Not With a Bang...

Seagrove

2010-11-25T09:56:00.001-08:00

Six p.m. on the two-lane highway into Seagrove Beach, Florida. The rental car smells like fast food and cigarettes. Roll the windows down, and the windshield fogs up immediately. I can hear the ocean, or maybe just the tires on the asphalt. Every concrete seam is another crashing wave.

It's pitch-black already. I think briefly about reality: the tilt of the Earth's axis, and our yearly lap around a star. And then I imagine that the dark is caused by the declining relationship of sun and beach. They used to fit together so well, but they're not getting along so well anymore.

There is nothing on the car stereo. I hate the noise the radio makes every time I turn it on. I didn't think to bring any CDs, and the iPod in my back pocket might as well be a brick, without headphones or aux cable.

In my head, it is 2004, and Pretty Girls Make Graves' "The New Romance" was the soundtrack to an otherwise hazy vacation, punctuated by frequent, fruitless real estate excursions.

2006, and Gnarls Barkley has just released "St. Elsewhere". The single is playing in every restaurant and gas station from here to Oklahoma. We drive down the beach to Seaside and talk, pointing out every building featured in that Jim Carrey movie, and you tell me how you guys are trying to get pregnant. I'm happy for you, but scared. An era is coming to a close. I think that era might have been childhood, and then wonder just how long I've been deluding myself.

Four years later. I am wondering idly what a seagrove is. I'm sad to have missed the sunset, since the silhouettes of palm trees are among my favorite things. I wonder what you're thinking about tonight. Maybe it's the little girl you were so excited about bringing into the world, or what she looked like on the day you had to bury her in the cold ground.

I think about whether the bacteria in the gulf still biofluoresce at night in the winter, and what life means, and whether I'll ever stop missing you.

Stray, Puppy

2009-12-09T17:11:00.001-08:00

Lately I feel like Time is taking my memories from me
one by one
and he hangs them on a silvery string around his neck like the teeth of his enemies or like ears cut from the fallen
like charms to ward away his immortality

I’m sure that when you’re Time the eons seem like such a prison
nothing ever changes
nothing ever ends
nothing has ever ended
or ever will

and all of that Forever leaves one with a thirst for closure

So I feed him my memories
A little something every day to keep his energy up

He gets fed twice on the days I dream the morning away
and on the nights I drink myself into forgetting

And now when Time follows me like the stray puppy Momma warned me not to feed
the handmade silver collar around his neck jingles
rattles like a chain in some stupid ghost story

I don’t mind the reminder
I feel sorry for something so helpless that it can’t even gain a new perspective

but every time I try to give it one of mine
I get a new one instead

Scuffed

2009-12-09T17:04:00.001-08:00

The swingset creaks under our weight while the slack chains creak in the rising Oklahoma wind and the moon strains to be seen through a low blanket of clouds.

My toes stretch, bare, too cold, soles scuffed from our barefoot midnight walk, longing for the nearest branch with its splash of newborn green, its nursery of leaves yawning and unfurling after their winter nap.

The air smells like electricity, like change, like life borne on the wind, or on the wings of great flights of birds come back from the southlands to weigh down the lines that make our computers and telephones and fluorescent lights work nonstop, all the time, forever.

Your shadow is long underneath the street light, and the gusts tug at your trenchcoat, crying anachronism, and threaten to pull you away like some kind of backwards Marry Poppins into the night.

The currents make dimples in the black skin of your umbrella and its handle twists against your palm, willing you to let yourself go as the first few fat drops splash in your hair, on your nose, on your forehead, and cling to your eyelashes.

We all laugh in different languages and mouth silent goodbyes to the chalk effigies on the sidewalks, and suddenly the air is ten degrees cooler and the sirens start humming to tell us yes – this is the front.

What I love about this season is all of the destruction and the renewal, and the way the rivulets and the puddles take the stinging heat from my scuffed soles.

Doors, Floors, etc.

2009-09-18T10:20:00.001-07:00

I lived so much of my former life behind doors.

Behind closed doors. Locked doors.

Doors designed to be thick enough to muffle the sounds of life behind them.

Doors designed to minimize the amount of light that could pass through or around them.

Doors that shut me in, locked me up, locked me out.

Doors I didn’t look at, listen at, knock on.
Doors I didn’t walk through.

And now I live in this house, this old house, the oldest house I have ever breathed in.
The oldest house I have ever breathed in.
The oldest house I have ever dreamt in,
cared for,
abused.

I live in this house, which is so old that the door frames are crooked, and uncaring,
whose doorframes do not allow for me to live closed and sheltered and protected from prying eyes, prying ears,
not even in the shower,
this house that has opened me to the world.

Outside of this house there is a wealth of experience that I can feel even here, in the floor boards – even in the floorboards which are covered by some kind of new laminate substance -- I wonder how many children grew up in this house, how many winters passed huddled by the fireplace which is boarded up and which no longer can be imagined to be like a door.

I wonder how long before the rest of this place is boarded up and forgotten – how many more generations of people like me can really live here,

who breathe in the change and wonder

and who wonder what comes next.

The 48th Street Oak

2009-06-19T16:09:00.001-07:00

Years ago,
you bought a house for a tree.
A great sprawling vine-wrapped oak that hung over the roof,
raining pollen in the spring time and casting shade in the summer,
making the yard rustle like old, dry paper through the autumn.

The years passed and sloughed off the seasons one by one.
The tree grew. So did we all.

I spent my summers sprawled in the shade behind that house,
with the pages of whatever book I was reading rustling in the same breeze that made the branches wave and the vines dance.

A few weeks ago you told me you’re selling the house
because of that tree.

These days, it’s too frightening to think of a branch falling off of that decrepit oak and crushing the place your bed occupies in space.
It’s too burdensome to think of trimming that tree and removing its discarded leaf litter and sneezing your way through the pollen each year.
In your old(er) age, everything is “too” something.

So you listed the house with a realtor who describes our tree as “majestic” and the home you made as “meticulously maintained”, and you’re moving to a place where the trees and the houses are all younger than I am, and the neighbors are all older than you are, older than you’ll ever feel – and somehow, that all just seems lonely.

Cold Front

2009-04-07T19:39:00.001-07:00

The front blew through on the north wind
and the cold is inside me again,
like rats in the walls,
scrabbling to get out.

Outside, the delicate flower pedals and
hesitant, budding trees
shake in the insistent wind,
bending low under the stale slate sky.
Color drains from the new growth and I expect snow stained red and yellow.
What there is grows colder and more colorless every day.

Just Learning

2008-12-23T22:18:00.001-08:00

Airplane bellies flash white in the sun,
like clumsy, rolling trout
under the direction of student pilots.

Monster

2008-11-10T21:31:00.001-08:00

She knew he had eyes like television static
Never the same, except that they imparted no message,
felt no sympathy,
and held her captive,
like red python eyes before a strike.

She imagined that his heart beat savagely against his ribcage,
as if it hoped to be set free.
His atrioventricular and sinoatrial nodes sparked out of time,
sparked so fiercely that the burning he felt in his belly
was real fire, eating away his cardiac tissue.

She imagined that when his heart gave out,
he would go on living – or whatever it was he did.

She imagined that he filed his teeth down
like a rodent
in order that he might maintain a semblance of humanity.

She imagined that fingernails and toenails grew
as if pulled from his flesh,
that underneath his gooseflesh he could,
at any moment,
sprout spines the length of his body.

And she imagined that
everything but the television static eyes
was just an illusion she made
to make herself feel better
when he didn’t want to be around anymore.

A Budding Existentialist

2008-11-10T21:28:00.001-08:00

There’s a certain point at which you just can’t ignore the evidence: the moon is the wrong shape and the world is spinning counterclockwise and you’ve picked the wrong major, the wrong future, the wrong boyfriend.

There comes a point in everyone’s life when nothing makes sense and the only reasonable question to ask is “what am I doing at this party?”

And that’s a valid question.
After all, it’s all allegory,
and what’s the difference between baskets of bread and fish,
and red Solo cups brimming with domestic?
The coat of many colors can just as easily be Bradford’s signed jersey;
that epic flood could have been the ice storm that ravaged campus, canceling finals and taking the trees with it when it receded.

