The Jewish brothers in Defiance were definitely tough.
One wanted to **** many Germans, the other to save many Jews.
The German soldiers were expendable, unmarried, unremarkable.
Each little death was very little, a little spittle in a big wind.

Fast forward to my friend's son's bar mitzvah or daughter's
coming of age ceremony. Food is abundant, the music frenetic,
the rabbi paid. Gifts generous but not obvious.
Wealth does not obviate death and we know it.

Here too we have natural leaders. Youth basketball coaches,
school principals and, again, interpreters of prayers. When
violence comes to the neighborhood they are who we'll first look to
for governance and guns. Unless have you read The Admirable
      Crichton?

Boredom, boredom conflated with loneliness, may be a sign
of good luck. To live a good length or light year away from man's
bad breath, allergenic perfumes, sickening flatulence and shed hair.
But you are drawn back into the debate about perfection by your own
      *******.

While teaching at the old city jail I have learned this: only meditation
upon the periodic table can save your soul. From itself.
Imagining the world without the self will make you whole.
What else is there to say. Do less until one thing's done well.

After the war the brothers started a small trucking company
in the Bronx. Grateful for such peace, the accounting
was relaxing. They thought back to how they met their wives, naked
before the bombs and bullets. How they lost and found themselves in
      what happened.

ACT I: Collecting Jigsaw Puzzles

My life has been a series of jigsaw puzzles, the first as pretty a picture as you could wish to see.  It never occurred to anyone that anything could mar the image of a bonny baby in all her glorious honey-hued, gurgling perfection.  

They never found out who crept into the playroom and stole the first piece. It was only one little piece – the size of a sixpence on the baby’s left ankle.  Hardly noticeable. A pity though that such a pretty puzzle should be incomplete.

The next piece to vanish left a leaf-shaped hole in the baby’s back. Did someone accidentally knock over the board? Perhaps the lost pieces are on the floor or down the back of the sofa.

But if that is so, why could they find no trace?  Surely it had to be the work of a thief because it did not end there.

The next puzzle was a toddler.  How strange that the same pieces were missing here too.  Not only that, but a third and fourth piece had gone – the other ankle this time and now a tiny gap at one corner of the child’s mouth.  Why would anyone want to remove random pieces of the puzzle? And how did they do it without getting caught?

No one had any answers.

Successive puzzles depicting a panda-eyed schoolgirl, a shy adolescent, a carefully groomed young woman – all plundered by unseen hands – revealed more and more of the blank surface beneath and ever less of the subject herself.

One day I opened a new box and asked myself “Is this puzzle half here or half gone?”

There comes a point when a puzzle ceases to be a picture with gaps and becomes a blank space strewn with fragments like the excavated remnants of an ancient mosaic.

Would some archaeologist dig me up and fill in the blanks to show posterity what I once looked like?

The jigsaw of a woman in her 40s would have been quick to complete, since so few of the pieces actually connected. Scattered across the board, it was impossible to decide if they, or the space between them, were the real object of the exercise.

I suppose it all depends on how you look at it.

Over the course of 50 years my unplanned jigsaw collection progressed from Bonny-Baby to Can-You-Tell-What-It-Is-Yet? What would the next puzzle be called… The-Invisible-Woman perhaps?

If you think jigsaws are frustrating, try my next hobby…

ACT II: Painting by Numbers

Number 1 was the original skin tone, a light golden beige, my favourite pigment.


Number 2 was the colour of nettle rash, mottled and roughly textured.


This was closely followed by number 3, a stark white, applied almost symmetrically in random patterns, some clearly delineated, others splashed carelessly across the canvas like spilt milk. (No sense in crying over it. There is no cure. It won't **** you.)

There’s nothing quite like summer for bringing out the colours of a painting.  A hat and long sleeves were no match for the persistent sun and by the time the picture was finished, the numbered paints ranged from 1 to 20 with a different abstract brush stroke to go with each one. My canvas contained a tortoiseshell patchwork of shades from brilliant white to violet, golden ochre, burnt sienna, chestnut and scarlet.

And yet this was the height of my blue period.

I had to paint by numbers for 50 summers before I could enjoy my third (and final?) pastime…

ACT III: Joining the Dots

By sheer fluke, at the age of 51, I discovered the secret of the missing jigsaw puzzle pieces. They were there all along – just not visible to the naked eye.  


