our bones will live a life after we die

fret not that to the grave we are betrothed
our bones will live a life after we die
and peacefully in desert tombs alcoved
we'll honeymoon forever, you and i
no reason will we have to leave our bed
each day we spend together, we'll be smiling
though everyone above us thinks us dead
we pass away the pleasant hours, whiling
our skeletons will make love in the earth
they'll go out drinking, they'll go dancing, dining
and gestate in a womb of pangless birth
our stillborn babies never waking, whining
and then, one day perhaps someone will find us
and some foolish poet's pen will mind us.

the music made of our remains

the grave will not yet mute our bodies' bones
though death may fret the body's muscle-cords
stretch'd over cryptic hollows and Unknowns
and strum away the flesh that we adored
and pluck away our life in quarter-tones,
our sinew clamped to spinal fingerboard
to mocking make a ballad of our moans
at least our love goes not untroubadoured:
here lies the lay of Tristan and Yseult
of married Monatague and Capulet;
Pyramus and Thisbes underscore us
and songs and lays and poems, plays result
arpeggiating lovers down Death's fret
adding measures to our lovesong for us
as if adding verses to our chorus,
epithalamiums to epitaphs
travelling from upper to lower staffs
singing lullabies to their better halves
and other lovers descending in refrains
join in the music made of our remains

strange dream

strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think
strange death that gives him leave to love past life
strange dram that did dispatch him quick as drink
that lately gives him leave to love his wife
and there, where flesh was tanned and lips were pink
since have been flayed off by his happy knife;
where eyes might miss some sight because they blink,
are now unburdened with that lidded strife...
and with the help of power passion-lent
and drugs, such dreams will guide us out from under
the curse of crossing stars and their intent
to short the hours that we came and went,
the turning earth that's turned you a white wonder,
and gives us leave for new love to invent.

strings

we close, like scissors, one though another
so, loosed of limb and our worldly tether
our ligaments under earthly cover
then might bind us closer there together
our bones suffer not to be forgotten
connecting tissues, 'round the world it brings
to life star-cross'd lovers, misbegotten
as at the end of marionette strings
they died with knives in desert Araby,
a pride of midnight lions standing near
and with help from an apothecary,
that exile who lived not too far from here.
we cut one cord together so to find
ourselves well-spliced, new-wrought and better twined.

let us not dare not

darling, we had beautiful bodies once.
remember? how quickly you forget it
and quicker still death resolutely blunts
everlasting love-vows if you let it.
its true that love has led us here to death
in to the arms of each other, dying
cruelly cutting loose our cords of breath
and our knotted bodies limbs untieing
but love and death and life and limb are one
and only are they in our bodies known
let us not end without having begun
or not dare not, do not, and die, alone
darling we are young and beautiful yet
oh, but still how quickly you do forget

...to the houses of the dead

make for us no tombs nor houses cryptic.
should i fail, then bury me inside her.
should i stumble down long Death's ecliptic,
never rising, let me rest beside her.
there is no terror left within my blood,
and no life left in Death's old mysteries;
the grave will either close us both in mud
or harrow hell, i, mystic Hercules.
perform no rites, nor pay my two-pence fare
(for Death is not so easily impressed)
should shadow join with night and breath with air,
our better parts at least will find their rest
if souls regard their homes with little worth,
we'll house each other underneath the earth.

i make you sonnets

now bury us inside a lover's grave
and let us clasp and kiss each other's bones.
beneath the overwhelming earthen wave
we'll measure out our love with littles stones.
our spoiling flesh will rot itself away,
staining nearby earth in underplaces,
where love-in-little-stones about us play
spilling through our skulls and out our faces.
sternum to sternum, our ribs entwining,
still, we dance through sunset color'd soil;
touch in places flesh was never finding.
and shuffle in each other's mortal coil.
for us a fading dawn will never break
the earthen lovely slumber that we make.

how to find your one true love

darling, we'll find our true love in the sky
in the fevers of the year
we will run away on the open road
we can take your car
i'll drive with my knees
so i can hold your hand across the shifter
while we hang our arms out of the open windows.
feathers will cover us
boy, girl, hands, arms, car and all
and we will lift into the yawning blue dawn
engine, hearts, arms pumping
a bird that knows the secrets that souls keep
finding its way back to the unfinished nest
it started building a century before we were born
that we will land in and finish forever
in the centuries after we die.
or, if not
and feathers do not cover us
and you do not hang your arm from the window
and we do not become a bird
and we do not find our true love
i will drive you back home
and give you your keys
and think of you, every time i fry an egg,
or arrive home without remembering how i got there

i am unwilling...

