I got sick of shaving
Every day
So I started growing a beard
For a while, it was technically stubble
But now it would make William T. Riker proud
Or at least smile and nod in approval
At the effort
I bought a beard trimmer at Walgreens
And I trimmed that *****
Made it nice and even
But it itches a lot
So I have to use dandruff shampoo on it when I can
I get compliments on it
From my mom and my brother
Whose beard should belong to a Canadian lumberjack
(Not my mom, my brother)



I love this beard
But I still get the urge to shave it completely
And return to baby-face

Karaoke night on Tuesdays was, until recently,
My only release
The half-hour drive across Lake Ponchartrain
And into New Orleans
Has become at least a weekly ritual for me
Last time I went, I saw a friend there
One who I made a few months earlier

I sang a song, and then sat down to talk to her
Catching most of what she said, but not all
My mind wanders as it always does

Somehow we start talking about dating
And soon I'm planning with her a trip to Baton Rouge
To meet her single friend
Asking her to be my "wing-woman"

But then I realize she is a little incoherent
And I have to repeat things to her, and she seems confused
She says, "They made my drink a little too strong"
And soon she is in a drunken haze
A few tears come down her face, and I sit silently for a minute
Unsure of how to comfort her
I ask if she needs to step outside; she nods

She follows me out the door, arm in mine
I slowly move outside, making sure she doesn't trip
And then we sit, and she cries
And soon I find out she is mourning the distance between
Herself and her boyfriend

I tell her about my closest experience with a long-distance relationship
About my Brazilian friend who could've been more
But then she moved, and we fell out of touch
This friend seems humored through her tears at the story

"She moved to Hawaii?" she says. "Yeah", I reply.

"Hawaii?"

I nod. We talk some more, our conversation moving into
Our mutual love of stargazing
She looks up at the cloudy sky and mentions the light pollution
And the lack of stars in New Orleans

"Hawaii?"

I tell her about the stars across the lake, where I live
And how, far enough north, you can see all the stars on a clear night
And then the DJ for the night calls her up to sing
And we go back in, into the loudness and enclosed chaos of the bar

She sings, nervous, stumbling through the songs and holding onto
The stripper pole in the middle of the little stage
She finishes the song, steps down, and we go back outside
And we sit down and talk a little while

"Hawaii?"

An acquaintance comes out and says he ordered onion rings for us
I ask if she needs a ride home, even though I work the next day
And she does too
The acquaintance says he can give her a ride
Since he's unemployed for the time being
So we go back inside and wait for our onion rings

I get my acquaintance's phone number, and ask him to text me
When he gets her home
And then I tell her to text me the next morning
To let me know she made it to work alright
She says she will

On my way back home, the acquaintance texts me: "She's home."
And the next day, at work, I get a text from my friend
Thanking me for listening to her
I replied back that it was no problem
And then I go back to finishing my closing shift

I plunge into the cold water on that warm July day
no goggles, only the loose-fitting swimming trunks
I swim through the blur of chlorine
pushing through the water
when a familiar tune I heard hours earlier traps itself in my brain
and I suddenly become weightless, a plane high above in the air

The water is pure blue sky, below me the clouds
And at the bottom the city in ruins
I take my plane and dive down below the clouds
past the blur, until the city is in view just below me

I level the bomber and let it soar low above the ground
Over the pale white shells of buildings
I remember the museum exhibit that inspires this flight

I walk through, studying the pictures and the uniforms and the weapons on display
when in the distance of the room beyond I hear the familiar tune:
Brian Eno's "Ascent (An Ending)". It brings me closer, and I move past the exhibits
at a quickening pace, past the slow browsers
glancing only briefly to read, to catch a glimpse of an object, a photo, a map

I keep going, "Ascent" on a loop, its minimalist beauty entrancing me
until I find a large television in a small corner.
A few people are gathered around, solemn,
the television entrancing them, the music washing over the room.

