2009: Here's hoping!

For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Everyone ready?

Yuletide

I was raised in a forest of Christianity,
weaned from a wolf of God.
Had I known a heath: been a heathen.
An olive grove: a luminous paganus.
Who cares who hijacked whose holy days,
in dark Decembers I know candles and souls.
There was no snow in Bethlehem.
There was far more blood in the firelit hills.
Give me this tempered concoction of belief,
smelling of pine, warm as fleece.
I wear it like an animal skin, heavy with horns.
I pray for a birth from the biting cold.
Where science shrugs to foist human dreaming
up against the icy rote
I will meditate, crown and thorn
buried in virginity, beloved by both.

Spiritual Darwinism

A world of things that I pinned my identity to, a host of stories and personal mythologies, now feel distant and untouchable. If who we are and what we root ourselves in can shift so dramatically--if things we once said we would die for (meaning it or not) are now things we remember fondly but fail to seek--then who or what are we?

My scope of focus is narrower. I am putting effort into my occupation, into little projects here and there. A year, two years ago I was reading poetry into a microphone, reading my well-worn copy of Rexroth's poems all the time, the same way some people would read a bible. I love these things no less, but... I'm not reaching for them.

And it's very possible that this is completely what human beings are always supposed to do. We inhabit an identity for months or years and then it evolves--which only means survival of the fittest, not survival of that which we choose to believe is most dear. As I've told myself before, somehow the tomorrow's keep coming, one after another, and I'm still here. So I must be doing something right.

Winter has set into the region. Today it's cold rain, last week snow. The leaves are all down. It's going to be four months of bare branches and gray curbs, just like every year. I don't feel heartbroken that the greenery is gone, or that I didn't get outside more often during the summer. I would have, a year or two years ago.

New Year's resolution: Grow lungs and legs. Leave the cold, gray ocean. Learn to fly.

Prop 8: The Musical

Okay, I've converted this from the mini-player to just a link because the anal-retentive side of me can't stand that it was overlapping my archive list. Yes, I realize the irony in that statement. Ahem. As you were.

Watch Video

From a letter to a friend

If you're going to allow others to read your work; if you want it to have even the remotest chance of surviving beyond you; one has to let go of trepidation. Your words are pieces of you--replenishing fragments, pheromones loosed on the wind. A lot of times, nothing will come back. Sometimes it will come back twisted, and yes, you'll have to defend yourself. You must want those rare and beautiful instances of true reciprocation badly enough to not be afraid of all the other possibilities.

We are lucky to be remembered at all, and one-in-a-million gets to become a legend that sticks in the world’s consciousness through the ages; considering that, to fret about exactly how one will be remembered seems almost greedy. If my choices are nameless, meaningless dust, versus scorn and notoriety for "corrupting the youth" (we're looking at you, Socrates) I still believe I would rather go down in the history books as something. Even if entire nations don't understand or agree with me, a solitary college student who happens upon my work and feels a moment of clarity, or sympathy, or curiosity from having read my words is enough reason for me to press onward.

Rip

I remember, on television once, I saw a strongman tear a deck of cards in half with his bare hands. He said it was actually more difficult than tearing a phone book in half, because a phone book is wider and allows more leverage. I wonder what that man is doing now. I hope it's something epic, like wrangling dragons on Mars, or wrestling Architeuthis on the ocean floor. If he is moldering sad in a rusted trailer, surrounded by decapitated jacks and queens, then there is not much point in writing novels, or anything. I hope he at least brings in a good salary, and that someone remembers he existed. Anyone.

Barack Obama / Joe Biden 2008

On November 4th, please help me vote some intelligence and rationality back into the White House. There is no such thing as a sure thing--if you support this movement, please don't sit home and assume everyone else will take care of it. Come out. Vote.

From the archives...

This dates back to about 2002, maybe 2003. And oldie but goodie (I think). Fans of Greek mythology may realize this came from reading Edith Hamilton's book over and over and over. What I like about myths is exploring the lesser-known characters, those that played pivotal roles or filled out a pantheon, yet have remained obscure because so few stories focused on them. Like this man here... his name is pronounced "SEE-icks" or just "SEEKS", depending where you look...to my knowledge, he is only involved in a single myth--and not even his own myth, really, but his wife Alcyone's (from whose name the Halcyon Days derive). The myth says that Ceyx married Alcyone, the daughter of the King of the Wind, and that they were completely, happily in love with each other. But something, which is never named, begins to trouble Ceyx, and he insists on leaving his wife to consult an oracle, even though Alcyone is terribly worried that something bad will befall him. Which, of course, it does. And so the question kept coming back to me: what could possibly have been so dire that he would risk losing such a perfect life? What drives anyone to forsake all of their common sense and good fortune for a dangerous pursuit? Why gamble it all away when your instinct tells you to stay put...?



Ceyx


Beside her in bed—
You held the daughter of the wind,
Even in sleep she bore you aloft
And when she lay awake
Your heart was cradled in the silk
Of a vernal breeze.
Everyone saw the devotion,
The storm-winds attended
As dawn’s light gave her away.
She weighed nothing upon you, and you
Were the unseen element
Holding up the air.
What could have troubled,
Ceyx, what were the various matters
Pinning your heart to earth so firm
That love could be eschewed
For an answer?
Perish it. Did you love the answer?
What better future could oracles speak
Than what lay beside you,
What salve administer to your wounded
Spirit that could not pour
From the lips of Alcyone?
Money, the trifle, no.
Politics, the worry-stone, no.
The fate of your art—
Though what art beyond her love—
No. None of these things.
Did the mouths of ages lie to your joy,
Did your hearts tremble in the frame of time?
Did you doubt?
Perhaps you sought her eyes’
Truth in the eyes of the oracle
Or, perish it, loved the seer?
Did you love the answer?
We will never know,
But in the wake of your choosing
The sea lies still, fourteen days.
And while some call it a mercy,
I know it means the placation of one
Whose questions owned his day.

Autumn is a verb...

...and I tell you, the sky is falling.

Strawberry Swing

The shadows on the streets thin with the autumn. I never realized I noticed this before, but all summer we drive through solid, black shadows and in autumn, it flickers and sparkles through the windshield. And later, in winter, when we need every blessed photon more and more, the trees sit kindly unobtrusive, bare. They have not a single thought about us; these are only incidental benefits; they made us as much as we made them.

