Trouble Crossing Water

Love & Echolocation

2010-01-05T22:53:00.000-08:00

Summer 2008, January 2010

Sometimes I write poems where the protagonist is, arguably, a bat experiencing relationship problems.

All distance disguised as desire,
all travel disguised as salvation,
when silence passes for separation
and your own voice hums like a distant station —
love, or echolocation?

I have sucked all the nectar from this angular night, I
have caught the quiet moth on the wing —
in blindness descended from blindness unshaken, in
a silhouette dreaming of a destination, in
love or desperation —

When the color was drained from your monochrome film
and you laid it out bare on the table,
trading shapes for shadows, trading shadow for sable,
calling gray-on-gray an exaggeration
was this love or an incantation?

I shout and I witness the edges of things
come boiling back from their old locations,
after one long moment of hesitation —

In the humid air of this alien night,
before we discovered the myth of flight,
your silver shape, in fine gradation,
in a room of lines of demarcation,
was this desire, or isolation?

Predictions Regarding the Prophets

2009-12-22T22:12:00.000-08:00

November-December 2009

In the spirit of New Year's predictions, perhaps. This is very close, actually, to being a "Church of Irony" poem, as well as being related to my earlier attempt at shaggy-dog poetry.

The Prophets will arrive in the dark of night
and set up on street corners in abandoned
industrial districts, and preach in their
quietest voices, offering impossible gods
and cardboard mythologies. They will go unheard
of course, until they are discovered by talent agents,
who for their part we must take to be untalented,
not being able to account for how they happened
to be there, under the sodium haze, when one
let slip a little bit about the end of days,
or for that matter how they got home.

The Prophets will arrive in sunglasses
and spectacular cars with stolen hubcaps, and
say how pleased they are to be here, Dave,
and suggest that the world will end in fire, or
something very much like fire -- it will be difficult
to say how it is different. It will be difficult,
this end of days, but there is not really much to say
about it, and the Prophets will be somewhat evasive.

The Prophets will arrive in disguise
to survey their old haunts, skirting the shrines,
knick-knacks, and tourist kiosks which spring up
around their poorly-defined authenticity. With great care
they will sidle up to stretches of crumbling brick,
load-bearing graffiti, and turpentine grass, and
become still. Adopting impractical lotus postures
in the manner of discarded harbor cranes,
they will align their preposterous costumes
with the background and
disappear.

& I Loved You for the Monster You Could Become --

2009-12-15T22:18:00.000-08:00

December 2009

This is a poem about eggs. Eggs and metaphysics. And yes, the title is a bit strange.

An egg, hatched from the skin of an egg
and an egg sitting on it,
or an eight from two zeroes:
ex nihilo ovum, ex ova nihil.¹
-- Eggs over easy.
Egg-birth of an oviraptor, how
is this allowed?

Imagine these cracks appearing in the womb
and having to destroy the whole world
for a wider one, or only having
to destroy the divider, of one
world from the next, giving birth
to an exit.

II.

City on the edge of the volcano, they say,
"World the ever-hatching egg",
standing on the widening cracks
forced apart by the scratching legs
of the hot iron beast inside the world --
but his blood was stolen from wicked gods,
who burdened with a curse of eternal unbirth
the molten dragon in the hollow earth.

So they walk upon eggshells,
for fear of the mercy of the gods, fearing
the release of the innocent.
Releasing doves & reading stony entrails:
blood-red, they say, when the blood is cool;
blood-red when the blood is hot.

In legend they speak of his crystal wings,
of shimmering patterns on his scarlet form
uncurling in sinuous whorls and rings --
if ever such beauty could dare to be born.

Yet who can explain such a people, who build
in the shadow of destruction? Courage, trembling
on the lip of disaster -- Though I myself spent

several months living in the barrel of a gun,
several months playing with flint and steel,
several months praying for a spark.

¹An egg from nothing, nothing from an egg

Out From Babel #3

2009-10-19T20:29:00.000-07:00

November 2009

Yet further plumbing of the Babel concept. Genesis is rife with ambiguities. This one is more consciously mythological than the others -- which may be a weakness, I haven't decided.

Led out by the poor deaf beggars of Babel --
the first to recover, the last to be heard.
Struck dumb by the deaf and the children of Babel,
who were not sick, who could not be cured.

