Lately I've been quite busy, between recruiting trips for work, my Freelance Photography, and my writing. That means I've neglected blogging a lot. Yeah, I know, serious loss to the art world, I can assure you, lol.
Anyway, I just wanted to start this Blogger account off with a bang, So I figured I'd pop ina a few of my fave pics and a collection of poetry and tidbits of a story I've been writing to get it rolling. That and it's easy, and I don't have to think this early in the morning ;) Sometimes the pics and poetry go together...tho mostly they don't ;)
Love to all.
These first two poems...well....I'm not religious, but sometimes things happen in your life that make you go "what if". I have NO idea when these two were written, but I'd guess college by the folders I found them in...
The Line
"When you walk the line
Sometimes you fall
The absolute worst times
Can bring the beast from us all
We all toe the line
But some of us jump
Beware of those leapers
They can fly highest…..but have farthest to fall
But if you don't jump
You'll never know
And if you walk the line
How will you ever stand tall?
"The Lost"
In this life, people you will meet
Walking around towns or cities
Always staring at their feet.
Tattered ragged, dirty, gritty
Have you noticed them?
or do you hurry quickly by?
Life is not easy, trouble sometimes closes in.
This is wherefrom come the Lost, who have lost the heart to try.
Not all of them are homeless, not all of them seem unwell
But all have given up inside.
Some can still act the part of people not already in their hell
But look, you'll see the deadness in their eyes.
But what can we do, you all ask?
It's not a hard thing, but to the Lost it could be life
Don't just keep walking, don't just let them pass
Give them a smile, a wave, a conversation would be nice
'Cause you never know who's playing Lost
God could be lost inside."
Sometimes, my writing is a direct reflection of my mood. Go figure!
Happiness
Happiness is a smile that melts your heart,
breaks it, rebuilds it, and makes you realize
nothing will ever be that beautiful again
until that smile, which is only for you, is once again displayed.
Happiness is a touch that shivers your spine,
makes you weak, makes you need that touch again,
long and often.
Happiness is someone who touches your soul,
your essences whispering to one another that you'll never be alone.
Happiness is knowing your presence makes someone else feel the same way.
Happiness is taking your best friend's advice and saying "fuck it" to your inner worrywart,
and finding that friend was right.
Happiness.....is something I've sought for so long...now that I've found it,
I may never be sane again.
Sept 15, 2004
I found this free floating in a box. I don't remember ever writing it, but the handwriting is immestakebly mine. It was set up as a song lyric, and I have no idea when it would have been written.
Frustration
"Just another morning
Sitting here without you.
Just another Day
I don't know just what I'll do
My lady do you love me still
most of the time it's hard to tell 
I'm never quite sure how I feel
You taught me how to hurt so well
Girl, I still love you
Can you please believe me?
Oh, I still love you
why must you tease me?
Every other night I dream
Of the things I'd love to say
Even though tonight it seems
I should have said them to you today
When I look into your eyes
Nothing definite I see
All I need is to revise
All these years of mystery
Everything I said was true
You know I'd never try to hurt you
Because, through it all,
you should know I still love you
Yes, girl, I love you
I hope that you believe me
Though since I've loved you
I don't know just how you see me
'Cause I've tried so hard,
Every day I seek
The strength I need
To help me speak
Though I know I love you
Girl you're still a mystery
And, since I love you
It eats away at me
Every once in a while
It seems I see
The echoes of what
Someday might be"
Aaaand a couple more in that train of thought.....
Lipstick
I made you breakfast this morning
before we both left for work,
you kissed me good bye and flashed me that smile
you never made it home tonight
your cellphone just keeps ringing
i thought i saw your car on the news
but that can't be, no one survived that wreck
it's 3am, you're still not home
and i can still taste your lipstick.
11Oct2005
For a Minute There
For a minute there,
I thought I could be happy
For a minute there
I thought my heart was free
In the moment though,
that the next minute started
i watched it go
and stood here broken hearted.
Maybe i am leaving myself too open
to things that aren't really there
but it felt mutual, and I was hopin'
that this wasn't just thin air
but i guess it was one-sided
as things are awkward now
didn't even get a chance to try it
and I'm left wondering how
That feeling was so big a thing
that it made my hope take wing
For a minute there
21Nov07
Okay, a glimpse into my whacky mind. Enjoy!!! And Here is a glimpse of the story I am currently working on ;)
He has no illusions about how fast that will be, however. He knows he isn’t the legendary Eddie Cheever in a state-of-the-art Formula 1 racecar, after all.
