Only Grey...

i know you're depressed
know you just don't want to deal
with me
with anyone
don't feel like you can
don't feel like you can take anymore
don't feel like you can handle it all
it's just too much
all these people who Love you
who mean so well
who want to be the one to save you
to play the hero
be the one to make you smile again
they have no idea
can't feel what it's like
they don't understand that
for all their good intentions
their affections are just another burden
their attempts at Love and comfort just a
complicated social dance
they're forcing on you

i know you want to feel better
know you would if you could
but all their attempts to help you
just make you feel like a burden
to the people you Love
the ones you least want to burden
and why can't they see that only makes it worse
to have to choose between
disappointing them
when their attempts at cheeriness inevitably fail
or lying to them
and pretending to feel better
when you don't
not really
just to spare their feelings
can't they see that you don't have the energy
to even be responsible for your own feelings right now
much less anyone else's
why can't they just leave you alone

alone

isolated

simplified

reduced

quiet

numb

trying to let the pain fade
disappear into nothing at all
so in the blessed silence left behind
the spark may return
just maybe
to fan the flames again
to build the heat
and warm you back to life
but only if you can first get away
away from all of us
and all our Love and affections
and our mountains of best intentions
only if you can reduce all the noise
and complications
and lay still in your shallow depression

i know you're depressed
i know how you feel
i know i can't help
i know i'd only weigh you down further
and make it harder for you to get up again

but i also know
that I Love you

and that you are not alone

Gaze Deep Into My Navel And Despair...

How am I supposed to grow up?

I want to grow up.  I really do.  No, more than that, I need to.  I need to grow the fuck up.  I'm almost forty years old, but I still see myself as if I were twenty-five.  That might sound appealing on some level, at first; "young at heart" and all that.  And maybe it would be, if that's what I wanted for myself.  But it isn't.  I want to grow up.  I need to grow up, because I can't keep living like I'm twenty-five.  I'm not twenty-five anymore.  I can't eat like a twenty-five year-old anymore.  I can't move like a twenty-five year-old anymore.  I can't party like a twenty-five year-old anymore.  Fuck, I can't even sleep like a twenty-five year-old anymore.  It all hurts me now in a way that it never did, and I can feel myself breaking down at an astonishing rate, as if the force of Entropy inside me were being fed by some radioaction of chemical combustion.  Accelerated Decrepitude.  But on the other hand, trying to live within my almost-forty means, while still feeling like a twenty-five year-old inside, is so monumentally depressing that I can't even fucking bother; I always just end up feeling like I already have one foot in the grave.

A twenty-five year-old trapped in a forty year-old body.  How incredibly pathetic.  How incredibly modern.  How incredibly privileged.

But how am I supposed to grow up?  I don't know.  My observations tell me that for most people, this happens as a natural side-effect of breeding.  That creating a child shifts all perspectives, and forces the new parent into a maturity that cannot be achieved through any other means.  That makes sense to me.  I can understand that.

But I'm never going to have any children.  So what am I supposed to do?  How am I supposed to force myself to achieve a state that, for most people, requires quite possibly the single most life-altering event they will ever experience in order to achieve?

Sometimes I think, maybe I don't actually need to grow up?  If I don't have any children, then what do I need to grow up for?  Why do I feel this need anyways?  I can only assume it is because I reflexively compare my life to the model my parents set for me.  When I look at myself, and try to judge whether I'm doing well or not, I compare it to the life they lived.  And I always feel myself coming up short.

They went to college.  They got degrees.  They worked hard.  (My father still works harder than almost anyone else I know, and while my mother never worked as hard as he did, she still inarguably worked harder than I do now.)  They bore and raised children.  They owned houses, with yards and multiple floors and everything.

But I dropped out of college.  I have no degrees, and probably never will.  Yeah, I have a career that doesn't leave me wanting to kill myself, but I still hate it, just because it's work, and I hate work of any kind; I hate being forced to sell myself every day in order to sustain myself.  I don't own a house.  I own an absurdly tiny condo that I hate and will never be able to sell for as much as I paid for it.  I am almost certain I will end up having to live in that tiny little box for the rest of my life, watching it deteriorate around me, with me - and that thought terrifies me on a regular basis.

