Author: Cameron Martin

• january 31: today I ended the month in frustration

  I’m already looking up prompts for poems.
  a clearer manifestation of my creative ennui
  I cannot fathom. i just can’t shake the feeling
  that this should be easy, and as soon as I
  mouth the word immediately it rings false.
  the very syllables are serpentine and lull you
  into believing them: easy, as if anything is –
  all of life is a struggle from cradle to grave
  and it’s not such a bad thing, isn’t it?
  eloquent, really, meaningful in its own way,
  a manner I cannot fully describe, and that
  is the constant shrug upon my shoulders.
  I bear it like a cross and I do not use the metaphor lightly.

  January 31, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 30: today I learned about face blindness

  

  I cannot imagine not recognizing a loved one,
  the familiar shapes and contours of the cheek
  rendered by some misfire in the brain inconsequential,
  the distinct colors in their eyes unintelligible.

  in the story I heard, their relationship fell apart
  and they let each other go. where once she
  would wave and use hand signals so he could
  pluck her face out of a crowd now she would
  let him pass on by, and I wondered what
  it would be like to be her – able to follow him around
  completely incognito, to see him in the most
  natural element.

  and what about him? a more romantic part of me
  believes he must recognize something in her, or
  must have at some point, love wriggling it’s way
  into the forefront of his consciousness, some whisper
  in his head insisting “isn’t that her?”

  January 30, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 29: today I finished the drive home

  we spent the day together, being educated
  in the countless ways our wedding
  could be personalized, monogrammed cookies
  and hundreds of paisley patterns on fine paper –
  I could not tell you how it all rubbed me wrong,
  like the wrong side of a towel – it all
  didn’t fit quite right.

  bleary eyed I careened across
  the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the
  lights hit me in the peripheral, NPR
  prattling on about frenemies over the radio.
  you gasped, the beauty of hundreds of apartments
  glowing through the eleven o’clock fog –
  how could I tell you that vignettes such as these
  are the most thrilling moments in my life,
  the ones we share, the insignificant parts of
  our adventures? my boot carefully rode the brakes,
  rounding the turns back home, and in my mind
  I quietly wished for a lifetime of beautiful nothings
  together.

  January 29, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 28: today I watched a man get hit by a car

  

  I sit in an office chair, mired in first world problems
  while many hundreds of miles away an armored transport
  strikes a protester on Egyptian streets.
  I watch from behind a screen. my hand snaps over my mouth
  as the wheels swerve toward him (silent video but I feel the thud)
  and more poignant – the man put himself in the way.
  no phone no internet as they attempt to douse
  dissatisfaction by blanketing a country in silence,
  yet voices grow louder and men step in front of
  panic-driven steel, in the name of equity, of the many.

  familiar thoughts come to mind, if I was in a cafe
  as the crowds rushed by sounding a call to arms,
  would I get swept up in the patrotic cry,
  kick tear gas back into phalanxes of riot shields –
  could I plant myself in between the line
  and the armored car – what else besides
  the inevitable choke of panic would occupy
  the private corners of my heart as the tires
  screeched closer? for freedom, or enough is enough,
  what satisfaction would take away the sting
  of broken ribs and dislocations, lying
  next to oil slicks and choking
  on burning rubber thick in the air,
  what feeling would take the pain away?

  this is what we do to each other, the unspeakable
  pride and ego that so easily lets one place another
  under foot to protect ephemeral gains.
  this is our humanity, splayed out on the street
  and bleeding from the inside – shot by riot guns –
  cradled in someones arms while voices fill the air,
  crying out dignity, dignity – if not freedom
  then dignity.

  January 28, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 27: today I watched the sun rise over snow

  

  exaltation! shoveling snow, reveling in muscles and effort –
  together we moved mountains in the driveway.
  the sun rose over the roof tops, salmon-gray clouds
  and bursting light, blue skies – I ached with satisfaction.

  it was the same feeling in the gym, fog in the steam room
  so thick I couldn’t see the door, sweat running
  and deep breaths, purify, purify – I emptied my mind –
  simplify, simplify.

