Dinosaurs in a Petting Zoo

We humans live in intersecting worlds … bubble worlds, bouncing off each other in an absolutely endless network of dimensional dreamscapes we refer to as the Universe.

The best telescope we have in many of these bubbles zooms us out or in to a visual insanity masquerading as a canvas backdrop of something we call “outer space” … as if we are somehow, “in” space - in our space … or some space. Taking up space. You can get lost in the complexity of a bathroom tile configuration, the pattern on a lifeless leaf, the color collisions of a person’s eyeball or the sonic ping pong of voices inside a tiny restaurant full of hungry people. Hungry in their stomach, hungry in their souls. Hungry for answers. Starving for something to make them understand even a half a second worth of what all this is.

We are a wild bunch. We the people of this planet. We are all crazy. Some of us know it, but most everyone else run from that truth like a puppy from the bathtub. How can we not be?

Chaos is our king and queen and somewhere in between lies our princess - Peace. She’s lovely, but so fickle. She’s comes and goes as she pleases while we all clamor around, making noise, ignoring anything that might scare her off, though we’re usually the culprit, as we neglect to notice the bubbles, bouncing off one another like bumper cars in a Disney dream.

It is without doubt, madness. But, it is glorious and fascinating. It is incomprehensible to our stifled brains, though our magic makeup, floating like an orb inside these archaic avatars know every secret, each line on the back of a butterfly’s wing, fully aware of the drops of piss on our tennis shoes and the way each of us never really look at someone for more than a few seconds at a time, because maybe we fear we’ll fall in and never be able to climb back out. The eyes are the portal to another place — a place we can’t go unless we sleep or die (of course there are other ways to catch that ride, but they’re rare).

Crazy, madness, death and fear — these are just words. Labels used to describe the things we can’t comprehend with our limited minds.

There is only one constant truth - the moment you are experiencing at any given time.

Only there can you feel what freedom tastes like in the back of your mouth.

Only there, can you meet yourself.

It is there, the entire Universe holds your hand and shows you the pathways to infinite possibility. Where heaven unclothes itself and feeds ice cubes to hell as every god holds a mirror up in camaraderie as you pass by like a child who’s just discovered a book is not only a time machine, it’s a multi-dimensional spacecraft that telepathically threads to our brains and transports us to everywhere and back again.

This life is more than a miracle. This life is river water rushing inside an hour glass. It is a beautiful choir caught in a doorbell … a dinosaur at a petting zoo.

This adventure is yours my friend.

Ride the fucking dinosaur into the traffic jam and call your people home.

There’s no more hiding who you are.

You’ve seen the mirrors.

Now take your place amongst the trees and all the life feeding itself with every breath, with each thought … with every sound.

And be.

If Blue Weren’t a Color

It would be the last note falling to the floor

from a tired violin in some stone walled pub

with beer stained sleeves and conversations colliding.

It would be a kiss that wanted one more press against the pair of lips

life will surely become a frozen river without.

It would be the feeling that fills the forest when a cool breeze holds

hands with a ray of sun and the leaves catch a ride on their shoulders

as the horizon tells the moon its time for her shift.

It would be how I felt each time you smiled at me and each time I

said goodbye all at once.

If blue weren’t a color, it would be my heart lying alone in my bed,

waiting for me to come back home with you.

Bloke & Blondie Meet in the Street

Enter scene:

Extremely tall English bloke, pumped up, screaming through Pasadena in a Mini Cooper blasting Rammstein, stuck in second gear ... foot hammering the pedal like a metronome dipped in a glass of molotoved energy drink (the cheap big can) – freshly jacked-up from a the ka pows of a cheesy Kung Fu film.

He’s sweaty and ready for anything.

Also entering scene from left (west):

Tattooed toe to necklace, sweet faced Middle Westerner Girl, lovely despite the pent up past begging to beat down the back door of her lovely blues to get to you and a penchant for chain smoking skinny, hand rolled cigarettes (rolled earlier while watching an old episode of “Mad About You”) and humming “Gary Indiana” from “The Music Man” not quite under her breath all the while still finding a way to wand sexiness over her short, spring dress, covered in violet petals - tourmaline necklace hanging swankily above; her flapper, knee-high fringe boots taking care of the rest ... walks loftily in thought onto the crosswalk of an intersection sweating pebbles in the sun below a mean/green traffic light only two weeks away from retirement.

The first scene meets the second in the third:

Mini bleeds black tar from the road as the brakes take a smoke. Bloke’s head bounces off the seat rest, his eyes like pinballs trying to find the way back to square one. Back in the square, they fall on her - the tattooed goddess from down the street and up the stairs (one room studio in “one day this and one day that” Ville).

She doesn’t flinch. Turns calmly, a curse word teeming to her teeth ... but her blues meet his pinballs and the curse word sinks back down into the Scrabble bag of her belly and she instead – smiles.

He smiles.

Light turns orange.