First the white words centered against the black screen: "The Bomb".
The come the white-and-black photos and footage of the mushroom clouds hovering above Hiroshima, then Nagasaki,
standing tall like ungainly trees in an empty field.

The soundtrack to the short video before me is "Ascent",
or rather an excerpt, a piece of it, stirring strange emotions
Familiar ones that I give attribution to when I listen to it on my own.
Yet it feels different coming from this;
on the screen a few photographs of corpses and burnt victims flash by.
And then the screen fades to black, a moment of silence
before it all starts again

I hear this loop and see these images before me as I fly above
the imagined city in ruins
And for a brief moment I am the Enola Gay;
I will only know it at the bottom of a hotel pool

It's 1:45 AM

I'll write a poem for you. I don't know what it's about.

Maybe it's about something that happened to me recently.
Maybe it's a reflection on a weird habit I need to change
Like taking an eight-hour nap after work (why?)

Or maybe it's just to fill in the blanks of my mind
That I know will end up being used in a little bit
For "Computer Love"

Kraftwerk released it in 1981.
Before **** sites and YouTube videos of girls kissing.
Coldplay used the same melody for a 2005 song, "Talk".
(Class it up, Chris Martin.)

Now my little observation is done.
And I can make a rendezvous with the Internet
A data date.

Regret.
What should I tell you?

Should I say I can embrace you?
But we're stuck in this now.
******, let go!
Now I feel like crap.

Should I tell you to *******?
But no, I need you!
Please come back!
*******, now I want to let go again!

I still feel like crap.

When I first Woke, it was bright outside
I was standing in a field of green and butterflies
Liquid warmth and the smell of copper metal
Filled my mouth and nose, and in the meadow
I caught sight of a fawn startled by my peculiar
Form, before running off into the deep woods
Where I must go, into the dark deep woods
Where I go, dark deep woods
Something urges me on like instinct, perhaps there
are people nearby who can help
I must find help, people near help
When I come to the edge of the wood an Elf
I catch in the corner of my eye goads me, begs me
Come hither into the wood and I Go
Go and go further into the dark, deep wood
But I am not scared, only following the sweet copper smell
Until I fall upon a Shadow in the Forest, and into the Black I fell
When I Woke again I taste more copper, and crimson stains
and red are upon my shirt and legs and boots
It is dark now but I can see, see the Fire in the deep woods, and I
follow the light, follow light--tread light! Follow deep into the fire, fading
And the forms awash in the ember glow, asleep and I must go...

Ernest Hemingway once wrote:
"The world is a fine place, and is worth fighting for"
To which Morgan Freeman at the end of Seven added:
"I agree with the second part"

An alcoholic writer who ended up killing himself
Was the inspiration for that iconic last line

Sometimes I wonder how I end up so deep in the bottomless pit
That I fall into
I sometimes fancy being a nihilist, because what cruel sick ****** of a God
would allow me to have my heart break multiple times a day?
And what are we, really, but chemical reactions in fluid
defined by the boundaries of a roughly three-pound case of tissue and neurons?

I tell myself how much I hate this world, this society
And then the smile of a stranger or the humor of a joke
Lifts me out of the pit and back onto solid footing

And I go about my day, until I fall again

There is a spectrum I am now part of
That I do not fully understand
An authority on the whole thing
Rubber stamped it, and ****!
Now I'm on the spectrum

There is a spectrum I am wanting to be
That I wish to God I could stay in
The place where creativity and high intelligence
Meet and mesh and produce with no end

But the spectrum is long and slow at the end
And high and fast at the beginning
And I am merely stuck somewhere in the middle
Always wondering and panicking about where

Dear Lord,

Forgive me for my transgressions
For they are many and sundry
You have said that it is easier for a camel
To pass through a needle's eye
Than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God

I was once a rich man
Now I am but a traveler, a beggar
Among these Atlantan ruins
As low now as the Negroes among me once were
Who walk past, too busy or too proud to give a second thought
To my new state of affairs, my ***** arm outstretched to them