They had been starved into transparency but, as I began to feed them, atoms of them materialised like specks of golden ink on blotting paper.  Tiny dots like pixels on a grainy satellite image, jostling, overlapping and joining together until they looked something like the missing jigsaw pieces - if a little mottled with mildew.  

And gradually the mildew has faded - along with the sense of loss - to reveal glorious, even colour.

Of all the activities I ever found in the playroom of my life, the most cherished, the most miraculous, the most deeply longed-for and appreciated has been this game of Join the Dots - an unremarkable pastime, you may think (if you have never walked in my shoes), but one which has brought me on a return journey along a jigsaw road from
Almost-Invisible
via Can-You-Tell-What-It-Is-Yet?
past Half-Here-Or-Half-Gone?
by way of A-Pity-That-It’s-Incomplete
and finally – if not quite back to Bonny-Baby – then at least back home to a grateful woman of a certain age who can look in the mirror and smile to see her whole self.


   Vitiligo: A Play(room) in 3 Acts © August 2013 Vitiligo Protocol

and then i am left,
at the upmarket stretch of sand
straddling this most unremarkable state,
quietly flicking my thumb against the blue lighter.

but it's too windy, at the water's edge
in an unremarkable state,
where no one recognizes me,
that bagpipes start playing

the wind acts against my fingers,
they are too delicate, too feminine,
no callousness ever affixed to these,
my ten silken extremities.

Mass appeal is mistaken for quality.
Communication makes a poor commodity.
TV shows you how to be and what to think.
This normalization is enforced vulgarity;
in the common, Value is lost in translation.

For a slave, meaning comes from authority;
guidelines from following superstition;
truth from the politicization of science;
acceptance from the surrender of identity;
morality the mortar that coheres the chains.

Beware accolades, whether peer or stranger.
A tempting gratification yields mediocrity alone,
self-indulgent narcissism too shallow to measure;
for in the end, it is always so that the unremarkable
is celebrated most vehemently by the unremarkable.

Hush.

Cease your noise.

Fall silent, all you who gather here
To lay down the suffocating burdens
That rest so unforgivingly
Upon your weary souls.

Your lamenting shall bring you
No greater harm,
Nor any relief,
While you are here.
Your cries will go unheard,
For we have either heard them before,
Or we cannot hear them over our own.

Your tears will be free to fall
But none shall amount
To any great difference.
If you must cry,
Water the earth with your expression,
And return to her
What she once gave you.
Do not let your tears
Of loss,
Be a loss themselves.

We are here together
To break free
From all that binds us,
All that holds us back,
Holds us still,
Holds us captive;
All that has broken us,
Beaten us,
Forgotten us,
Used us,
Taken advantage of us,
Looks down upon us
With the kind of sneer
That could only come
With deriving great pleasure
From causing great pain;
All that has brought us anger,
Sadness,
Incredulity;
All that has taken from us
The light by which we once
Tread our own paths,
And as it grew dimmer,
Our paths,
Winding,
Weaving,
Twirling,
Crossing
But never so that we met,
Became one.

And we are here
To let go of all
Of these things,
Because of which
We have harbored
Unspoken rage,
Unshed tears,
Confessions that were
Never made,
Or perhaps,
Never should have been.

We are here to release
The binding ties
Which in love,
Would bring us together
But in their hateful existence,
Have driven us all apart.

I stand before you with a match.
This match,
A rather unremarkable
Piece of timber,
Was tucked snugly with its
Equally unremarkable
Brethren
Into a pouch.
Thrown among a heap
Of the same,
With no consideration
That it might have
Been better off
Remaining a part of the tree
From which it came.
It was one tiny part
Of that tree,
But what of the possibilities,
That it might have been
Something great?

It might have been a branch
Upon which an eagle
Built its nest.
Or, even more incredibly,
A twig that helped compose
Her nest,
And for however long,
Supported the incubator
That would bring her legacy
To life.
It might have been a part
Of a ******'s dam,
A vital part of an ecosystem,
And whose absence could mean
Life or death
For so many others.
Or it may simply have become
Compost
When the tree had died,
Become a part of the soil
Which would support
Future generations
Of every lifeform imaginable.

But now...

Now, we will never know.
This little match,
So very typical,
With its plain composition
And tiny red cap,
Will fulfill a typical purpose,
Today.