I stood by the river under a tree with thin leaves--are there willows that don't weep? These looked like willow leaves, but I am a novice at naming trees. The sound of them falling through the branches, ticking and gently rasping against each other, the bark, and those yet to fall, took me back to her suddenly. The river, filthy with pride, took the leaves. A light wind started it again and again.

Fall begins today. I found out I can still feel that way.

Taps

I found a delete key in a crack in the earth. When depressed, it clicked against the nothingness between stars. I tapped at it like a parakeet at the mirror. I waited for my latest blog to fizzle and blink away. Half-expected a different diagnosis, a different new hire, the Mary Celeste of my heart to re-appear. For a year (it seemed) I pecked that button. Waiting for failed jokes to recoil in my mouth, for Galveston reconstituted like resurrection fern. All the hurtful things I said replaced by harmless air. I beat the button like I had a bid, like I had the question to their answer. Nothing buzzed with the sound of edits. The fissure's floor filled up with dust. Then I remembered the crucial discerning difference between the backspace key and that which I pushed now. The backspace rolls up the world behind it. Delete keys only kill ahead.

Meditating On The Catwalk

I understand, now, why some adults fall to searching desperately for inner peace. The quietness—the focused stillness—that existed in me when I was a child, an adolescent, a twenty-one-year-old… the capacity to experience that kind of inner calm seems to be losing… losing against the adult world of existential assumptions, societal concerns, the identity of being an American in Indiana who works in an office and pays his taxes (hold the Mr. Anderson jokes, please). But what are these things, really? When did I start caring—am I caring, or just going through the motions because that's "how it goes"?

Although I still reflect, it seems so much harder to attain a clear view. I've grown more and more complicated within, full of new worries about people and things, more fear of losing them than I ever had before; more apt to suppress my impulses and tell myself it's nothing, really, I'm as free as I ever was. I've grown… riddled. So much is taken for granted in the name of this rat race. Existence itself is taken for granted, as if we’re all just so very certain what the world is that we have the time to complain about poor service at the drive-thru.

There is a difference between questioning and wondering at. I question a lot of things--but the sense of wonder is tougher to summon back, and it's an important sense, make no mistake. There is a feeling I have of flagging wisdom; that I’ve gained experience and intelligence, at the cost of my appreciation. Mastering the mundane details while the big, ethereal picture fades away. Anyone who knows me is aware that I’m not very religious, but I have always borne a species of faith in the souls of living things—and my soul feels more vague today than it once did, in part because the route back to its origins is less clear. Maybe it’s time to get into that box of mementos in the basement again...

There was a morning, in November of 1997. The love of my life was away at school; I was alone, recently reborn--having been hollowed out by a potent crash course in philosophy the spring previous. All my ideas about the world were shaky at best; I didn't trust what I thought I knew. I was attending IUSB, taking my first college courses (I remember the first class, the first day, the first thing we were assigned to read: the epic of Gilgamesh, perhaps the first great tale humanity ever wrote down). And on this particular early morning I was making the drive to class, listening to Dave Matthews Band's Live at Red Rocks, which had just been released a couple weeks ago. And the first light snow of the new winter was starting to drift down as I rode to class.

The city is so gray at that time of year, but it's not yet the tired, wearying gray that comes later in the season. It's that pre-Christmas gray, where the cold air still feels like a refreshing contrast to the seasons just passed. It's a virginal chill that only emphasizes the warmth of the living body, the shell of heat you make inside a heavy coat that has slept for the last seven months. The traffic signals stand out so brightly, red and green, and the weightless white flakes look lost and countable, drifting as they are with plenty of air between them, falling any which way but straight down. #36 came on as I was nearing the school, and I ended up sitting in the parking lot a little longer than I would have otherwise, listening. Hani, Hani... come and dance with me...

That morning, it felt like I'd settled gently down into a perfect, lonely sort of heaven. In my Rilkean solitude I felt such immense peace inside. A few years later, someone managed to capture the moment perfectly in a song lyric:

My car became the church
and I the worshipper of silence there.
In a moment peace rolled over me
and the one who was beating my heart appeared.

- Ed Kowalczyk

O Fiona, Where Art Thou?

This will have to tide me over, I guess.

Listen

the song

moving cells in a drop of blood
bodies made of, caked with mud
voices lowing across the plains
wind in hair and water in veins
all these elements speak the same
tomorrow we may find our names

spinning webs in a shaking tree
sunlight flees from a mountain’s lee
axioms set with ink and lead
carving marble to raise our dead
sketching out where the last stars went
clasping hands for the prayers not sent

turning leaves with a hint of snow
wondering how the end will go
tiny creatures beneath our skins
writing laws to invent our sins
we consume what we need to live
comet tails must the sun forgive

falling red frozen mercury
pale white fish with no eyes to see
crystal virus in a velvet lung
passing biases to our young
churning butter in an ancient barn
surely God can do no harm

bent umbrellas in torrential rain
stabbing children to numb their pain
mantis colored to match her land
canyons patterned in flesh of hand
if our math fails on blackboard slates
find the words to deny all fates

Ranting Again

You know what, screw this country. Our political system is not just broken, it's become a perversion of something that was actually once workable, maybe even admirable. Even when the two parties aim for "bipartisanship" it's only to make their own parties look better. I think it's possible--possible--that Barack Obama actually cares where the country is headed, but just knowing that there's even a chance he could lose the race over some one-off sound-byte at the last moment--just knowing such a thing is possible in this country--sucks all the "hope" right out of me. We're maimed, wracked with self-serving political in-fighting, and the media only fuels that fire by emblazoning every ridiculous "did not!" "did too!" argument across the internet, in the headlines, or on a scrawl at the bottom of the television screen. The people who report it, and the politicians who originate it, act as though these trivialities actually matter; and so, consequently, the idiot masses who believe that if "everyone's saying it, it must be true" (these are the same masses who can't discern an obviously Photoshop-ed image in an email forward, and thus send it onto all their friends accompanied by messages of amazement and awe, or vague outrage) let the tit-for-tat muckraking sway them, at which point, sick though it may be, the bullshit becomes validated, in that it actually effects people's choices. Then, seeing that a result has been got, the politicians and media push even more of this refuse down the pipe, and the whole cycle just reinforces itself.

