A Summer Evening With A Best Friend

this is a cloud in the sky that looks like a dragon
and this is the reflection of your eyes reflecting my eyes reflecting your eyes reflecting...
and that is a little boy riding his bicycle
and this is a city park and it's 8 PM and I don't know when we got here but it's been awhile
that's alright though, that's just fine

so we can stay here a little longer, take a few more sips of wine
enjoy the evening air, breeze coming off the water
maybe go on the swings, until you hiccup, and stumble, and I have to catch you
and it's time to go home, so up you go honey
I can carry you off to the car if your legs are too tired or just not working right

now we can enjoy the sunset with the wind keeping us awake
with the windows down, and the music loud
some local band that's filled with friends that's singing about a lake
and a girl
and some mistakes
and the world
and the lyrics don't matter, it has a nice beat that I can drum along to
with my fingers on the door
and your smile sings in harmony while your foot taps on the floor

Brief Break

I will be in Chicago for a church service trip from the 20th-27th, so there won't be any posts this week. Sorry for the delay.

Run Run Run

Let's not slow down, let's speed up
Let's hit the gas, gain momentum
Hitch a ride out of town, you & me
And hang out with the sunsets and the rockstars
Look for eternity in children
And newborn youth in the old

Ah! Man! that's what I want to get away from too
the rigid rigidity of my poetic form, the concrete-infused rhymes and punctuation
I want to write poems that live! that breath! that lust!
that stab and run and drive recklessly and live more fuller than their readers, than their editors, than the dull men setting type and chaining them to pages
I want to scrawl my poetry! in sharpie on a bathroom wall, with a ballpoint pen I found in the street in a notebook I picked out of the trash, spraypaint on the underside of a bridge, jotted onto a postcard- these are the forms I want my poems to adapt to!

I am tired of sitting at a keyboard
Staring at a screen
pressing keys down, and giving you all exhausted rhymes that don't aspire to live, just mean (but to live is to mean, more than anything else!)

Ode To A Chair

Oh, chair!

You lift me up, you defeat gravity without any effort at all
You've held so much weight, so many bottoms
How many years? far longer than I've lived
Chair, you soldier, working on through spills of food, burns, scratches
Initials carved into your skin
Chair, you trooper
You are braver than me
You sit silent and bear your load
Drag your cross without complaint
Chair, I salute you

I just read The Road and it made an impression on me, but what kind I don't know

"Hey"
"Hey. Why'd you wake up"
"Are we okay"
"Of course we're okay"
"Are you sure"
"Of course I'm sure"
"I don't feel safe"
"Baby, you're safe, I'm here, I'm watching, you're fine"
"…"
"Okay"
"Okay"
"…"
"…"
"Are you sure"
"I'm sure"

lines

god

i should have capitalized that

but the agony of pretentious poetry that uses words like "agony" to describe the feeling i get at night isn't something i enjoy

like the heaviness or denseness of the sentence above, presumed literary content

fake

crap

just dust on the ground

and i am too full of stuff to not explode, but i need you, i need you

erasing what's behind and following my tail and nothing is nothing is nothing is real like what's real is real is real

Surgical Thoughts

I want to cut you open, break your heart, then electrify it and make it race
Make you live like never before on a surgery table
For just a few moments, before we all die

But if you knew how I felt, this would all make more sense

And I want to take the streetlights, pull the light bulbs off
Make you a bouquet of these beautiful lights
Or take all the stars, and make you some earrings
To dangle against your softly lit skin

Oh, if you only knew how I thought, you'd let me into your home
And give me a place on your couch

Oh why do the birds always fly south for the winter
Why do they always fly south..

