I miss the sureity that carried me as a teenager,
despite the gaping flaws in my prized logic
a sense of control is an intoxicating thing.
the gentle chaos and nuance of the day to day
is just as revitalizing, or so I tell myself
from the moment my feet leave the covers,
as the weight and the atmosphere begins
to press down, to turn my drawing breaths
soupy in my lungs – thick with portent.
Category: Poetry
-
february 23: today I convinced myself
-
february 22: today I watched the moon during the daytime
I used to watch the moon, always finding the face
empty – it haunted me, hanging impossibly silent and gray.
there came a certain point – the wonder couldn’t grab me
with its kaliedoscope stare, and I no longer sat rapt with attention.
I haven’t lost anything, not even my way. It’s more subtle, like
a growing fondness to dismiss my former elation and thrill
as the fantacism of my college days, a temporary psychosis
that all twenty-something english majors endure.
I convince myself that I’m coming out of it – as if any day now
I’ll see the daylight in it’s proper cynicism, when the truth is
that it’s all the white noise of a tired and apathetic muscle
I’ve neglected to flex.
-
february 21: today I regained a facet of myself
snow shouldn’t have been unexpected
but the neighborhood was beautiful this morning.
eight o’clock I spent watching people out the window,
and the day unfolded in a simple joy.
I sat and ate the fruits of our labor, ginger cookies
and curry that filled the apartment with aroma –
it’s a very human impulse, isn’t it, taking satisfaction
in what we can create with our own hands,
the quintessential act of feeding ourselves lost somehow
and I’m regaining it, and a piece of myself in the process.
-
february 20: today I spent the afternoon in the kitchen
I can cook passably well these days
so I lose myself in it, today – knives
and a half dozen burners demand attention.
this is the simple magic, a timeless alchemy
I welcome wholeheartedly into my life –
my focus is rapt on turning bits & pieces of
wholesome and pure into something
somehow better.
-
february 19: today the wind spun me around
we are a society of tools, we build and transmute –
it is in our nature to never be satisfied, we keep ourselves
wanting. it might be this same impulse that drives me
and keeps me questioning, the best and worst of my humanity,
the reason my mood will peak & valley a dozen times over
down the sidewalk with each sight I see –
the smell of bread, the plodding, steady sound
of melt water runoff from the subway platform
the homeless man’s blanket below, and I know
his feet will not be warm tonight.
-
february 18: today I reveled in the scent of soil
I am tranquil and wearing a blissful smile like a beatitude
when my familiar suspicion that I’m doing it all wrong
tinted the preternaturally warm breeze suddenly cold –
much the same way just one small drop of blood
while shaving this morning turned the sink sickly red.I suspect I’ve forgotten where to look – exactly which stones
to gently overturn to find those fragments and nothings that
add up to a monumental sum – unaccustomed to daylight,
like the nightcrawlers and pillbugs that delighted my
five-year-old afternoons – they lie in the soft dirt just beneath
strangers faces and flower boxes.the thought nags at me that I used to be better – expert, even –
at bringing them out and turning the mottled grey carapaces
to just the right angle to let the sunlight refract and multiply.
-
february 17: today I couldn’t shake this nausea
my mind doesn’t take the same maddening leaps it used to.
I read other amateurs work and feel it well up inside,
envy spreading through me like nausea, a burning rash
that is not easily quelled. self centering has become a new
full time occupation for me, as if my days aren’t full enough.there is a better way. I know this, feel it as surely as the aches
in each of my joints – predictive – not sensing air pressure, but
rather a front of kinder fortune. there is a better way. I’ll stand
in early morning and breathe – the right time, the right place –
there is a better way. I wait for it and work toward it.
-
february 16: today I remembered dandelions
reading anthropology texts I come across the phrase
mystery of childhood and I realize it’s one mystery
I’m trying to unravel. driving home I watch the lines
and dividers dripping past in the rearview mirrors
and think on this. it would be easier if we were living
through those grass-stained mysteries again,
when dandelions and berry bushes were enough.