  January 27, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 26: today I tried to be clear

  the last thing I want is to be difficult,
  I’m not writing to cover things up but
  to make them painfully clear. poetry
  is only a tool and not a puzzle,
  since I cannot hold a brush I
  paint with words.

  it overwhelms me – so much so
  that I gave the whole venture up.
  lines and ideas still came, unbidden,
  so I ignored them and they went away
  if only for a time.

  now that I’ve tasted both sides
  I still cannot say which is worse –
  the ache of not writing:
  uncomfortable fullness, like full lungs
  at the bottom of a pool, or
  the failure of writing:
  when you look at your handiwork,
  muddled and smeared like streaks across wet paint,
  like pages left out in the rain, nothing that
  a stranger could read and see
  just what you saw.

  you spend your days like a madman,
  raving down rainy streets
  yelling don’t you see don’t you see?
  in your heart of hearts you know
  no-one does, nobody sees the fat flakes of snow
  just outside the window, the light
  and the symmetry indelibly burned
  into your memory and you have to tell everyone,
  and that is the madness, that is the failure of writing.

  January 26, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 25: today I looked for the right words

  I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect.

  What are the words you do not have yet? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?

  Your silence will not protect you.

  – excerpt from The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, by Audre Lorde

  what to do when the novelty wears off,
  when I tire of hearing my own voice inside my head?
  I’m certain there must be at least 365 thoughts in there –
  it often feels like thousands, too nimble to grasp a hold of,
  replaced and renewed just as quickly as they appear.

  so what is worth saying,
  worth broadcasting to everyone and no one –
  which brief nothing should I give shape and form?
  it becomes my earworm, a predictable itch,
  the question of what is worth giving voice to at all.

  I disallow myself the luxury of intellectual laziness.
  when my head snaps up from the pillow I begin to ferret them out,
  these words that I reflexively consume, as if each day
  I stare out onto an ocean of language, deafening snippets
  that roar like crashing waves – I stand on the shore
  and piece them together, and it all says that
  it all means nothing. I’ve come to believe
  that this means everything –
  all paths and all of these strings follow back
  to the simplicity of it, the razor clarity of it, and

  in the face of it my words mean nothing.
  they mean everything. the duality is too much.
  my greatest desire is to pull the secrets
  from myself, to give them voice, but they hide
  in the dark. they go mute. they don’t stir.

  January 25, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 24: today I clutched my coffee for warmth

  as the mercury sunk down this morning
  all of us on the sidewalks clutched
  our coffee cups, held them close to our hearts,
  in preparation of grasping frigid subway poles
  and frozen steering wheels. I make this an
  integral part of my day, seeking out
  points of camaraderie with strangers around me –
  I tie tenuous bonds and pretend that I’m
  better connected to the world.

  so just breathe – let it condense on the windshield
  and let the morning settle gently, do not resist
  what you cannot change, do not force
  disappointment into a world so full of it already.
  breathe and let the earth spin gently around you,
  drink your coffee and be satisfied just to be warm.
  tell yourself there is always more time –
  mornings when you’ll wake up warm,
  afternoons spent with chosen company.

  just breathe – sit in the drivers seat
  with the engine murmuring, let the peace come
  while the car warms up in the parking spot.
  the warmth always follows.

  January 24, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 23: today I sang for the soil

  I wanna sing one for the cars
  that are right now headed silent down the highway –
  and it’s dark and there is nobody driving
  and something has got to give.
  – excerpt from Cotton, by The Mountain Goats

  frost crept up my fingers as I realized
  that too much of my life has been lived
  through planned out scenarios on television,
  over-wrought drama that makes the tears form
  and enough anxiety to keep me turning gray.

  there’s a place inside where you know they aren’t real
  and that you’re about to cry over people that
  you can never meet, but that’s the same place that
  seeks the pain out, tells you that sometimes
  it’s just the salt you need to season your life.

  I can see my boots over in the corner – world stomping
  scuffed straps of leather that make me invincible
  and nimble, boots I’ve written poems over, boots
  that have stepped off the continent and tasted
  dirt from all over – the boots that brought me home,

  the same pair sitting in a puddle of salty meltwater
  near the front door. they call people like me a homebody.
  and I think my body’s telling me too – my fingers lock up
  like a vice after five minutes out in the icy air, as if my
  hands are rebelling against the very idea of january.

  I want to be more than this warm body wedged into a couch,
  making memories vicariously though broken neighborhoods
  that play out on the screen like horror shows, scenes written
  to keep me awake at night out of empathy’s sake, because
  for some reason it’s not enough to hurt for just myself, anymore.

