Passages

I like it here but I need someplace to go. Someplace to grow. Someplace beyond what I know in the day to day flow of my life. I want noise and joy and busy life surrounding me and drowning me in the hum of its movement. I want quiet and solitude and midnight hours enfolding me and soothing me with the peace of stillness. I want faith in the loud life and the soft life and just in life in general. I want a center that isn’t harder and harder to hold on to as the days march by and leave me standing at the side of the road, watching. Watching all the travelers move through their days with fear and love, with tears and smiles and all the while I’m waiting. Waiting to fall in step and let my burden go or walk away from the silent, lovely show.

I want to want no more.

Ohm…
Street corners and headlights flash
like lightning from the heavens
Rumbling engines and construction hums
like far away storms in the mountains

Ohm…
People flitting about from building to building
as honey bees seethe through their hives
Concrete and gravel coat the earth
as hard as the stone in the rocky valleys

Ohm…
The city teems with life as…
I wake up dead from a nightmare of congestion

Once to feel the pulse beneath the skin, the flow of blood rushing from our straining hearts. Twice to feel the tears slide from your eyes, mixing with mine over sighs and shallow breaths. Thrice and done and the world clouds over, shuddering and still again.

Sometime in college…

The piece below was written as a quick reaction to a now forgotten poem a professor read in a class I attended. Whatever the words, the imagery it conjured was of me watching my father find his name on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D.C.

The professor picks two poems
The class hears them as he speaks
With one my interest mildly sits
the other raises my level of awareness
while catching me off guard
I’m gone from class and sit in myself
as I was many years ago
My father with that worn Air Force parka and black bandanna
the sign “Another Viet Vet for peace” forgotten at his side
And I see it, I see his name
his whole self reflected in my father’s eyes.

Original Piece: To Whom I May be Concerned About
A letter to someone from the past.

Why couldn’t I save you? Why couldn’t I have helped? What is there left to say? I know. Remember. Remember the gazebo in the park on that perfect day. Fall leaves circling around us. The crisp breeze lifting your hair. And the colors. Oh the colors. Like a landscape painted just for us.

“I love you.”
“I love you to.”
“Will you dance with me?” I asked
“But there’s no music.” You said
“There is always music…you just have to listen…”

I don’t have many clear memories of him. He was sort of a peripheral member of the family in my young eyes. In fact, the only times I really saw him were at family gatherings like birthdays, holidays and the like. What I do remember of him was money, fitness, beer and loud laughing. I remember him saying vulgar things at the dinner table that made the kids laugh, the parents look uncomfortable and the grandparents frown. In the later years of my youth I heard the darker stories from my parents regarding his lifestyle. The divorce came and went and he faded out of the larger family’s life.

I saw him recently at a funeral. He seemed fragile, depleted, sad. Attempting to display a front of calm compassion and support came across as nervous confusion. He looked like a puzzle piece that arrives at the table only to find a more compatible piece has taken its place. I remember speaking with him briefly. I remember overhearing his nearby conversations with relatives. I can’t seem to recall any of the words however. All that comes to mind is thinking “He is shorter than I remember him”.

Summer, summer, summer time. In my mind there are lots of lines that remind of the summer time. Or, more immediately, of how it has moved behind me, the fall winding down. The snow on the ground, here and there but not for long. Until the temperature drops and it sticks around.

While I could mourn for summer, I am looking forward to many things about the coming winter. Slow snow falls in the quiet of the night. The underglow of the city lights on clouds of grey. Piles of blankets and good books. Cold walks around the lake.

Hello winter.

And now for something completely different.

I recently heard the classic Mrs. Robinson by Simon and Garfunkel and thought to myself, “What if a goth/death metal band had written the lyrics to the song?” I know, you all have probably thought the same thing! Now, I totally dig the original. It is probably somewhere in my top “x” number of songs. I also totally dig satire. Here is my pass at a line by line rewrite (disclaimer – strong language ensues):

Continue reading

As I’ve started diving into this project more deeply, I’ve found some old material that I feel compelled to post. Some of it is from recent years, some from a long time ago…in a galaxy far, far way (I couldn’t resist). You will probably start seeing it pop up here and there. I will include timestamps on pieces that may contain content that references a particular time in my life. Some older pieces will not be identified as such. I’m not sure why, but apparently that is the decision I’ve made. Unless I un-make it later. Either way, it does give me a pool of work to pull from when I’m feeling particularly motivated to do anything but write.

A few blocks. A few miles. A few lifetimes away. Years and years of life squeezed into a handful of moments. A handful of tears from eyes too dry to make them. Too hollow to see.

The heart’s words spoken with a harsh edge. A cruel expression without pity and without the soul of comprehension. A stray set of words let loose without a thought to the impact…

concussion…

wound…

backlash…