And even these modest achievements - a well-paying job that I can sort of do well and tolerate, and a tiny little condo I'm trapped in like a prison cell - even these barely note-worthy accomplishments I never actually earned; I didn't work hard to achieve these things.  I got this job because some well-meaning middle-aged women that I worked with took pity on me, and talked to their bosses, and told them they knew this kid they thought would do well as a programmer.  And they were right - I am a good programmer.  At least, I'm alright.  But again, not because I try to be, or because I studied or worked hard or went to school or anything else.  I just have a natural talent for logic and pattern recognition and symbology, and so I am a naturally decent programmer.  I could be a great programmer if I wanted to be; if I tried to be and put forth the effort.  But I don't.  Because I don't care.  I only want to put forth the minimum amount of effort to get by, and save the rest for indulging in my life's pleasures.

And it's a similar story with my "home."  I didn't work hard and save money every day so that I could eventually put a down payment on my dream home.  My grandfather died, and since my mother (his daughter) was already dead herself, the portion of his life's wealth that should have been hers (and he had worked hard all his life to achieve that wealth) came to me instead.  And I used all of that money to buy the apartment I had been living in for almost a decade at that point.  The biggest, most "adult" accomplishment of my life - becoming a home-owner - and it only happened because I was in a position to profit off of the deaths of two of my close family members.  And so it has never felt like an accomplishment to me.  It feels like blood money.

(It's true that I performed magick to get the job and the money and the apartment, but even taking the assumption that my magick worked doesn't help the situation any.  Magick is a short-cut.  It's easy compared to actually working hard to learn or to save money.  And it's fun to do, and for that reason alone I wanted to do it, whether it worked or not.  So even assuming that I came by these things through sorcery, it still doesn't feel like an accomplishment to me.  It still doesn't feel like I really earned them.  It feels like I cheated.)

And I will almost certainly never see that much money again in my lifetime.  I can barely maintain a savings of more than a couple of thousand dollars at a time.  I live paycheck-to-paycheck, even with my fairly significant salary.  I've always been that way.  If I have money, I want to spend it on making myself feel good right now, and I can't seem to deny myself comfort or happiness in the present, in order to save it for some undefined future.  As I've written here before, I feel like the Grasshopper, fiddling away as the first snow begins to fall.

But why do I determine the value of my life by comparing it to my parents'?  They were completely different people, living in a completely different time.  And who wanted completely different things from their life than I want from mine.  And I know this.  But I still can't shake this feeling that I am somehow failing at life, because I seem to remember my parents being so much better off in their twenties than I am in my thirties; or will be in my forties.  I just want to be happy, like anyone else.  But I constantly and consistently feel that the things that make me happy aren't good for me.  That they are self-indulgent, or immature, or masturbatory.  That I am a bad person for living my life the way that I do.  But trying to live my life any other way always leaves me just as miserable, if only in a different way.

I just want to spend my life relaxing in the bathhouse, playing games, reading, writing, watching TV and movies, sleeping, eating, drinking and getting high, and punctuating the whole thing with the occasional orgasm.  That is really all I want from life.

And I feel like a worthless waste of a human being for feeling that way.  I hate myself for feeling that way.  But even so, I have no idea how to change it; I have no idea how to want anything else.

Okay, sure, I want other things.  Bigger things.  I want to have a big house with a yard and a basement and an attic.  I want to be able to support myself through writing, or some other form of creative expression.  (If only I could make a living playing games!)  I want a sense of accomplishment.  I want to feel like my life mattered, in any way.  I want to feel a sense of confidence that when I'm gone, I will have made some mark on the world that is all my own; that I will leave behind something more than a pile of carbon dust.  I do want all of these things.  But when I think about them, and I envision the monumental amount of work it would take to even try to achieve any of them - with no guarantee of success! - I lose any hope I may have had about ever actually achieving them.

Because I know that I will never do that work.  I just don't have it in me.  Achieving anything of any real significance requires a single-minded devotion that I just don't have.  Have never had.

Because deep-down, I don't want to be great.  All I really want is to be comfortable.  And I guess I am.  So I should be happy, then, right?  Then why do I feel this way?  I just wish I could learn to be happy with what I have, instead of hating myself for not being able to be great.