-
february 15: today I looked for secrets
I’ve been keeping secrets from myself, shards and gems
accidentally kicked out from underneath my mental leaf-piles.
instinct tells me I must have kept them secret for a reason,
especially if hidden from myself – so I don’t look. casually
I drag my foot and they are swept from view.but I want to look. it’s instinctual – the growing book pile
shows the weekly casualties of all the text I’ve consumed.
my need to know is reflexive and insatiable and exists
entirely outside of a need for a ‘what,’ I just must know
and the knowledge has yet to better me in any tangible way.maybe it’s the secrets I’m looking for – buried too well inside
but surely they must exist elsewhere, stumbled upon by some
other poor desolate case who was braver than I, enough so
to etch it out onto the pages – maybe the very same that
I have on tomorrow’s slate, a revelation in waiting.
-
february 14: today I threw out paper scraps
valentine’s day in a civil office
lacks the hearts, reds and pinks
and the cards. it’s been a peaceful monday,
quiet and unassuming. the only celebration
of the holiday was brought with me, what I took
from a morning embrace before
I stepped outside of the door.
-
february 13: today I danced for rain
the air grows thick and warm rolling past noon – and
I feel something ethereal inside me reach past the rooftops,
my aspirations and belief evaporating from my pores
to condense, I hope, into something that can rain down over us.
I want to stand on this same sidewalk, lost in a crowd,
in a torrential downpour, an ablutionary rite that will wash
everything down past the gutter – I will step inside the foyer
with my clothes heavy and forming pools on the tiles
and feel much better about the world, for a change.
-
february 12: tonight the hot water ran out
I’m like a furnace that needs to be fed
with all warm things, even now, on saturdays
where the font on the screen is enough to satisfy.it is about us, about four years of hand holding
on to each other. I want to write those minutes –
I’m ready to go back to read and relive moments again
with you. twenty three together, our lives blooming out
like a wineglass, our stem ballooning out to the cup
full of potential – I feel it electric in our breath.the cat rolls his ball through the track, places
his paws determinedly around it, trying
to pry it out with clumsy mittens.
I like to believe I taught him this.
-
february 11: today I bled out the afternoon
But I pulled you and I called you here
Didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I?
And I caught you and I brought you here
Didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I?– excerpt from The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned), by the Decemberists
bleeding out the afternoon with a mechanical tranquility,
wearing headphones because that’s what it takes now –
to drown in redeeming chords and verses that stab like knives
just so you can feel as awful as you need to.but you’re always the stranger in my daydreams,
standing in shadowy corners, behind me under the sheets –
you’re always present when I need you. orange sun as
the clock hands drip down past three o’ clock, then five.i’m searching music for what I’ve already found in you.
we commiserate, you smile with me on the couch,
as if you wrote didn’t I? didn’t I? comfortably on your lips
curled into perfect curves – what I carry through the hours.
-
february 10: today I drew mandalas
Drawn with ballpoint pens on cardstock i draw pseudo-mandalas behind my desk
and mull over them, consummate circles
across a page, I detail and draw fine lines
until my fingers ache. monks who make them
meticulously from sand will destroy them
once finished, their entire purpose just
to be made. I lose the will to detail any further
and consider crumpling the page but I keep it
instead, and any significance in the decision
is lost completely on me. this is significant too, I think.
-
february 9: today I thought on squirrels
while driving home I watched a squirrel survey three lanes of traffic
before eagerly throwing itself under the wheel of the car ahead.
I carefully swerved – I couldn’t bear to strike it a second time
and immediately wished I could have written the whole scene differently.it was a stupidly morbid bit of small talk to bring up at a dinner table
so I didn’t. The split second of its body going limp was indelibly written
on some obscure wrinkle of my brain, and I ate my casserole.
that was how I finished that night, feeling foolish for choking back sobs,
for the sadness I felt for the impermanence of squirrels.
-
february 8: today I squinted in the sun
creation myth #13: for god so loved to fill emptiness
that he stared into the void and we stared back –
fully realized, and full of a sudden and terrible impetus.
we cannot help what we cannot help but it is
our responsibility to try, and that is our failure
and that is our trembling hallelujah.
we stare into voids, too, and have to fill it –
it’s a godly impulse – and what we fill it with
doesn’t seem to matter and this is sin –
we’ve the ability to craft worlds and fill them with life.
it should all be lightness and laughter,
we should look at our works
and earn a more deserved rest.
-
february 7: today I was unafraid
fear is impertinent when facing the gathering black,
because it cannot smell or otherwise sense what
hidden keepsakes you reserve for yourself –
fear being a perfectly worthy token to carry;
it signifies you understand exactly what is at stake.
