Home

lately i've been thinking of home quite a bit more, and what that all means, especially now being away from it for an extended period of time beyond the couple of months or weeks that was sophomore and junior year. i wrote a simple poem that gets to the heart of what i really can't express more gracefully:

i suppose it's sad
to leave home for the last time
to trippingly spin your way out the door
knowing subtly underneath
the children's blanket warmth
of crispy golden-fried leaves
your room will be
painted
when again you return.

i suppose my life is on a track to finding a new home, and not for the first time, i feel homeless amongst the masses of hundreds and thousands. Home is home, but not in the same way. it's home in the way the evergreen scent of trees and dead-snow silence is christmas. and i suppose christmas, being a time to be home, brings these thoughts out. under the guise of something more profound, i think i'm simply ready for a break from the city, from people, and i'm ready to be taken care of for a bit.

i think what the poem really means is that i'm simply longing for a nurturing hand, but now, getting older, means that there are new layers, new coats of paint, to the relationship with family, and to the relationship with myself. discovering these new layers brings me to a new stage of self-realization, but also a sadness at the loss of the downy days of childhood, when a soft bed of leaves was enough for countless afternoons of fun. it still would be, but i have no time. and Time, such a precious commodity, moves unforgivingly forward. i always feel as though i'm catching up, always a little bit behind Time, because i hold on. i really don't know if this is a bad thing or not. i really don't know if chinese medicine is right, and my colitis is somehow part of that. but that's another day.

this poem reveals a side to me i don't share with people, because sadness and regret are hard to bring up in conversation without offending. but i am haunted by my childhood; by trees, lakes, rivers, a snowy whiteness, the mountains, and through it all, my father's hands on a fishing pole, quietly dipping into the molten-gold water at dawn. the moments of peace are few, and i weep gently, from the depth of my body, for all.

Jazz

i really want to thank everyone who responded to the note. be it good or bad, i'd love to know your opinion. that could mean writing back, telling me in the hall, or simply discussing it (or anything), with someone else. i suppose this is a forum for thought and feeling, and if something moves you, please do let everyone know. communication is becoming more essential in a world growing so small, and i feel that finding a place where your opinion counts is life-giving.

that said, i'm going to put some of my older poetry up here, as i'm too tired to attempt something original. enjoy or don't, but please no apathy. not-caring brings the world awful consequence, and i won't tolerate that.

prideful wedding bells
ring the smooth slow soppy-talk
of a '40s late-night dive
all escalator-notes
rising up like the collars
on a too-tall dizzy mix
of gangly interlopers
braying on a saxophone
& a trumpet
foxtrotting along piano keys
cutting the cords of a stringed bass
patting the drums
like the heads of naughty
two-year-old toddlers
sometimes i wish i was etta james
and i could suck my soul
into a song
run around the insides of notes
and come round the mountain
steaming to the end
wailing the brilliant
sunlight soul of jazz
just eating the Aflat
like a piece of rare beef
snapping off celery stick C's
dipping them in bleu cheese E's
coming round all the way
for a chocolate Bflat
just the smoothest little chord
under a hazy cool-whip high-hat
couldn't ask for anything more
play on you chefs of I-IV-V7
your kitchen is my soul

(a little side note on this one. i wrote it in merchants. many of you work there, or have been there, and know how loud it can be. but i was there one night, and it got quiet, and all i heard was a saucy jazz minx crooning her coffee-and-cream truth, and my head spun. she ignited the air, and made that fire easy to breathe. my ears combusted and i was back on solid ground. i tried to write that. and etta james being one of the only jazz singers i know, her name came to mind easy. i also had an especially good guinness that night, from an especially charming waitress, which probably put me in the right rhythm for that kind of language devolution.)

A 911 Call

"hello, new york emergency services, what's your emergency tonight?"

"hi! there's been an accident."

"where are you, sir?"

"101st and 2nd ave!"

"what borough?"

"...what...?"

"what borough sir?"

"oh..........................manhattan......................"

"you've been in an accident, sir?"

