handed a ticket through blood

the circus is in town and I’m handed a ticket through blood.

a strong man melts to nothing at the sight of his sorrow not standing there.

the siamese twins don’t share much in common besides loose cloth.

the bearded lady holds on by a thread and smiles through to the strangers.

there are wrestling midgets who don’t fit anywhere from what they’re told, but they enjoy the company and they let the sweat roll.

the clowns all run around the field playing tricks on each other and you.

and a woman in a box who is soon to be sawed in half by a magician who’s lost his touch wonders how she got here.

i hear they have elephants under the tent held together by ego and loose chains, few people in the room for now.

and a lion locked in a cage he can’t see with a hurt paw from last weeks show.

the acrobatic brothers don’t know each other, and never have and haven’t tried and never will.

the cyclops is afraid to lose himself though he dreams as clear as you or i.

and no one likes the room of mirrors, so they reflect nothing in return.

the tunnel of love is a quick ride with a cyclical queue and charges the most per ticket compared to the others despite its tendency to break down and rumored to have killed a man before.

there’s a fortuneteller wearing bifocals in between the carousel going backwards and a snake charmer who can’t find his flute.

and that snake charmer just the night before couldn’t sleep because he misses a girl who’s never there.

and that snake is in the mood for familiar sounds and spits poison when he’s agitated.

a man who can guess your weight forgets his own with each lame guess.

the $2 kissing booth describes our existence well.

and there’s a three legged dog who trails behind the whole gypsy carny from town to town because he’s still able to and doesn’t have much else to do anyway.

the circus is in town and it may only pass thru once and things pass quicker these days.

and it’s just in your backyard.

and you’re passed along a ticket while standing in line with the others.

Thanks For The Poetic Warning

By Justin Cude

What strange times we’re living in. 

The times they have-a done changed, old friend. 

Thanks for the poetic warning. 

A scene far stranger than the governments anti-psychedelic propaganda campaigns of the sunshine years. 

Only the lookers could see this coming. 

You can’t unsee this madness unfolding.

You don’t come back from this trip.

 Neither might the world. 

What an abstraction on the horizon. 

I’ve seen light from the cracks once or twice. 

Leonard told us to notice.

Gold even poured once before. 

The mind’s alchemy says twice, and might again. 

But concrete dries quicker than it mixes, and they mix it quickly, don’t they?

And, I might be gone a long ole’ time. 

That’s the way its been feeling. 

Ghosts from the past made human again. 

Sleeping with those still more recent. 

Darkness dies to light then has its revenge again before its over. 

A worthy opponent who shocks the crowd with each landed blow. 

An underdog for unknown reasons with blood in his eyes from years of irreversible attrition. 

The only fight worth a damn to hands untouched. 

The birds still fly south though we’ve confused them. 

It’s harder now to know the way. 

I’ve slept under clear skies with no stars. 

But have held the sun in winter til dawn. 

The world needs her then so I must stand to go despite the cold. 

Wild poppies provide rich and vital blood for the fields they devour. 

And color when you chose to look at life for the way she moves.

