They pull me apart piece me and pick what they prefer; she for how I like and he for my mind, boss for my obedience and stranger just for me being there, brother for our past and mother for my being hers; but none of them, not even myself, get me for my whole.
Month: October 2018
Sunburn
I laid on the roof in the sun too long and even fell asleep, me eyes are fried like egg yolks in my scramble brain and my body floats like the burn carries it, too hot to remember, I wander in the shade like nothing here powers me. Even though the sun would have melted me apart if I stayed, the shade and the rest of the world in its muted colors seems alien to me now, I’ve thought of returning to the roof and the bright burning apart anyway.
Most excited I ever was
Like those times of my childhood when I lived with my grandparents in the summer and I had nothing to do but lay out in the sun on their back porch, dreaming easily and worrying only about what I was going to do with my friends that night—that’s the most excited I ever was.
How I write
With my writing I’m first a sponge, soaking up through my pores as much as I can. Then a splatter painter, getting it all out and down on paper as I feel it. Then I am a puzzle maker, cutting out pieces with jagged edges, sometimes cutting a big piece in half, straight through the middle of something that might have seemed cohesive. I put it all together, take it apart, and put it together again. Finally I am a sculptor. Preparing the work to be seen. Trimming excess at the edges. Once it’s complete, I make sure it’s really complete forever, and then I can’t look at it anymore. I move on and won’t come back no matter what.
Where I’m going
I see some spots on my hand. I am getting old, I tell myself. I could die without ever getting where W’ve even trying to go all this time. Where have I been trying to go? Some part of me seems so sure I’m going somewhere, but whenever I ask where, I can’t answer.
Satisfied to die
Sometimes I feel so satisfied I could die; other times I feel so anxious I don’t think I ever could, willingly at least.
What a ride
It finally slowed down tonight, like I was on this ride and couldn’t even tell what I was seeing out the windows because it was a blur. What was going on inside the cabin held my attention. We partied and clinked glasses, oblivious to what was passing by. Now the train is slowed and I see where I’ve ended up. I don’t regret the party but it’s time to go. I pick up my things and wave goodbye to my cabinmates.
We are one Will and many spatiotemporal slices
I was selfish before and they told me I was selfish but I was still reading Rand and my metaphysics were such that I believed our souls are actually individuated and we are ourselves, no matter what, maybe even after death—as I learned in Church school.
Now, my metaphysics being that of a unified soul. I am just a fragment of Will, subjected to a slice of space-time. I am less attached to myself. I am understanding, motivated even, to let my fragment of the Will widen, and work for the good of other space-time slices—other people, motivated by the same unified Will. It is all the same. We are all the same.
Language is a rose with thorns
Language, like a thorned rose, shows me so much, at the same time as it hides much else; brings certain things into focus, and blurs others.
Wide enough work
I used to throw out what wouldn’t fit, until it became a wide enough work that there was a place for everything.
Visceral commons
I’m more concerned with what is visceral and common rather than with what is scientifically correct but esoteric. You can throw bigger parties with the visceral commoners.
Glass castle
Such a delicate system of glass trusses sure shimmers but holds for not much more than the light. Even if you build softly and slowly the higher you go there is a risk run of breaking before you reach the sun.
Strong or fast
You’re either strong enough to hold the world and bend it to your will, or you’re agile enough to go along with it and to go quickly, farther than most.
Causal psychic
If everything is determined, then I think there’s a superhuman part of us that can tap into the causal calculations and predict what’s going to happen next. This is why we sometimes dream of things before they happen.
If everything is determined, then I think there’s a superhuman part of us that can tap into the causal calculations and predict what’s going to happen next. This is why we sometimes dream of things before they happen.
A leaf in the wind
I live these lives that all of a sudden pick up their own Will. From the new place and people, their motivations and the motivations of nature take over. The weather will do what it will do. The molecules in the air will do what they will. My friends will gently and kindly push me along in the direction that the group is already moving. So I get picked up like a leaf in the wind and it requires nothing of me at all expect that I do not resist. before I know it I’m part of the mob that moves on its own; the universal Will is supplanted in place of my own.
It was chaos
“It was chaos, but contained in love.” Something Dom said last night. I don’t even think he realized he said it.
I left one morning
I left one morning with nowhere to go so that on every street corner there was no motive for me in any direction and I went until I ended up wherever and it was dark and I was hungry so I had to figure out what to eat and where to sleep for the night.
My greedy heart hopes
My greedy heart hopes haughty Hunkered stars reach out For the first time in a million years Beating blood meets far away light Through eyes that shimmer Stained-glass windows In between A high-ceilinged church And a jungle of primal life At first my beating heart complains And wants to go back to the wild Once I manage to wrestle it down I read a missal and hymn-listen It beats slower and learns There’s more than one god to beat for
Who hurt this flower?