Don't Like Love Me, Love Me

Don't make me cry
Don't make me fall on my knees grab my head in my hands choke on the lump in my throat
the involuntary contractions the saltwater leaking out
Don't break my heart
Don't make me feel like all the love in the world is just lies like I'm endlessly naive I'll get lied to over and over and over like it's my problem relationships are tough the little differences the little stupid differences that get inside my head


Like a blurred wet photograph, love me
Like a faded print tablecloth, love me
Like the sun in the sky or the blue in the sky or the broken pieces in your eye
Love me

Fall in glove

If I could fall in love right now
I would not, except with you
If I could breath the stars and sky
And see in endless shades of blue
I'd only breath the smell of your hair
I'd only have eyes for you

So please don't leave me so far behind
Darling please don't give up hope
One day we'll see the morning sun together
In a quiet room, all alone
And I'll mark wherever you are as the place that I call home
But until then we'll just have to deal
With what is cast our way
And struggle through the endless nights
The numbing ceaseless days

Oh honey
I can't finish the words
This just won't come out right
I'll just cut this off right now
And wish you sweet dreams, and goodnight

Emotional Investment #1

I couldn’t keep my eyes open. They just shut. At first all I could see was the light shining through my eyelids. My limbs were heavy, and I couldn’t seem to move them at all. Gradually the redness faded from my vision, and it all went gray. I could make out nothing at all. My limbs lost their feeling of heaviness, but now I could not feel them at all. I felt as if I could wave them about, but I could make contact with nothing, or even see them. Suddenly, as if a wave was washing away the grayness around him, a figure emerged. He was great, huge, far bigger than me. But he was also far off, enough that I could see him all without having to only see one part of him at a time. Looking, I knew who he was; Infinite Sadness. His robe was frozen in a tangled wind that did not blow, and his face was a mask frozen in the act of howled agony. I could almost hear his scream hovering in my ears like icy water, not moving, but detectable. When I reached the end of my endurance, I snapped into awakeness, my eyes still closed. The red filtered through my eyelids. Tears began to well up, but I feigned sleep.

The streetlights floated in the air. The pavement looked hard and orange in the light, and seemed to radiate energy. I started running, as light as a bird on the wing. I rushed along, and barely felt the impact of my feet on the sidewalk. Everything seemed to Be, and I could not help from laughing. I lost a part of me in the moment, and cannot remember when I ran out from under the lights back into dark.

My vision began shaking. The anger overtook me. My hands could not remain steady, and there was a lump in my throat. He reached forward and shoved my chest, and in the same movement I grabbed his arm and twisted him to the ground. I kicked him hard in the side, stomped on his chest, and slammed him in the temple with my heel. I slapped him and spat in his face. I screamed, and told him what a disgusting useless pointless fake utterly disgraceful waste of blood, air, and sex he was, how repulsed I was to even touch him, how much I hated everything about him, how I would order his death in a second, how he meant nothing to me, how horrifying it was to know he still existed, how I was at a complete and utter loss as to the point of a pale greasy sleazy shameful worm such as he. Then I ran as far and as fast I could. And then I cried until my eyes were sore.

The light played through the blinds as I lay by your side. And I knew, nothing could be so perfect as this.

But As For Me

I will shave my head, I will change my name
I will bedeck myself in jewelry and not act the same
I will endure upheaval and change in a struggle for my name
I will cross roads a hundred times and see something new again

While the wind pounds at the windows of my home
I'll be hiding under a bush thirty blocks away
And while the sun fries the eyes of the blind
A church will be my dark cool refuge from the day

I'll seek out the weary and the shamed
The garbage members of society
And ask them what they do to survive
And learn what I can before I die

I will destroy the middleman
I will breath in through my own nose
No oxygen from pipes or pumps
No children-woven clothes

[I will drive on muddy roads
In places where yankees should not go
I will splash through water stained with oil and fear
And run towards what I know I must find]

Father's Day '08

We visited my grandpa in his nursing home today for Father's Day, and I was left alone with him for a few minutes while my dad went to go find my mom and sisters. My grandpa has had several strokes, and finds things like talking and remembering who people are difficult. I normally just sit off in the corner; I don't know what to say to him. But we had a brief conversation this time:

Me: "Hi grandpa."

Grandpa: "Yeah!"

Me: "Happy Father's Day!"

Grandpa: "Who are you?"