Long Years Fade Swiftly into Smoke of a Dying Candle

By Justin Cude

Short stories come from long years of living. I once met a woman who handed me many in a single night. Some I can still recite with my eyes closed, others have fled for now. Some maybe have gone forever, but I won’t know until the end. Others have left nothing in my mind. Maybe they have, I just haven’t heard from them yet. They’re in there dormant maybe just waiting to live. But, I can’t wait around for them to reveal to me anything that may or may not help in my own living. The sun burns out quickly and who knows what year we’re in. Sitting down for a coffee seems like a trip to me. Its one of the few things that brings it all back, then, with a bang bigger than the big one we believe in, expand outwards towards areas I’m led to explore, to visit. Love of a good woman, love of a wild one, both in the same, physical exertion, a read which melts your brain, the occasional hand-rolled cigarette, a few whiskeys or wines have done it temporarily, the wind, a few walks in nature have revealed to me something, feeling breath, an animals stare and affection, travel at times when I’m not looking for it to, a written line which stops me, love towards anything when I try, and coffee, black, sometimes with cinnamon or butter. There are others but I don’t want to taint this with lists. I also don’t want to share everything. A good secret is OK to have long as your soul doesn’t burn you. As long as you’re not scarring yourself. You have you’re own things which reveal to you the world you’re looking for. Don’t copy others. Don’t blind yourself either from the world which actually exists. There is truth in both. The sky remained gray lately, but I’m aware its of our own doing. The air we breath is poisoned with our filth. So to the rivers and the bodies they bleed into. The land as well, but the world fights back. Its has to. Its all it knows. Not in hate but in life and with love to live that life. But our filth is dumped into our DNA and we’ve done it. This is chosen, not fated. It blocks the sun, too. At times I can’t see mountains only kilometers away. I’d say miles but those don’t work here. Not everything works everywhere. Love tries and its damn good at it most of the time, if we allow it to be. If we allow ourselves to be. Love does conquer all, but we’ve made weapons for that at some turning point in our evolution. What an idea. At times I can’t see my reflection in a window an arms reach away. But there are those days when the mountains sit with peaceful calm intensity and my reflection shows compassion for the one it reflects. Those days keep me hopeful. One day the sky was mahogany brown. It was an absurd moment to have passed through. Was if all were drowning in a pond of spoiled red China tea, or mud. We put it there and now we must wear masks to keep from suffocating. Quicksand we’ve submerged ourselves in with small steps towards progress. An oddity of the modern world. Something one day they’ll hopefully look back on in disbelief like we have so many times looking back at others mistakes from the past. Its not a mistake when suffering is packaged and labeled for resale in what we call foreign lands. Its not a mistake when we can see but look away. Humanity chooses and it tends to be against ourselves, like a mouse going for the cheese. Maybe our brains are that simple too. Maybe we can’t see the trap we’re walking into. But, art tells us differently. Art tells us we can see, radically. So does love. More so love. The abstract and the realism. If love was there we’d choose differently. Radically differently. But cheese looks good to a hungry rat. Art means nothing when our gaze is locked on the outcome. Neither does love. But, when the simpleminded have had their hit, and the daze of satisfaction withers, and the cheese is nothing but cheese, where do we find ourselves? What are we so hungry for? Do we really know our own answer to this? Bob Dylan stares at me as I write this telling me with a single look to keep going but only if you have something to say. He wears a harmonica on his neck which reminds me the beauty of music. How powerful that beauty can be and how widespread it’s embrace. “Write that way” he says, and I try. A girl hugs his arm looking for warmth but provides a fire in the snowy streets of Greenwich Village back when the snow use to stick. Another, he’s confident but only in his questioning. He knows its a joke to play with. The next, still confident but with sun glasses on inside after recording attempted answers looking into the unknown of his own, which is also ours. He’s talking to me in still pictures but I hear his words clearly. His words have always whispered to my soul the truths I’ve needed to hear. That there aren’t any written in blood but blood still flows, so follow it. Go where your blood boils, or make it boil if you can. We all know how. Answer me this; what have we all been deprived of? I’d say love. Then I’d ask, why does this deprivation continue? I’d say we allow it to. We block it or ignore it, we withhold or we fear its life, or turn away when light from beneath horizon starts to illuminate the memories. Then I’d know the answer to this deprive. And I’d say love again, but as an action not as a label. There’s little work this morning so I’m looking in. We all have so much to say but it never comes out exactly right. I’m trying just to get it out mostly these days. It doesn’t need to be exactly right. It never is even when you try for it to be. Even when you struggle for it. Just getting it out is enough at times. There’s no wind today either. Here there’s either none or there’s the type which can blow you over. At least it tries to. Inertia will hold you down. The mind can be heavier than those mountains I can’t see at times. It can also be as light as the dust blown in from the desert just over those mountains. Dust from the Middle East reaches the shores of Brazil I read once. I’d rather be blown away or challenge the gods head on. Inertia is only good in meditation. Even sleep is dynamic. Contemplation has blinded be many times. The mind never stops but you can sit with it and watch it go by. And when you do watch it go by, when you can glimpse the light through the filth, when you’ve said what you’ve had to say, exactly how you wanted to or not, when suffering is accepted and not feared, when the air you breath is just air, the moment just the moment, the mountains just mountains, your reflection just that, when you understand how much we make-up, the malleability of stories, the degradation of self, the empowerment of illusion, the anything of everything, the everything of anything, love is all remains, and love is there if we get out of our own way. Short stories can all be summed with a shorter one, and can be learned even quicker before those long years fade swiftly into smoke of a dying candle; love. No story amounts to this, though they’re all trying to say it, one way or another. No words can say it better. No other action contains more truth, though there are so many which happen. Everything comes from this, and everything is just attempting to make its way back home to it. The shortest story in the world makes the most sense, but we write others to hide it, or to attempt to reveal it, to rewrite it to justify our victimhood. To complicate it. That’s what I just did, and I feel good for relieving myself of the clutter, that is a practice worthwhile, but, yet all this gibberish, all this nonsense, all the these words, one after the other trying to say something, leads back to this; love. That’s it. That’s what we’re all really trying to say. That’s what we’re all really trying to do. That’s what we all really just need to do. Just love. You’re allowed to.

