Time Is Poetry

Little Doubt

2012-02-07T07:45:00.002-05:00

When your eyes are closed,
your mind won't sleep.
Old figures haunt and hover
and wince and weep.
They reach out to touch,
but they scratch you deep
and they whisper sweet-nothings,
but talk is cheap.

So, you think that you're quite
over it now.
It's a promise you've made
to yourself, a vow,
and those voices are faint
so you disavow,
but you're not sure of who or what
or even how.

Yet, gentle hands and soft eyes
help to remind you
that Good comes
in batches of few
and far between,
but true.
Somewhere in your heart you guessed,
but never knew.

Let time drag your
old habits out,
kicking and screaming
and whaling about.
Lay history to rest
and take a different route.
In gentle hands and soft eyes,
let there be little doubt.

******************************************

I've been quiet for a while. Oops. Life has been life-y and busy. Lots of things have changed since the last time I posted anything (back in November), both personally and professionally. Whether by fate or by luck or by accident, I'm taking a new path.

I wrote this last week, but things at work got crazy last week and I never got around to appropriately tweaking it until now. It's about how you'll always have your demons, but you shouldn't shut out your saints.

"I try to will myself away while shouting habits plead their case. So when the sun sears through my eyes, my beggar's brain can't compromise. I splash cold water. I draw the curtains. I stay inside." Kevin Devine You'll Only End Up Joining Them

"But I'll walk my own road. I'll go where you won't go. You won't put me through hell. 'Cause now I see through you. Believe what you need to. Go haunt someone else." - Kevin Devine Go Haunt Someone Else

"I don't want to live like I'm dead anymore, so keep that away from me." Kevin Devine Wait Out The Wreck

Prime

2011-11-22T10:58:00.002-05:00

Thanks for asking;
no, I'm fine.
What hurts right now
is I wasted my time.
Nothing to show,
not a nickel, not a dime,
but my blood is still pumping
and I haven't reached my prime,
just the end of a line
and I'd give it back if I could
and leave you stripped
where you stood,
choose "ignore"
and mean it like I should,
but you were always
so fucking misunderstood
and never any fucking good.
I just don't know what to do
with what's left of me.
I wish I had a clue.
I can't find myself
and everything else is askew -
anyway -
and now my thoughts are few
and you won't remember
and you're onto something new
and I'm stuck here
and I still miss you.

***********************************************

This poem is about digging a ditch and throwing all your fucking time, energy, and memories of someone in it.

"Fucking leave. And don't forget to leave your front door key and, after that, you can find your own way (find your own way) back." I Am The Avalanche Gravedigger's Argument

"You can't keep what you did not have, can't even give it back." Kevin Devine 11/17

"You're bleeding out your heart full of soul, so misunderstood, so misunderstood, so misunderstood, so misunderstood. I'd like to thank you all for nothin'. I'd like to thank you all for nothin' at all..." Wilco Misunderstood

"I've been looking for some time, in a room full of numbers, for my prime." Middle Brother Blue Eyes

"Another late night drive by you, I miss you so much. I know it's stupid, but I'm saying this to you. I mean it too." Hot Rod Circuit Supersad

Magic Wish

2011-11-11T08:05:00.007-05:00

There's a wall
that won't come down
and chains
that leave me bound
and I hear your voice -
it's smooth and calm -
but I fear the fall,
the blast, the bomb.
When the dust settled,
this time, I want to be standing.
I want to escape
the lashing and the branding.
I want to know
in certain eyes
I can still be safe;
there is no guise.
A magic wish,
a beating heart,
but please don't say
I was wrong from the start.
Your smiles heal
innately,
but have you seen
my wrists lately?
I hide in dark corners
and underneath beds.
You'll have to come find me.
I'll need to be led.

***********************************************

This is about starting to move forward, but finding you can't, that you're frozen, that you're going to need to be pushed. It's about accepting the wreck that you are and praying others can too.

This also just seems appropriate for 11/11/11. :)

(Tara, this one's for you, girl. ;) )

"Chain...I feel the words falling a rhythm; I see the wind bearing its decision to never give in..." The Fire Theft Chain

"You got a piece of me, but it's just a little piece of me and I don't need anyone and these days I feel like I'm fading away...." Counting Crows Have You Seen Me Lately?

"You can't keep what you did not have, can't even give it back." Kevin Devine 11.17

All Over Again

2011-09-29T08:47:00.004-04:00

You appeared in the fog
as if you'd been there all along
whispering the same old sweet-nothings,
singing the same old sad songs.
We said we'd have a drink
every now and then,
but we've missed the summer
all over again.
Now the leaves are changing
and so are the times
and I wish I had something more
than these wretched rhymes
to keep of you in my hands,
but there's nothing there.
I'd call out your name.
All I'd get is a stare.
Ice cold eyes
cut like glass
and silence speaks;
it doesn't pass.
Over, in another state,
in another time or another place,
you remember a sound;
you remember a face.
You remember how warm
you used to feel
when that emptiness in your stomach
wasn't real.

**********************************

It's about how I hope some part of you will eventually regret it.

"It's burning up in here even though the bed is cold on your side. I'd rather die then spend this night here without you." New Found Glory It's Been A Summer

"I'm wasting away. I find time to pine when pining away my time. Within sin. With no redemption. We will find our souls and the shells they're kept in. All wasted away." Glassjaw Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence

Bleeding Art

2011-09-26T07:37:00.002-04:00

Some days I don't know my own name
and I wonder if you ever feel the same.
On you I will place all the blame
for a sickness you never tried to tame.
Did it tie you up, tape your mouth shut?
Push you down and punch you in the gut?
Or did it just give you a reason to cut
and run and stay in your self-made rut?
Because it came out from your heart
and it pulled me apart.
It lied to me from the very start,
but I turned it into my own bleeding art.
You are in all my colors and all my words.
You're in the fish and in the birds.
You're in all the sentences I overheard
and in ever picture my tears blurred.
So, when you look in the mirror, you should see my face.
My visage should make your heart race.
I should be embedded in that space
in the back of your mind that you just can't erase.

**************************************

This is about other people's mistakes that wind up only hurting you and all you can do is write angry poetry about it.

I'm not generally a vengeful person, but when you screw me over twice it's tough not to hate you. I'm a sucker, though, so I'll probably always be here for you when you want me. You should really just want me more.

"She don't even know my name. She won't even look my way..." Ultimate Fakebook She Don't Even Know My Name

"Oh great, here I go again I'm stuck in this rut..." (Really, this entire song. All the time.) Saves The Day Three Miles Down

"Stay hydrated from from a double shot, get my nourishment from a punch in the gut, never really felt I had the best of luck. I gotta big big mouth that just won't shut up." Middle Brother Middle Brother

"You were the moon held high. You broke black with your clean light. You're words I can't say right anytime I try." Kevin Devine 11.17

Understood

2011-09-19T12:03:00.005-04:00

I can’t reach out
and touch you.
Then again,
I guess I never could.
I saw us once
in a room with a view,
our intentions mislead,
but not misunderstood.
If you’d just love me,
I’d swear to love you too.
I wouldn’t throw that term around.
No one ever should.
The shadows you cast
are far between and few,
but my memory is,
to a fault, pretty good.

I see you in the moon
that shines bright overhead
and in the stars;
so I pray for rain
and I almost feel you
here in this bed,
but I know it's just
a trick of my brain.
Come find me when
you feel yourself fed
up with your choices
and your perfect pain.
Let a good one go,
know the dread,
know you lost
and there’s nothing to gain.

***************************************

The sky was totally clear Saturday night when I came home.

I'll probably regret posting this one at some point. I feel like it's really only partially developed, but I don't want to get to a point in my head where I can completely develop it, so I think I'm just going to let this one go. There's a lot going on here.

I still look up at the sky and wonder if you're seeing what I'm seeing...and wondering if you're wondering if I'm seeing what you're seeing. I need to stop it. At least the second part of that.

"My heart is gone. It drove to the shore, swam out in the night, way out past the lines. I heard that now it lives in the south of West Central Spain, drinking off the pain..." Saves The Day Daybreak

"I turned you into a conversation piece and the things you take for granted turn out to be the things that you need..." Kevin Devine Letting A Good One Go

"I’m at peace, sainted and waiting, for my perfect pain to speak for me again." Kevin Devine Awake In The Dirt

Company

2011-09-05T20:45:00.002-04:00

You're just another boy
who ruined another girl
and if I were better
I'd also be bigger,
but I want to watch you burn
and I want to know
you'll never sleep
sound.
Bound
and gagged
by time and circumstance -
a sinister dance -
we rolled our dice;
we took our chance.
I'd still stand by your side
every day if you’d let me.
But writing your own tragedy
doesn't make you a hero
and perpetuating your own misery
doesn't mean I'll keep you company.

**************************************

It feels weird posting a poem from home.

Hope everyone had a relaxing Labor Day! Have you hugged your Union rep today?

“And I guess I could be bigger, but I'd rather make you pay...” Pedro The Lion Rehearsal

“It's hard to be the better man when you forget you're trying; it's hard to be the better man when you're still lying...” Brand New Handcuffs

“And I've known trouble all my life and I'm sick of asking why; it's like screaming at a set of dice...” Kevin Devine Trouble

“A laundry list of problems doesn't make you interesting and never getting help doesn't make you brave. Not listening to reason doesn't mean that you have faith. Your just cutting off your nose to spite your face...” Straylight Run Sympathy For The Martyr

Such Perfect Form

2011-09-01T12:36:00.003-04:00

I haven't felt right
for a long time.
I keep thinking someday
the sun's gonna shine.
I need a grown up.
I need a man.
I need a path
and I need a plan.
I need a blue eyed boy
to take me on a date
to a bluegrass club
in a blue-hearted state.
I need to wash away
the face I see
when my eyes are closed.
You came like a ghost.
Raise my glass
for a toast.
I gave you the most
you could ever hope to behold.
I stuck up for a friend.
Nothing much to defend.
Story's over: that's the end.
Only I couldn't find my pen.
Oops.
I'm bleeding again.
And the drops curve
in such perfect form.
It's all that helps
to keep me warm.
The rum hits the back
of my thorny throat
and suddenly I see words
I didn't know I wrote.

*********************************

I was drunk when I wrote most of this. But, seriously, someone take me on a date to a bluegrass club. Do they have those in the Northeast? There's gotta be some in NYC. The bigger challenge is finding someone to take me on a date.

Womp womp.

"Haven't had a dream in a long time. See, the life I've had can make a good man bad..." The Smiths Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want

"Get back here 'cause, baby, these blue eyes are never as bright without you..." I Am The Avalanche Green Eyes

"You've become a ghost. You're floating somewhere in between the waking world and a landscape of dreams..." Saves The Day As Your Ghost Takes Flight

"I was sticking up for my friend and there's nothing much to defend. It's a lost fight. It's a lost fight..." Heatmiser Not Half Right

"The poison make its way through my body slowly into the pleasure centers of my brain..." Pedro The Lion The Poison

Morsels

2011-08-31T09:04:00.004-04:00

We are all
so very small.
All of us,
if we should fall,
are only morsels
underneath the stars,
underneath the nebulae,
those spinning specters in the sky.
Take solace is the rain
that brushes your cheek;
it keeps your blood running
and strengthens the weak.
Be grateful for the wind
that howls and swirls
and puts out of place the hairs
on the heads of all the girls.
It's easy to praise
the great hot sun,
but don't fret the haze
or a cloudy day.
No one was ever hurt
by a little bit of gray.
So fragile and futile
are our little lives,
we'll be taken by surprise
by the falling skies.
For if we all should fall,
we are all so very small -
so very small -
but the earth knows all.

*****************************************

We got hit by hurricane over the weekend. It did a good deal of damage all up the east coast of the US, but the death toll has been fairly low especially considering we don't get hurricanes all the way up here. It's weird shit, though. Still, it wasn't any Great Red Spot, haha. I sort of saw it as the planet giving the Northeast a good scrubbing.

Hope everyone's drying out!

"It's always the old to lead us to the war; it's always the young to fall. Now look at all we've won with the sabre and the gun. Tell me is it worth it all?" Phil Ochs I Ain't Marching Anymore

"I spread into a distant hum. I droned along with everyone. And the earth grew green and nursed herself to what she used to be, all our senseless shouting calmed to quiet in her ancient memory." Kevin Devine All Of Everything, Erased

170811

2011-08-18T09:08:00.002-04:00

I hate you
though I said I wouldn't.
I love you,
though it does no good.
Behind my eyes,
I can still see
how you had me
fooled all along.
Along with my dreams,
you were shuffled
up
and exaggerated
and told
and retold
like a fable
like a fairy tale
in chapter and verse,
but now my tone is terse.
I wish it
in reverse.
I don't sleep
for the secrets I keep.
I can't breathe anymore.
You lied and took and tore.
You exist while I
am still sore.
I plead, but
you ignore.
And the crimson blob
found on my floor:
it's just my heart,
it's just my core.
I ripped it out,
consequence to you.
It's worthless now,
like me to you.

****************************

"Well, I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow, casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there counting crows: one for sorrow, two for joy, three for girls and four for boys, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told." Counting Crows A Murder of One

"It's not right. It's not fair. I'm still a mess and you still don't care." Fountains of Wayne Little Red Light

"I don't care so gouge my eyes. I'll spend the rest of my entire life blind. Consequence to you." Manchester Orchestra April Fool

Later’s Laments

2011-08-07T13:22:00.004-04:00

The liquor makes your eyelids limp
like your leg when it’s asleep,
but you like the way it dulls
all the madness to a peep -
between your ears -
this talks is cheap.

Prolific when you aren’t bleeding
and fucking genius when you are
like the mark of ingenuity
is in each and every scar.
I’ll meet you underneath the sky
or find you by the bar.

But we’re parallel
and scared as hell
and I can’t think
or touch or tell.
I only know,
somewhere, we fell.

So, Later’s laments
are Today’s regrets
and you’re nestled with your paperbacks
and your homemade mix cassettes
wondering how long you’ve got
‘til you’ve paid off all your debts.

*****************************

"I caught you nesting with your analogs, glassy eyes from kissing poison frogs, becoming infinite against his couch..." Bad Books You're A Mirror I Cannot Avoid

"The rap is scattered. It hides its ingenuity. I gave it this little part to give it continuity..." Bo Burnham Bo Fo' Sho...lol.

Peace of Heart

2011-08-06T02:11:00.002-04:00

All I want’s a little peace
in my heart and in my head.
I want the chaos to cease
with the words that I’ve said.
Close the book on this chapter,
lay the past to bed:
I just want the quiet
and the calm instead.
When my voice stops shaking
and my words have all been read
you’ll feel your own hollow;
you’ll know your own dread.
But my blood is hot
and it spills red
and my soul is hungry
to be fed
and you’ll be left behind
while I look ahead.

*******************************

2am poetry. [I spoke bad poetry.]

"Don't kill yourself to raise the dead. It never works. You'll only end up joining them." Kevin Devine You'll Only End Up Joining Them

"I sit home and drink alone and hope that bottle speaks, like you, like us, like me..." Manchester Orchestra Deer

"And I know that it's dangerous to judge, but man you've got to find the truth and when you find that truth don't budge until the truth you found begins to change...and it does, I know, I know." David Bazan People

Pinned

2011-07-28T10:01:00.001-04:00

It's the same story
and the same signs
with the same endings
and the same bullshit lines.
I will never speak
your name again.
I thought you were softer
than you were then.
I took your photo
down today.
I said my goodbyes
in my own way.
Sick to my stomach
from the wonder and worry,
but none of it matters
inside of this fury.
Permanence is myth.
I'm always just a phase;
I'm always just an option
and no one even stays.
I'm pinned against the wall
with your hands around my neck
and I'm growing old and cold.
I am your walking wreck.

******************************

"These sour grapes when the joke goes bad, this same smirk, same bullshit laugh, the egg on my face when I can't go back. I didn't plan for that." Kevin Devine 11/17/10

"I am bottled, fizzy water and you are shaking me up. You are a fingernail, running down the chalkboard I thought I left in third grade. Now my only, consolation, is that this could not last forever even though you're singing and thinking how well you've got it made." Incubus Just A Phase

Burn

2011-07-20T10:41:00.003-04:00

Long, late nights
and playful bites,
the cheerful smiles
over so many miles
are barely memories yet,
but I want to forget.
You ruined so many
songs for me.
Songs I used to love.
(Songs we used to love.)
They're just nails on a chalk
board anymore and I can't talk
or think or feel right,
a piercing through my temples every night.
I've done my fair share of my unfair shit.
That doesn't mean you'll get away with it.
Undeserved second chances
and false-start to stop romances:
mistakes from which one day I'll learn.
For now, I want to see you burn.

***************************************

"My baby shot me on a mountain top. I get my kicks - yeah - from the bottoms up. And all of these people saying they've had enough, well I don't think that you'd understand. I've done my fair share of my unfair shit. That doesn't mean you'll get away with this. I hid your name upon the quilt I knit; still, I don't think that you'd understand." - River City Extension Holy Cross

"There's a hole in the ceiling down through which I fell. There's a girl in a basement coming out of her shell. And there are people who will say that they knew me so well. I may not go to heaven; I hope you go to hell..." Counting Crows St. Robinson And His Cadillac Dream [I know I just used this recently, but the sentiment still stands.]

"And it's not what were owed, but it’s what we’ve earned, and it's closer than we realized that it's time now, to burn." Kevin Devine Time To Burn (Another Bag Of Bones"

Skeleton

2011-07-14T11:22:00.007-04:00

The punch in the gut,
the swearing, the smut,
caught her mind
up in a bind.
She did it again,
forgot to lift her pen
so the clouds still hover.
And she doesn't recover
from any of it.
A battle of wit,
but she's too drained to care
how many scars are there
or how much more her liver can bear.
Connect the dots, the rips, the tears.

Shuffling on her sidewalks,
but - at every turn - she balks:
a scared skeleton, hiding
and only in her walls, confiding.
Yet she suspects the drywall
of conspiring to tell-all.
She's looking for a home
or a soul with whom to comb
the strands of life she has left.
Her youth: victim of theft.
But it's always out of reach.
There's a crack, a hole, a breach.
There's a quiver in your speech.
There's a lesson here to teach.

***************************************

It's not that I'm being prolific. This one and the one I posted yesterday are actually just poems I started a while ago that I didn't feel able to finish at the time, but now feel I can finish adequately. You tell me.

However, I may become more prolific now that some of the older ideas have been worked through a little.

"There's a hole in the ceiling down through which I fell. There's a girl in a basement coming out of her shell. And there are people who will say that they knew me so well. I may not go to heaven; I hope you go to hell..." Counting Crows St. Robinson And His Cadillac Dream

Threads

2011-07-13T12:47:00.003-04:00

The sun that rises for you,
slouches in her skies.
She pulls her hair back
and takes a breath
to start her day,
but one just fades into the next.
The nexus between living
and operating
has dissolved into
a dew
and a few
take notice,
but the rest just turn their heads.
Frayed and tattered are her threads.
So, life goes on without you,
but its air is stagnant.
She finds her fragments
mingled with yours
in her glossy magazines
and in the fronts of her stores.
It's nothing tangible.
It's nothing she can hold.
She's just left in a corner,
in the dark, in the cold
where it's safe, but not sounds,
where she hopes not to be found.

********************************

I guess I'm starting to deal with it. But not really, haha.

"O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!"
- Hamlet (being only a little over dramatic)
Hamlet, Act I, Scene II

Smooth The Shakes

2011-05-13T12:42:00.002-04:00

What do you do
when the summit is so far away
and the voice in your brain
has your nerves torn and frayed?
The alcohol in your veins
keeps your tone from turning gray,
but it stings your throat
and makes the words you wrote
bitter with betrayal;
the hand that holds the pen is frail.

But you wouldn't care
if you disintegrated into the air
or if the ground ate you up.
You've had just about enough.
Your love is out of reach
and passion you can't teach.
Another swig to smooth the shakes,
another cut to numb the aches.
Because: what difference does it make?
For our apathy, the earth will forsake.

*********************************************

This is about watching something slip through your fingers and deciding not to give a fuck because the world's going to shit anyway. Happy Friday the 13th.

By the way, rejected last lines to rhyme with "make" include:
"I fuckin' love Drake!"
"Everything you say to me takes me one step closer to the edge AND I'M ABOUT TO BREAK"

Just thought you'd like some insight into my creative process.

"You see, I'm feeling everything. Nothing gets by." - The Frames What Happens When The Heart Stops

"Am I correct to defend the first that holds this pen?" - Brand New Good To Know That If I Ever Need Attention All I Have To Do Is Die

"You waited your whole life, said you're lookin' hard for something. You look so hard and you never find nothin' and the chances run like sand in your hand..." - The Builders And The Butchers Find Me In The Air

"Prescribed pills to offset the shakes to offset the pills; you know you should take it a day at a time." - Panic! At The Disco Nails For Breakfast, Tacks For Snacks [LOL]

The Devil Once Knocked On Your Door

2011-05-05T11:33:00.004-04:00

The devil once knocked on your door.
His face, you'd never seen before.
He promised you riches galore.
He told you there was so much more.

He took your hand; you pulled away.
"What more is it I have to say?"
the devil asked in grave dismay.
"Just promise me: this time she'll stay,"

you answered and the devil nodded
and the blood in your veins clotted
and your stomach, it knotted;
for, in hell, you'll be surely be poked and prodded.

But your deal is done.
You're eternity's begun;
and you don't bother to run.
You're the devil's new son.

You shut the door and turn inside;
it's there you find your blushing bride.
In vows, your hearts are mortally tied.
"'Til death do us part,' heavily on your mind.

You'll lament on how this deal never expires.
You wonder if she'll miss you when the fires
sneak in between the saints and the liars.
But you know it's worth it just to lay beside her.

****************************************

...for when you're desperate enough to try just about anything.

[Though "Reaper" appears in my acknowledgement here for mostly comical purposes, this really was a great show and it's on Netflix Instant, so you might want to check it out. RIP, "Reaper."]

"I FUCKING LOVE THE DEVIL" - Jess and/or Jackie

"When you make fire with the devil, don't be surprised if you get burned. You were among the lucky ones and he only took your hands." - The Builders And The Butchers Raise Up Your Weary Hands

"I want to make you happy but the devil's out my way, so I'll just pack up everything. Roll it out and up the devil's pay." - The Old 97's Up The Devil's Pay

Lowercase

2011-04-12T10:43:00.003-04:00

You take solace
is the silent seconds
when the shouting
behind your eyes
ceases.
Pieces
of you on the floor
from the night before
are swept under the rug
or picked up and plopped back into place.
You're an empty space.
You're a fall from grace
and you vanished without a trace.
You're a proper noun in lowercase.
The sting's etched out
across your brow
like a beauty mark,
like a vow.
The breath in your lungs
now tastes so sweet,
when once the task
was such a feat.
But that piece of your soul
will not be missed
in exchange for the scar
along your wrist.

