Wild Beasts - Albatross

Cold War Kids - "Hang Me Up To Dry"

Pedro The Lion - Second Best

Autolux-Angry Candy

Death Cab for Cutie -Title Track

True Fiction | Authspot

True Fiction | Authspot

3. The National Anthem

Just | Authspot

Just | Authspot

Just when the evening learns what the day knows

Just as the song lyrics used to speak to me and say

Just when a lover becomes lost in a lover’s throes

As the burning star reclaims the newborn day

Just when the cat is let out of the bag to begin

Its Cheshire cat sly and mischievous grin

It begins to end

This time I will not shy away

I am above it this time around; not below it

I am stronger, more resilient; stoic

I am prepared to know it

I am not afraid

I can and will show it

Iluminar | Authspot

Grays

and bluer days

Clouds come rushing into my wearied mind

Phased,

cut by the blades

What am I to do when what I’ve lost I seek again to find?

Let the good shine

Let it shine forever on

Let the Wisdom become

May it become mine

Let the weather forever change

And let the Sun’s shine come upon

My skin and then

Let it shine well

Let the blossoming jasmine smell

Where the sadness used to dwell

Let it shine on and when

It grows dark; shine again

For me

Copyright ©2011 by j. k. Bradford, All Rights Reserved

Read more: http://authspot.com/poetry/iluminar/#ixzz1Sb0zajDE

Iluminar | Authspot

Red Right Ankle

Seal - Secret (Feat. Heidi Klum) (Official Music Video)

A-Trak feat. CyHi Da Prynce - Ray-Ban Vision [NEW SONG 2010] - CurrentHi...

Now & Then | Authspot

Now & Then | Authspot

The World Wants Monsters | Authspot

The World Wants Monsters | Authspot

Royksopp - What Else Is There (Trentemoller Remix)

July 12th Old Topanga Canyon | Authspot

On July 12th Old Topanga Canyon

I propped myself against a convenient boulder

Trying to match the cool I saw in you

With a green St. Pauli bottle in my hand

You were walking with arms stretched out like Boeing wings

A balancing act for an overgrown spunky child

And like a child you traversed the jutting rocks

And softly hummed some Smith’s song

It was then that I had a melancholic moment when

I realize that you and I don’t belong in this world

Of harlots and thieves

Anymore than YOU belonged to me

Copyright ©2011 by j. k. Bradford, All Rights Reserved

July 12th Old Topanga Canyon | Authspot

Quid Pro Quo

Are you my new vocation?
Hardly, but in you I see an evocation
A proper preoccupation
A reason to be
A life of doing something simply to please …you
When all things crumble down
And the world’s countenance has fallen to the ground
We will still be; for the duration
Are you my new obsession?
Hardly, but when the novelty reaches its expiration
We will still continue to be
Loving and living; blurring the definition of two
Defying addition and multiplication
Are you my new “art nouveau”?
My project,
My quid pro quo
My creative heart’s alliteration?
Possibly,
But more importantly you are for me a place to keep my love safe and free from harm
Copyright ©2011 by j. k. Bradford, All Rights Reserved

Read more: http://authspot.com/poetry/quid-pro-quo/#ixzz1MS8VhG00

You Don't

waiting

   wanting

      thinking

  I wonder

    hoping

   acting

     above it

       or under

        dismissing

           wishing

   convincing

     the thunder

       to wait for the accompanying lightning’s flash

Copyright ©2011 by j. k. Bradford, All Rights Reserved



Read more: http://authspot.com/poetry/whatever-the-case/#ixzz1LnBY4dos

Jesus Wept for His Friend (John 11:33-35)

Jesus wept openly for Lazarus,

When he heard his dear friend had died

It is hard for some people to fathom

That God’s firstborn Son could have cried

But we are made in God’s image

A fact that the Bible deems true

So good people work to embody God’s visage

May it reflect in the good that we do

Copyright ©2011 by j. k. Bradford, All Rights Reserved

Much of the rosebuds work is good but not excellent. This is different.

Despite You and In Spite of Me

I sat outside of your narrow mind and waited for the storm windows to open
the hurricane you think men to be never came for you
and all of your posturing wasn’t worth the loneliness it cost
you
At times I find it impossible not to stand awestruck as you tap dance around unfounded fears
and when one gets the best of you,
I fear for you as the escalation begins and you like an animal
cornered
Lash out and destroy within yourself and others the very thing
that makes a loser win
and so I sit
I will wait through the storm of stated facts masquerading out of context
Screaming inside for you to abandon the storm cellars wasted years
Abandon your house of cards and come home
I will wait because once the skies clear
and the Sun makes its new debut
You will see my love washed clean from the rain of reality
Still here for you and no worse for wear
Copyright ©2011 by j. k. Bradford, All Rights Reserved

Riding Upon Your Own Coat Tails

Riding Upon Your Own Coat Tails

The Black Keys - Too Afraid To Love You

Minus the Bear - Pachuca Sunrise

The Greater Moses

"(3)If, now, the good news we declare is in fact veiled, it is veiled among those who are perishing, (4) among whom the god of this system of things has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, that the illumination of the glorious good news about the Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine through."
(2 Corinthians 4:3,4)

What meanders as a mystery
also moonlights as a means to an end
A monolithic myth clothed in a false credibility

                                                                             That claims the wisdom of Solomon

But beware
What crown the confounded;
misguided have worshiped
To be fair?
Their hopes? Ill founded
Leaves true worshipers who,
eager to teach are none the less astounded;
knowing this crown appropriately rest elsewhere
What heralding pleadings of come!
Trumpet from false voice and placating rock masses
Content to amass material assets
Their rock masses simply made of paper mache boulders
Though the Devil ma’care
That their champion rest not in the Greater Moses
but on less capable and sinister shoulders

Read more: http://relijournal.com/christianity/the-greater-moses/#ixzz1GgZ4mTlR

Radiohead | S a i l T o T h e M o o n

Night Shade Harmony

Hind sight is 20/20.