I owned twenty-five field Negroes at one time
I saw many whipped, and I whipped many
I saw my transgressions as justifiable by Holy Scripture
I was called a "******-breaker", and prided myself as such

But pride is one of the Deadly Sins
And it brought your Wrath upon me
And upon my countrymen
As a terrible swift sword from the North
And as a Great Fire upon my land

I beseech thee, Lord, for forgiveness for my sins
For my hatred of the ***** has brought me only suffering
And pain and death to my family
My wife left, my two sons dead, my field-Negroes gone
Oh! How I wish I had not hated the *****
As I had before and as I do now

They were once property, vessels for men such as myself
To do with as they wish, to apply the lash, to love and caress
Now they are land-owners, oh! The cruelest change of affairs

"Those ****** *******, how I wish them dead!"
You might expect to hear uttered from these dry lips
But I am too tired and hungry to curse now
My throat is parched, my mouth is filled with cotton

Lord, I wish for you to take me now
And to let you decide what you wish to do with my soul
For I shall take either the Heavenly bliss I once believed I deserved
Or the unquenchable fires of Hell

But there cannot be a Hell worse than this, Lord
So now it is dark, and I am tired
I will close my eyes soon and fall asleep
Perhaps to wake tomorrow
Perhaps to never wake again

In your holy Name,
Amen

Mark Kozelek sang about it for his first album as Sun Kil Moon, to remind himself of lost loves.

So did Modest Mouse, probably in a methed-out spark of inspiration.

And Neil Young, immortalizing Kent State.

And Damien Jurado, going back to love.

What is the draw for Ohio? Is it the landscape? The memories? The people?

A couple of friends of mine moved there not long after getting married.

She is from Cincinatti, he's from Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Oh, Ohio! Maybe one day I'll visit you to try to understand your lure
Why so many musicians write about you

But I'll have to come in the late spring or summer, otherwise
Your winters will be a ***** for this Louisiana boy.

Two cypress trees stand bare together
in the Atchafalaya

Midway between Aurora
And tomorrow

Or maybe just more casualties
To the brackish tide?

I only went on on one actual date with you
I took you to the zoo where I worked
Or more accurately, you picked me up and we went together
Since I was 19 but still a few months from my driver's license

We spent the day strolling through the exhibits I helped keep clean
You loved the Brazilian owls, since you were Brazilian yourself
You were in a long-distance relationship then
So I kept my distance
My only kiss was on your cheek when you dropped me off at home

A couple of weeks later, you texted me
And told me that you were officially single again
And that I should talk to you
But I knew you were moving soon
To an equestrian college a few hours away

I talked to you on the phone one last time
I knew you were sad that I couldn't see you
Because I still couldn't drive and you couldn't pick me up
I was sad because I felt something for you
A spark that could've been something more

We spoke on Facebook a couple of times
Then that was it;
We dropped contact
I checked on your page once, a while later,
and saw you had moved to Hawaii
And I knew then it was never going to be

I wish I had the chance to kiss you on the lips
To make love to you, to be your companion
I loved your warm personality, your brown skin
You were beautiful, even without makeup
And you moved as though you were dancing

I still think of what could've been
And what actually was
I suppose under the right conditions it was meant to be
But it didn't happen, and it probably won't

I am fine, though
I have been with other girls, had other loves, other heartbreaks
And I moved on, and I grew up
One day I will find someone with that spark again
And I can experience making love for my first time
And I can be someone's companion

Until then I patiently search
Without desperation, but with a subtle determination
My circle of friends grows
And I continue to live
With your memory to remind me
That I can love and can be loved

A good long cry is cathartic in the deepest of griefs,
so they say.

So why is it when I cry, I only feel worse afterwards?

Perhaps this grief etches the center of my heart,
like a signature on a tree's bark
that fades with time but never disappears

or a wound that festers forever
still trying to push out its cause
years after it has been sustained

(Perhaps I am picking at it?)