-
february 6: today I felt warmer
sunday sidewalks begin to peek from beneath the ice,
and I’ve heard it somewhere before, that the earth is warming
into a well deserved embrace, into the searching kindness
that makes us all brighter in the sun.
I feel it now, wrapped and waiting –
smelling like springtime in February and my clothes
feel heavy and warm on my body.I sense the silence ending – ice cracks under foot,
melting steady and bleeding down the gutters.
the people rumbling down the sidewalks open their coats,
and I open my heart to them. we follow our roads home,
lit up with the same foggy hope that warms us.
-
february 5: today haikus fit just right
envelopes and pens
and productivity settle
my stomach – I’m home.
-
february 4: today I traced my steps
happy happy life! was scrawled at the bottom,
a genuine wish written in her familiar unruly cursive
to close the remarks on my final poetry portfolio.
I deified this professor for the three years it took
to finally sit in her workshop, fifteen twenty-somethings
wielding pens and the best intentions.of all the sincerelys and thank yous I’ve read over the years
I’ve never had a valediction that clung to me so desperately,
and it struck me all over again while I scanned my poems
late last night, holding the cheap plastic report cover like a bible,
revisiting her corrections and suggestions and unintelligble
little random squiggles under words. I remember that May,
running up the hill in front of Donnaruma Hall to retrieve
our portfolios from the drop box on her office door.it was graduation day. our robes hung over our arms
and the dew clung to our dress shoes, polish rubbing off
onto the grass as we ran, and when we had the folders
back in our hands we traded, read and read again.
our professor wished me a happy happy life! and I felt it
in my bones, warmer than the sun reflected off
the campus center – yes, I thought, yes it is –
I offered my thanks to the springtime air,
gratitude for her final gift to me, and for the words
to explain what I wished for everyone.I feel as if I should tell her now – succumb to my impulse
to write people letters to explain just how I feel, to tell her
yes I’m happy, yes – but I wait, because I should –
wait for the further blessings that could come, wait
for the simple subtle happiness and hope I hold in my heart.
-
february 3: today I defined my terms
and after a night of madness
I only want to be home –
the night was too long with
discussions of what could be different
had conversations gone a different way,
talk which never settles quite right
because for all of my complaint
I would never want anything else
but warm sheets and love forever,
love of friends and marriage talk
to keep me warm at night,
to define what I call home
and to define myself.
-
february 2: today I faced a fear
I don’t want to forget this,
looking out of mist wrapped windows
five floors down to sodden sidewalks.
I don’t want to forget anything,
how pilly t-shirts feel against scars
that run highways across my body,
precise recollections forged into each one.it’s why I carry painful reminders,
my talismans of secret, broken promises
known only to me, because only
I am accustomed to their weight,
how to carry them without stumbling.don’t mistake my silence for uncaring,
or my demeanor for deliberate coolness –
I’m always cataloguing, forever I’m listening
because I cannot bear to forget.
I cannot allow myself the freedom –
who can judge just which mote
of recollection could change it all?if allowed only one outrageous wish
to fizzle into sweet fleeting reality
then take these talismans of mine –
take them all when I’m gone,
call them sacrosanct and keep them –
keep them safe, keep them warm.
-
february 1: today I couldn’t stop rereading
we grow beards and drink PBR out of aluminium cans
to form the impression that we represent the common man
when our aspirations and most fervent wishes couldn’t be
further from common. we wish the best for ourselves
and never picture settling in the places that we do.I’ve gone a month writing poems for my own self satisfaction
and it’s only deepened the sense of disappointment (not strong enough a word)
that I feel between the moments when I finally hit the pillow,
when that last exhale before the dreams filter in is let go
like a death rattle, because tomorrow is another day
and the fact that potential is all I’ve got left
is still enough to start it over again come the morning.I’ve gone a month writing poems and it’s left a bitter taste
in my life. I’m thinking in carefully built sentences again,
moving from each minute to the next through proofing marks.
glaring red repetitions of AWK are stamped on my consciousness,
I cannot revise the foundations that I’ve begun already, I cannot stop
writing either – I’ve tried and the pain was too much to bear.
-
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 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?”
CALL ME BELOVED 