“What am I doing at this party?” you’re thinking,
but there’s still that ping-pong ball in your solo cup,
and its contents need to be drunk.

All of this is wrong, though.
The shape of the moon.
Your major, your boyfriend,
and that new pair of shoes you bought last week.

What are you doing at this party?
What is this party doing to you?

For Margaret

2008-11-10T21:27:00.001-08:00

Seasons change,
and every limping day passes unremarked, it seems.

But who can afford to be unremarkable?

Autumn brings with it the whistle of escaping heat –
Oklahoma is finally finished steaming through.
It brings dust on the breeze and swirling dried leaves rasping
across porous concrete, still swollen and dripping with the warmth of summer.

Soon winter’s bony fingers will beckon,
and we will run headlong into cutting wind and the treachery of icy sidewalks,
to the grey infinity that is a constant overcast, and the dull loneliness that comes from missing the sun.

And sunny California waits with open arms and an open mind –
a blank slate, an open book.
California waits with a spring come months early,
if you can only outrun

the winter.

Swan

2008-11-10T21:25:00.001-08:00

Midnight,
and he nimbly weaves a tiny swan
from what’s left of his notebook paper.
He proffers it in cupped hands;
joy lights up his face.

Crush Crushed

2008-09-11T14:51:00.001-07:00

At first they made love ‘cause they were in it.
It was the only way to get closer together –
just to sink into each other and drown,
falling unconscious at the last.

They made love to prove they were more than just hip-deep in it,
more than skin-deep,
more than two idiots chained together.
They made love just to fill up their stores again.

Then they made love to prove it still existed,
that someone could be in love –
because for a few moments there,
they really believed.
They really remembered.

And now we make love because it is the only thing
we ever remember sharing,
the only nice thing about the other one –
the only thing that can still make us close.

The only reason either ever looks into the other’s eyes,
the only reason either is comfortable enough to fall asleep
in this cramped bed with a stranger.

And now neither of us really believes we are in love.
But we both still pretend,
‘cause we want to be more than hip-deep.
We want to be more than skin-deep.
We want to be deep.

But deep-down, we’re both just exhausted,
tired of pretending.
Deep-down, under all the pretense and the deception,
we’re being slowly crushed.

Do you remember what a crush is like?

Sleepless

2008-04-18T16:15:00.001-07:00

He’s been gone long enough that my bed’s gone cold without him,
but not long enough for me to have washed his scent from the sheets –
and every time I lie down, the reminder is too powerful
and I sit right back up again and go to work.

I haven’t slept in days,
but I can’t bring myself to do the laundry.

Maybe if I swallow some sleeping pills,
I’ll fall into unconsciousness
just beginning to dream of him.

If I’m lucky,
it’ll be a nightmare

and I’ll wake,
ready to wash away his memory
and wrench my life out of the past.

If Wishes Were Wings

2008-02-18T16:17:00.001-08:00

We folded our wishes into origami ravens
and we launched them into the air,
sent them off into the sunset.

And in a matter of minutes,
our wishes had strangled the sun
and blackened the sky.

Within a matter of hours,
the temperature dropped
and the dew fell,

then it was only a matter of time
until the wishes’ wings were wet,
and they crashed back down to earth

littered the grass and the streets,
got caught in tree branches,
and busily began to biodegrade.

That was the day we learned the truth:
if wishes were wings,
wings wouldn’t be worth shit.

2007-11-12T22:16:00.001-08:00

Seven days passed,
caught like autumn leaves in a gust.

Seven days passed in the whistle of wind against the windowpanes
and your whisper guarding our secrets from foreign ears.

Seven days passed like a whole season,
while we just held each other,
breathing and waiting.

2007-10-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

I have my feet on the ground,
but my head is in the clouds
and my mind is in the gutter.

And somewhere there is someone that can dispel this fog,
that can tether me to this earth,
or drag me from gravity’s sway.

Somewhere there is someone
whose skepticism melts the fog away
and whose arms are warm and optional.

I have my head in the clouds,
and my eyelashes are collecting ice crystals
while my ears fill with rushing wind.

I have my head in the clouds.
I have my mind in the gutter.
I have my feet on the ground,

and my bare toes are scuffed and cold.
My thoughts churn,
and my ears burn.

But you know,
there is someone.

Cold Snap

2007-10-23T16:08:00.001-07:00

He shrugs,
and our sneakers shuffle uncomfortably on cool concrete.
Somewhere above us, a flag snaps as the wind swings slowly
from south to north – from summer to winter.
Just like that. In a snap. Summer to winter.

He shrugs,
and I am uncomfortable on cool concrete.

The silence breaks stubbornly, like it’s gone stale.

Yeah, well,
I guess I gotta hand it to him.

I do smoke, and drink,
and sometimes I kiss and tell.
Sometimes I do more than that.
Sometimes I smile about it.

I do all of those things,
and I still breathe.
And I still need people.
And so do you, boy,
though you’d rather not admit it.

I am uncomfortable as the silence breaks
like waves over the concrete, whispering
like the first of this season’s leaves scraping across the ground.
Like my voices rasps
as I say something noncommittal.

Yeah, just like that. Snap.
Summer to winter.
I gotta hand it to him.

A Casual Summer

2007-10-11T22:53:00.000-07:00

We spent the summer with the stereo up loud,
with the windows down and the speedometer jumping,
just practicing casual conversation
over the dull roar from the speakers.

We spent the summer singing and spinning,
letting the earth cradle and rock us
to sleep,
nested casually and comfortably with our friends,
watching the stars in their infinite wisdom,
in their infinite distance,
in their imminent death
turn great wheeling circles in the sky.

We spent the summer storm-chasing
and we watched the wrath of god proclaimed
like a banner across the sky –
we saw through lightning-dazzled eyes,
with raindrops clinging to our eyelashes
and our clothes clinging to our skin.
When our clothing was too confining,
we took it off, and we reveled in the ease of it.

And at summer’s end
when the heat fled
and the stars turned frigid and unwelcoming,
we remembered the closeness,
the casual comfort,
the roar in our ears and the moisture in our eyes.

We remembered the dazzled eyes
and the shedding of our second, too-tight skin –
and we made the thunder come again,
casually.

Well, it was all so casual, so easy –
so easy to get lost in the thunder,
to go blind in the rain,
so easy to be the wreckage,
so easy to be the debris,
so easy to be a casualty
when it’s all just so casually free.

No Apology.

2007-09-16T14:19:00.000-07:00

He knocks on the door at 2 a.m. with a twelve-pack of Dr. Pepper and an unopened bottle of my favorite vodka. He knew I’d be awake.
“Hey,” I tell him. And, “I’m just doing some homework, and then I’m off to sleep.”
I know there’s no apology in my eyes. I know he won’t miss that.
He peers past the door to see my electric guitar sprawling across the bed like the lover he wants to be, like the glaring red evidence of my lies it is.
I smile, and there’s the apology he was waiting for, I guess.
When I close the door, I make sure the amp is off and I lay back down and I touch her, just like he wanted to,
and I don’t give him a second thought.

A Dire Message

2007-05-03T17:27:00.000-07:00

This seems to have become a habit,
this late night conversation,
parked in front of your house.
I can see you in silhouette,
backlit by the porch light.

The sunroof is open to the moon and the music cycles through disc after disc
and I think this is real, this is comfortable again at last –
except for that steady look you’re giving me
like you have something to say –
except for that sigh like you’re about to pop your rib cage open
and bare everything to my scrutiny
and to the humid night.

Your fingers are hesitant on the gear shift,
like reaching across the console will close the gap between us,
and you stumble over the words.

And the things you’re saying are sweet,
and I think you believe them.
I hope you believe those things about me.

Don’t get me wrong. I just think that now,
I’m a dream you’re chasing in your head –
a pretty idea I could never live up to while you’re awake,
while we’re alive.

So we trade secrets during the late night car conversation –
because it’s good to have someone to trust,
and it’s good to not need someone,
and it’s good to hear such dark words mixing with the night
to make the stars bolder,
and the moon more full of herself.

And this is as much of myself as I’m ever going to give you,
in these late night car confessions,
cut off again by the porch light flashing
a dire message.

