In writing on 03.08.10 at 01:02:19 AM i am mostly foolish,
if that is even the phrase:
a myth of the legend
running by at even pace.
we all have hours,
tied up in rigid red lace:
tis the timing of futures
that absolve the riddle’s case.
simple allegorical knots
sewn up in fate’s chaotic vice:
like destinies conundrum
and coincidence spun thrice.
an oath
and a turn
in the prestige’s count,
a suit well worn
mussed up
carousing for sound.
an eclectic collection
of baubles
random and slight,
is the confusion of
flattery in our silence
of sight.
i am mostly foolish,
if that is even the rhyme:
the unknown ahead
is closer
than the distances traveled
and left behind.
In writing on 01.11.10 at 05:25:09 PM there is a bridge,
covered with blackberry
and ivy and feet shuffling
along the dusted
fastidiousness of the
halcyon cracks left
from the decay
left over from a time
when the world traveled
slowly and consumed
the portents of a smile
left in the carafe of
everything that cannot be sold,
won’t be sold, and should’t
be
sold.
there is a ridge,
covered with juniper
and clay and hands
scraping at the
crack in the rock
left red by the
millenia of galcial shift
of pushing and molding
and shaping of the lava beds
that slip up from the spine
of the one thing that cannot
be told, won’t be told and
shouldn’t be
told
that direction has
no bearing
on soul.
there is the collision,
forming the gold of the
authentic rope,
that can be held, will be held
and should be held
in our nights recklessly climbing
hand over hand by hand
at every knot jointed
on our way over
the
road.
In life, writing on 10.29.09 at 01:02:56 AM the most often advice a writer receives is to write what you know. that without dipping into your own well, everything comes across as contrived. this always seems like such simple advice, always seems like simple fact in the face of trying to write fiction or truth. I don’t know about other writers, but I find this the hardest piece of advice to follow. I don’t know why, to be honest. Fear? maybe. Boredom? perhaps. Confusion? more than likely. It makes no sense, in reality. The only person with your complete history and perspective is you, yet I fail to be able to conjure it out of the aether of my life.
Tonight, I am yet again sitting here faced with a million possible word combinations, and none of them seem important enough for the words I do want to say. That my life, and thoughts, and word choices up to this moment are not necessarily false, but that they have no true context, no conjoining knot to follow through to the soul of the definitions. I think at times that maybe poetry is where it comes out, and at times it does. There are honestly five poems that I have written in my life that have told more truth about myself than any other thing I have shared. Be it through acting or music, or memoirs, none of them compare to those five poems in my heart, in the soul of my own truth.
I don’t know what happens in between those poems. Perhaps it’s like the musician trying to recapture that perfect rhythm over and over again. Trying to hang onto fleeting beauty, and who you are when that creation flows from you. It’s almost ironical when viewed from the prism of life. To be frank, I don’t know what happens from the start of saying something, to the end of it. It’s as if a metaphor is waiting to be written that I can never find the method to. Each word chosen too carefully, each sentence edited too much, each stanza carved down to everything but I want to say.
I drove this last week up to montreal to help some friends move. The whole drive I was lost. The whole moment of moving them, lost in the notion that I have lived thirty years and have no way to truly tell that story. No way to get those words out. At times I feel like I have lost my center, but in reality it feels as if I have never found that middle in the first place. That I have been drifting my entire life, and because of that, all of this passion is like an afterburner without a rudder.
Currently I work a job. That is all it is. I know that others have it harder, and I feel guilty most of the time for even thinking that I need for something else. But the more I run from it, the more I just say I need to pick myself up, the further I drift away from those five poems. From the truth of who I am in those words. I read them over and over again, trying to figure out where that person is. When I know that person is right here. There is no key that will unlock being able to write what I know. Not enough editing in the world that will find me carved out of the clay of this accumulated life of other peoples wishes.
I know something has to change, and I am tired of waiting for that. A long time ago I swore off grandiose statements because of my lack of follow through for myself. Perhaps that is the change I need to make now, and here. Because no matter what, if I am going to write: I need to become that person that I know I want to be and am in those five poems. Afterall, life isn’t an excuse for justifying what this world turns us into. Life is who we are when writing what we know.