This whole day I’m watching a flower, with its outer petals spread wide open, like a father crouched down to receive his child leaping into his arms. The inner petals, however, are still closed like a bulb. They remain this way for as long as I look, shutting out the world the from the flower’s nectar. Open, only so far, receiving some. The deeper parts, the heart of it, closed still. I wonder to myself, who hurt this flower? Who drank selfishly from the nectar before its inner walls closed? And how much courage did this little flower muster? Just to re-open its outer petals. I am the sun, watching this flower. I will watch and ray down and tell my cloud friends to rain but never storm, to let the little flower drink without drowning. Hope, I do, that the little flower opens. Watch, I will, and even if she doesn’t, love, will ray down.
Good and bad
When it’s good it’s good, but God, when it’s bad, oh God.
Little speck that stays
Creep back coyly, cut past the pride with which you stepped out, shrink into what you were before your evolution hoped for all this, dash your tiny leaf on a wave of oppression that was always stronger than your Will, loose what little motivation you mustered, except for that sliver, that little speck that all alone is no match for an adversary at any one time, but as time passes, as everything else that was so strong in the moment fades away, this little speck holds on, it stays, though small, it remains, so that when nothing is left, there is this speck, hanging on. This little speck is the last of you. It will carry you to the end.
Can’t wait
Sometimes I think I just can’t hardly wait. I’ve agreed to meet her and I just wish the car would drive faster. Unhealthy, these insatiable desires. These hopes for the future that only hurt if you let them hold onto you long enough. Shake them. Breathe them out. Breathe in the subtle present—this we trade too readily for a future that can’t possibly match our hopes; a future that is really just a present yet to pass. All we really have are presents.
Homeless poet
The homeless man says, “The first part is you have to go somewhere that knows.” That’s all he said, to nobody, as people passed by on the street, nobody listening. I think to myself, is there any difference between my poetry and the ramblings of this homeless man? I don’t think there is, really.
The homeless man speaking poetry all day and nobody listens. Maybe he was a poet with a home at one point. Still a poet now but without a home. Maybe one of the best ever. Maybe he was too good and his poetry consumed him along with the drugs. No one will ever know, because nobody listens.
Fire drugs
There are some psychosomatic effects whereby even the bad drugs end up being good, when I need a boost just to get me over the edge and the short-term negative effects are outweighed by the long-term momentum, like a match to start a fire, even though the small stick of the match will be used and spent up and even broken, a sacrifice is made for the flame of a log fire that spreads and spreads, even into a whole forest if it really wanted to.
Harlem
Roundabout the lights Through the speckled streets Air and eyes and simple lies Here we are in Harlem
Poetry
Poetry does something to you. It changes your mind and makes you consider more.
I go out to get a poem. I meet people and shake hands and dance. I look at things and tilt my head to change my perspective. I lean off the edge and feel danger and see if new words pop into my head to describe the feeling. I let myself dabble in love if only to get a poem of pain out of it in the end. I hold a leaf and let it scratch down some words on my palm. I get home and go to sleep, too drunk to think of poetry, then wake up with a mind full of it at four in the morning. There are no poems I won’t consider. There are many parts of the world I haven’t seen.
Mixing things up
Recently I’ve noticed I use words at the wrong times. I am self-conscious about sounding unintelligent. But sometimes I still can’t help but think it sounds musical, or that it makes sense in some odd way. When I look up the word in the dictionary, I’m usually wrong. I know what I’m trying to say, but we’ve agreed on the dictionary, so I have to abide by that if my intention is communication. I consider a world my only intention is communicating with myself. What would that sound like? I’m sure that crazy people sound perfectly sensical to themselves. They’ve just stopped checking themselves with the dictionary, so their words are only their own.
At some point soon I need to return to using language the right way. I’m too young to go so deep into poetry like this. I need to stay close to everyone else and their language. I love humans too much to go off on my own. Not yet.
Cooking up some good mind
I feed contents into my mind like ingredients into a pot of stew. They mix and mingle and seep into one another. As long as the ingredients are each individually appetizing, the whole stew will turn out.
Similarly, poetry that visits me in the night or whole stories that tell themselves in a daydream or bits of arguments in philosophy that make sense all of a sudden—these are composites of my readings, experiences, and thoughts.
The order in which these regurgitate in my writings doesn’t so much matter as does the quality of each individual mental input so that no matter what combination, my writings are composites of ingredients that are high-quality individually.
Hold on
So subtle was the pain that I barely noticed until my fingers lost their grip. I knew something was wrong but in a fight for my life I had no choice but to grip even harder.
Living in the past
I wouldn’t have wanted to think of it, had I any hope of experiencing it again in the real world. Without such hope, all I had was the memory. I know to avoid living in the past; in this case, however, even a hazy and abstract semblance was better than any present reality. Laying in bed at night I played it over like a movie on the back my eyelids, each time it became more distorted. Still, there was nothing out in the city that could be any better for me. Until now, I’ve finally forgotten enough, so that my memory is not even of the actual occurrence, but more so of my longing for it. Only recently have some present realities presented themselves as superior alternatives.
