The Subversive Symphony

2008-09-20T16:54:00.001-05:00

hello.

untitled

2006-09-01T00:51:00.000-05:00

a fistful of mysteries --
you lie low
lie low
lie
low

for the time being.
a slow sigh
tugs at my sleeve,
"it's time to leave"

and leave we will,
believe you me.

Roger.

2006-06-20T18:24:00.000-05:00

i have finally done something

Vacuum Cleaner?

2006-05-06T14:26:00.000-05:00

omegalpha

2006-03-07T21:23:00.000-06:00

2006-03-07T16:52:00.000-06:00

nothing is magical, of course, because the world is made of magic. so much magic all the time, that we have become desensitized to it.

we are beings of glittering perfection, stumbling drunkenly through the cosmos in a haze of glittering perfection, too much glittering perfection to take in all at once.

(do you see how ugly that phrase got, by the third time i used it?)

so we just don't bother. we are almost completely incapable.

reality.

2006-02-27T13:18:00.000-06:00

for all the times i have claimed, metaphysically, sardonically, melancholically what have you, not to exist, it seems now that it may be my greatest asset in achieving literary acclaim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jt_leroy

i wish i were fictional.

rock and roll

2006-01-18T15:19:00.000-06:00

so, i don't really know what to call this one...or what happened to the entry i already made with it in it...but i am very proud of this

Remember me?

2005-12-29T18:55:00.000-06:00

You probably don't. I know I don't.

here is a new piece. I call it Jultide City.

The ancient Nordic festival "Jul" of course, being where we get our English word "Yule." It is a time to celebrate extended darkness and the rebirth of light, a time to celebrate endings and beginnings, etc. what does any of this have to do with the poem, you might ask. Figure it out yourself, I would probably answer.

shameless, shameless

2005-11-28T20:57:00.000-06:00

buy my book!

featuring poems that are no longer available for reading, poems that were only ever available to listen to until now, and poems written so recently only i have read them!

thanks for supporting a starving poet!

why am i still awake?

2005-11-07T00:29:00.000-06:00

downstairs.

Listen Close

2005-10-18T15:14:00.000-05:00

Well, it has been a while hasn't it. If you're still there; I am pretty proud of this one. I had been trying to use more epic imagery in a poem for a while, and it is certainly a change of pace from the last one. I think it turned out pretty well: it is called, simply, Drought.

I also recorded not one, but two older ones. Although they, in my mind, are two parts of a whole, I wrote them separately, without any original intention of putting them together. The Cartographer / The Gypsy. Can you hear something different?

if you live it up you won't live it down

2005-09-30T18:12:00.000-05:00

Unfinished Symphony?

Question mark and all. I was going for a general tone of heartbreaking whimsy. It is something I (and maybe most people?) don't do very often (don’t confuse it with whimsical heartbreak!) and it just sort of all came out. The end result seems sort of Vonnegut-inspired? But I have not read Vonnegut in a while, that's just how it came out.

Also, I don't know if you've noticed (o anonymous but personalized reader) but I've been trying to do more entertaining things with my voice (and the production), trying to do things that fit the tone of the piece and such. In this one I think my major vocal inspirations were christopher walken and tom waits.

That's it. I might record an old poem later, if you ask me nicely.

clockwork?

2005-09-21T17:00:00.000-05:00

What shocking regularity! No need to be alarmed, but I have written and recorded a new poem, only a week or so after the last one. Insanity. It's called Church and State, and was scribbled down in my World Religions class (what a wealth of imagery to be lifted from other cultures), my head swimming with recollections of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart's take on George Orwell, and maybe just a TINY bit of my old familiar sarcasm. Maybe.

And continuing the "Best Of" series, another one I couldn't believe I had not already recorded: Axon Torpor, which I wrote i-don't-know-how-long ago and kind of forgot about. But it feels like it was meant to be read aloud; it has a chantlike quality to it, almost like a mantra. What do you think?

Looking Up

2005-09-13T21:44:00.000-05:00

The first time I have been excited to write, or excited about anything for that matter, in a long time.

Breaking Orbit is inspired in part by a sunset (of all things), and by sufjan stevens' unique approach to storytelling and finding subject matter, and it is also, I think, one of the best things I've written in a long time. A standout, I hope.