I guess what it all really comes down to is this:  I feel lazy, and I hate myself for being lazy, but I don't know how to make myself be anything else.  And I hate myself for that, too.

+          +          +

Or maybe I'm just depressed because winter is coming, and I'm all out of drugs, and I can feel both of these things gnawing at my bones.

Chromatic Wake...

the Colors came today
Red Yellow
Orange Brown
taking the Green away
back to where the Colors sleep
to hibernate another year

I've been seeing hints and peeks and signs of
their Arrival
for weeks now
I knew to expect them
soon
but today they were just
there
suddenly, and all at once
bathed in copper gold light
against a blue slate sky
exploding all around me
surrounding me in the beautiful dying of my world

every time this happens
every year this day comes back around
they take a little bit more of me
drawing the light out of me with their Colors
to join them in their sleep
leaving me lighter and less
but also denser and more
their Beauty a little death
to bring life back into focus
to remind me of all the wonders I'd forgotten
to deliver again that delicious Ache
that weighs heavy in my chest
yet floats me off my feet
as if waking to the memory
of a Love lost in an opium dream

so I can no longer sleep.

Making Excuses...

I haven't written in a long time.  Long enough that it is beginning to weigh on me.

I've been busy.  I haven't had much time to write.

But I have had time.

And when I've had the time, I haven't had the energy.

And when I've had the energy, and the time, I haven't had the desire.

And when I've had the desire, and the energy, and the time, I haven't been inspired.

And when all my stars have finally aligned in the heavens of my birth, and I have found myself inspired, and with a desire to write, and the energy to do it, and the time to do it in - I haven't had the tools at hand.

It's happened several times while I was driving.  It's happened in the sauna, and the steam room.  It's happened late at night, just as I'm falling asleep.  It's happened while I was rushing to get ready in the morning, late for work.  It's happened in meetings.  It's happened on the toilet.

I've tried to write without keyboard or pen, but I've yet to meet any measure of success.  The process is completely different.  My mind must then be constantly pre-occupied with remembering and reciting and memorizing whatever I've written to that point, while simultaneously trying to determine what comes next.

But when I have a keyboard - or paper and pen in a pinch - I can focus entirely on feeling out the next line; all I have to do is express.

What I realize as I observe this, is that making it up in my head is simply not my style.

But it's all I've got right now.  And I am clogging up.

The Other Boy's Father...

As a young boy, I belonged to a tribe in the Indian Guides.  Think the Boy Scouts, but with a Native American, rather than Pioneer, theme.  Instead of merit badges, we received various colored and decorated feathers for fulfilling specific tasks.  Instead of "dens" and "den-meetings" we had "tribes" and "pow-wows."  It was run by the local YMCA, and looking back on it now, it was actually pretty racist.  A bunch of suburban white boys and their fathers dressing up in feathers and war-paint, beating drums and pretending to be Native Americans, back when we still called them "Indians" and thought nothing of it.  Though, at the time, I was too young to notice any of that.  I just loved getting to do all of the crafts, coming up with my Indian Name ("Howling Wolf"), collecting feathers for my coup-stick, and especially, getting to spend time with my father.  He worked two jobs and went to night school, so any time we got to spend together was very special.  But what I loved the most, was when we would go camping.

A couple of times a year, our entire Nation (a group of local tribes) would rent out a campsite somewhere, and we would spend a long weekend out in the woods, making crafts, telling stories, cooking hotdogs on sticks over campfires, and other typical Boy Scout-type things.  Over the years, I grew to be good friends with all of the boys in my tribe, and their fathers, and I would look forward to every opportunity we had to get together.  They felt like a second family.  And the weekends we all spent in the woods are, to this day, some of the happiest memories I have of my childhood.

I remember one night in particular when I was around ten or eleven, as we were sitting around the fire after our hot dogs and beans, and after our s'mores, and after the last ghost story had been told, and long after most of the other boys were asleep in their bunks, I was trying to stay up late, to be with my father (whose Indian Name was, tellingly, "Night Owl").  I must've started to nod off at some point.  I don't remember exactly how it happened, but for some reason it was another one of the fathers, Tom, who carried me to my bunk that night, rather than my own.  Tom was tall and gangly and rather nerdy, always funny and good with us boys.  I remember he was also very handy, good at fixing things and such.  He was a plumber by trade, and owned a local plumbing company.  I'll still pass a truck with his name on it on the road every once in a while.