Ethical murder
I wonder if an ethical murderer would rather kill an older man, thinking that he’s lived his years.
Climbing
About a hundred dollar halfway, not even a head start, if I haven’t dug my toes into the cliff face notching my progress on the way up.
Economic ego
My economic ego tries to squeeze out and run dry every other part of me. I stop, shocked, and question myself, who is who here? Who is sacrificing what to whom, and why? I have an idea that the mob has caught me and fitted me into a cog, albeit with handsome reward, but this is not the Self at work here; this is a social trick born of a mass of animals, no single one of which knows why he participates, other than that he is satisfied in some way by it.
Nose breathing
I breathe in through my nose and engage a mechanism whereby my mind is emptied.
Lazy poems
I don’t know enough words to write a novel. That’s why I write the same words over and over, just in different orders. I call them poems.
Safe balance
Always a balance, he says, so that he can escape either way. Waiting, watching, somewhere ambiguously in the middle—the safest place to be.
You can’t stop time
Suppose it wasn’t so sorry enough that you really thought the clock even cared, ticking along like a march of hand soldiers that even the coldest winter snow couldn’t stop. Even if Atlas himself held back the clock hands with all his strength, it would take much more, even than the shoulders that hoist the world, to stop everything from changing.
The social man
The social man, seen to be with people. I wonder why they love him. Why they hang on his arms and laugh at his jokes. whether it is superficial or genuine; either is good enough reason apparently. The lights get bright and conversation gets louder when he walks into the room; they either want to impress him subtly or to get his attention outright. The social man is attractive, if only by virtue of being attractive to others. If seen alone, it would ruin his whole persona.
Plenty to worry about
There are plenty of things to worry about; if any one becomes too much, you can pick another, and another—you’ll never run out.
We’ll always worry. The key is to concentrate the inevitability on the right sort of things, and never to dwell too long on any one.
So and sew
So it leaves me like this So it goes they say So and sew it lightly Duck darkness into grey
Hairpin lies
Here alone it hurts me herald hairpin lies hoping during the worst we hold on for goodbye.
Listen
Melancholy whispers silence shouts somehow I listen closely for the silence if only I'd bask in the quiet noise.
Art beats
Beats faster, my heart. Melts in the rain, my art.
Everything
Everything is out of sorts, says my control. Everything is alright, says my peace.
World for you
If I create a world for you, could you pay the price of admission? Could you stand in it? Would there be enough room for you to dance around? Enough birds to sing with you? Enough space to pay you attention?
Once inside, would you try and leave on a cloudy day, and steal away with my favorite flower? If you stayed, would you miss what you left behind? Or would you swim in my creeks and climb my trees and smile at my sun? Happy with the world you have.
In between couch cushions
Split down the center of a formerly indivisible line, these become two sides of your wonder wall. Not too far apart, as their magnetism still draws the two sides together, you nestle yourself deep inside like a child in between couch cushions. It’s not long until, something from the outside world, catches your attention. You look up to see, a symphony, for you and the other split cushion dwellers. So you start to say, with less dismay, this really isn’t that bad. And the same magnetism that sucked you down and in, spits you back out, into the world that welcomes you home.
Open your eyes
Whether it was or wasn’t, doesn’t matter now. When the past is gone, it’s gone. When the ships have sailed, they’ve sailed. When the meadowlark moans you must crane your neck and look up into the tree and see. Your mind and memory have failed you with facades you’ll never fully realize. Your eyes can only show you what there is. Drink this and only this. Lean in after the sight of it and let it swallow you whole, until you can no longer tell the difference between yourself and what you see. When the past is gone, it’s gone. Let it go. Open your eyes and see what you have left.
Words for good and bad
We use generally bad and generally good words, sometimes not even knowing the specifics; but we know they’re one or the other. We can feel it.
Good life
The universe has conspired to grant me a good life.
Fly by night
I fly in the deep dark night past jostling fears of failure and falling, none of which matters much anymore now that the rain beats into the windows and the horizon is speckled with black clouds. We lurch on like a bullet train out of a pistol tunnel headed straight for an inevitable leap straight out of reality and into a world where the climbing higher takes on meaning in dimensions other than just the physical; our souls climb the celestial ladder together with just enough time to finish what we started in the early budding flower season when all relationships are happy just by virtue of two people having to come together; higher, here—things are more dire now and the risk is higher on both sides, deeper, higher into the more than physical divine sky and crashing, earthward back into a very physical and almost primal nature which is certainly a step backward from the ancient godly life that our love has taken on.
Swollen knuckles
My knuckles swell until I can’t feel my fingertips, the sweat on my brow doesn’t bother me, my collar tightens around my neck, normally I would be uncomfortable, but this is what is required, it being time to push into it, and life asking to go on like this at first politely, later it will force me one way or another, later there won’t be enough blood to swell in my knuckles, my brow won’t bother to sweat, and my scrawny neck will slip from a sneaky collar that needn’t bother breaking it; I’ll be as good as dead then anyway.
