fair

well? perhaps.

this site has been draining itself
dry for months now

it's just plain silly how very true
that the more you open
the more you leave exposed,
out your control,
the more that flows,
flows from you
you alone


so let's put on this act
the one that we've rehersed
to the point that the lines we recite
become wrinkles
on an exhausted face


so many things are just plain over.
now.

gushing is the last one would expect

and i was preoccupied, changing my name,
creating a fictional address
just so i could buy porn online

what little chariot of wild horses
would come bearing down upon
this stick frozen by time and the chill of a lake?

i, for one, was not sticking around
to find out



the scene always reveals itself in the past tense
and the arches of feet ache for the miles of rocky
dust ahead

sometimes a shoulder stand is better
than a head stand.

today is a good day for this one, a still life

by William Carlos Williams



so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.



---------

(pay attention to the ordinary, the small things

the quotidian.)

the cold water is always so warm

and it takes more than a minute
to register the command:
"cold, drinkable water now, dammit!"

expectations are not always so accommodating
to instantaneous need

even after years, or just a few weeks
we are still waiting
for the right response
("right" of course being the demand of intent
we attempted to create)

...influence only goes so far...

hiccups are oh-so-symbolic
if you want them to be

the most over-looked,

under-rated condiment EVER is

horseradish.


and that's all there is to say about that.

a time for the new?

i was thinking about starting up a new blog space, a new manila folder to contain writings of a different kind, a new space to carve out in my mind, an online portal into a separate section of thought.

this has nothing to do with the new year.


to quote a band that i referred to in an email to friends last year upon the changing of the calendar..."so this is the new year/and i don't feel any different."

that does not apply in this situation. a new year, with all of its culturally imbued metaphors of change, growth, and progress, can certainly begin at any time. i prefer to make my "resolutions" well in advance of any particular time change. besides, my "new life," or whatever, began a long time ago. fuck forget january first. the conventional symbolism of that day, like many named holidays, is just another day to colonize with commercial messages and PR campaigns. pessimistic? sure, why not. i'm a big fan of the alice in wonderland tea party song that goes something like, "a very merry un-birthday to you, to you..."

funny, those Washington Sports Club ads with the "desperate" RESOLVE text and imagery, nevermind the sad appropriation of tracy chapman's from-the-pit-of-heart-and-head anthem...

if you're going to do it, do it. the word "try" should not be a part of anyone's vocabulary.


and about that other blog...it may be in the not-so-collected works.

when did it become a job?

did it always work this way? centuries ago, was the pressure the same?

when did the word Labor become synonymous with the idea of just going out and doing things?

i guess it's just part of the process, part of the becoming ______. well, maybe it has more to do with an audience. when your audience becomes a list of people with names you don't recognize, and the pressure of ownership/responsibility to history and the push for something more, insight (the kind not tucked into ad campaigns or magazine articles), becomes a weight, one that is light as a feather and stiff as a board...

well, that's when you leave the computer and turn of the tv.


but first...

from a movie i just watched: "he just pulled out a gun. it's not like he even fought in a war."

last line, before changing the channel: "i try not to want what i don't have."

let us speak now

let us speak now,
or forever hold our piece

(that's right, you know the peace i mean.)

a soundtrack to our lives could replay
all of the words that should have
would have
could have
been

but instead
white noise fills the gap between
crickets clicking away at the closest moon
that hangs its light
just so shadows can be born

would
have
could have

(to have and to hold to have and to have not)

would have
could have
have their own ring
their own way of becoming audible
to the composer, the only member
of the audience

< hold >

so many songs are sung about silence
none of them come close to mimicking its echo

< let it reverberate >

Hold. perhaps the only word
worthy of capitalization
when standing alone.

there is something about histories

there is something about histories
and the way they always seem to repeat
themselves (ourselves) when we've reached
another new plateau

despite the evolution of the self
the self returns to that same old
sickly little self
wicked ways can't change
the hearts that have memory programmed
into the pattern of its pumping
of valves and vessels, in and out,
values exchanged from ventricle
to ventricle
the rest of the body
can't take
the continued flow
of past to past and past again
though it's learned how to oxyginate
and recycle
the past (its food for thought)

somehow, with time,
we reach the surface of the skin
the elements remind you, reconnect, you
to the reality of what was
for the first time, automatically,
the nervous system reacts
and the blood that is shed
is not saccharine
not of salt
but of a wish,
a wish to continue,
to close
the proverbial chapter
the one that has her as the lead
and you waiting in the curtains,
the wings that could lift you to life
if only you could remember
those lines you know you
can finally say.

