careyakane

[careyakane]

Fascist salutes thrown by the man-child in front of his elected puppet, while the richest men of this country sit watching with their wide insect eyes—something taken from them along the road, a sort of humanity lost as they climb further and further away from any sort of compassion for the world they came from, a world they now burn and rearrange to any shape of their liking.

Birthrights taken, landmarks renamed, bodies stripped of their autonomy, and, beginning tomorrow in Chicago—if the liar keeps true to his word—the destruction of families and splintering of communities will commence and spread throughout the entire country. Four years with the filing cabinet of a man stuffed full of sexual assault charges, felony charges, racist and cruel outbursts, and a superiority complex born from the molding hands of a wealthy white American upbringing. I send all my love and hope to the wonderful humans being attacked for nothing more than who they are by small men with rotten minds.

[careyakane]

RESTLESS. Impatient. My damn legs are shaking again. I am EXCITED TO BE YOUNG but some days terrified I am nothing without her. Terrified I will fall just south of all that I believe awaits me. The stadiums. The love. So much I have promised myself—twisted attempts at comforting my young heart and eager mind.

I swear, some days I could scream; I feel so invisible.

Some days I wake up so damn light I think I might drift away, like one of those balloons freed by a child’s hand.

Some days I awake and hate everything I’ve ever made.

Some days I wake and see the good in every stranger and friend I’ve ever met (the scoundrels too).

Some days I wake up and realize I never was asleep—I was simply being held inside an old memory, its kind hands running through my hair, its nectar voice whispering in my ear all the many comforts and falsehoods that keep me coming back.

Some days I wake and feel like a machine. I hear the voices that turn my gears, see the habits that have carved grooves deep into my pale blue hide of steel.

So many questions, and on top of it all, I’m always so damn tired.Even now, my eyelids might weigh a ton. Did I get bit by a tick again? Am I growing more? (Can’t be).

Well, anyway, the mood has passed. See you again in a few hours, I’m sure.

[careyakane]

Happy birthday, June Bug.

Fourteen minutes until your twenty-third. This time last year, I held you close on that couch up in Washington. The atlas, the snowstorm—hell, you even got me into a church, and the music was wonderful.

It was a beautiful time back then, the first time I felt comfortable with you, and for a moment, I forgot all the life we had waiting for us, I even forget her. I just let myself care for you. I’m not sure the feeling ever came back in all its strength after Washington, and for that, I really am sorry.

Now, just a year later, you have someone new (not that I ever let you call me yours), and I am driving back across the country west. I have someone I care for too, but she is like I was—unsure and teetering, like those wooden contraptions we had in the park growing up. Her weight is always shifting back and forth, and my resolve, while strong, is light as the wind and keeps getting tossed up and down carelessly.

Anyways… I’m glad you have Nick. I say I hate him, but I don’t. I guess I just grew protective over you and felt some unwarranted ownership that I, of course, don’t truly believe. You are your own. I was in grief; I was afraid. You were also pretty damn cruel from time to time, and with the world being the way it is already, I wanted someone a little kinder is all.

But yet tonight, I feel sadness for something I know I do not want. I love you dearly, and God, what a union we had, traversing this country through greenrooms and cafés. Well I should stop, I’m falling into places of the mind that keep me in my old ways. Best to just let you be.

Happy birthday my friend, and please kiss the mr for me. I’ll see you Monday.

[careyakane]

8:10 am - San Angelo, Texas

We woke to damn near a hundred vultures in a park off the South Concho River. They were perched in a crooked circle around us, with their sunken, beady eyes falling back into black coats of feathers and pink clusters of stripped skin. Evil-looking things—I can hear them laughing through their quiet stare. A terrible sound, a croak of hatred like gargling glass, comes from those pale, milky eyes and into my ears. We don’t stay long, and soon we find the road again

Here in the pulse of America, human hands have done fairly little spare the power lines, roads, electrical plants, and the oil fields. Bless their souls, I have never seen a sadder sight than that of the oil fields—work camps full of tired machines dropping heavy heads with devotion towards this Dead Sea land, then rising them back towards the sky again and again. Black ink brought up to fuel fires and wars. Maybe it’s the fact of their different sizes and shades, but one can’t help seeing them as human. One is a little girl shaped into a piece of violet steel; another is myself, a rusted blue machine that sits overlooking its valley. It feels cruel to have made them this way, with legs and a head and a crippled back, paralyzed in malaise until their day of deconstruction.