*****************************

This just puts together some of the lines floating around in my head. Not that this is a new topic for me or anything. You'd think after over two years, I'd be over it.

"I was hollow then 'til you filled me in. Now I'm empty again." - Rhett Miller Come Around

"To settle your debts you took a dozen steps or started on the path. Kept falling off when faced with righteousness. You couldn't work the math." - Kevin Devine Between The Concrete And Clouds

"But if they would kiss, there would be sparks...the beauty marks." - Old 97's The Beauty Marks

I'm Not Ready For This Sort Of Thing

2011-02-25T10:13:00.007-05:00

The pot whistles as the water comes to a boil, but Anna hushes it so it won't wake Adam. She pours the piping hot liquid into a white mug (the one that has the little chip on the edge by which she once minimally injured her bottom lip). Her bare feet hardly make a sound on the linoleum as she walks across the kitchen for the tea, a spoon, and her Honey Bear honey.

For now, she sits at her kitchen table, gently stirring and carefully sipping the soothing concoction. Adam's tee shirt covers her frame to about her thigh at which point the cool wooden chair then meets the inside of her knee and gives her legs goosebumps. She couldn't remember when she knew Adam wanted her, but she'd known it fairly confidently for some time. The sex which should have surprised them both, even scared them a little, had become such an inevitability in the backs of both their minds that the normal bout of pre-coital nausea she often experiences never afflicted her.

She wonders if it could ever really be that easy. But then she remembers that it really wasn't all that easy at all. There were tears and bad words and years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. She wonders how anyone could fall out of love, fall out of waking up feeling good and full. It seems like something one would have to work to do, though she knew that even she had experienced the phenomenon.

Adam was awake the whole time. He heard the pot whistle. He heard her little feet pitter and pat on the linoleum. He heard the spoon spinning in the little white mug. He hated waking up without Savanna even though this would have been the first time he had ever awoken to her. However, he was comforted when he realized he was in her bed; he knew she couldn't have gone far and would certainly be back. She wasn't a dream. She wasn’t running. She wasn't gone.

He climbs out of the bed and performs a quick search for his clothes, picking up only his boxers and pulling them over his hips. He surveys her room. His stomach turns a little as he considers the consequences of turning the doorknob and walking out into Anna's living room, finding her sitting at her kitchen table at the other end. Does she regret it? A deep breath and...

"Good morning," he says, opening the door. She was un-startled. His body relaxes. This isn't a stranger, he reminds himself jovially. What am I even talking about? Why would it be? It's not like I'm in the habit of sleeping with strangers!... He shakes his head to himself.

"Hey," she says, looking up from her mug, smiling as she watches him saunter through her little living room and into her even littler kitchen-slash-diningroom area. "There's hot water on the stove. I'm sorry, I don't have much, but there's tea, some milk in the fridge. If you're hungry, there's cereal...oh, and uhh, I could give your shirt back," she stumbles.

"Don't worry about it," he assures.

With his back to her, he reaches over his head to open the cabinet, pulling out a green mug and then opening up the drawer with assorted utensils in search of a spoon. She watches. She watches the muscles in his arms and back stretch and contract and she feels how those same muscles had felt in her hands just a few hours earlier. Her eyes follow his spine up to his neck and she remembers the soft spot under his ear where he likes to be licked.

"Is there sugar?" he inquires, this time startling her.

"Uhh, under the coffee maker, in that little bowl," she points.

"Is there coffee?" he jokes, picking up the little spoon sticking out of the red sugar bowl.

She laughs, "No," in a defeated tone. "Shut-up! I didn't bring you here to mock my lack of house-keeping!"

"No, the house-keeping is quite good. Everything's nice and clean; it's so clean, there's nothing in here!"

"Just for that, I'm keeping the tee shirt and you're gonna have to give me a damn good reason as to why I should give you this tea bag," she teases, holding up the very last tea bag.

"I think you’ve got me there," he sighs. "I guess the good looks and the charm can only get me so far, right?" he kisses her on the forehead.

"Hmmm, almost..."

And he kisses her cheek, the tip of her nose, her mouth, slowly, and sits down beside her.

"Alright. Fine," she concedes and hands over the lonely tea bag.

"Thank you. That'll do fine in my sugar water," he presses the tea bag against the wall of the mug and watches the color change from clear to yellow to brown.

They sit quietly, each stirring and sipping as if in so sort of choreographed performance, each wondering if the other is thinking the same thoughts.

"How did your parents meet?" Savanna finally says.

Adam pauses as if searching his memory for the cute anecdote his parents surely him at one point about their meeting, falling in love, marrying, the whole nine.

"Yanno, I'm not really sure. I just know my dad was working at the paper at the time."

"They never told you?"

"Or maybe I just never asked," he laughs. "I think he was working at the paper and she was, maybe, like, the friend of a friend of a friend of his editor or something? They had mutual acquaintances? I know he was working at the paper. Either they never told me the story or the story just isn’t very interesting and I’ve since forgotten," he stutters as his hand wanders almost involuntarily to hers, grazing the skin that covers her pinky finger.

"Do they still love each other?" she asks, still stirring her honey into her tea, trying to achieve just the right level of sweetness.

"In some way, I think," Adam answers. "They like each other at least, but, Love? I'm not sure," he explains. "Do yours?"

"No. Love, even Like...even Tolerate, dissolved a long time ago. I remember; I watched," she confesses.

"I'm sorry," he sympathizes, his hand now all but holding hers. "Maybe that's just how it is with people. We're all so indecisive. We're all so picky and needy, but never all at the same time, never harmoniously with each other, so we always spar."

"How do you avoid it, then?" she asks calmly, hiding that his comment had caused a twinge of pain in the hollow of her chest.

"Don't fall in love with anyone you'd actually want to spend the rest of your life with."

**************************************************

Do you ever think about the Library at Alexandria?

"It seems like I should say 'as long as this is love...,' but it's not all that easy so maybe I should..." - Counting Crows Anna Begins

"Because people are so fickle. They fall in love at different angles, so really I could lose you just as quickly as I've gotten you. And that's the kind of thought that makes me nervous and worried if you'll really think I'm worth it, when the rush wears off and you're left with this busted person. But if you tell me you will I will do what I can to believe it..." - Kevin Devine People Are So Fickle

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle." - Joseph Heller Catch 22

Wisdom

2011-02-04T09:48:00.005-05:00

You still hear that voice
that betrays and berates
and you question your sanity
and curse the fates.
What solace you find
in these trivial traits,
with the guise of satisfaction
they surely create.

But there's no wisdom
in masks or charades,
and no wisdom
in poisons or blades.
The shock of the feeling
reminds you in fades
like the sun and the moon
in their daily trades.

You repeat those words
like incantations
because there are miracles
in recitation,
but that magic's not in syllables;
it's in the sensations;
it's in your blood;
it's in the vibrations.

*************************************************

I can't believe how inactive I've been. It's depressing. It's mostly because work is tiring me out. It's leaving me feeling quite uninspired which means that I either need a vacation or I need a change...or both.

In any event, I started writing this poem back in December / early January. It was only four lines up until about last week. Now it feels about right. It can actually be taken, at least by my count, in two totally contradictory ways. So, have a ball.

I am also trying to honor one of my 2011 goals by writing a new vignette. I just haven't decided whether it's not or even whether it's worthy of posting, but I'd really love to post anything that isn't a poem right now!

"I know there's no wisdom in razors and I know whatever I thought I'd found was really just a mask."

"I bite my tongue every time you come around 'cause blood in my mouth beats blood on the ground." Incubus Blood On The Ground

New Monsters

2010-10-27T11:49:00.004-04:00

Broken mirrors
and black cats,
superficial smiles
and dirty rats,
I'm losing focus
and fading fast,
wishing the future
looked less like the past.
If you can never have too much
of a good thing, I think
I'll sit back an have
another drink.
Watch the old sun set
and the blurry moon rise
and maybe someday find a way
to break off all these ties.
I would kill for a short
long-day.
I think that I'm a liar;
it sure feels that way.
For all the vice
swept under the rug:
new monsters between the ears
are kept warm and snug,
but I'd never tell you
I'm okay
unless I meant it.

I'm okay, okay.

*******************************

"Say the words you used to wish you heard back when you focused enough to be good." Bad Books You're A Mirror I Cannot Avoid

"Here's to all our vice and our secret double life. I'll sleep with one eye open, maybe you'll save my life." The New Amsterdams All Our Vice

Grip

2010-09-28T15:20:00.002-04:00

She sees so much better with her eyes closed
and maybe that's what's real - who knows?
And who's here to say it's not?
Maybe this is just the side she forgot.
It's warmer here
and someone's always near
like a blanket over her shoulders
"It's okay, it's okay" they told her.

The hours are getting closer
and her legs seemed to force her
down an uncertain path
where she assumed she'd meet the wrath
of her own imagination,
a dreamy manipulation
where the lie is sweeter than the truth
and the realization is unsettling and uncouth.

You think you've come so far,
but all that awaits is wine and a guitar
and an empty bed
and a cold floor on which you bled.
Your hands always seem to shake
and every smile you shoot's a fake,
but you're "not losing your grip,"
or so says your shivering lip.

************************************************

"...And when I come, I will come on like a dream." AA Bondy O, The Vampyre

"I'm so glad that my memory's remote because I'm doing just fine hour to hour, note to note." Elliott Smith Waltz #2 (XO)

"My hands, they always shake, and no one's calling my phone." Kevin Devine Ballgame

Slip Into Flames

2010-09-02T14:38:00.004-04:00

You've been afraid
to spit fire
out of fear
you're a liar.
Keeping your balance
on a wire
where the situation
grows ever dire,
but you slip into flames
growing higher and higher.

With the rest
of the silent,
you knew
just what that meant.
Someone's lord took back
the years from you He'd lent.
Now you smell
the devil's scent
and it fills your lungs
with red resentment.

Dissent from your lips
does a patriot make,
compels the earth
to swing and shake.
As the bile in your stomach
causes it to ache,
stand up:
we've a country to take
or I'm afraid we'll all
be doomed to bake.

*****************************************

Another one about doom, the end of the world, and people who don't speak up for the things in which they believe (and this isn't to say I'm not also guilty).

"And she walks along the edge of where the ocean meets the land just like she's walking on a wire in the circus..." Counting Crows 'Round Here

"And if your God makes war then he's no God I know 'cause Christ would not send boys to die..." AA Bondy American Hearts

"It seems to me we get the same shit from them both. Reform don't work; I think it's time we tried revolt, but I don't got the guts to jump up and go first so I just shout until my throat hurts (and I curse and I curse)..." Kevin Devine No Time Flat

Lunch Break Haiku

2010-08-27T12:59:00.005-04:00

It's beautiful out.
I'm tired of the basement.
Ten minutes to go.

********************************************

I'm psychologically done for the week. Why are we all still here?

"Working all day for a mean little guy with a bad toupee and a soup-stained tie. He's got me running 'round the office like a gerbil on a wheel. He can tell me what to do, but he can't tell me what to feel..." Fountains Of Wayne Hey Julie

We Were Wrong

2010-08-26T12:03:00.002-04:00

"I can't breathe"
she said to me
as I float beside her
in the debris.
The city warps.
I saw a corpse
waiting at the corner
heading towards the ports
with his thumb up in the air
and checking for cab fare
in his walloped wallet;
there's nothing there.

The waters rose.
We all froze.
We were wrong
and nobody knows.
We're stuck here
locked in flooded fear.
We were wrong
and there's nobody near.
We were wrong
that it wouldn't be long,
that the howling rain would cease.
My God, we were wrong.

***********************************************

"If it keep on raining, the levee's gonna break. Everybody saying this is a day only the Lord could make..." Bob Dylan The Levee's Gonna Break

N.E. Corridor

2010-08-25T14:23:00.003-04:00

I've been running late all day and, just to prove a point, the universe is sending trains out slightly ahead on schedule, so I've been sitting at the station for 25 minutes after watching my train pull away. My cousin'll have other birthdays; if I make it in time for the after dinner brandy I'll be satisfied. The early fall breeze fondles the hem of my sun dress. The sun is old and getting ready to tuck itself under the horizon.

The next train finally pulls up and I grab my purse, my gift bags, my dress bag, and the high heel shoes I can't bear to where just yet and I head for the door. Hands full and off balance on a moving train, the door to the next, slightly less packed car, simply refuse to open for me and I nearly concede to stand in between cars when you hit the button with the palm of your hand. You nod for me to go ahead. "Thank you," I squeak and you smile, kindly and in a low tone you answer, "You're welcome." It's your smile that made me notice your eyes and suddenly I'm feeling sheepish and a little embarrassed. Gingerly, you place your hand on the small of my back to help balance me through the doorway. I take a seat; you take one just in front of me and I can see you in the space between the seats settling yourself in. Every so often, I swear your eyes flutter backwards to me, but I'm sure it's only wishful thinking. After securing my belongings safely in the window seat beside me - organizing things a little better for the upcoming trek down 34th Street - I take a deep breath and glance out the window, but the central Jersey scenery cannot keep my attention for long.

Tapping your feet along to whatever sound reaches your eardrums from the tiny white bud in his ear, you licks the tips of your fingers and turns the page. It's a big book. Maybe Econ 101? Maybe Western Civ? Maybe just something...dare I say...for fun? I wish I knew. What are you reading? What are you listening to? Who are you? I'm falling in love with the back of your head. Won't you give me a little clue? A blinking BlackBerry steals your attention away from the black and white pages, but you soon returns your gaze back onto the text. A girlfriend? I'll tell myself it was your mother. The sailing train jerks our car slightly, sending our heads wobbling like Bobble Head dolls in unison, but the voyeur in me won't be dissuaded by the train's ungraceful motion.

A full head of dark hair stretches down your neck until it meets the collar of your shirt, just a black button-up work shirt with the sleeves rolled up half-way to the elbow. Can you feel my eyes on the back of your neck?

Do you know what I would do to you if you only said "Okay, let's go" with that bass voice of yours?

No, let's not go there. It's fruitless. I'm only saying we'd both get something we wanted.

The sun sank as the train pulled into the station and our ride together is nearing an end. With my purse and various goodie bags draped over one arm, my shoes stowed away in one of them, and my dress held up by my other hand, I carefully step into the isle. You stand, waiting for me to pass by you and you step out behind me, into the doorway, and out onto the platform. "Goodbye" I think to you. As I descend the staircase up into the station, there's a tug on my arm and a pair of lips at my ear.

"Okay," it breathes, "let's go."

*********************************************

You know it's fiction: the trains are on time or early.

"So let my hands stray past that boundaries of your back to get you breathing and get this started..." Brand New Logan To Government Center

Rainy Day Songs

2010-08-24T15:04:00.002-04:00

Raining day songs
sing smiles in the darkness
and wrap you up tightly
in their melodic arms.
Those clouds,
they follow me
like precipitating shadows
(what a dreary honor to bestow),
but I set my turntable to 33
and watch the wax spin around
as the gloom is absorbed
in the dizziness,
in the scratch of your throat.
I stepped in a puddle today
and all I heard it say
is "I need a raincoat."

*****************************************************

This is a decoy.

Also, I just realized that The Jayhawks have a record called "Rainy Day Music." So, that's cool.

"This dizzy life of mine keeps hanging me up all the time. This dizzy life is just a hanging tree." Counting Crows Hanging Tree

The Real Thing

2010-08-19T12:03:00.004-04:00

I don't want to say it anymore.
If that's important; I'm not sure.
I hit a nerve and found Truth:
a revelation quite uncouth.
Drug out from a fog,
like a cat by a dog,
kicking and screaming
tricking and scheming,
her haven invaded,
she was easily persuaded.
She told your story,
in all its glory.
Suspicions confirmed,
you squeal and squirm.
There's no use for discussions
or their pointless repercussions
because your face says it all
while your mouth only stalls.
In this light
I might
swallow a bottle.

I was the model.

I was the shepherd
before my vision blurred.

I was the real thing
and now I'm just the rain king.

**************************************************

I went all of July without a post; I was not gonna go all of August.

This is a little bit unfinished, I think, but I couldn't pull myself apart enough to get it any closer. It's about Truth and whose side she's really on. It's about what happens when you just choose to believe what you've been told or what you want to believe until Truth actually reveals herself (or is pulled out), sort of the self-decay you initiate, sort of the opposite of "ignorance is bliss." I think it's also about realizing that things aren't black and white and words twist and it's easy to manipulate and be manipulated even as a relatively sensible and smart person (so imagine how it is for us crazies). Even in the realm of what things literally ARE and ARE NOT, there's still a spectrum of ways of conveying it.

This was tough to write and I don't know if it's any good. I'm not usually an "a-a, b-b, c-c, d-d, etc." kind of "poet," but that's just how it started to shape up and I figured I'd run with it. I don't know if there's any impact.

"Don't try to bleed me; I've been here before and I deserve a little more. I belong in the service of the queen. I belong anywhere but in between. She's been dying and I've been drinking. And I am the Rain King." Counting Crows Rain King

"Pull me out from inside. I am ready. I am ready. I am ready. I am...fine. I am.... fine. I am fine. Counting Crows Colorblind

Freeze

2010-06-16T21:11:00.004-04:00

I don't know what
it's supposed to mean,
but I feel you every time
I feel the breeze,
like there's a part of you
in the branches of the trees
or you're buzzing around
off the wings of bees.
It's not that simple.
No, it could never be.
So, the only thing I'm good at
is subtracting the threes.
The hum in my head
is such a tease
since my memory of your voice
is muffled and meek
and I feel like I lost you
with the greatest of ease
before I had the sense
not to let you leave.
Would it have mattered?
My begs, my pleas?
Couldn't you feel
my silent decrees?
Words are too late now,
so I'll just leave you with these:
you're in every moment
I wish I could freeze.

**********************************

I fell back into cheesy emo poetry. I'm weak. I'll try to be better next time.

"What do you mean?" Jackie Granja February 13, 2010 (lol)

"I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself to hold on to these moments as they pass..." Counting Crows

Repeat

2010-05-28T20:42:00.009-04:00

You know those moments you get every once in a while, once in a long while, that are perfect snapshots of how life should always be? Those precious rare seconds of complete happiness? I'm living one right now. I know it and, while in this moment, I know that I'll be sad and that I'll miss it when it passes, which it is doomed to do because moments are just that: momentary. We'll talk about it years from now: that time she was here and we didn't leave my apartment for a week and we stayed in, reading books and eating take-out and listening to records and having sex. Utopian days on repeat.

I set the needle down and open the window to let the early summer air in. It's always summer, but the heat doesn't seem so brutal today. The normal tasks of eating, sleeping, breathing: they all seem less brutal in these moments. A guy could get used to this.

In a slinky white camisole and white panties, she's curled up on her side on the recliner with her serious face on, looking hard at the tiny text of her book. She doesn't even know what she's doing to me, just by sitting there. She doesn't even see what I see. She doesn't know that just watching her read turns me on. Would she hate me if she knew what I was thinking right now? Her smooth legs, bent at the knee and leaning against the back of the recliner, are taunting me; I just want to see them spread.

I take my seat on the couch and pick up the opened magazine I'd placed on the coffee table. I haven't read a word since she woke up and peered out my bedroom door. She caught me in here by myself, said she didn't like that she woke up alone this morning. I told her I'd make it up to her tomorrow and I intend to. Now, I just peer over the edge of the magazine pages, watching her chest rise and fall with each breath. The record pops a little, but it sounds just fine and I want to take her hand and make her dance for me. I wonder if she would. Would she?

"Love this song," I say as I stand up.

She looks up from her book and grins, her bangs brushed just over her brow.

"I know; you said that last time you played it for me."

I graze her knee with my fingertips, then her arm up to her shoulders. She smiles and I lightly rub her shoulders until she looks up at me and I down at her. I bend down until my lips reach hers. "Dance for me."

She laughs, "Uh uh, no."

"C'mon, dance for me."

"I'll dance with you," she negotiates.

"Okay," I say and I grab her hand and pull her up, her book thrown onto the chair.

I take her right hand in my left and I wrap my right arm around her waste, placing my hand right at the small of her back. Last night, I learned she's ticklish right there, but she doesn't know I know that. She giggles.

"Am I that bad at this?" I ask.

"Haha, no, not at all," but she takes my hand and moves it up slightly. Let's call the whole thing off, I think, and I move the hand again, but this time over instead of up and I pull her in closer. With my face buried into her neck, am I bold enough to plant a few soft kisses? Before I'm able to answer that questions, I feel her warm lips brush against my neck and chin until they find my lips.

Back and forth, we sway to the song with a twirl here or there. Really, I'm not that good at this, so I'm extra sure not to spin her too hard. She's smiling, so she can't be having a terrible time. Back in my collapsed arms, her fingers seem to find all the spot on back I never knew were so sensitive. I'm a little hard, but hoping she won't notice. Just in case, let's get this show on the road: I kiss her neck and my fingers fondle the edge on her camisole, lifting it over her head.

She grins. "Again?" she asks. I don't stop kissing her and she doesn't stop smiling as she pulls my shirt off.

I spin her around and push the bedroom door open with the collective forces of our bodies. The mattress collides with her back as I battle with my belt. I don't want to take my lips of her. She pulls me under and helps me with the problem. We fumble over each other with impossibly graceful rhythm until nothing separates us anymore. I don't know where I end and she begins. The darkness is a mask and we don't have to be ourselves under its influence.

Breathing deeply, eventually, our bodies turn to mush. Somehow, I think I can even feel her limbs tingling. As I begin to pull away, she pulls me back again and kisses me hard, then smiles and rolls to her side.

"I'm hungry," she says and she gets up to find the take-out menu.

***********************************

Vignette #2.

As a select few people know, there's another one I wrote similar to this one that I didn't post, but may edit and put up later. That one's written from the woman's perspective, though. They comes as a result of listening to a lot of Minus The Bear.

