February 2012
14 posts
The truth is, I am so tired of waiting. I’ve been in this saddle so long now that the boundary between horse and man has swept so far beyond blurred; two beasts of burden joined at the spine though never quite meant to haul the same load. The girl, the woman, she, she tells me I’m wonderful. Fills my ears with the sounds I want so badly to hear, floats my heart on champagne tides of...
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rime
Here on the footpath, amongst the dead and rotting leaves long ago abandoned by their ligneous parents, there are only soft-edged shadows and the gentle weight of black on black on blacker still. I keep my hands in my pockets to ward off the chill, my shoulders high to hide my ears, my back hunched as though I’m carrying a burden somehow heavier than all the winter worry - the awkward...
There are a lot of posts on my dash flavored with the Valentine’s syrup - be it sweet or bitter, there is certainly love in the air. I’m not going to tell anyone how to celebrate today - not going to even make comment about the happy couples or the lonely singles.
I’m alone today, and I’ll not lie, there have been a few lonely moments in these past weeks. But I’m grateful for who I am,...
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aweigh again
I don’t know how in the world I ever let things become so heavy. I keep losing sight, somehow, of all the goodness that exists. It’s so easy to get caught up in this whirlwind we call modern living, to forget friends and family amidst all this pressure to become, to improve, to make a difference. It’s important to take the time to breathe and to appreciate what we are, who we...
abdicated
The worst part of being played for a fool is that this time, this second spin around this same damned barren planet, this repeated try at an infecund dream, was entirely my creation and thus my own cruel work. I want to be angry, but I can’t - just bleak and bored again, picking at the soft spot in this stupid heart which you probably never intended to really fill. I need to will learn from...
One day in the future, we will all be embarrassed to tell our children of the hateful ways we treated one another over such trivial differences.
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elephants, oceans, echoes
I don’t forget. I won’t ever forget. These are the rings of my tree, the marks made as I grew, the lines left as plain and permanent reminder of the wind and the weather this oaken heart of mine has seen and survived. I don’t always walk the line or broadcast how I hurt sometimes - but I’ll carry this and these and those with me for as long as it takes.
the here and now of it
It’s been an interesting weekend. Not a lot of sleep, nights that blend together, long conversations and endless hours of thought. I’ve been absent, saving my writing for myself and leaving these feelings to the ocean. There are changes coming, the sweeping sort of transformation that comes at the end of a season. Time is slowing down but this world keeps speeding up; I’m laying...
again and again
The day I finally understand this heart of mine and the way it’s supposed to work with yours, that’s the day I’ll finally sleep sound. But until then, it’s broken songs and burnt whiskey memory, questions that echo and dreams of how your skin might feel beneath my palms.
January 2012
25 posts
1 tag
wanted #6
Rain on the tent, a staccato rhythm played out like hurtling heartbeats, a hundred thousand tones struck against leaf, bark, stone and wood. Darkness, cold, your breath just visible in the air. And somewhere distant, with no real menace but rather begrudging tenderness, thunder rolls through the empty woods. Ten toes in this single sleeping bag, the soft prod of your hips against mine, your...
4:30
There is a lot to see, on the walk home. Nearly 5 miles in $500 dress shoes, soles designed for much less than these rough hewn streets. Truth be told, I like the distance. I like the sound. The feel of rain on my head, the smell of water in my lungs. I see things you’ll not see, I hear sounds you’ll not hear, I feel things you’ll not feel. This is my rhyme and my reason. My...
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lonely at the only clawing through the smoke the poets are so hip they don’t even write poems buy me a drink its no good to drink alone so full of worry i just need to sleep its not that i’ve been crying its just that my eyes leak if i knew what was wrong i’d let you know there will be nothing; nothing amiss at all all the boys with their sticky hands regulars with getaway...
yield
There are very few things that I wouldn’t give to be someplace else, with someone else, at this very instant.
You breathe out and all the world is suddenly colour, reds and yellows summoned from October scrapyards, gliding warm to my ears on curling whispers of truths I want to be lies. I push my hands deeper into empty pockets and shrug my simple shoulders. These bodies are temporary only, borrowed vessels we bruise and batter without care, forgettable beige jelly-bean rental cars left like abandoned...
one small moment
Setting suns and firework blossoms, a birthday cake ablaze and those first unsteady steps. That perfect and precise moment when all the rice is floating like a summoned blizzard of highest hopes and warmest wishes around the blushing bride, the impossible to duplicate smile of a groom who just can’t believe his dumb luck. All these things we try to capture and store away for rainy days, our...
“If I only scrape a living, at least it’ll be a living worth scraping.”
The snow and rain is appropriate. Everything is grey and wet, muted tones and muddled sound coupled with the impersonal mood that permeates everything. No faces, no names, just dry eyes and tightly wound scarves, soaked mittens and a shuffling step to ward off a slip or fall. The funny thing about a small town is how quickly word gets around, how fast rumor travels. It’s hard to hear...
it's in your blood
Sometimes it feels like so much more than just science, bigger than this clean, sterile, and convenient biological explanation. We were programmed from our earliest beginnings to live not as one and one, but rather always two - it’s written into our basic code, scripted into our double-helix like petrogylphs carved into stone, a long-dead language with a message we never fully understand. Some...