Airport, March 2nd

2007-03-08T21:22:00.002-08:00

/*This is supposed to look like an airplane pulling a banner, but I think I'm going to have to work on it some more.*/

Orion
stood high
in the sky and the
airport beacon was flashing a lonely, steady green white white, green white white over us...We five poured secrets into the night: writhing, flagellated stories with tails of “don’t ever tell anyone.” We poured our hearts into the night, in puffs of misty, quickened breath because the stars were too far away to hear and the night air was too cold for our misdemeanors to metastasize.
We nestled together
like lovers and we
shook, sometimes
with chill, but mostly with laughter.
And in the grand scheme of things,
conscious of Orion’s watchful eyes
and stern
stance –
I
s
h
o
u
l
d
have felt like nothing.
The truth was that I felt
like a part of everything,
right then. Part of a whole
so meaningful and huge
that the cosmos burned
that night with envy rather
than pride – and every pulsing
star glowed in jealous rage –
if only we weren’t too far to see.
I used to wonder what kind
of mark I would leave on these
people – like my name in
paint on this place, on
their minds. I know now I
will remember their mark
on me – nights like that, with
my favorite people and
our secrets spilling
into the air to die –
far longer than any
paint could stain a wall.

Top of the Ladder

2007-03-08T21:22:00.001-08:00

We were huddled there for warmth,
under the beacon that always guides me to that place,
and even when our hands strayed under the blanket
his skin was merely warm where it should have been electric.

The touch was smooth, and pleasant, and meaningless.

And my only unspoken secret that night was that it’s over,
and done
and I’m finally okay with
everything.

Because in the magic of that moment,
it should have been electric, but I was grounded.

But even where I was susceptible to the charge,
even high in the rafters of the school,
a hundred and
twenty
feet
from
the
planks
of
the
stage
floor,
with our hearts in our throats
and our limbs trembling
with nerves and regrets and life,
when I should have been moved to hold him,
it was unromantic.

I thought more of soothing his trembling than of how to get him alone.
And that’s it.
It’s over.
We’ve broken the barrier,
and his gravity compared to the earth’s is weak.

His hold on me was weak, and I’ve long since broken it.
There’s no place like the top of a ladder to learn a lesson.

On the Effect of Boys

2007-03-08T21:21:00.001-08:00

Her voice is strong,
and carries no hint of storms to come –
and her eyes stare straight ahead.
She is purposeful.
And I’m watching her in profile,
admiring her matter-of-factness,
when the first tear slides down her nose.
And the cloth of her t-shirt
was resistant to absorbing all that sorrow,
all that frustration,
all that hopeless broken-heartedness.
And the tears just gather on the fabric
like there’s nowhere else to go,
and they’re shining on her collarbone
under fluorescent lights.
And finally they sink in –
and this is beautiful
because she’s been wrestling the sorrow for a long time
because she loved him,
and he could change,
and she loves him,
and he’ll change.
And she wrestled the sorrow so long
that she didn’t notice when it pinned her,
and she didn’t stop fighting it
until just now

when the tears soaked through her t-shirt
and down toward her heart.

...

2007-03-08T21:20:00.002-08:00

The ladder is rusted, rough against my palms,
and I am climbing toward the moon that smiles sadly
on everything, but especially on this:
the end of an era.

The ladder is rusted – I feel the residue of it between my fingers
more than I see it in the semi-dark.
I can hear him breathing somewhere

below.
I imagine his forearms must be shaky like mine.
His breathing makes me nervous.

The rungs don’t stop, and I handle them as they come.
They’re just filing from the ceiling like DNA,
like a trellis to a bedroom window.
The moon lives up here, among the cables
that support the stage curtain.

The names and graduating years of all the visitors of this place
cover the walls –
and the letters painted by scared kids
with shaky forearms
are all that’s left, now that the rust has washed off their palms
and their diplomas sit, dusty and framed, in boxes and corners all over town.

The memory of those walls and
the rust on my palms and
my trembling incriminate me,
And I walked out of here with a guilty smile up at the moon,
who smiled sadly back on this last night of an era.

I remember betrayal, and I don’t relish admitting the lie –
but the slow panic of climbing down from a height has receded,
and the sky is open above me now
and Orion is standing guard,
and it seems like spring is here forever.

School’s as good as over and I’m as good as gone –
without even a splash of shaky paint to commemorate my presence.

I didn’t think I’d feel guilt at this,
my only stunt to date –
but a full moon shoots my shame back at me
with a sad smile I’m projecting onto it –
and finally the parking lot is empty
on this night at the end of an era.

Aftermath

2007-03-08T21:20:00.001-08:00

The sky was a magnifying glass
and when I looked beyond the road,
everything got bigger and bigger
and blurrier and blurrier –
and it seemed that sun and sky
were collaborating to sear the trees away
like insects – and the forest roiled
just like a kicked anthill.

I’m sorry. I still can’t believe it.
The truth is that what I saw,
through a haze of myopia and cough syrup,
was a lot of red dirt and piles of striped rock
where the forest should have been.

Oklahoma will rise up to bury its dead,
in time, when the fear is less sharp
and the char has receded.
When the tree-limbs get their casts removed,
and the bandages from that last ice storm
come off at last,
Oklahoma will care for the dead.

For now the land is littered with
broken branches and abandoned tree trunks –
the red dirt and glare of newly-exposed rock
show through on the roadside
where just last summer we both
thrived off of dappled light
on the pavement.

For now the trees look like cancer patients
and the sleepy little winding road
through camp is a battleground
surrounding a stormed fortress.

And there stands what’s left of the house,
marking the tomb of at least one fallen hero.
The siding lies around it like heavy armor
shed to give its wearer one last easy breath
before death – and underneath,
the red wasp nests cover the boards
like welts, like wounds. Like wasps do.

And this is the last viewing before burial –
the last visit before demolition.
And there it stands. A fallen fortress
at the end of a bloody march.

Something tells me it will stand ready
for the next battle
before Oklahoma has even begun to heal.

2007-02-11T13:45:00.000-08:00

You can’t be a gypsy without a band, girl.

I saw a man at his craft, once, begging on the paving stones outside of Notre Dame on a stifling day in Paris. The cigarette smoke drifted heavily around the square, and the air felt ten days dead as we waited in a roped-off line to see the Cathedral. The gargoyles stared down on us like they’d seen it all before a thousand days, a thousand ways. Inside, a boys’ choir was singing.
The gypsy’s eyes were white and blank all the way across and the hand holding his full cup of coins was hesitant and frail. He trembled, a rusting leaf on a limb. And later, on the way out of those ancient doors I saw him through the crowd, through awe-filmed eyes, wondered at the strength of his voice over the multi-lingual babbling of the place. I stared at his eyes – normal and just as brown as yours are – and his now-empty paper cup.
And he was speaking to his sister or his cousin – someone with matching brown eyes who made his coins disappear wrapped in a purple kerchief before she melted away into the crowd of tourists. And the gypsy’s eyes were wiped blank as slates as he turned back to the line and his trembling picked up, worse than before.
In no time at all, his cup was approaching full again, and I knew if I watched long enough, his partner would show up again to collect his winnings. The square would empty, the paving stones desolate and littered, and the air would cool with the sunset. The smoke would be a memory when the cigarettes disappeared and the first of the evening’s breezes carried it away, and the gypsy would be gone just as surely. Back to his family and his apartment, to a shower and a clean pair of clothes. And I was positive he wouldn’t tremble once after dark.

So you see?
Even a gypsy must have someone to be strong for.
Even a gypsy can’t fool everyone.
Even a gypsy needs to be herself, sometimes.

Timber

2007-01-17T18:26:00.000-08:00

The cold drew us to the den like bears,
and we stared at the fire, thinking,
until the embers started to look soft and orange-pink like taffy.
When the logs settled, they made sounds like breaking peppermints.

That place was such a summer part of me – such a part of summer me
so far removed from these ice days and this candy fire that I felt little,
and knew that to be deceptive.
Everyone knows that cold numbs the hurt.

The candy fire crackled and whispered to remind me
of another fire in another season,
where we traded kisses like secrets by the water
after all our worries had gone to sleep.