I have also recorded Pantomime Anthem, which is from a while back, but it is one I am especially proud of, and was a bit surprised I hadn’t given it the spoken word treatment already. Consider it part of my “Best Of”

About That Time

2005-09-01T19:06:00.000-05:00

I have recorded four new poems. They are The Devil's Staircase, which is loosely inspired by a dream I had; Sellout, a venting of various frustrations and vague imagery and its successor-sequel, This Repetition; and last but not least, a tourdeforce of my fascination with the glorification of the morbid, and perhaps the creepiest thing I have ever done: Little Girl

Tell me what you think.

i've decided.

2005-07-31T01:14:00.000-05:00

from now on, this is the only way i will put any new stuff up this ugly internet:

in spoken word form

anybody willing to transcribe my drawl just to plagiarize my words is one sick character indeed.

if you were missing my writing, here's your chance: five new poems, never before seen by any human eyes but my own. and still not, but they can be heard, assuming you own a set of human ears, and are willing to tolerate my voice.

you can comment on them here, on this very post, if you want. as always, it will be appreciated.

pressure; that's how diamonds are made.

2005-06-02T03:53:00.000-05:00

i don't know if anyone really reads this, but if you do, i'm sorry. i thought i'd let you know that i don't know when i'll be updating it again. i have to get everything sorted out with all of this plagiarism madness, and i have to get my personal shit together, and basically this is just a bad idea right now.

i'll try not to stop writing but i don't know when, if ever, i'll be posting any of it on the internet anymore.

Without You I'm Nothing

2005-05-03T01:13:00.000-05:00

it's downright degenerate the way i watched the scene unfold from across a bold and undeniable distance in a room full of dissidents and diletantes, dilatory in the twilight flickering of instant intoxication. my every vein was spiked in every direction my spine detracted and at this point i didn't care. i only wanted to watch a lock of yellow hair sucked through a doorway like divine spaghetti into the drooling jaws of a garbage disposal-zeitgeist.

at this point i was prepared to offer my prostrate services to the gestapo of any distraction, if it could only deliver on any empty promises it made. this place is desolate to say the least and it has diligently hollowed out my defenses and left me dry. i've been thirsty so long i don't even deny it anymore.

("Without You I'm Nothing" by Placebo, from the album of the same name)

Thumbing My Way

2005-04-25T22:35:00.000-05:00

horizon rubbing the sleep from its eye i am a mobile cigarette burn on america's tattered sleeve
predawn these are the cave in hours the meager smattering of headlights all looking forward with surgical indifference out here everything is subject to such a terrible longevity these miles never die.

the car seemed almost intangible from fumigation not even an exhaust problem this was something far more sinister like the driver had been sneaking brimstone on his lunch break or maybe my sunmad imagination had invaded my old factory
either way he seemed to savour his idle questions with a repugnant diffidence he asked questions like don't i miss my home?

how do i answer that how without tumbling wholly over the edge of the cliché
grinning hospitable spitting when he spoke he drove on beckoning to me from the brink of banality.

("Thumbing My Way" by Pearl Jam, from the album Riot Act)

Desert Town

2005-04-24T21:24:00.000-05:00

we all laughed but none of us meant it.

as soon as i pulled onto the main drag i could tell "i am not supposed to be here." today, or ever, every eye down the line blinking in time with the startstop rhythm of my mulepower engine. the banners were (still?) already up, the parade ever-ready to begin. no one was watching, every citizen required by law to march. spectators are a luxury not to be afforded; necessity is a dictator beneath a desolate atmosphere of sovereignty. this place is a means to its own end; this place is never-ending.

("Desert Town" by Jim Carroll, from the album Pools of Mercury)

Cities in Dust

2005-04-18T01:00:00.000-05:00

the sky that day was all phonograph scratches. when the needle skipped a groove the birds would twitch an infinite recursion, cursing jehova's itchy trigger finger sitting on his front porch cradling that twelve gauge fifty miles exactly fifty miles above the sky scrapers.

she never smiled, but she laughed when she said that evil men have very specific equations; the rest of us are far from uniquely determined. that wasn't what disturbed me. her sincerity, i'll admit, was alarming under the sickly purple syringe trees in full bloom but what really frightened me was when i noticed her index and middle fingers on her right hand. playing a subconscious game with me, she would alternately free one and then replace it only to free the other from the restraints. she wanted me to know that she could escape anytime she wanted to.

she wanted me to know that i was the prisoner here. it's a long way back into town.