"no - i witnessed one......."

"what happened?"

"a baby.......A BABY CARRIAGE was hit by a car.....!!!-!"

"oh my god...............OK WE'LL HAVE SOMEONE THERE AS SOON AS WE CAN."

"thank you..........................."

that's pretty much how it went. screaming tires, a cold shattering of glass wood, and silence..................................................then the scream -

"OH MY GOD THE BABY!!"

and terror grips you. the phone was in my hand and just as suddenly the call was over, the scream of an angel siren, and i was holding the boy's hand. he wasn't a baby, he was a toddler. i looked at his eyes. he wasn't scared (and because he wasn't, neither was i). all he could say was, "baby." and then he pointed to where the ignorant offending minivan man stood, impotently staring at the overturned carriage. "baby," he said again. and i asked him if he was ok. "baby," he repeated, pointing. and i laughed. "yes," i said, "baby." and then he was whisked off by his grandmother, off my phone with her daughter, telling her to come down and take the boy to the hospital. her drunken tears made me cold. by then, the firemen, the EMTs and the police had arrived. i took a backseat, and left when we told the police what happened.

a screech of tires, a crunch, and a keening cry. even now it chills me. it rent the air open, drawing cracks in the very fabric of the space surrounding it. and the crack broke me open. even now, the right response to that situation escapes me. i did all i could, but still feel a sense of lingering doubt.

i suppose i saw in this moment a microcosm of the negatives of a hierarchy based on economic law. here was an alcoholic old hispanic woman walking her grandson back home with a friend, getting hit by a well-dressed middle-aged white male in his gold minivan. the man may have been drunk as well. i was surprised and disturbed by the man's actions. he got out of his car slowly, walked to the carriage, and said blithely, "is everything ok?" his phone was nowhere to be seen, calling for help that came anyway, despite his impotence. and here, i thought, was a perfect metaphor for the society i see everywhere in new york. a young hispanic boy, hardly walking, is knocked to the street by an ignorant white male. the boy is unhurt, can even summon up a bit of unknown satire, but it occurred to me that this may be his struggle for the rest of his life. and when i left, i heard the EMT having to convince the guardians to take him to the hospital, "just for a checkup?"

this poor boy, whom i touched for a brief moment, is utterly trapped already. so i gave a homeless man five dollars and walked home in the sleet, to maybe make up for such a trembling injustice. there has to be a better way to help, a better way to make it better. how do i look that boy in the eye in twenty-five years, knowing i left him with people who may not know what's best? how do i look myself in the eye?

The Exiting Empires

and so it was
that ought-seven (have we counted so far?)
was over
and there were we
under the influence of confetti-packed sky-light candy
rolling underneath the weight of the ship
the hull flipped over to reveal the glass bottom
and we
staring up at the reflection of ourselves
at the bottom of the sea
strode manful to the gate
rapped on the door
with st. peter laughing drunk
spewing gunk
into a paper cup
wrote FUCK
on his forehead
and YOU
on his chin
then grinned
and pulled the machine lever to reveal the glory of the fading West
while fathers and fathers sang their Sun into the ground.
and what was the view?
of ourselves, that's right.
of a many-colored static night
the losing virginity night
in the basement of our parents' homes
covered in all modesty by the native american blanket
the primary reds, blues, and yellows
mixing and matching
the northern/southern sky
racing across the endless moonhaven landscape
like green fire across the salty ocean-bottom sea
and it was a welcome (wellcum) feeling.
to share and dare
and dream and die
and do and see
and crowd and create
all make the world spin just as fast
as when it was spinning before...