Friends with memory
I like spending time with people that remember things. It somehow gives importance to the moments we spend together. For the same reason I like to write and take photos.
As hard as I try, I can’t help but feel that I am losing something when present moments pass. I want my time spent with others to be an investment in their memory bank, even if it has to push out other memories to make room.
I’m selfish about the space I occupy in their mind. I’m even competitive about it in the same way that I want to make space for myself in culture and history. I want to be remembered. I don’t want to die. But I know I will. So I substitute mnemonic remnants of myself for the longevity of my actual physical body, hedging against the possibility that not even my soul lives on.
I’d be happy enough just to live on in others. I’m less attached to maintaining myself in the confines of my own ego. I see more clearly now that everything is part of, and flowing in and out and together with, everything else.
Why I love nonsense
I like nonsense because I don’t have to worry about being wrong. It’s the closest thing I can get to being completely myself without apologizing, filtering, or being careful in any way. I go recklessly in whatever direction no matter what. You learn a lot about yourself this way.
Stay present
All you have is the present. If you live in the past or the future, they are just less realistic versions of the present. Also, they detach your time from your space. For example, if you spend your time dwelling or hoping, you can’t focus on what you want and need and what you can do about it in the present.
Morbid
Leaf says, “I’m looking forward to this time tomorrow when I’ll be asleep.”
Moose says, “I don’t know what I’m looking forward to anymore.”
We laugh. It’s funny while we’re still together.
Art diamonds
I feel best when I’m putting out art. Emptying myself of everything I’ve worked hard to cultivate. Giving back to humanity the art diamonds that I have salvaged from the soil of my experience. And as a result art diamonds come back to me from others and the soil of my experience grows richer and my next diamonds are more readily refined.
Good trip guys
Krys walks out the door after we’ve said goodbye, “Good trip, guys.”
We all laugh.
Krys walks out in the snow. His car is waiting, idling, blowing smoky exhaust into the cold air.
In between times like these
Seamus says, “Just working in between times like these.”
Krys says, “Marking off the days in my calendar.”
We laugh jaded laughs, morbid about some things, but soberly, and knowing the things we have to do are well worth times like these.
Primordial soup
Spatial things are hard to grab at when their essence slips and melts together so you end with a primordial soup running through your fingers and you’re asking yourself, what’s the difference? Between this and that. What option do we have anyway? So choosing generally between a positive bright hue versus a dark trudging and dwelling upon weakness or misfortune or whatever else.
Art without explanation
I see art in everything that could just as easily be anything else but it is what it is; it doesn’t matter why, just that it is so gosh darn interesting, and that’s what I try to describe, as it appears to me, while avoiding the temptation to overexplain and force everything into a reason just because of my need to understand. I let it go and smile and say to myself, “This is it. And this is good. No matter whatever else.”
Bus trip
Wow, so much on the bus, trying to think of words for this but I don’t think there are any. Even my fingers streak across the screen. So many thoughts that don’t have words to express them. I’m doing my best just to write this and saying to myself, “Okay, okay, you got this.” I want to try writing poetry.
Glass out the window. Cold flakes yet to hail. I really think I’m too lost for this. It’s all garble. Nothing that makes sense comes out. All I can keep saying is ‘oh god, oh god’ and marvel at how my fingers feel.
My mind isn’t putting together what is spatially available to my body. I thought in my head that there was fruit in the fridge at home. I reached out in the present world where I’m just sitting in a bus and I tried to take the fruit out of my fridge. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me that I could reach out and grab something that wasn’t there. Everyone on this bus is thinking the same thing. It’s like we all share the same mind.
I want to take mental snapshots, to remember this somehow. The height of my life. I think the same thing every time. But eventually I forget and go back to living normally.
I feel the soreness in my brain like a muscle tired after a workout.
Fall leaves
Sitting on the porch swing in Denver looking out at the trees. Lake asks me, “Do the trees change color in California?”
I think about it. “I don’t know. Not the redwoods, I don’t think.”
“Well, what makes them change?” Krys asks.
“I think it’s them dying. The chlorophyl that gives them life goes away and the green color fades.”
I look at a tree across the street. It’s October and the leaves are shades of green, orange, and yellow. It’s like an aging population. One branch has green leaves that are all young—it’s a school of youths and no elders. Another branch on the outer edge has mostly orange members—these are middle-aged citizens that think back to their own youth in the spring months. And the yellow leaves, towards the end of their lives, looking at the ground beneath and preparing for their Fall.
Eyelid light show
The light show on the back of your closed eyelids is arguably better than the real light show with your eyes open.
Death by fire
My fear of death takes over and I stop thinking about the future, thinking it improbable. I’d prefer to burn up right now all at once by my own hand and enjoy it, rather than let a subtle icy death sneak up on me.
Frictions
Frictions define me. In the smoothness I hurtle fast along, not noticing much. It is in the transitions—changes in direction, slowing or speeding up the pace, transporting to somewhere or something else. This is where the friction comes from. Travel is never instantaneous. And I can never stay doing one thing in one place forever, so the frictions are inevitable.