ways to torture a broken wing

stem from the insecurities that are best hidden by daily engagments with calendar items
to do lists
checking stock quotes...

a yellow door is the gateway
to admitting one's failure at
facing the hard stuff

but that's why we turn away, isn't it?
because it's "the hard stuff"
the difficult things
really facing the issues
at hand
or,
stuck on the bottom of your shoe


mourning any loss
only concludes when we die
we become a collection of souls we encounter,
the pennies given to us as change
from hands we never hold
histories we never meet,
as we let the change
drop to the ground
and pass away

we keep the private stuff private
and annouce our commings and goes on away messages,
email reply receipts
"out of town"
"not here..."
"currently away from the computer..."

currently away
from any sense of responsibility
to the past
we refuse to face
to touch
to admit
to the ones that matter(ed) the most.

(all of us are with wings.)

alternative skies, and opposite risings of the sun

provide an element of escape,
for a while
then it's Back
From The Time Change, to
old realities
brief encounters
with the same faces
you didn't miss
while you were out

if Fast Forward is always
the speed of life to which you
return,
when does the PlayBack begin?

fog begins to burn
off of hillsides I have taken in
as new friends, morning confidants
and I'm already dreading the plane that waits
thirteen hours from now for me

why can't Escape be a part of
Real Time? Virilio says Real Time
is prevailing over Real Space - we have become
the architects of our own
Speed Pollution - the ability to author is not dead,
just threatened by widening gaps between
push and publish...active
and inactive...

"The ship that sinks says much more to me about technology than the ship that floats!"

why fight this little bit of writing
on this little bit of blog?

let me, instead, walk into the mist
of paragraphs better left unsaid
and wrap myself in the silence of bodily travel,
of transport by quiet information,
inviting the delay
between Here and Now
as a new friend that refuses
to be
given a Name.

malaise is the new mauve

your order will be processed momentarily
someone said we are all cartoons -
best to select Standard Shipping

velvet pants can only get you so far
- is that thought comforting?
can it be?

perhaps it is more claustrophobic than anything

then there were no words


somewhere someone was sleeping and said
- i know i try and you cannot give

well, isn't that what we do?
walk awake to run at night,
remind our legs of their purpose?

i, for one, cannot stand
on more than three legs

then the damn butterfly metaphor
fluttered into the room again,
unannounced, as always

a canteen eventually runs dry
and maps charting an escape
lead to too many places
we've already been

this weekend, and in other news

Buried Treasure

"...from the rock, lying with its head bent back as if held by the current against a stream bank, it evokes, far better than any mounted skeleton, a real animal that lived and died..."
[emphasis added]

still,

Current Headlines

"...there is not much research about how...[relatively stable institutional environments]'play the game' when the old 'rules of the game' are gone and new rules are..."

from,

The Center of the World

"...when he assumed power...[it]...was still on its knees...from the decade-long catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution..."

noted, from the passenger seat, located on the side of the road (an obvious error of judgement made by one in the driver's seat), a young,

White-tailed Deer

"...one can estimate the age of whitetails by examination of the teeth. At 9 months of age the fawn will be acquiring the middle pair of permanent incisors while the remainder of the incisors as well as the premolars will be milk teeth. At this age one molar on either side of each jaw is well developed while the second is barely breaking through the gum. At the age of 1½ years all milk incisors have been replaced by permanent teeth. At least two molars are fully developed while the third may be in any condition from barely emerging from the mandible to fully emerged. At the age of 2 years the full set of permanent teeth is acquired. Beyond 2 years age determination is somewhat uncertain but can be roughly estimated by the wearing of the teeth. Wear of the teeth is gradual until at 5 years the ridges of enamel are no longer sharp, but rise slightly and gradually above the dentine. At still later ages the crowns of the premolars and molars rise only a short distance above the gums, and the grinding surfaces are worn practically smooth.