"A few summers ago, we spent weeks in her room just having sex and listening to jazz and that was the life..." Minus The Bear Let's Play Guitar In A Five Guitar Band"

"And you're holding on to me like an old love that you know every inch of..." Minus The Bear My Time

"Black and white dress puts me into a trance as I memorize you..." Minus The Bear Excuses

I Ain't Got No Home

2010-05-27T11:20:00.013-04:00

"I'd like to see the ol' man" I tell the nurse, comin' in outta the rain. The nurses don't think he got much more time. His fits are gittin' worse. "We don't think he's got more than a couple weeks," the nurse says and I take my hat off 'cause it's impolite not to greet a woman by takin' yer at off. She tells me that they think my playin' might doim some good, though, so they let me in even though I missed visitin' hours by a couple. He don't get many visitors these days. Except me, acourse. These halls and little rooms have surprisin'ly good acoustics. Not that it matters much to the ol' fella. She tells me they had him strapped to the bed most of the day, afraid he might go and hurt hisself real bad. Or someone else. Or worse. When I open his door, though, he quiets down a bit. He can't talk no more, she tells me. He just makes noises. Loud unes at that. Scares the whole damn place. He thinks there ain't no other patients or somethin'. He gave one of them nurses a real hard time a few days back, she says, and now that nurse, she won't go back in to see him. They think he can still write, but he ain't calmed down enough for anyone ta give him any writin' u-ten-sil in a long while. He only try to communicate by makin' noises and fast motions. He can still see and he can still hear, though, and I may not be much to look at, but I can give ya an earful if you can hear.

"You should start working here, maybe," she says. "He won't hush for anyone else." I says to her, "Thanks, but Ima geetar player. I play gigs in New York City. I ain't got the the brain matter for takin' care a ol' folk or folks whose heads ain't screwed on quite right. Now, don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful and much needed profession, but I ain't got the stomach for it." She grins and gives me the one-up and I grin back at her. "If ya ever find yerself if the big apple, though, you should look me up," I says to her. She smiles and her fair skin blushed faintly and she leaves me and the ol' man alone.

"So," I says to him, "one a yers or one a mine today?" I throw my hat down on the table and pull my jacket up over my head, the one with the broken zipper I never did get fixed. I take the stool next to his bed and start tunin' my music box up. "No opinions today?" I says to him. "Oh, right, you can't talk no more is what I hear. That true?" I ask, doubtin' it. He's a stubborn one. "I guess it is, huh? Well, how's about 'I Ain't Got No Home' then? One a yers. Standard tunin': E...A...D...G...B...little e."

I strum 'em all through once. That'll get the idear across anyways. And I plays him one a his own songs and then I plays him one a the ones I been hearin' up in New York City, 'round the folk clubs and beat bars and poets' pit-stops, and then I plays him one a my own songs.

"I wrote that one, there," I tell him. "That's right. That's my own. I've been writin' - you know - whatever been comin' into my head for a while. Just ain't really put tunes to it, but why not?" He wrote his own tunes. He taught me a thing or two about havin' sumthin' ta say and how a reliable geetar can help ya say it.

He just lay there, quiet, but grinnin' his little grin at me, maybe a little wider than usual. I won't let on how the nice nurse lady broke my heart tellin' me he can't talk no more. His stories are the stories ya listen to. He's been all over this land. He's been trapped in the dust bowl and stowed away in box cars. He's been east coast, west coast, Gulf coast, no coast. He's always been a workin' man, though. He always been workin'. Paintin' and singin' too.

Now they tell him he's crazy, legally in-sane, and they go an' lock him up here in this ol' buildin'. All them stories can't be just the ramblin's of an ol' crazy man, though. He was sane when he was singin' 'em, writin' 'em all down. It wasn't that long ago he was out there, on the road, in the corn fields, with the union folks. He's got all this history in him. Maybe that's what drove him crazy. Maybe that's enough for put a sensible man over the edge.

I know he's gonna die soon. He knows it too. I probably won't come back here no more neither. I don't just come for his stories - no, that ain't true - but the songs just don't mean as much just comin' outta my mouth as they do when he sings 'em along with me or when he tells me he was walkin' on a hot road out in Cali when he wrote it. He never told me where he was when he was writin' "I Ain't Got No Home." But I think I know where he was.

He was home. He just didn't know it. Some men's homes ain't where there stuff is or where their families sleep. Some men's homes are where ever they can get to with a sack a clean clothes dancin' against their backs and the sun beatin' down on their necks. Some men just ain't at home if they ain't sweatin' or bleedin'.

******************************************

I'm trying to write more prose, but shorter than my usual 20 - 40 pages "short" stories: a series of vignettes. I have already written one (that would need editing before posting) and am in the process of writing another. So, those are what you can expect in short term.

This is just a hypothetical account of an event that happened. In short: this is what I imagine Bob Dylan's last visit to Woody Guthrie to be like. Guthrie had Huntington's before anyone knew what Huntington's was, so he was diagnosed with various mental disabilities and Dylan would visit him at Greystone Hospital in Morristown, New Jersey. Woody's mother also had incorrectly diagnosed Huntington's and I believe she died in a fire she set, which also killed her daughter, Woody's sister (if I remember correctly from Guthrie's autobiography Bound For Glory). I have no idea how debilitating the disease was to Woody, so he probably was able to talk the last time Dylan visited him in real life, but - as I said - this is only hypothetical. In fact, the characters don't even have to be Dylan and Guthrie, as they are specifically left unnamed. The name of the song (and the title of this vignette) is a Woody Guthrie song, though. This is a scene I may visit again in the future as it's something about which I've considered writing a full story. So, we'll see.

"Woody was not celebrated at this place, and it was a strange environment to meet anybody, least of all the true voice of the American spirit." - Bob Dylan Chronicles [page 98 - 99].

"I'm out here a thousand miles from my home, walking a road other men have gone down. I'm seeing a new world of people and things, hear paupers and peasants and princes and kings. Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song about a funny old world that's coming along: seems sick and it's hungry, it's tired and it's torn. It looks like it's dying and it's hardly been born. Hey, Woody Guthrie, but I know that you know all the things that I'm saying and a many times more. I'm singing you the song but I can't sing enough 'cause there's not many men that've done the things that you've done. Here's to Cisco and Sonny and Leadbelly too and to all the good people that traveled with you. Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men that come with the dust and are gone with the wind. I'm leaving tomorrow, but I could leave today. Somewhere down the road someday, the very last thing that I'd want to do is to say I've been hitting some hard traveling too." - Bob Dylan Song To Woody [1962].

That Same Old Moon

2010-05-26T08:21:00.004-04:00

The twilight ended
hours ago
and the calm, cool dark
seeps through the slits
in my blinds.
But the darkness is shattered
by a thin ray of light
that stretches over miles
and lands
on some far away coast,
where a lonely boy
sets the needle down
on a jazz record.
I know you see
that same old moon.
The one above my head
that now sleepily awakes
over yours.
Soon, you'll look up,
as I do now,
you'll see its face;
you'll see its shine
while I see yours.

Can you see mine?

************************************************

I just sort of feel a little less alone when I look up at the moon or the stars and realize all the millions of people who are looking up at that same moon and stars at the exact same time. Not everyone at the same time, but a good fraction of the population. People thousands of miles away from each other can all see it. It sort of unifies us no matter who we are. We all look up and can see them. When I look up, I wonder if you are. When you look up, do you wonder if I am?

Happy stargazing.

"Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog where no one notices the contrast of white on white. And in between the moon and you, angels get a better view f the crumbling difference between wrong and right..." Counting Crows 'Round Here

"A few summers ago, we spent weeks in her room just having sex and listening to jazz and that was the life..." Minus The Bear Let's Play Guitar In A Five Guitar Band"

Point To Pray

2010-04-21T09:27:00.012-04:00

There's always something to say,
only not enough voices,
but when selective memory fades
we'll be trapped in the trenches of our choices.
Raise your flag to heaven
since you are God's gift
and cross you fingers that
His judgment will be swift
because you can taste salvation
on the edges of your lips
and in the blood, when you bite them,
that drips.
I hear the pop of the first seal
and see the mane of a white horse
and the end has begun,
but you feel no remorse.
You're certain your savior
will bring you home
to live in love
and worship at His throne;
so pop another seal
and hear the galloping on -
pop, pop, pop -
and we'll all soon be gone.
Pop, like the last bottle of campaign
on Doomsday.
Pop, because now there is no point
to pray.

************************************************

The end of the world is still a fascinating concept to me. The four horsemen rumble around in my head a lot. I think it's a really powerful - and terrifying - image (example: see below). There is no redemption. There is no hope.

Have we - as a species, as a planet of disconnected souls - gotten there yet? Are we all too consumed with who IS right or wrong, or IS moral or immoral, or IS winning or losing, or whose god IS the one and only? Can we put the score cards down and say "Planet Earth: zero" and start working on fixing that? Not just for our planet's sake, but for each other?

Or have the seals begun to pop?

I heard this story on the news this morning:
"Prosecutors said Mr. Sucuzhañay (pronounced suh-KOO-shen-y’eye) and his brother, Romel Sucuzhañay, who was not seriously hurt, were attacked because they were Hispanic and because the assailants were under the mistaken impression that they were gay."
[Full story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/nyregion/21brothers.html]

So, you tell me.

6.1 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, Come.
6.2 And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and he that sat thereon had a bow; and there was given unto him a crown: and he came forth conquering, and to conquer.
...
Book of Revelation, Chapter 6
[http://www.reformed.org/bible/kjv20/B66C006.html]

To Remain Unread

2010-04-14T14:20:00.005-04:00

These are the letters I write,
but never send
and they all have your name
scribbled on them.
If the words remain unread,
are they meaningless:
a love never loved
unless professed?
Scales are the measurement
and clocks are the consequence
and I really wish I knew
whether this was your preference
because I'm awake at night
and I don't think that you are,
but I still wish I wasn't stuck
here, so far.
Distance can be counted
and felt
and this is just the hand
that we've been dealt:
for better or worse
and I'll dig through the dirt
'til I find a way to bridge the gap
and end the hurt.
I know I shouldn't say it -
or maybe I should -
but I would change everything
if I could.

********************************************

Mhmm...

"And these clocks keep unwinding and completely ignore everything that we hate or adore..." Bright Eyes A Scale, a Mirror, and These Indifferent Clocks

"Three-thousand, five-hundred miles away, but what would we change if we could?" Counting Crows Raining In Baltimore

Exit

2010-03-15T01:36:00.007-04:00

Don't say that you missed me
even half as much as I you
and for the record
distance does not make the heart grow fonder.
Wander
from coast to coast
while my sorry soul surrenders.
It's not a sonnet or a song.
Silence is Survival:
throw my throat out with the trash
and thrash the rest
to the fist that holds this pen.

Defenseless.
Defenseless.
And you know what
my best is.

Back turned.
Insert knife.
Twist
and shout
and splatter
and plunge.
Expunge,
extol,
exorcise:
and I could be your best bet;
let alone
your worst ex.

Exit stage left,
but this is not an exit
and when you think the story's over,
when you think the credits should start to roll...

you'll still see my face
and all the years that you stole.

*****************************************

I was annoyed and couldn't sleep several nights ago, so this is a half-asleep stream-of-conscience (stealing ideas from Taking Back Sunday, Elliott Smith, Saves The Day, Brand New, and others). Some are subtle, some are not. I'm really only posting this because I chuckled when I noticed that some of the shit I stole out of songs were in there unintentionally. (Do I use more lyric puns when sleepy?)

Hopefully, I will have some better and more original materials in the coming days, weeks...

This may take a while:

"And if you ever said you miss me then don't say you never lied..." Brand New Jude Law And A Semester Abroad

"I'll do everything I can so you can be what you do, coast to coast, coast to coast..." Elliott Smith Coast To Coast

"Am I correct to defend the fist that holds this pen?" Brand New It's Good To Know...

"The worst is over; you can have the best of me..." The Starting Line The Best of Me

"Well, shake it up baby now (shake it up baby), twist and shout (twist and shout)..." The Beatles Twist And Shout (Totally different context, but what the hell, hahaha)

"I'll leave the lights down low so she knows I mean business and maybe we could talk this over, 'cause I could be your best bet, let alone your worst ex..." Taking Back Sunday Bike Scene

"And your love will be warm nights with pockets of moonlight, spotlighting you as you drift: the actor in this play and you walk across the stage, take a bow, hear the applause and, as the curtain falls, just know you did it all..." Saves The Day This Is Not An Exit

"So if I'm a liar then you're a thief; at least we both know where the other one sleeps and lets end this tonight..." Brand New You Stole (LOL)

The Contagion of Lethargy

2010-03-12T22:51:00.005-05:00

These are the same white walls
and the same cold stalls,
the same busy typing
and the same early rising.
I'm as blank as these pages,
haven't written a line in ages
and I tally the losses and gains
with an ink that runs through my veins.
The contagion of lethargy
breeds despair and apathy,
but we swore it was never be we
because the future we could see
needed hands holding up arms
and voices carrying alarms.
We dubbed ourselves
the Warning Bells,
but our revolution
suffered stagnated evolution.
Has our youth lost its thunder,
our passions torn asunder?
Monotony and misdirection
and misunderstanding our own reflections
breeds disillusion
and false conclusions.
Disaffection drains us dry;
he is menacing and sly
and so our spry skin is thickening:
the sight is sickening,
like we can't see anything at all:
no rise nor fall.
How much longer can the setting sun wait
for a savior to seal our fate?

*******************************************

Somehow I didn't post anything in February. So, I'm making this one public since it's been sitting around here in draft mode for weeks.

This is about visionaries who go blind.

"If we're now so dissconected, it's our reflections we ignore..." Kevin Devine The Burning City Smoking

"Everybody's talkin' 'bout revolution, evolution, masturbation, flagellation, regulation, integrations, mediations, United Nations, congratulations: all we are saying is give peace a chance..." John Lennon Give Peace A Chance

Wind

2010-01-28T11:29:00.005-05:00

The wind sings your song
like a lullaby
and it whispers your words
like strings and tin-cans.
It carries along your smile
on clouds or the backs of birds
and when I breathe it in,
your scent tickles my nose.

But the longer we go
the fainter it gets.

And I want to write a love song
that isn't just a guess.

*********************************************

I really do apologize for the lame, cliche title. It's a short poem; my options were limited!

"I wish the world was flat like the old days then I could travel just by folding a map." Death Cab For Cutie The New Year

"I need a phone call. I need a plane ride. I need a sunburn. I need a raincoat." Counting Crows Raining In Baltimore

Nothing But Trouble

2010-01-26T08:48:00.004-05:00

Oh, son of fire,
oh, fallen star:
what gloom you have brought
to us thus far:
skies of mud
and oceans of tar,
and miles of men
with no life
left in them.
Do you count the sinners
like sheep
to comfort your
tired, boiling brain?
The promised ones
have fled the city;
this scene's about
to get real gritty.
I'm face down
with a mouth full of dirt,
but I'm not angry,
just a little hurt.
You want me to listen;
you want me to see:
there's ferocity and fury
in ever degree.
The fire rises up
and the earth slips out from under me.
Your expression is priceless:
glee and excitement,
a childlike grin
and no tinge of resentment.
You're almost beautiful
as monsters go
and I'm sure this pain
is all you know.
Does doom twinkle
like bombs in your eyes
while you listen to our tortured
and suffering cries?
You dance to machine gun music
and bathe in the rubble.
I suspect, however,
you're nothing but trouble.

******************************************

Taking a walk with the devil.

"I talked to the devil 'cause that's what young boys do." Frank Palmeri Talked To The Devil

"And what does a mirror show you, can you see the gray? Your sadness it is quite lovely but it's the sadness of a slave. Why don't you give yourself a rest, oh give yourself some room. You can't get your arms around everybody. You cannot carry the doom...of the living and the dying, how easily you bruise. Oh Delia don't go 'round when the devil's loose..." AA Bondy When The Devil's Loose

"Trouble makes no scene, she sweeps in surgical and clean, leaves me begging on my hands and knees. And she's always on the clock, but she doesn't own a watch 'cause she wrecks me straight into my sleep..." Kevin Devine Trouble

Pretending

2009-12-26T23:15:00.003-05:00

What do you fear the most:
your reflection of that ghost
that hangs on
the shoulders of your shadow?
The promises you've broken,
the truths never spoken
ball up into a cancer.
The lying's in the answer.
The chain you drag
you built
with hatred and heresy
and hallucinogens.
Your heavy heart
chugs blood along through
ungrateful veins
who simply spit it out.
So you bite your lips
'til they're chapped and bleeding,
feeding into delusions,
reading into illusions.
You swear the voices
get louder at night;
you sing to yourself:
it's alright, it's alright,
Rage dismisses your
half-hearted pleas.
He plays with your head.
He is such a tease.
When time builds no
brighter endings,
you might as well quit
all your pretending.

**************************************************

"So you crawl up those stairs and sing yourself to peace." Wild Sweet Orange House of Regret

"It's okay, it's alright, nothing's wrong." Elliott Smith Waltz #2

"I'm nothing it I'm not the rage." The New Amsterdams Drinking In The Afternoon

The Guilty and The Saved

2009-12-07T22:34:00.000-05:00

When the world explodes
don't say You didn't
see in coming.
The seas are humming
and the skies are preparing
to plummet.
Are we Your puppets
or are me masochists?
Which winds will blow our seeds
into oblivion?
You see our shadows
lurking in corners and under beds.
Your sheep,
misbehaving so well:
they make the earth swell.
It's enough to make You weep.

A fire-breathing counterpart
counts down:
our days are numbered.
Fault feeds the flames.
Is a fall so far behind?
The end of times?
The daylight dissolves;
the heat rises.
The devil devises
his dreadful deeds:
that fiendish fallen angel.
Who will wake come morning?
The guilty or the guilty or the guilty
or the saved?
Who would know the difference
anymore anyway?

*****************************************

"Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away."
- Revelation 21.1

"The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"
Percy Bysshe Shelley Ode to the West Wind

"Then they'll raise their hands, sayin' we'll meet all your demands, but we'll shout from the bow your days are numbered. And like Pharaoh's tribe, they'll be drowned in the tide, and like Goliath, they'll be conquered." Bob Dylan When The Ship Comes In

"I prayed for providence; God said, 'Don't pray no more. You went and made your mess, keep your blame off my feet.'" Kevin Devine All Of Everything, Erased

Hallucinating

2009-12-01T21:19:00.000-05:00

You're allowed to look now;
this isn't a prison.
See, those walls are just air.
The shiny metal bars
are just figments,
apparitions.
Your far too busy brain
built them up,
but you have no savior
to break them down.
You're hallucinating,
but this is nothing new.

Dank depictions of doom
dance between your ears.
It's a fairy tale warning
that keeps you up at night,
makes you shiver in the sunlight,
makes you jump with fright.
In earlier soliloquies
you've heard yourself recite
your voice rattles
and your tongue bites.
On the ground
is where you'll end up.

Duck and cover,
cover up.
The poison that you swallow
won't kill you -
unless you're luck -
so drink up.
Baby,
they're only bad dreams;
they're all just bad habits
to blow off some stream.
No need to worry;
don't give it one more thought -

But those lessons you've been learning,
may need to be retaught.

************************************************

Continuation of a theme.

"I'm hallucinating -- hallucinating. I hear you cry. Your tears are cheap, wet hot red swollen cheeks, fall asleep. I want to hurt him. I want to give him pain. I'm a roman candle. My head is full of flames..." Elliott Smith Roman Candle

"Why don't you give yourself a rest, oh give yourself some room? You can't get your arms around everybody. You cannot carry the doom... AA Bondy When The Devil's Loose

"Drink up, baby, stay up all night with the things you could do, you won't, but you might. The potential you'll be that you'll never see. The promises you'll only make..." Elliott Smith Between The Bars

Drown

2009-11-22T15:13:00.004-05:00

You suffer your habits
and mask all the dwelling 
and you smile along
 like your brain isn't swelling. 
They know that there's something
 that you aren't telling.
 From out of the wreckage,
 you stretch out your arms
 and you swear from now on 
to do no harm.

To yourself
you vow
not to shutter again,
but you know it’s only
the way your head spins:
the ice is thin.
When the voices begin
and sing their hymn
you know you’ll be unable
to rise against them.

Your senses are susceptible
to the slightest of slights
and you roll up your sleeves
like you’re ready for a fight.
You back yourself into corners
and can’t find your own way out.
There are seas out there calling you
if only there was light,
but the darkness robs you
of your wits and your sight.

Those drugs keep you stable
by kicking you around
and you feel more at home
when you’re too lost to be found.
Where sanity is impossible to conceive
and nightmares are easy to believe,
that’s where you’ll always be,
underneath the bow.
So, lay your head down
and for good now -

drown.

***************************************

Sometimes shit happens that shakes your bones. They kick you while you're down. Then, you have decisions to make: to get up or stay down, to shape up or decay. "You choose whether that slip is repeated and permanent or not." The options are clear and the ball is in your court.

"I try to will myself away while shouting habits plead their case..." Kevin Devine You'll Only End Up Joining Them

"One time I broke my vow. We laid a circle of roses, symbolized what was forever..." Sunny Day Real Estate 9

"The morning finds our bodies washed up thirty miles west..." Brand New Play Crack The Sky

Here's To The Decay

2009-11-14T00:41:00.002-05:00

You’re only prolific in your daze
because words make more sense that way.
Senses sing while hearts soar,
but you ponder what it’s all for.
Sliding, seeking, sidestepping, shrieking:
is this a nightmare in the making?
Making memories out of fantasies
and hearing love inside of ever sneeze,
these haunting lullabies
are embedded behind your eyes.
And when the cries are no longer audible
you shout out for the infallible,
but He cannot shut your mind down:
no, child, you’re just a lost sound.
That ringing in your ears
isn’t even the worst of your fears
because fire fights from your throat
and you choke on every note.
Hell finds a deeper home
where your thoughts were once free to roam
so now demons and goblins reiterate
the revelation that is your fate.
It sickens you to the bone:
the skills you’ve honed
that lock you in your heated space
when there’s just too much out there to face.
The heavy air follows you - it lingers -
and you wrap strands of hair around your fingers
until your fingertips are white and cold.
You’re about to fold
and you know it won’t matter;
you can’t hear above the chatter.
Your bruises prove the existence of colors:
your body's a canvas for all your failures.
Your nerves are fried
like your dignity and pride.
You’re mechanical and monotonous.
You won't put up a fuss.
In times like these, what’s a little weakness?
Just one more flaw to confess.
And you know it won’t make you feel better,
just a little bit deader,
but the world is gray anyway:
so here’s to the decay.

***************************************

Fight off your demons (and goblins)?

"I'm racing towards the one mistake that locks me in my place." Kevin Devine Just Stay

"And every word is nonsense but I understand and, oh Lord: I'm not ready for this sort of thing." Counting Crows Anna Begins

"Grey is my favorite color. I felt so symbolic yesterday. If I knew Picasso, I would buy myself a gray guitar and play." Counting Crows Mr. Jones

"Blue stars don't seem so bright when everything you see is in black and white." Socratic Decay

Choir Of Miles

2009-11-01T12:21:00.004-05:00

Ashes are green now
in this delusion
and humanity
feels so foreign.
Only unlucky fools
believe those smiles
smiled, showing teeth
that - like bars -
trap the truth inside
our ivory prisons.
Every syllable that escapes
is uttered three hours late.
Our secrets slept
with the Eastern sun
so you remind me
of the moon.
You were tangible
and touchable
once
but that was back
when the sky was blue
and the sun was yellow.
Now they're just sad
and chicken.
I can't hear your voice anymore,
not even when I'm listening;
there's a choir of miles
singing hymns of a different ocean.
You used to have sapphires in your eyes,
but now they're just stones.
I guess when life is living you,
it's tough to feel anything at all.