In writing on 10.15.09 at 08:29:49 PM i’ve never asked for perfect,
or expected heroism.
balancing between action
and dilution
are the laughs
sharing slumber with
elocution.
i’ve never wanted for chaos,
or accepted absolutism.
teetering betwixt diction
and subterfuge
are the stories
sharing stumbles with
confusion.
i’ve never thrown out relativity,
or victimized solipsism.
laying between words
and meaning
are the definitions
sharing remembrance with
conviction.
In writing on 10.12.09 at 01:23:28 AM i am not a patient person,
never have been,
but i want to be:
balancing impetuousness
with wisdom
like the apothecary’s
scale.
i am not a slow deciding person,
could never afford to be,
but i wonder at it:
balancing moments
with choices
like the taoists
spell.
i am not a fixed person,
don’t choose to be,
but i know it’s wine:
sweet righteousness
with vinegar
like the old
tale.
i am looking forward to
being this person
i know, when i hear:
the footfall
with future
like our chests
swell.
In writing on 09.22.09 at 11:18:45 PM adjustment is for the hair draping
across the whisper in moments
of who we are,
certain that
we will grow to be what we
just knew in the portions
of hues found at the
top of a painting flume.
evolution is for the fingers slipping
along the paradoxical spine
of who we never plan to
become,
but who we can’t wait to
become once we know
what it is to be that wave
cresting on a sand sharp
with every reason why
we should and every
moment when we couldn’t.
metamorphosis is for the wings flitting
over jet streams left by
every notion that we know,
we weren’t mistaken!
we scrawl across the river banks
nor were we taken by nor forgotten about
on that history that we
curl up like a map of treasure
on an island left in the
pacific of our life.
change is for us,
not because we need newness
or perfection,
but
precisely because every
mistake we know we can make
is subdued by
every hope we know we
feel in the empty bedded
thunderclap midnights teaming
with a cocoon left
to the right of all the time
we take to become
you
and me
and us
and we.
In writing on 09.17.09 at 12:15:00 AM if we can write the future
using quills made from the
feathers of a phoenix
on it’s last time around
our burn, then
we should make sure
that each comma
and semi-colon (i love
semi-colons; you know)
and period and sentence is
like your finger tracing down
the spine of dusty leather book
left at the back of
the shelf; mainly because
we know that to read it might just
mean that it has an ending.
if we can forget our past
like a jet forcing our hearts
back against the history
of atoms racing over each end
of our wing in that color of
forced condensation like that
night the taxi lights held
the other side of our world
at bay long enough to lose
ourselves in the alleys
that were really meant for you
and now and not them and then.
if we live our presence out
of this space we each are breathing
inside the magnet of
amplified worldwide electrons
playing the splaying of the laying
of every progression that
we both know echoes louder
than an eclipse and softer
than a concern.
In writing on 08.20.09 at 10:47:40 PM painting with the stars is
by far the easiest brush
to extend from the wrist
and flick the tale of
water color across the
canvas carved onto the leaves
gathered up into that pile
in the fall of youth.
raining the words down
upon the ears is by
far the easiest way to tell
someone those stories about
the twenty foot high fence
we would erect around them,
but the easiest route to
to the gate through a garden
tilled and sowed and
planted in your heartbeats.
explaining that life is just
images passing from novels
written by those that
have yet to plot a suitable ending
is really the narrator’s easy
way out, and we don’t really
like easy, do we?
In writing on 08.11.09 at 12:19:45 PM
when i was four i fell in
love with a woman named
Stephanie who flew away
as she had appeared
with the exchange of a
land that can only be
fathomed by photographers
who leave the frame open
too long.
when i was fourteen i fell
for that girl who i hadn’t
noticed talking in a tongue
that only the mountain men
understand after they
spend nights wandering through
the hills mixed with Pyrenees
like the wild cry left by the
hand of a painter we all argue
about the existence of.
when i was twenty-four i
flew across the dried out
ocean of years gone past
like Odysseun happenstance
to that location just above the
explorers belt where he hangs
a knife sharp with
moments washing away every
gathered bauble of recently carved
rivers.
now that i am thirty i see
that every drop down the well
with a bucket tied to ropes
bound and braided by a life spent
knowing that love is what destiny
wishes it could be,
that affection is what fate
could never hope to be.
now that i am thirty i see
that every voyage is just
chaos casting a sail
and we,
we are left to imperfectly
navigate a new direction home.
In writing on 08.11.09 at 12:17:37 PM if i could go back
and advise myself about life:
words are pretty great.
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