short
You feel like a shadow of that man
That in that moment’s perception
May not even have been
But still, you lock yourself in
Craving the admiration
Confident in this affirmed definition
Of you
But you’re not free
Amidst your revelry
Your stink and your sweat
Your refusal to give it up yet
You need to define it
Even though you completely comprehend it
Because it takes the place of that knowing
That there is no answer, no true knowing
ⓒ 2009 Shawn Michael Quinn
Blanketed By The Warmth Of Ignorance
Well I've been absorbing mediocrity
Been hollowed by uncertainty
I've taken all of my beliefs and given 'em up
Cause there's no guarantee of a god of longevity
Admit you don't know anything, and give it up
Singing, I don't know if I've been reborn
Lived a past life, suffered in another time
I don't know
Singing, I don't know if I've been reborn
Lived a past life, suffered in another time
I don't know
Give it up, give it up, give it up
Well I don't know what to believe anymore
But every now and then I feel a moment of awakening
But then it's gone, then it's gone, then it's gone
I'm blanketed by the warmth of ignorance
Singing, I don't know if I've been reborn
Lived a past life, suffered in another time
I don't know
Singing, I don't know if I've been reborn
Lived a past life, suffered in another time
I don't know
If I'll go somewhere special when I die
If I'll go somewhere special when I die
So I'll just go on and livin' my way
There's a strength in duality
Penetrate mentality
Give it up, give it up
Learned from casualty
Don't have faith in anything
Give it up, give it up
Singing, I don't know, no, I'll never know
I'm giving up, giving up
Singing, I don't know if I've been reborn
Lived a past life, suffered in another time
No, I don't know
If I'll go somewhere special when I die
If I'll go somewhere special when I die
So I'll just go on and live it my way
Tumor
Like a tumor
Eating away at all you’d had
Growing in the dark recesses
The deep caverns of the heart
Feeding off the creature comforts
Growing in the accepted sicknesses
Of jealousy, insecurity, greed
And the increasing habitual trivialness
As it eats away at you, slowly replicating over time
Through the blood that pumps through your heart
Until one day you wake up dying instead of living
And it seems much too late to turn it around
And those closest to you
Your trusted family and friends
Those who doctor up
All that’s become your life
They coach you
Implore you to have faith
To be strong, to not let go
And you know this disease is a part of you
But you also know
What it’s doing to your soul
Soon a confidante appears though
Someone you’re inclined to trust more than most
You tell yourself they must be right
That it’s somehow your only hope
Of feeling better, of retaking your life
And like the guesswork of white coats
You soon wake up sold
And so you seek your cure
Injecting into you this new poison
Fingering the festering sore
Yet this new growth still eats away at you
Still it grows, slowly taking over
Taking hold, taking control
And your cure is eating away at the healthy
All that was left of you
This poison, feeding too
And you lie to yourself
Reciting hope that there’s still a chance
Convincing yourself you can still turn it around
But everything is killing you
Your cancer and your cure
And so the resignation sets in
Fighting isn’t worth the fight
Your soul is gone
Your heart, numb
It’s too late for you
And finally
When it eventually kills you
Having taken everything you ever were
At least then, you’ll know
You will take it with you
When you go
ⓒ 2009 Shawn Michael Quinn
Dream of Home
Daniel, when I first saw you
I knew that you had a flame in your heart
And under our blue skies, marble movie skies
I found a home in your eyes
We'll never be apart..
And when the fires came
The smell of cinders and rain
Perfumed almost everything
We laughed and laughed and laughed
And in the golden blue
Crying took me to the darkest place
And you have set fire to my heart
When I run in the dark, Daniel
To a place that's vast, Daniel
Under a sheet of rain in my heart
Daniel, I dream of home
But in a goodbye bed
With my arms around your neck
Into our love the tears crept
Just catch in the eye of the storm
And as my heart ran round
My dreams pulled me from the ground
Forever to search for the flame
For home again, for home again
When I run in the dark, Daniel
To a place that's vast, Daniel
Under a sheet of rain in my heart
Daniel, I dream of home
When I run in the dark, Daniel
To a place that's vast, Daniel
Under a sheet of rain in my heart
Daniel, I dream of home..
Like A Man
Wake up son of mine
Mamma got something to tell you
Changes come, life will have its way
With your pride, son
Take it like a man
Hang on, son of mine
A storm is blowing up your horizon
Changes come, keep your dignity
Take the high road, take it like a man
Listen up, son of mine
Momma got something to tell you
All about growing pains
Life will pound away
Where the light don't shine, son
Take it like a man
Suck it up, son of mine
Thunder blowing up your horizon
Changes come (changes come)
Keep your dignity (keep your dignity)
Take the high road (take the high road)
Take it like a man (take it like a man)
Momma said, like the rain (this too shall pass)
Like a kidney stone (this too shall pass)
It's just a broken heart, son
This pain will pass away
Southwest Road Trip '09
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
Homolovi Ruins, Arizona
On the way to the Hopi 3 Mesa's, Arizona
Meteor Crater, Arizona
Montezuma Castle, Arizona
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