The cabin was almost completely dark, filled with the soft sound of sleeping young boys.  Tom carried me almost effortlessly down the dark, quiet cabin, toward my bunk at the far end.  It felt strange, the way he carried me.  My father would carry me almost slung over his shoulder.  But Tom carried me cradled in his arms, like a mother would carry her baby.  When we eventually reached the back of the cabin, he very gently lifted me up and laid me down in my bunk.  Because I was on the top bunk, I was lying down almost as high up as he was tall, very nearly face-to-face.  After making sure I was situated properly in my sleeping bag, he reached out with an enormous right hand, and cupped my head very gently.  He lightly brushed the hair off of my forehead.  Still holding my head in his hand, he softly stroked my cheek with his thumb, and then whispered, "Goodnight."  

And then, still cupping my tiny head in his giant, calloused hand, he leaned down very slowly, and kissed me on the lips more gently than anyone ever had before.  It wasn't like any goodnight kiss I'd ever had.  It was unlike any kiss any relative or family member had ever given me.  Even to my young mind back then, it clearly most resembled the romantic kisses I'd seen on TV and in movies.  Lips slightly parted.  Mouth to mouth.  Very soft and gentle.  And he lingered there with his mouth on mine for a long moment.  Then he smiled down at me, stroked my cheek once more, and left to go join the other fathers around the campfire, leaving me alone with my thoughts, and the twisting fear in my belly.

I never told anyone.  I was old enough to know that sometimes men touched children in bad ways.  But I don't think I felt certain enough about what happened with Tom that night to risk getting him in trouble by telling anyone.  Maybe I was afraid I would be the one to get in trouble.  Maybe I just didn't want to risk hurting anyone in my tribe, my second family.  But I remember that I wasn't entirely sure if what he'd done was really wrong or not.  It wasn't actually sexual; just strange.  I know that it made me feel very uncomfortable, but that could've been just because it was so different from anything I'd ever experienced before.  For all I knew that was how he kissed his own son goodnight, too, and he was just trying to be nice to me and treat me like he would his own.  No one but my own family had ever tucked me into bed or kissed me goodnight before.  Maybe the experience only felt strange to me because it was so different from the way I was used to with my own father.

I never thought that Tom was gay.  He wasn't effeminate at all.  And he was married and had a son.  And even his son seemed unusually straight for an adolescent boy.  When another boy from our tribe and I had taken Tom's son out into the woods one night to show him what we did out there by ourselves, and to invite him to join us, he wouldn't.  He just walked away, and left us there, half-naked on the ground, under the trees.  Maybe he'd told his father about what we'd done.  And maybe his father was gay.  And so maybe Tom thought he knew what I was going through.  Maybe he was trying to show me that it was okay, that he understood, that he was like me.  Maybe he thought he'd finally found someone he could share his secret with; this dark and horrible secret he'd been keeping his whole life.  Maybe that night, in the dark, in my tiny eyes, he thought he'd seen some sort of recognition.  Maybe he thought he'd finally found someone who understood him.

I don't know.  I'll never know.

Keeping Her Secret, Postcards Home...

In the middle of our two weeks at Summer camp, we received a special treat.  We were allowed to kayak out to Santa Claus Island, an uninhabited spit of sand and tall pine in the middle of Rehoboth Bay, and camp there for the night.  There were about thirty of us boys, all around nine years-old, and six adult camp counselors to watch over us all.  We picked our campsite, pitched our tents, built our fire, dug our latrine, and spent the rest of the day catching crabs from the bay for dinner that night.  Late in the afternoon, I snuck off into the deep woods by myself to masturbate.  After dark, I was running through the woods with some other boys, our flashlight beams bobbing and strobing through the brush as we ran full speed, and I tripped over a root I hadn't seen.  Scraped myself up pretty good.  That was normal for me.  I was a spaz.  Always getting myself hurt somehow.