("Cities in Dust" by Siouxsie and the Banshees, from the album Tinderbox)

Le Penseur

2005-04-11T23:58:00.000-05:00

I am a sculpture. Remember Rodin, and did you ever wonder how anyone could have so much to think about? Perhaps the world's most replicated sculpture, I have seen the world. Heavy chin resting on stone hand, or whatever the medium; my cold, pensive eyes keep watch over thousands of libraries, museums, and other institutions that wish to convey a sense of intuition.

For more than a century, I have meandered to each new replica, always contemplating everything new that I see. I have, perhaps, considered every possible philosophy from every possible angle, in thousands of varied locations, and in several different media. This form of existence of mine is surely the most desirable. I have all the time I need to think of everything.

I can occupy any reproduction I wish, but lately I've been passing most of my days in a bronzed plaster cast outside a modest art museum somewhere in the middle United States. I have seen every figurative corner of the globe, and as such cannot tell the minute difference between one tiny sovereignty and the next, nor divisions within larger ones. Why then, have I chosen this humble backdrop for my monumental cogitations?

Of all the things I have considered since my inception, I have perhaps spent the most time on Love. It, indeed, is a conundrum.

She works at the museum. Every morning I watch her pass by and on up the steps and through the doors. I watch her admire the other art out here on the grounds, and there is some genuine spark in her eye of true appreciation. She eats lunch resting against the pedestal upon which I am perched.

For the first time, merely thinking isn't enough. I want to tell her everything.

("Le Penseur" is a statue by Auguste Rodin. you've seen it: the thinker.)

Liar

2005-04-05T00:12:00.000-05:00

finally the guilt was eating me up inside, as the freezer prevented the flesh from dropping from his face. everytime i went for a glass of ice water, he was there winking at me. a salacious wink, i wish he'd stop.

shoes untied, jacket in hand i shuffled out the door and down the street pulling sleeves up my arms around the corner to the police station they said girl, you can't turn yourself in for a crime that hasn't been committed. they looked up his number called the apartment his roomate said he was sleeping peacefully and even went in to check on him.

how many times do i have to do this, how long till my confession sticks?

("Liar" by Queen, from the album Queen)

Running for home

2005-04-02T02:05:00.000-06:00

It was probably 3:45 am, when I ripped out the plugs. The sickening white walls, I couldn't stand it; how can you tell where the floor ends and the ceiling begins, all that white? It's where we met, but I won't shed any tears for that place -- hell, I probably couldn't if I tried.

The windows were a zigzag of wire and some kind of plastic, just like you were, at the end. My metal legs keep pumping through this thick organic mud. I've been thinking a lot lately, about what it means to be human; when they put those ports into our heads, it just meant you and I could carry on a conversation after we were locked in our separate rooms at night.

That statue on the grounds always made me laugh. A cross-section of mythologies, all worshipping at the foot of Science. We, the slaves, on our backs were built the pyramids of Science.

When they finally replaced your hard drive it didn't phase me. That silicon stare, I had grown accustomed to. You took to drooling in the corner, the new hardware was just too much for your fragile biology. That's when I realized that you'd already been gone for a long, long time. That's when I realized it was time for me to do the same.

I took one of your backup copies, to remember you by.

("Running for Home" by Matthew Good Band, from the album Beautiful Midnight)

Wishful Beginnings

2005-03-31T21:53:00.000-06:00

drip. drip. drip. drip there it goes again. it's dark and i can't even stand up down here, the ceiling is too low. the knowing hum of the water heater whispers a serenade my dear can't you hear it?

i'm
glad
we got this
chance to talk you see i've noticed you many times you walk by the window and i notice you of course from the ankles up down here i see the whole world from the ankles up of course but they let me live down here because i fix their radiators, clogged drains everything that could possibly go wrong there i am. yes i notice you coming in and out i'm
glad
we
got
this chance to talk after all these years see i've been studying your picture but i'm not allowed to say that but i've been studying your picture mapped every sector of your skin you see. not supposed to...

gladwegotthischancetotalk there's a lot of things drip drip that i want to say to you really haven't been studying drip drip see i see you drip walking every day drip drip drip i figure you're new in the building?

haven't been bad haven't been bad been studying, see been studying books all these books most days drip i just sit down here without much else to do so i've been studying you see.

i don't have many friends. people build up drip all these goddamn walls all these drip drip all these pretty walls and you can drip you can paint them all you want but they're still walls, girl, still just cold concrete. so i've been drip i've been studying, see, studying all these drip all these books drip doctor books and i know drip i know how to take drip how to take drip how to drip how to drip. drip. drip.

figured out how to surgically remove the walls.

can you drip can you feel my conversation slicing smoothly through your skin? i'm glad we drip glad we drip glad we got this chance to talk drip. drip. drip.

