Our workday selves are here.
In collared shirts and typing on a desktop.
Our emotional selves standing nearby.
Silent, carbon see-through copy.
I pause from the spreadsheet
And remember seeing her on an ad yesterday.
The me, standing silent next to me
Lets out a groaning scream
Like someone lost in the woods hysterically
Trying to put a new tire on a truck.
About to break into sobs from the helplessness.
Shrill and extended the scream
Makes the air and the walls and the computer screen
Rattle like they're being throttled.
I stop typing and stare blankly at a
Paint chip on the wall.
Floating on my back in the waves of the
Screams filling the silent room.
"Eh." I shake my head.
And go back to the spreadsheet
As the screams go on
Full force
Without me noticing.
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 11:33 AM UTC
Surfing channels on your car radio,
And there’s a great song covered by static.
A few words to know what it is, but oh well.
I closed the book on her a few years ago,
But at dinner yesterday I could almost hear it.
It breaks me like glass every time.
May 24, 2018
May 24, 2018 at 2:32 PM UTC
Writing is just like *****
It spills out.
Until it doesn't.
It's been years since I wrote anything
That I cared about.
And even this feels fake.
Forced.
Yeah it's late, and I'm drinking, and sitting in the same room I
Used to.
But its a different life now.
Like remembering thunderstorms I watched as a
Kid, I beg the skies to rip open again.
Then maybe,
What I write will feel like its real again.
And I can stop waiting for a reason.
And live in the vertigo of the retching and
Writing.
How I want to be sick again.
To live again.
Apr 7, 2018
Apr 7, 2018 at 1:51 AM UTC
Remembering a ghost.
A shadow waits in a room now.
While the hollow body walks.
But the body and the shadow,
Remember a ghost they'd rather be.
He died and they're the leftovers.
That ghost really lived.
Sep 12, 2016
Sep 12, 2016 at 9:29 PM UTC
And he was so powerful.
That after his death.
Past time,
After all the comings and goings
Of a million imagined heavens.
Into the deep black frothing at the sides with stars.
They would scream his name.
And he was so powerful.
The most that had ever lived as we could understand it.
But, the scream never made a sound.
Against it, it found the rushing of a roar.
The deaf wave of a quintillion and many more.
Souls deafening any single brightness.
It was only what it was at the time.
And it was all of what it was.
There is the matter and the motion.
The matter, didn't matter.
That it moves is important.
That a half dozen billion other carbon made,
Things are moving with it matters.
To look at any one.
Is meaningless.
To look at any moment.
Is meaningless.
It is the rise and fall,
The roar of millions across the thousands of years,
Becomes the lapping of waves.
From incoherent screams,
To the soft speech of a force.
Jan 8, 2016
Jan 8, 2016 at 6:56 PM UTC
We don't.
"I don't write to be understood."
Some author or other said once.
Maybe. I want a creative answer.
Write up a Rorschach test.
And hold it up waving until someone sees,
Something worth having.
"Oh that must be...
I understand."
I don't.
But someone does.
That's a start.
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 12:55 AM UTC
Vertigo. Maybe it's like that.
Like.
going blind.
Like
from that science show
Where a man said he couldn't see,
But walked down a hallway,
With obstacles.
Where. You.
Keep doing whatever you're supposed
To be doing.
But your eyes.
Your real eyes.
That ***** of the intellect.
Slipped right out of your head
Down a curvy,
Sticky, bumpy metal slide.
And he isn't having a good time of it.
I don't think he planned to.
It's just so hard in there.
And you have him running around
So much.
Lately.
And you're sick. But you're fine.
You turn the tap and there it goes.
You hide in this, and where do you go?
I can put together a life.
I can make a hell of a pitch.
And Lie Lie Lie
on a resume.
To a board.
In a suit.
I can lie and not even try.
But what is it?
A lie until you find the right thing?
the right thing?
What's that?
Is it like The One?
Where songs start, "making sense?"
"Oh you'll know it when-"
-
"Make your hobby into your job-"
-
"If you love what you do you'll never
work a day in
your
life."
But let me work. Maybe.
Let me do my thing that I'm supposed to,
only I can do,
And let it just be done.