...

there it was.
the moment into forever.
(a whisper's whisper)

Love at 18 Summers

There are times when i feel too much
when i walk in on the wrong conversation
when i stumble upon the drooping leaves over my feet
over the way summer is over
and you know it all comes to the end
when you know life has to start
and for the next while
you are gone again
gone into space
gone into life
gone into being
and recreating
and rewriting the script of your life
surrounded by strangers with glasses
and coats to shed all over again
the way it was way back when the coat
pulled itself off from the rain
and mother said "I love you" to your tears
who knew to disappear
Now they appear at 'love'
and disappear when pain comes.
it is the recital of life
almost a circus, never quite a show,
but always entertaining
always meaning
always growing and growing
and changing and changing
and stepping on yesterday
to get to tomorrow
My grand tapestry is a weaving
of love
of memory
of hardship
of beauty
of people
of passion
of song
of living
Now all i want to do is sleep and dream
a little longer with you
a little further and a little higher than before
And maybe if we fly high enough
no one will catch us
In fact, i know that.
Love is as inescapable as memory
and just as painful
just as beautiful
Somehow love with you eclipses memory
shouts at tradition
and follows me home at night
to write and dream of you
a thousand times before tomorrow
and thousand times since yesterday
and never enough of today.


it's illuminating to look back at myself then, knowing how things have changed. i'm not in love with this person anymore, though i was, deeply, for a very long time. i see myself in a moment, almost a photograph of pure consciousness strewn out in letters on a page. and part of me is jealous of that innocence, as i think anyone would be. now, thinking about love brings caution, though wild abandon will always be a part of who i am. i learned a lot from getting my heart broken. most of it i wish i could unlearn, and throw myself into the bosom of love once again, with full heart gleaming to starry night.

this is not the best poem i have ever written. nor is it the best address to love (in my opinion) i have ever written either, but it speaks to me simply. i think the best poems are simple, and even if this one is slightly jilted, my message is clear at the end. that's what i like about it.

Ruminations on Complications

"It's complicated."
That's all she said,
taking a drag from the ashen cigarette.
It's complicated...
He spilled his tea and watched it leak
all over the napkins,
making futile brown designs
like a wet fetid swamp growing on the table.
Or was it his heart?
(The bird that ran across the telephone wire,
leaping into oblivion
only to be snuffed out by
a passing jet engine -
Oh what a miracle to know the joy of flight!)
It's complicated...
over and over again
the flicker of a life-that-could-have-been
rolls through the back of his eyelids.
Spilled tea...have another?
Yes I'd like that.
It's complicated.
Undeniable secrets that float
across the plain to seek out hearts,
bury them in fields
where rain won't wash them up again.
Fill the ditches with the bodies of livestock
and literal translations of Chekhov -
It's so complicated!
Like a Rubik's cube
or a putting green or
a relationship.
It's the ineffable,
untouchable,
grief-stricken
death
of someone to whom you are speaking.
It's complicated.
The death-knell of a new life.

What A Loss

i'm going to be honest. when i first heard that heath ledger was dead, a sort of numb shock split me, as if the space around had actually been divided by a great meat cleaver, and i was left there to watch it slowly ravel into something again. when it did, i felt nothing but a terrible sense of loss.

if you listen to ben folds' itunes originals album, he talks about the cliche of saying "What a loss..." he used to hear his parents say it about old friends. and he said he never appreciated the phrase until he got older, when someone he actually looked up to was gone. all of the sudden, it wasn't a cliche anymore (what a horrible word anyway), and there becomes nothing more appropriate than those simple words: "What a loss."

it hit me on the subway tonight as i was riding downtown. i understood what that meant. "what a loss," i said to myself, and nothing else could bring me closer to what i was feeling. and i felt older for that.

it also hit me listening to band of horses' "the funeral." my sudden breakdown, of pure, unadulterated grief surprised me. i didn't know him, but maybe i felt as if i did. that is the beautiful thing about an actor - they reveal the most intimate parts of themselves, their most vulnerable inadequacies, to the entire world. when, in brokeback mountain, ennis collapses to the floor, holding his dead lover's shirt, overcome by his own sense of loss, i felt that moment of love more poignantly than any other i have witnessed onscreen.

and that was his gift. to bring us to tears, to laughter, to joy, and to terror, as witnessed by the dark knight trailers floating around the net. i feel this sense of loss personally, not only because of the circumstances of his death, but because as a young male actor, there is hardly anyone who did better work than he did.

and so i say, "what a loss," because what else can i say? i cannot write what i feel right now. i am in the cold light of mourning.

