Thoughts

Underneath all of my folded socks there lies a condom box.

If we transported people to the moon, the cheese theory would melt underfoot.

I stay up so late because I don't want to wait for you anymore.  

I ate ribs today, meaning I ingested another animal's means of inspiration.

Santa has become the 21st century version of Jesus. 

I believe in the power of ants to dismember my body when I die.

I cannot stand the thought of Googling myself.  

Hitting is no longer a rational option.  Neither is running.

The world is as remote as a plank of wood drifting on the vast Pacific.  

If I could do one thing in my life, it would be to die well.  

Underneath Summer...

I found the Winter, lying there, naked and exhausted.

He was stringy, sort of like a man made of angel-hair

pasta.  His long white beard drifted and parted along

the folds of his body like snow among a dying marsh

land.  He was gazing upon summer with something

like disdain, but it was really closer to mourning.  He

was a dying thing, she a living bloom, dripping with

sweat, the red mane of her hair heaving and flowing

like kelp among the tide.  She stared, not at him, but 

toward the sky, her green eyes dancing as clouds raced

overhead, there shapes a wondrous ballet promising

a finale sure to send the heavens weeping.  Freckles

of brown earth dotted her cheeks.  Suddenly, Winter

screwed up his face and blew a long icy blast of frigid

air.  She froze there, a greyhound in a midstride, her

ochre hair splayed about her like a belch of fire from

a car exhaust.  She remained there, for a reminder

of the warmth about to come.  And as Winter sat up,

the sky grew dark, the leaves turned red, and the stars

were cloaked by his robe.  The world turned white.

He sprinkled seeds about the newly washed canvas

and the cardinal showed its face among the briars.

Woodsmoke and cinnamon filled the air.  And he 

grew younger once more among the living cold,

his breath of life woven so deeply with her frozen

crown of holly berries.  And when she burst forth 

the next spring, they danced among the heather.  

Song

I'm an underrated showboat taster

from the iconic midwest circus shows.

I leave the light on every time

because it's colder in the sunwashed snow. 

I can't believe you left me 

all tied up in this mess.

But I believe that somewhere

exists a leaving-place for rest.

If you believe in iron dreams

blowing you apart at your denim seams,

then keep me in your phonebook,

and I will make you take a good long look

at the people you have known and lost 

that cover you in webs of loss.

They seldom hear your front-door screams

but I can let the warm air in.

If you were more than just a liar

that crept upon the midnight air,

I'd sling up my guitar and listen

to the streams that grace your willow hair.

But I'm a traveler out of touch

and you don't understand me much

so I'm off to draw you in the stars

and constellate the passing cars

into reflections of your moonlit soul

that made me stop my journey home.

Now I see you, from time to time

Watching the rolling route number signs

and I am still in love with how

you sparkle and dance to a cricket's sound.

Your image keeps the road a blur,

the tears become so insular,

And even though I couldn't come through

I am never far from you.

A wise guy once said, "I am the walrus."

He got paid a lot of money once that happened,

but then he redeemed himself because

he used that money to buy a hotel room

and have a sit-in for peace, which everybody

thought was crazy.  But then another guy said,

"I believe in the politics of hope," not disagreeing

with the first guy, but just saying it in his own

Ivy-League educated way.  But then somebody

shot him in a hotel kitchen, cause they thought

he was crazy.  The guy before him got shot

walking home, on his doorstep.  The man

who said, "I have a dream," was killed

by a bullet on a balcony for thinking 

he was the equal of the man who shot him.  

They both had the right to bear arms,

and one of them decided to use it.  They thought

the guy who didn't was crazy.  The guy

he met in India was shot point-blank

for thinking he was equal to a government

that changed the world with the rifle,

and a red and blue piece of cloth.  

They all refused to pick up a weapon.

One refused to eat before doing so.  

Another wrote letters from his jail cells

about how no man should raise his hand

against another in the effort of peace.  

Another wrote songs about peace 

and no one seemed to understand why.  

Now we are among those who have voted 

for hope and peace once more.  But where

will he end up?  How many more lives will it take

for us to realize life is more precious than 

a boundary line, be it political, social, economic

or racial?  Why do we allow fear-mongering

to persist?  Where do we find our spiritual conscience?

How will the world end once again?