And I felt the linoleum, too smooth on scuffed bare feet,
felt the ash still clinging to my eyelashes
when I ran back up to the cabin for another lighter or another drink –
smiling all the while about how beautiful he was in the flashes from the fireworks.

I remembered getting lost in the metallic smell from
the cup of quarters I was feeding into the greedy slot machine,
lost in the thrum of the lever going back and the tumblers spinning
and constantly shifting my balance on that stepladder until I wasn’t conscious of it anymore.

I remember three a.m., lots of mornings, in the front room
by the kitchen, careful not to turn on too many lights or make too much noise,
careful not to scatter poker chips too far or lose the Jack of Hearts
under my grandmother’s old beige recliner.

I remember sleeping bags lined up in the living room and inner tubes against the wall
for my fourteenth birthday party. My tenth, eleventh, twelfth birthday parties.
The sound of my footsteps, walking back to wake Hunter for breakfast,
The rain on the roof and the clock digitally blinking the time in red from the corner.

The character of that place
was borne on the backs of the brown spiders
the sneak in through the gap under the kitchen cabinets
or the blue-tailed skink in the corner of the living room.

And some of that was lost with the timber –
it was nothing men could build, but it deserves our trying.

Sunshine and a Gale

2007-01-17T18:22:00.000-08:00

There’s no weather-sealing on the windows in the new place.
When the wind blows, lukewarm and insistent over the carefully-planned Californian town, it keens past the windows fierce enough to belie the weather outside. Which is sunny and seventy, like always, and not a hint of rain for days or weeks or months to come.
But the wind blows, and with the blinds drawn, it sounds like a tempest.

Inside, my brother’s face is sad and tired and his beard isn’t trimmed and his t-shirt is wrinkled.
And my sister’s face is too pale and that makes her lipstick stand out as if to mock the picture of health.

It’s her first glass of wine in five months. And I could wish desperately that she was still sipping sparkling cider with dinner and afterward. But I know it wouldn’t change anything.

And my brother turns the television to Animal Planet and turns the volume down to an indistinguishable buzz. It’s just for company. And I worry that he’s doing this all the time now, just for lack of everything he left at home. I can’t pinpoint what’s sad about this. I’m broken.

My brother’s hands are always the same, sure and cautiously gentle. He uses his pocket knife to open a bottle, and busies himself with keeping everyone’s glass topped off.

My glass of red never gets shallower.Outside, the storm rages.

A Message

2007-01-17T18:17:00.000-08:00

It’s your birthday,
and your face is up on my computer screen,
shaded by an overscreen that says
“replay” and “send to a friend”.

And all of a sudden, I’m crying again
because I’ve thought of you every minute
for the last several weeks

and I’ve seen your friends
and I’ve seen your relatives
and I’ve seen your picture
and I’ve heard your voice

and it’s just not a substitute.
And one of these days
I’ll get the hell out of here,
skip town
and fly all the way to civilization,
to summer in the land of perpetual
palm trees.

And you know,
I love you.
And I called you at the moment of your birth
Central Standard time, that is –
You didn’t answer.

“This is Jonathan. Leave a message.”
And I can’t help but feel that message
sums up our life, lately.

This is Jonathan: leave a message.

Liars, Lovers, Cowards All

2007-01-17T18:16:00.000-08:00

And what are we to do
in the winter months
when the unspoken “I love you”
hangs in the air
on both ends of the phone.

It’s not enough to love
because someone, somewhere
has to know about it to make it real.

And what are we to do
when the rain comes down
and his transplanted girl
steps through the front door
and you know the “I love you”
won’t be uttered tonight –
not even between friends.

Because people are liars
and lovers and cowards –
people are just people.

Only the bravest
die the little death
that comes with
saying what you mean.

And the bravest
never live here
for long.

What Did You Think Would Happen?

2006-12-08T19:08:00.000-08:00

He’s a drowned man –
everyone knows his lungs are full of water,
and his lips are turning all the colors of the ocean
from blue to grey in waves.
His eyes are glassy and far-away,
strained to catch sight of something the living can’t see.

If someone would just tilt his head back
just so – you wouldn’t want his marble eyes to roll out of his head – just tilt his head back so the water dribbles out of the corner of his mouth.

If someone would just breathe one breath into his lungs,
lay one compression on his traitor’s breast,
he might live again.

The trouble is,
no one wants the trouble that comes with kissing his drowned lips,
not even to save a life.
And no one wants to risk compressions
for fear that the slow poison his heart exudes
will leak through his sternum and into their palms.

He’s a drowned man.
And it looks like he’s going to stay that way.

Fall from Grace

2006-11-12T17:39:00.000-08:00

How did it feel to fall from grace?
Did your heart really stop on the way down?

When I picture it,
it’s like you’re flying with the Blue Angels
and they neglected to give you a pressure suit.
And you’re smiling and looking out the window,
fascinated by the flying sensation,
dreading the height,
fingering the backwards American flag
sewn onto your shoulder. Just for today.
And then the pilot’s hands move on the controls –
All I can think about is how beautiful
the manipulation was.
Still is.

And you’re pushed back in your chair –
your hand falls from that patch –
and the capillaries in your eyes break,
and blood rolls over your retinas.
Suddenly, you’re seeing red to match
the beautiful blue and white skies.
When you pass out, you feel like you’re falling.

So tell me,
how did it feel to fall from grace,
to fall from the heavens,
to plummet from Heaven?

Did your heart really stop on the way down?
Did the whistle of your falling body
remind you of “Landed”?

And god damn you, I love that song.
How dare you?
How dare you?

I keep trying.

2006-09-13T21:14:00.000-07:00

A clutching hand in the blue light –
with the floor heaving steadily in time,
listening to the feedback with our ribcages
more than anything.
I fill my head with music,
and pack it in so tight that the knowledge comes running out of my ears
and there’s nothing left inside but me and the noise
and for days after, the sound of consciousness coming back
rings like a forgotten fire alarm
somewhere.
And that’s the way it is
as the crowd surges and tries to rush the stage
and safety looms up out of nowhere,
towering clouds of threat,
and it’s hard to tell him against me
from the rest of the pulsing mob.
Because we’re all connected,
and we’re all running over and through each other,
all singing and screaming,
breathing through one pair of smoke-choked lungs,
one raw throat.
It doesn’t matter who I am or who he is
because we’re no one.
We’re all of us no one.
We’re all of us one,
clutching each other in the blue light
because that’s how it is.

“Houston, the 2nd of September” – 9/07/06

2006-09-07T21:10:00.000-07:00

We improvised a tunnel,
and when the cavern swallowed up the noise
from the tires indefatigably pounding the road to sand
she threw her hands in the air
and she laughed like we were six,
and riding our first rollercoaster.

Except that we never rode that rollercoaster together,
Because we’re new to this friendship business
even if it doesn’t feel that way.

It’s okay, because an infinite number of secrets
will be wrapped in the distance
and forgotten.

And we four can sleep all tangled on the floor
And not worry about the dawn before noon.

Our relationship exists inside a vacuum –
And when we go under that makeshift tunnel,
And that vacuous model is all around us,

that’s the moment.

Fair Warning.

2006-08-07T21:59:00.000-07:00

It was a fair-warning glow
near the end of certain death.
The bell handicapping a collared predator.
She was waiting, empty-armed for once,
under the shelter that hides the stars
but lays the blue-light paths bare.
And I felt sure that she was watching
from behind a veil of smoke
and the burn of that ember.

And I could feel her scrutiny
And my own surprise
at the lack of pressure.

But then her questions found me in the dark
like so much smoke trickling under door jams...
Hesitant, infirm –
And her eyes were just as big as ever,
But they’d been blinded by good faith,
And were this time a little less certain
of what she’d always claimed.

And if I’d forgotten about the pedestal,
The height swam up to meet me in that moment.

And I smiled in the dark,
Because I never meant for any of it to happen,
But I feel certain that this is one of those nights to remember.
This was one of those wild nights.

I am a rock. Leave it be.