"the funeral"
band of horses

I'm coming up only to hold you under
I'm coming up only to show you wrong
And to know you is hard and we wonder
To know you all wrong, we were

Really too late to call, so we wait for
Morning to wake you; it's all we got
To know me as hardly golden
Is to know me all wrong, they were

At every occasion I'll be ready for a funeral
At every occasion once more is called a funeral
Every occasion I'm ready for the funeral
At every occasion one brilliant day funeral

I'm coming up only to show you down for
I'm coming up only to show you wrong
To the outside, the dead leaves, they all blow
'Fore they died had trees to hang their hope

At every occasion I'll be ready for the funeral
At every occasion once more is called the funeral
At every occasion I'm ready for the funeral
At every occasion one brilliant day funeral

Connections

and suddenly i'm unable to sleep
like a cold iron, lying prostrate across a little-used board
mixed up by fashion and fascinated
with fiscal year-end promises
so easily broken in the february cold rain.
if it was easier to simply stop
and stop doing what i've been doing
and start over again...all over
with a new body and an old brain
i would so easy right now.

i read tolstoy
and he writes about
the little pain before death
and i think sometimes i feel that pain
or something like it.
and maybe i really know what it's going to be like
to die and all.
i think ever since
i became a slave to my indefatigable, complicated digestion
i believe i might die any day
and still i do nothing
to preserve my own memory.

and now here i am
writing to my brain in the dark
waiting for me to wake up
and smell the nuclear fusion
sweeping the sidewalks clean.

but how can i wake up
when i can't go to sleep in the first place?

and what now?
what do i do with this knowledge of mortality?

but how are you?
i keep remembering to ask that...
how ARE you??
please tell me, because my loneliness
is a product of my feeble heart's disasters.
because maybe all i wanna do tonight
is listen
to you talk to me and i could be happy with that.
and we could not worry about (sex) and tomorrow.
what was that?
yes i am afraid of you.
i'm afraid of what failing with you might cost
and now...now you are but a reflection
passing out of a rain puddle across the street.
and i stare so deep into the back of your brown hair
waiting for you to invite me back into it
that it starts raining again.

but what did i do...besides nothing?
i waited, long under the expectant tree
with flowers in my hand, carving pre-empty initials
into now-dead bark.

(and my skin is so dry
and my armor is so thick)
against the rain and the snow
and the wind blowing
coating the city with separate-ness.

you reading this might think
of steely images
and lovelorn gazes lonelily
stirring up the snow geese heading north,
but i defy you to find sadness in this.
celebrate the awareness
of such ample emotion spread out
along the cracks of the sidewalks of the city.
for what is life but suffering the beauty of another?
and what is death
but a quest for eternal rest?

now i feel myself slipping away
to run across fields, leaping to touch the moon
naked and free from everything, even you.

please let me have this moment, deep in the night
where i can be free of all and imagine myself
running across these silver fields
loping into eternity
with dandelion seeds flung up from my feet
to become stars in the next life.

going home one night after

and with the ten o'clock wake-up call
comes snow
and the loud noise of bus engines bustling
through the crowdy streets of manicured
tinctured porcelain people
robed in fur and black

and walking home straight tears
form in my gut
to be thrown up out my mouth
to feel sick and sad
all at the same time
for no apparent reason at all

until

the rain-drop galaxies
form constellations on bare winter branches
and in the pale foreign orange
of a streetlight
become suns and stars
to eat up my melancholy
and slip into a promise
of life
that looks like a gorilla ice-skating
with an ice-cream cone atop its head.

to be well

what does it mean, the phrase, TO BE WELL? what does that mean to me, someone who is sick; sick in the way old people who are dying are sick, and (that's not me.) it means nothing. it means today, i'll be in pain, because something in my GUT isn't quite right. right? something is bugging me but i have no magic spray to kill the bug away. how i would wish for that - for that - for that - silly little pill to kill not spill the contents of my subtext onto un-metaphorical underpants, that, by the way, i throw away.