I strike this match
And say to you,
The flame that it will create
Will be the new flame
For your personal path.

It represents illumination,
A casting out
Of the darkness you were in,
A reawakening of all that
Might have been lost,
But can now be saved,
Or that has been lost,
But now makes room
For something better.

It is a rekindling
Of the joy that life once
Brought you,
And the magnification
Of that joy
Which it will still yet bring.

It is a revitalization of the good in you,
The light which you shed
On so many unappreciative lives;
A light which
You still have the chance
To shed
On those who truly need it most.

And it is a reminder to you...

...to not be a match.

Do not let them throw you in
With the rest,
Assort you as though you
Are common!
Do not let them pull you
From everything great
That you might yet achieve,
Just so that they may
Assign you a typical purpose!
Do not let them light you once,
Use you,
And then cast you aside,
Having already taken,
In that one small flame,
Everything that you had to give.

And now,
I light this match,
Upon the branches
You have laid here.
The branches that
Have broken off of
Your tree of life,
And now can be no more.

For everything that you have lost,
There is a branch for it.
Remember, now,
That what once was alive,
And has now been separated,
What is now dead,
Can no longer
Serve a purpose.

So I tell you,
Pull from your heart,
Your mind,
And your soul,
What has had the undeserving
Privilege of plaguing you.
Extract it,
Remove it,
Cast it into the fire.
Set it ablaze,
And while it burns,
Abosrb the warmth
From these flames,
Which remind you of
Who you are,
What you are worth,
And the warmth
With which you will
Illuminate
The darkest,
Coldest places
Where you, yourself,
Have returned from.


Cast them!


Cast them now!


Push aside the weakness -
That is not who you are!
Summon every fiber and cell
Of your newfound strength
And let all of it go!


And now,
It is done.


Now,
They are ashes,
To be blown away
In the same wind
Which dried your tears
These many years,
And will do so
For years to come.

Incinerated,
They are swept away -
The broken hearts,
The lost and forgotten dreams,
The stolen opportunities,
The harsh and unforgiving words,
The hopeless, sleepless nights,
The sunrises which brought no new promise
But reminded you of everything
That could go wrong -
They are gone!


They are nothing now!


But you,
In their absence,

You...


...are everything.

We had a color you and I.
You were a tantalizing white, vibrant yet subtle. You had the power to magnify everything because of that silent manifestation you comprise when a drop of any other shade was splattered on you, making it incredibly vivid. You were what poets used as muse for there was nothing purer than the flawless white of that glorious spirit yet you were neither dumbfounded nor disappointed by it.


I was a disaster-prone black, ill-fated yet beautiful. I made the light seem brighter, more picturesque; a comparison for better accomplishment. I came out at night to walk the terrors of the hours of darkness, untouched because of this gloomy soul. I was what the holly book prohibits to touch, to indulge all sensations because to drink from me was to imbibe a gallon of sin.


Sadly, beauty and unpleasant have a curious way of finding each other. I don’t remember which of us found the other first; if it was I who saw you shine from miles away or if it was you who found me huddled in a corner.


We were gods you and I. we created a love that transversed worlds. We shamed Orpheus and Eurydice. We disgraced Torin and Keelycael. There was nothing more powerful than the passion we twisted and at the same time nothing was more potent. We came from different places, you from the havens and I from the shallow depths of hell; and everything we made became a freak of nature.   


 We created the color gray.


We created the color gray from our undefeated essences. We made an unremarkable and unloved color from our insurmountable selves for the reason that we were too prideful to give up each other and at the same time ourselves. We made an abhorred thing because we were never meant for each other.


I realized when I saw you walk away, that last dreadful night, the white in you was somewhat fazed and I looked in the mirror that same night to see the darkness in me leaking. There was a little bit of gray in both of us. That was when I realized we stole pieces of each other.


Yes, my love, we made a color gray.

"bleed·ing heart"
a person considered to be dangerously softhearted
feeling sorry for everything and everyone and giving in to emotions quickly.

“My heart bled today.”
Nothing new, same old routine, same old unremarkable usual thing.
They say over and over, Repetition is key. The key for what, I may never know.
Things often moving quickly halt and take on the slow.
The same people, the same faces, the same air, the same places.