We ran back to the camp to get first-aid from the counselors.  As they gathered around me, shining their flashlights on my leg to check the extent of my injuries, one of the grown-ups whispered to the counselor who was holding my leg, "Dude.  Your arm."  I looked down to see something protruding from the sweatband he was wearing stretched across his forearm.  I recognized it as a rolled-up sandwich baggie.  I knew exactly what it was.  My parents kept theirs in the same type of bag, rolled up in the same way, in the secret drawer in our coffee table.  At night, they would pinch a little from the bag and smoke it from their tiny wooden pipe, and then laugh and laugh and laugh.  I can still remember lying in bed as a child, and hearing my mother's laughter echoing up from two floors below.  Sometimes, if she was already in her nightgown by the time the call finally came in, and she didn't want to have to get dressed again, she would send me out to meet her connection for her.  I would meet him down at the end of our cul-de-sac, hand him a check for the correct amount, and he would hand me one of those rolled up sandwich bags, filled with the fragrant dried remains of the secret plant that I wasn't supposed to tell anyone about, ever.  And I would bring it back to her and she would smoke it and I would smell the strong burnt odor and she would laugh and laugh.

The counselors had a Secret.  And I knew what it was.

I don't know if it's true or not, but at the time I felt like I was the only one who knew.  Even if any of the other boys had seen the counselor's stash peeking out from his wristband, surely they wouldn't have known what it was.  But I was Special.  I had grown up keeping this secret.  I knew the ways of this hidden adult world, and was comfortable there.  I like to think that when the counselor looked up at me with panic in his eyes after re-secreting his hidden eighth, that I said something like, "Don't worry, it's cool.  I won't tell anyone."  Because I wanted them to know that I was cool.  I wanted them to know that I was down.  That I knew what they were doing, and that I was perfectly okay with it.  I wasn't like all these other little boys who didn't know anything about what adults like to do to have fun.  But I don't think I actually said anything.  I was too shocked, and too afraid of getting in trouble.  I probably just pretended not to notice.  But I saw.  And as I laid in my tent that night, trying to sleep, I couldn't get out of my mind the image of the counselors sitting around our fire outside the tent, passing a joint the way I'd seen my parents and their friends do so many times before.  It reminded me of Home.  It was the first time I'd felt comfortable the entire time I'd been at camp.  The first time I'd felt like I fit in at all.  But no one knew that I knew.  No one could know that I knew.  So even though I suddenly, finally, felt like I belonged, to everyone else I was still just The Spaz.  And there was nothing I could do about it.

Back at camp the next day, we were encouraged to write a postcard to our folks back home.  I was only there for a two-week stay, so I'd only brought one postcard with me.  Trying to think of what to say to my parents, all I could think of was the counselors' secret.  The secret they and my parents shared.  So I wrote it all down on the postcard.  I wanted to tell my parents that there were people like them here with me, watching over me.  "It's okay, they smoke just like you."  I wanted them to know that I was okay here.  That we were all part of the same group, the same tribe, the same family.  The family of people who Kept The Secret.  And I was so proud of myself for being such a grown-up about the whole situation.  And I wanted to show them what a good, grown-up young man I was being for them.  After I'd finished writing out the whole story, filling the entire postcard, I went to hand it in to my counselor to put in the mail for me with the others, so pleased with myself.  And when he held out his hand to take it, I suddenly realized the horrible mistake I'd made.  This was a postcard, not a letter.  There was no envelope.  Who knows how many hands this would pass through between me and my parents?  Certainly other camp staff would see it.  And right there on the back was a detailed description of the secret I was supposed to be keeping.  That I was so proud of keeping.  The counselors smoke pot.  My parents smoke pot.  And everyone who saw this postcard would know!