*************************************************

Not gonna go there.

"Our secrets sleep in winter clothes." Neutral Milk Hotel In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

"The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly saying, 'Death to all those who would whimper and cry,' and dropping a bar bell he points to the sky saying, 'The sun's not yellow: it's chicken.'" Bob Dylan Tombstone Blues

"In the world we stole, there was a choir there." Sunny Day Real Estate Pillars

"Stones in your eyes, stones in your eyes, stones in your eyes, stones in your mouth, stones in your ears, stones in your mind, stones in your eyes, stones in your eyes...Living in a jar, think the lid's the sky. You're hoping for a savior on your cross outside. Stars are just a million little fireflies. The sun is just the whole world and the light outside." Brand New In A Jar

"Life is what it makes of you." The New Frontiers Passing On

Just One Possibility

2009-10-11T18:09:00.003-04:00

“I swore you sang,” she said, she said.
“It sounded like champagne and chandeliers
and when I awoke you were present,
but only in body, never in spirit.”
She turned away,
her back to the day,
and she remembered
the look in your eyes
when her hand first
touched your thighs.
In the back of her head
she began to feel frantic;
She never say anything
about romantic.
But intentions are hidden
in words that are rusted,
her hands search to find
a lie that can be trusted.
Her perfect nightmare
pulled apart
when your eyes seared through
her broken heart,
but the fairy tale gone wrong
found its unhappily every after
after all; in a long
story that read
like a sonnet
dictated by a ghost.
“At most,”
he replied,
“you actually love me” -
a pause -
“but that’s just one possibility”
and he folded his face into his hands.

************************************

This poem has been plaguing me for days. I gave up. I can't tell whether it's done. I just don't know. It's challenging because I'M not sure what the true intentions of my characters are. I can see it from so many angles. However, I kind of like that because so much is left up to interpretation. Read it at least twice. I don't think you'll see anything on a first read. These characters are not just Cliche-Boy and Cliche-Girl. There's a tension, but I don't know with whom it lies or where it begins...or even exactly what it's regarding. It's about the consequences of a dream.

“Shakespeare sang ‘err on err,’ so I sang.” Sunny Day Real Estate Rodeo Jones

Time Is Poetry

2009-09-04T15:06:00.001-04:00

If time is just an abstract
I'm drowning in clocks
and there are big hands and little hands
boarding at the docks.
The ships, where they lay,
carry away all my shocks
from yesterday passed tomorrow
in a brown postage box.

It's secured with locks
to protect what is mine,
but nothing leads to another
and it's recording in rhyme.
We're all voices and shadows
within spaces and grime.
The inevitability of circles
should be a crime.

So I'll meet you next time
beside the playground fence
where we'll fool around and run
and hide from our parents.
In my memory, there are holes,
but even worse, there are dents;
Our fortunes and secrets
no longer make sense.

Counting hours for distance
while hearts fade,
I'm throwing up my sentences,
every confession made.
And then that ticking voice
offers me a trade,
but our connections are dissolving
and are horribly frayed.

Our lives were delayed
and now they run conversely.
My brain used to love you
despite impossibility,
but the sun has stolen
our youthful unity;
I won't fight him, though:
he has his immunity.

To the burden of uncertainty,
I am no longer confined.
In your shadow is a shape:
a body and a mind.
That spot behind my eyes
is no longer blind.
So, my history was continued
not merely redefined.

********************************************************

ROFL@life.

This is about how weird life can be, especially when you live long enough - and love long enough - to watch things come full circle. It's supposed to be sad while also being optimistic. It's about feeling disoriented, but knowing it's the only way to get back on your feet, to a place where sometimes things make sense again. It really IS about how time is poetry. Over hours, day, years, and on, lives are lived and lessons are learned and if you focus it right, you can make something come of it. Unanswerable questions - only with time and passion - find their answers. Maybe that's how one finds love too. There's time to right your wrongs. There's time to reconnect. There's time for those relationships that make no sense right now to work themselves out, define themselves, and redefine themselves. There's time to pull yourself out of whatever fucking ditch you threw yourself into and make it into something of beauty, of art, of worth. You just have to DO it. Kevin wrote me once and said: "Nothing's ever 'over.' Life is about accepting these pieces of ourselves that are fucked up and realizing that through acceptance we can better figure out how to keep those pieces at bay." Even your low points can have meaning if you make something good come of it. Don't let yourself waste away in vain.

This is about time taking things away and giving things back all in due course.

"Sew it on. Face the fool. December's tragic drive when time is poetry and stolen the world outside, the waiting could crush my heart..." Sunny Day Real Estate Seven [Clearly, I don't quote this song enough.]

"With the salt all ablaze and the ships where they lay, there must be great fear in a spark..." AA Bondy Of The Sea

"Meet me there in the blue where words are not. Feeling remains: sincerity, trust in me, throw myself into your door. I go in circles. Running down..." Sunny Day Real Estate In Circles

"But the connections go. Bubbles break on the surface like they do on the flooded craters round here - the ones that've been here for years and have God knows what underneath." Billy Prior via Pat Barker The Ghost Road

"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it." Winston Churchill

We Are Who We Are

2009-08-20T16:26:00.006-04:00

I just want to be in a car right now
on my way to anywhere.

Tiny American towns
with lazy Sunday afternoons
call me away from
may air conditioned office rooms.
Sometimes I see these four walls
as my living tomb,
but there's fresh air somewhere
and a nation in bloom.

Wind and sand
stings our cheeks
the happiest red
that burns for weeks.
There's nothing in front of us
except miles and heat
and we sing with the stereo,
a little off beat.

We're on our way to a place
we'll never see again
unless we truly are the lucky ones
every now and then
There's an ocean that isn't mine
just around the bend.
"Mine is better, but
yours can pretend."

We joke that we don't know
how we wound up so far
from our rooms and basements
and our dingy corner bars.
But we've known all along
because we are who we are.
I want to see a snow-faced boy
and I want to hear a little guitar.

************************************************

Feeling tired of being at home. I want a road trip that's more than just an over-night, but...I have - like - a job now. Downgrade. Haha...well, not really, but it makes trips tougher. Today, I missed driving through desert. Weird.

"Do you know -- who I am?" - Ummm...all my friends.

"I want to hear a little guitar. I think it's time to put the top down." Counting Crows Raining In Baltimore

"Lullaby for a snow-faced girl is what I'll sing, watching you, the whole time." Kevin Devine Lullaby For A Snow-Faced Girl

While Oceana Weeps

2009-08-15T08:58:00.002-04:00

Humans are skin and bone
and blood and bite.
Our roots dig deep
in uneasy soil.
Like weeds,
we strangle.
A choking planet,
red in her face,
glares up at us
with bloodshot eyes.
"You told me lies,"
she shouts and cries.
I shake me head;
my hands are tied.
While Oceana weeps,
we multiple:
a spider's egg hatching
with seedy spawn.
'We are pretty parasitic,'
said under-breath and parenthetic.
I liken this disaster
to Revelation
only faster.
And there are no pearly gates.
What is the proper fate
for a species programmed for hate?
For beings who need bribery
to have principle?
Even martyrdom means nothing
without sex.
Oceana rages;
she curses and spits.
She's begging you, please,
to find your wits.
But her tears will flood
and her crust will cave in
before we recognize
the mess created.
When the sun stops turning
over our homes and huts
just say, "It wasn't me;
the bitch went nuts."

*************************************************************

Told ya I'd be posting quickly!

And yes, I know it should be "'It was I; the bitch went nuts," but the bystanders in this poem aren't very bright anyway.

This is another poem about the need to be better to each other while (meshing in the Apocalypse...for good measure). It's about having to open your eyes and stop making excuses. It's about the need to stop thinking about Life in capitalistic terms. Whether you believe in Mother Nature, God, or non-of-the-above, it's about the reality of a dying planet and the need to actually do something about it...things that are very doable if only people were willing to sacrifice for it. There's an "I" in the poem because I think a lot of people (myself included) want to help, but haven't really made a whole lot of progress because of disenfranchisement (i.e. what can I really do? and is my small contribution really going to help when corporations won't commit to making any contributions at all?). I don't know what the answers are. But it's about having to do SOMETHING.

[By the way, I recently found my draft for that 'Apocalypse' poem I was working on a year ago and...it's a lot better than I remembered, so I may get back on that one soon.]

"These tides sweep us out of reach." Sparta While Oceana Sleeps

"And you were too busy steering the conversation toward the Lord to hear the voice of the Spirit, begging you to shut the fuck up." Pedro The Lion Foregone Conclusions

"The bitch went nuts. She stabbed my basketball. And the speakers to my stereo. She called me 'cunt,' but nothing prepared me for what I found when I came home. Oh and I made my own bed. I lie in it. You lie in yours. You lie, you lie, in yours. But they want more, they're at my door with torches. Please leave me alone, you know. Just shut it. Just shut it. Just shut it. The bitch went nuts." Ben Folds The Bitch Went Nuts

The Way My Pen Fell

2009-08-14T20:05:00.002-04:00

We don't talk as much as we should
most days.
So when the breeze blows
I mistake it for your voice.
You were real once
and you used to glow,
but now I can never find you
lost somewhere below.
So I turn to what I know:
a happy hypothetical in verse or rhyme.
I only write half
of every thought on my mind
because the rest is hard to translate
and I'm at a loss for time.
But my muse is hiding
under a smoke screen
and a dirty mask
so my limerick
turns blasphemous fast.
This isn't the story
I intended to tell;
this is just the way my pen fell.

******************************************

Expect a few new poems in relatively quick succession. I can't promise that, but I've had lines building up in my head for days and I can't mesh any of them together, so they'll all wind up being separate works.

This one is about people who disintegrate.

[For Jess...I have a new one: 'disintegrAAAaaaaatioooon.']

"In the days when you were hopelessly poor, I just liked you more." The Smiths Half A Person

"So you think it out on paper, hypothetical and safer." Kevin Devine This Box Is Empty

"You know you're walking around with a mask on, and you desperately want to take it off and you can't because everybody else thinks it's your face." Dr. W. H. R. Rivers via Pat Barker Regeneration, page 242.

"When you set the table, when you chose the scale, did you write a riddle that you knew they would fail? Did you make them tremble so they would tell the tale? Did you push us when we fell?" David Bazan When We Fell

Maybe It's Rapture

2009-07-23T18:24:00.001-04:00

The devil's at play
in your kids' playground.
He's in your neighbors' eyes
and your Senators' hearts.
Is it the death of humility?
Have we forgotten our humanity?
Maybe it's Rapture:
one dead policeman
and two dead suspects,
or
a head on collision,
or
an accidental overdose
or
a war barely begun,
we're told, but over - so over.

The officer fires
then he crosses his chest:
like a target on his heart
with a bullet, now he rests.
His badge on the pavement
and his brothers surround,
but the damage is done:
no silver lining to be found.
The dealers that dealt
the deadly blow die
drowning in His blood
(with which the streets now flood).
Their families left
with a lifetime of guilt
for the lives they'd built
and the sons they'd killed.

Her car flipped over
on top of mine;
I was dead before the fire was out.
With scorched baby
and headless husband,
I watch the reports
on how the highway is shut down
so "find other modes of transport."
Is this all that can be said
in the wake of what is lost?
The newscopter circles the scene
to survey the cost:
it's dollar signs and hours
and three young lives erased
and you'll never hear my name
or know the smile on my daughter's face.

He shuffles and stirs;
his vision a blur,
walking his tight rope
of disaster and high hopes.
What's another pill?
If only he could sleep.
Ambien and Vicoden
cure all your ills.
Orange bottles fill his dresser drawers;
he can't remember what they're all for.
But he knows those voices in his head
will shortly disappear.
His blood becomes thin
and his skin almost sheer
and when his heart stops,
he won't feel the fear.

The men march in step;
they watch their feet
plunge into mud.
They're hot and hungry
and the air's too thick
to breath their lungs full.
A young mother clenches
a folded up flag:
all that returned
of her high school sweetheart.
Her son cries out for his daddy,
but flags don't play catch as well as young men.
She wonders:
for what cause will my son never know his father?
And she knows "for freedom"
with never be a good enough answer.

So come 'round here all good Christians
(and even you bad ones);
listen here you social liberals
and you fiscal conservatives:
can't you see your planet is crying
as your children are dying?
She can grow anew,
but has grown rather accustomed to you
and she's begging that you be good,
though it's been a long time
since you've been good.
Don't keep your feet planted
still where they stood;
pick them up with all your force.
There's a fork in the road
and it's time to change course.

**********************************************

It's been a little while since I posted anything. I have a job now, so I either don't have a lot of time to write or I'm just too tired to write anything decent. I've written stuff, but nothing decent until this. I've had a lot on my mind. Getting up every morning and watching the news sort of makes me realize why I was so depressed in high school...watching the news can be unsettling in the morning and then it sets the tone for the day. On the other hand, I'd hate to live an uninformed life. Network news isn't the best place to go, but it gives you an idea of what's going on.

For the past several mornings, they've run stories on Officer DiNardo who was killed in Jersey City last week. [Jersey City cop dies from gunshot wounds] It's stuck in my head and is the basis for the second stanza. The rest of the stanzas are hypothetical, not based on anyone in particular. We cover death in the country strangely. Maybe it's universal; I don't know. But we seem to take it so casually. Unless it's Michael Jackson or something.

So, this is about the NEED for humans to look out for one another. We need to treat ourselves and our neighbors better. We shouldn't be concerned about others only to the extent that it effects us. Our world - our home - can survive without us, but...what would be the fun in that? If we don't pull together soon, though...all of everything, erased.

Lots of inspiration...

"Oh, the living and the dying: how easily you bruise. Oh, Delia, I don't go around when the devil's loose..." AA Bondy When The Devil's Loose

"I don't want to talk about Jesus, I just want to see his face. I don't want to talk about Jesus, I just want to see his face. The trees are swingin' like hangin' men, and I just want to see his face. The trees are swingin' like hangin' men, and I just want to see his face. And rapture, sweet rapture, won't you lay your hands on me. Rapture, sweet rapture, won't you lay your hands on me, for I am blind..." AA Bondy Rapture, Sweet Rapture

"Because I've had to come to grips with scope and figure, how my problems stack up in a world this close to ruin; I don't believe that it's rapture..." Kevin Devine Ballgame

"But it's over - so over - you're imitating, fascinating conversations based upon my lies." Pablo Loser Crew

"A young mother down at Smithfield, 5 am, looking for food for her kids. In her arms she holds three cold babies and the first word that they learned was 'please.' These are dangerous days. To say what you feel is to dig your own grave..." Sinead O'Connor Black Boys On Mopeds

"Only that if I were going to call myself a Christian, I'd have to call myself a pacifist as well. I don't think it's possible to c-call yourself a C-Christian and...and j-just leave out the awkward bits." Wilfred Owen via Pat Baker Regeneration, page 83.

"It's been a long time; it's been a long time; it's been a long time since I've been good...Heaven can wait; Heaven can wait. I will be good, swear I'll be good. I will be good; I swear I'll be good." The New Frontiers Spirit and Skin

"And every coughing car and every coiled snake and every shrieking star and every burning stake: dissolved to atmosphere, all of everything, erased..." Kevin Devine All Of Everything, Erased

Far Enough

2009-07-07T08:14:00.006-04:00

We're such a nothing of a start.
We stall before we depart;
we never say anything anyway.

A simple plea
with great solimnity,
I lay down my sword.

Words shatter bones
with syntax and tones
and I now I'm beaten and scarred.

Your prepositions paralyze
and your commas tell lies:
you are a walking ellipsis.

But you're sung and not said,
hummed and not read,
and I tap my feet as you fade.

Defeated today,
I wander far away
like I'll find you if I walk far enough.

******************************************************

It's about having something, taking it for granted, fucking it up, and then missing it when it's gone.

"So tie the noose and raise the cross. The martyr's arrived. A desperate plea for sympathy; it's all you need..." Straylight Run Sympathy For The Martyr

"'Let the blue sky overhead,
The green earth on which ye tread,
All that must eternal be
Witness the solemnity."
P.B. Shelley The Mask Of Anarchy

"I had finally given up on love and romance. If I laid down the sword, I'm giving my innocence..." Miniature Tigers Cannibal Queen

Sweet Dreams, Momentarily

2009-06-24T22:25:00.007-04:00

Your body needs a rest,
but your mind will get the best
of any lie you dole out
until you shake and shout.
Prolificacy
is a sin, you see,
but what matters most
is that meddling ghost
behind your eyes,
muted and paralyzed.
Measured words - like incantations - shoo
away the demons haunting you.
A proverb, a poem, a lullaby,
lingering tales, then a sweet goodbye:
a sentence with resolve
and your specters dissolve.
Sweet dreams, momentarily.
'Til you wake warily.
Razor blade daydreams:
your muse, it seems
and now you can't stand
the blood on your hands.
It's a story untold
or too folded to unfold:
tuck it tightly twixt your teeth:
hide the secrets underneath.
Hold your breath and just pretend
that you control the way this ends.

**********************************************

This is about all the things you try to do when you're feeling your weakest, but sometimes it gets the best of you anyway.

"'Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free -"
P.B. Shelley The Mask Of Anarchy (Seriously, read this poem and ponder upon it.)

"He has a halo, for dreams return to dust. Words dissolve on the page like tears in blood." Sunny Day Real Estate Rodeo Jones

"When your mother sends back all your invitations and your father to your sister he explains that you're tired of yourself and all of your creations: won't you come see me, Queen Jane? Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?" Bob Dylan Queen Jane, Approximately

Road Maps And Mixtapes

2009-06-22T17:18:00.008-04:00

Ghost towns and highways,
from ocean to ocean:
it's the life we live
and the places we've been.
An artist's tribute
in headphones and hearts
reminds me of how
we're not so far apart.
Kindred spirits
can always find
their way back to each other
in due time.
Road maps and mix tapes
eclipse the gap
and parallel for now
travel our paths.
In the span of space
from rhythm to rhyme,
cacti to pine,
and the hours that
without regard
pass us by,
I lay awake
and hum a tune
that was written by you
and - to me - rings true.

A lullaby
and we'll be fine:
sleep peacefully
all through the night.

*************************************

While I'm revealed I don't have a "tour" this summer (because I'm poor and also just got a job from which I can't just take three weeks off), I miss the road. This is about driving to weird places and it's about why it's worth it. It's also about finding something to help you sleep at night.

"You'll taste it in time. You'll taste it...it time." Sunny Day Real Estate Seven

"Sleep peacefully. Like the way you look this morning. With faith in your eyes and me in your hands: a whispered promise in your heart. Lullaby for a snow-faced girl is what I'll sing watching you, the whole time. It's three-o-five on Monday morning...or is it night? I don't know. Is it night? I don't know. We'll be fine. We'll be fine. We'll be fine. We'll be fine. We'll be fine." Kevin Devine Lullaby For A Snow-Faced Girl

Taut We Remain

2009-06-09T20:52:00.007-04:00

If we're all in this together
then I'm no more dead than you.

I loved as best I could
from so many miles away.
And the distance between us, dear,
well that's just the price we pay
for honor
and sin
(and look at the mess we're in)
and the solutions discovered wherein
dissolve
like our bonds.
But taut we remain
still
despite the heavy rain
and the awkward pain.
Sunshine seeps through panes
and reminds us how clear
vision can be
in hindsight.
This might
be the eye of the storm
or the eyes staring at me
from that table across the bar.
You leave me guessing:
forever haunted,
forever hunted,
a forever of only one.
Life and death
equate in sleep
and sleepless nights
scare me to death.
Windows and doors
and wiley floorboards
sing cautious lullabies
of how my heart defies
reason.
Is there something to believe in?
Are my lung still breathing?
What's wrong with me, then?

************************************

I know is should say "Is there something in which to believe?," but "believe" doesn't rhyme as nicely with "reason," so deal with it.

"Ugh...liiiiiike, I don't know." Exactly. I don't know. This plagued me for a couple of weeks and I don't know if the outcome matters at all, if it was worth all the trouble. This is about things that won't die; it about resilience. But it's also about the strain of that resilience. Lots of things feel unstable and messy right now yet everything seems to be staying in place, for better or for worse.

I found this interesting:
Taut -
[–adjective, -er, -est.]
1. tightly drawn; tense; not slack.
2. emotionally or mentally strained or tense: taut nerves.
3. in good order or condition; tidy; neat.
[Courtesy of http://www.dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/taut]

...those seems like sort of an ironic mesh of meanings for this little word.

"The people you've been before that you don't want around anymore. They push and shove and won't bend to your will. I'll keep them still." Elliott Smith Between The Bars

"Peace, be still." Pedro The Lion Secret Of The Easy Yoke

"What's a bond if it dissolves in water?" Saves The Day My Sweet Fracture

Consequence

2009-05-26T15:05:00.001-04:00

Shape shifting shards of sanity
steal what's left of her reality.
Blues and grays
and passed on days
feel like eternity
weighted with scum and debris.
Your shadow in a haze:
she still loves your gaze.

Rare truths spoken
as righteous tokens
to the girl who longed
(perpetually wronged).
From a dream, awoken:
her fantasy life broken.
She thought she belonged;
it's sorrow prolonged.

But she pulls on her socks
though Consequence knocks
her off her feet:
there's a face she hopes to meet.
He's secured with locks
and hidden in a box
so he'll stay fresh and sweet,
away from misery and deceit.

His visage pleases her:
comfort in a blur.
He's hers alone to view,
but his whispers are untrue.
Promises that never were
inside her cause a stir
and she knows something's askew,
but she'll say she never knew.

He rips through her rib cage
with inconspicuous rage
and drops her heart
like it's just another part:
a war she did not expect to wage
and in which she's unqualified to engage.
She used to be so smart
before he picked her brain apart.

In Oblivion she'll now reside
with a book and a pen by her side.
Consequence claims another soul,
another shining smile he stole.
It's time to hide
to keep her pride
inside her cozy hole
where - at least - she's in control.

*********************************************************

Light twists,
heart skips a beat:
through all this destruction
who knows what you'll be?

*********************************************************

Parts of this have been in my head for a few days. These poems are getting tougher for me to describe: sometimes because I'm not sure what they're about and sometimes because I just don't want to talk about it. I guess it's about recognizing a pattern of unfortunate situations and the consequences of such situations over time. Eventually, it all becomes predictable and almost surreal.