Me: "I'm Walter, Mark's son." *gestures down the hall toward where my dad went*

Grandpa: "Oh, okay." *smiles slightly*

He was looking directly into my eyes throughout all of this. It was unusual, I had not actually spoken to him and made direct eye contact for probably a year or more. From the look in his eyes, I could tell he was trying to place me. Or maybe he knew who I was, and was just...I don't know. I cannot guess at what he was thinking.

It occurred to me later that he had, in a way, returned to being a baby. He is no longer capable of feeding himself, dressing himself, even going to the bathroom by himself.

I'm sorry we never really got a chance to get to know each other, Grandpa. Happy Father's Day, though.

Message In A Radio

Baby

Don't you weep. No don't you weep for me, for there is no one as lucky nor as gifted as I, for I have seen the sky torn in two and I have felt the light caress my face and

Darling

Don't you pray for me. Please don't pray, I've already gone and talked to God, and we figure the two of us have everything worked out okay, and there's nothing but smiles now, nothing but smiles

Sweetie

Don't you miss me now. No, you can't miss me, 'cause there is no one who is as happy, as light, or free as I, who can fly on the wind and soar through space and dive every depth and win every race and

Love

Please believe me now. Please believe, because I can't, and I'm still not sure.

Honey

egfiuhgiuaehfihgeuihgaghaeohgeohuodhgviuwhgrhurouhsghi3q2235258794285732328930
5270397#################################-----------------------------------
-------------------------__________________________________________________

the sun
fell
and I
tried to catch it
but it burned me very badly

To: The Global Artistic Community. RE: You.

Please stop. Please. You are killing me with your art and your self expression and your plumbing of feelings and your search for meaning and truth. Please stop it.

It hurts. I am an artist too, and what you do- it attracts me. I cannot help myself, I cannot turn away, I have to look and gaze and experience what you have done. And it hurts me. On the inside I am blind, confused, sore, raw, and I cannot confront what is there without flinching.

Please stop. If you are really the loving, feeling community you are..you will heal me. Or give me time to heal. You will put down your pens and your pencils and keyboards, your cameras and your paintbrushes. You will let me scab, and heal, and grow a new self. And then I shall be ready for your introspection and your feelings and your pretensions and your elegant language, and I will be able to approach it and join in and be able to wring meaning out of it, and we shall all be the greater for it.

But.

You will not stop.

The world is a machine, a corporate process that consumes, changes, recycles, spits out. everything. nothing left untouched. And you, you artists, you feelers, you introspective thinkers; you are part of this machine. No individual can make a change on you, unless it is a streamlining of the industrial process by which you operate. And, above all else, no individual can make you stop. It is as if I had opened up my window, stuck my head outside, and yelled, "Please World! Stop your orbit of the sun! Stop your rotation! Slow down, be still, if only for a few moments that I may catch my breath!"

That will not happen. It can not happen. But it is what I need.

But, it must be confronted, just because you need something to happen is no guarantee or reason for its happening. Or even the possibility of its happening.

"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.."
- I Cannot Remember Who Wrote This

"Everything I make is trite, and cheap, and a waste of paint, of tape, of time."
- Bright Eyes, Waste Of Paint

"If I were to write something that truly captured all that I think and feel about the world, it would probably be in all capitals, one word, probably not one you'd find in dictionaries, something along the lines of, EEEEEEEEEEERRRRYYYAAAAAAFEABHCDAKBJNAEAEGOGAEHUAGOHU!!!"
- Walter Mongin, To: The Global Artistic Community. RE: You.

id bring my camera with me

We were dead, no brains left in our heads
Just wandering around, taking pictures of a broken God
But it was still far greater than we could mention

And some of us wept, and some of us slept
And some embracing living forever

I am weak, but I can control myself. I am weak, but I am stronger than you. I want to die, but I will live forever. I am surrounded by lies, but I will speak the truth. I am tired, but I can dream while I am awake. I will move mountains, and I will drink seas. I will scrape the sky with my hand, and I will warm my feet in the earth. The wind cannot blow me down, and space can not burn my skin. I am invincible. I am a giant. I am God's child.

