tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91877765003086576052023-11-16T07:23:05.970-08:00the Beatnik Baltimore11 years and counting! Thanks for following!bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.comBlogger169125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-37566618238866455332021-02-23T12:37:00.021-08:002021-02-23T13:06:29.121-08:00E+KOf all the words I’ve written - The truest ones were what I said to you - with every ‘I love you’ All the forgotten metaphors I’d toyed with To build a towering story - Or race the streets of nowhere - Never reached the heights of sitting next to you. Trekking the days of these ‘strange’ times together - As the outside feels like crumbling,and we go on bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-68346864211268823462020-08-30T21:28:00.021-07:002020-12-19T15:01:15.226-08:00Pages of oldIn a book upstairs - lives the pages of another life. The sweet joys - of days along the ocean and diving in. They remind me of all the year before this plagued one - and what can startle a late season. What getting lost and (totally) renewing really was. When tired was a compliment and toast to you. Swear it smells of long late drives home with the windows down - reaching out to bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-27463194058944749272020-07-05T15:04:00.001-07:002020-12-19T15:07:35.691-08:00Last plane to Boston: oldieThat's the last time I'll board that plane - When you're waiting in Boston to fill the time. When you're drafting another elaborate fable - And destroying the real - of its fantasy - finally. Leaving me again - and last - reminding me why I left. So unravel yourself so many nights - in damn memories, long gone. You're drinking in years lost - at a bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-68434101533100008822020-05-17T15:19:00.001-07:002020-05-17T15:21:30.640-07:00end this world tonightIn every thought before passing time -
that long slow time we're in -
I think of the sweet pulsing smell of a crowded place. My cherished passionate places of best adventures and long exuberant nights.
Of words I've said before and spells I've cast with dwindled time.
I can feel the dancing rhythm of a collective crowd; the spotlights that guide you sideways -
and the easy embrace of everyone bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-26369280479828415072020-03-16T21:52:00.002-07:002020-03-23T17:33:11.811-07:00Shut down
It’s hours after the world has gone to sleep - that I worry about it.
It’s in the dark dawn that I lie awake and feel fear. Fear that Rome is burning, that hope is running, that after everything - there’s still only you calling me - and yet you’re gone too.
Despite the chaos, and all the goddam building I’ve constructed - it can collapse that easily. It can be shut down and shut bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-68465408120714649392020-02-22T22:10:00.003-08:002020-08-30T21:15:14.389-07:00What about Forever
So many times with you I’ve wanted to jump. So many times I’ve walked up to that big oak Church door - and paused happily -
I’ve knocked and heard the silence.
I’ve run and heard the music, of us.
When you talk of forever -
Hasn’t that always been me for you babe?
Haven’t we danced around the (text) messages - and kept promises of friendship -
All to keep bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-28959026126261131782019-11-20T19:41:00.006-08:002019-11-20T20:24:42.073-08:00Winter
What will we be
Without you and me -
Following days in the sand
With the warmth of the trail found there?
Winter settles in and we change
Against all our best promises in summer,
Without realizing what’s set in -
As early dusk falls.
We layer up the walls again,
Waiting for the lights to change us back.
Wherever they be found or broken in.
But what of life bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-77194825622483710082019-09-26T19:58:00.001-07:002019-11-20T19:49:42.886-08:00Happy by the sea
I lay down
And I - think of you
Like the tides on the waves of the sea
I want you.
Lost like the wind with a calm smile.
As’if the fog of the fall, off the horizon -
Is smoothing everythin’ and I’m away.
So I think it all through...
Again wrapped up in you,
or racing to the shore, or laughing with the music in the crowd.
It’s the sunrise along the pier kinda view,&bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-36159201210468228852019-02-15T14:14:00.001-08:002020-02-22T22:13:26.488-08:00Like We Were - Boston 5I spent the hours before dawn of an entire night, remembering who we were —
mixed with the movies, the music, and the hurried, traveler movements of this last year apart. The touch of our famous goodbyes.
I dreamt of us — and woke to who we are now.
Us living goals — and gliding past skies — and calling when it's late.
The airports,bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-45680560402118084822018-06-19T21:01:00.002-07:002019-02-15T14:08:24.903-08:00first southern nightThat first warm southern night without anything of just before. How the sky had these levels of radical, historical, old piercing blues forming and I felt like a crash of all the women I’ve tried to be.
I could still feel if I tried, like the aches and pains of you trying to try, but instead I just feel the sweat on my skin for the first time this thrilling summer, and the fresh clothes, bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-8721523395663421292018-04-16T18:21:00.000-07:002020-02-22T22:13:15.016-08:00Just thoughts - Boston 4Now let's talk about last night.
Are there words yet, again? Cause I only remember colors and I, -haha- can't stop the smile at the turn of every unrelated thought.
It's all "just happy thoughts" blended at night. It's all the best I've ever seen of you, who you are, and what's formed together behind that handsome face.
I should get it together. I should start organizing back to bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-4846488092190838882018-04-16T18:12:00.000-07:002018-04-16T18:28:14.171-07:00How's that for destinyIt's gone now. The last shadows of the darkness, the last tiny corners of the bad - I feel so sweet - it's been healed.
That was it, and a whole story more. (Later.) But let's take a moment for the equal balance found. The dreamily, romantically, lived opposite of all the pain of another woman who I was. Here, there were,- are- open hearts, kind soft touch and hours long expression. Here it's sobates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-54646961241991179662018-02-07T21:33:00.002-08:002018-02-26T16:16:03.389-08:00Boston 3So go to Boston & think of me. Cause maybe that’s the girl I should be. Maybe I, maybe you, maybe any compromise wouldn’t do — or could be found. But here we are again, saying goodbye just near that wonderful town — with flights and fears and failing plans.