I’m a person with a bleeding heart.
It’s dangerous to lead a life like mine,
Sadly you can’t escape the family bloodline.
Constantly stuck in a place between the planes.
I can’t help what’s running wild, pumping through my veins.

No rest for me. The others are already gone.
My logic quickly left along with the dawn.
My bleeding heart might just be the death of me.
I would show you I am hurting but we can’t seem to agree
I am all alone surrounded by nothing but my own suffocating thoughts.
I can’t breathe and continue to find myself at a loss.
A new beginning. The strong will live, the weak will die.
It’s tattooed into the minds of the people in the city as a nearby excuse for people like me.

Yes, there are others, but they are far out of reach, conveniently unavailable.
The rest of us have been wiped out and deemed unfavorable.

What am I?
Just an unnoticed vessel of the human soul
and all of it’s dangerously soft-hearted mannerisms.

I have a bleeding heart. I do not deny.
Left alone for the beasts to tear apart.
But I cannot help but look to the sky.

I despise my nature, my being even,
Curse my benignant soul,
And my lack of self control
What’s left for me in this cruel world?
Run by unintellectual imbeciles running off their own flawed reasoning

A divergent past, lies in ruins which was once filled with memories and happy experiences,
I was once just a kid lost in her own place, drowning and begging for help but no one came.

Perhaps, I’m not as much of a person with a bleeding heart as I possibly could be.
Perhaps, the legacy I leave behind will be nothing but a life of running away.
Perhaps my bleeding heart only bleeds in contrast to the reality around me.

“Because it is mine, it will always bleed”.
I am stuck in this life of heartache and unwelcome spilled blood, but it will be alright.
Because I won’t give up, not until I succeed.  
I will make it one day, even if there is no destination, I’ll go just to see the sights.
Bleeding heart and all, I will fight the war, not backing down, but disappearing at midnight.

where were you when I came out?
seventeen
asleep in a Philadelphia suburb
with that man
you called
boytoy
lover
caccoon
because everyone likes to feel weeks of web
crystallized between their sweaty toes

I was an unremarkable specimen
called yoda because of the hairs
on my ears
a baby with a flawless twenty digits and
hands like a
painter’s
but love was spring
and had to wait for the grass to green
and the retrievers to shed their
winter coats
so their owners could curse
and huff
and sneeze

you
precious
Kurt Cobain fan
and all things hip/hop
with those glasses and that hair
asked to be my sister
but caught unaware
with **** in your shorts because
you never saw me coming
and
how alike we were
and
what if we met
somewhere
someday
and you said
yes
this is my brother
this is the one who I lost
in the spring

I am nervous.
I feel the moths in my belly,
The kind that make you sick.
The kind where you are worrying
But have not been given the reason to.
I am worried that I love them.
I am nervous that they will break me.
I am scared that they will wake up,
And see me as unworthy.
Unworthy of being called beautiful.
Unworthy of their presence.
Unworthy of their love,
And maybe I am.
They are so good to me,
More than I could have asked for.
More than I could have dreamed of.
I wished for someone to love me for me.
To see me as something special,
But I never have been.
I am not the golden child.
I am not remarkably intelligent.
I do not have a special talent.
I am remarkably unremarkable,
And maybe I never have been worthy.

Where the whole that was
has finally
fragmented,
descending in an open, unremarkable blaze.  

And so pieces of me shall collide
with the ground,
implanting fractures
few shall discern.  

And the winds of days
and nights will continue to
persuade the dirt unto me
so my morose roots will not grow,
infesting a world undeserving
of my inadvertent pollution.