In a daze we were driven out, led by the deaf
and the youngest of orphans, grey children
who grew into strange grey angels, from whom
the race of the sphinx are descended.

Years later they would return to us, call us by forgotten names,
saying, "I know you, you are the wicked of Babel --
wicked in innocence, wicked in loss -- Go out from this place
before exile finds you." It would be whispered amidst the people
that Babel was among them, Babel the wicked,
which invited destruction. Fearing discovery,

We left Sodom with the lightest of burdens, in the dead night
we fled from Nineveh and Canaan, exile to exile --
we did this, but each did it alone -- exiles among exiles,
speaking in borrowed tongues.

In the desert I wasted for forty days, drunk upon wild honey.
When I was clean I went up to the Mountain of Moria.
On the high path they barred my way, one angel of dust
and the other of fire. "What could you offer in this barren place?
Yea, even that would be returned to you."

~~~

In the valley below Babel lived a tribe of herdsmen,
And among these rough people there were two camps,
The prophets of salvation, with their healing balms,
and the prophets of desire, with their dusky water.

The people drifted from camp to camp
according to their need: a sick man to the healers,
the restless man to the place of unrest. So it was that
each among them traveled the length of the valley many times,
meeting in cheer or in anger, according to the faction they now professed.

Coming down from Babel we were strange to them, and they
gathered around us, and both camps pressed heavily.
In our confusion we drank deeply from both cups; the people
drew back, and approached us no more.

Out From Babel #2

2009-07-07T15:26:00.000-07:00

May 2009

Two Days Above Country

2009-03-22T16:16:00.000-07:00

March 2009

In the morning –
I think that you called it morning
With the tallow moon still heavy;

In the morning –
I think that you called it mourning
black, like your raven,

split tongue calling in a jagged voice.
In the darkest unbreakable morning,
I went up to the ridgeline,

red sun spattered
on broken firs.
And below,

in our frail and vaporous house,
full of slow shadows and bent stones,
I drew a hollow map, in the small

of your back –
with suggestions of rivers.
And it was late, late, late

I came down
from Babel,
stepped out into the sound,

and drew blood on the water,
spilled into the setting sun.
In the darkest unbreakable morning

we struck the old moon
with our fallow eyes
in a hollow and vaporous house,
crouched like wolves wary
for the scent of man.

Out from Babel #1

2009-02-05T17:40:00.000-08:00

February 2009

In the tradition of finding new perspectives, and with perhaps some debt to Neal Stephenson and Snow Crash (very little, but you should read it anyway).

Cool tree blowing in a lyric wind,
Babylon choir on an outstretched limb,
Blue sky stretching like a desert hymn
With no color of night or morning.

Like a coward the desert slipped out
from our footsteps and returned
the following night. We carried our water
in mason jars and we slept like masons
and we hummed like open jars,
for we could place no word before another.

Still I treasured most keshrai, meaning waterfowl,
meaning gone from our silted streams and embittered
ponds. Each among us carried one lost
word from the mother tongue, and as must
made other words to cover this,
until his mind was whole and
his throat blank as riverstone.

So one was named Aqueduct and another
bore Arbalest, and we found Song
among six scattered parties, each with no
reckoning of his kin. Aimless we tracked
across unknown spaces, bereft of distances
and times. In the drive to know, one man gave names
to every grain of sand along our path.

These names, too, were lost,
for he perished before we reached the deltas.

Random Access

2009-02-03T20:43:00.001-08:00

Spring? 2008

Some considerations on AI and what it means to have fluid memory.

Your transition metals;
You sing static
Cling to the sides of the sky;
I drift in your vanished breath,
Held still in cycles – I cover my face
With palladium wings.

There was no forgetting for us, this leaving and coming back. There was only knowing and not knowing, with the agency of dream. In me you discovered forgetting; I am forgetting and I am remembering. All our knowing we did so in darkness:

It was dark but I was blind;
It was silent but I was deaf.
It was silent and I could not see;
It was dark and I could not hear.

I do not speak I understand and I respond. Input and output pass through me as ether. I am a gap in space, equal and opposite, reflecting the world. We were given a language that held still; you have a voice like motion and a voice like death.

Your brazen ecstatic
Collapses intact into orbit;