I just... don't want to care anymore. I'm really starting to be convinced that we're getting sick beyond repair here, that the good eggs are doomed to be subsumed in a sea of busted rotten ones. I kinda want to move. But damn it, I love my corn fields, my raucous crows, and my oak trees... I love the top floor of the Schurz library, and hearing the symphony play at the Morris once in a blue moon, and driving up to New Buffalo in the summer to get a cheeseburger at Redamak's. There was a time when I "followed politics", when I kept myself abreast of world news and events. Now? About the only news source that doesn't disturb me is NPR. It feels like there's a glimmer of sanity there, at least. And there are a couple decent writers for Newsweek that I don't mind reading. But every time I go to check my email, and Yahoo! pops up their inane version of a headline, I cringe. Because I know some people click that link and think they're going to learn something from it. And by some, I mean... lots.

Maybe I'm simply having a bad night. Yes, that's the ticket. That will get me through until morning. And maybe when I wake up tomorrow, something meaningful will meet me. I think it might. I hope so.

LeRoi Moore 1961-2008

Sax, flute, penny whistle--
he was the breath of DMB.

No one can replace him.
They can only hope to disguise the void.

Rest in peace, Roi.
Thank you for the beauty.

Curfews

The tornado came down directly upon the cemetery where Aura Hay was buried in 1886, and that means something to me. There was only one witness to its formation; his name was John, he was fourteen, and he had been living with his mother and two brothers in a dilapidated shack in the woods. As it happened there was a clear view across a nearby field to the cemetery hill, and after that black vortex touched down it plowed straight toward John’s family’s shack. He said he felt like a mouse in front of a stampeding elephant, and as trees began to rise out of the earth and fly about his family threw themselves flat to the floorboards. They were completely engulfed in the heart of the funnel (it sound liked a train was coming, John said) but it left their wretched shack intact, and moved on to cause greater damage to the rural subdivisions to the east. It was when John and his brothers wandered in that direction the next morning—to gawk at the horror—that a local news meteorologist stopped and interviewed them; and that man’s subsequent reporting on the evening news is how I found out about the whole thing.

Eel River, Indiana is not what you would call a bustling city. Once upon a time the military built enormous war machines in the factories here—those towering mechanized landwalkers known as Crollhorses, which won the Second World War for Amerika, if you believe the history books—but that era had long since past and now, today, Eel River was the absolute last target on any army’s map. There was nothing anyone wanted here, just people, and commercial development, and a struggling artists’ community in the heart of town. Even the river had ceased being important; where once there were annual, massive log jams from the lumberjack camps down south, now there were only the occasional sport fishermen or kayakers. One positive thing could be said for the Eel, however, and that was its purity. No river in Amerika was so clean, and you can bet there were some courageous government officials laying down the mandates to keep it that way. It had become a source of local pride after the factories shutdown, but it didn’t bring any real money into town.

The ghosts brought in more money than the river did, and they were, officially and on the books: “an unconfirmed phenomena, generally believed to be a localized hysteria of the indigenous populace, popularized by common lore of the region.”

Any given person on the street, however, might be able to recount seeing just such a phenomenon, and sometimes under greatly unsettling circumstances. When people talked about the ghost town of Gnaw Bone forty-one miles southwest of Eel River, they honestly meant the specters implied by that phrase, not simply the long-dead boomtown it was in truth. There were missing persons, strange murders, all manner of unsolved crimes around the county. There was even a cryptozoological mystery known informally as the Crumstown Slayer, to which several cattle mutilations, two dead dogs in a tree, and one bled-dry horse were attributed. No one had ever seen or photographed it, just the gruesome things that they believed was its handiwork. The complete lack of any tracks, spoor, or left-behind fur or feathers created rumors that something dark and intangible from Gnaw Bone had gotten bored waiting around for lost tourists to wander into its range, and had gone out a-hunting. I was fifteen and my folks still made me keep to a nine o’clock curfew if I was going to be anywhere west of Peach Road or south of Kern, even when nothing unexplained had happened for two summers running.

But then the tornado came, just like Aura (dead at twenty-two) told me it would, that day on Crumstown Highway, when the corn was six-foot high. And I set my own curfew a little earlier: indoors by dusk, and prayers said before midnight.

Etymology

Someone help me define "antrobelphic".

Proofs

In the afternoon I reach a point, many days, when I have to lock my computer up, push the chair back from the desk, exit the cube and the building and go to the river. It's only across the street.

Today I walked along the riverwalk. There were tall, small-blossomed magenta colored flowers growing up from the water level, with large spiderwebs strung in-between. There was the submerged shopping cart, the same one that's been there for years, looking like an Atlantic wreck, minus the blind fishes of crush-depth.

I wandered by the huge tree I don't know the name of--leaves look like aspen but I don't know about that. The bark is impossibly craggy and thick, like the kind of rough ironwork you see in museums that speaks of tonnes. Huge black ants clambered up and down the exterior, not doing anything apparent, maybe guarding, maybe on their lunch break.

Underneath the bridge, where I always look upward and remember scenes from The Host, there was nothing but girders and shadows. I leaned on the concrete wall for a moment, looking down at the unhealthy water, remembering how it almost covered this wall at flood stage.

I ambled back, sweating. The sun is such a presence in August, like someone in the room who has finally stopped tapping their foot and approached you, grabbed you by the jaw and forced you to acknowledge their jurisdiction. That's when I stopped and looked over at the grapevine tendrils bobbing in the breeze, hanging off the trees that are hanging off the embankment.

Some kind of insect eggs had warbled and curled and ruined the smaller leaves. Interesting. I could see the orange and black of some small beetle hiding just inside one of the curls. Interesting. And then...

In between the tiniest of the tendrils there were spiderwebs again, two of them, except so tiny as to be almost invisible, and yet exactly in the style of the big ones. And in the center of each web: a spider like a dust mote, sitting, waiting.

I may be the first and last person to witness those particular creatures living their simple, intense, microcosmic lives. Both of them had eyes, and some miniscule matrix of a mind organizing the movement of their atoms into a purpose. And both would have lived, hunted, mated, and died completely unknown to us, completely unwitnessed, their effect upon the universe unfelt but actual, unnoticed but irreplaceable.

Cymbals

My true home is banked inside
such melodious thunderstorms.