I couldn't hand it in.  I quickly said I had to fix something, and ran back to my bunk, fear knotting in my gut.  I didn't want to get anyone in trouble.  Not the counselors, and especially not my parents.  I'd written it in pen, so I couldn't erase it.  But I couldn't re-write it, either; I'd used all of the room on the back.  And I didn't have another postcard.  And the counselor was waiting for me to hurry up and hand it in.  Everyone else had already finished theirs and were ready to move on to our next activity for the day.  Everyone was waiting on me.  I had to do something, but I didn't know what to do.  I had to hand in this postcard, but I couldn't hand it in with these words on it for anyone to read.  So I just started blacking out each letter, one-by-one.  Using my pen the same way we used our #2 pencils to fill in the bubbles on our scan forms when we took tests at school, I drew spirals over and over and over each letter until they were just a dark-blue scribbled blob of ink, and the letter underneath was completely obscured.  I pressed down hard, so that my marks bulged out on the backside image on the postcard, like braille.  It felt like it took forever, and eventually the rest of the group left me there in the cabin by myself to finish up whatever it was that I was doing that was so secret and so important.  Once I was finished, all that remained of my original letter home were the words "Hi Mom and Dad!" followed by line after line after line of big, fat, blue scribbled dots, and concluding with a quick "I miss you.  Love, Mike" squeezed into the lower right-hand corner, like an afterthought.  And then I handed it in.  And worried every day the rest of the time I was there that Summer that I might've just ruined my parents' lives.  What if someone could make out the words underneath my scribbles?  How could I have been so careless?

When I got home at the end of the week, my parents asked me about the postcard.  When it had arrived in the mail, they didn't know whether they should laugh about it, or be worried about me.  Once again, I'd done something strange, that didn't seem to make much sense, and that they didn't know how to take.  But now that we were alone, I could finally tell them the whole story.  And afterwards, I saw relief spread across my mother's face.  And then she kissed me, and told me she was proud of me for being so smart, and for doing such a good job of keeping her secret.

Everything Changed Then...

It was fourteen years ago today, that we drove home from the flop house on Fort Ave., disheveled and ruined in our best and blackest finery, and stopped at the Perkins to try and sooth our hangovers and our bruised souls with disgusting food and even worse coffee.  We both felt so sick in so many different ways, for so many different reasons.  We sat there and we cried and we tried to look each other in the eye as we fought to figure out what to do with our lives.

And you told me you realized something that night.  You realized you wanted me.  You wanted me more than you wanted anyone else.  You told me that you couldn't bear the idea of losing me.  As a friend, or anything else.

And I knew right then, you had me.  Completely.  Always.

Median Meridian Mean...

There is a Middle Road between all Worlds

I know this to be Truth

I have always seen it, glimpsed like a shadow in the corner of my Eye

Everywhere I have ever Looked

Everywhere I have ever Been

Everywhere

I have always felt myself to be

Known my Self to be

Standing to one side or the other of this Lost and Delicate Way

Skipping between the Extremes, always

Too High

or Too Low

too Hard or

too Soft

too Strong or too Weak

Too Much

or Never Enough

a Life Exhausted, leaping Across the Divide

from Mountaintop to Mountaintop

Seeking in vain the peaceful Valley on the Horizon

Always in The Distance

always Almost

never Now

Until

Until

until

until I collapse

until I cannot Go Any Further

until I finally Let Go

and Let My Self Fall

and Slide down the Mountain

because there is Nothing Left for me to do

but Lie Down

and Be Still

and Rest

Eyes Wide to the Sky

along the Middle Road

At The Corner Of Drunk And Pretentious...

Last night, I took a twenty dollar bill from my drawer
the last one
marked it with my words
in thick, black ink
grabbed a tack from the desk
and went wandering the alleys and backways and sideways of my town
scanning for the right spot
the right time
And alone on Cumberland, across from Potomac
I found a pristine telephone poll
sprouting tall and straight from the asphalt
like an urban redwood
Took the knife from my belt
the tack from my teeth
BOOM
BOOM
BOOM
and I walked away, heart pounding
hoping no one heard, no one saw
leaving the twenty hanging there like jesus
like a sign
in thick, black ink
asking,
"What do you REALLY want?"

I feel like a fraud.