T'is silence leaps from one self to another. Betrayal, o betrayal, doth greet it-so violently and startlingly, along th' entirety of its journey! Undelightful as 'tis, but made worse by t'at hostile dubiousness. Another fact aside from its ambivalent hatefulness: recognisable to every questioning eye-is t'is downright scary on its own, with unmolested quietude, and ******, but involuntary, unspokenness. Resolutions made within undesirable ambiences! Sacrifice t'at outwardly suggests th' presence of glam profuse in rich elaboration-but bland enough! And on top of all, t'is brimming immovability, and 'tis pool of doubts is causing me but to commence feeling weary about 'tis raising thorn. How didst I send myself into ferocious wanders-about t'is airless rooms, heated like sunflowers bathing themselves to death on th' giggling surface of raging snow. Battle of nature-and war of its childlike beings! Like a stoical plant in th' midst of 'tis glittering forest; vacant and idyllic-passive and unquestioning towards th' blades of farmers t'at come to exploit 'em: with morbid and futile, savage desires for rebellious treasures-unbecoming in t'eir temporariness, and unavoidability of sincere devotion as t'ey wilt soon leave t'eir offspring bereft of t'eir provisions once more. Yet look, look how red t'eir eyes are in t'eir hunger-eccentric vivacity gloweth in t'eir eyes, but mockery governs 'em-as ruptured t'eir weak souls are, by loathsome uncertainty and severe senses of greed. How t'is consideration made aggravated; agitated my soul is-o, seriously agitated! Yes, indeed! No longer doth vanity boast away about being my pride, but th' sultry pointlessness of my power of self-esteem. How melancholy t'is life is! O, and th' raising thorn itself, th' one aforementioned so discreetly within my fourth phrase up t'ere-growing dominantly and selfishly-aye! every day, is unlikely to be abashed by any remorseful incarceration, or stony suicidal attempts hurled by t'ose disgraceful beings out t'ere; but in t'is case, yon disgracefulness is comprised of grateful swarms of exquisite laughter, divine in its own roots, like th' sacred nook of a moonlit river. And how t'ere, on its most godlike slice of rock-so dearly scented by nature and innocent greenness-a sight be so dear to my longing eyes, shalt thou dwell with thy poems, and heart trembling with thy fullness of passion. For me, yes, for me, selfishly! O, my love! Cannot help I uttering thy name-thy very name, whom I am undeniably besotted with, like a feverish storm mooning over its lifelike sea, and whose eager cruelty so invincibly blanched by 'tis romantic tides-gone as it is, in just a seeming couple of cordial seconds! My love, whose name is so unmistakably dear to my heart, and indisputably belongs to 'tis greedy layers-ambitious, my love, desirous of,  and bland to solely th' dormant rains of thy love! O, t'ose pristine tears of blessings t'at are volatile but decorative to my half life-for thou art unarguably th' other half of me! And splendid in t'is very breath, t'at recognition t'en beats furiously along with t'is frail voyage of my humanness-grounded inevitably by unremarkable velocity are my wheels, and sometimes imprisoned in helplessness amidst th' pursuit of my fierce dreaming. But I admire 'tis core-as it is but thy warm, genial slumber; and 'tis skin is but th' very depths wherein I conceal my very whole love for thee. My love, my darling! If only thou wert here-yes, here, querida, to indulge t'is pr'saic quietude, shalt I shrink into nothing but a piece of thy fallen star; and t'ese feeble hands shalt t'en thou own, just as thy heart I should'th won.

sometimes

I wish that I could get out of here, away from the dead thud of your approach.
You remanifest with a mouth full of flat line, nothing’s changed.

A man with the same nature about him, the same engorged rhetoric toward life
I wished to bury in my garden long before. 

A wound in the backyard, untraceable and
unremarkable.

Not of my heart but of Her Red Sea in which you reside now 
Only as blood. 
Buried along with my naked, along with my softness and my victim.

When all this is over, don’t look at me 
and expect to see the same person.

Inadequate to the task
Humbled by the enormity of our love,
The perfection of our joining,
Where are the words kept that sufficient
Honor and portray what we have achieved?

You seated, beside me by the bay, finally,
Two old adirondack trees side by side,
By the sheltered place you bequeathed me,
Where poems are raindrops, so numerous,
And you, if not the subject, the source.

The waves rolling in, mirror the
Fluidity of thy dancing,
Fluidity of the adaptation,
Two lives, now one bay blue colored,
The merging, the unification,
Many waves, but one bay,
The Bay of Us.

Yet so different.
We are cloud worshippers,
Does not the Skye's Tableau inconstancy,
Mirror our ever changing form, individuality,
Yet, one sky,
The Sky of Us.

So many times have I lain be-sided
Even as we this afternoon sit now a-sided,
Tears welling up, above and beyond control,
This man's steady nerves, constant on patrol,
Our secret open, visible, un-hided,
Your are my Magi
My Yogi,
i.am, your, obedient devotee, shaped to you please.

This is the birthday present my words present.

Words, unremarkable,
Except for the contentment
That lies within them.