Someday I'll turn you onto them
and "sky" will carry more blue.

Meanwhile, the red of your eyes
is a lightning I need words for:

Cumulonimbus pulmonary clouds.
In my world, you can buy back virginity

but no one seems to need it.

Slipping

Jeans slipping down a moon like a thigh

A moon like a thigh slipping out of the night sky

The night sky slipping down a raccoon highway

My highway is green mists of night slipping by

Green moons, white thighs, a slip of time

The death’s head hawkmoth spreading wide

Orbs of eye in the head lights tonight

Black masks, blindfolds, a luna moth in flight

Joss Whedon, Super Genius

Day 10,807

Still don't know why I'm here, what I am, or what this place actually is metaphysically-speaking.

I just like to remind myself of those facts once in a while. Then I get on with the excitement of going to see The Dark Knight on Friday. Woooooooo!

Travelogue

Port of origin: Parts unknown.

To be alone
as all living things are alone
secluded, if not in placement
then in soul.

To bear a mind-sewn quilt
stitched in the steady and unsteady
hand of the senses.

To wear a mantle
of inseparable flesh
and know someday you will be parted.

To fight with intangible why,
run with, to, or from intangible
why and watch it endless elude.

The plot of the weave
of a fabric softener sheet
and the fractal arms of a spiral galaxy
equal in mystery.

The incoming birdsong,
the rabbit's movements in the overgrown yard,
the unexpected chemical burn of love
equally out of control.

I did not puncture the window screen.
I did not make the screen.
I did not make the air and light
passing through the puncture.
I did not even make this eye,
or the ink, or the language.

To inherit all the world from past
and dwell in a body of luck.

To crew this shell of compounded fortunes
appointed by chance, fated to choose.

To send forth ships like leaf skeletons
and wait for word of other shores.

To grow drowsy with the effort
of such metaphysic alchemy.

To put the pen down
with nothing resolved.

The Rand McNally Blues

I was searching the lines of a book for answers when the car entered a new state. The name of the state was Summer, and we were cruising through it for several miles before I finally looked up. Like Iowa and Georgia before, the landscape was hardly any different. I should have recognized it immediately from dozens of road trips past, the ramshackle snow cone stands and rusted gas station oases, grass longer than a mother's hair, swifts and swallows skimming the erupted roots. Yet too much had changed: someone built a silver skyscraper on a distant ridge, the dust was less flavorful, and inside my head the clockwork cogs had been swapped out for a pulsing atom of quartz. To be honest, I felt comforted that I could burn the book anytime, let its ashes trail out the passenger window without a care. But that book was our atlas, and the roads aren't well marked, and lately I think all the compasses point inward. A fork is inevitable, but for now it's Red Arrow Highway all day.

Staple Back Into Place This Mortal Coil...

Tim Russert.
Stan Winston.
George Carlin.

Enough with the dying already! We can't take much more of this! We needed these people, you know? Hell, Carlin alone was among the great pillars of reality. Now who's going to keep us in check?

Jon Stewart, I'm looking at you.

R.I.P., guys. You will be missed.

Dearly Departed

He was gone, just like that.
Not even a note.
No smiling geisha with an armful
of cryptic cue cards slowly revealed.
The skywriters held no clues.
We looked into the spinning of spiders
and only found unconnected webs.
The radiation blast
did not capture his shadow.
He was a phantom almost overnight.
Gone, just gone.
The court reporter read it back:
It wasn’t anything we said.
He was just gone.
So why was that purple tabby all a-grin?
I bet it had something
to do with that blonde girl
and all her colored gemstone baubles.
Drink us, they said
but his blood samples were all
clean as the bib of an old sleeping nun
in the shadow of a peach tree.
He must be chasing after the tail of summer.
Must be.
It’s the only conclusion that
makes no sense.

It Doesn't Hang Together

Regretting the last line just long enough
to cross it

that acute sensation of existence

(featherweight heartthrob)

a life of choice given but unchosen,
unspecified warrant for animation

served, you are
imperceptibly raped by your own soul

soft pet caged in a sunbeam,
cars faulting by the open window

a cheater’s peace
of crushed greens

Commonplace, commonplace and desperate

to shell and fuck,
a stem with interesting leaves

the first and foremost crack in the foundation.

Note To Future Mark

Dude,

Today's weather was as good as it gets around here. The sunlight was perfect, the wind was perfect, and the temperature was made for walking. If you ever find that time machine and decide to come back, today would be an excellent destination. After you've gone back to the 50's and talked to Rexroth, of course. But immediately after that--you totally have to come back to June 17th, 2008. Heck, bring him with you. Remember, though, that as cool it might be to see real, live dinosaurs, you'll probably just get yourself eaten. So skip it.

- You

p.s. September 11th. 1995.

Signs And Wonders

Finished with threshing the mowers sit dead in the pit of this cochlear on-ramp; concentric circles like alien fields blaze with the heat of a June sun at noon. And what scant meanings could attach the image from retina to hypothalamus and back? It’s just municipal trivialities, yet wrings recollection from the sponging cortices. Fifty-seconds later a green arrow still ticks, forgotten for these words. I rush in, jot and expand the thought into a red-tailed hawk unfolded by wind. Cool fall air, crisp blue sky. My how time passes in the mind…

Bush who...?

Oh, we still have a sitting president... I almost forgot.

Absence Before And After

The lime-bright spaces of being when you’re here
and adjoining darknesses to follow
stack together the ricket-wood structure that seems
to hover under every insubstantial observation
I lay down like floorboards and call my current thought.

Hook ‘round, fall back, veer nearer my vicinity,
my invisible allocation of intentional warmth
which you know, my superlative, the waxing majority
blows waves in the wheat of you, gusting adoring
with the draft of a nest your blue egg never forfeits.

I sit here, the surgeon with a surfeit of patients,
a stethoscope’s bell pressed firm to his aegis
reaching forth to stenograph the slightest murmur of a life;
long lost painter with a palette of embers,
you must remember, I am your knife.

Peeve

Today's peeve is brought to you by the letter "Y".

As in, "Y-Y-Y do they do this!"

Executives who skim their emails. When you take the time and care to address all possible questions in your reply, only to get a reflexive email shot back at you asking about something already covered in your message.

Nothing says "I didn't bother to read it" like one of those off-the-cuff, frantic replies to your own, well-composed email.