...to return to the real world today.

paradise by the refridgerator light...

...or something like it.

its pretty late. i've been working on a few beers (not simultaneously) to little effect (forcing me to rethink my method of alcohol intake), and smoking cigarattes that each make me feel a little bit shittier, a little bit closer to swollen glands than the last. if i haven't mentioned what a delicate boy i am on this blog yet, allow me to do so now: i have the constitution of equatorial vegetable life when transplanted beyond the tropics of cancer or capricorn.

luckily i've discovered the miracles that a daily dose of "airborn" can produce. and no, i'm not a compensated endorser. i go very uncompensated, financially. that's ok. i'd endorse airborn at a financial loss. it is just that good. only vitamins, you say? ah ha! with fizz! and a gritty, waxy scum that coats whichever glass it is contained in. no, sir. no, madam. much, much more than vitamins. it is nothing short of an ol' timey health tonic. you can heal palsy, and cast demons into swineheards with it, i swear. and call down fire from heaven. it will perform both old and new testament miracles.

i should be...any number of things that i have been too scrubbed thin by working to be. asleep might be one of those things. less satisfied with not really writing at all lately could be another. worried, about things i am too ashamed to admit i'm not all that worried about is definately another.

i think i don't really have anything of substance to say, today. i am reduced to talking about the weather, like this: it is getting nicer out, and that bodes well for me. in an "either i'll start being productive/or i'll start having more fun" kind of way. and speaking of things to say, i have been reduced to a wit that just barely scrapes by with my tables at work...you know...the kind that is like a gradeschool verbal spat...where you say something reasonable good though not necessarily a coup de grace, and turn around to think of something really skewering to say about thirty seconds after you should've said it. i've been getting by at work though; when the precision of wit fails, the double barrel of a smile and feigned sincerity get the job done. tonight was definately a 20% night for me. but i was lucky.

i suppose i could talk about my forays into the digit snatching game, in which i've had some recent victories, but that would just sound like bragging, and they probably won't pan out anyway. i find a lot of expectation comes along with this face, and the boldness of my charm that i can't really back up the way anyone wants me to. believe me, i'd like to be more than just disappointing, but i'm not at that stage in my life yet, and we're all just going to have to accept the possibility that i may never get there.

its not that things don't happen; its not that there's nothing big to talk about. i'm just...apathetic about it all at the moment. though i guess not so apathetic as to avoid feeling guilt over it. i guess that says something. (perhaps that want a little more credit than is actually due?)

anyway.
i have been seared closed by this apathetic streak. in some respects, i have been amputated by circumstance (i.e., work, spilling rum and coke on my laptop, not paying my phone bill), but i also haven't fought it quite as hard as maybe i should have. i guess what this post comes down to is this:

i owe a lot of people a lot of things -- phone calls, e-mail, general love. expressions of gratitude. i plan on making good.

..but right now, i choose pasta salad.

in the 80's...

apoptosis/apotheosis

outside, there is a bird singing three notes from the movie music soundtrack i am playing in the house, as i have coffee on the front porch. i wonder if the squirrels that live in our crestfallen front yard tree have realized the old landlords, who used to fill the birdfeeder with seed, have moved; i wonder if the squirrels will move too, or just go on living in that same hollow branch, a little less fat than they used to be?

can that bird possibly appreciate this song as much as i do? i think maybe he is more capable; he speaks in music, and he is, after all, singing along. i've heard that man started playing instruments in imitation of birdsongs. funny, when you see a moment where things come full circle. this bird is chatting up my iTunes. he likes Clint Mansell, apparently. i like this bird.