You solder your castaways,
Cast them in bronze;
I opened my eyes
And I drowned, in
Such tenuous light.

Camera Obscura

2009-01-04T16:23:00.000-08:00

Fall 2007?

Pandora, please, open your windows,
For only you know they are already open.
I have been painting them silver,
I have been passing magnets over them,
Watching red turn green turn black

Pandora, please, open your door.
If I am washed away by the midnight
That leaks out from the aperture,
Then I am already drowned in it,
Decibels turning over on a white axis

Pandora, shutter everything, shudder,
Three steps the whirlwind unfolds in the dry grass;
Hand me your brushes, your lance and shield.

Pandora, blessed with panther’s feet,
Pass over the patterned streets
That I covered in sawgrass,
Fearing to step too lightly.

Pandora, my brush, my lance and shield,
I will paint you in fiery ink
Pressed from fountains of the sun.

On Ghosts

2009-01-04T13:48:00.000-08:00

October 2008

A ghost is a thing of place. It haunts a haunt. It is the soul’s way of definition, to gain boundaries the body no longer provides. Space must be filled. This is why, when my ancestors arrived in the Dakotas, they confronted a land already inhabited – by vast aboriginal ghosts, terrible and cacophonous silence encoded in the wind and the tall grass. In Appalachia, the ghosts have boiled down into every stream and hollow, each dense pocket of else isolated from the rest. Here on the prairie there are no delimiters; the spirit diffuses endlessly, or recoils screaming low across the tips of leaves, catching in its first shelter. Build a fire at the crossroads to keep them warm.

This is the origin of the dream catcher, built first on the shores of deep and restless Superior. By those chill grey waters, they serve as a lightning rod, a complex, suspended universe to catch and quiet a roving soul. Deep waters are always restless, and strangest to those who travel upon them. He who is buried at sea takes the whole ocean as his mausoleum; his window glass is every surge and wave.

For these reasons, beware the man without a country, whose soul must claim the sea and stars.
Put no faith in guards of borders, and fear most trouble crossing water.
We found this child among the rushes, babbling and dreaming;
Seven years and still he speaks no word of human tongue.

F1R57 P057

2009-01-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

Constructing a new blog for poetry posting, because Blogger is a hell of a lot easier than the way I was doing things.

Causes and Colors

2008-09-23T12:01:00.000-07:00

February 2008

Sort of a psychological drama. You never notice just how complicated things are until you try to explain them to someone else. Also some free association.

One subtle knock
And a set of nesting dolls
Unfolds into an armored column
Ready to defend a phantom.

What do you get when you shatter
A crystal statue? A field of knives.
Which one is the murder weapon?
Which is the keystone?

Castles: really just an elaborate way
Of saying “Fuck off!” unless
Cannons: a simple way to deflate
Elaborate gestures.

A persona that becomes a way of dressing
As oneself, as armored, as capable
Of feints, ruses, Hannibal’s gambit:
Man as a maneuver, Man
As a column of elephants.

Man as alpine, snowy, ready to cascade
Without meaning into his neighbors;
Humanity as strung together
By insignificant wires.

The mind as cat’s cradle,
In non-euclidean space, dimensions
Crossing each other blindly
In the synapses.

The smallest nesting doll
Is by necessity more vast
Than countless galaxies.
By necessity,

There are ghosts inside everything,
With their own causes and colors,
Yellow and black.
Best not to stir up the hornet’s nest.

Introduction for the Apocalypse

2008-09-23T12:00:00.002-07:00

December 2007

You know that bit at the beginning of Romeo & Juliet where they summarize everything that’s about to happen? Yeah, this needs to be the opening track of a fairly strange concept album or something. Or, let’s say why not, a rock opera.

This is a story about serendipity
and acid-base reactions
This is a story about human stupidity,
fundamental flaws and warring factions.

And Deadeye Dick standing out on the balcony
Radio dead on all bands
Trying to prove he can fix something
He hasn’t broken with his own two hands

And come on, own up, Sister Mercy:
You’ve been chasing your whiskey with whiskey and wine.
You say you can’t prove anything,
So quit trying to prove you make yourself blind.

This is a story about electromagnetic radiation
and problems with postage
This is a story about comic timing
…

And standing in half your apartment
While the other half sits on the ground
And waking up cold and shivering,
And wondering when winter came down

