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.

ghazal

poetry for you

i wanted to find new forms of poetry for you.
i traded in my prose for love poetry for you.

i looked inside the epics, i read between the lines.
i looked beneath prose and above poetry for you.

i saw you as an ark, carrying my flooded heart.
i stormed it with olive-and-dove-poetry for you.

i wear words like garments, you can read them down my sleeves.
and written down from wrist to glove: poetry for you.

i have pried at your heart, and saw it empty of me.
into its vacant parts i'll shove poetry for you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

i never realized what a fine line there is between good and corny. i think this takes more than one step across it.

what am i doing trying to find rhymes to 'love'?

because they give me a sense of accomplishment...

the separable soul

if i knew how to separate my soul
i'd draw it out like poison from a wound
give up the ghost and catch it in a bowl
to tranquil rest, commit it on the moon
and in that silver body, in a grail
far from the earth and its forsaken cries
my life would fester there and never fail
immune to those who kill and that which dies
if, from the body's moribund decrees
i could conceal the dying of my death
and so exchange the language of disease
to gain a tranquil, trance-entangled breath
i'd shed the contradiction of your charms
and shuffle off your mortal coiling arms.

valentine's day offerings

i wrote something today, that i'm not actually all that fond of. i am posting it here in the comments section. it is a heptina, which i think i may have made up. i accidentally wrote seven lines for the first stanza of a sestina, and just decided to go with it. i had to crack the nearly indecipherable numerical pattern upon which the sestina is built, and change it -- a monumental and historic achievement, i'm sure you'll agree. anyways. that was what i wrote today. and like i said, i'm not entirely fond of the product. i need a break from poetry and go back to prose. it will be nice to say what i actually mean, and do so with emphasis. anyways. check the comments, if you're interested in the other stuff....

i would rather

i would rather you live forever
in the well-furnished mansion of my heart
than with me, here, today.
my apartment is small, and
it is a mess.
(there are things all over the floor)

Teach Me, Benvolio

(an english sonnet)

o teach me how i should forget to think
do more for me than liberate my eyes;
though roving, my eyes see her when they blink,
in blinking blooms the face of rosy lies.
give me something with which to replace her,
a potion with which i could cast her off;
ever if my eyes again do face her
my abled mind her image yet could doff.
show me something lovely in a new face,
in the dawn of some new mistress's eyes;
give me the sun, if moon cannot keep pace
or an enemy, if you think it wise.
so let us crush a cup of wine, and drink
and there perhaps i'll learn to forget to think.

re: January 15th

started it then; picked it back up today.
unflattering to all parties involved.

-------------------------------------------------

i love you, Moonlike
vain, tidal, turning new
best when you are full
you reflect better light
than i have thought to cast
but that is a lonely
day every month...

is it fair
to love you only full,
to love you
less when
you pull me
less,
less when your
head is turning?

i love you, Waterlike...
moving in your dancing-mirror-likeness
best when your lips roll in to kiss boat's prow
i would westward sail you
forever together under
the never-setting sun
if daily you did not
snuff out suns and sailors alike

is it fair
to love you
only as you lift me?
...to love you less
when you are
restless,
less when
you are
drowning...?

i love you moonlike; i love you waterlike.

everything new is old again

in space there is a galaxy (i forget where), shrouded in its own cosmic breath that is humming the Music of Its Own Spheres.

the new men like to say that there is no sound in space; that, in space, no one can here you scream.

but there, in its own sphere with its own cosmic breath, mathematically, undeniably, there is a singing galaxy, perhaps from which we were all exhaled and to which we are all headed one day to be consumed in its fiery musical ether....

and it makes you wonder if there wasn't something to
that story about Xibalba and Greek musical clockworks and a Christian heavenfull of voices singing one song in a living, breathing galaxy, sharing the nebulous breath of a living, breathing God.

i've written...

i've written some of my worst poetry by moonlight.

i am building

i am building
my future
one
word
at
a
time

Happy Candlemas....

...or is that tomorrow? and i used to be so up on my pagan-turned-christian holidays.

catching up on e-mail today, hopefully. and making sauce.

if i can see your name in my list of frequent contacts, expect a letter soon. if i can't see your name, you should e-mail me more.

and if i can see your last name to the right of my front door, you will be getting the best sauce of your lives.

thanks, Tunte, for the blender.

love,

Wayward Nephew

Since, Eve, We Will Return

…And God, he made the earth from ash and dust
He lit the stars returning to their place
In dreams of Eve, He fostered Adam’s lust
And stretch’d it o’er with skin and gave it grace
Her body’s sails did fill out with a gust
Of holy breath; a smile licked Adam’s face

The holy heads that tongues of flame do lick
They turn to ash the deeds of murd’rous men
Speak healing to the sails, the seas, the sick
To fathers, sons return from the pig pen
Mud from their skin mortars a house of brick;
The dreamhouse of “thy will be done, amen.”

Sometimes we are commanded in our dreams
To lick and seal, roll a scroll, and eat it.
The parchment skin unfurl’d from candy reams
Is ash when our stomach turns to meet it
The mouth cannot return the words it seems,
Galilean sailors can’t repeat it

One day that scroll, like a sail, will unroll
A future dream illumined to reveal
returning revelations to our soul
that faulty licking lips cannot repeal
this flesh of living ash may take its toll
but your skin at such price would be a steal

How will our skin fare in tribulation?
They will stretch it on a righteous sailboat
To escape the ash of conflagration
Dividing their dreams between sheep and goat
Lick the crux of transubstantiation
Returning to God on a scripture quote

And earth returning to its former state
Sloughs off the shell of life like dying skin
With hands of fire God licks clean the slate
His Spirit over the deep, sailing in
With new dreams of life, the flower of fate
Blooms in the ash where other life had been

Since, Eve, we will return to dust and ash
Wake my dream to your skin; its smiling flash,
Wind-licked like a sail with an open lash

(poem; straddling midnight)

i am standing in the snowmuffled,
nightmuffled world.

i can see the wind blowing
in the slant of the small snowflakes
through the streetlight;
it rings me like a bell.

in the day, the felled snow
has rubbed out the world to its
edges; winter is a blankened,
bleached-out life.

but at night, the snowy patches
in the blue shadows of my porch, of
the nightfallen park, are
like windows into moonlight
like danced-on landings
for angels' feet.

it is a beautiful oblivion
a silent nightful of overcast snow
silver stars bound and burn out of it
the small, heatless fires of
my trampled thoughts
momentarily glorious
snuffed out by bloodfrightening
bodypeeling cold,
carrying away any good thing i've thought,
away into the muffled world.

...

i want to write with lightning; i want to speak in thunder.