2006-08-03T21:19:00.000-07:00

It is life like leaded eyelids,
Smiled, smattered, smeared into place
some kind of art, I’m sure.
And superficial settings shining somehow,
Lakes just throwing the sun’s gifts
Back at me,
shameless.
Thankless.
Blameless.
It makes something about orange magnificence
And artificial pinks just throw me into a rage,
these days.

No. Not recently.
Always.

It is constant like the earth’s spinning,
Twirling me dizzier than that medication
was s u p p o s e d to.
And don’t they know that stability is my livelihood?

Don’t they know, I’m supposed to be stoic?
They suppose it, you know. It’s not just
an expression.

Stoically standing, statistically speaking,
is so startlingly strange –
Sporadic.
A singularity
Which must, which
Will wreak revenge, running
its course through imagined veins.
Vehemently venting in vain.
No, don’t imagine
you know
what it is to be supposed
a rock.

RemoteMemory

2006-07-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

Memory is lying in the dark next to me –
She keeps her distance, but I can hear her breathing.
And soon she starts to sing softly,
The words to a song she shouldn’t know --
Notes to make the dark a little blacker, a little sweeter
like coffee addiction.
Like soccer jerseys and anise and stairwells.
Like being on top of the world,
or at the Center of the Universe.
She whistles, and I hear the tide coming in
And Angel’s soft slither in pursuit of
something
with scratching claws...
She hums, and I taste Sunday mornings in Durham.
She knows the songs, but she wasn’t there.
I know I was the only one there.

But now in my mind it’s all polluted.
Mixed and transplanted, so nothing’s where I put it.
All the memories have been trampled into swampland –
And they’re building a Starbucks
there, to sink into the mire.

And even in my dreams, all the clouds,
They look the same to me,
Like airplanes,
Whose propellers make the drone coming
From the new construction
Somewhere in the prefrontal cortex.

She sings the songs I know by heart
While she drills holes in my brain.
And while I sleep, the new things
Flood up through the empty spaces.

She’s re-programming me every night
With all-new sequences and four-digit transponder codes.
Soon there will be no bridges to anything familiar
Outside that swamp, not anywhere:
not in London; not in Eucha.

Memory is re-programming me,
Just like a remote control.

But I don’t know what I’m controlling.
God. Don’t let me forget control.

Un.

2006-04-19T17:35:00.000-07:00

there is a twist and ache smile
there as our eyes meet somewhere in Bermuda
no Jordan
no Stroud
and a heft of the weight of parting.
her lips want to mock the words in mind, the path traveled
and the agony of their downturn follows me
down the stairs not to nowhere
but to math class.
my metal hearts go cold
one against my collarbone
the other behind and under
and she is there, where theory meets practice
and electives mean nothing
to sincerity
to lifestyle
to ever after
she rides the tide of their imaginations
and there are no illusions under the seascape
as the moon pulls me inexorably toward madness
and waning
toxicity flows through the veins of all the sea creatures
urchins spiny and purple
like the roof of her mouth in nightmares
they are dreams crafted under the wary supervision
of my consciousness which is opposed to them.
they are nightmares because they make only
one of my hearts more still
stolen steel, sterling silver
Sterling told me.
Sterling told me she is there,
where our eyes meet, even in Bermuda
and Jordan
and Stroud.
he told me, the best man of them,
and I didn’t listen.

Altar

2006-02-23T20:14:00.000-08:00

Summer left me at the altar.
I still can’t stand coming home to an empty house.
But I think of you more and more often,
And I smile when the thought comes.
I don’t know what that means.

But yesterday I found the old flag we used for our “campsites.”
It’s rather ragged, and if I had any patriotism, I’d burn it.
I guess my loyalty to you has always pre-empted that.
The stripes seem to have been foremost a symbol of me and you.

And the stars...
Stars weren’t really your thing, but you’d watch them for my sake
On nights when we’d get the telescope out,
Count the craters in the moon, and then lose interest.
I almost feared the stars.
They herald the end of the day,
Time to pedal homeward and run in the backdoor shouting excuses.

Shouting excuses.
A lot of it’s been like that.
I hope Orion sees through them.

Cage

2006-02-18T12:55:00.000-08:00

“Can I put my cancer here?” she asks,
Laying a finger across one of my floating ribs.
“Under no circumstances,” I say, backing away.
She’s a little disappointed, I see.
A little disgusted with both of us –
Herself for asking, me for saying no.
We’ll have to move on – but I’m not worried about that.
There are a great many people waiting to incubate her secrets for her.
One day they’ll hatch, taking their hosts’ hearts for nourishment,
And that’ll be the end of it.

“Can I put my cancer here?” she asks,
Laying a finger across one of my ribs,
Her eyes shining with that smile.
I really wish she’d stop.

Sorry.

2006-01-16T14:04:00.000-08:00

Your admiration weighs forty pounds per square inch.
So I’m sorry, I guess I shouldn’t have shouldered it at all,
But I can’t stand up under its weight anymore –
I’m gonna have to drop it.

She predicts that you’ll bounce,
But I know you’re made of softer stuff.
You’re the kind that cleaves to the pavement,
And won’t ever let go.

Sorry, sorry
I didn’t know it’d be so heavy.
I’m gonna have to drop it
I’m gonna have to drop you.
Close your eyes.

What dreams have come...

2006-01-12T21:35:00.000-08:00

We give our kids Lego Headaches
And Intol Inhalers to bind their legs
And keep them shackled to science.
And they’re afraid, all their lives,
Flinching at the words “tonsil” and “penicillin”.
Surgery’s not such a bad thing.
Some of my best epiphanies
Have come to me while under the knife.

It’s the way a drowned man sits up and spits out water,
And either never ventures near the water again
Or is, from then on, fearless in the face of the waves.
I don’t suppose it really matters,
Except that I feel like the drowned man.
And even in anesthetized dreams,
The thoughts are clearer in the saline current,
And the sights sharper through lidded eyes:

I’m swallowing in the dark,
Still tasting irontang in the back of my throat.
It’s a good thing Time doesn’t exist here,
Because it would have stopped for me.

Sleeping again, traveling that bottomless chasm
That is the lifeline of my dreams,
Like a highway to horror.
Take a spine-crushing dive
Toward an impact that will never come.

Gasp, start, reaching for a pen,
To spill blue ink confessions
In crooked lines
To ease my conscience.
Nervous fingers fall on pistols,
Not inkpens,
With hairpin triggers,
Magazines locked and I think it’s cocked,
Before I know
Facedown on the green concrete,
And that seems strange,
But my eyes are sliding closed, and it doesn’t matter
I’m resting at last.

Boy.

2005-12-14T18:53:00.000-08:00

We’re playing love like a lesser game, in this life,
Like it’ll make the first more fun –
“Truth or dare?” the sky is mocking.
The truth is too terrible.
Dare, fly, care, die.
I can’t do any of it; no one taught me how.
We’re marching through life to the beat of a new generation,
And now everyone’s a drummer.
Secret headphones blaring public music
With your rhythm offbeat just to make them wonder.
Do they really, anymore?
7/4 time is the metronome he ticks in his head. Who writes like that?
I think he writes words like a man about to die,
Beautiful and brutal in his honesty,
And he likes his love bitter on occasion.
He’s a catapult king with a pronubile pen for a wife,
A broken fiefdom of scribbles and scratch-outs.
And the lies keep pouring from his mouth to seal the cracks,
To fill the streets with fog, to make the flags fly and the singers sing.
He writes himself deserted on the freeway,
Seconds from the end.
And the words make the headlights rake across his face, glaring back into Forever –
They don’t know what he is.
He doesn’t know what he is.

I don’t want the storybook ending,
Just a chapter near the beginning,
So I can be a part of the exposition.
Just give me the boy.

Pocket Full of Secrets

2005-11-27T20:27:00.000-08:00

I’ve got a feeling he wears his secrets around with him
In the pockets of that old jean jacket he’s so fond of wearing.
He doesn’t remember they’re always there,
But neither does he take that jacket off.
I want to seem too polite to ask outright,
And if I got close enough to find out, it’d be too late –
He’d have me figured out, too.

It’s fortune cookie wishes that sustain me,
And candles I can keep burning in my place.
I’ve saved up enough sick days and favors
That I can get out of here, and feel no guilt.
I’ve got work to do.