("Wishful Beginnings" by David Bowie, from the album Outside )

Spiralling

2005-03-24T15:25:00.000-06:00

it's been a long time and it will be many years more until i leave this place until i board a plane and fly away. this bed is warm and soft and vast and i am a prisoner of comfort, i am a prisoner here. they bring me everything i want, my bank account can cover it; after all those years on the silver screen i feel like celluloid runs through my veins. the beautiful flowers mean nothing anymore. i see everything in sepia tones these days, when will i leave this decadent purgatory?

they come in carrying a tray and on it food and a single glass filled with water. an eyedropper spreads a cloud of dark liquid through the glass and i can see that dark cloud spread through my body in x-ray clarity, twisting its sinister self around my bones into my brain. every last clear inch is polluted, the mixture tastes like forgetfulness.

everyone knows my name but nobody knows who i am. this house is no longer my home.

("Spiralling" by Antony and the Johnsons, from the album I Am a Bird Now)

Vanishing Act

2005-03-18T01:59:00.000-06:00

i broke my promise, i said i'd never go back there. but i had to know.

we'd all hang out there when we were kids; looking back it wasn't as eerie as maybe it should've been. it was a shitty old house which meant seclusion which meant freedom in those days. no one knew where we were, and the best part was that all the furniture had been left in the place, covered in plastic bags. when we first went in there it was much colder than it was outside it was like a morgue for the furniture. at the time, though, the plastic was convenience; the chairs were not permeated with god-knows-how-many years of dust and god-knows-what else. it was the perfect clubhouse.

i remember the time we found all those old photo albums, covered in dust filled with black and white people staring blankly out. people in old photographs always look so solemn, but these looked downright sad.

joey always seemed sad to me, too. i'd heard all the kids' stories about institutions and treatments, but to me he just seemed sad. i never mentioned it, that wasn't how we were.
come to think of it, joey was the one who first showed us the house. i remember he smiled when he saw how excited we were. he didn't smile often.

i guess joey's family moved away. when i went back to the old neighborhood today, it occurred to me i didn't have the slightest clue which house they'd lived in. i wasn't really sure if i'd ever met his family. at any rate, we all lost touch as we grew up, nothing shocking about that. sometimes joey would say things and they would seem... thicker than what everybody else was saying. they would hang in the air far too long after he said them, and no one else would speak, as if they were afraid their words would get caught in this strange viscosity.
in those moments, i knew none of the other guys would keep track of joey. i knew i wanted to.

i guess the last time i saw him was in that house. he went off to take a piss. we heard yelling outside. some of our moms had finally triangulated our secret coordinates, and we were soundly debriefed about how dangerous that old building was. mine made me promise. the trepidation i saw in her eyes seemed somehow bigger than the simple fear of collapsing floorboards or falling plaster. i said those words and i put a piece of my soul in each one, punctuated by my beating heart. i never went back there.

until today i mean. i finally pieced it all together. i was researching an article, and i came across a picture of the house buried in the archives.
i tried my hardest not to make any hasty assumptions. i tried to keep my mind clear as i peeled back the ancient plywood across the window and crawled inside, as i made my way up the staircase, avoiding the third and the fifth remembering their feeble state.

after i saw the picture, i checked and checked again. there was no photo of joey in our primary school yearbook, no entry even of his name. and here before me was the reason why. here was joey's portrait, septuagenarian and sad in this musty old album, and here, looking anachronistic in sepia on my printer-paper also: a tragic looking young boy standing next to a comically heroic-policeman. they both stood beneath a headline: Man Kills Self, Wife Found Long Dead in Basement Son Barely Survives.

god knows where the system took him. apparently he'd never left that house until the cops found him. his parents treated him kindly, educated him superbly, and sheltered him completely. when they died, it makes no mention of where he went to live. but i understand now, why decades later he was so vehement that we all go to that house -- that he go home, and for once, bring some friends with him.

