No one said it would be this hard!

Well, I’m still searching for a little peace in this world. Recently, though, I find reason to ask, why? If the “good life,” and all that is pure can be found in the glory of the high wire; and if peace comes with learning to balance all the darkness we let in through the eyes against all the love that we hold in our hearts; and if you believe that Aristotle was on to something with his teachings on the “good life,” then surely you know how hard it is these days to simply keep your eyes on the prize. For so long I’ve wanted to be more than nothing, but years go by fast. Then one day you realize that you’ve given everything you had to give. Now, there is nothing left. You soon find that the price a man pays living life this way is just too damn high. This, and desperation, make it impossible to feel anything, as you’re slowly desensitized over time. “Wake up, dead man!!!” Is there no hope anymore? Just when you think you’ve hit bottom, and the only way to go from here is up, the bottom will drop out from under you. Remember the play, Hamlet? “Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.” Maybe it all comes back to this one crippling fact. “The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape!” He scours the earth seeking souls to devour. This I know to be true. But it’s hard to detect what’s hides behind a beautiful smile. We all will fall short of the glory, sooner or later. Surely, this gives reason to our suffering. Not an excuse, but maybe an explanation for our failure to end the wars we wage. In conclusion I ask this one question. If the devil hath the power to form a pleasing shape, Mr. Shakespeare, then what possible chance would a man have against him…..given a vulnerability to, and a weakness for that which is pleasing. Professors have taught me that whatever we do, good or bad, is not by choice or conviction, but because we are genetically encoded, or pre-disposed to do it. Of course, I am speaking of animalistic behavior. It is simply our biological destiny. We have in our DNA, genes coded to grow a tail. We posses genes to grow gills for breathing underwater. They are only turned off, now, because we no longer need them as we once did. Evolutionary biology explains all this. Look how far we’ve come, they say. Well, damn! If it took millions of years to get this far and mankind is all we have to show for our anticipation, then surely any hope we once held for our future must now be long, long, gone. I realize now, that I’ve been wasting so much time searching for things that could never be found. But hey, I am not gonna worry anymore about what I can’t change. Anyway, only the dead know for sure.

Closure

“I wrote this not long after a walk through of my first house just before I sold it.   My divorce from my first wife had just been finalized and I was leaving town. The house was so empty. Anyway, I thought I’d share these words that hopefully gives insight into what I was feeling at the time, and my proverbial trip back to the place where promises were made…seeking closure…trying to give back the memories…trying to let it go.  I found myself standing on the edge of a nation….staring into the eyes of the deep blue goodbye.”       -KMW   05/11/ 2011

 Closure   (copyright 2007)  

I’m pretty sure I don’t live here anymore.
Somehow I let you go, and this place that was our home.
Still, I can feel you here, like a ghost…
Just to disappear, and leave me here…..all alone
But I remember now, all the promises we made
At a time when you were mine……..my everything
My angel…. forever,  can you remember,
All we promised that December?

Georgia looks as beautiful
As I remember her to be.
Since you could not be here with me,
I brought with me your memory.
An offering to the sea,
For promises we could not keep.
No longer living in slow motion,
As I watch you drown in the ocean

So say goodbye to another year
As friends and lovers, disappear
Time is the one god everyone fears…..only to have it slip away.
I watched you betray me.
How easily you gave away,
What you vowed was mine forever.
Oh, the promises we break…….. from the tears of the cradle…… to the finality of the grave

We should have kept this one.

It was just one… in the course of a lifetime…

Georgia looks as beautiful
As I remember her to be
Since you could not be here with me
I brought with me your memory
An offering to the sea
For promises we could not keep
No longer living in slow motion
As I watch you drown in the ocean

  

                                                                                                     

“Fast Asleep in a World of Sorrow”

I once dated a girl for ony four days. She was a school teacher. A teacher charged with the education of our precious children. On the fourth day we were eating dinner at some restauraunt. I don’t even remember the name. What I wil never forget is her final statement in what felt like a misguided crusade to belittle my need to find peace in life and and my hope for peace in this world. Now this is something that must be strived for to maitain our very humanity, even if we know somewhere deep inside us that it will never happen. She said this to me, “Keith, honey, peace on earth would be boring.” I remember dropping the fork in what must have been an adverse reaction to ignorance. Next, I felt sick from what must have been the shock that someone would actually be evil enough to believe this crap.  Finally, I didn’t even say goodbye as I left her there at the restauraunt.  Now, this I know was not the most gentlemanly thing for a man to do, but it had to be my reaction to the disgusting knowledge that this could allow our children to grow up with seeds of hate planted in their hearts. These seeds could then grow and turn their hearts to stone, and it would be our fault. From children of men to the killers of man. I knew I had been exposed to a sickness .  I knew that negativity was contagious, but maybe I had seen something  worse. There is a saying about reaping what you sow:  “you plant a demon seed, you reap a flower of fire!” As we stand before God on the day of judgement, I don’t think it is going to be  enough to simply say we fell asleep at the wheel. That we went through life wearing blinders, and we were unaware of the “wolfen creepin’ around our door as we lay sleeping.” I have tried for years to express this through the writing of a song, but I have failed.  So I cannot keep this inside anymore. I didn’t know how to handle the emotions that were stirred up that night. I was unprepared for the tailspin I was thrown into and if I would ever recover. You might ask, “Keith, how could simple words cause you such turmoil?” Well, I don’t know. However, I do know the power of the pen as the cliche goes. I truly believe in the power that simple words can hold. Maybe all that I believed in that night was ripped from me and I simply lost my faith. Rarely does a day go by that I don’t think about the beauty that fell from her face on to the dirty ground as  darkness itself came out of her mouth.  I hope  God is somehow busy or needed somewhere else.  How brazen it must be to hope God will forgive us for not learning from the sins of our fathers, and for carelessly passing on this disease to our kids.  What scares me is that we are without excuse.  What I believe God might say can be found in a song by Audioslave.  “I find you guilty of the crime, of sleeping at a time when you should have been wide awake!”