I’m bleary-eyed and weary-smiled,
But I have a story to write.
I’ll write it with broken binding and a creased spine,
So that every other page is dog-eared, and coffee-stained,
And rain-wrinkled.

I’ll write it to become one of his secrets.
And I’ll slip it into one of those pockets –
The one with the torn corner --
And when he tries to find himself,
That’s where I’ll be.
Buried so deeply in his psyche that he’ll never know what hit him.

Endings.

2005-08-19T20:38:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted here. It seems superfluous, and...maybe I just really liked that last post. It seemed appropriate for a long spell of dormancy.
But now I think it's time to post this, as a tribute to the dying summer. I wrote it in the season's anticipation. For the magazine, but mostly to cure Algebra's boredom.

“Wait for Me, Summer” – 4/21/05
Summer caught me unawares.
I looked up from the routine,
And the trees were green again.
And so, oddly enough, was the sky.
Through the sunset, I was only thinking
About how the clouds resembled some
Kind of rotting amaretto fudge
Pink veined, with those white splotches,
The ones that reminded me of the pale,
Fleshy creatures that watched from their jars,
Their shelves
In that dream
The panic-induced hum that was exactly
The feeling of electricity in the air
Before the strike
The wind-tunnel effect drowned the voices,
Ceded victory to the rhythmic bump of
The tires hitting the faults on the highway,
Stretching inexorably onward,
And no, the hissing wouldn’t stop, but
The bottle wouldn’t open
Anything but our palms.

The moon wasn’t enough to illuminate
The clouds, marching home to wherever
The weather lives in its off-season.

And I wanted only to call
“Wait for me, Summer.”

Upon a Time

2005-04-29T18:40:00.000-07:00

“You know, Anathema,” she said, “I believed in magic, once.
And since that time, I’ve never known where I belonged.”
She closed her eyes and waited, but the whisper didn’t come.

She saw the pale and bleached out version of her life on fast forward, how
The water swelled and pushed at the threshold of the valley house.
Her blood cells filed, one by one, buoyant through the vessels,
While the rafts all shuddered, sinking, to rest with the ashes of the homes of men.

“There was sun, then, you’ll remember, and the reptiles on the rocks,
Blinking lazily and soaking up the light, until we circled back, to the origin.
If you wish to find the light, Anathema, seek the serpents of the globe.”

The raccoons root for mussels at the bottom of the creek,
While the herons wade the rushes in the shallows down the way.
The bridge connects, spans the diffusion of the customs she reviled,
Disturbs the peace of trickling water and the destiny of the prey.

“You never told me how we got here, how we got to this same day.
The swami said it didn’t matter, said I’d find my counterspin.
I suppose your thoughts do cancel mine, and that seems quite enough.”

The barkeep poured his bourbon with the ghost limb doctors made
And the ice cracked in the glass like his hand had as it crushed.
Somewhere else, the sigh through mountain passes spawned a downdraft
And twisted metal wings compacted the dirt a little tighter.

“I never noticed how my heart felt, as it contracted night and day,
Never noticed the futility to our haphazard ways of life.
Where will my memories go, when I’m not here to hold them?”

Update.

2005-04-20T18:24:00.000-07:00

Time was, I could pretend he was the tide.
He was the force that washed their boat ashore in the
Summers when I’d wait outside with a popsicleFor the van to come around the corner.
There was that two story playhouse out back by the pool,
And a wooden shed, smelling of pine and full of curiosities,
From a time before ours.
We rarely went inside, would run to dinner when called,
And we’d both convince our parents to let us stay out later,
Because it was summer, and the sunset was prolonged
Just for us.
But night would fall, and we would pretend not to know.
The pavement was still warm long after dark,
Long after I’d lost my shoes.
And maybe I’d ride my bike around in circles, and watch the
Shadows of the moths projected bigger than life-size across
Grass bathed in yellow light from the street.
And maybe we imagined that we had to shout
Over the singing of the frogs.

I sat alone on the curb last night, in front of the vacant house.
The curtains didn’t stir; no kindly old face emerged.
The frogs sang still, and the moths fluttered around the streetlight.

It’s only that we grew up.

Ten.

2005-04-14T18:03:00.000-07:00

If, some day, I flip out and join an anti-censorship group bent on...well, abolishing censorship -- blame this.

Anyway. Good news is that I might be flying out to California to stay with my brother for a while in August.

On the other hand, the only one who reads this blog anymore is my father, bent on, well...preserving censorship.

So I'm off to re-watch the fourth season of Buffy. And to plot my obtaining season five of Buffy and season two of Angel.

Allons-y!

Sigh.

2005-03-11T07:29:00.000-08:00

Last night I sat at the kitchen table, writing my AP bio lab report, and just cried. I'm sure I looked ridiculous.

Mom's third relative to get a serious form of cancer is on his deathbed. He's the second to get pancreatic cancer. The way I look at it, my chances are increased. The way Jonathan looks at it, 1 in 6 gets cancer, and if three on that side of the family already got it, our chances are reduced.
Funny how that works.

I'm supposed to be working on a paper for government due on April eighth. I'm not. I'm just staring at this blinking cursor on a TPS computer that probably hasn't been defragged since '01, and feeling bitter than the shift key sticks.

And I'm listening to Bright Eyes.

"And I don't know why, but I still try to smile
When they talk at me like I am just a child.
Well, I'm not a child. No, I am much younger than that."

Passive Insurrection?

2005-02-27T14:39:00.000-08:00

How many generations since the dinosaurs? Just count the shining logos on dirty trucks riding the vascular system of these states United by the pulsing need for consumerism.
The smoke will curl around your fingers like greedy hands around a throat, embers floating near your shoulder, smoldering in your eyes, waiting for the chance to ambush. You log the hours your heart is beating, seal your impulses in searing candle wax, and that’s how you want to make your fortune: fluid and fast, soon growing cold to be observed for however long forever is today.
You don’t need to see to hear his vertebrae knocking together as he dances, desperately trying to please you. The battle was over before it started, but on some level he needed to feel that bite and twist of cold metal before he gave in.
You’ll stare at the ground, and keep your questions quiet for fear of somehow cheapening the mystery for all the true believers. Don’t look up until the constant flow ebbs, and you can lie on the freeway and reacquaint yourself with the stars.

I'm trying. Really.

2005-02-22T14:50:00.000-08:00

I watched him watch the sky hopefully,
And the shadows of the menacing clouds almost fit the crossword.
Tails scissored against the green sky, and
Only for the eye will the storm never come.

I watched you leave the cello on the park bench in the rain,
Watched running water swerve to fill it, watched you return to drink it dry.
You smiled to yourself and carved your crucifix into the cherry
As one hundred black cats paced across your sidewalk.

Eggs are frying in the street, regardless of the ants swimming in the yolks.
Children’s pupils burst and deflate, and they walk through life flat-stared,
Light bouncing off retinas, images drowning in running iris.
The cold snap comes, and the roses bloom, red against the stark edge.

“Is it enough to say, ‘hysteria’?” Anathema asked.

Happy Valentine's Day

2005-02-14T15:04:00.000-08:00

“Regret” – 2/14/05
You let the cigarette drop from your lip
And my smile lasted as long as it took
For the sand to burn away.
You shook the seaweed from your corpse
And the gulls fought, raining avian warmth
In their wake, during yours.
You hurled a shriek from your dry tongue,
Hoping to send the salt sting from your skin.
The memory seared.
You tore the sinew binding rhythm
In a vain search for your heart
The color drained from your eyes.
You splashed through the puddle at your feet,
Recalling the dim memory of fluid life.
Swallow, and it drains away.
You filled the void with a silent echo,
Wishes stacking until they showed the rainbow.
Fall to your knees, and worship regret.

What now?

2005-02-11T18:29:00.000-08:00

"Shh. Don't do anything else to piss us off tonight."
All I have to say is, "What the fuck?"
Wish I had the will to say that to you.

We all have our yous, don't we? Understood.

Of Rogues.

2005-02-11T16:51:00.000-08:00

I went to see Bartley today. And I had to admit, rather grudgingly, that not all of middle school sucked.
Is it sad that one of the hardest A's I've ever made was art class?