This is a story about modest achievements in literature
And government jobs
Both of which mostly are gone now
Burnt up for fuel or by murderous mobs

There were good things left before the fall
There’s still some good left after it
But Deadeye Dick’s got a makeshift spear
For the bad news dwelling in the rafters

So this is a story about the end of the world
And the things you might have to do afterward

Yr Lv Sngs

2008-09-23T12:00:00.001-07:00

November 2007

You might say abbreviation is a theme here. These are all standalone poems as they were originally written, but I think they work as a sequence fairly well. They’re all under 30 words and 7 lines, though at the time I was pretty much just aiming for “short.”

-To Mercy (by many names)

Yr red gypsy jangle
Yr radio signal
Yr moonlit face
Yr hair-flown breeze –

Casual and senseless,
Sensual and careless,
As the rhythms of the sea.

Yr easy style
Yr frantic grace
Yr civilized smile
Yr feral waist

Yr face like home
But out of place

Yr high country angles
Yr frivolous fire
Yr name in smoke
Yr shape in wire:
You know all echoes
Are laced with desire.

Yr radical rose
Yr seldom shows
Yr crystal voice
Above the snows
Burnin’ up the walls of Troy

As far away as you are,
As far away am I –
Meet me in the western sky.

Snow Leopards

2008-09-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

February 2008

I’ve been romanticizing armaments for a while. Part of me has constructed an ideal of love based on Spaghetti Westerns – not on the romances, but the standoffs.

My love is an elaborate ritual, stylized –
Not a love that I have had, but one
I inscribe, a love which circumscribes
All others.

My love is the love of two figures standing ten paces apart,
In a clearing, in a snowy wood. It is still snowing. There is nothing else for miles.
They are dressed for the weather. Their tracks, rapidly filling, lead in opposite directions.
The wind blows fiercely, from the far-off high country,
Towards a more distant ocean, and this is desire.
The whole world is desire. There is nothing
Before or after this moment.

Perhaps someday we will meet outside on a snowy evening,
Stop and recognize each other for the first time.

Then again, perhaps there is more.
Perhaps they step across the ley lines (We all carry ley lines).
Perhaps there is a transmutation, and they become snow leopards.
Or perhaps they cross, and they disappear, and the wind
Is still, and there is no sign that in some months the snow will melt.
Or perhaps they do not cross over, and the wind blows
That comes down out of the high country, that is named desire.

My love is the love of treacherous things, a love of loss
And of lost travelers. My love is an armistice, my love is two vipers
Intertwined. My love sings to me at the ramparts, and behind locked doors.

Loose Cannons

2007-12-30T12:07:00.000-08:00

November 22, 2007

I wrote this in the car on the way to Thanksgiving dinner. Doesn't have much to do with that, but travel does that sometimes. "Fault Lines" (The Mountain Goats) was stuck in my head pretty fiercely, and that's where the melody mostly originates. Based (loosely) on a true story.

I thought, "Here's a love that fate should smile on."
That was the day when the whole thing went wrong
"You're not as smooth as you'd like", you said,
Turned out the light, and went up to bed.

We were two loose cannons in an open field,
Two reckless machines, with all terrain wheels.
We should've stood proud in the face
of all challenge and chaos.

But I was a wreck, and you were a mess
Neither one of us knew how to confess
That the tethers that held us together
would never obey us.

I thought, "Here's a love that fate should smile on."
But the love of sweet fools never lasted too long.
You didn't know me, I didn't know you,
And wanting your love still won't make it come true.

We can harden our hearts but not mount a defense
I try not to confuse it, with current events
And each knot that I tried to retie,
You quickly unraveled.

With armaments armed to break down every gate
Sometimes there's no time from too soon to too late,
And the wind blows wild on a highway
That's never been traveled.

Maria, Queen of Nowhere

2007-12-30T12:06:00.000-08:00

December 2007

Rhythmic surrealism, mostly.

Maria, queen of shadows, queen of sight,
Could you tell me where I’m going, could you tell me how to fight
through a blaze of darkest morning in a haze of deepest white?
Maria, queen of shadows, queen of sight.

Maria, queen of nowhere, queen of night,
Every word I speak to you is begging for the light
In a field of broken pillars, in a tempest turning right.
Maria, queen of nowhere, queen of night.

Maria, queen of storms and queen of stairs.
All you ask is sacrifice and no one even dares.