"Goodbye to sleep. I think this staying up is exactly what I need. Take apart your head; take apart the counting and the flock it has bred..." Brand New Degausser

"To vanish into oblivion is easy to do and I try to be, but you know me; I come back when you want me to. Do you miss me, miss misery, like you say you do?" Elliott Smith Miss Misery

"In the depths of my gloom, I crawl out for you. From the peaks of my joy, I crawl back into: tearing me down every time you smile, every shining time you arrive." Sunny Day Real Estate Every Shining Time You Arrive

Wonder Why

2009-05-14T15:39:00.009-04:00

I'm not okay, but I will be.
It's a fine line you can't see.
Absurdity
is fond of me.
Hanged with a belt around my throat,
I'm reading your note
and embarrassed letters I wrote
into words of love so remote.
Now drowning under tidal waves
of questions and regrets I stave
off sorrow, but within I cave.
I am not brave,
only broken and stubborn.
It's not of your concern.
It's a lesson I learn and unlearn
and either way I'm left to burn.
On a desk is a picture of us
which I leave you as a posthumous
gift of my naivety and hubris.
Characteristics you won't miss
anyway,
but you may remember someday
when things aren't going your way
and language is no longer your forte.
Will it matter to you
when I lay with a gray hue?
Will you be shaken by the view?
Will you claim you never knew?
It's a long goodbye:
that which has no reply,
for people who don't try.
I will wonder why.

******************************************

This was not what I was supposed to be doing today. Ummm...it's about what you think it's about. Except I'm not actually dead. It's about being an impossible person and facing an impossible situation. It's about how it's never what it appears to be and probably never will be. At least for certain people. At least for me. It's sort of like "lol, me," but also "wtf, me?!"

Also, I sort of miss JamisonParker. Bring it back.

"It's not what we're owed, but it's what we've earned and it's closer than we realize and it's time, now, to burn. So burn, so burn, so burn..." Kevin Devine Time To Burn (foreverandalways)

"Cut this picture into you and me, burn it backwards kill this history..." Elliott Smith Sweet Adeline

"I live in notes and photographs and everything I'm holding back like all the words that weren't enough; you remind me of a song I used to love..." JamisonParker Your Song

Love In Dances

2009-05-11T15:51:00.001-04:00

She's reading her book
and that look that you threw
and the dagger in her tongue
is of no concern to you.

It's times like these
when silence means everything,
so she's passive and patient
despite the taste and the sting.

But inside her grows
a cancerous mass
of unuttered thoughts
mixed with poisonous gas

that tortures and tears
and remembers the glares
of eyes soft and faces fair;
all the thoughts she couldn't bear.

Photos of imagined memories
haunt her in her sleep.
She wants to scream,
but can't make a peep.

She's a ghost in a fairy tale;
there is no happy ending
for her:
just past and present blending.

It's like you never said a word:
speech through glances
and funny looks,
love in dances.

She cries.
Her tired eyes
shift to hide
their lies.

************************************

I don't know why I'm posting this one.

But - hey! look! - there are stanzas in this one! I haven't done that in a while!

"It's times like these when silence means everything and no one is to know about this..." Taking Back Sunday Ghost Man On Third

"I'm the family's unowned boy, golden curls of envied hair, pretty girls with faces fair see the shine in the black sheep boy..." Tim Hardin Black Sheep Boy

Songs And Cigarettes

2009-05-07T16:00:00.006-04:00

A new face,
a soul reborn:
from a carcass
I am torn.
Such bloody symmetry
is what remains of me
in muddled minutes
when no word fits.
Repetitive at best,
I make the wrong bets.
I hear your threats
over songs and cigarettes.
Played like your marionettes
or hidden under silhouettes
my breath is shallow
as I'm hung from these gallows.
Branches and bones break
and one last breath I take.
Passers-by will dream and wonder
how long 'til I am torn asunder.
Come dance with me
under this killing tree
where I will be
eternally.

***************************************************

^ What I did while I should have been working on my short story.

I'm really not that depressed. Honestly. But when Gordon Schochet recognizes that a strength of mine is writing "dark," I feel like maybe that's something on which I should focus.

Is it bad that it comes relatively naturally?

"Sew it on. Face the fool. The mirrors lie - those aren't my eyes - destroy them, raise my hand. Reflected in savage shards: a new face, a soul reborn..." Sunny Day Real Estate Seven

"I dreamed another dream and I was free and no sorrow can find me under that killing tree as I wait for my true love..." AA Bondy Killing Tree

Bloodshot Beauty

2009-05-05T15:32:00.004-04:00

Broken artist's soul,
now you understand it all.
Red splatters against the wall:
you've seen the rise; you've seen the fall.
The bloody brain matter brawl -
away from which you were lucky to crawl -
left welts and scratches
from wrestling matches
in which you were over matched
and underestimated.
You hated
and seethed
and choked on air
unhealthy to breathe.
Pure water eyes
use pale lids for disguise,
your bloodshot beauty:
now too horrific to see.
Your lungs filled up with paint
and your muscles seized without restraint.
A God above you - a saint -
appears as you begin to faint.

As the blue bird sky sinks
into solemn silence,
I think,
I will dream of such violence.

**********************************************

I've written a few poems recently, but none were any good. Not that this one is, per se, but I need to get back on the wagon at some point, right?

"You turned white like a saint. I'm tired of dancing on a pot of gold-flaked paint. Oh we're so very precious, you and I, and everything that you do makes me want to die. Oh, I just told the biggest lie..." Elliott Smith The Biggest Lie

"And I dream of Michelangelo when I'm lying in my bed. I see God upon the ceiling; I see angels overhead. And he seems so close as he reaches out his hand, but we are never quite as close as we are led to understand..." Counting Crows When I Dream Of Michelangelo

"It's my brother's blood in my dirty lungs, in my crooked mouth, on my swollen tongue, on my father's gun, on each stranger's face, across the blue bird sky, on every hand I shake..." Kevin Devine Brother's Blood

So Many Things That Never Worked

2009-03-02T17:09:00.005-05:00

Running backwards,
chasing cars,
blaring music,
thousands more,
hot rush of smoke,
and a blinding fear:
the issues that
have led us here.
A limerick that
I couldn't sing,
a gift to you,
I couldn't bring,
a carrier pigeon
who dropped his note,
a cursing sailor
who lost his boat:
I am so many things
that never worked.
I jerked
and threw away
what wouldn't stay
or ran away
anyway.
Today,
on snowy fields
on back roads
in country lands
where promises bestowed
are daily broken
(my rightful token)
there are girls and boys
happily making noise,
and holding cold hands
and making grandiose plans.
My toes are numb
and my nose is red
and I'm swallowing truths
I never said.

***********************************************

"Don't ask me nothin' about nothin'. I just might tell you the truth." Bob Dylan Outlaw Blues

Miles Behind Us

2009-02-27T21:14:00.002-05:00

There are simple things
that make us move;
they change our shapes,
make us love like fools.
You see your reflection
in the pools of her eyes,
as if that's the only place
wherein your silhouette is safe.
That unfamiliar feeling
is her own heart beating
and that mess in the mirror
cleans up pretty well,
but she'll scoff as she walks
and she'll hide as she talks.
That which -
by any other standards -
are deemed unequivocal,
she questions the most...
as if questions
bring forth truths.
Your hand on hers is true
and so is that grin from across the room,
but so are the endless silences
and all those miles behind us.

**********************************************

"Yesterday, I watched you leave ten seconds too late. Yesterday." The Movielife Ten Seconds Too Late

Light I Lit

2009-02-13T17:57:00.001-05:00

The sound of your voice
fades in and out,
but I guess I believe you
without a doubt.
There are so many words
you know nothing about
and - like a child held captive -
I'll scream and shout.
You think you're so smooth,
but you lack class and clout.
Souring, searching, but
stuck so still,
motionless waves that
claim their kill,
I'm hungry and hunted;
you'll get your fill.
Your shadow behind me:
the chase is your thrill.
Once, I thought it made sense;
it was a perfect fit,
but you showed your knives
and you threw and it hit
and you outsmarted me
with your charm and wit.
But you're soft and you're warm
and what I know I can't admit,
so when you're on your way back home
follow that light I lit.

*************************************************

"This little light of mine, shine bright and blind the reaper's eyes, hear you stomping on the tops of pines. We rest as death lays on his knife." Wild Sweet Orange An Atlas To Follow

"'If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay,' said Gatsby. 'You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.'" F.S. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Get Your Way

2009-02-02T14:12:00.006-05:00

Keep far away from me
like I'm diseased and contagious.
Already at an arm's length,
I'm still a threat, still dangerous.
I want your smell, your taste,
though I know that's outrageous.
It's a constant stream of
knowing and never knowing
that keeps my thoughts
flowing and over flowing
like you can't make up your mind
while mine is going and growing.
Hold me close
then throw me aside.
"I want in!"
I haplessly cried.
And with silence
you amply replied.
You had me fooled in
every step of the way.
And the smirk across your lips
is all you ever had to say.
If you really want to lose me,
you're about you get your way.

*************************************

Limerick-y, but...whatever. I figured a little bit of silly rhyming might mask my frustration a little. Haha. This has also been slightly edited just...because. Ask to see my notebook if you want to see the unedited version. There's only one line different; you're not missing too much. This was written over several days. I guess I'll slightly less frustrated now than when I began drafting it.

Also, this should probably be divided into four stanzas of six lines each, but I don't like stanzas much these days. When everything's blurry and confusing in reality, stanzas seem to take the point away a little. There is no organization in life. Life is just a stream of randomly occurring bullshit.

"I wonder how it's going to be when you don't know me. How's it going to be when you're sure I'm not there?" - Third Eye Blind How's It Gonna Be?

"Tell me what you want. I'll be it, darling it's anything you want, look no more. Just let me stay the night, I'll sleep on the floor. Tell me what you see, I'll see it even if, it's invisible to everyone. I think you know that I can see you girl, so don't fight it, love..." - Ultimate Fakebook TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT

Wilson: And that's why religious belief annoys you. Because if the universe operates by abstract rules you can learn them; you can protect yourself. If a Supreme Being exists, He can squash you any time He wants.
House: He knows where I am.
- Courtesy of yesterday's seventeen hour House marathon and http://www.housemdquotes.com/ [lol that this site exists, by the way...and that this is exactly the quote I was thinking of and I managed to find it in about three minutes]

Mrs. Lintott: And you, Rudge? How do you define history?
Rudge: Can I speak freely without being hit?
Mrs. Lintott: You have my protection.
Rudge: How do I define history? Well it's just one fucking thing after another.
...
Mrs. Lintott: History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
- The History Boys [I really need to see this movie from start to finish...I keep missing the beginning.]

Heap

2009-01-15T22:42:00.002-05:00

You say these words to me
like they're magic incantations
and I melt because I'm solid,
like ice.
I'm cold.
It's just the weather.
It's a reaction to the season.
It's the rainy misconception
and the waste of another reason.
It's all misunderstanding.
It's all in bad hand writing.
It's all a lie about love and loving.
Warm hands or eyes -
it makes no difference -
it all amounts to shit:
the substance which you fed me.
Broken promises spell trouble
so I guess I'm in a heap,
but I wish you'd still come find me;
even your lies sound pretty sweet.

************************************************

It's about dishonesty. Or loving.

Or maybe there's not much of a difference.

"I'm kickin' like a kid 'cause I can't get rid of it." Kevin Devine Trouble

Something Like Happiness

2009-01-12T21:30:00.003-05:00

Coffee stains
and razor blades
and mismatched socks
and dirty mops,
a string of benign
and beautiful shots
that snap imagination
out of hibernation.
The smells are familiar,
like I once lived here,
but ran screaming
with fear.
A feckless foe
faces me,
stares me down,
asks too much of me.
To break
down
apart
up
off:
the thought
leaves me
numb.
And I'm already cold
from a tale so old:
a fairytale nightmare
in which I disappear.
A damsel in distress -
perhaps you know the rest -
with her dazzling prince
and a moment's glimpse
of something like happiness:
it feels so warm,
but only when you are,
like blankets from the dryer
or maybe hell's fire.
Still, your steps sound distant
and your voice is so faint
and I dream that you're nearer,
my reflection in a mirror,
so I could see you clearer.
But dreams vanish with the sun;
they mock me just for fun.
I'm writing you this story
of lonesome glory,
but my pen's in your hands:
you decide how it ends.

****************************************

"...I felt just about the closest to this stuff that is called happiness as I have ever struck." Woody Guthrie Bound For Glory

Snap

2009-01-10T21:31:00.005-05:00

She speaks in shallow promises
and broken hearts:
she repeats what's whispered
in her ears.
She walks along
on her tightrope
as if there's no such thing
as absurd.
She brushes your cheek,
but you never feel it
like her heat
is your repellent.
When the sun shines,
she cries.
It should be dark
all the time.
The light
hurts her eyes,
but she denies
it's you that makes them sting.
So, she shuffles her feet
and bites her tongue.
She imagines a day
when you're not gone.
And when it rains,
she smiles and sings.
She wishes she had wings:
to you, herself she'd bring.
Like branches,
she sways
from side
to side
and you,
her wind,
made her snap,
so unkind.
It is she
who is your sport
for ignoring,
though she was born
inside your smile
this morning.

********************************************

"She brings her friends so we wont have to be alone. I fear I might lose my composure without warning. I am a child of fire. I am a lion. I have desires and I was born inside the sun this morning." Counting Crows Hanging Tree

Half Alive

2009-01-03T21:51:00.006-05:00

Laying on my back,
half asleep
or maybe half dead,
thinking half dead
is all right:
it's half alive.
As sure as we're all alive,
we're all gonna die,
we're all gonna die
and that's just fine.
The fan is off
so it's too quiet to sleep
and you're too far away
so it's too cold to dream,
but closed eyelids
draw you nearer.
Fingertips
and eyelashes
and feelings
and looks
and I've already read this book,
but you managed to get me hooked.
Again,
a wrong turn
down a dangerous road,
but it's so tempestuous
and it tingles
and tastes
suspiciously
like you.

*************************************************

It's about doing shit you know you're better off not doing...but - then again - what the hell? Ya only live once.

"Would you say that the one of your dreams got in you and ripped out the seams? That's what I'd say. That's what I'd say." Heatmiser Half Right

"As the priest got up to speak, the assembly craved relief, but he himself had given up. So, instead, he offered them this bitter cup: 'You're gonna die. We're all gonna die, could be twenty years, could be tonight. And lately I have been wondering why we go to so much trouble to postpone the unavoidable and prolong the pain of being alive.'" Pedro The Lion Priests And Paramedics

"We're all gonna die. That's just life in time. The hallelujah, the by-and-by, we'll all fly away so high." All Get Out Wasting All My Breath

Close

2008-12-28T18:47:00.000-05:00

These words you shoot off
softly with a sigh, sing
praises into the atmosphere
for the waste that is this year.
You never knew
that you're of the few
I see when my eyes are closed
tight when you're not ever close.
If seas separate
steal me a raft.
Or I'll swim the coast line
following your light.
House
or home
or land to roam
or foreign shores
or lips too far
to taste before
they're cracked and chapped,
I'll be there
just behind
in every step,
in every shadow
that you pass,
in every camera's
blinding flash.
Someday our dreams
will be the same,
but we'll still see them
when we wake.
Your cheek against mine
and a satisfied grin:
a future I can't wait
to begin.

******************************

These are some words that arranged themselves on a piece of paper.

"Maybe one day soon, it'll all come out, how you dream about each other sometimes." - Fountains Of Wayne Troubled Times

Anything More

2008-11-30T20:25:00.002-05:00

Heavy eyelids, heavy hearts,
heavy minds that make their mark
are mired and mishandled
like that box you labeled "fragile."
Smile big for all to see
when all you see is me,
but it's fishy and it's fake:
drives the best of me away.
Instability explains this mess
and so there's no need to confess
that how I act is how I feel
and I want you oh so real.
If I weren't falling apart at the seams
you wouldn't know what to make of me.
My eyelashes brush your cheek,
but my efforts are too meek.
You're so much bigger than I
so why should I even try?
I'm an ant of your floor
that you've stepped on before,
but I love feeling you breathe,
watching your chest heave:
like if you inhale me now
I'll be part of you somehow.
It's the words I can't articulate
that seal my sorry, sullen fate.
Take pity and I'm yours;
I don't want anything more.

********************************************

It's about trying to decide whether something's really worth the effort or if it's more beneficial to just remain a fly on the wall, just on the outskirts: stay put and lose nothing or dive in and hope for the best. It's about being stuck...but more by your own limits than the limits being place upon you by anyone else. It's about feeling like you could change and just not doing it...for one reason or another. It's about not believing.

I actually have no idea what prompted this. I found the first couple of lines saved in a note marked in September, but I don't remember why I began it or why I, apparently, abandoned it.

"This is the part of me I don't like..." Pablo Words For Free

Present

2008-11-28T22:18:00.001-05:00

I got nothing but words
hiding up my sleeves.
They're tangled and tricky
and
temporarily
they leave my tongue tied
in dos
and do-knots.
So, you see me silenced
and stopped in my tracks.
You're a metaphor
that's gone too far.
Unfortunate am I
to be choked by a lie.
Wishful words whimper
inside the distance.
They don't bring you
any nearer.
They won't make you
true.
False starts
and finished ends
make up a history
as time bends.
But you would never see me,
not nearly as I see you.
I won't place you in the past tense,
but then I need you as my present.

**************************************************

It's about missing you one second, hating you the next, hating myself after that, and then letting the whole cycle repeat.

It's not about anyONE. It's a pattern.

It's about some other stuff too, I guess, but that's the gist.

"Blue house dress, fading fast with time and age: a metaphor for where I let us go. Will we rise again?" The Miracle Of '86 Two-Color Pattern

But It's Not Mine

2008-11-24T23:37:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty sure I'm left for dead
beneath a swirling ceiling fan.
I'm cold as you
and turning blue.
That line I can't forget
sings somewhere in my head,
but warmth is just a memory
and love is just a fantasy.
Heart beats slower now,
breath breathes light and futile.
This room becomes a grave:
so still as I lay bleeding.
A crimson carpet drowns me
and imaginary voices chide.
You lied: said I was strong,
but still my will can't save me.
My fading thoughts drift far
and I see you like you're here.
In that brightened doorway,
I can almost taste you.
Life flashes, but it's not mine.
Three.
Two.
One.

****************************************************

I had a line in my head for this poem, but I forgot it. Then, I got another line in my head and ran with it. This is a fictional room and a fictional suicide. Don't go all nuts and call 911 on me.

There's this show "Fringe" and in one episode, they hypothesized that the last image you see before you die gets frozen in your memory, behind our eyes. (This is a totally fictional show, for the record.) This is sort of a spin on that idea except it freezes on whatever image the mind drifts to last rather than what's actually there. I guess, if I died tomorrow, this is what I think I would think about before I was gone.

"It might be tomorrow. You can't tell the minute or the hour. Well, you just will get ready: you got to die." Willie McTell You Got To Die

Only In My Head

2008-11-18T17:15:00.000-05:00

Shadows mark a passing phase,
like the lines on my arms
and the circles under my eyes
and the frog in my throat.
There's a road I can't quite
force myself to cross
without a hand to hold
or a guide to follow.
Or maybe it's a fork in the road
and neither path is cleared.
You use silence as an art
with your arms like a brush
and your eyes like a voice
(which say everything).
But my eyes are shut
so I don't hear a thing -
like always - but words are clearer
when you say them, anyway.
Missteps and mistakes
and misunderstandings along the way
and all the things I swore I said
(but only in my head)
amount to scribbles on a page
which you would never read anyway.
Words are safe when eyes can't see them
like hearts are safe enclosed behind ribs
like I am safe when I lock myself up.
Oh, how I want to be so very unlocked.

***************************************

This definitely just came out of my ass as I was sitting here mentally kicking myself for any number of missed opportunities. Parts of this I really like, but parts I still think are really weak. I didn't want to mess with the flow, so I just wrote what came out with little interference. Not sure it was a good choice, but that's how it came out.

"I keep feeling my eyes close shut. You know I love you sincerely, but now I just wanna be still and not move and not think: be still, be still, move and make me feel ill." Heatmiser Still

If God's On Our Side

2008-11-14T20:53:00.000-05:00

Preface:

This story was originally written for my Political Theory independent study in the Spring of 2008. It was about half this length at the time, though. Now, it's more or less how I wanted it. As always, there are probably formatting errors as well as typos (spelling AND grammar), so please let me know if you catch any!

"If God's on our side, he'll stop the next war." Bob Dylan With God On Our Side

"For when it's time to kill, who needs a reason?" AA Bondy Against The Morning

* * * *

She anxiously picks at the dry flecks of skin the winter air has stripped from the rest of her body. They fall to the ground as her jittery legs dance in place. My eyes engulf her as if I’d never seen her before. She doesn’t know I was in first class. She doesn’t know to expect me to be among the first to descend from the plane into the arms of a much missed and beloved mother, father, spouse, or child.

“Richard!” she shouts, forgetting how badly the backs of her hands need lotion.

Clara jumps into my arms forcing me to drop one of the gigantic knapsacks labeled “MARINES” in letters that seem almost bigger than her entire body. She is warmth. I know she has me in her arms as tightly as she can bear to squeeze and I struggle not to hurt her within my own arms. Her lips on my neck, and suddenly I am no longer in Afghanistan. Suddenly, I am home in the arms of the only person who has ever seen me cry, heard my stories, and knows my nightmares. I won’t let her go. She has to be the first to step away and I am in no rush to feel her hands remove themselves from my back. Lips mischievously travel further north and a warm tongue massages the insides of my mouth. God, it’s good to be home.

“Where’s Abby?”

“I left her with my parents. Everyone’s there, waiting for you. We didn’t want to clog up the whole airport,” she explains without removing that brilliant smile.

I grab my bags from off the airport linoleum and follow my wife of six years in and out and up and down every curve in the airport until we finally arrive at the car. It still smells like baby even though my daughter is now five. So many nights with bombs going off in the distance, I worried if my little girl would even remember my face the next time she saw me. I knew she’d know my voice, but what if my appearance jarred her? The concern haunted me. Some nights I never slept. This is information Clara doesn’t need to know.

* * * *

“WELCOME HOME, RICHIE,” shouted the miss-matched group of hooligans who greeted me at the entrance of my parents-in-law’s home; their guns at bay with seemingly sincere smiles smeared across their faces.