I gotta get out of the office more...

May This Time

The sun repeats its course. Exactly ten or eleven years to the day, more like than not, this shade of orange gold wrapped around the building fronts and shadowing underpasses. The grass was this high, crazy high, ecstatic wild but not crawling, not yet. It’s still too cool.

The sun repeats its course. Autumn and spring feel like the same thing if you all-of-a-sudden wake up in the middle of one, like regaining consciousness in the in-between light. Dawn? Dusk? Does your body feel when it comes out of the west?

The sun repeats its course. Exactly ten or eleven or so years ago, more than likely, this particular wavelength of sunset radiated off the deep dark windows in the closed-up stores, the shells of factories. And people were driving around, paying much too little for gas.

The sun repeats its course, exactly enough to turn the crescent-handled deadbolted doors on memories stored eleven to twelve distant years ago. The same dim spot in the lee of Bamber’s Superette. But now there are gilded weeds straining in that abandoned parking lot. You know it maybe, the chain-fenced one across from Raco?

The sun repeats its course. Maybe not to the micron, but to the aging eyes. Close enough for me to weave a random weedy vine through my back fence, in the dim of the lee of Alvin’s garage. The bare fields like bald spots edged in wild green hair, the highest plants catching light like eleven and twelve and thirteen years before.

This shade of orange gold… I know it so well. I want to disappear into it, with it. There are so many green strawberries, so many more white blossoms, on my in-laws planted rows. We both want the same thing: summer.

The sun repeats its course. I repeat an oath under my breath as I walk down the office hallway, in the last hour of my day. This was earlier. I find that if I say the first line, I am compelled to say the rest. Something like Franny and her automatic prayer. It’s the oath of someone who is trying to be good. I repeat it. The sun grows lower,

and cottonwood fluff hits the Saint Joseph River, until its like caramel and dust.

Accidental Birth

She said, "All I did
was exhale into a picture frame.
I fogged the glass
and someone slapped a back on it,
wired it for hanging.
And all it really is
was a sigh of surrender
and they caught it like you might catch
a spider's web,
with a can of spray paint
and some construction paper."

The Claws Insist

They try to sell me disappointment
this ragged legion of ochlocrats
but I have hidden my purse from the herds’ hands
and pay out love to the worthy cats

I think they hunted the Florida panthers
and culled their numbers in greed and spite
until the mythical skunk apes packed up
leaving behind them only the night

For certain sometimes I speak to be listening
painting ribbons on the timeworn stage
a sudden truth like a bursting spotlight
illuminating an empty cage

There is a loudmouthed cat here
who grooms himself with a shiv and tongue
where beats the heart like a Spanish guitar
collecting quarters in the sun

There is a rhythmic séance
inducing tremors by loops divine
felicitous and so frightful lovely
it carries weapons of a gentler kind

Pfilip of Everywhere Conquers The Moon - Part I.

Pfilip was not an old wizard by any stretch of the imagination. An old wizard would have, for instance, a flowing white beard and knobby-knuckled hands tipped with fingernails that had reached geologic proportions. However, Pfilip was not young. There were lines around his eyes and a shadow of grimness about his mouth. A better explanation might be to say that Pfilip had the sort of face one could observe and, without too much effort, visualize what it would look like in another twenty years, yelling at children to stay off the lawn. His wispy brown hair was showing a few streaks of gray already, mostly hidden beneath a gaudy, misshapen hat that resembled a chef’s toque, except the hatter had given it a warped brim and topped the whole mess off with a sort of squashed mushroom cap, the edge of which was festooned with many small charms. Overall the shape of it suggested a spool of thread plunked down atop the wizard's head; and the top of the hat had been collecting fallen seedpods and burrs all day long. There is little point in asking what color it was—the hatter, apparently, could not make up his mind.

Crouched beside Pfilip was a boy of perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age, with (as they say) a clear brow and eyes aflame. He had blue eyes, blue as a robin’s egg, and silvery hair that fell to his cheekbones. A fierceness played about his features, and his smile showed a lot of teeth, but then he reached up to pull his hair away from his eyes, and in this movement there was undeniable gentleness. He pulled a small, steel knife from its scabbard and flipped it around his fingers, fidgeting.

“Who were my real parents?” the boy asked idly. He and his mentor were hidden in the undergrowth, watching smoke rise from the chimney of a secluded cabin.

“I told you,” Pfilip whispered, never taking his eyes from the smoke, “you were an Elven prince who was stolen from his kingdom by a beautiful wizardress and given to me for safekeeping.”

A moment of silence followed, in which the intermittent sounds of the forest testified to the sublime serenity all around them.

“Why won’t you ever give me a real answer?” Baffin sighed, though he made sure to keep his voice low. It should be noted that the cabin in the clearing was, proportionately, like unto a castle. Whoever dwelt there was large enough to turn a doorknob five feet in diameter, and thirty-six feet off the ground. The serene smoke rising from the chimney was a bonfire’s plume.

Pfilip turned toward the younger man, though his eyes still watched the smoke. He pursed his lips thoughtfully, then shook his head. “Alright. You don’t have parents. A stork dropped you in a cabbage patch. Can we focus on the task at hand, please? You might have to actively avoid dying at any given time.”

“Lessons for life,” Baffin muttered, and re-sheathed the knife. He shifted on his haunches, stretched a bit, prepared for a run.

“Now, you do remember what to look for, yes?”

“It will be tiny, smaller than my hand,” Baffin replied, speaking from rote memory. “Probably hidden among the gemstones of the hearth, pressed into the wood there. A small… orange… glass… moon.”

“With a drowsy smile and heavy-lidded eyes,” corrected Pfilip. He flexed his fingers as though preparing to snatch the object out of the thin air in front of him.

Baffin looked at his mentor with incredulity. “Really, how many different glass moons do you think she’s going to have in there?”

“If it were me trying to hide the thing? Hundreds. Literally, hundreds.”

“Great. I can see you’re going to be trucks of fun once this is done. It’s really that valuable?”

Pfilip reached out and tousled the boy’s hair, simply because he realized he was older, and believed he could do that sort of thing now. It was probably the first time in his entire life that he had ever tousled anybody’s hair. It was a fraternal sort of action. And he was somewhat amused when the boy knocked his hand away and slugged him not-too-gently in the arm.