Let me love you more,
Recklessly abandon norms,
Kiss you at the supermarket, at the opera,
Unashamedly, take you in my arms
Wherever wonderment and wandering lead us.

T'is so very hard to compose
When tears flow upon my writing tablet,
To wipe, blot them away, I refuse,
For tears are joyous emblems,
Salty badges of love,
All compliments of our complementary beings,
The Tears of Us.

The soaring music we gather in.
The shimmering sparkles upon the bay,
My gift of natural diamonds better, this day,
Than jeweled glitterati I hide in the refrigerator.
All this treasure, part and sparkle of
The Treasure of Us.

T'is truth,
I know not, forgot, your age nor care,
The day the time the year,
What matter they to me these artifice markers,
I weep carelessly, undone, overcome,
Every day, but this day, most, united joy.

Need-No reminder,
I am a survivor,
From a concentration camp
That slow programmed to destroy,
Perhaps the kindness you claim
As the hallmark of my fame,
An inadvertent gift, from the devil?

You shook my hand on our first meet,
Don't think, have I ever let go?
Let me be your driver, entertainer, your only poet,
Let me be whatever you need,
Even as now, I laugh-cry, your tissue carrier.

For t'is I who weeps and keeps
These tissues as part of our history.
You are the first,
Who has ever read
The Words of Us.

A plant grew in a forest
beginning as a sapling in a crowded opening
two inches tall
with no idea of what it was becoming
it rose slowly
but consistently
as others rose above it for light
it reaped the benefits of leftovers
this plant grew
not to be the tallest
not to be the prettiest
but it grew
It took in carbon dioxide
and released oxygen
it did its job
it was a good plant


eventually like most things this plant died
after being trampled by a young boy
this boy visited this forest everyday
its nature was his greatest toy
he knew the surroundings by heart
from the tallest tree to the smallest shrew
he saw all in his dreams
he knew all the plants save for a few
one of those few was our plant
although it stood tall, it was not tall enough
although it was pretty, it was not pretty enough
it died unremarkable
it was a good plant
it did its job
but it died without a trace
because it never risked to take another's place


and so the boy grew older
he left the forest for an office
in the hopes that one day
he’d be rich enough to return
so he climbed the ladder
and said all the right things
he was a good man
he did his job
until he met a girl
a girl so powerful
so unmistakably perfect
he had to rise above the others
he left his job because he hated it
he stood tall to reach the sun
he took risks not because he had to
but because he wanted to


this man died poor
he did not succeed
there was no beverly hills
no millionaire mansion down the street
this man never climbed that corporate ladder
never got lost in the rat race
never missed the birth of his son
never broke a promise to that boy
he took a risk he shouldn’t have
an unnecessary leap of faith
he looked back on his past
the trouble he left in his wake
he remembered that plant
the one he didn’t see
the reason he is who he is
the man who became a tree


take risks because you should
because one day you will die
buried under dirt
while your life has passed you by
life is too short
too precious
to be a good man
to just do your job

I want to write a bad poem
A cringe worthy, generic, forgettable poem
Maybe something along the lines of...
                       ...your bruised arms around me
                                   left a hole where my heart should have been....
That was a good first attempt at bad, I reckon.

I shall litter said poem with words I found in a thesaurus,
(iridescent, luminous, diabolical, sacrilegious, egregious etc.)
and elements of nature,
(infinite blue skies, bubbling starfish pond, burnt autumn leaves)
and vague ****** references,
(satin bedsheets, steamy phone booths, glistening skin)
and unremarkable idiosyncrasies of past lovers
(you always filled your pockets with loose change;
you always peeled the apple bottom-up;
you always blahd the blooh blah with your blah-like personality)
and lastly,
but most importantly,  
the stray allusions to a life of tortuous heartache and unfulfilled dreams.


Zzzzzzzzzzz

I imagine, quietly,
if this were it.
If, while I waited on this train platform,
this ever-romanticized,
transient in-between,
someone pushed me into the tracks.
It would be an accident, of course.
What was I waiting for, anyway?
The news would hear it first,
and they'd be the first to forget me.
Clamboring over my unremarkable story
to the next and the next and the next.
I hope I'd make a favourable statistic.
Then what family I have would hear,
once they determined who I was,
and they'd worry I wasn't pushed.
They'd have so many questions
I'd be unable to answer,
much like when I visit.
Then would come a lover,
as sad as those who loved me,
and they would keep my photo
until they grew tired of looking.
For their own sake,
I'd hope they got tired quickly.
Friends would remember me
and tell me kind words I wouldn't hear,
and I'd be of no help to them anymore.
Every once in a while,
I'd come up in a conversation,
and I'd hope they'd grin at a memory,
but it would be more likely they'd frown.
There it'd be,
my young life detailed
in saddened conversation and tears,
until I'd be left another piece of the past.
The statistic of an unremarkable life.