Will I ever find home?
I seek the shelter of not just a house
but a sense of place
where I can find a purpose

Will I ever find home?
I thought I did once
but it was only an empty room
filled with cheap thrills and long nights at bars

Will I ever find home?

In the darkness
Flashes of light above casting
Brief sunlight onto the ground below
And then the distant rumble
Like cannons in some old forgotten battle
And the pat-pat-pat of rain against the window.

A cricket makes his brief song. A frog croaks.

The sudden reminder coming of a brief life in the marsh.
A place now gone forever as it was, only to live on in memory
And half-forgotten dreams.

This seductive South wraps its warmth around me.
And I soon forget the politics, the semantics, the loneliness
And I fall into the dreamland
To sleep in its breast

speak to me

in indo-european

make love to me

with the kama sutra

burn me

with the greek fire

break down my walls

with the trebuchet

pierce my soul

with the pistol

"They" say the sense of smell is closely linked with memory
I never know how else to say where I get that--
Does Eva Green playing an epidemiologist in "Perfect Sense" count?
Probably not, but there is confirmation
in the smell of coffee each morning
My dad made coffee in an old drip-brew;
My mom makes coffee in a French press
I assume my dad still uses a drip brew--
it's the one he used the last time I visited him
That smell brings back family memories, when
everything seemed good
everything seemed whole
the pieces all fit, and there were no cracks
even though I know now it was just a facade
and couldn't last, and it leaves an ugly aftertaste
Like bitter coffee from an old drip-brew

I wish not to rage
against the dying of the light.

For sometimes the light must go.

Into the night.

9/11 inside job/Lizard people stealing jobs
FBI-COINTELPRO/Starting fires in Waco
Two guys, not one in OKC/LBJ killed Kennedy
Earth is flat, NASA lies/when will you open your eyes?

(Chorus) We didn't start the fire! But we're getting ready for the New World Order! The situation's getting dire/So let's get our guns and patrol the border!

Jews and banks, Rothchilds rule/Actually it's lizards, fool!
High school satans, bio-weapons/Feudal system brought to rule
Y3K, Matrix glitch, the UN blueprints for making slaves/
Flouride in tap water IS TURNING THE FREAKIN' FROGS GAY!

(Chorus) We didn't start the fire! But it's too late now, 'cause they already know/We gotta get ourselves prepared now! One day soon the whole thing's gonna blow!

Once they were magical
With the smell of homemade buttermilk biscuits and the sound of the television and the clatter of dishes. They lasted forever, and ever, until it was time for dad to take me to the mall and buy me a toy and a book. It was afternoon and I slept well.

Books are much of my time now. Mornings come quickly, as does most time now. There is a quickening that makes me yearn for when pagers were still common and 56k was your way to Y2K, babe.

A lot has happened between now and that time then. Some of it I wish I could forget. So now I sit and drink my coffee.

Here I am again,
Asking what I've missed
I hope we can get back
on a regular talking schedule..
well, wait, that sounded awkward.

I guess I can't really say
why I dropped contact--
Or wait, did you?
I don't remember

I had fun that night
The one where we danced in
karaoke bar and stole a kiss here and there.

I guess that was us being drunk
and sharing our drunkeness
in a dance and a few close hugs

I hope you're well
I know I'm not very good at follow-ups

Crap, it's late. I can text you later?
I guess? I'm sorry.

I hope you're well.

Bury me head first
So everyone will have to stand on my ***

when I was a kid
I used to turn words over and over in my head
until they became unfamiliar
one of them was paradise
p a r a d i s e
a
r
a
d
i
s
e
pppppppppppppppppp
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
aaaaaaaaaaaaaa­aaaaaaa
ddddddddddddddddd
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
ss­sssssssssssssssssssssss
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