Is it so much to ask?
Like a guy in a suit goes into the office,
And clicks away at keyboards.
And clicks away at pens in meetings.
And clicks away
An click away the day?
And all day he wants to go home.
Because home is better.
We ALL know that.
He's a working man.
We ALL know that.
He should want to go home!
We ALL know that.
we all want to go home too.
He checked in, and did all the work he was
supposed to do. So go home you're done.
You did your thing.
You were built for it.
You reached it.
Take.Some.Time.Man
I want to do it. Whatever I'm here to do.
But I'd like to get it done quickly.
And just, check out.
Dec 11, 2015
Dec 11, 2015 at 2:25 AM UTC
I hate it.
For a musician,
Maybe it's fun. The beat.
To keep you alive.
But writing is just like *****
That sometimes,
Spills out all night
After a terrible day.
All I want is sleep.
All I get is words puking out.
Sharp little hands crawling up my throat.
Scratching on my teeth.
So up I go. Fumbling for the lights.
Again.
In the dark.
To let them out.
Dec 11, 2015
Dec 11, 2015 at 2:12 AM UTC
I feel like there's this second life being lived around me.
One of those toys. Where you wind it up. And it
Spins all over. And falls over. Spent.
The other life might be like that. Where a gear gets to winding,
In this standing thing that,
Thought blank I guess. Seems quite not
discontented with all this standing.
And there's this burst. All this flying around
and schools and cars and highways and highways.
All these roads swirling around on, riding
on?
And then I drive up after my morning classes.
And just don't want to leave.
But the winding has to start again.
Some law. Nature.
I get cagey. But mostly I'd rather not leave the cage.
So this other guy with all his motives and ****
With his resume. And his fantasies of
martyrdom and heroism and political
winningism.
His campaign t-shirts.
His volunteering.
His training.
He stands there and puts up with me.
Real me.
The. Me.
The guy writing to you. Real me.
He puts up with me until all the cranking bit
is finished and he zoom off away.
Sometimes though I think. When he's walking.
Or when all the walking and talking and training
stops.
He thinks about me, and why his chest feels so cold.
He's off with his fire fighting.
friends, work, homework, campaigns, life.
And I'm just shivering. Waiting for a body again.
How else could I write you this letter?
I have to wait for him to circle back.
To miss this chest full of fear.
To come on home.
To what he should be doing if he could make any money at it.
and if anybody ever saw they'd put
it in a magazine.
But we don't care about money.
I've never wanted anything that badly.
There's no place I'm furious to see.
(though I like those relaxing ones)
We just want to do that thing we're supposed to do.
The ticket out.
I'll keep on writing.
(I feel good about it)
And he'll keep on with the life saving.
And the TV show happy face,
Real jobs and everything.
Until it washes over.
Like a cliche preacher would say.
Or warm surf.
But I hate the ocean.
Hot air in a car after all day in the cold
classroom.
It'll come.
And I'll just go.
Warm.
Dec 11, 2015
Dec 11, 2015 at 1:53 AM UTC
You ever stand there,
In the Fall dark.
Hearing the City as a groan.
And dogs fighting past the yard.
And think. That's something.
They have something.
In some yard I've never seen,
But I know is bare of grass.
From kids and paws.
Where there's faded plastic
Rotting toys.
The kind you pedal around in
Or gnaw on.
Or pick up and know the cracks.
Because you bought it new,
But now.
And those dogs, with another
dog for each.
They've got something.
I've got bread. Good dark stuff.
And a pen. And lots of other things.
And people. And places.
More than those dogs.
I don't know if I want any of it.
Love and comfort, great tastes and sights.
I know I'd feel sick if I ever lost it.
Just, sick at the void.
That I'd have to fill of go down
The change would worry me.
And my stomach.
Who really does his own things.
All those kids at that pep rally
Who watched how that warm soda unfolded.
Unfolded may not be the
best way to describe horrible
acid ***** humility that I brushed
off then but worries me so much now.
The change.
I think mostly I'd like to sit in the
Same place, and do the same things,
And drink the same couple of root beers.
And just see how all that goes.
Dec 11, 2015
Dec 11, 2015 at 1:40 AM UTC