("Vanishing Act" by Lou Reed, from the album The Raven)

Sound and Vision

2005-03-16T00:25:00.000-06:00

maybe months ago, he left his laconic zippo lighter on my coffee table. i spend hours flicking the top back, gingerly lowering a finger down toward the flame, carefully into the flame, down through the yellow flame but i never can stand to go as deep as i'd like to. i never touch the blue flame.

i'm beginning to take for granted the furious sounds outside i keep my little apartment locked keep my spurious curtains drawn. it's a good day if i don't dart to the blinds more than twice an hour.
i'm beginning to take for granted the calloused fingers but out of habit i don't press down. i never dial the telephone and it never rings the TV's much more entertaining on mute.

calloused fingers charred black, but habit keeps the neurons firing in a timely fashion, keeps the train of thought on track. i don't even feel the heat anymore but out of habit i don't press down. i never touch the blue flame.

("Sound and Vision" by David Bowie, from the album Low)

Missing the War

2005-03-11T21:33:00.000-06:00

everyday i walk by the storefront and everyday the news is worse. i don't own a TV of course this is like TV but with choice and choice is important. when we were dating, i never realized.

and the whole time i was with you, i never had a single "episode" and now i wonder if that wasn't you, working on their campaign from the inside i never did visit you at work.

while we were still together, the government started stealing my toilet paper again. they recycle it to print the fake newspapers the ones that don't say what's really going on, how all so-called schoolyard bullies are really paid government agents because history has shown, you see, history has shown that overcoming adversity is what makes people great.

but we advanced too fast. we obliterated all adversity during world war two. everybody heard about the atom bomb, but it was the other bomb they were developing even more secretly, simultaneously that really one the war. it never had a name, it just had that ghastly yellow smiley face emblazoned on the side. we obliterated all adversity, but it didn't take the higher ups long to realize that was a mistake.

we obliterated all adversity, and we've been making our own ever since.

since i left you, the agents have stopped tailing me. we both did our part for the effort.

("Missing the War" by Ben Folds Five, from the album Whatever and Ever Amen)

Mourning Air

2005-03-04T00:41:00.000-06:00

scent of lilacs was lingering, she was lying peaceful on the pedestal. he was standing by the doorway looking ready to vanish as soon as he could; i was feeling pasttense and mostly exhausted. thirty-two white vinyl roses haloed her head, as per her request. the vicar was too vibrant, i thought. he didn't understand the way my sister did things.

every moment we spent together was impetuous and subdued, she was always smiling, but there was always a bittersweet aftertaste to it. sisters sense these things. she would come out and play with us and laugh twice as loud as anybody and she would lock herself in her room for hours, we would listen at the door, hear nothing.

when we were older everytime i'd go to visit her she had one less picture on the wall. each time a different excuse, that one looked at her funny or this one's colours clashed with her room. which was, of course, white and sparsely furnished. eventually she decorated it with silence.

i knew she recognized me, her eyes would follow me around the room but she didn't like talking anymore, i guess. somedays i understood the way the words, far too viscous, stuck in her mouth. somedays i wanted to reach in there and pull them out.

a single lachrymal violin resonated in the emptying lobby and in my hollow amphitheatre head on the long ride home leaning against the windows watching the prairie stumble past; lonesome, she would've loved it.

("Mourning Air" by Portishead, from the album Portishead)

Sarcophagi

2005-03-01T17:27:00.000-06:00

yeah, i work at the factory. across the tracks, those crisscross scars of obsolete conveyance. twelve hours a day we stand in a line, assembling the machines that will replace us someday very soon. people ask me doesn't the tedium get to you?

i go to work, i come home, i don't think about much else. i got a computer, but i ain't much for conversation. most days i just sit quietly in my chair, looking not at the wall but in its general direction and i wait until an acceptable hour to go to bed.

and that's why i ain't worried much about the future, see. it won't be long before technology progresses far enough that the robots start getting bored.