Life As A Playwright: A Survival Guide by John Klein

How did you come across the book?

Um… I frequent the drama book shop quite a bit and I picked up another playwright book beforehand, saw this one and knew I wanted to come back for it.

So far, what perspective have you gained from it?

Um… that I’m lucky that I don’t care about money! And… dedication to your craft.

Would you recommend it, and if so, to who and why?

Yeah, I would… it has an interesting perspective that it isn’t so much of a guidebook as it is annotation about experiences. It has a lot of really deep, comprehensive interview chapters with several really well known playwrights. So… I think that gives a really nice perspective on everything.

The Books We Read

By Justin Cude

I’ve read tons of books lately. Hold on. Bear with me. I don’t say that with any type of pretentious. Its just a way to start this piece. But, seriously, lately I have read tons of books. From Self-help horrors to border-line erotica novels. From the lone pessimists attempt of optimistic existentialism to the bonding painted along a band-of-hippies psychedelic rove. Books which reign the top 100 to ones spawn from the endless graves of underground novella. I’ve read deeper into the works of authors I truly love, and have flirted with the lines of authors I’ve only just met with a glance. I sat down yesterday and read a whole damn book. I’ve only done that once in my life, years ago, and it felt wonderful to experience this again. But, this piece isn’t about the number of books I’ve read through in the last few weeks, but rather about what I have noticed, as I have before, by doing so.

The books we read influence us. Greatly or subtly, it doesn’t matter. They teach us. They touch us. They lead us and they push us. Some can hold you back. Many will move you, either which way. The ones we love, we do so for many reasons. There’s not just one reason we read and continue to. We read for many. And, we keep reading because those reasons are always further affirmed the more words we finish, the more pages we turn, the more books we try. We know why we read, individually, and our knowing of that is enough to continue forth. Every book I have ever read has provided me with at least one line of life; life learned, understood, challenged, gained, lost, made aware of, or changed. Even if only a line. I read for that one line. That one line that provides the life I needed to experience as to allow my own life the right, or the acceptance of, to just be, and for me to just be along with it. For life to be what it is, at any given moment, during any given experience of its provide. And, for me to be who I must and who I choose to be in response to and in demand of that greater providing.

I read for that one line. And, I read for this one life. Because, the books we read provide the life of others, while we’re out learning and living towards the writing and the sharing of our own. There’s wisdom there. There’s trial and error. There’s love and the exploration of its layered and endless complexities, along with it’s simplicity. There’s death and our questions. There’s wild stories from all walks of life, and there’s devout peering into the uncertainties we face. And, there’s us, reflected in the words so humanly placed. The books we read are shared closely with the lives we live. The lives we live are steeped in the richness of books we read.

So, I encourage you to read on.

What More?

By Justin Cude

What more is there to say?

What words are left to write?

You’re born from the sun,

you live with the day,

and you die into the night.

I know there are tricks in between,

but all we can do is live,

try to figure them out,

and love while we try.

The Way Things Happen

By Justin Cude

“It’s not suppose to go a certain way, it’s just suppose to go.” — Unknown

We all carry with us expectations, for every facet of this life, it’s path and the way we envision things to go.  This is dangerous, and we know this, though the temptation of it truly does invite one in with a certain seductive appeal, one that ignites our desire, puts flame to the fuse of our strive. There is nothing wrong with these feelings of passion, pursuit, of tenacity; they are the spice of life, the feelings we all long for, work for, dream of, crave. What is wrong here however, within our blinded view of their true existence, is our naively hopeful presumption of encounter with the byproduct we believe their pursuit-of, or withholding-for, promises to provide. We hold our expectations, feel down to the bone their premature existence, surer than death of their inevitable arrival, left ignorantly vulnerable by a belief system we have curated in our own mind, made real by a psyche ran wild, by faith chanced on a baseless mirage, delusion. Expectation blindfolds our deeper need of actualization; the makings of reality, not an ideal, more convenient alternative. From actualization, further actualization is made available through our efforts; I hope you find where to direct yours. From expectation, further illusion ensues, understanding impedes, knowledge narrows due to ones dwindling view. Expectation impetuously promises everything and delivers nothing. Actualization provides the world, in acknowledgment of the way things happen no matter our feelings towards this. The way we want things to go strangles us with lies. The way things happen provides freedom in their unbiased telling, their steadfast here-ness, and in our…

“Objective judgement, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance — now, at this very moment — of all external events.”