Again A Darklight Day...

there's a strange and beautiful light in the building this morning
as i walk down the hall lined with empty offices all dark
on my merry way to my morning coffee
it's dark and storming outside
sweet Summer rain
heavy dark, almost night
and that odd, grey-cast half-light
that is not quite shadow but neither true illumination
filters in through the tinted office windows
into the hall
into my eyes
blending on the way with the white bright from buzzing fluorescents
that draw a dotted line down the halls' ceilings
so that the colors from within and the colors from without
merge
to form a singularly beautiful light that glows in the air
only on days like this
dark rain
morning sky
fluorescent light
off-white walls
and i'm suddenly lost in that ethereal glow
drawn back in time to a memory i had forgotten when i was still young
of the time when i had first learned to love this light
though i didn't know it then
and couldn't have put it to words even so
i was still only learning how to read
and the school day still included a time specifically for "napping"
but i knew that rainy days were different, somehow special
and not only because we would have recess in the gym
but because everything about this strange new world that i was shuttled off to every morning
Looked Different
on these dark rainy days
everything glowed in a strange way
and it wasn't like that when the sun was shining bright through the windows
and most days were sunny
it was only sometimes, only in the once-in-a-while
that the sun would hide behind the darkness
and the wet would come pouring down on us
and the class-room would glow
and i would feel the strangeness of that rare and special light inside of me
my tummy would roll and quiver all day in anticipation of
nothing in particular
my young body would vibrate to match the frequency of the fluorescence humming above me
overwhelmed with exuberant expectation
i couldn't have described it, couldn't have said what it was
i was still only learning to speak
but i knew something was different in my world
i knew it was rare
i knew that it did something to me
i knew that i liked it
and i came to realize that is what the word "beauty" meant
and that is where "love" came from
and though i didn't know it then
couldn't have known it then
now i realize
i've chased that strange and beautiful light
every day since

Between The Eye And The Mirror...

i'm getting depressed
keeping it bottled
the pressure is mounting
i need to write
want to write but
now i need to write
i can feel it
but i can't do it
can't make myself do it
i'm working so hard
so exhausted
feels like i never have the time
or the energy
to sit down
to express
and compose
i write my poems in my head now
staring into the bathroom mirror
in the mornings
as i'm getting ready for work
i dictate them into a phone
it's all i can do
i wrote this very poem that way
just this morning
staring into my sleep-ugly face
because i don't have the time
to take the time
to write
to craft
to sculpt and shape my perception
into anything resembling art
i'm left only the option to
regurgitate words onto page
clean up the mess
and get back to work

but it's more than that
it goes much deeper
i don't like what i'm feeling right now
and i don't want to say it out loud
wish i didn't have to
saying it out loud is how to make it all better
i know that
the care-free grace of the newly-confessed
but there's this wall of fear
between me and salvation
and i don't think i have the strength
to climb it
because it's one thing to confront your demons
i do that every day
it's another to do it
out loud
in public
for all the world to see
dancing naked and crazed in the center of town
covered in your own vomit and shit
while your family gathers around
and stares
and you say, "See, Dad?
I'm doin' just fine.
Just working a few things out."

i have no ending for this poem

it hasn't been written yet

Kallisti...

Another year, but what a year!
And all that you've done, so amazing my dear!
A new career
        and new prospects
        a new outlook on life
Two new husbands you've lived through
        and held strong through the strife
That I thank all the gods that you are my wife
So I could witness, in joy, your Becoming this year

So thus goes a year that you'll want to remember
All the way through to your last December
A year where you've grown
And made life your own
And fanned flames from your glowing ember

As the wealth and the riches of this year are now yours
Then what glory for you has the next year in store?
I'll say it
        I'll scream it
        louder and LOUDER
Being yours this year
        I've never been prouder
But of one thing I'm certain:  I've never Loved you more

The Present Dreams of Future Things...

I am a middle-aged grasshopper
fiddling my way to Winter
I can feel it coming
smell it in the air now
my days are getting shorter
and soon I will know my first Winter
and my last
and I see the ants all around me
going about the business of their days
while I fiddle away in mindless joy
I am free from all their cares and concerns
I share none of their worries or woes
and every moment of my life is filled
with more bliss than they will ever know
but the price to be paid is Winter
when the long night comes
they will have time for reflections
they will enjoy a sacrifice-earned peace
and plenty
that I will never know
they will possess a special wisdom
born only of accomplishment
that I am doomed to covet
but never share
the precious sounds I drew from my strings
that spread so much joy to so many for so long
lost now in the howling winds of the storm
and lost soon after even to memory
but that I enjoyed it all every second
to the fullest
every moment but the last
there is no sign to mark my passing through or by
no trace left of me where I danced my life away
but perhaps the impression of an almost imperceptible
hump
in the new-fallen snow that covers me where I lay
next to the towering mountain hill of the ants
teeming with the frenzy of the living
who will know a second Spring

Hating Myself Never Felt So Good...

