Wednesday, October 31, 2007

a barrier of language

"Your train ride appeased you?" I asked. "Oh, God," he said, "twenty-six hours, fucking unbelievable." This girl Unbelievable must be very majestic, I thought.

********************

It's not that I'm not saying the right words, it's only that you are hearing the wrong ones.

what once was...

I think I might have ruptured something.

********************

If I don't count my steps, how will I know that I'm alive?

********************

"...stronger even than when he was a child and it first occurred to him that he must try to understand what it could mean not to be alive--to be not in darkness, not in unfeeling--to be not being, not to be." ~JS Foer Everything is Illuminated

understanding astrophysics

outside, it all makes sense. in here it's nothing but numbers. big piles of shit and numbers.

...

I was really never here at all.

So let somebody else devise a cure for it...

Hello helicopter, are you here to stay?
Bodies, rest and motion fighting night and day.
Well it's kill or be killed
and one day we'll get the best of them.
Hello helicopter, will you be my friend?
Will you take me away?

Hello helicopter, have you heard the news?
No one gives a shit about the things they do.
We all waste and consume, destroy and ruin everything we touch.
It's easy not to think when you're not told that much.

~Motion City Soundtrack

********************

What about the pigeons? No one stopped to think of the pigeons, did they?

Sunday, October 28, 2007

let's make this moment a crime....

Maybe it's just too late (I've got to get away)
When everything feels the same (I've got to get away)
Tell me it's not too late...

On and on and on you wait and oh the days they fade away
and all the nights they've never felt the same.
If I was wrong then I was wrong and on and on and on and on.
The things we do are never going to change.

~The Format

********************

Maybe the time will never be right. Then again, maybe that's the point.

********************

In the end, none of us makes it out alive.

********************

"Dad?"
"Yeah, buddy?"
"Nothing."

I'm a sucker for a kind word...

In a house without a back door
I was looking for a fire escape.
And I'll be ripping up the floorboards
just trying to get away.
From this sleeplessness,
sleeplessness, sleeplessness.

~Copeland

********************

I wish I could find this damn movie. I want nothing more than to watch it:

"How come we only ask ourselves the really big questions when something bad happens?"

"How am I not myself?"

"Motherfucking cocksucker motherfucking shit fucker what am I doing? What am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing. I'm doing the best that I can. I know that's all I can ask of myself. Is that good enough? Is my work doing any good? Is anybody paying attention? Is it hopeless to try and change things? The African guy is a sign, right? Because if he isn't, then nothing in this world makes any sense to me. I'm fucked! Maybe I should quit. Don't quit! Maybe I should just fucking quit. Don't fucking quit! I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to fucking do anymore! Fucker! Fuck shit!"

********************

Why is it that I can't seem to bring myself to do anything for school? I really don't want to go in on Monday. I have no idea what I'm going to teach. I feel like crap. I want to go back to sleep until Wednesday so I can get paid and feel better. Teachers hate school more than students. It's a fact of which I am now aware.

I have made a place for you here...

If you don't find the love you want,
if I have acted ungracefully,
I don't want to see you go.
I never meant to make you want to leave.

But go if you want.
Make your way straight to the door.
I hope that you look back before you go
'cause grace looks back before it starts to leave.

It's a fight between my heart and mind.
No one really wins this time.
No one really wins this time.
In the endless fight of grace and pride
I don't want to win this time.
I don't want to win this time.

Change if you want, but don't you go and change for me.
I will love you as you are.
I didn't mean to make you want to leave.

~Copeland

********************

It's the calm before the calm, the storm burning the sky black, turning on itself.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

this is fact not fiction...

I've realized tonight, as I was looking through some of my books of poems, that it has been entirely too long since I've actually sat down and read poetry. And what's worse, it has been nearly a month since I've written a poem, even longer since I've written one I can actually say that I almost like. Nearly this whole summer I wrote nothing. I hate this feeling. I hate loving poetry so much and not making time to read it, let alone write it. I can't really call myself a poet if I never read or write. I'm like a man who calls himself a carpenter imagining shelves in his mind but never touching a single nail or piece of wood.

********************

One of the masters, in my mind:

The Rescue
~Seamus Heaney

In drifts of sleep I came upon you
Buried to your waste in snow.
You reached your arms out: I came to
Like water in a dream of thaw.


from Squarings
~Heaney

xlviii
Strange how things in the offing, once they're sensed,
Convert to things foreknown;
And how what's come upon is manifest

Only in light of what has been gone through.
Seventh heaven may be
The whole truth of a sixth sense come to pass.

At any rate, when light breaks over me
The way it did on the road beyond Coleraine
Where wind got saltier, the sky more hurried

And silver lamé shivered on the Bann
Out in mid-channel between the painted poles,
That day I'll be in step with what escaped me.

one-hundred-foot faces of God's good ocean gone wrong

The vessel groans; the ocean pressures its frame.
To the port I see the lighthouse through the sleet and rain.
And I wish for one more day to give my love and repay debts.
But the morning finds our bodies washed up thirty miles west.
They say that the captain stays fast with the ship through still and storm.
But this ain't the Dakota, and the water is cold.
We won't have to fight for long.
This is the end.