knock knock.
you done in there?
no i'm not you fucking bitch, just hold your piss a little longer while i clean this goddamned shit.

i'm not in hell, i'm a demon's wet dream, made for a purgatorial conspiratical cigar-bar stories, deemed clean by the quack who took a look inside and won't look back. don't talk to me about diapers, baby, because you got it lucky, baby, everyone jumps to change you, baby, while changing me means operations to remove the sick part of me, heal the bad heart of me, trim the rank start of weeds flowering the art of me.

so to be or not to be is not so much the question, but the place where i can reveal the impression my accession to indigestion is in fact a secession from painful expression so apt in repression but reeking of the medical profession.

i said wait, person at the door. your turn will come. my porcelain throne is nearly yours.

the idea that silence has a sound

and in the hopscotch lighting
of believability
i watched you turn in concentric circles
around a photo of polar bears
and i laughed to think of an image
so clandestine
to know it in some ornery corner
of the still night grasshopper summer.

you turned so graceful
like a ballet dancer on pointe;
a pointillated comet
showering the steely earth
with an unmended sense of disaster
and colloquial dreams.

it was the product of a summer night
that rode so peacefully
through the ocean of my mind
and grasped silently
the hurricano waters
sluicing them through a sieve
of flowerbeds and canoe paddles
rasping so still
outside the dwellings of turtle-necks
and frog legs.

in some far-off place
like an l.l. bean catalog
i saw you then
racing up a mountain
careening from ledge to ledge
mountain-goat-leaping
like a disturbed phobia
to match the runnels of water
pouring down a crystalline road map
filling gaps and hedgerows
in a quiet thunder of movement.

and what was so still
and what was so silent
about it
was the way you laughed into a glass of wine.

sometimes the only reason to live in this world is...

release the crease
that built my head
upon the back
of my neck
trill the silence
with a sharp
loving tone
disorganize
my hair
pull my eyes
out of focus
and trap me.




suggest theme music.




brush.




and in the space between
set up open mic night
on my tonsils.

3 Thoughts

1.
in the dusk
where the lamplight paces along the wall
i watch you through a spectral glass
with curly hair and heidi dimples
roving across the fields of memory
conjured by a future of uncertainty
and dimmed reality that so laments
ungrateful glances of masturbated moments.

where were you when the dog died?
is the sadness now in me
ever a by-product in your perfect image?

in the past
i would have loved
for you to know who i am.
and now
it reeks of registered regret.

2.
when the train pulls
into the station
and you are a little late
getting out of the seat
and onto the platform
i think of flamingoes
and picture you
standing one-legged
in your pantsuit
groping fish
from the brackish water.

3.
Dwell in the cloudy moment
of a rainstorm for just a second
and holding the newspaper
above your head, digest
the news as it run down
your hair. when you get
home, don't wash until
you believe all the words aren't
dirty.

[when in the quiet twilight]

when in the quiet twilight
mysteries leaven the dead mind
a sounding board
of twittering fibers
our hearts become
and will us
into action.

blank verse

1.
Dawn is an argonaut on a telling sea
a whistling bird killing the tiny brine
that sweeps away the sweeping deep and boils
the sun early to a temperate seat.

2.
Dwelling on the duality that speaks
to me when you tie your shoes around
your ankles trips me into the heart
of cuddling mystery and safe harbors.
Keeping that in mind, the mastery with which
you ate the scone defeats my finger rhythms.

so yeah...just a little experiment in writing like the bard. thought i would try it and see what happens.

to the woman kicked out around 8:30

who were you before you wrapped your head in a brown towel to protect you from the sun?
do you have children out there in the black discovery?
was that your lovely kiosk?
just a place for some company?
and who brought you in to this lightning-filled brain trust to be shunned like Lazarus?

for what was Prometheus but the outcast of the gods?
what fire have you discovered?
did your brilliance light the world?
or did it burn up with your paper dreams, now smoke-ash like your coat and your voice?