Music is good
Loud music gets me high. I close my eyes and know nothing else. It covers me and gives the darkness a quality of warmth, like the dark is hugging me. Blinking when the cymbal claps. I worry about getting up with it and having to get down later, like climbing a tree that is easier to climb up than down. Why are you dualist about this? I ask myself. Music is good. Don’t worry about getting down. Maybe you’ll grow wings or find a rope. Go with it, I tell myself.
Kansan identity
Growing up, it was all about where you were from. Your friends, your tastes for food, your sports teams, your religion. Everything was largely homogenous with the people you grew up with.
Now that I’m grown up and out into the world, people ask me questions about who I am and what I like and where I’m from and I’m less sure of how to answer. I try to talk to any of my experiences based on I’m with and what they’re most familiar with.
So much chaos inside my soul, had I not been born into the basic, safe life of the plains and homogeneity, I might have lost it too soon. With my Kansan base, I can lose it carefully, consistently, and still always return afterwards to a static set of rules and sense of identity, then set up to take off again.
Plane crash
Sometimes I sleep soundly on a plane ride, when I’m all too comfortable to die. Otherwise I worry about a crash, of course, as all people do. I can’t sleep and I can’t read, so I just sit there and wait for time to move slower than usual, jumping at any turbulence and watching nervously out the windows as the wings flex in the wind.
Multi-directional art
I used to write and want to keep it going in the same direction no matter what. I’d have the initial idea and no matter what else occurred to me I wouldn’t veer off; I was limited in this way. Not to mention the cultural norms that were really barriers to my creativity, only allowing me to access so much in the first place. Now that I have access to more and I’m more willing to go off in another direction, my possibilities for artistic direction have multiplied.
Lady love and poetry
Somewhere from the night she visits me. Lady love and poetry when I need her most comes in through my cracked door and sleeps at my feet and waits for me to wake. Sometimes she’s not so patient and tickles my toes in the middle of the night. I wake and smile to see her like Wendy would smile at Pan. Oh lady, I’ve missed you, I’ll say. It’s been so long here in this factory world with its gears and mechanics, can we please please go off to your world tonight? Without saying a word she grabs my hand and holds back time like a bedsheet. Space and the mechanical world still seem to be there but the light is so bright that I can’t tell. We fly in the timeless night until I’m all empty. When lady love and poetry places me back in the mechanical world to charge my primitive batteries. And I wait for her to return.
Suppose a sucker
Suppose a sucker swayed in his conviction like grass in the wind. That a heart’s center had no magnetism to guide its morals. Only a natural trepidation that bent one’s back in the direction of the queen. Hard labor and a leaf that looked bad actually turning out good. Then a rose petal might stay in that stem a little longer if only the woodpecker’s cry was on softer bark. Oh daisy, oh doozy, I can’t even write anymore.
Hot air balloon
Just when I think the poetry has dried up, and all I’ve left in my forlorn life is a trudging forward, just then I’m up in the night with flowers bursting from my chest. No soil beneath my rib cage and no sunlight in my room, but nevertheless here are these flowers brightening my midnight life and making smile a face that hasn’t in a while.
God, life is good and everything is alright, I tell myself. You just have to go through the bad times, I guess. Necessary lows for the highs. And as I’ve gotten older I get better at remembering this. A paradox where I can still enjoy the high knowing there will be a low coming, and paying my dues in the lows without hoping too much for the highs.
It’s only sometimes when I’m like a kid again and I get so silly high that I forget about anything and blow so much hot air into my own ballon that when I’ve run out of breath the fall back to earth has a hard crash landing. And when I meteor here, my impact drives me so deep that at first I know it is temporary but at some point so far beneath the surface I start to wonder whether I’ll ever rise again. So much time in the dark, cold cavern, and deeper, darker all the while, I can’t really help it. But boy, when I’m high up there, I don’t know if I’d change it for the world.
Let’s go through it
Let’s go through it, unsure of how we’ll come out, this is all we’ve got. One direction being no different than another, the only real difference is our speed, if we are to control how much ground we cover. So that the only choice we ever really had was to hurtle headlong into the furnace. The sun mooning up at any distance we charge into. And the moon sunning from the source. Your heart’s center was really the only thing that ever beat for me. No matter how much sense school ever made to me as a boy, I was always bound to chase after your heart.
Yoga love
At yoga, the instructor tells us, “Exhale and let go of something.” I exhale and let go of it. Later in the practice, he says, “With your strength, express love.” I express love to the same thing I let go off.
High ceilings in churches
High ceilings in churches so our songs rise and the divine beings in the corners can hear them. I am stumped trying to write about religion now. I walked by a beautiful church on ninth street and saw the high ceilings through the beautiful windows. I thought to myself, “There is something about those high ceilings.” But I cannot separate my childhood ideas of churchgoing from the art I’m trying to write. They don’t seem to want to go together.