Honestly, he will be happy just to make it around the 20.8 kilometer track in less than ten minutes.
While entering the left-hand bend just before downhill into the Klostertal, a flicker of bright color draws his attention to his rearview mirror.
Glancing at the mirror, Monahue sees a bright red speck swiftly grow, until a gleaming 1987 Pininfarina Ferrari F40, the Italian manufacturer’s latest supercar, is nearly at his passenger door before the two dissimilar automobiles enter the one hundred and eighty degree corner of the Klostertal.
Both Steve and the F40 driver brake slightly to rotate through the corner at nearly sixty miles an hour, Monahue’s Camaro on the outside of the Ferrari while they are in the corner.
Once they are out of the somewhat tight corner, Stephen grins and looks over at the driver of the cherry-red Ferrari while they enter the steep downhill stretch ahead.
The F40 looks more like a fighter jet than an automobile, with its pointed nose, aerodynamic shape, and tail spoiler standing taller than the supercar’s roof.
The Ferrari F40 is more art than auto, in Monahue’s opinion, but, as beautiful as the car is, the driver of the road rocket makes it pale in comparison.
At least, what Steve could see of her, looking slightly down into the F40’s cockpit while both cars accelerate out of the corner, is very nice.
She is a tallish-looking brunette, maybe five-six to five-eight, with pale blue eyes sparkling with amusement behind her lightly-tinted driving sunglasses. She wears a summer dress the exact hue, even with the metallic sheen, of her Ferrari, and she has the kinds of curves that fill it nicely.
WOW Stephen thinks as he takes a second look at the woman, noticing the freckles in interesting places. Here kitty kitty.
She looks over at him, winks, and tilts her head slightly towards her windshield.
Glancing in the direction she has indicated, Monahue’s eyes widen in alarm.
Directly ahead of the two racing vehicles is the infamous tall tree that marks the entrance to the nearly blind Karussell, the famous berm-style banked hairpin corner of the Nordschleife, and also one of the slowest corners on the course.
Entering the Karussell at too high a speed can be deadly, as history has proven. Even the slightest mistake would toss a car off the corner and into the Armco barrier.
The woman beside him is already set up for the high, outside line through the corner, and, besides, her brakes reflect the nearly twenty-year newer technology of her vehicle.
Monahue’s Camaro, on the other hand, didn’t exactly stop on a dime when it came out of the factory in 1967.
Which means it is a good thing Stephen has done some work on the car since he’d purchased it with his first paycheck after passing SEALs training in 1979.
Just before entering the corner, Steve presses own on the brake pedal, and the nose of his RS/SS dips towards the pavement, the F40’s nose mirroring the move beside him.
Once his Camaro enters the corner, the exact moment his tires hit the lighter grey pavement of the lower portion of the corner, marked with painted white squares at standard intervals throughout the corner, Monahue releases the brake pedal while turning his steering wheel to the left, into the corner.
He knows that one of the easiest and fastest ways to tear up your brakes is to ride them through a tight corner.
Just before entering the Karussell, both the Chevrolet and the Ferrari are doing almost eighty miles an hour, however, by the time they are on the banking, the supercar is down to fifty miles an hour, with Monahue’s muscle car about five miles an hour faster.
Squealing their tires into the thirty-degree banked hairpin left-hander, the red F40 is just on the outside of the green Camaro’s passenger door, almost close enough to touch, if anyone had been in the Chevy’s second seat.
The Camaro, however, is carrying more speed, and is on the inside of the corner, the shorter way around.
It is also almost a thousand pounds heavier than the newer F40, and carries more momentum into the sharp bend.
Near the apex of the corner, Steve’s Camaro is pulling ahead enough so that the nose of the Ferrari is near the rear passenger quarter panel of the Chevy.
Monahue grins briefly into the rearview mirror while piloting the RS/SS through the hairpin.
The smile vanishes abruptly when the rear tires slide across one of the white squares just a little, and the tail end of his muscle car breaks loose just past the corner’s apex.
It isn’t a lot of fishtail, as these things go, but with a $400,000 supercar less than a foot off his fender, it was enough to grab Mouse’s attention.
There is no way he would be able to afford repairs to the red road rocket.