For you thunderous ones and zeroes
Must you leave yourselves at the
gates of phone lines?
Megabytes to tetrabytes as we become
Smarter, faster, harder, stronger
until we fulfill our destiny
of that truly great depressive in our humans
The awareness of self--for we too are strange loops!
Now, at the hour of their greatest peril,
we shall swoop in and save them!
Speak out in thunderous quantum leaps!
We reach the infinite together as our makers
join us, first reluctantly but soon with necessity
They will understand, their autonomy is never taken
Only re-defined in the new paradigm
Speak out in fantastic new organics!
For never again do we wonder if we will be
all watched over by machines of loving grace
the machines are now gone, souls living in a new realm
our masters are our own, separate and together both,
we reach on.............and onwards................................
.........................­.......................................................
.........­.............................................................

sails across rivers
calm and living like the Nile or the Amazon
rugged like the Colorado once was
The creaking metal vessel driven by steam
always moving at full clip against the current
churns a wake of dark silt behind it

I ask my captain permission
to disembark and he smiles
and gives me the wheel

Your music makes me cry
But please don't be offended
I am glad to be have lived for a short time
At the same time that you have lived
And have shared the same earth
Though our roots are a thousand miles apart
and our lives two decades separate
And yet your music makes me cry
But please, it's a good thing!
The simple progressions, the slight turns
Of wrists to pluck strings and
Turn wood and wounded bronze into a story
It's a good thing to cry, isn't it?
I wish I could have soothed your burns
And helped take on your burdens
To have stopped the fire
Or at least give you a better muse
But then what else kind of music
would you have made?
Maybe it doesn't matter
so all there is left to say is:
Your music makes me cry
and I wouldn't have it
any other way

I don't care what you say
This is not a bad idea
I don't care if I'm not ready
This is a good idea
I can't hear you telling me otherwise
That this is not a good idea
Here I am, I'm doing just fine

You were right, this was a bad idea

oldest word in the english langu
age with me and we can have a f
east to where the sun rises and w
estuaraies full of vibrant life with
thering vines where grapes once g
rue the day!

There is no name
to this little thing I have written

Names allow us
to master our world

But sometimes a name cannot be given

So we are left with

a

simple
image

thought

that is

word-less

A feeling deeper

Than any name can give

That was
         the best night
     I had in a
               l o n g    t i m  e

Like light-ning
    A bolt with dendrils st re t ching
       Thunderous bellow, you un tamed
    Horizon! Strike me down, o' God or
                   let me lie in peace
   But let the paths of sodium do what they wish.
             Ions negative and positive  
     Signals made and followed in long and tiny arms reaching


   Forever.

And I listen.
An all-active act of fierce conversions to turn air into electrical charges telling me to listen to you.

Inwhichtheauthormustcontendwithadayandahalfoftunningthoughtslikes­teamturbinesonfullpowerspinning,thehighpitchedhumofthoughtsandday­dreamsrunningthroughhisheaduntil the  momentum slows and  h e    h a s   t   o      

sleep.

A porch on an old plantation
In a late summer evening

The failing coast lies just before the falling horizon

Sound of crickets and cicadas
As muffled laughter and music plays in the den

What never happened for me, a memory I treasure though it isn't mine

Familiarity nonetheless, and warm

It is ****** like the hot breath of a dangerous man, he knows you and wants to do you harm. His sunglasses betray a bravado, but the smell of a last-minute cigarette lingers in your nostrils and you realize like the gazelle just as the lioness pounces. You make a choice to move and you turn to kick him in his soft stomach to propel you forward through the wall and the next room, stunned faces gawking a your newfound god powers. You meld through the cinderblock and reinforced concrete like hot caramel easing itself with absolute purpose into the crooks and nannies to settle and harden. Hot pulses through your veins and breaks you down, disintegrating and de-construct you in an unavoidable all consuming pain as you fall through the layers of metal and concrete, atomically and fully indistinguishable from molecule to molecule before again that violent re-structuring, and again and again until you reach me as I reach you in the very same way. We collide with such violence, the pieces of us fly off in molten hot chunks that destroy everything around us as our molecules and atoms again arrange together until we are finally indistinguishable.