  January 23, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 22: today I ate mexican food

  we brave twenty degree streets
  to gather at dinner tables, watching
  the west village out the windows.
  our lives unfold before us – it’s
  been so long since we’ve seen
  each others faces.
  catching up is hard to do,
  the ‘how are things’ questions grow
  tiresome when the answer never changes.
  it’s the spirit of kindness and the
  earnestness that forms the answer –
  and you have to believe –
  that things are good.
  life gets better.

  January 22, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 21: today I climbed ice mounds

  
  let the ice and snow become my bones,
  become a part of myself – call me brother winter –
  and let me show that there is kindness in the season.

  let me cover boughs with gentle blankets
  and the sprawling roads and sidewalks
  in pristine sheets of white and new beginnings.

  let me cover the hills, let me watch children
  carry their sleds to the windy top – and
  let me carry them safely down again.

  like the falling rain taps on windowpanes
  I’ll cover the world quietly. let silence
  be my mantra, the falling slow my gentle whispers.

  the silence is not death, but only the earth
  taking it’s deserved rest – let me lull you,
  let me calm you – let me never get tired of it.

  January 21, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 20: today I looked out of the window

  It’s funny that the first chords that you come to
  are the minor notes that come to serenade you,
  and it’s hard to accept yourself as someone, you don’t desire –
  as someone you don’t want to be.
  – excerpt from Rambling Man, by Laura Marling

  the days where I’ve nothing to say
  can sometimes become the simplest poems to write.
  out of a void comes sense and thought,
  the subtle glances and milestones of the day
  become stanza and form, the ordering of chaos
  upon blank pages and scraps of paper.

  the lines that follow are disappointing and
  the words that come are downtrodden –
  and the truth is that the sad poems
  are the easiest to write, such a rich
  library and lexicon to draw from, and
  such a troubled world just outside the door.

  classical music swells from the radio,
  the too-bright sunlight of three o’clock
  accompanied by lively violins and horns.
  it’s making the afternoon surreal –
  an unfitting soundtrack for a life too mired
  in complacence to justify the effort.

  the song on the radio builds while
  the homeless man parks his shopping cart
  of bottles and bags in the plaza outside,
  curls up on the marble memorial’s bench
  to block out the wind, and for a second
  a sliver of his pain is my own.

  as if on cue the crescendo dies off
  into a mournful, slow draw across the strings,
  the man shivers on the stone bench
  and I can’t change it –
  I cannot stop the wind from gusting,
  I cannot take away his fatigue, and
  he looks so very tired.

  January 20, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 19: today I had good intentions

  it dawned on me last night that I’m living a parallel life
  through these poems, carefully breathing words from
  behind a keyboard. this is how I communicate with
  those closest to me, I write and I break my silence
  not with gentle sounds but a pretty cacophany –
  each line break falling like cracked and tumbling glass.

  to the few that follow me through my mornings
  and afternoons, carved out of blank screens,
  understand I only wish for comfort and peace.

  the sounds never sound right as they wheeze
  from my throat. they get stuck and mumble forth
  like so much nonsense, distorted by some
  self-sabotaging instinct that twists them up
  into anxious knots and cold, aching monotone
  before they dejectedly fall off of my lips.

  to the few that scan down the page, those
  who glide through these cryptic syllables, please
  understand it’s never what I’m trying to say.

  so instead I speak my mind through this obscuring lens –
  it magnifies and distorts like so much light refracted
  through wavy, imperfect glass. my words, eroded and shaped
  by the friction and pressure of time. these lines
  become my elephant in the room, the testament of my
  good intentions as I carry myself through the wasting weeks.

  to the few that seek out these poems,
  those who share that fleeting minute in the day
  where I leave these bread crumbs behind me
  for someone to follow – to the few who commiserate
  and comprehend the haunting sense of dull sadness
  that lurks in every conversation before it has
  a chance to settle into the corners of our memory,
  I welcome you, I welcome you –

  understand I only want the best of myself
  to leak out into the world, waves of compassion
  and peace to ebb out from me and crash into
  those I love – for them to become overwhelmed with it.

  January 19, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 18: today my socks got wet

  it must get easier than scraping windshields,
  than blustery gray mornings and holes in your shoes,
  than the creases and folds where the wind slips in.

  it must get easier than the passive silent rage,
  the feeling that grave things are passing you by,
  the bed of disappointment you fall asleep in.

