Stop what you're doing and be still for five minutes, focusing on your breathing. Does your heart run away in impatience or perhaps frustration...? "I can't stand when these fucking cosmic cliches tell me to be still and breathe deeply, in that voice that thinks its narrating my subconscious. Pretentious assholes." Give it a whirl and then ask yourself where you are. Are you your name in your house? Are you aware of a sense of seperation? Do you find yourself categorizing your very own identity according the bins that society has labeled for you? Are you lost without a reflection of yourself, either by negation or affirmation in the eyes and expressions of others?

The documentary "Zeitgeist" (German for "time-ghost") should be required viewing for all American citizens. We really don't ask enough questions. We are far too content with our reality, asleep under the myths that blanket our lives. Time to break through to the other side. Time to get mad and hold the real transgressors accountable. Our nation is in distress and the vast majority of its people are indifferent if not oblivious, egomaniacle if not dillusional, just plain dense if not numb, desensitized and depraved.

"WHY?" is the catalyst.

Wake up.

Salutations from the barren lands of ancient Babylon. I'm currently engaged in an intimate staring contest with the vacuous reaches of a desert horizon taunting me with a past of biblical proportions, a present of frightening logic and a future of impossibly beautiful dreams. The parched wind whispers to my cheek its dying wish, but she's too faint to make it out... I remember her best in rushes of exhilaration as she washed over my electrified skin burning through the pre-historic ruins of Monument Valley at seventy-five m.p.h. on golden wing; like a child stepping up to the plate and staring down his major-league hero, the moments racing past in flashes of terrifying ecstasy.

Last night I was strolling through an eerily familiar landscape, obscured by a heavy blanket of sleep, with someone who I think was my mother. We came suddenly upon a rattle snake that had no rattle. I swiftly raised the shot-gun that miraculously appeared in my hand as I took the serpent in my sights and pulled the trigger. The first scatter-shot peppered it and the second was concentrated into its delicate skull. It reared back by force of the blast, hissing demonically and then whipping itself forward and sinking its fangs into itself, as if in spite. As I leaned down to inspect the heap of swelling sin it began to bloat and it flared its gut to reveal its belly covered in hair like that of a cow's. The woman who was accompanying me asked if I planed to gut and clean it at that time, but I was so stricken with fear and disgust that I replied, "No, I'll do it tomorrow." We started back in the same direction we had just come and had walked about twenty-five feet when I turned around to observe the scene. In the place of the snake was standing the grotesque figure of a man...pale as bone. He stood there as if in a trance, shaking his head in disbelief of what must have been a painful mutation. He looked at me and said very matter-of-factly, "Well, I guess I'll see you tomorrow, then."

Voracious visions of defiant beauty, perilous adventure and cataclysmic rebirth in the immediately infinite future, sustaining the weary soul in times of tribulation, laid asunder by the claustrophobic paranoia of emotional amnesia...this is my quest.

all bets are off

Looking up at the pallid moon tonight I wonder what those mischievous insurgents might be up to in the mysterious desolation outside my front gate. For as many times as I have lit a cigarette and wondered why I am here, on this earth, in Iraq, or if my purpose is as parallel with the machine as my contract says it should be, I rarely consider the simple beauty of the night sky as it is, vast and indifferent, cool and crystallizing. But such indulgences of the soul are inefficient and costly. To roll the dice with hope and love on the line is a dangerous gamble. The deeper, more searching and abstract the feeling for the sensitivity and affection of any other time and place, the higher the stakes.

Caldwell was rocketed a few days ago. It was the first time this f.o.b. has been hit in over two years. The eight foot Katusha rockets impacted a few hundred meters from where we sleep and served as a vital reminder that we are indeed in the heart of a combat zone. After June 30th U.S. troops have largely pulled out of the urban c.o.p.s and f.o.b.s and combat missions have almost halted in their tracks. We have ceased to roll out on "combat patrols" and the area that we have worked so hard to clear of insurgent activity is now entirely in the Iraqi Army's hands. In direct proportion to the diminution of our presence and Sphere of Influence, terrorist activity has increased. More IEDs and land mines on the roads that we so diligently cleared, more attacks in the cities and no doubt more plans to display the destructive and homicidal passions of religious jihad.

Our mission over these past eight months has largely been to strangle the flow of weapons and explosives trafficking from Iran into the urban hubs of terrorist activity. These supplies would be transported through an intricate network of canals and tunnels built back in the eighties during the Iraq/Iran conflict. So as we loosen our grip and a breath of new life enters this window of opportunity it would be no stretch of the imagination to foresee a spike in urban car bombings, suicide bombings, rocket and mortar attacks on isolated coalition forces, and ultimately a season of great unrest in the ancient land of Babylon.

i need a battle

A little flow from a couple of sleep-deprived tower guard shifts...

what can i say, i guess i still gotta pay
some dues for the shoes that took me so far away
from the ones that i love and the love from above
i couldn't see it was free till freedom took off the gloves

then it was the 1-2 and 10 and the doors swung wide open
down the halls they were callin me walls of the fallen were stallin me
but i kept pushin in spite of me in spite of the light of eternity
blindin my flight and burnin me
till i forgot how to listen and flooded my system
with sugar and spices and vices that glisten
till all i was missin
was a reason to keep pleasin myself in this prison

i need a battle
an 8.8 earthquake to shake and rattle
the wheels of this track leading back into the shadows
obscuring my vision by fear and division
of my self from my soul by a single discision
to follow hell down a hole through a shallow inscision
in the tip of my finger that lingered over the line
needing blood to be signed
so shorten my name and set a flame to my time
while i play my part in the game and march down the line

now i go boom, boom, boom till it fills up the room
to maximum capcity and critical mass
aint no elasticity can survive the blast
boy, you better watch your steppin
i rock a belt-fed weapon
my rage is a rhythm
and this cage is a lesson
that i'm learnin to the core
and turnin into my war
as i break down the doors
and shake down the memories
of every time i've turned away from a sign
and followed the low road alone
throwin stones with my eyes

these lies are a liability chocking the virility
out of the little bit of love in me
so these words that i'm writing
is the way that i'm fighting
to shed a little light
into my heart
and hope it
ripens