The aesthetic of having things
The aesthetic of having things: I am attracted to a person, a man especially, who seems to generally have things—things which we need, in particular. For example, when we are hungry and he says, “Ah, here have a piece of fruit.” Or when there is something to be paid for and he steps forward with money as if his pockets are full of it. Or anything at all where something is sought after that I or everyone we’re with would otherwise have to go out and get ourselves and he says, no matter what it is, “Ah, yes, here you go, no worries.” And never expects repayment.
Aesthetically, he is seen to carry things that he owns, like a backpack on his shoulders, the coat he was supposedly wearing at one point now in his hand, glasses on top of his head that serve a dual purpose to keep his hair out of his eyes. He is a demigod working towards either omnipotence or omnipresence—I am not sure whether it is power or presence that his possessions convey; either, godly in some way.
Abstract art is about feeling
I closed my eyes last night and thought of how abstract art makes sense. I tried to “see” my toes and legs and hips with my eyes closed. I was trying to feel, only with the sense of touch—my toes against each other, my legs against the bedsheets, my hips against my own skin. I could only come up with a rough sketch that didn’t match the exact picture I’d seen before in the mirror. I think similar when in love—opening my eyes and seeing, closing my eyes and feeling.
There is a certain emotion still that goes with even the roughest sketch. Something that just barely looks like a face, only the curve of one side of the jaw, a shadow between the eye and eyebrow, a line where scalp meets hair—individually, these marks, shapes, colors are nothing; together, they represent all the faces that we’ve loved, hated, longed for, and feared.
Infinite lives
When we were young we talked in terms of now. When we went to school we talked in terms of what are you doing today and tonight. At work we talked about months. Now we say we’re going to do this or that for so many years. I wonder, if we lived infinite lives, we’d start talking in terms of decades and then centuries.
Sight meditations
My deepest meditations continue to be based on “sight.” I am not sure whether it is my physical eyes seeing the backs of my closed eyelids, or if it is my mental mind projecting blackness. Either way, I see mostly black darkness that displays sometimes abstract shifts in its color and other times real-world shapes and figures that I recognize, like people’s faces, street signs, etc. I go deeper by continuing to focus on what I “see” and avoiding thinking about anything else. I find my drishti in various points of the mildly dynamic darkness. At some point I felt a delightful sensation in my legs and feet like a tingling. Once I got to a certain level, I felt that I was oscillating back and forth. I made a push to go deeper but was shut out, set back, and made to try again. I did this until I fell asleep, not from lethargy or relaxation, but from exhaustion.
Don’t fall in love
I sit alone on my couch in my apartment at 9:32pm on a Sunday night with my arms folded tight across my chest, shaking my head and groaning and saying to myself, “Don’t do it! Don’t fall in love right now, you fool.”
I try to meditate. I try to focus on my breath or on anything else but her. I’m on the cliff, I know it. I might have even already fallen off. I’m already thinking of the last time this happened. Even if it’s requited, this kind of headlong love is too much. I’m going to try and sleep it off. By god, I’m scared.
Big decisions
I remember right after we graduated we were most of us on the fence with our decisions. We could have done one thing just as easily as several others. Some decided right away and started. Others took a couple months. But almost everyone I know decided on something eventually.
And now, almost a couple years later, a lot of us are doing those things we decided on, and they’ve now taken up big parts of our lives. Seeing as most of us are in our early twenties, then what we’ve done since graduation is a tenth of each of us.
It makes me think of how important those decisions are. In the moment they seem just like waking up and having breakfast. What’s subtle is they change the course of everything for really no good reason at all in the sense that we could have picked something else and it would have been just the same now.
Do more
Mostly I don’t have time to plan. I just have to do it. In my mind doing more is better than the marginal improvements of doing less, even if the less things you do are made better by the planning. Still not worth it to plan, I think.
God, I’m thankful
Wallets I would have had if my bookshelf could’ve kept from toppling. Empty bottles full if they weren’t so full to begin with. Laying on the hardwood floor hurts a little bit, neither of us will admit. We even roll around a bit before confessing we’d rather be in bed. Shoes and rolled jeans; I like her dressed up as much as not. Don’t think it’ll last much longer honestly but at least it lasted this long. Even just that it lasts right now is more than I can really ask for. God, I’m thankful. I forget too often.
Death destroyer and birth creator
The physical world chews me up anyway. I want to have some control over my own destruction. Like a child constructing a tower with blocks or a miniature toy cabin with logs, I build myself up partly for the joy of stomping through, smashing and tearing myself down.
I believe in the two sides of morning and night, birth and death. A morning birth is building up and a night death is tearing down. They might seem at odds except for that what breaks up in the night reconstructs itself in the morning. The parts of us that release at death are born into others.
Like a child’s watercolor
I can’t look at a tapestry, too much, so I look at a nailhead, but even that starts to break itself apart after I’ve stared for a while. Things hold together only if you glance and shortly go on glancing at something else. Otherwise you see that nothing stays the same, and everything is entangled; hard to tell where one thing stops and the thing next to it begins, like a child’s watercolor that melts at the edges of each brushstroke.