{the “wolfen” quote comes from the song,  Peacemaker, on the album, Mystery Road,  by Drivin’ N’ Cryin}

“Laying down my guns in the name of peace”

(title is taken from my song,  A Symbol of Hope,  that was written such a long time ago)

This quote I have held on to for most of my life and I am reminded of it every time I read someone’s response to an email I sent. It is tagged to every email I send. In dealing with a few things in my life right now, I realized that maybe I needed to be reminded of its powerful message. Just because I once understood it and tried to live according to that understanding, doesn’t mean that somewhere down the line I haven’t forgotten it. So, I am making a commitment at 12:20 am on Sunday, March 27th, 2011, that I will do all I can to live my life never feeling I was weak because I practiced civility instead of destruction, and that I will act in a civil manner instead of going to war even if it is perceived to be weakness by everyone else. I also will try my best to do what I say I will do. If I fail at this seemingly simple task, I promise to ask forgiveness of those I hurt, even if it means asking on my knees. I promise to never ask someone to put their trust in me only to find my promises were only words spoken and void of meaning. I surely know I have been guilty of this in my past just as I surely know the empty feeling one gets from believing in someone only to be let down. Some things in life you simply have to earn. Well, this is my promise. I only post this in the hope it may help someone as it has helped me. So, at long last, here it is. If this is for you, spend a few days thinking about what is actually being said, considering that is was born in a time of civil unrest.  The world had changed overnight. It had become such a dangerous place.  You must understand the context of the times to understand the true power of these words.  Try to imagine the crippling pressure that must have been upon President Kennedy and how it was becoming apparent that the world was inching closer and closer to complete destruction. What really gives these words meaning to for me is simply how they gave hope to so  many people all over the world that somehow we could find a better way to live while at the same time it gave a warning to anyone who dared to stand against us that we were fully invested in the maintainance  of peace by maintaining a killing machine. This was an understanding that justice for the world could only be found in the barrel of a loaded gun. I believe that in those days, the President of the United States of America must have felt the literal weight of the world pressing down on him.       Keith Watson

“Civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is certainly subject to proof!” -JFK-

Homesick Blues

Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins is well known for being able to coin a phrase. “Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage!” Man, I wish I would have written that one. “The world is a vampire sent to drain.” I believe he hit the nail on the head with this one. Well, this is just a lyric I wrote during a great storm in my life . I wish that whenever someone read a lyric of mine they could know what I know so they could understand exactly the emotions at the time and the burdens they brought to bear on me and my family. Sometimes a lyric will seem so simple or shallow. This is a very simple song with very simple lyrics, but inside the words themselves there is an ocean of darkness. I know if you are reading this, you must be so excited to see I have posted another one of my stupid songs. Let me just say I have always written. Even when I was a boy I would jot down a few words or maybe a paragraph or two containing the emotions of the day. As I began playing guitar at the age of eleven, I tried to parlay them into songs. Now, after 24 years of playing and writing music and failing to make a career out of it, I find myself doing the opposite thing. Although, I still believe in these songs, and that they really do have something to say. Maybe somewhere, they could help a kid make sense of his life and possibly bring them a little peace. I was that kid. I held on to the words of Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” and his “The River” albums as if they were the only thing that kept my breathing. It was a bad time for a little boy burdened by that which cannot be unseen and by the pain a child should never know. Even a simple lyric like this one is important to me. It is not sadness one takes from sad songs, but it is hope. It is a belief that even the darkest night holds no power over the smallest light. If there is nothing you, the reader, can take from these lyrics of mine, then maybe it is enough to have provided me with a lifetime of therapy. Thanks!

Homesick Blues Copyright 2009

Maybe I’m between hometowns

But this place has never felt like home

Yeah, we gotta find a place to call home,

But it sure as hell ain’t here.

We gotta pick up and move from these…

Homesick blues

I really want to make you happy

But I want us to belong to something

To hang our hats on hat racks

In a place that feels like home

And let us feel lonely no more

May we feel lonely no more

We got to get out of this place

It’s the first thing we got to do

This town must let go of me

So I don’t let go of you

We gotta pick up and move from these…

Homesick blues

memories

unforgettable night on the beach….

Direction

When the time comes to leave the ocean and to go back home where for me life is pointless. A life overflowing with the kind of stress that makes it so hard to breathe. I hope I can find within me the courage it must take to allow a man to make a wrong turn and to keep going. To never return to what can be described as a life in chains. Where people are filled with hate and rage. It is impossible to get free from the oppression.

Well, I found I was short on courage. What a difference only a year can make. We could have survived if only I had been strong enough get up from my knees and take responsibility for my house and all it holds. I could have picked up and moved some place new. To have been free from an oppression that feels like it is demonic. It can jump on to a man’s back and then pushes his face into the dirty ground. Laughing as it holds him down until his will is breaks. Then it just walks away with something of a smile on its face. They say you feel nothing when the the levee breaks.

One thing I know is that I must take whatever it takes for a man to wake up from such a nightmare cannot be found while his face is the ground. So I am told it may be too late for us now. My wife has been crying all day. I’ve watched her slowly slip away from my side. Now it is too late to save her and now I am here all alone. I know that is is somehow my fault. I had a chance to set my house free, but I refused to believe in the truth that stood in front of me. I wish I could say that I had courage