  I toss and turn at night, the sounds of tires
  calmly whirring past and kicking up sleet and salt
  onto the sidewalks, I think, there must be a kinder way.

  January 18, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 17: today we cleaned our home

  vinegar has permeated the apartment,
  slowly evaporating into the air and off
  of the hardwood. furniture shuffles about
  as I sweep out the cobwebs and grit
  from my mind. each breath is new and
  rejuvenating – the back and forth of
  the brush, the broom, the mop
  the perfect focus, a mantra that fits
  for this afternoon at least.
  we exchange smiles as we pass in the hall,
  and peace washes over our home –
  I fill myself with it and am satisfied by it.

  January 17, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 16: today I hunted poems

  “she had a heart too big for god to watch over it anymore”
  – compos-dementis, who inspired today’s entry with her poem.

  sitting back I think on the moments that brought me here,
  the black moleskin notebook purchased at the university bookstore
  that I raced to fill with the pretty nonsense that meant
  everything to me – one became three, than four, workshops and
  classes, poets and professors and good books that made the
  world seem somehow more real than it had any right to.
  I swear the air outside on stony Connecticut paths was electric
  with the sense and calculated chaos of language, and with
  my pen and with my books I could cement it, for myself, forever.

  I found a poem online today, in a community I’ve long abandoned
  and apparently the other writers too – it settled on top of
  e-mail notifications, what I assumed yet another reminder
  of when end rhymes were compulsory and ‘heart’ and
  ‘apart’ was the perfect way to say exactly how I felt,
  but instead I’ve read the poem three times and I am still floored
  for the girl – and the same jealous wave crashes because
  these are the words I want to say, the letters I want to write
  in the air so I can show everyone, shove it in their face and yell
  that this is how it is – this is how it is,
  and how what is and why it should be doesn’t matter
  and the pain begins to bleed through, and I’m frustrated and winded
  and nothing seems to matter anymore.

  January 16, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 15: today I watched the sunset

  when you’re tired and the weight of the day
  is pushing you down, I want to be the pillar
  that will hold you upright. if there is anything
  that I want out of this life it is to be stalwart
  and calm when the winds blow, when the seas rise,
  when the clouds break, when life rushes at you
  with a furious roar.

  I think about this while the windows fog up
  and the sun dips down past the rooftops,
  while the trains roll rambling home and
  the front doors of the building open
  and close, open and close – the clock ticks on
  and brings you closer to being back
  home with me.

  January 15, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 14: today I read Allen Ginsberg

  “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
  dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
  angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night…”

  – excerpt from “Howl,” by Allen Ginsberg

  sometimes I feel that frenzied kinship –
  that the scattered and ragged youth are still here,
  doing holy work out on the streets and sidewalks.
  it’s difficult to say but I get the feeling
  that it never gets any easier, and maybe
  that’s the point. we rage and rage,
  try to carve out something achingly beautiful
  in the time we have but it’s never enough,
  never quite what we meant and so
  we, ourselves, ache for want of it.

  I watch the best minds of my generation from afar,
  across self-imposed distances that ensure
  I’ll never become as close as I’d like.
  outside metaphorical windows I listen
  to them sing their songs, beat against
  the desktops and slide fingers down
  the fretboards, dragging pens across
  marble notebooks and their tired
  glassed-over eyes across their screens.

  across time zones and into their houses
  I swear I can hear them sleep – the thought
  settles an unrelenting soreness in my chest,
  because I feel the very same onus to
  create. I know the day-after-day
  devastation of failure that hangs
  over our heads.

  tell me that the desire consumes us;
  that in some distant time, in some
  fantastic place we will find ourselves
  seated at the cessation of all our misery –
  all of the routines that consumed us in search
  of that hazy sense of destiny and purpose
  suddenly at an unceremonious end.

  tell me we’re fighting the good fight,
  that all of our pretty swan songs
  and clumsy sentences were enough.
  tell me they mean everything in the end.

  January 14, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 13: today I wouldn’t forget

  We took shelter from the cold last night
  in drafty restaurants, reminiscing with
  whiskey in our glasses about our childhood,
  all of the memories suspended in sunbeams
  in our minds as we breathed them into life again.

  It’s one of the comforts offered in recollection,
  that while we remember halcyon days
  in amusement parks, hazy afternoons
  and freckled summer skin – they are all
  rid of their flaws by the passing of time.
  Sitting around the dinner table, they warm us.