[careyakane]

A review I left the Texarkana Texas super 8 hotel this morning after a brief stay….

The air smells sour and it seems only to grow worse as we drive further into this invisible Texas border town. Our refuge of a decrepit super 8 provided little relief and a whole new pallet of unwanted smells that crept up on us all night. The room somehow grew more expensive in the same stiff drawl by a greasy weasel of a man as “also the tv is broken, and there is no internet”. I was so damn tired I just smiled. The elevator when summoned, creaked and moaned for a brief moment, let out a limp cry from a distant floor and died again. Poor thing never even attempted the climb, and the door stood still. The stairs were no better. Crumbled drywall and trash piled on the patterned carpet of colors i had never seen. Some shade between orange and green, a rotten union. Our hallway was adorned with broken furniture and framing material, florescent bulbs hummed as we traversed to 308. This must have been the ��Under renovation” the weasel had mentioned earlier. I can see him uttering that cheap excuse to every customer since this place began. Inside the room we were met with the smell of curry, sticky floors and a single face towel. The beds were comfortable and in the dark we could have been anywhere which helped ease the mind. Upon awakening I opened the blinds and was met with a wonderful indigo sky and the relief of departure. I will not be back to the super 8 in Texarkana Texas but strangely i wouldn’t wish it to be any different.

[careyakane]

4:08 pm Memphis TN / 1:21 Am Texarkana TX

Mahogany tables beneath bourbon walls and a black ceiling as Carl, the saint he is, pours sweet tea and recommends the dry ribs. He holds himself as a gentle man, moving slowly with a little extra weight on his left as he steps towards the kitchen to fetch more of the drink. Damn the sweet tea—tables full of that honey nectar, the water of the South—brought swiftly over worn hardwood floors that have known the feet of many joyous, dancing folk. Folk with soft voices that end each phrase in kind words and affirmations, folk that meet and hold a gaze loyally, just like a deer is loyal to the headlights of its end.

For a moment, I dread the harsh hiss of my peers in the West; anxious fools we all seem in comparison to these tender souls of Memphis. The land of B.B. King, the land of the blues. “See you boys next time,” Carl seems to sing as we step back to the road and begin again. Soon the sun has expanded until she floods everything in sight with a color just like that of the sweet tea. Train yards, groves of locust, drowned fields of soybeans, a sandy full moon low to the horizon, and suitcase towns all burn up in her hand as we fly west.

With time, the snow slips back into the landscape, and just past 10 p.m., we arrive at a deserted navy hospital perched above Hot Springs Arkansas. A thousand windows lay dark, like the eyes of some terrible creature of the sea. The building feels alive, restless to sit drained of the life and death that once filled its halls. Towns like this make me rejoice for my destination, and I swear I saw envy in the eyes of those bound to stay as we stopped for coffee and waffles—“just passing through” written all over us.

Now, an hour past the reset of the day, we stop to sleep in a Texas hotel “under renovation,” or so a greasy fox of a man says, as I am sure he has said each night for years now. I’m not sure how one could fix anything with the sad sum we cough up, and so I turn my head away from the missing drywall and stained mattress and write of the day’s unfoldings. Austin tomorrow.

[careyakane]

8:46 Am - Ashland Ohio

Driving west with the sunrise giving the illusion of being everlasting. Soon it will take its ground over us and the world will fall flat again, stripped of its early morning shadows. Robin egg blue above, behind, every damn direction for that matter. Haybale fields crystalline in the fresh coat that fell overnight. Naked forests save the evergreens. Kii and owl asleep about me in the way one rests carried by the motion of travel. This day is good, all is right for a time. —- on another note we met a women working a cafe in Ohio at 7:30 this morning and she with a laugh asked if the three of us were in a boyband which prompted us to give her our names which she then sent to her daughter who apparently is a big fan of my music. It’s wonderful and shocking of course to think where my songs have laid roots. What a joy to find connection through all the invisible inner workings of thread that connect this wonderful country far from the big city’s and policy makers. Now to Nashville.

