Wasted Why

I care to know when
I care to know how
Or what made the formation
Of the mind
To reach the conclusion
Given
But I have no interest in why
You must settle that score
In your own mind
On your own time
For I can not waste any if mine

Radiohead goes Public

I just heard that Spotify the music streaming Internet software company is going to go public in the coming year. So as a full-time musician, I was shocked to realize that this corporation and it’s soon to be investors, are going to be able to make money in an industry where the employees – a.k.a. musicians – are rarely ever paid. I have reviewed my paycheck of four cents from thousands of plays from Spotify over the past four months and I find this be hard to believe that they are going to go public and make millions of dollars with their investors, and yet they still have no plan on how to compensate the exploited musicians. Is amazing that investors and a company can make money in an industry where musicians are not even come fair wages. Sickening. I propose that Radiohead go public along with Spotify, this would at least give me a reason to be excited that a band has found a way to make money and survive in this market, rather than some bullshit high rise corporate executive. The sad realization, it is easier to make money exploiting hard working bands, than to be out doing hard work, creating great music and being a band. So to this I say, screw you Spotify – and long live rock and roll.

-NP

Certain Uncertainty

Mary’s not going to pay her bills on time
No concern for fine cheese and expensive wines
Riding subways straight
Under the streets
Standing upright on sore feet
Asthma machine is 6 feet deep
Her certainty in uncertain
Uncertain of the next job
Or the next paycheck
Not contained in simple
Passages from underground
I wish to help
For I stand helpless
These poems ideas felt a million times before
What can I offer
What can I do more
These circumstances I can not change
Take her world rearrange
Life fruit lay in her bounty
For I am the one who must need pity
Wanting to help
With nothing to give
Yet neither of us should shed pity on others life lived
So I walk on
Battle over
Defeated
Destroyed inside
Maybe if I offered help I would feel alive
But I walk through the tunnels to my next passage
From the subways to the streets
And on with life

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Unsophisticated Unassuming

Morals low and high
Splashed with city water
On my mouth side
Competition wanes complicates
Waning on in many days
Lungs
Feet
Hands
Sore
We made our way on the eastern shore
We wake up every morning and ask for more
Pedals pushing hearts bumping
We ask simple question
Answers looming
Under the winter storm
Warmness yearning
We wake
We rise
We take
Opportunities blooming
So unsophisticated
Unassuming
We wake up
We rise
We take

Cold

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The cold has a way
Seeping into warm lungs
Fastening to cells
Slowing motion
Opening entry for illness
We deal
My wife and I
Get sick
Dust ourselves off and go
Trying to stay warm
I’m this New York cold

Shaded Morning Expectations

White shade illuminate morning expectations

We look forward to a changing tide

With our eyes wide and hoping

Take one good look over the past

This moment will no longer last

Than it has taken to pass

Green in the city

Staying this way

Will prove a challenge

Yet a reward

We push onward

Today we set our roots in a new home

Two souls together

Better than one alone

Distortion Drawers

Distortion drawer
Tucked up high
On the fifteenth floor
Looking scraping skies
Off buildings 529 feet high
Steam belts
Ring around tops of structures
Under the sky punctured
In the city sound
When it’s your home
You’ve found

Big City Big Plan

Big city
Big plans
We go
Where the unknown
Is full
Certainty
Empty
While we grow
Outside of comforts
Lined growth
And direction
To set out
To find our own reflection
Among skyscrapers and the Hudson
We stay warm
With eyes on the empire
Feet pushing through
The snow and sand
In a big city
With big plans

Overwhelming Evidence

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Challenge
Knocked down
While my eyes wonder round
The changing landscape
Oh the eastern seaboard
You look different
New
Yet confused
While I lay bemused
Yet I have made it through
Under conditions variant and cold
We made it to the city
Only one week old
I wake up
Back on solid footing
And push on