I don’t call them hooligans to imply any disrespect. Quite the contrary, I am proud of my mongrel family: those by blood as well as those by marriage. We are a large, mixed family. My wife’s father in Nigerian and her mother: Puerto Rican. Clara is an English professor over at Monmouth State, a writer, and occasional journalist. Her family is about as liberal as possible, borderline Socialists. My father nearly killed me when I first introduced Clara, not because of her heritage, but because her mother was known for making noise in the local media. Nina, my mother-in-law, is an outspoken women’s rights leader. She often campaigns for pro-choice candidates and is pretty famous in her own right.

Similarly, Clara’s father (Tombari, or Tom for short) is a journalist who, until he retired, dealt with economic inequalities and homeless immigrants. He remains an important figure for immigrants’ rights, but he no long writes articles about his work. Most of his time is spent volunteering at shelters and raising money. He is quieter than his wife, but by no means less influential, especially to the people for whom his presence has meant life or death.

My family, on the other hand, is…well, very different. My mother had and raised four children while my father worked in the next town over for Ford. I went to church every Sunday, coming up, and for a while I thought I might become a priest. Nancy, my mother, stayed at home with us and helped us with our homework every night. She was always baking. The house always smelled like cake. She and my three sisters spent most of their afternoons in the garden once homework was out of the way and while dinner was cooking in the oven. I’d help by swimming around in the soil in place of a more refined shovel.

My father, Joe, owns six guns. One, legend has it, is a Civil War piece he inherited from Grandpa Leo. I don’t know if the story is true and I never cared to ask too much about the gun. All I know is Grandpa Leo was born in Georgia. If it’s true, you do the math. I decided when I was very young that I didn’t want to know the history of the weapon. I was intrigued by the mechanism as a boy, but I realized I was interested in most mechanisms. That’s how I became a mechanic and an engineering specialist for the Marines.

Dad fought in Vietnam. I suppose I never really questioned my future. I’d go to school for as long as I could stand it and then I’d enlist. Mine is a military family. It was never a discussion, nor was I unhappy to sign up. I felt like I had reached my telos. I was sure that America was a worthy cause, one I’d willingly and happily give my life for because she is the definition of freedom.
Then, I met Clara.

“Richard!” my mother shouts and is the first among the familiar faces to grab my cheeks with her heavily lip-sticked lips.

I give the appropriate length hugs to both my parents, but I can’t stand it, “Where’s my little girl?” I finally ask.

“Right here, daddy,” Nina announces smiling, holding her granddaughter tightly.

Nina hands Abby to me and the little girl’s face lights up; she remembers: “Daddy!” she says through her baby teeth.

“Hey, baby,” a smile eats my face and I kiss her nose.

“Cake! Richard, please tell your mother to cut this thing already! The smell is taunting me!” Tom jokes in his exquisite and exotic accent.

“Yes! Cake, please! Feed me something that isn’t served from a metal pan.”

* * * *

There’s sand up my nose and in my eyes and pounding my eardrums. I can hardly see a goddamn thing. Wind rushes and whistles, stings. It’s like a sand blaster aimed at your entire body; nothing is safe. The truck is our only guard. Six guys huddled behind one big truck and bullets firing from an unknown source. I can’t hear anything except wind and bullets. I know they’re talking; I can see their lips move. And then.

“Man down! Man down!”

“Jimmy!”

Gasp.

“Rich, what’s wrong?” my wife asks lying next to me.

I shake if off, realizing I didn’t even know a ‘Jimmy’ in Afghanistan, “Uhh, dream. Sorry.”

She leans over and massages me chest with his hand as she kisses me. God, it’s good to be home.

“It’s funny. The whole time I was over there, I dreamt of nothing else, but being here and now that I’m hear, I’m dreaming of being there.”

A little concerned she asks, “Not because you’d rather be there, I hope,” and another kiss.

“No, no.”

Clara twists herself around, “6:23. I was going to have to get up soon to get Abby ready for school anyway. Eggs or waffles?”

“Eggs,” I smile.

I watch her climb out of bed, her tiny stature, her stick like arms reach for her robe and she steps into her slippers. She disappears from the room without making a single floorboard creak.

* * * *

“No, no, no. You never leave a battle un-won. I don’t know what those goddamn liberals are talking about. Get your ass in battle and see how easy it is to win a war. These thin skinned politicians think these people will all just kiss and make up! It’s not gonna happen. They have to be taught to be civilized. These people need to be told where to take a shit!”

“A lot of them are actually highly educated,” I peep in while my dad goes on and on with his buddies.

“Maybe a lot of the ones you were around. You were an engineer.”

“I was still in combat, Dad. I mean, look, they need to be taught to organize and they need to learn loyalty to a democratic government, sure, but their intelligence isn’t the biggest problem.”

“Oh, here we go. This is his wife’s jargon: ‘We need to hold their itty bitty hands and ask them politely to not blow each other up!’ That’s pussy shit,” my dad loves impersonating my wife and – I didn’t tell you this – but he does a really good job of it.

"I’m not sayin’ that either. They need jobs, though. They need electricity. They need to see that living in democracy is better than the alternative and I’m not sure we’ve shown any of them that yet: not in Afghanistan and certainly not in Iraq.”

“Weren’t you in Afghanistan?” George, one of my dad’s buddies, asks.

“Yeah, but I had friends deployed in Iraq; we all kinda got spread out.”

“Anyone you know workin’ Abu Ghraib?”

“God, no. Thankfully. It’s a big war; we don’t all know each other. I just hear shit from friends. Emails get through. Pictures. I saw one of this little kid. Dead. It was an accident, but…still. Like…what are we doin’ over there? Are we trying to give them a government they can run with a military they can control or are we just exterminating them?”

George takes a long drag and nods his head. My dad shakes his head in disapproval. I know I’m too soft for him, but I can live with that.

“How’s your little girl,” George asks, his eyes still examining my face intently.

“She’s great. She’s perfect. Her mom did a great job.”

“Abigail, right?” I nod. “As is Adams?”

I laugh, “No, not Adams. Clara had a younger sister who died; her name was Abigail, so it’s for her sister. We call her Abby, though.”

“Has she heard Abbey Road yet?”

“No, not yet. I want to wait until she’s older for that. I’m not sure a five year old can totally appreciate The Beatles,” I laugh.

“As long as she ain’t listening to any of that ‘Wiggles’ shit,” my dad puffs.

* * * *

“Jimmy!”

“Jim’s down. Jim’s down!”

“Woah, woah…drag him there!”

“I got this side. You cover there!”

An ambush in a sand storm.

I grab a helmet from the truck and toss it over, then one for me. I can’t see who I’m shooting or even if I’m shooting. Wind and bullets. It’s all a blur. I can’t make out shapes: not of people or guns; I can’t even see the fucking truck.

There’s a haze. There’s a spot in my vision; the sand is thick in the air.

“What is that?” I ask, but no one answers. “Hey, hey…what is that!?”

I don’t know these men. I can’t see them or hear Jim’s cries anymore. All there is to hear are disorienting winds, even the bullets are muffled. I know there’s combat if I could only see it. The dark spot in my eye line inches closer as if I’m about to be eaten by a sand blob.

Gasp.

5:48.

* * * *

Abby sits in her grandma’s lap. Nina brushes her hair back.

“Clara should be back soon and we’ll start dinner. Would you like a drink. A Brandy perhaps?”

“Oh, no, no. I’m fine, Nina. Thank you.”

“Alright, well, you just say the word. You know, Clara’s been working on this story about women refugees. It’s taking a lot out of her, I think.”

“She’s hardly mentioned it to me.”

“Well, of course not. She doesn’t want to bother you with it,” Nina puts Abby on the ground. “Go see how Grandpa’s doing with the sauce!”

Abby runs into the kitchen with her two braids bouncing behind her.

Nina leans in and I meet her, her voice is low, “To be quite honest with you: I don’t think she wants to worry you about anything right now except sex! It was a long tour for her too, yanno,” and my mother-in-law laughs.

Most men would be concerned, if not entirely creeped out by this exchange, but that’s Nina. She hardly gets a sentence out without alluding to sex and she’s a truly beautiful woman in her own right. So, I laugh because men always laugh about sex.

“Have you been…you know…able to perform, officer? Sometimes PTSD can effect…”

“Performing fine, Nina. Thanks for your concern.”

“Listen, I don’t know how sympathetic your father will be, but if you’re experiencing any sort of depression, you better tell someone. Tell me. Tell Clara. It’s been hard on her, having you away with Abby and all. She needs you here, totally here…so if you’re not…”

“I’m fine, actually, Nina, but thank you. I was worried a little about that too. I don’t think any solider can say he doesn’t fear coming home and feeling depressed about it, but I’m feeling great.”

“You’re not jumpy?”

“No, not particularly.”

“Feeling anti-social?”

“I’ve been your veritable social butterfly the last couple days.”

“Sleeping well?”

“Sleeping…” I nod.

The jingling of keys can be heard from outside the door.

“Mommy!” Abby squeaks and runs to the door to greet her mother.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m late!” she says, carrying a gigantic bag with wrinkled papers sticking out from under the flap.

She drops the sack in a huff and picks up Abby. She is glistening.

“Finally!” Tom jokes, slowly walking out from the kitchen. “Wash your hands. Dinner is served.”

* * * *

“What the fuck is that!?”

it’s all in the distance; it’s all out of my reach. It seems like miles away. The sand blob moves closer.

“Stop,” it says, only it doesn’t.

It’s not human, but it’s not earth either. It has neither form nor language.

“Stop?” I choke out through sand and dirt.

Gasp.

“That game must be riveting,” Clara jokes, walking into the room with a bowl of chips in one hand and Abby slung around her other shoulder.

“Mets suck,” I reply, a little disoriented.

She takes a seat next to me on the couch. It’s the modern Rockwell portrait of a family: big strong man with his darling, perfect wife and daughter, watching baseball on a Sunday afternoon. It’s a snapshot of perfect unity in which everything truly is as it should be. A father at home with his little girl and feeling both love and admiration from as well as for his wife: is this not exactly what every human wants out of life and family? Isn’t this the real American dream?

Yet, in a room so far from death and destruction or anything resembling the depths of hell, I feel coming upon me the eerie feeling that hell isn’t as far as Afghanistan, like it’s creeping up under my home’s own foundations. I swear I can see it seep in through the window screen and air vents and it leaves this sinking feeling that once felt, you forget how to feel anything else.

“Yeaaaah!” Clara, excited. “That’s four to one now, sissies! Eat that!”

Abby, on her lap, “Yay, Mets! Yay, Mets!”

“You taught her well,” I kiss my wife.

It’s not something about which she should feel concern. I’m sure reoccurring dreams about war and sand blobs are perfectly normal.

* * * *

“Stop,” it says, or it would if it had a mouth.

“What are you?” wind whips and whirls around my face.

The sand blob hovers in my general vicinity. In this storm, I can’t tell where it begins or ends. I can’t hear its voice, yet I comprehend its language.

“What good is this?” the blob asks.

Around me, fellow soldiers move in slow motion. Jimmy is being attended to, but blood still flies everywhere. Two others duck behind the truck with weapons, shooting at someone they can’t even see. How informal war has become, when you can shoot at a target without ever even making eye contact. The charm of a good sword fight: you got to know your enemy before killing him. You’d have the chance to turn back as you dance around each other, eyes stinging your heart and soul. The decision to kill then was, truly, a decision, not simply the pull of a trigger to take a life you never felt, but would now touch and change forever.

“This is war,” I say.

“I write history…and every line is about what I don’t want to write about anymore,” the blob, its essence, communicates to me.

Confused, I squint, desperately trying to see behind this swirling tornado of sand that seems to want to tell me something, but clearly cannot: it’s sand and sand, in case you missed that day of science class, doesn’t speak; I must be going mad.

“History? What are you?”

“I write history…”

“Are you God?”

“I create and destroy. I am no more or less than you. I set in place circumstances and help to deal with the consequences.”

“You are God, then?”

“What good is this? This death? Whatever I am and whatever you are: does this help either one of us feel safer or live happier? Centuries of death suffered by men because of men. If there exists a God, do you think he would allow this to continue much longer?”

“So, you’re not God?”

“When all humans are gone, the Earth will remain and she’ll recover and new life will form. This planet and this circle of life and death will continue regardless of whether your species is here to defend it. Humanity could be just a blip in her memory. So, do you envision a future with or without mankind?”

“With, of course, with, but…”

“Then men must find a way to live among men. And men must find a way to live within their means on this earth.”

Bullets wiz around and I see another one of my men collapse. Everything except the wind and my body are still stuck in slow motion, but – for some reason – I cannot compel my body to lunge forward to help my fallen comrade.

“What does that mean?” I try, but when I turn my face back around the sand blob is dissolved.

* * * *

“Did we know a Jimmy?”

“Jimmy? When?” Andy, a Marine with whom I served, asks.

“Afghanistan, I guess.”

“Last name?”

“Uhhh, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t even know if he existed.”

“I don’t remember a Jimmy. What’s this about?”

Andy and I went through a lot together from boot camp to war to reuniting with our families after far too long away from home.

“I don’t know. I thought maybe I knew a Jimmy over there,” I respond vaguely.

“More coffee?” the waitress asks.

“Yes, please,” Andy replies.

“Please,” says I.

The waitress fills both our cups and leaves some extra cream on the café table. It’s a gorgeous day; everything’s in bloom. Andy stirs his creamer into his coffee with a particularly peaceful smile etched onto his face.

“It’s so nice to enjoy a cup of coffee without having to worry about pissing in the sand somewhere later on,” Andy laughs. He finishes preparing his coffee, “So, this Jimmy guy…you got a crush on his or something?”

“No,” I laugh. “I’ve been having this weird dream. Some guy named Jimmy gets hit. I think he lives, but he’s the only person in the dream who has a name.”

“You dreaming about Afghanistan?”

“Not really about anything in particular, but – yeah – it’s set there, in like a sand storm.”

“Well, yeah, we became real acquainted with those…”

“But it’s weird because the dream isn’t so much about war or battle as it is…I don’t know…like…about life.”

Andy looks confused.

“There’s this…thing…that appears,” I say in a low voice.

“A thing?”

“Like, it looks like it’s sand just swirling around, right? And there is sand swirling around, but this is like contained. I don’t know…it’s a fuckin’ dream. Look, it talks, but it doesn’t have a mouth. So, I just hear and feel what it’s trying to say without it actually saying anything.”

Andy looks more confused.

“Okay, I know it sounds nuts and it is, but it was just like this nameless, shapeless entity and it was trying to warn me.”

“About what?”

“The end of the world. About how we treat each other and that if we don’t shape up, everything we have…all we know…could get wiped out.”

“Woah, dude, that’s heavy shit.”

“And this thing that was talking to me…it – like – it was talking about if there’s a God, He might not let this go on much longer. Like, humans. Like, we might kill so many of our own and piss God off so much that God just goes, ‘Yanno what? Fuck it! Gone! Poof with humans.’ And, like, yeah…maybe he would. I think I’d be getting pretty pissed about now if I were God too.”

“Sure. I mean, theoretically He created us, but we’re destroying ourselves.”

“Dude, did you ever think that, even though we were defending our country that, maybe, there was something about what we were doing that wasn’t totally moral? I mean, I know we were following orders, but so did the Nazis…and I’m not equating us to Nazis obviously, I just…I wonder if it’s ever worth it. To kill.”

“Yeah, man, of course. I’d think about my boy and my baby girl and I’d think, ‘I hope they never find out about this,’ and that’s like a test for me, man. If I’m thinkin’ about doing something, I think about if my kids find out and whether I can live with them knowing about it and if I CAN live with them knowing, then I think it’s an okay thing to do. So much shit went down over there I hope my kids never hear about.”

“Right, exactly! And, like, what if it’s the same with God.”

“God’s all knowing. He’ll know shit whether you want him to or not.”

“But what if he just creates the situations and wants us to work ourselves out with his help…not like we’re just pawns.”

“You think God’s telling you to end the war, end killing, and save mankind? That’s an unfair task to put on one man’s shoulders, dude,” Andy laughs.

“I know, I know. And I’m not sure it’s God or if it’s just…like…me.”

“Lemme get this straight. You think you were talking to yourself in the shape of a sand creature in a dream about the Apocalypse?”

“Okay, well, when you say it like that it really does sound like I’m fucking losing it!”

“No, dude, it really doesn’t sound any better even if you replace yourself with God…I just wanted to know if I understood you right,” he laughs.

“When we were over there, I hated it. I never really understood the mission or the point. I feel like the stakes need to be really high to go killing people. War almost seems like acceptable mass murder, even genocide. I’m proud to protect my country, my family, but I don’t feel like that was ever really what we were doing.”

“So, you don’t want your girl to know.”

“I don’t want Abby…or Clara…to know what it’s really like over there. And, is that moral? To hide it from them?”

“You askin’ me or your sand monster?”

“Har – fucking – har. It’s just been rumbling around in my head is all. Should I take this seriously?”

“I don’t know if God’s talking to you or not, but – I mean – what it said to you is true. We can all kill each other and burn in hell and it’s our own fault.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“No, man,” Andy says. “Not really. Why…do you?”

“I did.”

“But?”

“But…I don’t know.”

“Do you really think God’s talking to you?”

“Now, if I saw ‘yes’ are you really ever going to look at me the same again?”

Andy chuckles.

* * * *

“When all humans are gone, the Earth will remain and she’ll recover and new life will form. This planet and this circle of life and death will continue regardless of whether your species is here to defend it. Humanity could be just a blip in her memory. So, do you envision a future with or without mankind?”

“With, of course, with, but…”

“Then men must find a way to live among men. And men must find a way to live within their means on this earth.”

“What does that mean? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?” I shout, but my words aren’t audible.

Jimmy still bleeds. I can’t see him, but I see his blood. The only things I can see are sand and blood. My comrades are lost in disorienting winds. A bullet could hit me and not only would I not hear it, I wouldn’t see it. I’d be dead before I knew what hit me.

“WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?” I try again, but the sand blob is lost: spread around Afghanistan or maybe drenched in Jimmy’s blood.

Gasp.

My eyes shoot open and sweat pours off my forehead in large drops to the sheets. And then I see it.

“What are you?”

The sand blob now stands in front of me, several feet away n my bedroom with my wife sleeping soundly to my right. The sand blob communicates nothing.

“What. Are. You?” I ask again slowly and softly so as to not disturb Clara.

The blob moves closer and – with what almost appears to be an arm – begins to reach out to me. Almost involuntarily, my arms rises out from under the sheets and my hand meets the blobs. Upon impact, the blob disintegrates and disappears into the carpet, not leaving a trace.

All the clocks in the room shout “4:21AM” at me. I know I should sleep, but what use is that when I’ll only wind up back in a war zone.

* * * *

“You look like hell,” Tom, my father-in-law, lovingly informs me. “She keepin’ you up all night?” he nods to Clara with an elegantly mischievous grin as she exits the living room to meet up with Nina and Abby. Nina insists on giving Abby piano lessons, which I don’t mind except it’s becoming increasingly obvious that my perfect daughter may be tone deaf. Or just five. The piano can be heard throughout the house crying every Thursday evening.

I give a half-chuckle, which acts like an answer to his question, but really isn’t. He accepts it and moves on.

“Have you heard anything from friends still in Afghanistan?” he asks.

“No, nothing yet. I’m thankful for that, though. Right now, I just want to be home.”

“Yes. Home is a much better place for a young man with a family.”

“Yes,” I smile. “Yes, it is.”

The room goes silent except for Abby’s lesson in the next room until…

“Tom, I’ve never asked you, but I’m curious. About Nigeria. Growing up there. Would you mind if I – ?”

“Go ahead,” my father-in-law answers, rocking back in his chair.

“So, when you were young, you lived under British control, right? Nigeria was part of the British Empire?”

“This is true. I lived in the Southern region on Nigeria which Westernized much more quickly and also inspired me to, eventually, leave the country for America.”

“Did you care that you were under the rule of a country so far away from you? A country out of touch with your needs?”

“Well, look, I was young. British rule was all I knew because we were already under British rule when I was born. I was in my early twenties when we gained our independence and I left soon afterward, so I’d lived a great part of my life that way. I was aware of it and I didn’t think it was right, but for me personally, it may have almost been a blessing.”

“Because it eventually brought you here?”

“Partially that, yes. But also because of the education I received. Look,” he leaned in, “I cannot say that British colonialism in my country was a good thing, but I also cannot say it was the worst thing for me personally,” he paused. “Likewise, what you did in Afghanistan: the good, the bad, the ugly…all those things will have both positive and negative consequences.”

“So, you don’t think it’s wrong for one country to rule another country?”

“Theoretically, no. A strong, wealthy country can bring a lot of good things to small countries with minor economies and failing infrastructures. In practice, though, colonialism or invasion is never truly just about helping the indigenous. And I knew that even as a boy. Britain had her reasons for being in my country and they sure as hell had nothing to do with educated one little black boy.”

“I just wonder whether those folks over there, whether anything we do is ever going to bring peace.”

“I think there’s a right way and a wrong way.”

“And which did we do?”

“Look, Rich, you know I’m against these wars. And that doesn’t mean I’m against you or even that I think you acted immorally by fighting over there. But, I think our great country did a very bad thing. I think you have to choose your battles wisely and I don’t think anything was done wisely in the run-up to either of these conflicts…in Afghanistan or Iraq.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” I force a laugh.

“But that isn’t to say that America can’t win or can’t make something good come out of a very serious mistake. You can always turn situations around with real leadership and direction.”

“But – at a certain point – do you ever wonder if maybe we’ve gone too far? Just too far and there’s no turning the situation around?”

“I suppose there’s a breaking point somewhere, but I don’t think America’s war crimes have reach it. Yet. I still think the principles of liberation are good and that some among us really hope for that. I believe you hoped for that when you were there. And you continue to.”

“Of course.”

“Then, the world may go to hell, but you did all you could to prevent that.”

“Do you think God will view it that way?” I ask almost under my breath.

“God? I wasn’t expecting questions of God tonight.”

“Sorry. Nevermind,” I laugh it off. “It’s just my mind wandering.”

“No, it’s alright. But I’m no priest. You’ll have to work that out with God, I’m afraid.”

I would, but he doesn’t answer me and then he disintegrates and disappears into my carpet. (This point, I chose not to mention to my father-in-law.)

* * * *

I don’t try to touch it this time, despite my curiosity. I let it swirl around. I can’t tell what it’s doing, but it’s doing something. It’s growing or forming. Whereas the dream leaves him formless: just sand swirling, particles flying in and out; now, it is becoming more confined to structure. I sit up silently, watching.

“Honey?”

And the sand blob again disintegrates into the carpet. It’s a good thing it disappears every time. I’d really be pissed if I had to vacuum it up every morning.

“Yeah, babe?”