“Baffin, if we get the moon back, you won’t believe the places we’ll go."

* * *

They watched the cabin in silence awhile longer, until suddenly a puff of sparks blew from the chimney, and the smoke died down.

“That’s it,” Pfilip whispered, “she’s finished cooking her spell. Now she’ll leave the cabin and head toward the standing stones. If she isn’t around the corner and out of earshot by the time the door latches, we wait until tomorrow and either try again or seek another plan.”

“I wish we didn’t have to speak the chant aloud,” mused Baffin. His mentor smiled.

“Well, you have to—that’s why it’s called a chant. From the Latin canere, ‘to sing’.”

“You and your Latin…”

Pfilip’s smile broadened, not at the boy, but at the prospect of finally laying claim (again) to the elusive artifact hidden within the witch’s abode. “Someday we’ll visit that facet of the Gem, and I’ll get you a book on it. Watch, now. The door opens…”

[To be continued...]

The William Tell Overture vs. The 1812 Overture

Not. The same. Thing.

I must apologize for accidentally spreading misinformation about this fact. Rachel, for the record, the 1812 Overture is what they play during the fireworks.

The William Tell Overture is what the Lone Ranger rides around listening to.

Yeesh... but then, nobody else caught it either. You can thank my wife for this sudden tidbit of enlightenment & clarification.

Happy Saturday, all.

Crosshair

Chamber a word—
thumb “confluence” into line
and before it, “our mortal”
the hammer shot forward
with the force of “My lips require. . .”

Then stand there
blindfold slipping from one eye,
and be my William Tell overture.

As spent syllables
fall and roll
a golden bullet caught in your teeth.

That is how you do it.
That is how to take me down.

Afterword

I will wait just inside the door to the underworld for you. That gray-black stone tile thick with dust, just before the sudden descent (rollercoaster angle) is where I will crouch and breathe on my hands for warmth. I will wait for you, so that we will go down together, to introduce each other as a good man and a good woman among the milling souls of the recently dead. I think they will greet us as people always do when thrust together into a situation strange, worrisome, but calm enough and free enough from signs of peril that panic does not seem a natural response. I think they will welcome us, and ask us what we think, and if we have any news from the world above. And they will already know the answer before it leaves our lips: No, sorry, it doesn't look like the government's going to send relief anytime soon. The living world, like a howling blizzard, will cease to seem like a thing to return to, and we'll all begin exploring the uncharted lanes of what comes next. We will move down the subterranean mountain (whose mountain? I've heard this before) carrying the coals of a future hearth to where existence opens, the plains of the waiting flowers.

But I digress...

Any previous statements I may have made about not turning this into another chock-full-of-poetry journal should be summarily trashed. I know I won't be able to make it to Chicory tomorrow, but I do have a poem to share:



Cryptozoology by Mark Sniadecki


You were such a delicate
creature - deer come down
to the tranquil pondside
glade

- carried poetry
in gold strands of spider-
web laced in your
womanly antlers.

You left behind
evidence like bedded down
tufts of grass
and odd shed skins -

Then one day
I accidentally dressed
in huntsman's gear
- crashed aloud,
clumsy in the cattails -

and now I hold only
this tintype
of slender legs dis-
appearing between
trees I cannot uproot.

The Seal

I have the original graphic (slightly larger/sharper) if anyone wants a copy.

The Ballad of Allison Loan

She was some kind of regent
like an orphanage queen;
her blessings had been overcast.
They took her away
in a wagon ash-gray
and a janitor emptied her past.

For seventeen years
she amassed birthday candles
until on a midsummer's night:
a god with a hammer
and one eye for cold steel
layed her out with a peregrine light.

I met her in Texas
in bars rimmed with salt;
I nursed back her last dying coal.
There were tinfoil stars
in the heavenly vault
but none of them paid at the pole.

Where Thursday's wind took her
I know second-hand;
where the alley dogs hunch in the rain.
Some stone carver paying
his granddaughter's rent
will chip out her final refrain.

Fallen

For K, and S, and sometimes Y


Castaway from a heavenly court
You pulled aside a shielded wing
To reveal the darkness
That pulsed through you first, last
When your Maker insisted
Your desires are not worth the Creation.

It is easy for me to advise rebellion.
She is not my mother.
I am not chained in blood.
Still, hear and heed as now I say:
The sin of the tree
Does not rule the apple.
You have sweetness untold.
You are yet a queen of autumn.

Night Visitor (slightly revised)

It was a silverfish on the wall.
In the cone-glow of a lampshade.

They elicit
bad dreams of housedeeps.

A spider, you think a loner.
Execution, then forget it.

A neatly-folded moth, narrow squared
wings is a grandmother's attic.

It's that fishy name,
you think of how they must teem.

In the dark walls
their movements a chaos of crossings
under and over.

Schoolcraft. Skittery hexes.
Lousy with legs.

Having seen one sprint
its wending way down textured paint,
silver-flash
you don't want to take your eyes off.

I hate them.
Please, deliver us from the creeps.

Springtime, all I want to see
are ladybug orgies in the woodwork.

They make you dream
of vaulted ceilings you cannot reach.

Of Absence

Nothing is different beyond the window save the absence of sunlight, and the accompanying cool that goes with that territory. Our behavior has shifted, yes--the sound of cars comes less often. Thinking about how many billions of repetitions of this coming and going of light.

No, that wasn't a grammatically correct sentence.

The walls of the house create the illusion of so much more separation and safety than they truly provide. At this moment there are things, mammalian predators, snakes, lightning bolts, that could be my accidental end and they are on the same playing field, just separated by miles, or cages, or aquarium tanks. A cough in someone's chest in Botswana.

Is that even a country anymore?

But enough of this dire rumination. The fact is I am in a place of relative safety. All things considered, there's no finer place on earth. And the night is quiet--I haven't even got any music playing. Ten years ago I'd have popped on the radio immediately. Which sounds like a very good idea.

"Hotel California", 1976. The Eagles. This could be Heaven, or this could be Hell.

I've been reminiscing this evening. Googling the names of ghosts, happening upon an old blog, remembering, remembering. We haven't had that spirit here since 1969. I haven't embarked on a serious work of fiction in a long time. Something completely dark and indulgent, vampires and sex and obscene language. Twisted ideas and whorled morals. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Ain't that the truth?