No Pressure

It was quiet, the way you turned around

and met my eyes with an unofficial glance

to the table where my old teacher sat.  

It said, "You better go over there 

and say something or you won't

be getting anything tonight."  I

laughed inside because I knew

you were serious and I loved that

about you.  So I strolled over, a pupil

of gracious intent, to fondle my professor's

ego a little more tonight, and tell him

"I've been doing a little bit here and there,

but nothing of importance and little in earnest."

A joke.  He laughs, pulls me aside,

and points to you across the room.

"I always knew you would end up

together."  I smile.  Of course I did too,

way back when I wrote this poem

for the first time, and everything

seemed so possible.  No pressure.  

But it changes so quickly

and pretty soon you dissolve

among the lily wallpaper

and I'm standing at a bus stop

talking to Kwon the homeless man

about his relationship with Won,

a rapper that stole his name.  I give him 

$1.75 in change, and tell him to "Be Good, Be Safe."

I flash him a peace sign.  He brings it back, "One Love."

Damn, I think.  One Love.  I seem to dream

in Love, and I have so many affairs in my head

I can't believe in just One.  Or Won.  

Or maybe that One Love is still out there,

still waiting at a cold bus stop in the snow.  

Maybe she has downy hair, and speaks

like the willow trees, full of air.  

Maybe her eyes are the color of dawn

and I'm the blue morning she's counting on. 

And maybe, just maybe, she wants it

just as much as I do when we get home

after talking to my professor 

among the flowers of the future.  

Maybe she whispers something in my ear,

a phrase so corny I sink my teeth into her flesh

and it tastes so sweet, like snow and blue light

and cold air.  We flash like northern lights

and drop like a barometer in hurricane season.  

No pressure whatsoever.  

Connections

It has felt good the past few days to write so much.  I'm at a transition point in my life - I'm looking down the long tube to the end of the tunnel and things are beginning to crystallize into the shapes and forms of 'what I want to do with my life.'  I had a great feedback session at work today, making me realize more and more the work my potential for growth there.  I also am starting to lay down a timeline for my acting career.  I'm going to take some time off auditioning now that I have the show set for the spring, and focus on other things.  I'm going to commit to my diet.  I'm going to get up tomorrow and go to the gym.  Little things, but all part and parcel of the person I want to become.  And lastly, it snowed today.

I love the snow.  It reminds so much of my childhood.  Some of my first memories are trundling out onto the married student housing playground, bundled up in layer upon layer of waterproof clothing and creating worlds in the fresh canvas of my backyard.  I buried my plastic dinosaurs in a huge igloo structure, and lost one digging them all out.  I never found it after the thaw either, which still bothers me from time to time.  Then memories of blizzards in my backyard, of just sitting by the window with a fire roaring, watching the snow fall and fall.  Shoveling out the driveway so Dad could drive the car in.  Shoveling out the driveway because the plow had dumped all the snow at the top of it.  Shoveling out the driveway at 8 o'clock at night, then having to do it the next morning again because it had snowed another six inches by morning.  

I've always had a fascination with the quiet snow brings.  Very little happens in the middle of a snowstorm.  People are cooped up in their houses, enjoying the warmth of a cup of tea or hot chocolate, quietly reading or watching TV.  Once in a while, a car will mosey down the road, trying to get home as safely as possible.  I used to live in the woods and it would grow so calm and quiet among the white.  There would only be the soft rustle as the snow layered itself up, like the frosting on a wedding cake.  The animals had hunkered down in their holes and nests to wait it out too.  Nothing really moves.  All is calm, all is bright, as the song says.  There's a magic to it, like the silence at the end of a particularly cathartic film.  We have all agreed, as a community belonging to the earth, to rest.  

Which, coincidentally, is exactly what I should be doing now.  Enjoy the snow.  

Something

It was something like the past,

something like a future forgotten;

something like the present

I once received in a little hand-knit bag

which gifted me time once again

to reconsider the clockwork 

of our phone conversations.  

It was a talking breathing;

it was something like that.

It made sense then, to be in that

something that reminded me 

not so much of a diamond ring,

but a sad clown stooping 

into the circus ring, his dog

barking over his shoulder

that droops because of a hunch 

he found while searching

for the meaning of his life.  

It was a something that meant

so much more than a dwelling-place;

meant so much more than the word

"Home."  It meant comfort.  