I remember the exact sound, how strange, that the door made the morning that you left. It said the sounds of what we always say too latebates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-45204051209844531272018-01-23T15:42:00.000-08:002018-01-23T15:47:44.201-08:00Call of the dark moon
I don’t know if I want to give this up to the lost spirits of writing, but it’s thinking itself through, it’s working’ itself out, and the heat it reckons to be called out.
He told a lullaby kind of story that night… in the past-decency hours, in the wake of wine and wanderings across cities not connected. But this dazzling story… it seeped past the hardened wolf tales of my Book bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-65431985289612324272018-01-23T15:07:00.003-08:002018-01-23T15:07:57.546-08:00ThawWhen the weather's just a bit warmer than it's been all this hurried winter, that it heats, and you've got a smirk holding your face, your mouth, your whole aura -- with a quickened step up concrete stairs -- headphones pulsing and heading for home in this perfect Capitol city.
I can feel for a moment - the summer self brewing back up for the first time. And I think she'll be a force this time bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-47354364837534379442018-01-19T15:03:00.000-08:002018-01-23T16:00:07.898-08:00BluebeardI'm living proof you can kill the monster.
Truly & fully with the absolute force he did show. Because what the fairy tales don't tell you is you don't even need violence - just lock him up in apathy and forget - and he'll whimper and whither in that destructive cold. Ah, that's right because the poison of it all - the poison he bestowed so slowly, so carefully, so dangerously - was already bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-35292025997588639472017-12-21T10:57:00.003-08:002019-02-15T14:31:32.653-08:00New York
There was this lighted mirror in the bathroom,
in a hotel in New York... — it made elegant, swanky uptown, fractured reflections in ochre yellow
- as I lay in bed between the twinkling lights of the bridge and buildings and “vibes” on the other side.
And all the big, rude, loud city that you like
had quieted finally...with the music playing in just the right low bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-59200919285186687312017-12-21T10:40:00.002-08:002018-01-23T15:59:24.746-08:00The old burning
Let the hills keep burning cause I don’t know you anymore. Let that precious, strange, desert place where the rolling cuts off every background -- slide off.
And so you creep, and you make, and you let the land take you over. You let yourself disappear so no one even knows.
All that mess and mourn, I don’t yearn for it anymore. All that buzzing television on repeat; like a retro bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-34753386925994013952017-07-10T20:24:00.001-07:002017-07-10T20:36:30.176-07:00The Stage.
There was a time when we were all playwrights, and all the world could shine and shineeee, on—ward into the skies of our rafters and our rooftop laughters.
We’d stomp booted feet on old, worn, soft - beautifully beat hardwood floors - that creaked - and we… Well we danced upon ourselves and our discovery of all of that. We danced and shouted - for bloody volume of the night - the right bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-36247087352808904232017-04-06T21:10:00.002-07:002017-04-06T21:10:42.744-07:00Whew! There was a spider on my bed so I didn't sleep. So let's read this fast. hey! Ran circles round the past across blue lines instead. Thought how WOW!-great this all is. Thought about the rain too, and the dumping you, and it's all just making my mind allergic and delayed. Still it's rampant and dismantic. (Not a word? ah hell) Need the music and the dance, need the frantic and the pace.
Neeed a bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-85731408341605964522017-04-06T21:05:00.002-07:002017-04-06T21:45:14.163-07:00New England.originally written some time ago.
I didn't think about the sharks!
In New England on the Cape, on a sweltering night - that should've been cool and fine - I thought about the ocean. Raced to it rather. Ached for it. Got on the plane in thoughts of it!
Then it looked - like nothing Baltimore had ever been (or anywhere I'd been) -
yes, the waves could hardly be seen (though they rocked bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-62038848655500454132017-04-06T20:54:00.000-07:002017-04-06T21:29:35.338-07:00Another one to California originally written oct 2016.
You've gone longer to me I remembered.
A friend knew better the other night - it was two years instead of one.
It was more holidays, more stories, and more nights happy at that diner than I remembered.
So I thought of you and California, like I do when there's room. Thought of that strange night with the french film and the Beast. How you said goodbye to bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-15347184818795827372017-04-06T20:47:00.000-07:002017-04-06T21:39:59.138-07:00Failed.originally written oct 2016.
Alright I failed. Maybe I failed. As the crickets whine into another autumn, - and I get it. I should've gone so long ago, because some time ago in all the mess I lost all of myself and my pieces, and my... I don't know it was lost.
Entirely this time. Unlike all the fabricated false tortures before (for art! for youth! for anything..). Hah. Because those bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-52529093131209607582017-03-29T20:57:00.001-07:002017-03-29T21:03:39.746-07:00The first time back.
It’s a strange night here with the wind and the frozen snow, and I’m upstairs hearing it howl - the thoughts of someone new being easily forgotten in it - and I’m not yet sure. Not sure how I feel either. Feel the gloriousss -damn- wake of nights out drinking again, in my renaissance of beginning age, and it should be catching up any minute — like the piles of the books half read at 4 points of bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9187776500308657605.post-18597386770881698522017-03-29T20:46:00.001-07:002017-03-29T20:48:04.889-07:00Write man.1.25.16 - redone 3.28.17
Everyone had everything to say last night.
Telling you - you gotta write. Write. WRITE man. To feel it, to know your soul. It's the only bridge to happy dreams and hope. Love and nobility. Writing is pain known intimate. It's the medicine to nightmares. It's home again and it's onward from it all. It may be everything of who lived in you, but that's okkkk. Feel good bates0610http://www.blogger.com/profile/04353240788809500077noreply@blogger.com0