Well, I for one hope it is.

Got big plans on haunting Rush Road someday, freaking out teenagers, drunken farmer's daughters, making the eyes of raccoons glow. Being confused with the moonlit mist, being mistaken for a rustle in the wet corn leaves. The music never receding like it does in the studio, but simply continuing on, forever, like that mythical cut of "Hey Jude" that never, ever ends.

I'm drifting a bit, under no influence whatsoever, except the release of pressure--the decompression of a boy shoved into a man-suit shoved into the presence of the Vice President of Finance who, to say true, is really a pretty cool guy... but that's a bit more of "the life" than I ever want to pack on my back.

Still, those rumored days of "things getting better" have not yet come to pass as prophesied, and so I've continued to work the extra hours and buy the extra time and deal (poorly) with the extra stress, all the time aching to unload the whole persona, the whole bloody routine, and return to the things I love like a freaking swallow to Capistrano on speed.

And on that note, the room is quiet. The lacy edge of sunlight racing over the planet towards me is a few hours closer than it was before. Had I a letter, I would seal it. Had I an auditorium, I'd douse the house lights. All I have is myself, and down come the eyelids, on cue.

Buenos noches.

Dearest Friend

Last night, I dreamt of an afternoon horizon full of moons--it was beautiful. Eight of them, at least, all full and enormous. I couldn't tell which one was the real one, I only knew that the rest of them were reflections and echoes. An old ghost riding next to me (he pops up in my dreams now and then) made a comment that suggested they portended some spectacular new moon in the coming days. Yes, that's right... a new moon, the one you cannot see. He said we would have to be sure to check it out.

For Caesar, they say, the Ides of March were full of dark portents.

For you, born three days hence, they have filled my mind with a bright vision of wonder.


Happy birthday, Sara Eve. :)

Whiling

I sit in the grass
making chains of adverbs
to lay atop your proverbial crown.
Necks of daisies bend back
for my gangliest laurels.
When a small early locust lands
on your thigh, with yellow-green legs
you smile spritely.
Expertly.
Aboriginally.
It is like you are the base state of glory
the world returns to
after every war.

The Adversary

This is something I wrote awhile ago, a couple years ago at least. Right after reading Stephen King's The Stand, which got me to thinking about a character who has been my own Randall Flagg, my own Crimson King. Believe it or not I used to write fiction all the time. Tons of it. I've got hundreds of pages of unfinished business. Worlds on pause. The question I hit myself up with all the time is, when are you going to wake them up again?


Ozihael had learned the lesson. Evil—that which seeks to destroy all which wishes to create—must work alone. The singular flaw of evil was its self-consuming nature, its tendency to spin out of control with the force of its own malice. To have minions, to build intricate plans with pawns and armies—that was where evil built-in its own downfall. Ozihael, therefore, sought no allies. He made himself strong, smart, and most of all careful—and he did his work alone. He did not plan—he maneuvered his way among the plans of others, smashing the cogs as he went. He did not raise an army—he was the army.

Minions could turn on you. They could have sudden attacks of conscience or sanity, or be bought by your adversaries. They were a wild card. A risk.

And who doesn’t know the old adage about the best-laid plans? Going into a world with a plan for how to destroy it was foolhardy at best. Instead, Ozihael slipped into pre-existing plans as fluidly as he walked between the worlds. He looked, saw what was being created, sought the lynchpin, and pulled it out.

Sometimes he set himself up as a dictator. This worked well in worlds where nobody knew much magic, or where the weapons were primitive. He looked for lives that could be torn apart. He looked for beauty that could be tortured into ruin. And always he kept an eye open for a reaction.

How long would the Creator allow such atrocities to go on? The answer seemed to be indefinitely. And that pained Ozihael all the more, because as much as he wanted to face down his maker, he wanted that Being to prove more kind than himself. What kind of Creator would sit back and let Ozihael take Its creations to pieces? Was It a coward? He wanted to see a thick vein of hypocrisy pulsing in his maker’s mind—who would create such wonderful realities, all with such loving attention to detail, and yet only look on impotently as one among them stood up and challenged, spilling blood and raining fire as he waited? It had supposedly given Ozihael and all the other souls of the worlds this unlimited freedom, this Will to do as they pleased, but how could It? How could It possibly, when they were all trapped within It? What Ozihael wanted was to see the Creator make a slip, tip Its hand, show Its true desire—that all of Its creations should play by Its rules. Let It force my hand, Ozihael thought. And I will show It just what free will means...

Thus far, although a trail of dead and dying worlds littered his history, Ozihael had not been able to draw even a disapproving glance from his Creator. Except....

There was that young man, Pfilip. His once-friend, Pfilip. And that little tart that traveled with him, Hestia, with the amethyst eyes and dark green hair. He had known them, been in their presence, looked them over. They were no different than he, yet perhaps they were the Creator’s pawns, Its pitiful operatives. Killing them might be the act to push things over the edge, but hunting them seemed... a waste. A Creator that cared more about two dewy-eyed lovers than the burning of an entire world was such a ridiculous thought that Ozihael rarely entertained it. When he did give this consideration, the day often ended with a thrashing or a slaughter, and a rant directed at the sky.

Ozihael knew his maker could manifest Itself anywhere, possibly inside his own mind, but yelling into a mirror was too much like madness...

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Artists Among Us

I remember once, a long time ago, my youngest uncle (still in college or maybe even high school at the time) speculated that his perfect job would be to work as a hired observer. What you would do is follow one of these high-powered, too-busy-to-notice-life executive types around throughout their day, and at the end of the day report to them the little things they didn't notice: the sparrow building a nest in the big letter "A" of a merchandise store; or the little child walking down the street holding its mother's hand, a three-scoop ice cream cone leaning precariously toward disaster; or the missing button on a secretary's jacket; or the reflection of a crowd in the window of an idling taxi.

This occupation does exist, but it doesn't pay well.

Quick Look

I forgot it could be blue up there,
that when clouds
move aside, even in winter
it's electric blue.

Those crows
still holstered in the trees
now appear
conspicuous black
instead of blending like shadows.

The dosed year
shows signs of icy petals slipping
apart, barely
in the afternoon sunlight.

Sunlight in winter strikes,
an alluring stranger
who knows she is out afterhours
and cares.