It meant the washing would be done

in the afternoon and that dinner 

would be served around 6:30,

right after the sun went down

and I had started the fire 

(with only one match!).

It was like an experience

that was never meant for me

but everyone is supposed to have it

even though not everyone does

and I did.  It was something 

like a dog treading water in a lake

right after the sun has come up

and you're drinking hot chocolate

in your long-sleeve t-shirt

watching the mist rise

off of this non-human drama.  

But the something is so human.

It is so vital that it is like a circle

that never ends no matter

how many times you go around

and around and around

in a circle searching for something.  

It was like a past future re-presented.

It was something.  Just something.  

12.19.08

Well, I'm here once again, quite late, though not quite so much my fault.  I helped a woman at work tonight by staying on the phone with her for 45 minutes past my shift's end.  Then, luckily, I caught the train just as it was coming into 59th street and I was off home.  I was thinking tonight why I get off the subway at 96th instead of 103rd.  First, 103 doesn't feel that safe at night to me, though I'm sure it's just some small-town paranoia of the big city still living in me.  But I also realize I need that walk home after work.  I need to really pound the pavement for a good 10-15 minutes so I can get my thoughts together and disengage my body and mind from that high-stress environment.  

And to do that, I need to listen to some really good music while I walk it out.  I'm on a Counting Crows kick lately, after staying up late and watching some of their live stuff on YouTube.  I couldn't listen to it for a while, cause it reminded me too much of past joys and sorrows.  Those lyrics are all a little too real sometimes.  But it's been a couple of years since I've really listened to them, and I find myself even more in love than before.  I know these emotions he expresses so eloquently and so uniquely.  I know them much better than I did two years ago.  Which to me proves how great his and his band's art is - it continues to grow and change as the listener grows and changes.  

Tonight I grew a little bit.  I came onto the train just as a homeless, wheelchair bound-man was squeezing through the doors between cars.  He was making the rounds with an old beanie, going from car to car looking for spare change.  But the first thing I saw after I got in the car was his foot.  It was swelled like a great gorilla's, sticking out from under the ragged yarn blanket he was covered in, showing just enough to suggest an enormous lesion of dried, cracked skin.  It was like someone had sewed his foot together with parchment paper.  And I was afraid of it.  I practically ran to the other end of the car, scared of what this could be, this confrontation with - decay.

He got through the doors, though, and continued his trip up the car.  I took deep breaths, calmed myself down, and looked again.  It was like before, but this time I looked at his face too.  It was kind and old and tired.  You could tell he had been through a lot of pain, and was probably suffering that moment.  His undignified situation gave him a certain air of dignity and wisdom.  He was very apologetic of bumping into anyone.  Most people gave him something.  I reached into my pocket and found fifty cents, and threw it in his hat.  He waited for someone else sleeping to move before getting into the next car.  He moved on, but I still felt him there; juxtaposed in the image of his face and the image of his dead foot.

I realize now that as I was walking home, the tears that came from my eyes weren't just from the cold wind - it was a mourning, a release from the fear that death caused me.  I haven't been confronted with much death, but something in me knew that man wouldn't live much longer.  But he was peaceful.  He kept on with his life, even in the face of such pain and humiliation.  And I was afraid in a way I haven't been in a long time - the pure visceral reaction of flight.  It connected me to something and I had to deal with it there, in that moment, in the present.  I was present, for those moments, because of him.  Fifty cents is a small price to pay for such a gift.  

huh boy...

Well, here I am again.

For the last few nights, I just don't seem to want to go to sleep.  Even though I'm dog-tired and I need to get up in the morning, I just can't seem to make myself let go of this internet/YouTube/iTunes thing and simply rest.  Then I get up feeling groggy at 1 in the afternoon and have 2 hours before I have to get to work for another long night.  This is not the way to live life.  

This sort of self-sabotage behavior is something I'm noticing in myself a lot more.  And I don't really understand it.  The more I try to understand, the more I fall into old patterns, and the more I think to myself, "Good God, Seth, you need to get to therapy."  I'm not joking about this either, in some sort of "Oh-I'm-going-to-scoff-at-therapy-because-it's-for-crazies" kind of way.  I really think I do.  The more I get older, the more I'm starting to realize I have some shit in my brain to work out that's pretty darn fucked up, but I certainly don't want to face it alone.  And it's not the kind of thing you talk to your friends about either.  I'm talking fucked up, eat-your-heart-out-Dr.-Freud type shit that gets back at you on your deathbed when everybody has left you cause you never worked it out in the first place. 