This story's old but it goes on and on until we disappear.
Calm me and let me taste the salt you breathed while you were underneath.
I am the one who haunts your dreams of mountains sunk below the sea.
I spoke the words but never gave a thought to what they all could mean.
I know that this is what you want.
A funeral keeps both of us apart.
You know that you are not alone.
Need you like water in my lungs.
This is the end.

~Brand New

*******************

I feel like complete crap. My body aches. My chest feels like it's collapsing.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

it's easy feeling righteous when removed....

...all you'll get is what you want to hear. It hurts because it should. How else am I to make it clear? I could never be the one that you want. Don't ask. Well, here's to living in the moment, 'cause it passed.

~Jimmy Eat World

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That which needs no explanation:

Homecomings
~Seamus Heaney

I.
Fetch me the sandmartin
skimming and veering
breast to breast with himself
in the clouds in the river.
II.
At the worn mouth of the hole
flight after flight after flight
the swoop of his wings
gloved and kissed home.
III.
A glottal stillness. An eardrum.
Far in, featherbrains tucked in silence,
a silence of water
lipping the bank.
IV.
Mould my shoulders inward to you.
Occlude me.
Be damp clay pouting.
Let me listen under your eaves.


Autumn Sky
~Charles Simic

In my great-grandmother's time,
All one needed was a broom
To get to see places
And give the geese a chase in the sky.
*
The stars know everything,
So we try to read their minds.
As distant as they are,
We choose to whisper in their presence.
*
Oh, Cynthia,
Take a clock that has lost its hands
For a ride.
Get me a room at Hotel Eternity
Where Time likes to stop now and then.
*
Come, lovers of dark corners,
The sky says,
And sit in one of my dark corners.
There are tasty little zeros
In the peanut dish tonight.


God's Woman
~Anne Carson

Are you angry at nature? said God to His woman.
Yes I am angry at nature I do not want nature stuck
up between my legs on your pink baton

or ladled out like geography whenever
your buckle needs a lick.
What do you mean creation?

God circled her.
Fire. Time. Fire.
Choose, said God.

we would have been safe...

It's always necessary...

********************

nothing

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

we were living dreams...

You close your eyes and kiss your hand, then you blow it. But it isn't meant for me, and I notice. If the choice was ours alone, then why'd we both choose letting go? Does it end like this? Time never had a chance to heal your heart, just a number always counting down to a new start. If you always knew the truth, then the world would spin around you. Are you dizzy yet? Respectfully, some honesty, I'm calling out. Do you hear this conversation we talk about? Back away to the safety of a quiet house. If there's half a chance in this moment when your eyes meet mine, we show it. All talk and not a lot to think, we were living dreams. And shame never crept close to our naked feet. If there's something left to lose, then don't let me wear out my shoes - I'm still walking. I tried, but it rang and rang; I called all night. On a pay phone, (remember those!) from another life? If everything I meant to you, you can lick and seal then fold in two, then I've been so blind. Respectfully, some honesty, I'm asking now. Do you hear the conversation we talk about? Back away to the safety of a quiet house. If there's half a chance in this moment when your eyes meet mine, we show it. Oh, oh take it all back, take your first, your last, your only. Oh, oh take it all back, take it all back, everything you showed me. Oh, oh, this must be how it feels when the feelings goes. I told you as I hovered I'd never felt this way. You said "I had the shot that stops my clock," baby it's okay. You said you'd never have regrets. Jesus! Is there someone yet who got that wish? Did you get yours? Babe? Respectfully, some honesty, I'm asking now. Do you hear the conversation we talk around? Back away to the safety of a quiet house. If there's half a chance in this moment when your eyes meet mine, we show it.

~Jimmy Eat World

********************

There's always something left to lose.

********************

I've determined that the future is bleak when the past is so hard to let go of. Life is nothing but inevitabilities. Living is just trying impossibly to avoid them. The past is the sum of inevitabilities that have happened that usually determines the inevitabilities that are to follow. I've made enough mistakes. I've allowed myself to run into the inevitabilities and never flinched when they smacked me across the face. I've had enough. This needs to end. I can't let this rule and ruin my life any longer.

bring back the sun...

A little white house. It’s everything we've dreamed about.
I wanted you to know: I’m hanging up my ego.
We shouldn't have to fight or worry about the bills tonight.
I wanted you to know: I want to be your shadow.
The mystery's gone so bring back the sun.
We’ll bury this hate and build it with love.
The grass wasn't greener, I found.
I wanted you to know: I dug you up a rainbow.
I know, I know I failed you.
I hope, I hope we get to sunny days again...

~OLP

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Farewell...

"So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear."

~Milton PL

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The worst part about knowing the truth is you can no longer believe anything else.

Poison Trees

If you knew what I know, would you try
before your time has run on you and worn you down?
Would you know what you desire in your heart?
If you knew what I know, would you try?
Is there time? Is there time, to follow just one desire?
Is there time? Is there time, to follow your heart?
Dress your wounds. Test your strength. Face the night.
Crave the touch. Feel the pain. Know the signs.
Is there truth in your pain? You decide.
If you knew what I know, would you try?
Is there time? Is there time, to follow just one desire?
Is there time? Is there time, to follow your heart?
As we lie in the shade of poison trees
are we as safe as we let ourselves believe?

~DC "The Shade of Poison Trees"