One constant in my unremarkable life
The infinite ringing of tinnitus
Ignored by methods learned so long ago
I could not remember to teach them to you
Certainly not fail safe methods
With age it seems harder not to listen
And lament as it gets louder
Slowly, slowly, barely perceptibly
Louder
As through a screen I listen to things
From the dullest congressional hearing
To the most exquisite music
Of Gustav Mahler and Sigur Rós
I know there will come a day
I will not be able to dissect the intricacies of a randomly chosen Mahler symphony
Or appreciate the perfect bliss
Of Jónsi channeling angels
Breaking barriers, cerebral and ethereal
How will I remember this divine sound
When tinnitus masks the music of the spheres?
Will my memory ability do it justice?
Soon, oh graceful Lord, soon the curse will overshadow the blessing
And I will have to stand condemned of it being my own fault
It makes me want to cry when I say
I'll miss all music
For music has been the most trusted and reliable friend I've ever known
Sacrificed for what? Persistent ringing
But who knows, perhaps the tinnitus
Is to keep me from hearing the voices that accompany schizophrenia
Perhaps that's the sacrifice, the trade-off
Godsent music the price to keep insanity at bay
I must not think that way
Though my years are getting shorter
And tinnitus will surely claim my hearing sooner rather than later
I can't let myself feel guilty
For basking in the sonic waves of comfort
For playing Riceboy Sleeps again
Listening for the million musical noises
Floating around in the atmosphere like fire flies on a dark, humid summer night
There are recordings of ghosts on the record
I'm no para psychologist and I don't even believe in ghosts
But I swear I hear their mournful cries
Pianos in empty rooms
Simple melodies picked out by no hand at all
Sounds that cannot be identified
Pin ***** starlight shines pencil thin bright light beams
That show the moths and dustmites hanging from the air
Riceboy Sleeps you can wear like a cool coat or hide beneath like a sheet waiting for Answer Man to come get you
Stalling, stalling to keep you here until the absolute last minute
Something so strong that even tinnitus can never fail to steal it's otherworldly beauty
And though it's true I would choose Mahler over Sigur Rós and Jónsi/Alex
To be stuck on that desert island with
It's only because I think his symphonies would be better tools against boredom, so complex and intricate they are
I could live 50 more years and still not have heard what waits in his symphonies
Jónsi's voice is carved on my heart
I take it with me everywhere I go
I will never lose it
It is indeed part of me, even as it grows in it's mythology
Jónsi will be with me always
Even through the gates and down streets of gold
Mahler, though, will take a long, long time to work his way into my memory banks
Though he my not totally succeed I know
I'll get more than enough
And the desert island experience
Was only made tolerable by those 9 symphonies either in the Claudio Abaddo versions or the Muchael Tilson-Thomas cycle
So I keep 'em both
And in similar ways my tinnitus is staved off by
Message For Bears
Immanu El
Stafraenn Hakon
Yeasayer
Jean Sibelius
Gregor Samsa
...there are many others
   Stand against tinnitus
   Pray a miracle from God
   To point out
   Unrecognized silence

the nature of a woman is pain
she lives in silence
not a nail in sole would rouse her
she is not perturbed
but you will believe it
so she won't make a sound
for her voice is deafening
billowing with accusations and slander
how could woman not be happy in her confinement?
she is exactly how she should be
when she is small, mute, and most of all unremarkable
no woman should have the gall to look a man deep in his eye
if not without her clothes
so keep your head down *****
or you will be dealt with
man has the power
the strength
the resources and
the will
to take you
to **** you
to **** you
learn now and in earnest
lest your beauty or pride dissuade you
from finding your place in this world