“Why are you staring out the window? Is there something going on?” Clara, groggily, asks.

“No. Nothing’s going on. Just woke up. It’s a clear night. Lots of stars.”

She burrows her head back into her pillow. She probably won’t even remember this conversation come morning.

* * * *

My mother busily chooses this pan or that pot. The house smells like cake, but there’s no cake. How does she do that?

“Not that I don’t appreciate your combat work, but you’re home now, so you can help me out,” she says hurriedly. “Grab that spoon over there wouldya?”

“Yanno, if dinner’s three or even five minutes late, no one’s gonna scold ya, ma,” I say as I lean across the counter to grab the wooden spoon. “Not even Dad.”

“I’m not worried about it being late. I’m worried about it being burned.”

“You haven’t burned anything in your life.”

She laughs, “Well, regardless, I like having dinner on the table at 7 o’clock.”

“We always had dinner at 7. Every night. You’re pitchin’ a no-hitter, ma.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes it is! Every night. And Dad’d yell at me if I wasn’t at the table, hands and face washing by 6:58.”

“No, no, no, I was late once. Remember that Sunday? After church, I stayed late to talk to Mrs. Farrow and I lost track of time?”

“No, I don’t remember that at all.”

“Well, I guess I was more upset about it than anybody else was. My job was to be your mom. I guess I saw it as some sort of failure. I would have been docked a day’s pay had I been workin’ in an office or factory or something.”

“Ehhh, you’re a great mom,” I say and kiss her cheek. “You’d be Head Supervisor Mom is you were in an office or a factory.”

“Oh, Rich. I’m glad Afghanistan hasn’t worn your sense of humor. I was wondering, actually, if you’d come to church with your dad and I this Sunday. Everyone’s been askin’ to see you.”

This request isn’t an outlandish one. I went to church with my parents every Sunday as a kid and most Sundays even once grown and married. It would only make sense that once home, I’d fall back into the routine.

Routine? How sad. Is that all church is to me?

“Richie?”

“Sure, ma, I’ll go.”

“Great! Oh, that’ll make Father Davis so happy.”

“Can I ask you something?”

She nods.

“Why do we always go to church? I don’t remember ever seeing either you or Pop with a Bible out in this house.”

“Well, I guess your dad and I always went growing up. It was something we thought was important. Give you and your sisters some sort of spiritual background.”

“But it wasn’t so much to believe in God. More just to believe in…something?”

“I don’t think we ever decided to press God onto you kids, but I certainly think we hoped you’d enjoy church and learn something from going.”

“I guess. I don’t know. Do you really believe in God or do you just think the stories are good. Not good like entertaining, but good like moral: stories to learn from.”

“Both.”

“So, you think there’s a God up there somewhere watching us?”

“Watching us, guiding us. Yes, I do. But even for those who don’t share that belief, I think learning some of those stories could do the whole world some good. Whether you think Jesus existed, even as a fictional character, he’s not a terrible role model.”

“If God’s watching us, then, do you think he’s happy with us?”

My mother, now realizing this wasn’t just a casual conversation, pauses her stirring.

“Happy with us as a family?”

“Happy with us as…humanity. All of us.”

“Father Davis would surely be more qualified to answer that than I am, but, yes. I think he’s happy with us.”

“Despite all the death and war and fighting? You think he’s happy with us?”

“I think all this death and war and fighting is part of His plan. Right now, it’s tough to swallow, tough to understand, but He has a purpose for all of us. He has His reasons.”

I pick up the spoon and begin to stir the sauce. I test it was my pinky finger.

“Think the sauce is ready,” I tell her.

If there is a God and if he is causing this, is that really a God I’d want to worship in a little church every Sunday? Shouldn’t God love us? Shouldn’t He want us to live long, happy lives? Why should war be the test of humanity? Why does there need to be a test at all?

* * * *

It’s always the same dream. The same war. The same ambush and bloodied sand. It’s always the same spot in my vision that speaks, but doesn’t speak. It’s form created before my eyes yet has no start or end. It’s always the same conversation and unanswered questions, the same gasp and beating heart.
And it’s one thing for this blob to haunt my dreams, but now he has invaded my turf: my home.

I try to keep my distress low and my wife ignorant of Afghanistan’s invasion of our home. There it is again: standing in front of me. Afghanistan sand has no place in my American bedroom. (Am I allotted no privacy? I mean, really, what if we were…yanno…busy!?) I say nothing this time. I stare at it, puzzled. I wonder if I watch it all night, will my wife see it when she finally awakes and – if she does – exactly how do I explain this one? I wonder which is worse: if she sees it or if only I can see it? I wonder if I’m simply crazy. Am I a prophet?

Is there a difference?

The sand blob swirls silently beside my bed. If it had eyes, I’d swear it was staring just as hard at me as I was at it. I wish I had a name for it. Or even a gender. I want to be polite. Would it respond more pleasantly to, “Hi, Mr. Sand Blob, sir: what can I do for you?” Does it even understand my non-dreaming language or could it only understand me when I was asleep because anything is possible in dreams?

Is this a dream too?

The tiny tan beads which form the blob are now darker and more defined. A shape is forming. God’s body? When they say that God is omnipresent is it because He’s made of sand and is quite literally everywhere?

A human-like figure forms, but the details are still blurred by sand. I can see a face, but it is neither feminine nor masculine. It’s just two eyes, and bump of a nose, and a hollow mouth. There are limbs, but nothing defined: hands, but no fingers; that sort of thing.

“Does this form intimidate you any less?” its mouth opens. I don’t hear it. I only understand it. It’s telepathy with the courtesy of a moving mouth. But I don’t know how to best communicate back: do I speak aloud or can he hear my thoughts?

“The latter,” Mr. Sand Blob responds.

This would be a wild acid trip had I taken any acid before bed.

“Actually, drugs make it tougher for me to enter your mind.”

Right. You hear my thoughts. Gotta remember that before I think anything inappropriate about Angelina Jolie.

“Anything inappropriate you think about Angelina Jolie is perfectly understandable. I do apologize for my intrusion. I know you cannot always control your thoughts and I will not hold it against you. You see: you keep waking up. I keep scaring you and I don’t mean to. Does this form intimidate you less?”

Well, yes, I suppose.

“Very good.”

If my wife wakes up – ?

“She’ll only see her husband sitting up in bed, staring blankly out the window.”

So does that then make you a figment of my imagination or…are you real?

“Reality is subjective.”

You’re really going to give me the ‘if a tree falls in the forest when no one’s there does it still make a thud’ argument?

“Reality is whatever you want it to be. If you want me to be in your imagination, then that is all I will be. If you want me to be real and physical, holding your hand on the beach, I can be that to. That is not important and it is not why I am visiting you.”

Okaaay. I’ll bite. Why are you visiting me?

“You’re in trouble.”

Me? Like…personally?

“Your planet and your kind are suffering. There is death like I’ve never seen before and not just among human beings, but among all species of all living creature.”

If you’re God, shouldn’t you be able to – yanno – make it stop?

“Regardless of whether I’m God, I couldn’t stop humans from doing what they choose to do. Unless you’re a determinist in which case…well, don’t be a determinist. Those folks are nutty. Point is: the only ones who can prevent early Armageddon are you, humans. You’re the only living creatures on the planet smart enough to fix the mess before it’s irreversible.”

Early Armageddon? You think we’ll end the world ourselves – what – before you’re ready for the judgment?

“No. Before the four horsemen’s horses are fed and bathed.”

You’re sort of a smart ass, aren’t you?

“If I’m God then don’t I deserve to be?”

And if you’re not God?

“Well then you’re the smart ass, aren’t you?”

Well, what am I supposed to do? I’m one guy. I’m not even over there anymore.

With this question on the floor, the blob suddenly went silent.

Excuse me? You still hovering over there?

“Men must live among men. Peace must be the goal for which all mankind is driven to achieve. Love was engineered to be among the strongest human emotions for just that purpose, but men seem to have forgotten what love really is. They’ve made marriage a popularity contest. They’ve made sex dirty. They’ve been blinded by greed and falsified faith. Mankind wants harmony – instinctively – and it is in the best interest of humanity that humanity thrive, that man lives on, that the Earth be revived and nurtured.”

Pretty sure I could have figured that one out.

“Yes. And you have. Now, what about your fellow men?”

With that question on the floor, I suddenly went silent.

“If I were God, I could promise you that if the world comes to an end by human means and not mine, you can be damn sure those pearly gates won’t be opening for anyone.”

So…you are God?

“And if I’m only a figment of your imagination, listen to what you’re saying to yourself: something is wrong with this world. It’s plain to see. It’s obvious. There’s death and hunger, greed, disease, mass sadness. You know that isn’t right.”

Yeah, okay, but – yanno – there are some people who think they’re doing you a favor. You, God…not you, me. So, what about those who encourage the destruction just to bring about the end of days?

“They are wrong. No deity would ever condone murder and any book which claims so has greatly misinterpreted the words of that deity.”

What if they won’t just listen to me?

“Figure out what they will listen to. It’s as if instead of one anti-Christ walking the earth to bring the end of days, the entire Christian right has turned into an army of anti-Christs, but they’re all wrong – all the religious fanatics – and they’re all pushing their luck. And my patience.”

Your patience? You are God, then?

“Aren’t they really trying your patience?”

And before I could answer, the blob disappeared again into my carpet and I fell back in my bed, compelled to sleep as if my body literally could not stand being awake any longer. There were no dreams of desert ambushes or sand blobs anymore.

* * * *

“So, that sand monster of yours still visiting you?” Andy asks as his son and Abby play in the sandbox.

“Oh, him? No.”

“So did you vanquish God or just start seeing a good therapist?” he laughs.

“I don’t know what it was. I think I just figured out that – while no one person or soldier is at fault – there is a very big problem over there. A messy one. And it’s okay for me to think it’s a mistake even if I served; I’m not betraying anyone.”

“No, man, of course not. We all got our opinions of what went on over there.”

“And that isn’t to say that there’s no cause over there worth fighting over, but we’re just not doing it right. We’re just making them hate us more. Our morals are clashing with theirs and – ultimately – it’s what they think that matters; it’s their land.”

“For now,” Andy says, shaking his head in disapproval.

“This whole thing really never felt like it was totally about liberation.”

“No, of course not. We got caught with our pants down and had to react. And we lucked out because at least we did help a little in Afghanistan. Iraq has just become such a fuckin’ shit hole. ‘Howdy, we’re from America; here to give you freedom and democracy, but first we’re going to destroy your cities and force curfews upon you! Oh…and we’ll take some of that oil too, while we’re here.’”

“It just never really seemed that worth it, yanno? And if we were going to invade, it should have been done a lot better than this,” I lament.

“We’re just snatchin’ up countries left and right. Next stop…Iran? What the fuck, man.”

“Empires fall. They always do. And someday this one’s gonna fall too.”

* * * *

After church, Father Davis wants to speak with me. He promises my parents, with whom I had driven, that we would only be a few minutes. He has an office down a short corridor where those doubtful souls or the lost-willed come for heavenly words of guidance.

“How’ve you been since you got home?” he asks.

“Doin’ alright. I’m sorry I haven’t been to church until today. So many people to catch up with,” I say as I pull out the chair in front of Father Davis’ desk.

“No, no, it’s quite fine. I was not offended. In truth, a lot of returning soldiers seem to find it difficult to return to church. For some, faith is all they had, but for others, war can often make it difficult to keep the faith.”

“Well, I can’t say I was a regular attendee of the chapel, but I made it there when I could.”

“I just wanted to make sure you were readjusting well and to tell you that the church and I are here for you, for whatever crises in faith you may experience.”

“Well, Father, thank you. I really appreciate that.”

“Is there anything you want to get off your chest?”

I think for a moment.

“Son?” Father Davis asks.

“Just…I worry that God won’t be proud of me, that my service – in his eyes – is just pointless killing.”

“I see. Every person must take responsibility for his or her deeds. What you did in the war – in any other situation – could be defined as pointless killing. Does God know or care whether you killed because it was your order, because you had to protect your country?”

“Exactly. Does He?”

“I believe ours is a forgiving Lord. I believe you know in your heart whether what you did was justified and, if having decided it was not, you must reconcile your deeds first with yourself, your friends, you fellow soldiers, and then with God. God granted us the gift of morality. With his help, we can see the right path.”

“Thank you, Father,” I say, nodding.

Father Davis stands. I stand as well. I reach out my hand and he places his in mind. He shakes my hand firmly, smiling like a proud father, and we exit the church.

I’ve never thought or morality and a ‘gift from God’ particularly. I always sort of thought of it as something we all learn. Despite this minor disagreement, I understand what Father Davis means. If I sense that our actions in the world are wrong, I have the power to protest them, the duty, in fact. I don’t regret my service. I know I did some good and, perhaps, as my father-in-law said: “I still think the principles of liberation are good and that some among us really hope for that.”

I don’t know whether it’s God’s will or my subconscious gnawing at me, but it doesn’t really matter. The pain, death, and suffering occurring in the world is plain to see through anyone’s eyes: omnipotent or not. I know right from wrong, or I know one version of it. I recognize that different people, even the ones we had to deal with overseas and even the ones who blow themselves up, all have a version of morality by which they have to live. I learned from my parents that defending your country is good and I learned from my wife and her family that war in the name of anything less than defending your country is not good. I don’t need a God to tell me that and while I didn’t always know it, once it was learned it was very much real and apparent to me. Almost innate. So, whether I’m a prophet or a guilt-ridden former soldier who can’t sleep through the night, whether my moral compass is as a result of God’s works or my upbringing: I know the blood being spilled in the name of what used to be such a great and strong state is being spilled haphazardly and unnecessarily.

A new Bible needs to be written.

Acknowledgements:

“This is war…every line is about what I don’t want to write about anymore.”
- Stolen from Brand New’s “Okay, I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t” off Deja Entendu (2003)

“Empires fall. They always do. And someday this one’s gonna fall too.”
- Stolen from Kevin Devine’s live version(s) of “Noose Dressed Like A Necklace” (and/or “Whistlin’ Dixie”) off Make The Clocks Move (2003)

A Saint

2008-11-01T20:13:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I can feel him,
hear his voice inside my head.
A saint I never mentioned;
a saint forever dead.
But I hear his songs
sung sweetly through
a sadness and a thickening soot,
digging himself out of an unspoken rut.
Working through some late night terror
with beauty and matchless grace.
Dark demons only he saw,
though thousands heard,
left him hungry and raw
and inevitably alone.
Everyone is a fucking pro,
but they let you walk around with a head so low.
He knew it better than most
and with a whisper from his ghost,
I heard a hundred sorry songs
of so many regretted wrongs.
We hear every word
and hum every tune.
Don't worry, dear balladeer,
you will not be forgetten soon.

***********************************

Meh. I already wrote this poem and it was better the first time, but it just keeps coming up.

"Everyone is a fucking pro and they all got answers from trouble they've known." Elliott Smith St. Ides Heaven

"We look to flashes of sky, the windows of time, the crust of our dreams. But really we wait, only to find the crest of our sea. And, we ride when we find our wave. Take us to the coast, carry us home." Band Marino Dear Balladeer

Your Apocalypse

2008-09-23T16:26:00.000-04:00

Your apocalypse came and went,
showered down the innocent.
Your pristine haven
with your god still saving
souls and damning saints.
I hear a whisper; it's faint
and it keeps my head spinning
while God is grinning
a magnificent, mischievous grin
because there's no consequence for His sin.
He sunbathes on a cloud
and can't hear us crying so loud
while Jesus writes dirty poetry
and hides it where no one can see.
A happy literate is he
and his words are for free.
But you'll manage to mangle them,
destroy, wreck, and tangle them
so you'll never listen
to his proud and peaceful sermon.
It's your own fault for throwing it away.
It's your own fault for what you won't say.
And you'll grieve when you hear
the horseman's horse galloping near,
but you'll know in your heart
that you brought about the start.
The fire's heat sticks
and the devil's pitchfork pricks
against your back
for the conviction you lack.
Don't claim your piety now
for Love to whom you never did vow.

*****************************************

At my local Starbucks, there was a book entitled "Jesus With Dirty Feet" sitting on a little book shelf. I misread the title for a brief moment as "Jesus Writes Dirty Poetry." Don't ask me how. The spine of the book was wrecked, so the only words I could really make out were "Jesus" and "Dirty." I was a little disappointed when I saw I was wrong. So, it became the basis for this poem. I liked the idea. Jesus was a hippie-ish figure, afterall. I could see him writing dirty poetry and hiding it from Pop. God in this poem is the Old Testament 'fire and brimstone' sort of God and Jesus is supposed to represent a softer figure who is then - naturally - misunderstood; his words turned upside down and interpreted into garbage he never intended. Maybe this is my brief history of the Christian faith. Maybe.

"There's hell upon a breeze; there's hell upon a breeze. Six riders ride..." AA Bondy How Will You Meet Your End?

Shoe Laces

2008-09-15T17:32:00.000-04:00

Heart bleeds,
skips a beat,
whispers lies
and takes bribes.

You're much too far away
and I can't think quiet enough to pray.
I miss the words you wrote
and the song from your throat.

But it's your hand on my back,
that warmth I now lack,
the keeps me awake at night,
that keeps you within sight.

I'm not in the business of interpretation
and to try would be a great sin
and just because I miss your eyes,
doesn't mean I'm paralyzed.

So, tell me something meaningful:
words that wake the idle
and bring me back to you
where my vision's always glued

to soft faces
and shoe laces
and smiles that bite through
even the thickest fog and dew.

****************************************

It's about the little things we notice about people that make us miss them the most.

"So let my hands stray past that boundaries of your back to get you breathing and get this started..." Brand New Logan To Government Center

Myth Born

2008-09-15T16:51:00.000-04:00

Tell me the truth
or a convincing lie:
words so mangled
and mismanaged,
their meanings are
muffled and mutated.
There was a story
whispered or maybe
wimpered, but not told:
remembered,
restored,
resurrected,
rewound, and
ruined.
Written and
written off:
a lie spewed
a myth born,
a happy ending
to save face,
to let you leave
with a smile in place.
But it's fake
and fraudulent
and it sickens
every inch.
Disappears
in a sinch.
Aches on your skin,
a pinch.
You want the truth
to sound so sweet.
Oh, disappointment,
a fatal defeat.
But you force your head high
and you smile real wide
and you cover and conceal
that which you can't feel.

**************************************

It's about the lies we believe and the truth we can't believe.

"Believe in me ' cause I don't believe in anything and I want to be someone to believe..." Counting Crows Mr. Jones

Back

2008-08-19T22:51:00.000-04:00

There's dust and a haze
I get lost in these days.
The shadows are too thick
so I lose you when I blink,
search through the muck.
Why should I give a fuck?
I say it's just a phase
I get lost in some days.
I wander around an empty house
behind the ghost of a lost spouse
who was never really mine;
I was yours to pass the time.
It's just your gaze
I get lost in most days.
A song sings through
the walls of my room.
The needle is dirty,
but the record keeps turning.
Your words and your ways
I get lost in nowadays.
A slip of the tongue
and all hell has begun.
And I just want to go back.
I just want to go back.

***********************************************

"It's seven-thirty. I can smell the candles burning. I could go to sleep now. I'll just wait till morning when the melodies come and sing me stories. All the birds that can talk; no, they're never boring..." Wild Sweet Orange House Of Regret

"In the shadows buried in me lies a child's toy..." Sunny Day Real Estate Shadows

Falling

2008-08-19T14:47:00.000-04:00

It's something in the inside
and I don't have words to write it out:
misleading and misunderstanding,
speaks in tongues and scribbles.
Peeling out from behind
a weak and weathered mind,
it's misshapen and mistaken;
and it was never quite right.
Just like us.
It boroughs back
into it's shell:
cozy and cold,
falling into the comfort
and complacency
of normalcy and patterns,
of admiring from afar.
Teeth, like bars, hold back,
a trap,
a language barrier we built
and never broke:
silence,
in which so much is said,
but every word misheard,
indiscernible.
So, in your face,
I read a warning;
it tells me:
stay away.
Another step farther
and I won't see anymore;
I'll just fall away
while falling harder.
Because I want to know
your song
and your smile
and every inch.
But that's not what I say,
only what I mean
and I fall behind the horizon,
so I'll always be falling.

********************************************

"With your head up high, would you try? 'Cause you're the only one to pull me through - it's true - and it seems a waste of time to grow old alone; we've been dyin' since the day we fell apart..." The New Frontiers The Day You Fell Apart

"Shivering cold, I woke up in water and wrapped myself around the toilet seat. I spoke in tongues and took all my clothes off. The tops of my fingers touched the tops of my toes..." Wild Sweet Orange Ten Dead Dogs

"I got this delicate lisp that speaks in tongues and upper lips. Your silhouette's my favorite. I'm not letting go of it..." Northstar Pollyanna

XO

2008-08-14T15:41:00.000-04:00

Clear your mind.
Pass the time.
It's late,
but it's so crowded.
Listen to a voice
through the headphones.
You can turn him up louder
than the noise in your head.
The sky is falling,
but who's to notice.
Each dying star
unseen or forgotten.
It's all the same to you,
another sign of destruction.
A hand to warm your shoulder:
placed there by a dead man.
His visage would startle you
if you weren't expecting him.
His voice sings and sooths,
but you'll never know him now.
And the pain,
like that of not knowing God,
aches in a place you didn't know existed
and makes your skin burn inside to out.
You reach,
but the hand is gone.
No remnants to grab.
No warmth to calm.
To honor his words, I vow,
and I'm gonna love him anyhow.

***************************************

This came out of nowhere, but it happened last night. Not shitting you.

"What I used to be will pass away and then you'll see that all I want now is happiness for you and me..." Elliott Smith Happiness

In Mirrors

2008-08-12T16:25:00.000-04:00

In mirrors, there's a shine,
but not in mine.
It's stale and bitter
and looks like me.
A glare, a dagger,
a meaningless mess,
a tie untied,
and a secret to confess:
avert your eyes
so you can ignore the rest.

I felt it in your glance
and saw it in your fingers.
I tasted it in your voice
before you went silent.
It was a brilliant mirage
I fell for in full,
framed into focus
and forced into view.
Now: a back turned
and a book closed

mid chapter,
dialogue choked.
We are a story unwritten
or never quite conceived
or shelved for a rainy day
in Paradise.
And whatever weak lines
are written for me
are probably better off
remaining in the silence.

********************************************

More to come.