Contrary to popular opinion, it is almost impossible to determine accurately the age of deer by the number of points on the antlers."

Like walking through an Open House and seeing little red and blue dashes on the corner of a kitchen wall, lines that mark the (former) territory,

so much depends upon

growth and Development through Enterprise

sometimes we send messages to those we didn't mean

to receive such words, emotions, threads of meaning in our little, carefully plotted knots.

like living in a house where most of the mail comes addressed to people you assume lived there before yourself.

like living with roommates and trying to guess from the dried crusty colors on bowls and knives which one ate what.

(eventually all of our furniture becomes extensions of our selves.)

the messages we compose to the ones living in graves are perhaps the most easy to deliver, and the most difficult to compose. of course there's the knowledge of the decomposition of the meaning between thought and send, and then there's the obvious --- i am only talking to myself if the person i love is no longer physically able to hear these thoughts?

but if they were alive, would they really hear? would they take the time laid into the pauses between vowels and punctuation to get the sense our little language is tooled to deliver? that's why dead words -- songs, poems, emails never sent --- are perhaps the best words. they can be called up at any time, quoted, referenced, by the individual attempting to re-compose, to re-connect. but these words too, like the people to whom they are referents, also live in a time and place of introductory experience that has already passed. ... what i write here is never meant to be sent to anyone. that is why it lives in a world of strangers with back buttons and search capabilities. a wide world of access means that those meant to hear are rendered silent by the cacophony of software traveling pairs of eyes to a one-way conversation with a mirror image that can't see the black beyond the glass.

too many and too few. that is all i could ever give to you.

if the bare bones begin to break

like damp toothpicks between frustrated fingers
and the wickedness of the wind
begins to match
the color of your mis-matched socks,
the anger between your intestines and your spleen

let nothing but the cold fill your gut
and reach the top of your head
slowly through your toes,
xylem to your phloem,
wood to your whisper
conducting all the memories that have turned to mud
and laid themselves into the graves of cracks
between poured concrete

step on a crack
step again

leap, look, laugh, lunge

your lungs are nothing but
tracheids you'll never use
vestigial only because
you still live for regret.

when will the old me

when will the old me
meet the new me
that's already having
the tea you hate to drink
with the me from the past
the one that used to agree
with everything you said
until the new me
had that, and a lot more
to say
to you, and me
whatever versions they may be

did you read this month's edition
did you catch that post?
me neither.

let's leave
before that last train.

someone said something

someone said something
about art
and the making of something good
if it's not perfect
(there is a perfect)
there must be something
in a reaction, a gut-spoken response
maybe a rage
maybe a silent silent long look
to communicate to another
"yes we both know."

in the knowing do we find
what we think we are looking for?
no.
absolutely not.
it's just the closing arguments
to the always already stated
"this confirms the self.
through others we define ourselves."

give me that conversation
that word
give that look that says

..."we are for each other:
then laugh...
for life is not a paragraph
and death
i think
is no parathesis."

I am my own moving target

i am my own moving target
in a shooting gallery
made of glass

clay pigeons beat me
to the finish
and i'm running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running

running
running
running
running
running


out of time

in the

in the hazy shade of memory
you were covered in white light
a finger raised
as if to say
"all of our dirty laundry comes clean."

pointing at the sky
white and white blended into blue
your raised head was a signal to
do the same

"we all make our lives into this shade
stop wanting
and the light will come."

stop wanting.

i brushed it aside
licked the skin of my arm
(the part before the shoulder)
and tasted the last of you
before falling
into the sleep of day
(the last shade of night)

the curtains close
and a shoulder to bear
marks our remains

our december has come and gone

our december has come and gone
and baby, it's cold outside
it's cold outside and
i won't mind

these veins of mine
won't leave my body
i don't mind
i don't mind

just leave me here to become the moss
that covers the floor
of the forest i've lived in
for years
let me lay me down now
i won't mind
it's cold outside

let me cover it
cover myself
in the cool cool moss
of the last long summer
i won't mind
if fall is what you had

had in mind