Kamikaze Pianist

Kamikaze Pianist

I’ve always been drawn to the piano ever since my mum had one laying around our old living room in England. The way in the summer time the long lonely hours of mid day casting itself upon the keys as if the sun light and the keys were lovers. And I’d play it; Dillon, O! I’d play one handed disharmonic symphonies while my other hand dangled free. Ever since then at times in my life when I was drowning in deep negative thoughts there is always a piano to be played. Tucked in a corner with dusty keys and out of tune, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter that you do not know how to play it – just let your hands run back to the god that once held you so tight – before one of you let go. And if only you could remember whose palms slipped from who’s, but you can’t; so you play the Grand Piano. That is what I would do in the house that was slowly demolishing itself with parents whose faces are not as clear as their backs. It was how I cried when my tears were dry, it was how I screamed when my throat was raw, it was how I touched the sky although I was small, it was how I breathed air for the first time in years clearing the cobwebs from my soul. And it works so well because all the parts of life are not tuned on key, or on time with a metronome, but purely flawed in raw abrasive instances echoing around dusty piano cords struck by small mallets. And what else is there to do but to throw those mallets flying into the chords – make the piano wail with all the torment exploding inside of you like a thousand light bulbs overloading and raining glass shrapnel onto an aristocratic dinner party. The blood shall rain from your fingertips in pure discordant fury – as living creatures flee hurriedly from the ghastly sound – the cacophony blares on as light, time, and space tear. And with tears in your eyes your reach the conclusion of the piece. With tears in your eyes!
As your fingers kamikaze the last mash of keys your heart stops briefly – the world collapses, everything slows to a halt but your fingers moving towards the aircraft carrier keys at a speed that seems almost stopped.

Then it happens: impact.

Fín.


© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.

I went to barnes and noble tonight

Bookstore Cashier

He was in my theatre class
In high school, back when
I wanted to be a liar by profession.
Now he is a senior in high school;
And me? I am the “established”
College student buying half a dozen
Poetry books I cannot commit
To finishing, or even remembering
In several years time.
I am the older guy still as lost
As he was several years ago
But can hide it so much better now.
I am the one who drove home
Tears forming in the black part of his eyes
Because I was going to get
An application, but didn’t
Because the cashier
Was so much younger then me
And I am a proud old fool.

©Liam Elliott 2007. All RIghts Reserved.

Poetry

Choices

Damn near dead
My tire marks like scars
Across the tar skin
Of the freeway.
But no panic.
Just acceptance.
And with it; calm action,
A gentle maneuver
As smoke, pieces of tar,
And blurry lights
Flew around me
As fireflies about
A small child
That I; growing up
In the fast city of London,
Would no nothing about
Having never seen fireflies
Except in movies.
And things are never
How they are in the movies;
Especially dying.
I’ve strayed desperately
From this fate: this dark room
At the top of a narrow stairwell
Eleven feet by eleven feet
And a roof that is too damn low.
O! how I tried to leave the occupants
Run off down city streets;
But Los Angeles is no London:
All I encountered were doors
Locked and barred.
No late night carousals
Just vagrants dicking around
In much the same muddled way
As myself. Shocking that I feel
Somewhat akin to the kinless
Somewhat at home with the homeless.
But they reject me from their society
And I wander on: my feet dragging
The conveyor belt earth haplessly.
I’m still up late at night searching
For the answers to riddles
Posed in youth about reality.
What if this were all imagined?
What if I was making it up?
The pain, the madness,
The narcissism?
And what if; after the lies,
Teas, toasts and jams,
What if I ceased to exist?
What if time lapped over me
As elegantly as silk over skin?

And with that; I close,
Murmur an empty staunch
“Goodnight.” To the blinking
City lights of my life.
Perhaps tomorrow I shall wake
Elsewhere; as if by choice.

©Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Crime and Animals

Crime and Animals

My resolution
To stay clean?
Fucked! like a whore
After 8 months
Off the streets,
Then right back
To her pimp.
And into the arms
Of some random man.
And [I want you,
The reader, to pause
-Right here–
Inhale deeply
As if you were about to drop
An atomic bomb on a village
Of smiling school children
And make that sound
You make when deeply thinking.]
I’ve been thinking
Self destruct sequences
In the codec of my brain,
My soul, my very being
Bursting like a cantaloupe
Dropped from a skyscraper.
The concrete welcomes
Another impressionable youth
Driven mad by his own markup
Language: that wrote him that way:
Backwards, inverted—
Like developed film negatives.