("Sarcophagi" by The Mars Volta, from the album Frances The Mute)

I Don't Blame You

2005-02-28T23:27:00.000-06:00

there are certain things that sleep can't do for you. the only thing i really miss is the dreams, when they took away my dreams i vowed then and there not to give them the satisfaction. there have to be laws against it even prisoners have rights cruel and unusual you cannot take a woman's dreams away from her.

i kept seeing commercials advertising your soft smile and strong assuring hands couldn't take it anymore. sometimes i go to the basement of the building and with surreptitious glances to ensure that the room is clear i put in a load of clean laundry and i sit on the washer and let it vibrate all my thoughts away.

but today an old woman from upstairs had stationed herself in front of the machine built battlements out of baskets and baskets of polyester garments emblazoned with elderly flowers, hours every move of her creaky old joints took hours to complete and i swear she was washing them one at a time.

i was just trying to get in to see you just once to explain to let you know that i forgive you but they said things like violation of probation and they confiscated my dreams said this is the last time they confiscated my dreams.

but i showed them. i haven't slept in days and i try not to blink if i can help it.
i'd stopped dreaming about you anyway.

("I Don't Blame You" by Cat Power, from the album You Are Free)

Across the Universe

2005-02-24T23:05:00.000-06:00

that is absolutely the last time i'll ever take your advice.

sitting standing walking, quarter after quarter into this machine and various others, the hope being if i keep moving no one will notice how long i've been here.

"here" is a service station protruding like a pimple from the prairie lands. the southwind is whispering apologies, the taste of daybreak is taking its sweet time in fading from my mouth, and i'm wondering how i'll get home.

thanks, buddy.

("Across the Universe" by the Beatles from the album Ultra Rare Trax Vol.3)

Worlds Apart

2005-02-23T21:09:00.000-06:00

about fifty miles outside of Baghdad, night in the desert, cold as hell.
i don't tell the boys i write in this thing. i wouldn't want them reading it, of course, but i don't even want them to know i'm writing it. a macho thing i guess.

couple weeks back there was a sandstorm, i was separated from my squad, we were under fire and we couldn't even see the bastards. they saw us well enough, a couple guys went down, they're home now. i heard larry was crossing the street ... couldn't get out of the way with that shell in his leg. he's dead now, dumb bastard.

i'd twisted my ankle, i was bleeding from a couple places, but what really got to me was the sand. it's not enough to be in my hair, my uniform, my socks. the sand got greedy, that day, tried to swallow all of us whole.

so when i woke up indoors, you can imagine my elation. the floor was stone, cold against my bare back, but there was some rolled up cloth under my head, and there was a roof. i looked around, saw a woman tending a pot, hanging over a fire in the middle of the room. it was dark, and the chorus of smart bombs chiming in from outdoors confirmed that it was still nighttime. they sounded too close, i tried to get up. my ankle had other ideas, and made its point very clear. but it was wrapped, it looked pretty good. considering i didn't remember doing it, i couldn't have done such a good job. she saw i was awake.
she said something i didn't understand, and gave me a bowl she'd filled with what ever was in the pot. i sat up against the stone wall and tried to look through her. i was the army here, had to make it clear that i was still in control, despite my prostrate condition. her eyes caught my gaze midair, and would take it wherever she wanted it to go. the soup was delicious.

through the night she stayed beside me, and believe me, under different circumstances... well, she was a very beautiful woman.
i lingered there for days, hoping simultaneously that my leg would heal properly, and that it would never heal. we were neither of us scholars of linguistics, we learned to communicate with gestures and glances. she took care of me, we laughed together, in her bare little hovel in her desolate village.

i don't know exactly what happened, i was asleep. i was dreaming that i was lying in bed, back home, i think she was lying there next to me, and the alarm clock was going off.
it was artillery fire. i guess they burst in the house, saw me lying on the floor, bloody and unconscious. she protested, as would anybody, the sanctity of her home compromised.
see, my squad, they're some of the best damn boys in country, they wouldn't leave anybody behind. they came to rescue me.

she was still beautiful, lying in a bed of dust and crimson. her head was opened up. like she wanted me to know everything that was in there, no more language barrier.

("Worlds Apart" by Bruce Springsteen, from the album The Rising)

Lonesome Valley

2005-02-22T23:28:00.000-06:00

it was snowing, which is unusual, but not unheard of for this time of year, in this region. i remember that much, because my wife had been talking about doing the spring planting tomorrow, she had gone to bed early to get a head start in the morning. she would be dissappointed. i was lying next to her, trying not to read shapes in the light from the window on the ceiling.