Still smiling, she takes a puff of a skinny roll and gives him a tiny wink before making her way to the curb (waiting anxiously to catch a peek up her skirt).

He sits.

Honks, glares and uncaught curse words climb through the air around him, but he’s still watching her wave that wand.

It’s just an ordinary Wednesday (Hump Day as they say) ...

But now he believes in magic.

- Jack Piatt

All Over The Map(s)

You have to understand …

We’re just riding imaginary rocket ships to Neverland.

And we didn’t buy the tickets.

Sneaking off when the night plays cards with crickets …

(the laid back kind) not those forever fiddling types,

pompously offering (without actually asking) the seeming serenade

(seeming … because once again, they didn’t ask and neither did we)

of unwelcomed noise.

But these other crickets, the card players …

They have style.

And when they put their bows to their fiddle legs … they mean business.

Not the currency of exchange type business … I mean Bizzness!

The musical kind … the kind that crawls up into your ears with mining lights on their hats and don’t stop searching till they find the motherboard of your internal makeup, cause they’re explorers, truly exploring … digging for truth … and the occasional peanut (they get hungry).

Listen … I like what I like.
But I don’t have to.

I mean, that can change. And should it not?

Really – think about that.

Why so rigid? Why so inflexible? Like old ironworkers trying to do yoga at 97 … it’s a stretch.

Seriously, they would really be tight at that age, considering their background and all.

 So let’s consider the perpetuation of the Status Quo. I don’t suggest actually perpetuating it, quite the opposite ... I merely suggest considering the notion of it as a concept. I’m not going to lie to you as there is no reason (no dangerous situation or feelings to consider), I don’t like the word status anyway … the implications of the word bother me (think title and class, or military – “Hey! What’s the status on that box of grid squares?”).

You get the point.

 So back to what I like or don’t for that matter:

I saw a beautiful girl the other day ordering food from a hot bar at an organic grocery store and before I had decided to secretly marry her, I looked down to find her legs were hairier than my own.

A bit unsettling – yes. No sense in lying (we went over why).

But why?

Why unsettling? Because somewhere, deeply rooted within my inner psyche is a seed planted from some cultural conditioning propaganda telling my ego what I should and shouldn’t like. What is beautiful and what isn’t.

Holy shit man … this is getting a bit heavy (but keep carrying it – we’re heading somewhere).

Do you think those crickets (the cool cats, with sunglasses and poker faces) give two flying firecrackers

(you thought I was going to say ‘fucks’ didn’t you) …

about leg hair on a lovely, cricket maiden who plays the thigh violin like David Garret on shrooms?

I’m going with Nega Tive my friends … no Sir REE Bobby Dylan.

They don’t … and why not? Cause they’re cool (really cool).

Not like me, who obviously has much evolving to do before I can play cards with those guys.

-Jack Piatt

(c) sometime around 2013

Crockpot

I believe in doing what you want.
Let’s skip ahead to whatever your end is ... whenever that end is.
What do we see?
People crying (maybe).
A house load or at least a pick up truck load worth of stuff orphaned to a family member who doesn’t have the room for it (cause they have a truck load of their own shit) or a thrift store mid-town flipped through by those who are building up (or adding to) their own pile.

Everything you “own” is a crockpot. Well, a crock of shit at least.
It’s pointless, most certainly after you are gone and most likely even while you are here. What are you doing with all of that crap?
Seriously?
What do you plan on doing with it?
Today? Tomorrow? After you are burned or buried?

Do what you want and stop collecting shit like a crazy person shipwrecked in a junkyard.

I have a feeling, let’s swing for the fences and call it a gut feeling, that you have things you want to do. Things you want but haven’t done. You’ve thought about it, dreamt about it, daydreamed about it, spoke about it and maybe even wrote it down.
Yet you haven’t done anything about it. Why?

It’s simple.
You are too busy collecting things — scrapbooking instead of experiencing.
You are building up a bank that doesn’t have a currency where you are going.

What to do?

Drag every last thing you own and don’t regularly use into the front yard (back if you’re shy) and smother it all with good ol’ Gas -O- Leen. Strike a match (really soak that sound and smell in) then drop onto the pile of pointless.
Watch as the unneeded melts into something that has always been an intangible word to you.

Freedom.

It’s now yours. What to do?

Well, what you want of course. Go play. Have fun.

Pack light.

~ Jack Piatt

Fear And Boating On Lake Acid

I’m not afraid anymore.

Not afraid to say I make my life more difficult than any cooked up chicken foot curse could ever puff up a dream to (and some).

Truth be told, I am my own curse. But I am also the cure. I am the medicine I need to make me better when I just can’t seem to get out of my own way.
It’s this long curve ball that’s the problem ... the one the pitcher tossed my way when I was born. I am still squinting my eyes trying to get a bead on that bad boy.