outside, it is like the old poems say; spring is here, but not yet on its way. the ground is so frostbitten, it hasn't yet recovered enough to melt the last few dirt-scorched patches of ice and snow; hasn't yet been able to make the grass look like grass, or bring the trees back to life.

i learned a new word, the other day; a neologism from Greek, that means "to fall away." let me load the phrase with the not-entirely-fabricated implication that it is a falling away with purpose; a self sacrifice, a shedding of the heavy mortal weight to enable...something else. survival. life. paying out a portion to eternity. like insurance.

the insurance of trees is: the souls of fallen leaves come back as spring rain.

when the blind recover sight, ask them what it was they saw first. they inevitably reply: "i saw trees, walking around like people."

sometimes, when i think about why i left buffalo, i have trouble deciding whether i am the tree that shed the crispy leaf of my hometown? or am i the leaf who let go, whose weight is still spiraling towards some unseen floor? it is only half the question: you can't talk about going without conspicuously ignoring the coming, and perhaps in considering the dual nature of all such questions, we can synthesize an answer: i left my hometown to come to my birthplace. i shed a husk of an old life, hoping that the lighter parts might ascend, that the truer parts might become more refined. that i might be distilled; sharp spirits from a dull malt, rain out of escaping vapor, stronger life out of life, to penetrate and cultivate the unyielding earth.

i was a leaf, i like to think.

i looked, and i thought i saw my life, spiralling out of control. it was the husk of a leaf, exhaling its living parts. and if something spirals, it is never out of control. life is subject to seasons, and somehow we fool ourselves into using terms like "beginning" and "ending." life is a perpetual motion machine. the spiral is only a circle subject to time. what goes around, does, in fact, come back around. if all were chaos, there would be no reaction for every action.

so, this life is a loop; a rolling hula-hoop, or a tire like the ones third world children chase down streets with sticks.

if i am spiralling, it is not out of control.
it is no coincidence the bird outside of my window is listening to my music.
the squirrels? they have no seed? let them eat cake. or shed a pound or two. or find out where my old landlords live now.

i have recovered a little bit of sight.

i am a tree, also: walking back to my roots. letting go of my tarnished leaves, and reaching, even through the winter, towards the sky, towards spring...clutching at the skirts of a thoroughfaring God, in the wake of His green glory.

yes, a little bit of glory is what i'm reaching for. it is not as stupid as it sounds.
i give up life to gain life.

mens sana in corpore sano

"a sound mind in a sound body?"

i'll take a different sounding mind
and
you can keep the body

next time i go, i'm bringing extra cash...

starting today...

...i get my power back.

"technical difficulties"

i'm experiencing some techinical difficulties with the poetry, lately, so you'll have to forgive me when i wax prosaic.

i suppose i'll just come out and say it: i'm adjusting badly to my new life out here. i've been making hints, but i've kept myself from saying it explicity in hopes that i might be able to maintain some level of self-delusion about it. well. i'm done. now. i'm trying not to whine, but it has been a rough six months.

worst of all, my work situation has not been working. its hard to let this stage of my life be what it is and not compare it to my old life, but work hasn't been this bad since i was an awkward whiteboy who could barely man a register in a pharmacy on the edge of the ghetto. i've never been made to feel so incompetent; and its been awhile since i've let anyone make me feel this unconfident.

what it has been is an interesting exploration of what i hang my confidence on. being the resident fuck-up at work hasn't been as bad as it could be, but its still bad. the people aren't so much malicious about it as they are condescending, and i'm not sure which i'd rather deal with. but in a work environment, being stripped of confidence in your own professional skills is...castrating. emasculating. i haven't been too articulate over the past few days, so those aren't exactly the right words, but you get the idea. not to mention the inability to settle in means total lack of a social life (which is just a euphemism for 'i still haven't made any friends').

i guess i hadn't realized that feeling competent at my job and having people around who like me meant all that much to me. to tell you the truth i'm almost a little ashamed. i should be more independant than that. i should be more centered, more self sufficient than that. but this exercise in self-sufficience has shown me this much: i suck at it. i am a suckybaby who can't handle life.