you are the speck of twilight on the golden horizon, reminding us too well of our failures, so you must go. but I must remain, to measure out my life in checkbooks and yardsticks. you are so free, beyond the melting sidewalks of manhattan. when we drown in ignorance, your significance will overwhelm US.

with words.

in body language
the boy pointed out
we often say what
we can't when we give

voice to our thoughts.
isn't that beautiful?
he said, rolling his
eyes. but you just

rolled your eyes
the girl said. that
is meaning you
don't take beautiful

seriously. i was testing
you the boy said eagerly,
nodding his head. you
have passed and now

you see my point. what
point? she said smiling
shyly. he smiled,
blinked and blew her
a kiss. she uncrossed

her toes and caught it
in her butterfly eyes.
the point i pointed out
to you with words.

i want a brown bread life

a fluttering of wings that melds with the coma-inducement
of a dreamless work day suddenly brings me away from finite
thoughts and yellow mustard faces - those thousand dimmed lights
that surface among the lilypads to croak their crunching number factory
across the pond - while i stare up among the rushes
to watch the rain pour down and the clouds gather ominously
to throw a sucker punch of wet light across the face of the sky
scarring it like the face of adam cracked and aged among the sistine quiet.
and reaching up and out of the ground
the fluttering becomes a beat, a drum of incessant needfulness
squealing past the sundering powderpuff to break through
into a night devoid of alien twitters. and the stars peek through
and the waffle-iron image of the big dipper
sweeps away the existence of commerce
and big ideas. and i am alone among the universe
in a packed house of florescence, smiling deftly.

A Little Zen

there is a tree lying down
somewhere in the middle
of the old dogwood town
that speaks of a people
sad to behold.

their eyes climb sundays
to the dogwood steeple
of the church in the middle
of the dogwood road,

kept sane and pregnant
and just a little
too shiny for the preacher
who sings the parishioners' weekly ode:

"a mighty fortress is our god"
he sings, regretting his bacon grits,
now speaking to him as an unwelcome prod;
piercing the quietus of his bare abode.

elsewhere, a bird is humming a tune
while it muses on seed and fruit and bug,
a mighty fortress it seeks to festoon
with twig and leaf, for a welcome home.

and the tree lying down knows nothing
and everything of the nonsense
that plays in the dogwood town
with his only friend the dogwood road.

Tribue to HL

there it was.
there it was that the boat was rocked
under a thousand seas
peering downward to taste the fresh salt
that floated up from the bottom
and we were terrified.

we were terrified to find in ourselves
the understanding of a soul
so needy and distressed
a soul possessed by his madness
his muttering incantations
a mixed-media multitude
of cries and laughter
that brought only
terrific terror.

the whistles that brought us home then
have a keening cry now
a sort of morbid underground dwelling
that a seeker may find
beyond all his wild fantasies
and swift wishes for death
and destruction
and rape
and mind-blowing orgasms

all of these things are now somehow related
in a way they weren't before
so if it was said, "you're a whore"
it might mean "i love you"
and it wasn't like that before.

the soul is a starting-gun
an ominous sound that signals
a race to a steady, rhythmic pound
and like the tick-tock of bombs
and the hopscotch of laughter
the soul is a starting-gun
and it doesn't matter.

SP

we were a dreamer's being
a whistle lifted to the mourning light
a soft-spoken urge to cry when dust settled
in the front of our mind's eye.

we were a dreamer's being
a nifty little teapot
boiling the ideals of a 60s generation
into tea-leaf necromancy
watching the steam rise
to waken dead rhetorico-politics
embodied by a knight less dark
than a caribou-carcass dawn.

we were a dreamer's being
we ebbed and flowed
like the tides of a feminist dream
a beautiful, undulating wave
of emotion, free thinking, and eve-olution.
a spanking that left hazy drifting lights
at the edge of vision

of a dreamer's being
that tossed about
a schooner caught in the maelstrom
a portrait of a retarded clown
a sequoia tossed on the money pile
a muscled ego playing brahms
crooning to his newborn puppies
a lullabye to swing them to a deep jazz sleep
where notes flutter about on the wind
mixing with the times
to become
a dreamer's being

of the endless swollen future.

