8 Lives Left to Go

We do a lot of bad out of loneliness 

Lookin for a stronger hand 
A lot of birds fallen out of the nest

Lookin for a place to land 

I see a lot of birds fallen out of nests

Lookin for a place to land 

Yea we do a lot of pain out of being hurt 

Lookin for a way to cry 

A lot of tears take the place of words 

Shoulda said and we don't know why 

A lot of tears take the place of words 

Never said and we don't know why 

I only wanted it to be like it was before 

When there was no such thing as a closing door 

When there was no such thing as over 

No such hope as gone and love was still 

9 lives with 8 lives left to go 

8 lives left to go 

But there's a point you reach where you hit the street 

Losing's the same as landing on your feet 

And still inside me one more song 

I thought I had but I was wrong 

9 lives with 8 lives left to go 

8 lives left to go 

I've done a lot of death out of guilt and fear 

Lookin for a skin to shed

A lot of talking to no one here 

Who'll remember me when I'm dead 

Who will remember me when I'm dead?

And still inside me one more song 

I thought I had but I was wrong 

9 lives with 8 lives left to go 

9 lives with 8 lives left to go 

(c) Colleen Lloyd

Hurricane, Utah 

Oct 11, 2013

Even When I Run

Even when I run

I feel the fatigue of life

Feel the fatigue of all they took from me

From us

All the years I can’t run fast enough to catch

Because they’re not ahead of me

They're not behind me

They're inside of me

They're dreamseeds that wait in vain for the rains

They're dead end roads off Route 66

Leftover from another glory day

Old hotels and dance clubs staring vacant like broken promise

Behind Populux signs for a million me and Moms to find the money and

Bring a million possibilities

And visions we had to leave behind

The strip mall world moved on

And left us wrinkled and with our ungainly oversized dream innards hanging out

Beneath hard yellow flashing bulbs

Someone stopped paying the bill to light decades ago

And even when I run

I can't catch it anymore

I can't restore Route 66 to how it was

Or how it could be

I can no longer wave the magic wand of childhood imagination

 
And summon the laughing dancing crowds for us to play in

And my muscles have no future to drive to

It's just me climbing that lonely hill

And me running down in pain longing

For joy that my heart has shrunk and withered every passing fruitless season praying for

And me to know the memory of their mass and weight and strength

And how they carried me like a buck

Pulling at reins chasing freedom

I always had somewhere

And hope I never lost, but hid for safety

 
And now the crumbling fragments apologize and make their way from my hands to earth

At least I've saved as much as I could for this long

But I cannot catch up to relevance

And time and destiny

No matter how I outrun myself

I'm from another time, my people and memories

And long nights on endless roads

Are no longer running beside me

One by one they fall off and leave the race

And the only place I catch them

Is in the wind

The dark wind that speaks mystery

The playful sunny wind that whispers love and forever young

The gentle wind that settles down with me at sunset

The only place I trust enough to rest

They catch me when I stop and follow me

Even when I run

 - Colleen Lloyd
April 8, 2013 1:48 am
Hurricane, Utah

To all my friends who run

You are with me

And all my ones who have been with me

every step of my life

    

    

When you meet the Pacific, you will find the ocean peaceful and gentle. The waves rush toward you and absolutely throw themselves at you like over-enthusiastic children, caressing you, engulfing you in love. You begin to think of the ocean as your friend, and you accept its ecstatic embraces with open arms, falling gratefully into its bosom, trusting it to carry you a few feet further toward the shore.
     Then suddenly the waves twist viciously underneath you, grabbing your legs and shoving you along like some panicked crowd of humans would. Sometimes when you're under that swirling madness scrambling like a cat on a slippery floor, you feel that same thing you've felt on a thousand carnival rides or when the heat of summer erupts suddenly into a violent senseless game between two knived young men too close to you; the possibility of dying is thrust upon you unwillingly, and a frozen quickening of your heart informs you that the control you have over your life has just been ripped from you by a power which dwarfs you.
     And that is the romance of the ocean -- that fascinating, tempting, irresistible duality of pleasure and danger, of tranquility and passion, of eternal rhythm and unpredictable-ness, of life and death. The conflict of these great primal forces is what I see when I walk along the sand at the edge of this continent and search the horizon for truth.
-Colleen Lloyd
1985, Venice Beach, California

 I took that picture of the pier at Imperial Beack, California on my last visit last year. Thinking of Michelle, Jackson, Michael, family, all the people whose lives and destinies have mingled with mine over decades of cycles of tides and travel and seeking out dreams.

 

Your Long Black Mane

How can I forget you
When even the limbs of the trees I turn to
For solace’s release
Whisper your name
And the breeze caressing their leaves
Is so like your fingers
Rustling light over my skin
As you breathe into me your spirit’s desire
And the memory of you
Upright under your long black mane
That first night on my bed
Moving together in smooth matching rhythms in the dark
Lingers
Like the smell of your sweat on my sheets
Where I left the dry comfort of my peaceful desert
To dive so freely into
Then fight
The salty-sweet waves of your love
Now crashing down my face

- Colleen Lloyd
2002 Kayenta
home again

One Thousand Years

If I could scream one thousand years
It would not be enough
To quench the pain, dry up the tears,
Close up the wounds of love

If I could sail one thousand seas
And fly one thousand days
Another universe would not
Prove far enough away

If I could sing one thousand songs
If I could die a thousand deaths
The stench of poison lingering on
Would wait for the new breath

