theme of the year.

over the edge of loneliness. over loneliness stretched flat, a glass slate of sky. over loneliness waiting for clouds. or slants of sharp sunlight. or a black storm, to break apart this hard block of blue lit horizon. some nights im drowning in it, all this empty open air. but then i come up, come out. what a clever trick the blues can be. they can tint every wall in my house with hurt. and one yellow morning i’ll slip from under my sheets, cheeks crushed with sleep, and im clean. 

it’s like you have a fever forever, and suddenly, you wake up, and one day you don’t.

pablo neruda.

now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

it would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

what i want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
life is what it is about;
i want no truck with death.

if we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.
perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

now i’ll count to twelve
and you keep quiet and i will go.  

-“keeping quiet”
(heard this on the radio and wanted to live in it for a while.)

i gave up on something lovely for something i hope exists. i may be shooting the moon for make believe. please be out there. dear someone, please exist.

bad advice.

after the first time i loved. when touching was no longer just touching. and kissing wasn’t just kissing. and sleeping next to was its own seismic affair.. after the crumbling of that big first, the next boy i touched was a shadow bag full of comparisons to him. the before. like a plastic container filled with all the ways this one was not. i was duped. i was scalded. i remember the recoil, and the flashbacks that stung at my eyes, like campfire sparks, like fire buds. i remember folding myself into the thinnest half-moon, gripping the mattress ribs and thinking this was how you really let go. because this is how you move on. and now, after every great heartbreak, not that there have been so many, i go through this. in my five stages of grief, touching another and feeling for the last seems to be the start. and waiting for every next touch to wound a little less. 

“you can try to escape the story of your life but you can’t. it happened. the baby died. the dog died. the heart broke. i knew you when you were young. i know your heart broke too. i will know you when we are both old and maybe wise. i hope wise. i know you now, your story. mine isn’t the one that i would have chosen in the beginning but i’ll take it. it is my story. it’s only mine and it’s not over. there’s time. there is time. there is so much time..” (mike white, from enlightened)