A...thing...I wrote during/after Rogue readings at Shades of Brown today. There are parts of it constructed from bits of the conversation. It was weird:

This is a thing –
Wait. Shut up.
Stop serving up death.
This is a thing I need to say.
And can’t.
Too weak, too fog-suffused,
Ambulance-chased,
Mirrored in the setting sun
That I can see behind your eyes.
Black and white lines,
Each word a color picture
With your soul bound in the background.
The holes where the nails rattled out were filled with your tears
Which are only now beginning to evaporate.
Transparent shrouds devour your perspective,
But you’re jumping through hoops,
Seeing through rings of care,
Shiny baubles bought or seized
That you can
Mix and match.
Slip on and off.
Melt down,
To fashion the weapons you’ll use against the next unlucky winner.
Wings flitter hopelessly,
In agony that is not quick, only twisting.
And it’s absurd how fast passion transmutes.

The New One

2005-02-01T14:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Matt thoroughly welcomed our new English teacher by being an absolute pain in the ass. She moved him three times, and his was the only name she learned all hour.
Deena moved the chair normally reserved for "talkers" from the middle of the room, isolated, moved it next to me, and sat in it all hour, where we talked. The look on the new teacher's face was great when she was listening to our conversations. Deena was telling me about her latest conquest (darkroom) and the next one she planned (the navy blue-haired, lip-ringed girl I went to kindergarten with), while keeping a running debate with Ryan about who was the hottest girl in school. The teacher jumped when she heard the word "lesbian". She nearly kicked Brandon out of class for cussing loudly three times, and yelling at Noel about his ex-girlfriend. I can't stand Brandon.
I have high hopes for this teacher. I've heard Easter giving her advice...and she seems to be taking it.

Five hundred feet from the pavement.

2005-01-29T12:22:00.000-08:00

It's 1300 overcast today. 1200 feet above ground level still qualifies as a VFR (visual flight rules) flight, but is excessively stupid. So I have one thing to say: Winter, fuck you.

I lied. I have more to say.

You ever wake up and think that you could be trying 30% less hard, and still fall in with the rest of the crowd?
It's not worth the effort, or the missed sleep.

Eighty-nine point three is such a stupid number.

2005-01-27T20:12:00.000-08:00

At least she screwed Mark McClure out of his A, too.

So:

"I have died so little today, friend, forgive me."
--Thomas Lux

Caved!

2005-01-23T15:41:00.000-08:00

I generally don't fill out surveys because I think they're annoying. Then I found this one, describing what songs you'd play in the scenes of your life. I caved:

Opening Credits: Poe -- Hello
Waking Up: Iron and Wine – The Rooster Moans
Strutting: The Refreshments - Banditos
School: Green Day – Walking Contradiction
Work: Pink Floyd – Welcome to the Machine
Driving: Joe 90 -- Drive
Partying: Modest Mouse – The Good Times Are Killing Me/Monty Python – The Philosopher’s Beer Drinking Song
Love At First Sight: The Decemberists – Of Angels and Angles
First Date: The Refreshments – Down Together
Sex Scene: James – Laid
Breaking Up: Iron and Wine – Bird Stealing Bread
Long Night Alone: Ben Folds Five – Evaporated
Friends: The Counting Crows – All My Friends/Butthole Surfers – Pepper
Graduation: R.E.M. – It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Growing Older: The Counting Crows – Long December
Happiness: Guster – Barrel of a Gun (couldn’t tell you why)
Life Flashing Before Your Eyes: R.E.M. -- Hope
Death Scene: The Unicorns – I Don’t Wanna Die
Closing Credits: Grateful Dead – Box of Rain

Find him.

2005-01-22T17:35:00.000-08:00

I flew to Little Rock today, and I was thinking.
I was thinking, as I landed with the setting sun at my back, if I knew anyone in Little Rock. I think Eddie and Miranda are in Little Rock.
So then I thought about telling you that I'd been to Little Rock today, and the fact that my feet really didn't touch the ground there. I didn't even breathe Little Rock air.
Does it count?
Everything seems weirdly surreal in an airplane.

So then, as I flew back home (twice as slowly, with the wind from the front this time) in the dark, staring at the lights illuminating what I couldn't see but what I assumed to be houses.
And I came to the conclusion that it means nothing at all.

The most concrete thing about the trip is the permanent ink in my log book, or maybe how some disembodied male voice asked me to relay a message to the guys at Riverside.
"Tell 'em Nick said 'hi.'"

Chicago

2005-01-21T21:05:00.000-08:00

Sitting on a bench, waiting for a ride. Cigarette smoke curls around her fingers, then up into the glare of the streetlights.
"What school are you from?" I assume she's asking after my connections to the band. Maybe I should have noted the cigarette, but then all of my friends were smoking, too.
"Edison."
"Huh? I've never heard of it. Is it around here? I dunno that much about colleges. Just a freshman at TU."
"Ah. Yeah, it's a high school in town."
"Oh. You look much older."

I don't look that old.

Things to be happy about: guitars, retirement.

With a Bang. Then Came the Whimper.

2005-01-20T20:48:00.000-08:00

Probably the last swim meet in which I'll ever participate. Yay?
Divin entered the diving (he'd never done it before, and had to be told the rules.) Crazy Divin and his gymnastics. Kid has no fear. None. It'll kill him one of these days.
Taylor dropped her water bottle, towel, and cell phone behind the bleachers. One at a time, in progression.
The Oologah swim team has no modesty, which causes a lot of screaming fresh(wo)men. It gets old.
On the way home, there was a Sonic/Subway stop. The kids at Sonic nearly got arrested in what we will, henceforth, refer to as the "Sonic Incident" for some business involving ALL OF THEM mooning the workers. Coach threatened to let the manager call the police on them.
Oh, and the other great thing was that they were all wearing shirts with the name of the school on them. Geniuses.
The swim team may never be allowed to go anywhere again.

But then, I'm good as gone.

Cross my DNA with something reptile...

2005-01-19T16:43:00.000-08:00

Help me out here.
Every time I can ever remember listening to "Falls to Climb" (R.E.M.) I have this memory that I'm not entirely sure I didn't make up.
"Who cast the final stone? Who threw the crushing blow?"
Does anyone else remember, on the show "Doug," the characters actually throwing rocks at a house, until it falls down?
All I can get is a guy in a leather jacket walking away from a crumbled house.

Square One

2005-01-17T19:50:00.000-08:00

Solo to TIP again. As it was in the Beginning, so shall it be at the End.

Today's experiences include seeing Nicki, playing Katamari Damacy, listening to Ani DiFranco and Dogs Die in Hot Cars, and reading (the beginning of) the Iliad.
Does that go in quotes, as a poem, or get underlined, as a book?

Tomorrow's include getting up at ridiculous hours, chlorine, repetition, redundancy, and repetition.

Foiled Again

2005-01-16T19:14:00.000-08:00

I'm overqualified for Duke TIP at KU. That disappoints me way more than it should. I should be happy about my test scores.
So I'm thinking Duke East or Duke West..."Primate Biology"? It has lemurs, galagos, and lorises. "A Cross Cultural Study: The Vampire Theme in Literature". "Knights in Shining Armor: Fact vs. Fiction." "Philosophy in Literature and Film." "The Science of Science Fiction."
Eh? Any suggestions? Probably Duke East.

Two episodes until I'm Buffyless again. One episode in two parts, really.

Suddenly, I feel like a real nerd.

In Dental Terms

2005-01-15T13:28:00.000-08:00

It's been a sorry day.
We beat Skiatook and Grove, got our asses kicked by Claremore and lost to Pryor by two.
It all seems pretty lame, if you think about it too much. A bunch of kids sitting in an unheated library, next to a window, on a Saturday morning, each trying to know about more trivial things than the others.
I return to guilt trips and unanswerable questions.

Jonathan was right when he said I couldn't carry other people's drama.
There's too much of it.

And then.

2005-01-13T20:56:00.000-08:00

It's eleven, and I just walked in the house, returning from that damned swim meet. Went straight there after academic practice...