It hangs on the wall, in its place, solid, unremarkable. Outside, the seasons change, the Sun rises and sets, time passes. The cupboard is full now, and has been for many years, a place to put things and close the doors, hiding them away from casual guests and inquiries, one in a row of solid boxes mounted to the wall, doors are straight, hinges oiled, it hangs true where ceilings meet walls, and walls meet floors, and floors absorb the many steps of those within. And I, I spend my days filling the cupboard with past lives and past Life, and no one looks within but me. Its shelves are full now, but rearranged at times, the faces to the back for now, the names placed in the front for easy reaching, times and dates to the side, all within reach and sight for when I need to look and remember, safe behind the oaken doors I’ve closed. A rare day indeed, of late, do I open it, washing away the dust of years, taking notes and inventory, each item in its place, filed in memories and dreams, then closed again. A half empty glass sits on the counter below, the setting sun throwing thin beams of light through the window, the cupboard now in evening shadows, waits… and stays solidly quiet in the darkening room, content with its place and its purpose. Quietly, night falls, birds hush, stars gleam dimly in a darkened sky, and within, ceilings meet walls, walls meet floors, and floors wait for quiet steps and the cupboard still hangs true and straight, a place for a sleepless hand to open its doors and place a dream within. It waits… unremarkable… solid…it waits.
                                                                                                JC 2005

Revel in space, yet not darkled, still
the **** and span of things that breeds
airlessness; The trees are evenly cut,
and their overgrowth seems like a forethought.
Where I am from, we eat fish with
our bare hands and our furniture, from bodies
of sandalwood, crushed with the scent of
peregrines. The morning makes you conscious
of space, and altogether the height of trees
syncopates to a nauseating stillness. In the awning
hours, leaves punctuate the ground – the cicada
with its machinistic song prowls, spills like
water from a broken vase toppled by me
years younger, raw, agile, deftly windless,
  wounded in love, lovingly wounded,
perhaps if there is a word for it, then let me
have my way, easily fraught with its meaning:
   a casualty. Sometimes the timeworn folks
would light cigarettes underneath the canopy
of a mango tree to banish ants and send them back
  to their queens – roosters in their wrinkled stations
croon in stasis, a song for the somnolent. I become
what the seasons evict. Constancy. Rearing weight
and gravity from nocturne. Tears are communal.
They make us aware of the weight of the Earth.
Somewhere, a funebre stilts through the silence,
and the jangle of little pieces spells out fortuity,
men in huddles mending pain by the sleight of hand,
a toss of a card, spinning in its imaginary axis: fate,
   feigned and fine-tuned to belief that it is controllable,
a variable, or a tabulation marred by frailty. From where
I am from, people stride through the streets naked,
soldering baskets filled with fruits gossamer from the
harvest, children suckling their mothers, the music of sweeping
metastasizes throughout the afternoon, and the same clouds
contort themselves to afford wry proposition: it is a day tender
with wonder, its allure overwrought, its sheen unremarkable.
  The funebre leaves with a necessary abundance of absence.
All the leaves depart from their mothering boughs,
  collapsing on the dreary back of the loam like penitence.
Like how once when you were young, you tinkered with
the fresh scab of your wound and felt the pain confine
  itself there, a part of you, that has now healed, but is still
      available for the world to break once again.

magic amplifies in my loneliness a single flaw.

a bird, a high window.  sound of a brain cell.

hunger and its unremarkable kitchen.

as a doctor I hammered the baby’s knee.

bio, and the undisclosed location of god’s recovery.

harm is harm’s audience.

The color blue has always been just that to me - a color. A plain, unremarkable hue that I never thought twice about. It was the same as any other color - no different than the color of a dull pen or the gray skies on a rainy day. It was a common color that I had seen a million times before in a million different eyes.

But then I met you.

Suddenly, the color blue took on a whole new meaning. It was no longer just a color but a reflection of the depths of your soul. Your eyes were like pools of shining ink spread across plain pages, filling chapters of my life with every glance. They were like a bright summer horizon that expanded before me, stretching as far as the eye could see. They were like a vast, infinite ocean of sparkling blue, and I found myself willingly drowning in your color.

Your eyes are not just blue - they are a world of their own, filled with depth and meaning that I never knew existed. They are a window into your soul, and every time I look into them, I feel like I am seeing a new part of you that I never knew existed.

They are the color of your laughter, your joy, your love, and your pain. They are the color of all the things that make you who you are, and I am grateful every day that I get to see them.