Why should I spend a great deal of time reHASHING the
HAPPEN stance
and HARSHness we called a lover’s dalliance
Fights over HONESTY
HONESTLY?
Resentment ruled the roost and hence
Forgiveness was offered without any AMNESTY
Mistrust,
Strained finance
Refusals to adjust,
Malignant
We needed real professional assistance
But help never came and we didn’t seek it in a measure
That honored the depth of our feelings
And the arguments continued with persistence
We refused to talk
When the other DEMANDED?
We balked
If I were the one REPRIMANDED?
I walked
When I tried to leave you pleaded
Gripped my pant leg wet with tears; the door blocked
I didn’t UNDERSTAND IT
It was awful
I thought I lost respect for you based on your behavior
In REALITY? Never
Never in a million years
I think back on how much you meant to me and I savor
The MEMORY
The secret sounds of twilight conversations at dawn
The nightshade HARMONY
The way we fit so perfectly together in love and lust
The ECSTASY
No one moved me and soothed me like you, TRUST ME
And I am not sure anyone ever will
Copyright ©2011 by j. k. Bradford, All Rights Reserved

Bon Iver - Re: Stacks

Nature Boy - Nat King Cole

The Dead Weather - Are Friends Electric?

She Wants Revenge - Red Flags And Long Nights

Caveat Lector

I miss the ability to pluck from your feather bed what I hold dear
and you deem precious
I would by route
distract you with these well rehearsed false impressions
In softer muffled tones and spice riddled
Affirmations and accents
To teach,
and unlearn your mother’s caveat lector lessons
While the caramel plum hue of my intentions
gets the better of me;
it mercifully remains hidden
at least partially in the dim light from where we are sitting
Cradled in an overstuffed button punch love-seat
leaving me in this pitiable condition

I want to forget my own vision and see you in
purposeful poses
Positioning the lotus for me to notice
Your ambiance wafting in the air like summer roses

I swear

I swear the swans have traversed the lake
and upon the shore of your submission have landed
and here I stand
At this moment the sum of my weakness and glands
and all of this why?
So I may pluck the daylights from your star's
forbidden sky
Until exhausted you fall breathless into the slumber's hands
©2010 J. K. Bradford

Bajka,Bonobo - Walk in the Sky

Autolux - Turnstile Blues (From the Basement)

Under Loose Assumptions

On Wednesday I cleaned my hallway closet and I found the old album of scrap
Photos and miscellaneous magazine clippings
You used to keep
A box full of charcoal drawings and letters cryptically
written in Swedish
To family and friends still frozen and pickled on Akvavit in Stockholm
I wished I could understand the language
But the words stared back at me silent and apathetic
As if to mock my inability to decipher their import
I wish you had taken them with you
I wished I had not been so nostalgic and sentimental
Because
I thought I had long ago forgot
I thought the smell of you had long since faded from my memory
and before I had the chance to lift my shield of recovery
My mind splintered into a thousand small
fragmented windows through which shone your face
From every vantage point and place we visited together
or talked about visiting as we lay conversing and intertwining
our legs under comforters
And I was involuntarily transported to a page in the book
long ago, ripped from the spine
and dog-eared, and crumpled
Under the loose assumption that it had been discarded
I compellingly went through the box in its entirety
Photos, compact disc, and incomplete sketchings
Letters and scrap book contents
and in the end I remember what once was
Before reminding myself of what could have never been
Copyright ©2011 by j. k. Bradford, All Rights Reserve

Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby

Trees and Birds

The World Wants Monsters

This world wants monsters to lurk in every household

A snarling manifestation of our collective misery made incarnate

We drift into the decidedly dark

and the desirability of essential escape from the foreign

Seen as a simple lark of sorts;

A subscription to the twisted prism of the less boring

The commanding, the demanding, the consummate

While the people pride themselves on carrying on;

Enduring

Substituting the salient for the god of it’s awfully alluring

If the truth be told to spit upon the spark

That denial has been methodically obscuring

©2009 J. K. Bradford

Talking Heads - Houses In Motion (Stereo Difference) from "Remain In Light"

Flimsy Like Paper Lace

flimsy like paper lace

Flimsy like a lace paper window pane
Rattled in a heavy wind blown rain
The rain
The rain came quickly down
And the shutters leaked as they tried in vain
To curb the pelting sound
The rain the rain falls wet and cold
And weakens the hillside ground
Which then gives way and
Tumults over the wall which cannot hold
The rain the rain
When will it end
The rain will never cease
The rain will someday wash our weary souls I am told
The rain the rain the rain the rain
©2007 J. K. Bradford

Band of Horses - Laredo

When it rains in California....

When the waters weigh burdensome upon the construct of the levy

The storm continues to rain down

And the wintry weather’s tympanic sound

Reminds me that eventually the water has its way and become to heavy

For the barrier to properly hold its ground

Day two and three non-stop I watch the torrential inching symphony

Cleansing the entirety of this town

Landslides, and car crashes to swerve around

The homeless of this place hide away from nature’s unleashed bevy

‘Tween building and beneath makeshift tents they’ve made or found

After the length of the day surrenders to night’s hidden envy

The storm continues to pelt and perform

To defy the Sun and with its wet hands pound

Outside of the Californian norm and still the glistening ground is pretty

To my own eyes that leaked with this new sadness I have found

Copyright ©2010 by j. k. Bradford, All Rights Reserved

Band of Horses - Laredo