Fire love
Iced stuff over the fires that could have burnt anything but this. The contrast, miraculous. To see her fight to not fall into this love. No, any one but this one. For though surely it’s flames would melt her away into ecstasy if she gave into it. There would be nothing left of her—or him, for that matter. A love that destroys, and means to destroy. A building up that tears down. A creative destruction. A melting burning.
God of time
The god of time visited me, pocket watch in hand. He talked in a rhythm that matched the ticks of his watch hands. He said, there are appropriate times, to stop and to go. You shouldn’t stop when you need to be going. You shouldn’t wake when you need to rest. Do the right things at the right times and watch out for when the times change subtly. You’ll be doing one thing and all of a sudden it’ll be time to do the next. Balance between staying completely present to what you’re already doing and keeping your eyes peeled for potential futures that need to be grabbed at just the right time.
Torn like a sunset
Tell me things, about when they weren’t like this, when you had to dress a dandelion just to hold down the fort for a night’s cabin. Man, I miss those nights, even the ones that have yet to dusk, that might resemble nights passed, in which case I can’t wait. Nights are like dying, which means they are also like living. I am always torn like a sunset. I want it to start but I don’t want it to be over.
Written memories
“I have a bad memory,” I tell people. Nowadays I’m better at organizing my writing than my own memory. I have to write everything down or I forget. So when I need to remember something I search my phone or my notebooks instead of my own mind.
Method writing
I bend myself like a method actor to get into a certain style of writing. Sexed and drugged to write poetry with an honestly dumbed-down vocabulary and more emotion. Alone for weeks with coffee and exercise to write academically. Holding my breath and watching characters out the window to write a novel.
Swords and arrows
I could have played along just as easily. I just wasn’t built to. No harm or foul if you are. Pros and cons to fitting in, and the same for not fitting in. Just so interesting that progress and economics are primarily owned by one, and love and spirituality are primarily owned by the other. Like two armies with different types of soldiers, one with archers and the other with swordsmen. Both could potentially win the battle, each by completely different means.
Girls
Girls that are loyal but not bad enough, and girls that are too bad and not loyal.
Dark and light
There are dark times and there are light times, always. There is never only dark, and there is never only light. Even at the same time, the dark is light in some ways, and the light is dark.
I say this because sometimes it gets so dark that I think to myself I’ll never again see my shadow apart from all darkness. And other times it is so bright that I think it’ll be light forever. Always, things change. And things come up that I never expected—this keeps me moving forward, through good times and bad.
A sublime physical world
Carved into the hillside hauled down from the horizon where a point of eyes meeting sky ignores the sweat on my brow long enough to make progress that goes unnoticed save focus on the presents that were passing, though the passage itself made no difference to the hike ahead, carrying us along inside a sublime physical world.
Art I was after
There is a tragedy I face as an artist standing between two worlds. My mediums of description are symbolic while what I’m trying to describe is not symbolic. I do more drugs and love more and forget myself, feeling that I am closer to the source I am trying to describe.
All the while I am destroying my powers of description as my brain deteriorates and my memory fades. So that the door is closing and I will come to a point where my abilities (to describe) and my closeness (to what I am trying to describe) meet in the middle of my life when I will write my masterpiece.
Thereafter my powers will worsen like the wings of Icarus burning off as he flies closer to the sun. Finally in my old age a solar blast will return what remains of my attempts to describe, and what I’ve borrowed and called myself will break up and spread throughout the source I was after all along.
Capturing heart
I carry a capturing device in my heart that catches what my mind can’t when words don’t really make sense; still, all that I have other than a kiss and a touch is to try and say something.
Whether I remember or not
So that in times like these I’m not really processing anything both for being overwhelmed in this moment and all the moments just before that I haven’t quite caught up with but the dirt picks up under my feet just the same and supports a body that houses a mind in a universe that moves in just the same way whether I remember it or not.
Hiking poem
Trails cut into the hillside like scars; looking out at the open ocean I’m not sure which side is the sky.
Double yous
Woken on walked up whimple washed waves these double yous keep coming back to me.
Texting myself
Writing to myself, I used to feel dissonance when deciding whether to refer to myself as “you” or “I.” Now I’m more comfortable referring to myself with different pronouns. I think because I feel more a part of everything.
What day is it?
We made it and forgot that we made it so we got caught up in chasing something new until we chased that down too, so now we wake up every morning not knowing what day it is.
Found out
After I’ve “found out” it’s like the gates open and everything pours out so I’m writing all night on my iPhone with her asleep in bed next to me.