You will not defeat me now, you will never defeat me, and you have not defeated me in the past. I will destroy whoever I do not love, and I will love everyone. You can not change who I am, you can only accept it.

I will breath in the dusk, and exhale the dawn. Do not fear; the dark will not hurt you, and the light will not blind you. You are freer under my protection than you were ever before.

I feel the want to destroy, but I will turn to the need to create instead.

I am nothing; I am everything.

I am-

You Are The Light Within My Eyes (Darling, Do Not Blind Me)

You are the bones within my legs
(Darling, do not break in me, do not let me down)
You are the wind inside my lungs
(Darling, breathe in me, buffet me around)
You are the decay inside my cells
(Darling, please wait to grind me down)

[You are all I need to live
And You are why I will someday die
You will always give and give
While I will accept, and cry, and cry]

You are the chemicals in my brain
(Love, do not twist my moods)
You are the food within my belly
(Love, do not make me sick)
You are the thoughts making up my mind
(Love, do not leave me so far behind)

[You make me who I am
And define who I am not
You give me no middle ground or choice
My will is filled with rot]

You are the impulse telling me to jump
(Dear, do not smash me)
You are the feeling telling me to run
(Dear, do not exhaust me)
You are the things that belong to no one else
But I cannot call my own
(Dear, do not leave me)

A Story About Love

The light penetrated into the house; it forced its way in through the windows and lit up the rooms with a light that only served to make it easier to not trip, and did nothing to illuminate the spirit of the place. He was sitting at the kitchen table (actually, a card table he had found in a neighbor's garbage pile) waiting, when he heard a step on the porch stairs, and the door creak open. He got up and opened the door to the stairs, and as he caught sight of her she froze. The light seemed to pin her to the wall, accentuating her paleness and the lines on her face.

"What'd the doctor say?" She stared at him. He asked again, and the focused look in her eyes broke; "Oh, um..Can I come down there?" He moved out of the way and she finished descending the stairs.

"What's the news?" She looked at him over her shoulder as he began to shut the door. "No, leave it open."
"Why? What's wrong?"
"I- I'm leaving." He stared back at her in something between disbelief and uncomprehension.
"I- I don't have long to go, and...I need to live." She walked into the bedroom and swiftly packed the suitcase standing by the door. "I love you, you know that, but..I need see and do as much as I can before, well...Before I can't any more. And I need to do it alone."

He sat down suddenly at the table, seemingly stunned or concussed. She walked back out holding the suitcase. "I left your half of the money on the nightstand.." He stared dumbly at the floor. "Darling, don't make it be like this, can't you tell me you love me and goodbye one last time?" Her eyes began to moisten as he continued to silently stare down the floorboards. She walked over, kissed his forehead, and murmured, "I love you sweetie." There was no reply, and after a moment she said, "Bye.." and walked over to the stairs and ascended them to the outside world. As the front door shut, the light seemed to dim even further.

With the way he was holding his head in his hands, it was hard to tell who was dying faster.

A Brief Epilogue Of A Middle Class Family

The man walked into his childhood home. The lights were out, and he stepped forward with his arm out, trying to find a wall with a light switch. His hand met something solid and cold, and spasmed, sending it falling off the mantelpiece. A few seconds later he found the switch and light flooded the living room.

The drone of the vacuum permeated the house as it ate up the fluffy grey ashes in the carpet. The man's mind was locked inside his skull; his facial expression was unreadable. He finished the task, unplugged the vacuum, and carried it outside. As he tossed it into the garbage can, he murmured, "Sorry Mom, but it's my choice what to do with him now." A haze of grey flew up into the air only to be met and captured by the falling lid.

He reentered the house, and sat down in the old recliner stationed across from the tv. He stared at the tv a few moments and then lept up and smashed it in with his foot. He turned back around, grabbed the chair, and pulled it onto its side. He then proceeded to pick up a lamp and hurl it through the window before turning out the light by punching the switch, finally getting into his car and pulling out of the driveway quickly and recklessly, only to collide with another car speeding down the road, ending in a messy collision that had absolutely no good consequences for anybody.