Patience is a virtue they say, but so is good eye sight if you ask me and the best exercise for your eyes – looking at something two or three times more than you wanted to (yes, that’s a clever plug for “go ahead and make mistakes”).

So, back to being afraid (or not being ... or both).

Sure I’m afraid of sharks and solitary confinement, old people or infants that move too fast etc.,

— I won’t bore you with the usual suspects in the “Fear and Boating on Lake Acid” department, but I will offer a suggestion to wrap up this saunter through a page ...

Let yourself off the hook every once in awhile.

This life thing we are all signed up for is pretty brutal in it’s own right when it wants to be, which tends to mirror the schedule of the daily rain drop release in Seattle and neither of those is an exaggeration.

But flip that well traveled, coin over and life pulls the clouds right from over us just as we’re reaching for the umbrella that doesn’t really work that well anyway.
So it’s the whole yin-yang, dark and light balance philosophy, yes ...

but in all seriousness (and we should measure how many times we use that statement in a day down to teaspoon increments) ...

I say again ...

Let yourself off the hook every once in awhile.

Hell, I have a better idea – switch that whole routine altogether. Only put yourself on the hook every once in awhile ... the rest of the time run proud and free from that hook like a two year old child who’s just escaped with a spoon covered in triple fudge cake icing. Run for the living room (and the nearest end table to hide under to enjoy the spoils of your tiny five-finger score)!

Don’t be afraid of that curve ball anymore.
Just swing with no expectation or outcome in mind for what happens when you do.

You’ll find it’s much easier to swing the bat …

when you’re not hanging from a hook.

~ Jack Piatt

The Endless Daydream Gone Mad

I’m pushing the coffee back for the beer. The crack of the top brings some kind of peace to me, that maybe I only knew as a child running through a field in the frozen hourglass they call rural Ohio.

I’ve thought I was many things throughout the years that foolish people think define us, though reality says I am also a fool for thinking at all ... for assuming I am anything at all.

I am an ant crawling along the floor of an endless daydream gone mad. I am a drop of rain that slammed into the ground at immeasurable speed exploding into a billion tiny tears, only to collect myself and climb to the closest cloud for another fall.

That’s what I am. That’s all I am.

Stop pretending whatever it is you are doing is more important than just sitting on the ground and looking across at whatever is there.

I thought I found love, about 400 times. Fuck off, I did (think so anyway).
Because that’s the only way to walk down the street – the only way to look into the eyes of a beautiful girl who you marry for a moment in time.
And maybe a little longer ... sometimes.

I’ve lost my heart to an Otis Redding song.
His voice shattered me into a mess of pieces unrecognizable on the floorboard of my car.

I kept driving, and I kept loving. Pulled up to the next bar and fell in love again, but I only had a piece of heart to slide across the bar, but my smile was still on point ... my eyes never let on to what was going on below.

I can disappear for sometimes a year at a time.
Here I sit though, same old haunt, a computer screen glaring “off bright” toying with my eyes, keys daring me to push them.

So I push. And I push.
I’m pulled and I’m pulled. I’m full and fooled.
Until I’m empty again.

Until the lights don’t know what time it is and I don’t know what day it is.
Music is my favorite companion. She doesn’t give a couple of damns what time it is, what day it is or what my name is.
She just wants to dance in my head ... and I let her.
She’s beautiful.
I’m once again ... in love.
Number 401.

Crack. Sip. Smile.

~ Jack Piatt

Sidewalks & Broken Clocks

Sometimes the time just isn’t ... the time.
But life carries on despite timing, as it has it’s own clock to abide by.

Sidewalks sing when we’re not around ... because we’re not around, walking all over them as parents and teachers do to “unruly” children who won’t buy into the dream.

I’ll take my dream to go please, my clock is broken and the sun seems to be setting. There’s a place I need to be, where the sidewalks sing all the day and the children play with no regrets.
My heart waits for me there, right where I left it when I was 11 years old.

A mind unfilled with seriousness and endings. Brimming only with laughter
... and a beginning.

~ Jack Piatt

High Hanging Fruit

And from the wildness I see the ever changing collide of modern reality with the elusiveness of the dream station ... the helm of creation.

In the cradle of that babe’s heart comes the foundation of immortality. The abundance within grows like fruit under the sun, sweating purity onto a ground that holds us steady to our walk ... guiding us with intuition breathed into us from the great integrity; the ever present energy that celebrates within us.

The simplicity of everything outweighs the complexities of conception. No stories need be written, no markings on the wall. This is just a speck on the surface of it all. You are the dream. You never went to sleep. You can’t wake up.

You are endless energy melting into the minds of the masses. The essence is born a billion times. The bounty of the ether re-designs itself again and again.

Music leaks from all around and from the highest realms. This second is perfection. This very second is sacred. And each and every one that follows. With eyes shut tight in the deepest of reverie ... suck long the fruit’s nectar ... savor that taste and be humbled as eternity unconditionally kisses your face.

Jack Piatt