“Swan dive swing vote”

That was the title of the piece I tried to write last night. As I typed, words eased onto the page with subtle threads of sound laced throughout and signification as dense as a sonnet. But then it stopped. I didn’t want it to, so I pushed it, shoving more words in, forcing creation into intent until the very subject matter of the work played out once again, as if in an absurdist drama rife with irony. A heated exchange of signals in my brain and a balance of chemicals being tipped to a disadvantage, for me, but potentially advantageous to any who might read it and think so this is what madness sounds like.

PANTS!

These are the pants I'm wearing right now:




They are more awesome than you can ever hope to be.

Perplexed

Two times in the past two days on two separate occasions, a beautiful girl has smiled really big and waved at me as I was riding by on my bicycle. Both times I kinda sensed that they were expecting me to stop and talk to them. But I didn't stop either time. Because I was convinced they thought I was someone they knew.

unimpressive thoughts

1) People like photos with people in them. I've been watching the number of hits on some recent photos I posted to flickr, and I've found this to be true.

2) I am the only person on my hall who actually lives here. The lady in apartment 3312 had a postcard stuck in her door for over two months. Yesterday morning, the FexEx man left a package in front of the door of apartment 3309. And it was still there when I got home at midnight tonight. I haven't heard my next door neighbor in weeks, and I've never even seen the person who lives in the aparment across from mine. On my hall, I am the only person, actually, who lives here.

I guess it begins again

Running into you in places I didn't plan to be. Surprised every time, I never get out what I want to say. That your hair looks great grown long. That your perfume smells beautiful, if smell can be such. Instead I talk small and have no idea what I’m saying. Because your eyes. They captivate, enthralling all of me.

Blessed

Because I’ve found a love I can't conceive.
Because a heart turned to stone has started to beat again.
Because I’ll love till it hurts, then I’ll love some more.
Because I’ve discovered the secret.
Because the cynics speak hollowed-out claims, halfheartedly.
Because a life in his name is never safe.
Because the cracks let the light come in.
Because “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
Because Death has no victory.
Because he’s opened my eyes to see it.
Blessed.
Because we all are. Every single one of us.

Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound

I love you because it hurts to. Because you kill me. And nothing makes me feel more alive than dying.

I’m starting to see something divine in that. You will never be who I need you or want you to be, and that somehow makes it better. Gives me peace. Because that’s who I am to him. I am the one who falls down, runs away, slaps his face. Then begs for help. I am the one who can never be the man he wants me to be. But just once, I swear, I wish I could say that I even tried to be.

Fucked

Because I thought I’d found ‘the one,’ again. And was wrong, again.
Because bad decisions leave scars like sloppy incisions in permanent marks.
Because in times like these, alone is the scariest place to be.
Because a death wish is a life wish gone to hell.
Because yesterday may have been the best day of my life.
Because I can never save you from what he’s done.
Because I’ll break my vow again tonight.
Because I’ll lie and make you think I’m alright.
Because it’s in my genes, a double helix jinx.
Because I’m more than you can handle.
Fucked.
Because we all are. Every single one of us.

Shh...

I love doctor appointments. Over the past few years, I’ve seen sinus doctors (4), allergists (2), general practitioners (2), and an orthopod. I go in and tell them what is wrong. And they listen. Really listen. And that’s what I love about it. Because no one listens anymore.

Surprise

I'm starting to see my life as the day of a surprise birthday party. But the minutes become months and I'm still waiting for everyone to jump out and scream "Surprise."

A Ghostly Jest

I live in a wing of the old St. Luke’s Hospital, built in the 1930s, that some developers gutted and turned into industrial-style lofts. I’ve heard rumors that this had been the pediatrics wing. A few months ago, they put in a new elevator. It has had numerous problems and has been shut down for repairs quite frequently. The latest “quirk” is that once you step in and push the button for the floor you want to go to, the door starts to shut, then opens again four times, finally closing on the fifth. Just yesterday, I noticed that this problem had either been repaired or stopped on its own.