So I gotta take care of that.  But this blog thing helps, to just vomit out some truth every once in a while and have...well...no one read it.  But it's out there.  People could find it, if they wanted.  I guess that's the point.  

Now I'm getting existential on blogging.  

I struggle so hard with myself all the time.  I am split in two by the mania in my head.  I am two people; someone who loves fast food, but hates the idea of how much it bleeds the earth.  Someone who eats organic, but only after a week of Big Macs and Large Fries and Steakhouse Burgers and Onion Rings.  Someone who has a chronic disease, and feels the deeply the consequences of this bingeing, but at the same time feels mentally relaxed when this food goes down the gullet.  

I am someone who feels so deeply within me the perplexities and problems of the world, but I can do nothing to get myself off the couch and into that world.  I seem to be a titular idol to myself - almost a schizophrenic war of polarity.  I can find no balance.  I do workout one day, I play video games the next - but never in that order and always without a schedule.  I am a man without discipline.  I struggle with myself to find that discipline, but there is something in me that hates rules so deeply and with such a passion I tend to disregard most of them in favor of finding my own way out of a problem.  

I cry at the smallest whisper of emotion, but try to bring that out of anything conscious, such as in a play, and I'm dry as a faucet in the middle of the Sahara.  There is a disconnect, a block between my conscious and unconscious and that is where I exist - between those worlds.  Instead of doing something, I sit at home and do very little.  I interact very little.  At least, on any meaningful level.  There are those few bright moments here and there, but the truth is, I'm afraid to let people into my little world.  I am so strange and so thoughtful and so - acutely perpendicular to myself that no wonder I've had three girlfriends in the past 6 years.  

But there is a part of me that is also saying right now to "trust myself."  And I try, but that gets me into trouble too.  I'm just feeling lost.  I'm feeling without discipline.  Without some reasonable "oomph" to drive me.  I feel like the last baby penguin who hasn't started swimming yet.  Just can't quite get up the nerve to commit.  

I don't know.  I don't know I don't know I don't know.  Hemingway says write something true about yourself to become a writer.  I think this is the worst thing I've written in a while, but it is true.  

in the title field, there was nothing.

In the title field, there was nothing.

Just a simple short note, saying how 

you had met someone else and it was

better that we didn't see each other

again.  Maybe it was too short, or maybe

I really didn't believe you, but I hit "Reply"

anyway.  I left the subject line blank, 

because I always thought "Untitled"

made paintings more artistic, 

just like no capital letters 

make poems more meaningful.  

I wanted to write to you

that I had slaved and suffered 

over our relationship, that no burden

was too heavy to bear, 

no river too wide to cross.

That just that afternoon,

I had bought you flowers

and when I saw you again,

I would give them to you,

along with a poem I had written

about our first night of lovemaking.

Things like,

"...the passion of our sweat-tears

mingling our bodies

like twin constellations

in a Milky Way heaven,"

or, "these two eyes, so green

and beautiful, like summer

staring through me."

Just things like that.

I really wanted to write that,

to fight for you, to weep over you,

to gnash my teeth and wail

like an old Greek chorus 

in a tragic play.

But I couldn't.  I wrote,

"You do what you have to.  

I had a nice time while it lasted.

Thanks, really thank you,

for everything, and I hope

we can be friends someday."

The pure impotence of begrudging myself

to you is so tragic.  So latently romantic,

but ever so tragic.  Don't believe a word

I tell you from now on.  I am a jilted lover

walking a tightrope to the next failure.

Someone once said to me, you had a boyfriend.

I was not discouraged, as not much can really

discourage my courageous romanticism.  

And I thought to myself, you have a boyfriend.

But what if you had a better time with me

than you have smelling the salt of his sweat

that echoes in his sea-foam eyes.  Eyes

that grow roots into your heart, spreading

warmth down to your beautiful toes.

But words.  Words become a subtle waltz

of small sounds, focusing the world

to the breadth of a candle flame.  

Then the infinite stretch of time

between that first kiss

and that last goodnight

and then that first kiss of morning light

upon the dew of your shoulders

in a room too hot for blankets.