— Marcus Aurelius

I have nothing to say here. This is only an attempt to break a horrible, inactive writing streak…

By Justin Cude

I haven’t sat down to write in a while. I haven’t been able to find the words. They just haven’t been there lately. I’ve had nothing to say and I don’t know why. And, well, this is my attempt to break that streak. Bear with me. I don’t know where this may lead…

It’s not that I have been lazy. I keep a pretty rigorous schedule with most things in my life, writing usually being one of them. But, again, lately, I just haven’t had anything to say.

ANYTHING. NOTHING. NADA. ZIP.

And, again, I don’t know why.

As I write this now, and as I force to the forefront of my consciousness, reflection upon why, I still don’t know why. It’s as if my brain just hasn’t made connections lately. Not in the world around me, not in the people, not in nature, not in anything.

I’ve never felt this “blank” before, if you will, when it comes to writing. And, as I continue to think of it now, I don’t think there exists anything, any one thing even, causing this. It’s just what is lately.

I have nothing, for no reason, to say.

And, as a writer, as you can imagine, it’s not a great place to be. I love writing. I love how challenging and how raw it is. I love words, simply, put together, even if the words today aren’t. I love emotions from those words. I love reactions to those words; mine and the readers. I love messing up, becoming frustrated by it, and trying again. I love thinking I’m done, to only catch myself fooling myself, and then forcing myself to start over, to keep on, to earn it. I love writing, and I love all that comes with it. There’s more there, but no need to push it more. If you write, then you know.

Anyways, even now, as I continue on with this unguided attempt, I’m still having trouble finding the words. I don’t like this as I write it, even. I hate even the way it sounds. But, I do like the feeling of my fingers, typing away. The noise of the keys. They sound confident in themselves, though I know their conductor to be not. Not in these words. Not in this attempt. But, whatever. Confidence at times is overrated. Sometimes, you just have to show up and try, confident or not. Or whatever other driving force you call it, or not; Confident; Courageous; Impassioned; Angry; Sad; Stupid; Whatever. Sometimes, the feelings don’t matter. You just have to show up. And, again, that’s what this is. I’m just attempting to show up today.

I think I may have found something here. Isn’t that the case with life. Couldn’t that be argued. That your feelings don’t matter. At least not all the time. Because, no matter what, you just have to show up. You have to wake up, everyday that you are given, and you have to show up. For yourself, for others. For your craft, your vision. For anything. For everything. Even if you feel that you can’t and that you won’t, you’re only fooling yourself, because you will, no matter how you feel about it. You still must wake up and face life. There’s no hiding from that. For now, its not going anywhere, and neither are you. You must show up. You will show up. You have no choice in that.

Don’t be narrow minded here. I’m not talking about showing up to work, or to class, or to anything given a specific place or goal. I’m talking about showing up for it all. For whatever life is, that moment. Every moment. Again, YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM THIS. Even if you tried, where would you go? Is your mind not still with you? Is your body not still intact? Hell, even drugs can’t take this away. Life is the force of it all. The provider. The creator. The do all be all, of it all. I don’t mean to get too grim here, but maybe even death doesn’t provide retreat. Who knows. I don’t know. And, I won’t act as if I do. All I’m saying here is, you’ve got to show up. You will show up, no matter how you feel, prepared or not, ready or not, whatever or not. You will show up. There’s no hiding from life.

Showing up by choice does feel better, though. Even now, I still hate this piece. I hate the words I’ve thrown together. I hate my lack of direction here. I still hate the way it sounds. But, I chose to show up, and I chose to try, and I chose to stick with the attempt. And, for that, because of that, I feel better. I feel here.

I’m going to post this, unedited. I will not go back and change anything about it. Not a word. Again, today, this was my attempt at showing up, and it serves as proof to myself that I did. Unguided. Unconfident. Without excitement or anything to say, even. But, I showed up. I tried. And, again, I feel better for having done so.

P.S.

An interesting practice for any of you self-proclaimed writers out there. Just show up. Write whatever. Even if it sucks. Even if you hate every word. Could be an interesting practice for anyone attempting anything out there, really. Just show up. Try. Even if it sucks. The act of doing is a very powerful thing, no matter the outcome.