Ink On Snow

A murder of crows took up residence outside our building for the day. From the corner of my eye I've caught their black shapes swooping up high to the rooftop or down from the vine-wound trees. We worked until late night last night, Sunday night. We were at it again this morning, numbers and data, data, data. Eventually I felt I had earned a few minutes of nothingness, so I went to refill my water cup and stood at the wide metal blinds, looking out at the crows. They walk, did you ever notice that? Robins hop and grackles stalk but crows just sort of saunter. They were looking for food. I started remembering every time I needed to draw an illustration of a crow, and the pieces of them I could not recall well--shape of the head, shape of the tail, proportions... It's not a good life they have, exactly. How bleak and desperate frigid these last few days have been, and imagine no shelter, anywhere, and only scraps and bits of carrion to keep you warm. Then again, nobody imposes a structure upon their lives--or more precisely, they impose no structure upon themselves other than the daily cycle of surviving. If they have politics then it's something immediate, brash, and quickly resolved. If they have order then it's without a mission statement or employee handbook. They meet no greater quotas than the needs of their bodies. The only repetitive thing they do is caw, caw, caw. And I would rather listen to that free, coarse music than hear their fingers rattling tiny keys.

Wind Chills and Wax Museums

I escaped a cube only to be caught in a bubble. The bubble, at least, has a door. It is still somewhat cube-shaped, however. The predominant color is gray, which may or not technically be a color. At least it's warm. In another universe, a somewhat damaged version of myself is toiling outdoors in this subzero madness, coming home chapped in the evenings to a solitary domicile wherein he makes art, more art, and after that, art. In another universe, a somewhat pitiful version of myself is driving back from a retail job and still writing incessantly about a high school dreamscape. In another universe, things are better than they are now, but it's the sheer "how" of it that escapes me. Escapes all of us, I think.

The next several days are going to be arduous in the extreme. Not back-breaking, which I could respect, or emotionally draining, which (in the words of one fictional lawyer) "could be understood, if not condoned." Simply numbing, frustrating, and drawn-out. The rumor among the prisoners is: there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and we're digging for that light right now. The rumor among the prisoners is also: that tunnel is gonna collapse, just before we reach it. Nobody knows. They're all walking in those alternate universes, down those myriad optional roads, under optional suns and moons. Yet somehow everyone comes crashing down square into the center of the present, and they land together, grudgingly or happily. I am simply waiting for the bubble to pop. If my life is one of numbers now, then hear this--the number of things more important than a society-sanctioned occupation are limitless. The rules of existence are ours to follow or flaunt, and mostly we good-naturedly carry on for the sake of a peaceful chance at the end.

But sometimes, sometimes... don't you just want to dash it all to pieces, strike the set, raid the costume closet again? Maybe that's only me. Maybe it's the work of jesters.

Trite

I sat downstairs eating kisses all evening watching Stephen Fry's Q.I. and letting the day's weights slip off my shoulders, and now I've come upstairs and checked out ninetynights.com and my email for signs of life, and thinking about the fast-writes that Julie Frayer assigned to us that great semester of creative writing, when it was Eli and Paul and me and Mayor McCheese, and times were different, for one thing I didn't say things like "times were different", because I knew perfectly well that people have always, always been people. So here I am trying the fast-write thing again, non-stop tappety-tap-tap on the keys, dragging in whatever stimulus presents itself, not deleting if at all possible, the jars of sand on the computer desk brought to me from Hawaii, the empty Pepsi bottle, the Feathers McGraw keychain, and what this makes me remember is, yeah, that class again—I was so thick into my fantasy worlds then, building societies and wildernesses, lifting up characters I wanted to watch on screen, if only someone would make my movie—and I could never write a script, really, the one time I tried was at IUSB and they roped in a couple drama students to read it aloud (not just me, everyone else's too) and I must have been firetruck red, and now my concentration is being interrupted by some loud woman erupting from my wife's computer's speakers—some little piece of "news" that's circulating today, apparently—and anyway where did I leave off? Right, right, the play, the play's the thing and boy, hasn't—


—back, had to bring the dog inside from our wonderful arctic wonderland, ever seen an abominable snowman flip out when three dozen balloons of cocaine burst inside him? Okay, if you haven't seen that episode of Robot Chicken you're severely worried about me, but that's alright, fortunately my bro has the same sense of humor and we laugh when nobody in their right mind probably would. Yeah, that's him working his tail off in the warehouse where they only promote family members and screw the rest every chance they get, but enough biography let's talk about your chances in the cosmic race where you've slipped on your diamond running shoes and found you've got a soul, a rather nice one shining and looking for a reason, any reason really not to fly the coop at the first opportunity, and lucky for you you ol' boondoggle horny toad there are oodles of reasons around every bend, not the least of which is spring who even now turns restless in her bed, ready to rise and tie on the green dress one more time again, but until then, better keep your shirt on, Peggy. It's cold. Real cold.

Too Soon, Way Too Soon

In Memoriam

Heath Andrew Ledger

April 4, 1979 - January 22, 2008

Christening (first revision)

I.

Call it ritual send-off,
call it amulet for the soul—

the smearing
cleansing a past of fault

—breaking an innocence
at the outset, in the hope
a smashing god won't try again.



II.

Vessels shatter—
a brow whets,
lonely waves afflict the prow.

A poet is launched—
transparent love
the glass crashed without ceremony.



III.

Ships, which are always spoken of
as women, and for that matter
so is the sea.

Cheshire Smile

Imagine stepping into Alice's Wonderland, among the mad people. Condense down the stress of trying to keep fifty kittens neatly corralled in a circle of chalk. Boil frustration until it gets real sludgy, then use it to fill a quagmire the size of Rhode Island. Walk down into that mess with nothing but an English degree and some poignant high school memories to protect you. Your words transubstantiate into little lead pellets, and in exasperation you chuck them wildly into the tar. Following the teachings of Homer, you try to extract your words with your hands, and then extract your hands with your teeth. Gets hard to breathe, doesn't it? And the whole time—every minute—you hope to Joe Pesci that nobody notices you are completely naked. This would make a fantastic nightmare, if only it weren't a metaphor. The best thing I saw all day was a river in flood, ignoring every human boundary with gleeful abandon. Cold January air tastes so good...

Put that on your Excel spreadsheet and smoke it, world.