And then,
2AM hits
Delirious fever
Fits of madness—
I’ve been running
All this time
On an empty tank.
Consciously, I dropped
Like a poached deer
Drowning in its own blood
Because I’ve grown
Weak wings—
And cannot fly away.
Someday, someday.

© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Lost Youth

Lost Youth

Our generation
Has no great war
No great revolt
No great leaders.
We have no cause,
Except abusing substances,
Sleeping on a friend's floor,
Preparing for life
In homeless shelters
If we are lucky.
If not, a stoop,
Or a dark alley will do.
Pan handling,
Stealing, possibly
Killing - just to live
In the life we chose
But, only on accident.

Our generation
Is the mistake generation.
Dad forgot to pull out,
Or Mum screamed:
"Cum inside me!"
And he did.
And here we are.
Mistakes - unwanted:
Living in patch work homes
With family that is
Patched awkwardly together.

Our generation
Is narcissistic,
Reasons with technologic,
Bipolar, manic depressant
Attention whores; nostalgic,
Romantic, addicts, aliens,
And all sorts of messes.

Our generation
Has been offered
The mainstream truth:
A gilded teaspoon
Filled with cod liver lies
That we spat out.
Our search for truth,
God, true religion,
Love, and happiness
Often seems to be in vain.
"Vanity" is our generation's game.

Our generation
Lost its youth
To pedophiles,
Drug dealers,
A war no one
Believed in,
Divorced parents,
Parents that fought too much,
Parents that beat their kids,
Parents that killed their kids,
Parents that ignored their kids.
We lost our youth
Because the older generations
Were envious of our youth,
Beauty, and endless possibilities.
So, when we were little
Unable to fight-
They stole our vitality
Leaving us premature adults
Relying on substances,
Possessions, and sex
For a happiness
Walt Disney taught us of;
That does not really exist.

Our generation
Is lost
In a cold technological era
Never leaving home;
The comfortable electric hum,
Unless we are getting our drugs.

Our generation
Was misplaced between
The eighties
And the new millennium


~Peace.

© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.

A Poem loosely about emotional ties

Tea-Cup Tempest

I have etched
My footprint
Down the roads
You never took
And felt in ways
You have never felt.
I have stood above
Mist coated valleys
Stretched out my arms
Flew briefly –too close.
I have lain beneath
A macabre mist
So dense, breathing
Was belabored:
Asphyxiation—
A dream in the dark.
Shortly thereafter
I managed to live
Under the surface
Of a tea-cup tempest
In a submarine
Soldered with nothing
Other than a child’s
Imagination
Rent on escaping
In anyway possible.
I have swept aside
My darkest parts
Into dark corners
In my dark psyche
So I could brighten
A room or, perhaps, two
But darkened them
In the long term.

But at other times
I have had copycat
Experiences
Just like all of you.
All of our feelings,
Reactions, even
Thoughts—
Were all identical.
This is so we all may
Hold each other raised,
Like wine glasses in air
Above gaping mouths
Waiting to drink us dry—
Maliciously sipping
At our very being
Until we are empty
Again.

©Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.