I don't want to admit it

I don't want to

have to

admit it

but I like myself better this way

I wish I didn't

but I do

I laugh more

so much more

both longer

and more often

same with the sex

almost the best it's ever been

and nothing like anything

we've seen or felt or been in years

every orgasm a god's kiss goodnight

I know I'm killing myself

but we are all going to die

someday

and what is the point in a long life

if it's a miserable slog the whole way?

I'll take a few years off the end

for a ten-fold increase in joy and pleasure

the rest of the time

any day

all day

all day long

There are a hundred other

little reasons

for hating myself for this

a hundred little setbacks

chipping away at my self-worth

but there could be a thousand and it still

wouldn't matter

they just don't add up

they just can't compare to

the ache in my face from laughing so hard

I can't breathe

the feel of her flesh under my hands

swallowing me

the look on her face when she comes

the tears in her eyes when she can't stop laughing at me

or the idiot smile

splitting my face like a knife wound

I wish I were wrong

but this just feels

too right

Let It Out...

The first

thing

The

very

first thing

that

You

ever did

was

scream

Why Are All Of My Poems Questions?...

What if I don't
feel anything
worth writing down?
What if I don't
see anything
that penetrates my eye
with beauty?
that infects my mind
with wonder?
What if
nothing happens
in my ordinary day
to inspire
or bewilder
or amuse?
or arouse
or confuse?
or infuriate
or frustrate
or fascinate?
What if it's just
a day?
just like the day before
and the day after
and I feel nothing
nothing worth saying
nothing worth feeling
out loud
no line to express
or wisdom to surmise
with cutesy-clever
patyourselfonthebackforthinkingofitaren'tyouspecial
twists of wordplay
Just a day
And what if I have
nothing to say?
I'll say it anyway

Twenty Questions Solitaire...

Do you remember

the last time

you said the words

"I

Love

you"

?

+          +          +

I don't

I don't remember

I don't remember
the last time
that I said
"I
Love
you"

I don't remember
when I said it
or to whom
or why

And now I can't escape this
rotting feeling
that this isn't a memory
we should ever out-grow
That this isn't a memory
we should ever out-live
That this isn't a memory
we should ever get
too far away from
Now that I realize it's gone
I feel adrift and lost without it
like a greenhorn just realizing
he's lost sight of shore
for the first time

The sudden realization
that I couldn't remember
that I've lost this memory
that it must've been so long
since I last said it
to anyone
for any reason
that I've lost it completely
sits so alien and unreal in me
That I could've ever lost something
so important
something
that has always just
been there
before
something
that should just be a backdrop
to the rest of my life
now gone
and I didn't even notice it
didn't miss it at all
until now
It's as if I suddenly realized
one wall of my house was missing
exposing us
letting in the whether
and I can't even remember
when it happened

And this is all only preamble
just the lead-in
to the real question
Why?
Why can't I remember?
Why have I forgotten?
Why has it been so long since I last said it?
Why haven't I said it?
Why did I ever stop?

What am I waiting for?

Title...

I am too tired to be inspired right now.

I swear, that rhyme was unintentional.

This is not a poem.

One Down, Forever To Go...

gotta write
can't write
no time
gotta work
can't stop
too much to do
i can feel it
building up
hard up
hard time
hard line
hard night
coiled wire muscles
stretched tight twang
reverb spinal twitch
sets one eyelid going off
fluttering to start a hurricane
and the whole of it unravels
unless
i can get it out
get it out
get it all out of me
and onto paper
into screen
out to hivemind
out of me
out of me
out of me
one fibrous thread of
twisted steel at a time
all i need
is just a little more time
and a little room to bleed

This Should've Been A Tweet...

I'm so tired, I'm actually dizzy.  Looking forward to the baths tomorrow more than I ever have before.  Need to relax feels like a matter of survival at this point.