“Home-come and Re-lapsing (FUCK!)”

There is again a faded bird
that once flew over and beneath white tiles,
bent and balanced in front of me,
blind as I held on
to a plain view of young roses.
She’s flown by again tonight
in a distant dark
and Im up again with lumbering lips
trying again to learn her whistling call,
to know her song and eyes again.

I know it’s an evil song, beneath her lost eyes.
I know its full of hapless circles that will leave me
and take off for tilted seasons.
I know there must be some viral thing in me,
some allergic crutch.
That is all there must be to keep me
so fixed on finding again
her lost and hollow bones.

on becoming someone worth boasting about…

here’s the idea, a plan for a better self, a blueprint before a sturdy home for my pride.

part one: freeing anonymity.
forget myself. lose that idea of myself that defines my actions as i go through life building a complete portrait of myself. disregard outside views of who i am, for if there is no i, who are all of those people looking at, what is there to which guilt and consequence can be attached?

part two: selfish charity.
rid myself of all possessions not necessary in my elemental survival. not as an act of the good man, the humanitarian, but as the act of a man lessening his load in an already difficult journey, preparing for a quick escape in the case such an escape is needed.

part three: thoughtless honesty.
no more pleasing, no candy-coated veils to throw. empower myself, strengthen the foundation of my integrity by saying all things as they truly are. be unafraid of the tears of others. in fact, consider tears as possible proof that i am an honest success.

part four: inconvenient family.
bear the burden of family. wear the label of a last name like the badge of a martyr. find a wife. collect her life and make it my own. make new lives and shape them to serve me, feed my pride, and further carry the badge.

I am Calvino’s man, made of invisible parts.

I am an expert.

As much as any man, I can find proof for all things to be true. I can create worlds of truth. Each of us can live in a world of my creation, and we possibly may. I have constructed the histories of nations to which I have never been. I know the origins of the roots of words I cannot define and have never successfully used in a sentence, or even in the use of a sentence fragment.

In my quarter-life, I have existed as a single person, but have created a minimum of two identities. Both of these identities have been published; both have subscribed to bi-monthly magazines or journals. Both of these identities have families and friends. Some of which overlap between identities. Both have fears and dreams, favorite bands and authors, flaws and pride, and even moral codes.

One is a young man learning to be healthy and ambitious, looking forward and planning the beginnings of a long career of hard work and social responsibility. One is an older boy energetic with a persistent desire to experience all things equally [pain and love, loss and euphoria] as a single person who may, sometimes in occasions of circumstance, cross paths with others who will gain great meaning in his life. The first is strong and reliable, shy yet prepared for righteousness, intent on good intentions. He longs to be only good for all others, and often feels pain in observance of the pain of those around him or not around him at all. He feels guilt for his wrong doings and the transgressions of innocence in which he played no part at all. The second lives only through what he can sense through his own eyes, mouth, ears, hands, nose and tongue. His world is small and meaningful–the cast of a flashlight on a midnight search for what it means to be alive. He is perpetually aware of his inevitable end, both as a reason for the timely celebrations of the burgeoning experience of his days and as the constant opportunity to make a necessary escape.

Right now, in the days of waning time and in the pressures of nearing ends, both of these identities are wrestling within me and I am stopped dead and alive in my tracks.

Perfectly the same, no matter where I find myself.

As the initial entry to what will most likely be a short-lived line of writings, the following will spend no time/space/words to greet or meet. I will begin–an effort to bypass the pretense that is so attractive, so natural in such media.

I commence.

These are not unique words, nothing to raise an eyebrow or well up tears. I am an average traveler. I am as lost and found as anyone. This blog will not change lives or make days. It is as meaningless as any other corner of the expansive mess of the Internet.

I may be leaving this town (my fourth attempt at a home). I may be staying. The choices are the same. The situation has not changed.

There is a past to run away from (a girl, a shrinking group of friends, a feeling of misplacement). There is an inviting and mysterious future ahead (new town, new job, new discoveries, a new chance to kill and old way of life). There are anchors (steady and available jobs, a few stable friends, familiar comforts). I resent them all. In the way a teenager resents an angry parent, I am quite good at hiding and forgetting the deep and general love I feel.

If I am to stay, or if I am to once again move on, life will find its way back to the state I am currently writing myself through. This middle stage of coming and going, social and emotional purgatory, will remain once the dust of my decision has settled. This is the difficulty of commitment. This is the feeling that I, and most everyone I know and love, is hurting with. This is the weight of having lived through so many experiences, each feeling so incredibly different, all somehow ending the same.

From where do those who have the answer, who have found a place to settle and smile, harvest this courage, this secret solace that so many others long for and so many more have died without?

It’s a strange world we have made for ourselves, whether in greed, benevolence, or ignorance. One that, I am convinced, none know how to truly live unafraid of themselves and all the choices they are given and must make. And, of course, when so many of our choices end in such identical results, we become jaded and forcing ourselves to make any decision at all, much less the correct one, becomes a task that requires even more forced effort.

Whether the choices are a manifestation of freedom and privilege or simply an illusory meaning, they are necessary and inescapable pains for which there are very few pills.

patterns in the confusion, misguided meanderings.

I found these young words on the top of an aging pile of pieces of myself (if not pieces of myself, then single spikes that have kept my train of thought steady on its rumbling way).

I found the words, the idea, that follows and I tripped on it, like a book in the middle of a path through a dark room. I hit the floor and found myself looking at a collection of analogous memories I’d been hiding under my metaphorical bed. Sometimes memories find each other, mate, and have monsters as offspring.

May I introduce you to one such memory, the proud new parent of a monstrous newborn…

The Old Scoundrel’s Ode to Lively Lives

On these gentle passes
Which float us from one life to a second beauty,
A new yet affable whim of lust
For fantasy and the fragility of satisfied hungers,
We are eager toes wrung tight
To a blade of grass,
Sharp and vivid with the arrival of unescaped electricity,
For a kind of stable state,
For a home among the unfamiliar lions
And all the colors of new birds
Without names or meaning
Or human mirrors.

Yet we go on like lovers
Quiet in the ebb of expectation,
Placing a shivering palm onto every awkward
Shadowed body part,
And through every Rosemary sprig,
Singing as we give sidewalks purpose
Between here and there and the river.

We believe in the things that are hidden,
The ghosts whose names we know or not,
And we worship the echoes we leave
On the far sides of fences, on porches,
For children who will grow up slow
To hang their shoes on power lines.