Today, I realized something. Or, rather, I acknowledged my having realized something. I'm not sure if it's sad or not, or if it's sad, if I'm the only one who thinks it's sad, and if it's not sad, if everyone but me thinks it is. Sad, that is. Or isn't.
Now, with that confusing preamble: I've got so much stuff to do that I never actually get involved in any of it. So much homework I didn't go to IHOP with the team at ten thirty with the team. Because what's better than that? So many clubs during advisory that I can't make any of the meetings. And all of this takes away from my ability to read or learn anything outside of the regular confinement we all have to suffer through.
Yesterday, in English, we talked about death imagery. A-fucking-gain. (See? An infix. Something I learned from an English teacher, not in English class.) She wouldn't call on me. Apparently, my cup runneth over with participation points. I have a ninety nine percent in her class, and I haven't tried on anything in three months. Anyway, instead of listen to her, I read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which was immensely more educational, and least for the, "In the room the women come and go. Talking of Michelangelo," line that comes up in academic bowl.

Moral of the story is that I really have nothing interesting to say about anything because I'm too busy having something interesting to say about everything.

"Well the sword-swallower he comes up to you and then he kneels
He crosses himself and then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice he asks you how it feels
And he says 'Here is your throat back, thanks for the loan'
And you know something is happening but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?"
--Dylan.

In the Bible-Black Predawn

2005-01-10T15:24:00.000-08:00

My weekend was filled with airplanes.
Bad news and worry abounded, today.
My weekend was filled with airplanes.

Pilots and Cookies

2005-01-08T21:46:00.000-08:00

In the lounge of the jet center is a case that is continually filled and refilled with cookies, which are, most of the time, warm. Pilots walk in, out, and around in the lounge, continually eating cookies. Non-pilots toss their cookies. This is a theme. It has been Noted.

Last night was insane. The second part of the Rogue meeting was cancelled due to unfathomable drama. I went home, watched two episodes of Buffy, then came downstairs to check my e-mail. Ended up talking to my brother. Dad tells me to turn the volume down on the still-looping Buffy DVD. So I start wrapping up the conversation. He storms back to the TV, talking about how he's going to cut the power cord. I stand, walk through the den, and am accosted by my mother. The Question of the Year: "Who were you talking to?" (No, more suspicious than that.) I tell her, "My brother." She asks again. Obviously there's someone other than that. It can't be that simple.
An already long story I'll attempt to abbreviate -- she ended up storming into the back room, where I was watching the finale of season two, and asking me, "Why are you so rude?" I have no answer. What do you answer?
She tells me she's assigning me an essay with that topic sentence. An essay.
She says I won't fly tomorrow if I don't write it by noon.
She asks again. I begin trying to explain why she pisses me off. I figure that's the closest thing to "why I'm so rude" because it usually results in me dismissing anything she has to say from that time forward. She goes to her room, after giving me the I-can't-believe-you-say-those-things-I'm-about-to-cry-look. Which made me feel sufficiently guilty.
After a few minutes, I resume the show.
When it's over, I walk to the kitchen to put some dishes away. Dad's sitting in the dark, staring at the glass of wine he was rolling in his palms. We had a long talk, there, in the dark.

Was that anticlimactic or what?

Went to see the Life Aquatic with Jordan. Hadn't seen her in forever. Saw the little brother of one of my friends who was shipped to a boys boarding school in Maryland. Walked across the street to the mall to bear witness to the sad testament of how lame our town really is. Mall closed, locked, and dark at ten o'clock on a Saturday night.

I Came As a Rat

2005-01-07T15:05:00.000-08:00

I just got home from buying Modest Mouse tickets. February 21st, Cain's. Go, and give Albertson's or wherever your money, because it's Modest frickin' Mouse.

Today was better than yesterday. Except maybe for the sickly worried feeling that today might not, in fact, be better than yesterday.
But it was.
We didn't have to read Red Badge of Courage out loud in sixth hour, so I listened to my iPod and read yesterday's and today's assignments, then wasted seventh hour in Easter's Spanish class, not really seeing any of the answers in Campbell's Quiz Book.

Mayfield's even thinking about killing the block schedule because it caused attendence on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to drop by twelve percent -- and, in case you forgot, we're on Bush's "Needs Improvement" list for attendance.
Oh. And I was nominated for Most Studious (again. Which Drover said was the "kiss of death"), along with both of the other people that were in my math group today (he split us up to work on something). Jane, the person I "ran" against last year, and Frank, the Math Guy on the acateam.

Of Counsels and Progress

2005-01-06T18:44:00.000-08:00

I spent three hours being counseled today, and the only thing I got from it was the feeling that there is clearly not enough education required for high school counselors.
It's funny how the old friends and the passing acquaintances step forward in a crisis, not so much to help as to give the appearance of wanting to help.
I don't think it's over, but I really hope it is.

[End Vaguery]

Valuable Lessons

2005-01-05T21:26:00.000-08:00

Tonight I learned from Buffy that, at frat. parties, you will inevitably be seduced, drugged, and sacrificed to a giant jack-in-the-box-like-reptile-being that lives in a well.
So never go to frat. parties.
Also, all monkeys are French.

We spent almost thirty minutes in AP Government and Politics talking about blogs as the next major addition to news media. Only then did I realize that I can't think of any..."peer" of mine that doesn't have a xanga or livejournal or some form of blog. Weird.

Driver's ed is done. I'm continuously amazed at how one can just get in the car, close the door, and turn the key. It's remarkably simple. Why aren't airplanes as foolproof?

I'm told they publish Harry Potter in Latin. One of these days, I'm going to decide that there is nothing to be done except to read that. And I shall.

Come to think on it, I'm also continuously amazed at the way I never stop talking...or rambling in this thing I usually name writing, but is really just stringing a bunch of words together in a not-so-interesting way (what can I say? I'm not Douglas Adams). (Ironically) I believe I say most every coherent thing that pops into my head (and some of the incoherent things) at one point or another. I need to work on that. Rarely is it interesting.
Like just then. Did you see that? I did it again.

It's a vicious cycle.

It's time.

2005-01-04T21:02:00.000-08:00

A friend's birthday today. Seventeen.
Things seemed simpler when I used to write him letters in orange crayon, and ask my mother which side of the envelope the stamp went on. Don't suppose they really were. Relatively.
Funny how time always works the same way, but I'm continually surprised by it.

Mom invited some people over for dinner. Lucy got sick and didn't come. Watched less than a quarter of the orange bowl, then retreated to the back room to watch the first disc of the second season of Buffy.
Nice to have an obsession for a while.

I can hear the rain outside. Everyone's claiming there's an icestorm tonight. School starts again in eight hours. Still haven't adjusted to the schedule. I'm going to open my window and listen to the rain for an hour or two.

I'm dropping swimming for the second half of French II. There are only eight kids in the class. Three eighth graders, two of which went to Eisenhower. One kid from my own class there. One with French parents. Seven girls and Matt. Should be a much better class than the one that drove me to independent study and then to Latin last year.

I'll miss the smell of the chlorine, my allergy to which I've ignored.
No, I won't.

The New Year is Ruined!

2005-01-01T20:56:00.000-08:00

The dinner guests for New Year's Day leave, having been exhausted by the previous night's activity (or lack thereof), and Reconstruction begins. San Andreas is scowled at, and ordered turned off, and I to bed. A complaint is lodged, though not in Her throat. I woke up eight hours ago.
As we argue the customary argument, the garbage disposal finally decides to end it all.
And then the customary shouting breaks through the house, as soapy water fills the kitchen: "Shit! Shit, shit, shit! Fuck."

I can't help it. I smile. "The New Year is ruined!"

This is how the world ends:

2004-12-31T23:39:00.000-08:00

Seventy-seven degrees. The entirety of America watching their various watches, clocks, falling globes. Alone, eating food left over from Christmas and staring through the dark, at the trees limned by exploding fireworks at a party to which you weren't invited.

That's a little over-dramatic, for a first post.

I went to Nicki's, went to Sterling's. My parents were, conveniently, an hour and a half late. Almost made it to midnight, but they're just so old.

Did you catch the bitter note there? Thought not.

First act of the new year: watch Buffy season one.
I'll do that now.