on the other hand, i've had copious amounts of time to myself, and recent days aside, i've been having probably the most productive few months i've ever had, which is exciting. and this is why i ran away. this is what i came out here to do. i came out here not to have friends. i came out here not to be distracted by a great job and lots of people, and to center myself: around the family that i hardly know, and around my writing and creative exploits.

now that i think about it wish i would have better chronicled my days here, rather than saving it up for a weepy bitching blog-post. it would have been a lot more interesting, a lot more productive. the actual living of my life would be less hindered by all the complaining about how i'm not living it. all it takes to live the life you want to live is a choice, and a little dedication.

and this is exactly the life i asked for. its not easy. it is, admittedly, a little uneven. but it is the life i want to be living, for now.

and sometimes its the smallest things that drive home the break i've made with my former life:

--i've finally changed the presets on my car radio from buffalo to albany stations. its a good thing i can't get enough of that new nelly furtado song.

--all the old phone messages i've saved were deleted during those couple months i couldn't pay my phone bill: i'd still had about 15 messages from when i was dating brenna; a slew of hysterically funny messages from eric w.; the last message i'd gotten from sarah before that year of silence settled in. my grampa singing happy birthday over the phone, two years ago. if there's one thing i hate more than nostalgia, it is not being able to torture myself with it.

--i lost the longest, warmest, blackest scarf that was ever made.

--my dad, after chatting with him only a handful of times since i've left buffalo, asked me, a few days ago: "have you ever considered monastacism?" to which i answered: "yes"

the break with the old life will never be clean, and it never should be. i have family in buffalo, and friends who are like family, and it would be tragic -- and just plain morally wrong -- to try to rid myself of those parts of me. on the contrary, and to use a weird surgical analogy, i'm not looking to have anything removed; but i could be a better version of myself, so i'm spending the money, and getting those impants. i'm looking to incorporate new life, abundant life; i'm not looking to get rid of anyone or anything.

some things i've yet to do:

--figure out langauge that more effectively differentiates between my adopted and biological family. somehow i feel like if i can do this, then i would be more comfortable with that part of my life. i still don't know how to talk about it. that i have two dads is among the least weird phrases that i can own.

--hang out with any of my Wickham sisters enough...

--or much of the Wickham family, lately. i'm such a douche!

--be of any reliable usefulness to my blind grandmother.

--cook or clean or not drunkenly break the bathroom sink off the wall enough for Rachael or Rebekah.

--get into a writing rhythm that matches my schedule and maximizes my productivity.

--put shelves on my bedroom walls (or hangers in my closet).

i'm not sure what my regularly scheduled programming is, or when i will return to it. nothing else to do but stay tuned, i suppose. here's to the show still being in progress when we return. let's hope i can get my bearings...

old tricks

===============================================

abomination that causes desolation

"blank-verse sonnet..."

questions, indirect

too often i will question lives gone past;
i must begin to think of future days,
like: where upon the map my foot might fall,
what words might sprout once there i plant my feet,
what paper i might ink my life upon,
how, bound into the spine of open roads,
a freedom steers me out to quiet fields,
to sleep between the rooves of car and sky.
somehow i keep forgetting how it works:
there is no mystery left to the past,
there is no question marking its events.
it crosses state lines, leaves statements behind.
as roads are paved by chasing unpaved roads,
leaps landed by faith, books by reading writ,
so life remains...a forward, leading question.
----------------------------------------------

on the world

lately, i've been losing my grip on the world.
my feet are beginning to slip on the world.

Thales' head was bent to otherworldly things.
he fell to his death when he tripped on the world.

perhaps i haven't yet fallen to my doom
(though i've bled and broken my lip on the world)

beneath the moon i am walking Thales' path.
from here, that hole looks but a dip on the world.

the hole is a grave, the grave is a ladder.
i must wrestle and break my hip on the world.

i'll ransom an angel to gain God's good will.
i'll parley with a witty quip on the world.

every limping footstep is a passport stamp
i'm leaving my citizenship on the world.

i am walking, with words, through the path, through the hole
i'll leave a turn of phrase to flip on the world.