Last night when I came home around 1 a.m., I stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the third floor. The doors shut on the first try, but then the car didn’t move. The doors opened to let me out, still on the first floor. I pushed the circular button labeled "3" again and got the same result. A bit frustrated, I just walked out of the elevator and started up the stairs, which are right next to the elevator shaft. After climbing five or six stairs, I heard the doors to the elevator close and the car start to go up. I came out of the stairwell on the third floor, and right as I was walking in front of the elevator doors, they opened. My rationality wanted to laugh it off as the failure of modern mechanics. But the immediate chill that ran up my spine and down my arms made me wonder if I wasn’t the object of a prank from a child who might have never left the hospital. As I walked down the long corridor to my apartment door, I looked over my shoulder several times to make sure that the unseen was at least staying that way.

This Round Is On Me

Left alone with my insecurities, your words replay in my head. Over and over. “Why are you so self-conscious?” This is not an issue that should come up on the first night we’ve met. But it does and I am and I've got no response. Look away. Pint glass to lips and swallow. I’m not good at hiding and I know why I’ve never played this game. Because the best liar always wins.

the Pragmatics of Suffering

Not long ago, I realized I want to be a writer. Then I spiraled into a depression. Not a real depression, just a poetic one. One morning, I looked in the mirror and noticed that I had grown a beard. And that my eyes didn’t look the same.

But it occurred to me that since I’m not famous yet, my going into a depression would not draw the kind of attention it should. So I decided to hold off on being depressed.

---

Several weeks ago, I woke up from a dream, or a vision of sorts, and scribbled down a description of what I had seen. I completely forgot about it until today when I found the scrap of paper I wrote it on. Here is how it reads:

The not-Philosophy
3:44am
I saw it clearly. A four-dimensional, utterly complete system of thought. It was multi-cubed and labyrinthine. Translucent. Skeletal. Truth was inherent in the structure, but it cannot be spoken or formulated. It was the framework of everything, luminous, floating above me as I marveled at its beautiful complexity. As I began to gain consciousness, the object drifted away, becoming as little more than lightning flashes in a distant storm cloud.

Goodbye, Dresden

It’s not like I knew her. She lived next door for only a short time, six months maybe, but the mere proximity lends itself to a sense of loss upon leaving. Maybe it’s because she left her door propped open after she was gone and the smell of her place filled the hallway. As I unlock my own door, I think how this was the scent that had been closed in until now, how when she would open her door, this is what home smelled like. And it's lovely.

damn you, John Updike

You broke me down again. But I’m grateful, in a way. Janice loses the baby in the murky bathwater. My eyes swell. Harry comes back home.
Nelson, age five, asks, “Baby sick?”
Then the next day, “Is baby Becky dead?”
“Yes.” Harry answers.
And I’m useless for the rest of the day. Because I want a Janice. And a Nelson. And the bad times. Because you only know bad if most days are better. Good, even.

Too visibly unaffected

By the news that you have plans to wed. Because I know it moves something deep in me that previously clung to indeterminacy, or to some impossible possibility that we could—

Never has come just as we knew it would (should?). Yet your reservations reverberate, and I wonder what that means. To me, implicating.

Henry

Phantom my killing is theater
imminent on the object anonymous.
It’s daunting with possibility.
I lie faking if I succeed.

What yellows in my own tomorrow?
Cardiogram antithesis if a reason.
Oh sear is cigarette
as I breathe in again.

All, I come closer in arriving left of
after all our pier is not sunk,
mocking out to sea who aren’t
in epic romance vacuous.


[a homophonic rendering of Sappho's "Fragment 31" with heavy influence from Laird Hunt's The Exquisite]

of Ribbons and Rebellion

I want a typewriter because I think I am supposed to be a writer. It’s what I’m good at, what comes naturally. Words and phrases flow from my fingertips and create paragraphs, pages, and pathos. And if not pathos, at least noises, stirrings, whispers. All the things that are the beginnings of revolutions and rebellion through reticence and recalculations of how you thought of words before and how you will never see them the same again. Or maybe I’ve had one to many whiskey and 7ups.