[careyakane]

I’m gonna be so forreal, seeing your posts makes me feel depressed lol bc I’m just spending most of my time inside and I dont have any friends

My friend let me just say that this world is as equally rich in color and experience when alone as it is in good company. I can count on one hand the amount of people who I believe truly care for me and beyond them I would rather spend my days alone with a guitar or a good book or maybe just a long walk. Also to be quite honest, all of social media including my own is compiled of brief snapshots and highlight reels and rarely do we include any indication of the many hours spent rotting away on a phone or in emotional turmoil. All that to be said I guess my point is life waits for you, both in your mind and outside your door. I hope you find your way into it and in the process meet a few good people to cherish it with.

[careyakane]

10:10 - Brimfield Ohio

The roads got the best of us. We were ice skating as semis screamed their horns at us going thirty miles per hour down I80. We took the nearest exit and looked for a motel. The snow was coming down hard at this point and sleeping in the car so far east would have been a sad way to end the day already so derailed by Owls car troubles and the sky’s downpour of white. — The first lobby women quoted me a hundred and twenty six dollars. The second sixty six. She had long yellow fingernails, almost longer than the stretch of highway we slugged down all day, and a irritated air about her that made one act real polite as they signed the papers and waited for her to return the ID that she tapped with those long fingernails. Now in Room 214 we make plans of triple AAA and a tow to Cincinnati in the morning. The day is done and Ithaca five hours behind us. I wanted an adventure and now I sit seven hours short of Nashville where I thought tonight would end.

[careyakane]

2:05 pm - Lock Haven PA

Gun shops, 12 quart woodsheds releasing maple and oak into a winter sky. Corn rows frozen in until spring releases them with her warm hands and rains. Clusters of cows surrounding feed bins, farmers born here to die here. Kii and owl stripping back the sources of their rage and tendencies of their love brought about by absent qualities in their young mothers. Ten hours to go and then twenty five more after Tennessee before we will see the fires that hold Los Angeles and in it our home…. Freedom for a few days in the expanse of this beautiful country as our grand chariot (an 09 mercury) speeds west. In the brief time we will drive past a thousand opinions, past a thousand dreams that fell to silence in the heads of good people, we will trade brief conversations with our hopeful eyes and eager banter as we drive back to the lives we carve for ourselves out of time and ideals, such solid material they seem. We sing songs of our sufferings and we grow accustomed to our joys. — Back to the road.

[careyakane]

Kiibythefire or firebythekii

[careyakane]

Los Angeles burns tonight, just beyond the apartment we kept on Sunset Blvd. The canyon burns, and the people flee. I spent the day pacing the house in its eternal sunrise, writing a fucking song about you—as I always seem to—and all the while, my city burns. Your old home burns, and you still don’t say a word.

It’s been a year and a half, Ella. God forbid you check in on me. YOUR OLD CITY IS BURNING. DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND IT IS OKAY TO CARE for those you once cared for when their fucking city is on fire?

I am writing a song about you. Hours I spend working its lines and grooves, and yes, still the city burns, and no, still you say nothing. Your mother says nothing. Your father says nothing. Your Nonnie says nothing.

Are you happy now? Is this what you wished for? To alienate me so far from your precious life that, when my fucking city burns—yes, the one we called home—even then, I hear nothing. Not a text. Not a call.

It’s stupid, all of it. People are losing everything, and I am upset over selfish wounds that still have not healed. This is not what matters, yet I write it to clear it from my mind.

Don’t waste me in your prayers. I am safe. Pray for my home, if you’d like, and pray for the thousands void of a lifetime of possessions and treasures. For animals afraid and searching amongst the ash and rubble. Pray for them, if you may.

-

I hate when I grow this angry but the fires in my home and your silence got to me for a moment.

[careyakane]

The last six months were, in many ways, the best since the beginning—from Mexico to Montreal, the trip out west, and that final summer. We spent countless hours together, holding on as tightly as we dared, knowing it would all soon come to an end. There was a heavy feeling in the air, but we were happy. The prospects of the future, while present, didn’t always consume us.

I promised her many nights that we would be okay, and she, with her soft eyes, said something similar back to me as best as she could. It’s a shame to care for someone you know you are about to be absent from. And to think—with such force did we part ways. We drew it out—or, well, I drew it out as long as possible. But it’s been many, many months piling into years, and I have not seen her since. I guess that’s how it goes.

I think she held onto as much of her old self as she could for me, and when she was finally away from my gaze, she changed very quickly. It broke me a little, but in the end, I understand why she did it.