a rush of blood to the heart

it was easy to think about love
in our mud-rusty
blanket face phase.
a whirling dream of misbegotten lies
a well-shaped organ of sweetness
of candy and cotton
and tumbleweed misdirection
that looped across the sky like the tail
of a comet brought forth
through countless hours
of exploration underneath
a blanket of stars.

a dreaming blue that signaled
a new kind of rapture
that enfolded and unfolded
and exploded
and then
corroded
like a raspberry snowcone
in a carnival park night time spill.

it was such a dream:
that dream of you and i
and the countless other people
that were witness to our public
masturbations of emotional lewdness.

it was a dream a dream a dream
of such magnetic beauty
like the head of medusa without the snakes
that maybe would turn nothing but our hearts to stone
and we would be cured of our dreaming

our endless sleep
of a willow pond in late summer
of dragonflies on a swimsuit top
of sex under the full moon
in a steamy backseat car
your pink silk dress pulled around your waist

the heat
of a sweat
stained
sock
caught in a doorframe in the rush
of blood
to the heart.

laying cool on a mountaintop
with windy conversations
and no nothings about us
but an evening in the blackness
of starlight kisses.

oh it was a dream of such
michelangelo greatness
that gods only
could tear it down.

and they did.

Thank You Note to BHO

I cannot be anymore silent than I am right now. A sated silence; the breastworks pile up like wine-valley hills around my distant wisdom. I am a creature of solitude among the clever spinning lights of the DJ booth. They are whirring in an ecstatic customary way. Won't you feel the back of my neck simply glowing with consternation at the thought of peeling back my onion heart to expose it to this rainbow of light - this modicum of sound - this ecstasy of fertility ritual. These altars of paganism that scream silently beneath blood that bubbles and boils with the sound, the sound, the sound...

Waves of energy are being released out among us, the fruitful youth. We are become the juggernaut, the grand inquisitor and the virgin sacrifice all in one motion - a sweeping from right to left that transforms the outer workings of our ritual into the inner workings of our last great hope. We are become the sole responsibility of daylight. We are become the dawn.

I am ensconced still by the trappings of night. Now, daylight is grown shorter. The hand that tucks the purple night into the horizon comes earlier and by its clock do we run the gamut of our day. Now is the time to bed down among the cotton and wool our mothers taught us, and say our prayers against the Cold: the aching presence of age so summarily gifted us by the whiteness, the blankness, the darkness of winter.

Sad it is we should be thrown Opportunity as the twilight dwells longer. But sing we louder into the depths of night, obsessed with the beauty of our skin upon each other; our touch informing the soft and violent language of love. We are up there, among the stars, just as surely as we are trapped holding each other under woven blanket dreams. So the rainbow fits, and my efforts to keep my own rapture from bursting forth seem futile amongst the liquid dawn we have created amidst a jumble of steel and mettle so hastily assembled by our fathers.

What Joy we have created! What monuments of our own destiny! These tiny flagellations of night-time seem nothing compared to our bright golden dawn. What Joy! What intimacy! What Freedom! Here we stand, tasting the metal air, the sharp acid intake of Air before the plunge To Be! The haste of man's survival is upon us! What Joy! What Joy!

-SJ

It seems like you and me

have drifted away from

talking to each other in

the past few months.

I think we are like moths

floating from the cedar

tree, a bad taste in our

mouths from the smell

and the strong wind

that carries us away. If

maybe, I could talk to

you again, I might;

though you'd have to

convince me you might

change into something

nicer the next time I

see you so I might be

somehow convinced

or not of your interest.

Because you are so

interesting to me, like

the way a hive is

interesting to bees

or the way sticks are

interesting to birds

building a nest from

scratch. I might

convince myself of

strange fantastical things

in our hour-long flight

into romance, much like

a fox is convinced

the hound is but his

playmate until the polo

horse strikes a wide

deep rut in the mud,

leaving traces of metal

and bone in the fresh earth.