i can't sleep out here, in the middle of nowhere. a city-boy, born and raised, i need the uterine comfort of an endless stream of traffic passing under my window. you know, if you listen all night long, just before you go to sleep, the seemingly random outbursts of violence, the shots the screams, just before you nod off you start to see the pattern.
but the doctors said she couldn't handle it, not since the accident. her needs come before my complacency, we packed up and moved out here. this computer's the only thing that makes me feel like i'm still part of the world. when the morning fog rolls low over the extraterrestrially green grass and out across the pastures, i'd swear we've died and this is where they send the ones who haven't caught on. i never let myself wonder if we'd have been better off, without the doctors, without spendingso much money on all the operations... i never let my mind wander.

it was snowing, like i said, and i was only wearing my slippers, but i didn't notice. i had to know what those lights were, and i kept walking.
there was a whole city out there in the woods, only a few labyrinthine feet from our spacious backyard. skyscrapers that mingled with the canopy of trees, pedestrians and people on bicycles everywhere, looking at my stupid self in my long underwear and bedroom slippers. i stopped and i just stared. everything was like a digital photograph of home, crisp, almost too real, the streetlights haloed and gleaming orange off of the street and the snow, stoplights all switching in time with one another. i noticed a place that looked just like the chinese takeaway we used to get our meals from, when neither of us felt like cooking and we both felt like walking (when we both still felt like doing much of anything) but some man i didn't recognize sat behind the counter, not interested in me. everyone was crossing streets and driving and smiling with friends and neon signs were shining dark alleys being avoided, this was what i missed, everything was vivid and alive.

except nobody was saying a fucking word.
mouths moved, and no sound came out, cars glided across the pavement without so much as a whisper, the only sound i heard was my nervous teeth, and my shifting feet in the acumulating snow, still falling everywhere.

i just ran.
got back to the house as fast as i could, and i've been sitting here since, listening to the CPU hum, staring out the window at the peaceful, darkened forest.

("Lonesome Valley" traditional, performed by The Fairfield Four from the album O Brother Where Art Thou OST)

Morning Theft

2005-02-21T00:04:00.000-06:00

So, the last five months or so i was living with this guy in the city. nice guy loft apartment he was studying to be a concert pianist and we were just friends.

well, that's how it started out anyway three days after moving into the new place my bed caught fire. there is nothing finer than a cigarette and a good book but not if you haven't slept in days and you've been working the night shift. i woke up from a torrent of cold water, him standing above me with a bucket from under the sink i thought he was just being a dick, until i noticed that the fag was much shorter than it was when last i'd wrapped my lips around it, and my bed much more charred than i remembered.

i would've slept on the couch but we didn't have one, what are you gonna do? we were just friends.

(he wasn't the best piano player in the world but by god he had the fingers for it)

so, i'm popping a third piece of nicotine gum into my mouth and trying to negotiate the sticky, stinging lump it's become somewhere comfortable. watching the sunrise between the skyscrapers, the frost on the window becoming fearful. i came in from work and he was still gone. his key slides gracefully into the lock, the deadbolt concedes, a little moan. the kind of moan i -- he interrupts my reverie. i almost mouth the words along with him; i've been expecting this.

i know who it is, too. i've passed the window at the café where he works, seen him chatting with some little fag called tony. tony is a horrible name for a queer. and of course, he's decided he's gay. of course, the gay concert pianist, how quaint.

of course, we always made love with the lights off.

("Morning Theft" by Jeff Buckley, from the album Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk)

When the City Drops into the Night

2005-02-20T00:02:00.000-06:00

blogging in my head on the street striking brick keys in front of a TV store, something is very important, must be said. the eyes of all passing pedestrians (pederasts, probably) betray their countenance of dis-corruption.
"fucking bum"
i can read your thoughts. but i have no time no time no time to waste dispelling the misconceptions bursting open the doors of their tiny minds opening windows to my world no time but soon they will all understand, you see. i am frantically furtively slapping now the keyboard, something very important very important to be said my message must reach the people and i have found a way disseminate it to more than the usual dissidents and degenerates who frequent my streetcorner podium. the illumination of the internet i am infiltrating the backalleys of the information superhighway. because i have something very important to say. i have come here with something very important to say.

there is always that sudden sad revelation that i am only staring in a store window, but that is only illusion, an allusion to a world that doesn't exist doesn't exist doesn't exist DOESN'T EXIST soon i am returned to reality reality this is real the reality of the splendor of my blog my town crier to the world something very important to say.

they gave me a certificate at the institution. i am certified now which means you have to listen to me. and i have something very important to say.

("When the City Drops Into the Night" by the Jim Carroll band, from the album Catholic Boy)