[careyakane]

Some photos of my parents, myself, and our dog moonshadow in the early 2000’s

[careyakane]

Provoked on Christmas Day

Weave the narratives that you spit well, for it will take much to drown out the light of reason that is plain to see, should you find the courage to open your eyes. It is sad to see someone digress emotionally with age, but yet here we are. I remember when your words were beautiful and powerful, with a simple and swift cadence. I remember when you had the ability to look beyond yourself. I remember when you embodied the quality that many claim to carry but rarely do—empathy.

I fear the South has blinded you, and the young voices found in your classmates and strangers have reassured you to fester in your anger. Was it not enough to let that anger strip me from your life? No, it would seem not. You had to break apart many more relationships of mine to feel you did a day’s good work. Of course, I still care for you, but do not mistake that for my needing control of you. I have shed that disease. Even now, as I hold such beautiful things and as I keep the company of such wonderful people, still I keep my heart open to you. I still think of you as any lover thinks of that which helped to make him.

You lay with a new man who, I am sure, comforts you in the tale of me being just a lie. A shame.

I rarely write of you in this tone, but today you have really stirred me up, and it’s better I keep my words away from you and instead share them with those who may have the heart to listen.

[careyakane]

The lover can see the subtle changes that fall over her face at supper.

The lover can see the quiet pleas in her eyes when the noise of life grows loud with age.

The lover can see her thin dreams pulling apart their final threads, hoping secretly to be forgotten and left behind.

The lover can see time spilling out in lines and creases upon her kind, gentle hands.

The lover can see when she remembers some far-off fragment of an old self that, for a second indistinguishable to all others, holds her before taking its leave.

The lover can see when she has given all she can and then some—standing still, strong, with grace—for it was what she was taught and what she has always done.

The lover can see when she feels safe in the cradle of good company, her mind briefly resting on nothing more than what sits in front of her: her weight taken, her heart full, her eyes wide and awake, music playing a room away.

The lover can see when she is beginning to pack her things to flee, long before the words of release or anger have been said. Long before the rooms are filled with quiet. Long before the memories become his only possessions and remembrances of her.

The lover can see but rarely does he act or understand in the time that something could’ve been saved or mended and now the lover writes and writes and she changes and changes despite my words attempt at keeping her in all I knew her to be.

[careyakane]

God, when I get home, it gets bad again.

I find myself speeding into town, pulled by the invisible threads of habit. I must remind myself again and again: “She does not wait for you as she did before.” I languish in familiar places, hoping for accidental meetings that might lead to long-overdue conversations, ones that might finally bring me the answers I’ve sought restlessly for years now. At nighttime, I squint as the last glimpse of a blonde head in a long black coat turns the corner. I stop myself from following, of course—but only at the last second.

I have come so far when I am back In the west. I think of you rarely and with thoughts far from possessive. I lay no claim on you when I am surrounded by all that I have found in that place and its people. But here, amongst the reminders and remnants, I succumb and fall back into that silent well of grief. I have found solace in these waters before, and I will again. It is false—I know, I know—but many comforts are false, so why can’t I give in for just a moment?

I am always holding my head so high, always protecting those who look to me for answers to questions beyond knowing. Time and time again, I give thin responses and watch as they drain every drop of that temporary relief. May I not, too, fall apart for a day? Give me my falsehoods, and sew cloth over my eyes and mind, which look to protest this comfort made in jest.

Now I sit parked where I should not be, trying to fill the carcasses of all the many simple nights that spilled over on this damn road under these damn streetlamps. I think of the boy who sat here three years ago and try to signal to him as best as I can. I have not a clue if time and its pulse work in this way, but yet in rare moments, I have felt as if something was pleading for me to shift, or to run, or to take account and rejoice. Maybe—and it would bring me great joy—every moment in some way exists eternally, and if I can only picture it clearly now, I may send a message back to myself in that given instance.

So here tonight, I simply ask he who I once was to hold her gaze just a second longer, to embrace her and hold her well as she tells him of the simple passings of the day. To tell her plainly and without hesitation that she is kind like no other, and that never in this lifetime will he forget these days of innocence.

Regardless of whether this door through life and time holds any truth, I attempt. And I must say, I have calmed down since beginning this writing. I truly am— for any who stumble upon this writing and may know me—happy to have continued on with my life. My momentary pauses in that past are not accurate pictures of where I stand now. Please forgive me if this makes you question what I am. I have set much down and would not betray you for any of it back. I simply enjoy writing and remembering. I’m sure you too will fall into my words with time.