  This is the duality of memory, the sin
  and the grace of forgetting. There are times
  when the imperfections are the keystone
  to the whole core of ourselves, the very
  last thing we should let slip away.

  I awoke to your voice under heavy blankets,
  the silence in your home enveloped the morning
  in a satiating calm. I stepped onto the cold hardwood,
  satisfied by tranquility, determined to write this –
  determined to never forget.

  January 13, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 12: today I slipped on ice

  

  
  there was no snow day today – plows roam the streets
  clearing the last remnants of our city’s second blanket.
  I shuffle into the office, comfortable in my boots,
  and enjoy the peace that settles just outside the window.

  I have always wished for snow. those long nights spent
  staring up at the ceiling, breathless and awake as you plan
  a weekday outside of school, for once – the gray clouds
  quietly roll in, pregnant with possibilities.

  co-workers shuffle in, worn from a cold commute.
  they squeak out damp footsteps on the tile floor
  and head toward lonely offices, frost scattering
  morning sunlight through the glass.

  sitting in my office chair, I watch the world wind down
  and love the snow anew. it demands a simple respect,
  fragile and gentle yet stubborn and unyielding –
  difficult to move and content with itself.

  the noises of complaint and weariness that
  once drifted up and down the hallways of my floor
  are muted – the snow has blanketed us too.
  we watch our steps. we take deep breaths.

  January 12, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 11: today the words didn’t come

  this is how it used to be – it came easy,
  in deliberate swoops over the keys –
  my fingers hammering out exactly
  what lies in my heart. It was me –
  I turned my back to it, and yet
  the whispers never stopped,
  always gently pleading &
  feeding me morsels of
  phrases, maddeningly
  brilliant but never
  close enough to
  really say that
  which I want
  to say, so I
  let it go,
  and it
  went
  dim.

  January 11, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 10: today I looked for joy

  each poem I write reads to me like
  it’s cast in shadow, dozens of corners
  and recessed bits in the phrasing
  where darkness pools and makes all
  the syllables clumsy and grim – so
  I force beauty into my lines, and
  into my life, by proxy.

  I strive to rescusitate those
  letters across the page, as a reminder
  that this is not a disaster, but only another day.
  with enough effort, even the choke of panic
  in your throat that comes from the meer
  weight of living – even that breathlessness
  can be beautiful. the joy of living
  has never left, it will never go away.

  January 10, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 9: today I fought off the cold

  sitting in a cold living room I toy with words,
  feeling the unbridled pleasure as ‘warmth’
  rolls off of my lips, fills the room and mingles
  with the sunlight through the foggy window.

  it’s a way of working magic into a dreary world,
  to fill it with sound and passionate fury.
  someone has given me a voice with which to sing,
  and whispers the right words in my ear.

  I sit in a cold living room, watch the sun
  work its way through the cat’s fur on the bed,
  and I begin to fill my world with warmth & sound,
  I craft letters together slowly – I sing aloud.

  January 9, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 8: today I meditated in thought

  “To be, or not to be, that is the question: whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?” – Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

  we’re made of stronger stuff then it feels, sometimes –
  durable and unyielding. the more I look the more I choose
  to classify humankind as stubborn, in a word – we resist
  all opposing forces, we transmute, we adapt.
  shakespeare called the day-to-day pains of living
  slings and arrows of outrageous fortune – a fine
  depiction of the glory of waking to the late morning sun,
  outrageous fortune. I turn the words over and over in my head,
  a warming thought in my core that dulls away the nicks
  and stings of those arrowheads and stones.

  January 8, 2011

  Poetry

  ---

• january 7: today I sat in the sunlight

  the cold is the herald of january this year,
  seeping in through the windowpanes and
  the constant passenger whenever I’m in the
  car, chilling my hands numb as my fingers
  tighten around the icy steering wheel.

  I pass the time during the morning by reading,
  glancing out the windows, searching for sun
  that will soon pour in the windows and
  stretch out over the city – the familiar
  downtown shopping district of my town
  lit up and elucidated.

  I watch as people file in and out
  of the train station, idly picking
  at facets of their lives by what they carry,
  briefcases and bookbags hint at stories
  I don’t yet have the wherewithal to capture.

  yet my eyes blink steadily, lazily
  saving glimpses as they close
  like a camera shutter – I wait for the sun
  and think of you, I pray for warmth
  and offer poems.

  January 7, 2011

  Poetry

  ---