An Experience

The God Spot

I spent today in another world, another universe, another time. It all started when the day refreshed much like a browser window does with an influx of new data. I awoke on my friends couch. The others were in the other room neatly tucked inside a warm summer’s morning bed. Its been a blur these past few days – something to do with my tempests under the control of the moon, some bitter lows like an aircraft caught in a hot pocket, that same old revolting self pitying, and then excuse making. We all reported to each other what we had forgotten from the previous night, found nourishment at a local smoothie shop, and went our separate ways. I found myself driving slow down sunny surface streets the same way old people do while they wait to die. And instead of turning down the street where I am visiting my parents for a brief time until my financial situation is cleared – I turned down a nearby canyon road. I found myself returning to a spot I found a week or so before: the God Spot, as I call it. It is here where I parked my exhausted sputtering vehicle and stepped out into another world. The God Spot is at the apex of a canyon hill – but is not the apex itself which lays a little ways ahead, or behind depending on your direction. No, the God Spot is a humble spot on the side of the final climb to the top. There is a small path and a mediocre clearing. But that is not why I came to it – I came to it for the view. Because you are so high there you can usually see above the clouds but not today. Today when I slowly stepped out of my rolling coffin I stepped into a heavy fog that was rushing over the hill tops. I quickly walked down the path to the mediocre clearing and it was the same. The fog was rushing from inside the canyon to the top of the hill and then was burned off by the sun. In a sense the fog was striving to die. It rushed up the beach of the hill like a high tide coming ashore. I was drowned. I fell to a sitting position beneath the oncoming flow. I then told God I would not leave until he spoke to me. I waited an unknown amount of time beneath the fog, not reveling in the fact I was at a greater altitude than those in their toy cars below me – but burdened by a silent God. But I had made a pact, so I asked questions: “Where am I going?” – “Where should I go?” – “Hello?”. Then after I had meditated I felt the small quiet voice of God tell me this very specifically: “I am bigger than you. You cannot push me around.” I sat there a moment not sure whether it was God or just my mind trying to not let me be disappointed. At last as I watched more of the fog commit suicide overhead I knew it was God. Quickly, I apologized to him for bullying Him and general evils done. I sat a moment longer looking out across the now almost clear canyon. I had never been there during the day before and thus had never seen the canyon fully unveiled. I watched as the fog slowly ran up and, much like an elegant dress sliding off a young woman’s body, the canyon began to be revealed. However, I got up, went to my car, and left before I saw all of her treasures. I did this because I felt I was undeserving to see the glorious view at this time. Perhaps later, my spirit will be at peace and bring me back for a better view.
I then returned home to my glorified bed-sit, walked in past my mother vacantly watching government propaganda on her small, black broken television, and went into my room where I began to conduct a symphony with imagined instruments digitally mastered for my enjoyment. I took a break from my composition to rest briefly and watch the thoughts of other people on a DVD. I dozed off multiple times but caught the gist of what the person was portraying – something about forgetting not being the opposite of remembering, but its lining. “So true.” I thought at the finish of the film.
And now, I sit in silence. My vague disconnected thoughts played out before me on digital paper written by digital hands of which I am the puppet master. I write this not only for others to read and maybe comment, but so that I do not forget what happened this day: July 5, 2007.

Without Our Names and About Me

New Poetry of the "In Silence"


Without our names.

Those moments that you deem perfect
Fade like an old over worn belt
Donned around the waist of time
Underneath the shinned leather
Is the gray fabric called Shame
And this, we all wear delicately
Even when referring our past
When we were ivory deities—
But no one recalls our memories
They have sailed away down stream
Into a small pond full of dreams,
Delusions of grandeur, and moments
We are left up stream, in silence
Left only with our nightmares,
The acceptance of obscurity,
And time traveling around us
While we are harnessed to a rock
Where we die a little more each day
Only to rise the very next
And wait to be torn apart again
By an eagle. Or maybe vulture
As the historical record
Fades and is carefully rewritten
Without our names.

© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.



About Me

No one will read of me.
About me no one
Will ever wonder.
My existence?
Purely negligible.
I am the small cog
In the American
Dream machine
Limping home every night
Defeated again
Defeated again.

© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved

New Poem

Welcome Home

These blank walls
That welcome me
Back inside
Make me sick
So, I throw up
A painting here
A picture there
Masquerading
The emptiness
With Feng Shui.
No avail
This here room
Has not found
Itself yet
And cycles
Through fads
Underneath
Which lays
The same void.


© Liam Elliott 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Announcement and New Poem

I am starting a new body of work- which means that I have already started it and will close "The Unmentionables" soon. The new body of work will be entitled "In Silence". It is partly enspired by the fact that one day I ran out of things to write about I had noticed my topics become boring. I fell into a poetic silence. I searched inspiration and found an audiobook of Billy Collins' which I listened to promptly because I rather enjoy his literary style. He encountered a similair experience in his writting carrier to the one that I am in - so, I decided to take a few pointers from his work. "In Silence" is basically what I think of when I am surrounded by silence. It will be a collection of quiet calm maybe sad maybe happy moments. The blog will be filled with it and such and so forth. Art Galleries was the first of this new venture.

Here is a new one.

Airplane

There is something
So warming about
Watching airplanes
Fly overhead
The way the white stream
Slowly follows the plane
And passengers soaring
Soaring above us mortals
Stuck with our heads
Supported by our arms
Stuck in the grass
Like tent pegs.

The plane moves slowly
Or it seems that way
From such great distances
But really, the plane is speeding
Towards a horizon that we,
Down here, can never reach.
Once the plane goes over the horizon
We must find another flying machine
To watch drift across our little blue sky
Perhaps aliens in a flying sauce pan
Who has come to take you and I
Back home – at last.

© Liam Elliott 2007. All RIghts Reserved.