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Just above freezing
Black coffee, a loosely tied scarf and the lingering feel of your fingers on my back. It is Sunday, colder today than this island is used to, and the people here move with a deliberate slowness that is somehow comforting. There is frost on the windows, a shimmer to the shaded pavement and a crisp feel to the air - it almost feels as though this moment of half-sunned silence could crack and shatter...
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#489
Your roots pushed down deep, through the dry and cracked soil and between my ribs to gently wrap round my secret heart, somehow finding the last few drops of love hidden within this arid body. You were my constant, my courage, my unspoken oath and unquestioning oak tree- you were strong in the face of every ill wind, you held my foolish weight without complaint, you were simple patience in a...
otiose
My house is a hodgepodge collection of artifacts that all scheme to ruinously remind me of this space, this vacancy, this role left uncast. It isn’t that I despair the sight of the twin sink in the bathroom, nor the empty beside table nearest the margin of the oversized mattress which I, even in deepest dreams, have never once explored. It is my inherent and inescapable pattern, this collecting...
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small steps
She has laugh lines and her eyes crinkle in an amazing way when she laughs. I don’t have the courage to tell her that it’s been more than three years since I’ve been on a successful date, since I’ve really been interested, since anything felt remotely right. She surprises me and orders beer in a coffee shop. I was worried about appearances and so I overdressed, and now I...
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briefly
I spent the day in the water, bobbing about in the cold with the company of a few other brave souls. It was good to be back at my local break, cutting a line across familiar green water, filling my lungs with air that tastes somehow like home. I spent too long in the water, as I often do, and as my surfing partners one by one gave up and paddled for shore I felt a weight within my chest begin to...
almost home
I’ll be home, back with my pup and where I belong, in a matter of hours. Over the past 2 weeks I’ve written pages upon pages, and I’m beginning to sift through to determine if and what I might share. I feel like I’ve been gone for a long time - I wonder how you’re doing, who you’ve hunted, what you’ve been. There is so much catching up to do.
Anonymous asked: You write so beautifully I almost can't bear to read it. Please never stop.
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Notes on Living, #1
So that was Day 1. How did it go? Was it everything you expected? Do not feel bad - the secret is that today wasn’t what you expected, because you didn’t really know what to expect. You were sometimes surprised and other times disappointed, once hopeful and later fearful, in one moment you felt sadness and another you were elated. This is what living is, this constantly shifting...
I send this year off like a half-hearted prayer, like sheet lightning on distant cloud, like blood and whiskers down the drain. 2011 wasn’t so terrible, but she wasn’t so beautiful either - just another line in the bark, fading fast and soon to be forgotten. I thought you should know that when midnight finally hit and all the world exploded with the shimmering golds and tracing...
December 2011
17 posts
And of course, I wonder if you miss me.
Because in this slice of life purpose built for two, I miss you. Terribly, with an empty longing and a burning fever, like a summer sickness curling cruel into the longest and most beautiful night.
This bed was meant to be shared, the shower space enough for more than my rough frame, a breakfast table always with silverware to spare and that...
12/25/2011
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, joyous Hanukkah, whatever floats your boat. Best wishes and highest hopes, kids - I keep you close and count you all among my blessings. Here’s to bigger and better, brighter and lighter, in all our days ahead.
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So I guess this is Christmas. Here, from the lower deck overlooking the cactus and the sand, I can hear the ocean slump her shoulders into the beach with an exhausted sigh. It feels like home, here - strange at that is to admit. I suppose some small part of me found comfort here, a little slice of something warm amidst all this light and sound. I’m not certain what this means, or whether it...
I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but I’m feeling weighted down - I’ve got your breath in my lungs and your words on my mind, heavy and umber-hued like the the rusted skeleton of a long sunken ship. It’s all what-could and never what-is, I think - all this time spent watching you run ahead and now suddenly you tell me to slow down, wait up, hold fast. What do...
Trapped at the airport. They keep delaying my flight. At this rate, I will be in serious trouble soon, as the airport bartender is quite charming and my lover’s liver is just aching for a little exercise. I have so very much to say about airports, about all these comings and goings and every seasonal goodbye. But this isn’t the time, and you’re not really listening.
fathom
We’d drink together in silence along the sea wall, watching the lights of distant ships plod gently along like man-made glaciers of economic intent, imagining how the worn sides of those loveless rust-red hulks might shudder as they would cleave, cruel and brutal, through the infinite black water. We could taste salt on our lips, the lingering saline kiss of the oceanic wind reinvigorated...
now
At 3:18, when the lights are low and the warmth of the day has long departed, when the bones of your back ache like red links of rusted chain and your hours-ago dinner sits low in stomach like wet cement, when the clock slows to standstill and your tired heartbeat echoes across feather-down infinity, it isn’t the sex you miss. It isn’t the passion nor the fury, not the pride nor the...
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wax & wane, time between
Beyond the break, deeper than a surfer should be, I watch the unending waves blossom up from the rippled glass border between two worlds. Each one is perfectly imperfect, a precisely balanced burst of pure energy born only from the sea itself. Chaos and order blended together into form and function to bring both life and death to the jagged shore, birthing stony beaches from the ruins of countless...
In the fraudulent yellow light of the basement bathroom of some bar I can’t claim to know the name of, I rinse my hands in the sink and take a few extra moments to press my thumb into my palm, to feel the bones within shift and strain ever so slightly like the buried roots of a storm-blown oak. It smells like piss in here, like filth and stain and all the little parts of living that we...