If I could see one thousand miles
The danger still to come
A thousand walls I'd build and still
I'd never feel at home

And if I dare to scale the wall
One thousand times, a thousand men
Could not repiece if I should fall
This broken heart together again

Release my soul, unlock deaf ears
And force the coos from doves
If I could scream one thousand years
It would not be enough

- Colleen Lloyd February 17, 2000

I Must Keep Your Memory Alive

I must keep your memory alive
So in the early morning hours
When my mind is healing
Floating
Gliding on sleepy waters

Like a skiff for one
Rocking gently pulsing with the
Rhythm of love's peaceful swells
In between the tides
When the chill of dawn seeps down upon my arms
Above rest's blanket and I realize too soon I can't hold on

I must keep your memory alive
So when the spell signals dissolve
And my restless heart beats quicker
Like a tiny bird discovering it suddenly lies
Captive in the hands of gods who lift it
From its secret nest
Not knowing what the danger of the day brings

I must keep your memory alive
For it is still within your arms
That I was safe and home although
You're in the land of dreams and spirit now
And you keep floating farther still
With every storm
With every natural cycle of come and go
Your shadow on horizon smaller, distant
Til the darkness settles deep over the deep
And in that silent unfathomed world
Where only true devotion's sails still venture

I must keep your memory alive

- Colleen Lloyd
February 14. 2013
Just now (7am)
In bed
Hurricane, Utah

I miss you Dad and everyone in my past
Even if you are still here
You still become a memory
I will hold onto

In the Middle of the Night

There's so much I have to say to you
In the middle of the night
So many dreams and visions waiting to come through
When the feeling is right
If I could look into your mind and finally see the truth
I'd die of fright
In the middle of the night

It would scare me
I can hear you say right now
It would scare me
Baby don't you go there, get out

It's a cave of screaming demons you may not escape
And it's driven me to madness and to create

In the middle of the night
In the middle of the night

There's so much I want to play with you
In the middle of the night
So many stories we could be living like freaky fools
But it's getting light
Oh yea we'd dance around the fire, throw away our shoes
And hold on tight
In the middle of the night

It's so much I want to stay with you
In the middle of the night
And if you call me in that wild way and love me too
I just might
Come on it's getting colder getting bolder, gotta do
What isn't right
In the middle of the night

Just isn't right
In the middle of the night

- Colleen Lloyd
Just now in the middle of the night
March 7, 2013

A song for all the wild nocturnal beings out there prowling in the middle of the night heehee

Virtual John Trudell

 

I love to see what JT is gonna write
In the middle of the night
And if I'm hanging at that party when the master's words flow
Then I'm the first to know
Amazing time when we can watch through virtual windows
Of anyone's once private minds from outer space
And catch the vision as the seeds sprout fast in time lapse
Without earning that feather and place beside a teacher
Great as him. Amazing tool to spread the inner truth
We used to grow organically in trusted circles, press into vinyl,
Chisel in stone, always ahead of slow technology in days when
In the flesh was warm reality where we lived and even black light
Was more natural than this unearthly sterile glow we breathe our souls into
Like a matrix, a play world where even the most privileged intimacy
Counts for nothing
Really.-Colleen Lloyd
Just now
March 6, 2013 2:27 am
My brother's birthday

Warrior Woman's Wish

about Somebody That I Used To Know. Inspired by RM's, not as good but just as mysterious. 

I wish I could tell you how I really feel 

without someone getting hurt. 

I wish I could go back to the young and promising days when the vision's journey I was chosen to carry was opening up the world I now call home to me, and I came to find you and you walked into my life. 

I wish I could feel the way I felt then today. 

I wish I still saw you with those eyes. 

I wish the paths we travel would have joined and we could have walked together in pure love and made each other shine brighter. 

I wish that I could find a reality where I belong in yours and you belong in mine. 

I wish the mystery of who you are and why you never leave my mind would be answered and I could step into unknown waters where sirens beckon without the self-doubt it's a mirage. 

I wish I could lie at rest and share the natural rhythm of our breathing wrapped like puppies in each other and know the weight of your head resting on my breasts and the smoothness of your long hair in my hands. 

I wish the woman I was born to be was the woman whose life I lived and my laughter would give you the satisfaction I can sense your spirit craves. 

I wish I could say I was your friend and share your adventures and random thoughts because I think I have something to share you need and give that has been there since I was a child, and what it is, is just being real and loving life. 

I wish you could answer the passion that I never have stopped believing is still in me to fulfill my reason for being created. 

I wish you would never stop being in your prime and full of magic so my heart grows shy in the same strange way when I see you as it always has and I don't know what to say, because that's when the ride you take me on begins. 

I wish I could feel you in me and the pleasure of giving myself to you without inhibition or shame to move as your sure hands have waited and imagined. 

I wish every woman and man could live the way I wish we could, not for a moment but with every moment that our bodies are warm and strong and we hold on to desire. 

I wish I lived in your arms, your crazy smile, your mind, your future, your past, but most of all your present. 

I wish you were here

Or I was there. 

-Colleen Lloyd

Sunday, February 24, 2013 

Because you are still a secret I cannot tell and the truth is always a good thing to admit, if only to myself. 

DEDICATED TO THE MEN AND WOMEN WAITING IN VAIN IN THE TRENCHES

Wa do for the inspiration and for hanging it all out there, RM, still my favorite muse until someone better shows up! :)