I may come up with the

likelihood of you weeping

o'er my coffin at my funeral

and that will probably determine

whether I ask you on a date

or not. So I'm fairly serious

in a sarcastic kind of way.

But really, we haven't spoken

in ages, and I'm satisfied like

an astronaut that finishes his

freeze-dried meal with a little

bubble of orange juice floating

very close to his nose. Because

fresh vegetables are so hard to

grow in manufactured oxygen,

so high in the air.

Typical Daylight

I think today was made of papier-mache.

It began sticky; a hot crowded subway car

with something sprayed over the seats

like dried urine. I felt it a humorless way

to mark one's territory in a city populated

like matchboxes stacked upon each other.

Two rubbing together might burst into flame

and burn the whole block down. It grew

hotter, more crowded, in a greenhouse

growing adult toys. Each man walking

became stiffer with each step, like a dried-

out Christmas Santa made of papier-mache.

Each woman wore less, much like a fantasy

of adolescent bravado, but in the end it grew

into a liking for toys and gloss and metal

and a one-horse race already won by the guy

outside in the car. So I guess it couldn't

really be worse, but then I got contracted

to work in Santa's shop, and I grew like stiff

like him; stiff as a board with a knot in the

middle, so I actually choked on my tears

as they forced themselves out. Which is what

I did till I realized I was sprinting downhill,

with an angel in my ear, feeling free flying

low without a stock broker's care in the world.

Till I guess I realized that shit don't matter

when I'm not there. That place conveys

feeling, like distance conveys time and

a genie conveys this poem, like an angel

in my ear. Like the sun on the moon.

A Conventional Love Story

You were made for television. Like a pixel

on a vast ocean of screen, you shine primarily

for the sake of other people's lives and tell

their stories with a much brighter intensity

than you live your own. You are sort of like

a really easy game of solitaire, where it all

fits in place to conveniently. Maybe you

even cheat a little, and use the Joker as a

wild card. I think you probably need a little

help when it comes to picking out orange

juice when you go the grocery store. You're

"that type of person." Or, at least you were,

until I got the courage to run across the bar

and talk to you, say things like, "It would be

really lovely if you could find a way to stop

melting my heart like the ice cube in your

too-strong drink right now." Then you laughed

at me, and I think I fell in love. So I told you

that, even though my flannel was not a hand-

me-down, I really cared very little for politics

these days and that although the organic

movement is an important step forward in

national health policy, I still exclusively shopped

at Farmers' Markets to support the even more

important Local Growers' movement. And

I agreed to buy you a drink. Maybe three days

later, when we finally got out of bed, I told you

I would never buy you alcohol again, and you

laughed at me, and maybe that's when I fell

in love with you too. But that's not important,

because we drank apple cider for breakfast. I

was joking about never ever calling you, when

you agreed to move in with me. That was after

the impromptu day at the park when we held

hands everywhere, me begging for a kiss while

you focused more on helping me remember

Chinese characters to graffiti all over a studio

wall the next day. It was a game of twisted

pleasures that we played with each other,

and some sort of marriage, for other than tax

purposes, followed. But I don't think it lasted

all that long, because suddenly you were screaming

at me about how dirty the closet was and I think

I hit you, but I can't be sure. But then you started

crying and I don't think I was in love with you anymore.

That's when I started comparing you to televisions

and radios and the massive consumer culture that

sprang like a weed between our better selves, and

found that our house, the one we built on logs,

had been whittled down to stilts, which was

convenient when the floods of tears came rolling

on through, as they inevitably did. So did doctors,

lawyers, psychiatrists and mass media, who all

dictated our checkbooks for the next few years,

although I did get a fantastic tax refund come

May. Which I suppose is why I didn't talk to you

until I was good and drunk, and why they say,

"Never meet someone in a bar." I know it's why

they say, "In Vino, Veritas," because truly, we

were made to be drinking each other till the

last drop.