"We saw a spark within your eyes. Your face reflected in the light. We are all angels in the sky. We are all mirrors in disguise." The New Frontiers Mirrors

You'll Have To Wait

2008-07-24T15:18:00.000-04:00

Save your voice
from getting harsh
by biting your tongue
and sucking it up.
It's getting late
and for your wishes,
you'll have to wait.
You'll have to wait.
Those screaming sounds
from behind your ears
are telling you:
give into your fears.
Another fall,
another failure,
another mark,
a brilliant anchor.
I wear it well:
my seal of honor.
It's nothing,
but a constant reminder.
And even louder,
a clamor.
It shuts me in
and up
and down
and where I land
is in the dark:
the only place
where I can see
what's sitting there
in front of me.
A cloudy sky,
a rotting Earth,
and all the things
I should have thought of first
are tearing down my walls.
A riot.
Wait some more
and then you'll see,
all that's really left of me,
melted in your eyes
and evaporated to the sky.
Up here, there's a better view.
I wish you knew.

*************************************

^ Written in a Waffle House in Phoenix.

"I met a girl on the square who showed me how to kill my cares, but once that's done, man, there's nothing left to do. Time's running backwards from me to you." Elliott Smith Riot Coming

Cold

2008-07-14T21:38:00.000-04:00

It's swollen and it hurts
and it's lesser than it's worth.
A badge, a mark, and name tag pinned
in vibrant red onto my skin.
A scowl sketched inside my skull
reminds me that my fists are full
of fire and a choking heat;
the blood spills SPLAT onto my feet.
You can't find it in the words I say,
but you read it in my eyes anyway.
And it twists and turns
and disappears before you learn,
cried out in a tear
and whipped away out of fear.
Without words, a plea:
you want more from me,
but the syllables make it real
and that breaks the deal,
breaks the latch and starts the flood;
hear me fall and make a thud
on a floor of glass that cracks
under the weight of useless facts
that leave me done and out of breath,
just out of reach of crooked death.
It's the story I've written in ink
of how I never stop to think,
about the hand that leaves mine cold;
my God, this story's getting old.

****************************

Still working on that one about the end of the world. It's sitting there staring at me, but it's too much to think about. Especially since I leave for tour tomorrow and I don't feel like thinking about the end of the world.

For now, here's some inner contemplation leaking out. For whatever good that does.

"This is the life you went and earned because you never fucking learned." Kevin Devine Carnival

Mercy Street

2008-07-09T14:41:00.000-04:00

Almost gave up today,
threw another one away,
like the sky was falling down
and on God's face a frown.
A let-down, a disgrace
and on my hand is placed
the mark of sin;
an evil grin
peers at me across Mercy Street.
He swears - for me - he is sweet.
Or his ripe red apple is.
He cons me just like this.
Redemption is too lost to be found.
She's dug herself far under ground.
She fears false confessions of
faith, remorse, or love.
So, I take from the grinner
his apple for my dinner.
But before my tongue can taste,
my veins spill out their waste;
my hateful heart can no longer beat
upon the concrete of Mercy Street.

**************************************

I guess, in keeping with a theme, it's about wanting to feel forgiven. There's a story in there somewhere, but figure it out yourselves.

"With every breath you drink in the night, you won't give up your blues without a fight. And looking at the sky, there is no pain, and the stars keep falling down like burning rain. They were fired by the mightiest of guns..." AA Bondy The Mightiest Of Guns

A Crooked Crutch

2008-06-24T16:51:00.000-04:00

From savior to son,
from holy spirit to the one,
to whom repentance is owed in full
and forgiveness is a sober tool:
when all is said and done
does it really matter who's lost or won?
Whatever you hold true
is yours to hold true
from the landscapes of Eden
to the edges of Hell or even
the space in which coming clean
leaves you buried and unseen.
War, Famine, Pestilence, Death,
a thunderous gallop you wish to forget:
don't look twice; we're well on our way
to a judgment which will wash us away.
That heavy gavial, that heavenly judge,
that holy jury: will they hold a grudge?
Will the gates open wide or slam in you face
the day the clouds fall and earth is displaced?
Oh, Sin, you say you know me well,
because my heart, from Heaven, fell.
You keep me far from home and love,
and from almighty God above.
And yet you don't appear in space
or occur in any single place.
You are nothing but an abstract fiend,
a crooked crutch upon which I leaned.
You are Fear without Faith
and I think I like your taste,
but I hate your big steel bars
and - most of all - I hate your scars.

********************************

It's about a fall from grace.

I'm not sure whose.

It didn't make an impact.

"I don't want to talk about Jesus. I just want to see His face." AA Bondy Rapture (Sweet Rapture)

Spin

2008-06-24T16:49:00.000-04:00

When failure's not an option
you spin inside your head,
finding faults in every detail
like you're wasting more than breath.

Each frame of every film
and each smile laced with guilt
reveals a shining, desperate quirk,
a secret you died for, but kept.

Like you're racing more than time,
you clinch your fists and grit your teeth
as if such empty gestures could compete,
as if you don't just want to bleed.

It's the debt you earned and owe
for writing less than what you know
and letting that which saves you
break, shatter, scatter, and blow.

***************************************

I wanted this to be a lot more than it became. Then, I just got annoyed with it. I'm out of school and I just feel like I'm floating. I could be what I have been. I could be what I was. Or I could try to be something different if I had any idea how to do that. I feel like the magic 8 ball would say: "outlook not good."

"Keep looking, but get any inkling of 'failure' out of your head - you're doing the right thing by enjoying your free time and the weather..."

Begin

2008-06-19T21:34:00.000-04:00

You tried to fix me,
but I broke
free and fell
like stars from Heaven.
There are footsteps beside mine
so I must be going mad,
but He whispers not to worry
and takes me by the hand.
"I don't know you,"
I say with a stutter.

And He doesn't reply,
only raises a mirror to my nose.
But I don't know
whose eyes look back anymore:
there's no reflection without light
and it's all the same with eyes shut anyhow.
So I won't see the world
and I won't taste the sun,
but I'll hear the songs
and I'll feel them through.

But can salvation be sung?
Can it be lost or won?
Is it written in ink?
Can it dissolve or shrink?
It's something like faith
that keeps me awake.
Hazy eyed and terrified,
I wonder if he knows I lied.
Forgive me, Father, I have sinned.
Don't even know where to begin.

******************************

Abnormal poem. Especially for me. Stanzas that aren't four lines long? Haha. I don't do that. It also only rhymes in the last stanza, which is something that would normally bug me. I like consistency. I decided to tell myself to shut the fuck up on that, though. This time.

It's sort of just about how you can't know "God" or you can't have faith or spirituality until you know who YOU are, until you know what you're all about and what you stand for / believe in. It doesn't have to be "God" in any religious sense. You can't have any idea about what you're life should stand for until you know who you are. If the light's off in the room and you can't see who you are, you can't even begin the process. If you can't be honest, you might as well live in the dark.

Don't worry. I'm not converting or dedicating my life to Jesus. Just because I've had a Bible on my desk opened up to Revelation for the last two days doesn't mean shit. I'm just studying. Thinking.

"I hope Jesus is the one, but what if we're wrong and he doesn't come? Who will give us love?" The New Frontiers Who Will Give Us Love?"

"I'll take something to believe, something with long sleeves 'cause it's unpredictable. Now Jesus said He'd fill my needs, but my heart still bleeds. He's just not physical." - Pedro The Lion Promise

The Joke's On You

2008-06-12T02:48:00.000-04:00

Caves and Earth's crust
and crisp, clean air:
breathe better before
the Fall.
Preparing at night,
those false saints
for their judgment,
their last triumphant stand.
Divinity swings on her cloud
watching the cars pollute the sky,
the lit factory lights
shown through haze towards Heaven.
Gates closed:
no more admission today,
no more deserving souls,
just weary soldiers.
"And it's not enough,"
she sighs.
"Spare me your prayers,"
her lamentations trail.
A mocking laugh,
a mushroom cloud,
a menacing eye,
a machine gun blast,
and all the rumors
(lies we spread),
the paper thin promises
(ripped to shreds)
create a world of nothing true,
nothing real, and nothing new.
"This time, kids, the joke's on you,"
Divinity heckled, her rage grew.
Melt away, regenerate,
retell the lies you swear you hate.
She'll have you realize your own fate,
but only once it's much too late.
So, go on about your mission of might
and how - for freedom - we have to fight.
Remember well the words you write:
they haunt the rest of us at night.

**********************************

This could probably fit in somewhere with the 'Emperor' series, but I don't think it quite makes it there...but maybe. It's along those same lines, but dealing more with morality from an innocent omniscient point of view. It's about the end of the world, about doom, about someone 'up there' saying, "Fuck you guys; I'm tired of you and your useless bullshit." It's about all the ways we kill ourselves. It's all about the end because, really, nothing and no one is forever and when all our bullshit is said and done, does it really matter who's won? It's about: "Can we all just get along?" and "Can't you just kiss and make up?" It's about wishing that people would actually do what's right, what makes them happy (while not hurting anyone else), what makes them tick. It's about Divinity and she wants you to know that "life is what it makes of you." (Yeah...I've been into The New Frontiers for a week and a half and I've decided I'm awesome enough to quote them.)

"I've been writing a lot about God," I told him.
"I've noticed. You write about God a lot for someone who doesn't believe in her."
I snicker.

"It's not what we're owed, but it's what we've earned and it's closer than we realize and it's time now to burn." Kevin Devine Time To Burn

"Once there was a time to join the army and once there was a time to hear the news and once there was a time for easy silence, but now the jury waits for you." AA Bondy Witness Blues

Landing

2008-06-09T13:19:00.000-04:00

A pretty paradox:
perfection and detox.
I lost the words I meant to write
to mist and shadows and a vacuumous light.
I tucked them away in a box
and weighed it down with rocks.
They were too weak to win a fight
against her eternal, omnisent right.

And in their deep sea dungeon,
that place so foreign:
no screams are audible,
no sylables recognizable.
While her heretical surmon
acts as more motivation:
this urge, insurmountable
and the mark, unmistakable.

Scribbled lines on tattered pages
left forgotten for ages and ages
are my only hope for understanding,
redemption, love, or landing
on my feet through these changes
of hearts and minds and places.
And through my staggered planning,
erase all evidence of my branding.

*****************************************

"...
When between her and her foes
A mist, a light, an image rose,
Small at first, and weak, and frail
Like the vapour of a vale:

Till as clouds grow on the blast,
Like tower-crowned giants striding fast,
And glare with lightnings as they fly,
And speak in thunder to the sky,

It grew - a Shape arrayed in mail
Brighter than the viper's scale,
And upborne on wings whose grain
Was as the light of sunny rain..."

- P.B. Shelley, "The Mask Of Anarchy"

He Looks Away

2008-06-08T21:29:00.000-04:00

But you never said it, did you?
And you never made a sound,
and the words that passed your lips
were always only partly true.
So, there's no one left to blame
except that sorry, misshapen sap
whose empty eyes gaze back
from behind your mirror's cracking pane.
I picked up the pieces that I found,
but they didn't fit anywhere anyway.
And falling, they landed and
looked more whole apart than as part.
Of a larger hole
where passions are misplaced,
perfectly prim paradoxes
play with forced-quiet tongues.
It rages in your skull until you burst
or tear the seams that suck you in.
One day, all the things you should have said
will poison you and take your breath.
Folly's in the silence reached
when fear controls you voice,
when Love bats his eyes, but you refrain
because you swear he looks away.

Your Pages

2008-05-15T15:47:00.000-04:00

Thievery in themes
among words and worlds
of thought
and heart:
what's right,
what's not.
And each measured line
written in hasty rhyme
is written and rewritten
and plucked from piles
of your pages,
only with perforations.
Poesy and Piracy are cousins
rooted together in branching affection:
an understanding unspoken,
uttered alone in eyes.
There is not in the world
either malice or matter to alter it,
I think.
I hope.
With inspiration as elusive
as an aging angel,
I anguish as Antigonus
in restless agitation.
Art has never been
so very close;
now it teeters terribly
on the tip of my tongue.
Something so near,
but never mine
because I am only
what I say
and I say
so very little
of what is truly
mine to say.

****************************************

Sources:

CAMILLO: Sicilia cannot show himself over-kind to Bohemia.
They were trained together in their childhoods; and
there rooted betwixt them then such an affection,
which cannot choose but branch now. Since their
more mature dignities and royal necessities made
separation of their society, their encounters,
though not personal, have been royally attorneyed
with interchange of gifts, letters, loving
embassies; that they have seemed to be together,
though absent, shook hands, as over a vast, and
embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed
winds. The heavens continue their loves!

ARCHIDAMUS: I think there is not in the world either malice or
matter to alter it. You have an unspeakable
comfort of your young prince Mamillius: it is a
gentleman of the greatest promise that ever came
into my note.

- The Winter's Tale - William Shakespeare

AND

The Ecstasy Of Influence

Mauled And Masked

2008-05-08T17:28:00.000-04:00

There's a word
for people like you.
I'm sure of it,
only I don't know it.
I can't pronounce it
and I can't spell it.
It gets caught in my throat
and stuck between my teeth.
Mauled and
masked.
I'm a terrible poet
and worse at 3am,
but your miles
are in my eyes.
Wide open,
wide awake,
and that wide smile of yours
wades through the width.
Whispers and whines
and wayward eyes
and the musty shine
of lucid lines
make clear intentions,
no false accusations.
It's true;
all of it is.
But fancy words
can't create bridges.
If time and space
were nothing but terms,
this bed would be less empty
and my body less cold.

**********************************************

Couldn't sleep.

Fuch yeah, dude.

I'm still cold.

"'You sink your voice, but I can distiguish the tones of that voice, when they would be lost on others.'" Captain Wentworth / Jane Austen Persuasion

Voice Betrayed

2008-04-28T14:44:00.000-04:00

Itching to etch for days:
the fog, the rain, the haze
and inspired fortunes phase
you in and out of stirring craze.
Words turn meanings - switch in phrase -
and syntax taxing tampered praise
create a patchwork puzzle of blacks and greys
and meaning is lost: alphabet decays.
Language thrown into the blaze
of reds and yellows; your ending frays
and falls apart in neat cliches,
but it's only your voice you did betray.
Your feather or pen, your ink well lays
as welted proof of no todays
as past swallows you whole and weighs
upon your shoulders: kicks and plays.
Wake up: it's just a phase
'cause you're not done with all the ways
you write and wait through his delays;
I wonder if this one stays.

*******************************************

Title comes from an earlier draft.

Listening to a lot of Elliott Smith, though I'm not sure that explains anything. Upon first reading, this won't make any sense, but it is really quite literal: sort of about writing out your life and then revising when someone tells you it's wrong until it makes no sense and then you quit complaining about what has already happened to start focusing on what is happening or could potentially happen next...though that may not be any better. Something like that.

"So, wake up 'cause you're not done. You could pick yourself up, kid, and you could learn how to love..." Kevin Devine Ballgame [Live]

Advance

2008-04-22T23:11:00.001-04:00

Putting broken words together:
you are form, formal, formidable.
Our split speech spits
and spews in sync
with lavish decor
around the door
way to a place where
language is love.
Your eyes and mouth
defy the possible
and your sentences
lack sense;
they conflict
and contradict
with action,
with what I know.
But I feel your glance
on the back of my neck
and I see the tips of your lips
advance.
Adverse am I
to my own defeat,
to an end unknown,
and a truth never shown.

***************************************

Among other things, I adore your words.

"I'm falling back in love with the letter you wrote." Kevin Devine The Longer That I'm Out Here

The Riders Ride

2008-04-12T16:45:00.000-04:00

I watched the Sunrise shake
and sip down lemonade
in springtime's blowing breath;
he wrapped himself in flames.
The devil's humid heat
sticks to your melting flesh
and as the Riders ride,
their gallops' genocide,
the Almighty hides his head
and weeps into his palms.
Too sunk to swallow up
redemption, pride, or love,
you choke down molten rock
and drown within hell's wicked walls.
It's fate and it's yours to own,
no pearly gates to welcome you.
It's not your fault; it wasn't you:
just your nation, your leader, your vote.
His Grace disgraced in gunfire and guts,
and with no mercy left Him to offer,
your wrinkled words of worship
can’t do a thing to save us now.

*************************************************

^ Mostly written during Later Romantic Lit.

It's spring and beautiful out and all I can think about is the Apocalypse. Does that make me weird?

"I prayed for providence. God said, 'Don't pray no more.'" - Kevin Devine All Of Everything, Erased

Story

2008-04-11T17:27:00.000-04:00

It's that song you fell asleep to
that now keeps you awake
and it stares into your soul
through eyelids never closed.
And that nightmare left you drenched
in someone else's sweat
with the smell on salt and sand
saturating through your sheet.
You want the language all to stop:
those words you can't hear
whose demands you already know
and they bite and tease and tear.
Away. What kept you sane
you ask in anguish in volumes
of abridged anthologies: fragment
sentences and incomplete thoughts
and love letters never sent and
air you merely pretended to breathe
that's locked in the binding
and lost is the smudges.
The past turns with each page,
torn and twisted,
tinged from timidity
and everything you didn't say.
Somewhere in between each line
you taint with clever vocabulary,
there's a man with a look
about him you don't understand.
He's holding a book
and it's bigger than yours
and it tells every story,
every myth ever written or told.
You already told him you love him
and he already knows how to wreck you.
And all that remains is
that you write your story now.

************************************************

^ I haven't been sleeping well. ^

All the words in my head are really cheap knock offs of muffled KD demos and Shakespearean imagery. And there's more.

"This kind of wordplay gets you ostracized, but if you operate inside these perfect lines you'll be fine." Kevin Devine Write Your Story Now

Inside To Out To In

2008-04-08T23:58:00.001-04:00

You take a deep breath
and a big step back
and you keep your eyes closed.
You think you can find clarity
in eye lids' locked darkness;
in your armored cocoon.
Only life breaks through;
it's edge rough and rusted
and rogue hate bleeds in.
Thick skin forms where your
ignorance couldn't protect you,
where what you know spits you open.
Desensitized and vulnerable,
careless and stubborn,
you put yourself out.
Like Coriolanus and his 27
marks of honor and valiance,
painted like medals on flesh
and you cover and hide
what you lived through, but not over
and it rots you from inside to out to in.
And then you can't live
in a world where others breathe
and you despise every smile,
each one a reminder of your failure
and by your own design;
it's such a drag.

******************************************

I stole this entire poem.

Sources:

MENENIUS: True! I'll be sworn they are true.
Where is he wounded?

[To the Tribunes]

God save your good worships! Marcius is coming
home: he has more cause to be proud. Where is he wounded?

VOLUMNIA: I' the shoulder and i' the left arm there will be
large cicatrices to show the people, when he shall
stand for his place. He received in the repulse of
Tarquin seven hurts i' the body.

MENENIUS: One i' the neck, and two i' the thigh,--there's
nine that I know.

VOLUMNIA: He had, before this last expedition, twenty-five
wounds upon him.

MENENIUS: Now it's twenty-seven: every gash was an enemy's grave.

[A shout and flourish]

Hark! the trumpets.

VOLUMNIA: These are the ushers of Marcius: before him he
carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears:
Death, that dark spirit, in 's nervy arm doth lie;
Which, being advanced, declines, and then men die.

[A sennet. Trumpets sound. Enter COMINIUS the general, and TITUS LARTIUS; between them, CORIOLANUS, crowned with an oaken garland; with Captains and Soldiers, and a Herald]

HERALD: Know, Rome, that all alone Marcius did fight
Within Corioli gates: where he hath won,
With fame, a name to Caius Marcius; these
In honour follows Coriolanus.
Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!

[Flourish]

ALL: Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!

CORIOLANUS: No more of this; it does offend my heart:
Pray now, no more.

"Coriolanus" by William Shakespeare.

-- AND --

"Time heals all wounds they say, but the self inflicted won't just fade away and in these shifting tides of blame why are you suprised to see your name? It's such a drag. Time got the best of you. Things you gave you say were taken, explaination piled over excuse. And so the story goes, but by your own design and if you look to me to find you then my eyes will pass right though..."

"By Design" by Rites Of Spring

Nerve

2008-03-11T16:44:00.000-04:00

Another disappointment
which I've brought about.
Your disapproving eyes,
your discontented voice:
it's all that rings in the space
between my two ears.
It rattles,
like snakes do.
It growls
like the rabid
with contemptuous foam
and poisonous breath.
No proud maternal smiles,
just cold distance as I wait
for my head to be bitten off
like the runts of litters.
You are anxiety
and tension.
You smite deeds done
in the best of spirits.
You are an anchor,
locking me down.
You are the will
which raises the knife.
It's your hand
on the handle
and your strength
that breaks my nerve.
So innocent you
assume yourself to be,
yet so murderous
the result of your actions.
Thoughtless words
spoken in haste,
a happy symbol
turned to dark:
another mistake
added to your list.
I'm sure the tally's
monumental and meticulous.
Jab once or twice:
I feel nothing at all.
'Nothing?'
'Nothing.'
The breaking of skin
is numbed by experience.
The only pain I feel now
is courtesy of you.

***************************************

LEAR: To thee and thine hereditary ever
Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom;
No less in space, validity, and pleasure,
Than that conferr'd on Goneril. Now, our joy,
Although the last, not least; to whose young love
The vines of France and milk of Burgundy
Strive to be interess'd; what can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.

CORDELIA: Nothing, my lord.

LEAR: Nothing?

CORDELIA: Nothing.

LEAR: Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.

CORDELIA: Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more nor less.

Missed It

2008-02-20T02:26:00.000-05:00

An addiction only addicts can romanticize,
poems written on hips and thighs.
You smile, warmly, with your eyes;
you don't know I'm keeping lies.
Secrets - like hot air - rise
up my throat, to my lips: chastise.

Bile burns my mouth and lips,
as cold skin begins to rip
from the metal I've learned to worship.
Bubbles, oozes, and drips.
Why not just one more trip?
At risk is just a friendship.

It's getting old; it's getting tired.
Don't have the will that is required
and every attempt is bruised and mired.
Words reused or long expired,
leave so much to be desired.
So, I'll just lay here uninspired.

And read this verse as my confession:
the truth in words I couldn't fashion,
a warning of the deepest caution.
Love and hate, a bubbling caldron:
ridged and rough and smooth and silken
with all the mysteries that lie within.

I loved him in ways that are listed
on limbs that are whithered and wilted.
I'd say the words if they existed,
if their spellings weren't rank and twisted.
The tale's too mangled and maliable and misted
and though I told you, I knew you missed it.

*****************************************

What this is really about is something I'm eternally unable to articulate which is why it winds up making no sense. It's like: something happened and you should know, but I can't wrap my head around it; therefore, I can't explain it.

But, really, you don't want to know anyway, so it's probably for the best that the words are gone (or were never there to begin with). And for the sake of not losing more people I love, my teeth are locked tightly atop my tongue.

"I'll just lay here uninspired, feeling bad that I threw you away..." Kevin Devine Confessional At 6am