"They Say I'm Nuts (Medley)" - 9/10/'07

They say I'm nuts

negative in reflecting
on what I'm expecting
when I'm dealing with lemmings
stuck in ruts,
failed at emotionally connecting and getting off their own butts

When all along, I'm trying to stay positive
and all they do is make it tough.
Find the diamond instead of dwelling on the rough.
In no such position for pain anymore
Meds in remission from my brain
Open the communication channel, or close the panel
close your mind.

Cut your lines
Punch your holes
Pick your poisons
Pick your nose
Inject through veins
The new marrow of your bones

What makes you who you are
Gives the blues and the scars
When you come loose and fly through the car

Everything goes by like the lightening/
it can kill us quick/
in a flash.
It sure can.
This sure is shocking just the same,
but it aint that kind of flash in the pan.

All that I am says to simplify this into "poppiness."
There's no right way to talk to you
when its all about "Be yourself, but watch what you do."
Our whole relationship is based on showmanship.
It once meant revelations to clear the air (in your head)
by way of conversation.
It was a real mind-fuck.
I'd rather opt-in on "mental masturbation" than test our luck.

And they say I'M nuts...

By MIKE PHELAN O'TOOLE
Copyright 2007 All Rights Reserved

"Off My Head." - 6/26/'07

I'll
steal your soul on video
Study life's sciences
Mess with your religion
Turn the knife in the incision
The gaping holes in your belief's indecision.

For all the times you speak of "truth" you gut and mame and hurt me.
For truth be told, and logic ready, there is no such thing other than uncertainty
rocking steady
and taking it all in stride and with grace.
I stand straight in the now with my pride, and you bow with your faith for ever-after.
Happiness is not in the hall with the staying and the praying
But in the self understanding that we live in not the building but the caving.

I'll
break hearts through the arts
with ink, oil, mixed-media and paints
where no scripture prophetizes the path I take
and hits me when I break
So, it's true that I'm a human, so I'm an amalgam of junk ideals
Go bang the doldrums,
label me a punk and tie me in how it is to feel
I don't recall this harsh of heaven, so don't instruct me where to go...
For I've no hate for deviation from the written definitive and depression
of your sinner and your saint.
"God knows" as an expression,
I just finish where I faint.

By MIKE PHELAN O'TOOLE
Copyright 2007 all rights reserved.

"Parting Ways Over Partying Ways" - 12/27/'06

It's a funky dysfunction with an addictive kind of friction
And a love with violent distinction.
1986 could have seen me "eighty six'd" from this scene of distress.
What a hot mess
Give me another twenty and today's friend will be tomorrow's enemy.

That sex and booze are in the excess and flow a' plenty.
Your warm beer is one frivolous thing that gets me upset
But to the women, I won't resist.

Here's party rock and spoken word
Rapped over an eight/eight tempo
locked against your rolled-up joint memento...
What a way to remember what made me arrange these fake words
and ingest meds
Struck by cocaine heads and
Naked girls...
Who all happened to be your best friends
How was I to know
that what must've sucked for you
was my bust after her blow?


Copyright 2007 by MIKE PHELAN O'TOOLE.
All rights reserved.

"Crazy Glued Glass Ceilings" - 12/7/'06

Go read the dead poets
instead of scanning journal posts
Self fulfilling the prophecy;
Out to cut this monotony.
Love is less a conspiracy, more a monopoly.
They eat it up
If only they knew how to sell it properly.

Buying into all the flat generics and straight-up pricks
Sure I'm six feet short,
fate almost hit "abort" and
I'm always late to court you.
But conviction should win over addiction
Integrity should have sold out all that regret by now
already.

I'm just out to write things tonight
Ink through to an opinion that's left over, but is right on.
Everything you claim to crave
I am well aware
You don't understand the way of this waste land.

Offering contemporary vanity in verse
With all the profanity of hip-hop,
and all the perverse energy of rock-n-roll.
No longer blond
Fucking brunettes
Better
Wetter in the heat.
And I don't sleep or eat
And when you're cut
I bleed all the words you can stand to read.

Passion flows to hustle in this scramble
Laying it all down to gamble
Rolling the dice to save a life
Taste the flesh sample.
Hang 'em high by my hamstrings,
tighter than a noose some days
Loose when they stretch me in eight different ways
for better or worse
Enduring that burn to hold what these kids yearn
for you're my last and first.

We scale things upside down
and build new ground
on the glass ceiling of these unbreakable feelings
Still in grasp and screaming loud.


Copyright 2007 by MIKE PHELAN O'TOOLE.
All rights reserved.