Spending winter break at university
I do my breaks alone. I travel to universities in the Midwest and rent a dorm room in the empty halls and take my showers in the community bathroom. They both rushed to tell me that I could spend the holiday break with their families. So I had to politely decline and tell them about how I actually enjoyed it. Something from my old school days is still hidden there, something scholastic and nostalgic. I sit at an old mass-produced wooden desk on a worn-out desk chair with a red wool cushion. There’s nothing on top of the desk except a book and a notepad under yellow light. It gets spooky at night, something about a place where normally so many people are but then nobody is. It reminds me of the Thanksgiving I spent alone in my dorm room during college. I was scared to get out of my bed at night and walk down the long empty hallways alone.
I need
I need a life where I can share.
I need open space for my deep breaths and soil for my roots.
I need pages for my words, the ones I write and the ones I read.
I need human bodies to animate the hearts and souls I long for, both mine and others.
I need canvas for what I paint and what I see.
I need stage for when I perform and for when I’m in the audience.
I need a pillow and a dream world to rest and let my tired mind roam.
I need a plot of land to rest forever, eventually.
Talking to trees
I assume she has her reason for not wanting to look, just like the rest of the natural world has theirs. I imagine a tree with his branch arms crossed, emotional, with his back turned to the trail, refusing to acknowledge passersby like us, who hike the trail looking at our feet, like guests at a party who fail to find and greet the host and express their gratitude.
I imagine a world not unlike the fairytales where our dialogue is not only just among ourselves but also with the rest of lifeforms and even with inanimate objects like teapots and candlesticks. Otherwise we are closed off from the world that’s always trying to tell us something.
Swallow whisper
Swallow the silent words you will. Whisper softly foregone fables.
Whimpers that won’t whine
There are some mysteries better left that way. Nothings that we’re better off not whispering to one another. Whimpers that won’t whine quite contrary to the core as we want them to. When it’s all up to the moment to just be, ignoring our nagging to describe it and box and tie it up in package and parcel when it’s really so much wider than that. Better left unsaid, these things. Better left just to be.
Irrational fear of death
My fear of death has almost become irrational. I imagine someone smashing me with a hammer when I’m not looking. I imagine someone coming in through my locked door when I’m sleeping. I imagine everyone has a weapon and everyone that looks at me funny wants to hurt me.
I think it’s irrational. But then I think of people who were killed by surprise. In hindsight wouldn’t it have been rational for these people to worry and watch out ahead of time?
Bright light
I turn off the bright light and turn on a dimmer one. In a few minutes I say to myself, “Gosh darn, I thought I turned that bright light off.” Then I look up to see the lights and it’s the dimmer one that’s on. I say to myself, “Oh wow, how my eyes have adjusted.”
Sexed and drugged
I come back to this sober world where I care for my physical body, my survival, and my future. Back from a whole month or more so sexed and drugged that I forgot who I was and just became a part of and in love with everything. I didn’t even realize I’d misplaced so much of my ego.
My meditation, too, served to lift me up and out of myself so that what I was concerned with most was everyone else and everything around me.
Now back here, more in my body, my thoughts are more often of looking better and maximizing returns on my investments, rather than poetry and dreams that came to me constantly while I was open to everything.
I was looking up into the open sky and overwhelmed by it so probably processing the same amount as I am now looking very far into a deep, narrow hole. They are either both lenses to the same thing or they are opposites.
Openness crept in
Seems quite open, everything does. In a way that heralds a hue of austerity outside of what you’d normally expect from the cool night air rolling in through your quarter-cracked door. ]The openness wouldn’t tell of itself other than the secondary qualities like air passing through and the absence of any closedness tattling. With a flow like that pouring into my nostrils it was too hard to stay awake and once the openness crept into my dreams I didn’t know anything anymore.
Ascetic glutton
Mindful on a morsel when you’re starving, but what about on a mouthful when your stomach is full? Can the fortunate glutton be mindful as an ascetic monk?
Four of us feeling good
Through a tunnel passing through the low yellow lights crossing the bridge smoking in the car speakers drumming early in the afternoon four of us talking and feeling good.
Describing the whole thing (writing)
For the sake of my writing I try to stay focused for as long as I can where I’m at. I can look at something once and write about what I see. But if I look at it again and again and hear it and feel it and smell it and wait to see what it does and how it reacts to me being there and experiencing it—all this can only be gotten from stopping and staying put for a little while.
You’ve got to let it work its whole self out otherwise you only end up describing one point on the surface rather than the whole shape. You’ve got to stick around to get all the other points like pieces of a puzzle until the whole image is displayed. Otherwise your reader will only have one thing to go off of and it’s more likely that their subjectivity will show it to them as something different instead of what you were trying to describe objectively. On the other hand, if you can give them more points on the surface, more data points, then your description can trend towards objectivity with less of a chance of your reader guessing wrong.
Travel sickness
I travel far away and forget who I am so that when I return I don’t remember what to do. I feel that I belong nowhere anymore and don’t know whether to spend energy remembering who I was or to just set off again and keep forgetting, letting what happens happen and not worrying about it.
Only me
It’s only me that stops myself. It’s only me that tells myself that I’m unhappy. It’s only my mind playing tricks on itself. I’m smarter than my biology. I should start acting like it.