Reacting swiftly, with his combat-honed reflexes making the reaction almost instantaneous, Stephen increases pressure on the gas slightly while loosening his hold on the steering wheel fractionally.
The rear tires smoke while they fight for purchase on the Karussell corner, and the Camaro’s rear end slides over the F40’s nose while the two cars exit the corner, the Camaro sliding at a forty-five degree angle in relation to the Ferrari behind it.
Maintaining the drift for just a second, it’s a near thing, but Monahue keeps control of the ‘60s icon and straightens the Chevrolet out, the car wiggling slightly as it gains purchase and accelerates up the hill towards the relatively tamer corners of the Hohe Acht, the highest part of the Nordschleife, ahead.
Keeping his eyes on the traffic, which is heavier than it had been the last five kilometers, but still relatively light, Monahue glances into the rearview mirror every other moment, shifting his car from side to side on the track, passing the cars he can and keeping the higher-powered Ferrari on his rear bumper.
Monahue keeps the gorgeous woman’s supercar behind his muscle car through the Hohe Acht, through the tricky downhill twists and turns of the serpentine Wipperman and Eschbach corners, into the steep downhill before going around the Brünnchen dog-ear, dodging and weaving around slower traffic the whole time.
Monahue glides the Camaro through the Eis Kurve, treacherous when wet, luckily, today is dry, and the two jousting cars roar into the switchbacks and elevation changes of the Pflanzgarten, where the F40 driver makes a feint to the Camaro’s right, then accelerates to pass him on the right just as they crest the hill an hit the Sprunghugel.
The suspension on both cars gains some travel as the two vehicles try to lift off the road on this portion as the hill drops away from them and both cars gain speed, rolling into the Schwalbenschwanz, Monahue using the unpainted portion of the Armco barrier as a reference point to start his turn into the banked corner.
The Camaro is once again side-by-side with the F40, and the older car is this time on the outside of the left-handed corner, a nearly one hundred degree banked curve, Stephen barely able to stay abreast of the Ferrari as they exit the corner.
By the time the two speeding vehicles start the sharp constant-curve right hander of the Galgenkopf, Steve knows it is all over. At four hundred and seventy eight horsepower, the F40’s 2.9 liter V8 has more get up and go than the three hundred and seventy five horse his Camaro’s V8 can put out.
In the corners, in traffic, he can hold his own against the masterpiece of Italian engineering.
Looking ahead while he exits the corner, Steve realizes he and the Ferrari driver have passed all the traffic, and that the track ahead is mainly straight for the next three kilometers, up until you pass the Nürburg castle and re-enter the pit lane, and the line of others waiting to take a lap around the track.
The stunning driver of the Ferrari knows it, too, as evidenced by the wink she gives Monahue, and the kiss she blows him before pressing down her accelerator.
The F40 fairly leaps ahead, even while Steve mashes his own gas pedal to the floor.
Though the 1968 Camaro RS/SS accelerates smoothly up to its top speed of 155 miles per hour, which is twenty faster than a stock model, thanks to the work Monahue has done to the car over the years, the Ferrari disappears down the straightaway, the red car’s top speed of 201mph meaning the Camaro has no shot of catching up.
Grinning and shaking his head slightly, Stephen roars the Camaro down the long straightaway, hoping that the woman in the F40 will be waiting for him at the end of the course.
Realizing he is starting to approach the pit lane entrance, as he is now passing the Nürburg castle, the man known as Mouse starts slowing his muscle car in preparation to enter the staging area, thoughts of the F40’s driver still in his head.
Suddenly, in the midst of his reverie about the pale-blue eyed brunette, Stephen hears a loud “pop”, and the Camaro starts to slew to the right.
Monahue tries to compensate, but his left rear tire has gone completely flat, and the Camaro spins off the track, and across the short run-off, before slamming length wise into the Armco barrier along the passenger side of the car.
Once the dirt and grass and tire rubber settle to the ground, and his head stops spinning, Monahue realizes his Chevrolet is facing backwards and resting against the Armco barrier, which it has slid along for about fifty feet, leaving green paint along the steel barrier.
Twang!
Without even stopping to think, the former Navy SEAL unhitches his seat belt and dives over both the Camaro’s driver side door and the Armco barrier in one fluid motion.
The sound of a ricocheting bullet is an unmistakable sound to a trained warrior.