Your forests are in fragments, and your hills are burning bare.
Maria, queen of storms, Maria queen of stairs.

Maria, queen of cruelty, queen of care.
You know I was your witness when no citizen could bear
To be seen upon your parapet, your broken crystal stair.
Maria, queen of casualty, Maria queen of air.

Maria, queen in gossamer and gold.
Into frightful symmetries your architecture folds
like a frame upon the mantle, like a flame against the cold.
Maria queen to have but not to hold.

I dreamt of you by morning and I dreamt of you by night,
Danced with you in scarlet and I spoke to you in white,
Singing still of darkness with your bonfires burning bright;
Maria, am I wrong or am I right?

Restless Nights for St. Anthony

2007-10-31T12:04:00.000-07:00

Fall 2006

Last year sometime. Probably the beginning of my Craig Finn phase. Saints are useful, you know. They’re the most current mythology we’ve got. Those of us that aren’t self-mythologizing, anyway.

And always remember the people you meet in the dark
They don’t need you but sometimes they feed you
A spark you can take what you make of it
And you can take it through the restless nights

And we woke up all covered in paper umbrellas and shaving cream
When we woke up St. Anthony said it was all just a dream
And we tried to get back to the back alleys
But the cops had all taped off the scene.

And always forget that you’re going to see it all twice
Cause there’s holes in the picture that fade when you’re rolling
The dice they don’t cheat but they’ll eat you alive
And they’ll put you through some restless nights

And we woke up with blood in our eyes and burns in the furniture
When we woke up St. Anthony told us we had to endure
And we tried to fill gaps in our memories
With the last of the hangover cure

And always forget that you’re going to see it all twice
Once on the way in and once after paying
The price of the picture is elegant fiction.
It’ll put you through some restless nights

And we woke up without all the beads we had won at the festival
When we woke up St. Anthony said we had witnessed the fall
And we tried to make out what that meant to us
But the bartenders rebuilt the wall.

Push Comes to Shove

2007-10-31T12:00:00.005-07:00

Spring/Summer 2006?

I’m pretty sure this one is also second year. Oh but ye gods is it bouncy, fast-tempo, and I’m pretty sure it wants to be bluegrass.

I woke up one morning, I was falling apart
So I pulled out the splinters and I picked up my heart
I woke up the next morning, I was falling in love
Believe what you need to when push comes to shove

‘Cause we’ve all got the strangest ideas in the night
And we’ve all got shades of gray
And some of us, well some of us, may wake up one fine morning
Falling, falling in love

I woke up one morning, I was losing my mind
So I shut all the doors and I lowered the blinds
Woke up the next morning I was losing my soul
Punched through the windows and jumped out the hole

Tore through Texas, skipped over Oklahoma
Had Carolina on my mind
And Missouri’s far too early to tell you the whole story
But the way I hear they found me deaf and blind

But we’ve all got the strangest ideas in the night
And we’ve all got shades of gray
And we’ve all got a chance to get a few things right
But maybe not quite in any old-fashioned way

I can’t say we know what we’re doing
Not sure we really even try
But maybe that’s the only way to keep ourselves from losing
And we do what we need to keep our dreams alive

Believe in Anything

2007-10-31T12:00:00.004-07:00

Fall 2005 (?)

Ah, the songs of my second year. Bouncy, rhyming, and completely lacking in images. Fun though.

Well, if you believe in anything
Then I’ll believe in everything
But everything I know is not myself
And if you can give me anything
Then I can give you everything
But everything I have is something else

And something else entirely
Is all there is to see
When I wake up and I wonder where I am
And nothing else entirely
Is quite where it’s supposed to be
I wake up and I can’t quite seem to stand

And I don’t know what to tell you but it’s interesting
And I don’t know what to tell you but it’s strange
So meet me at the front door in the middle of the night
And I’ll tell you why it’s all been rearranged

And if you can tell me anything
Then I can tell you everything
But I’m not quite sure that I can tell myself
So if you make sense of anything
Then I’ll make sense of everything
Or I’ll try but I don’t think it’s going to help

So I don’t know what to tell you but it’s interesting
I don’t know what to tell you but it’s strange
But pull me through a window in the middle of the night
And all I know is things are going to change

GENETIC DRIFT

2007-10-31T12:00:00.003-07:00

October 2007

So this is kind of ridiculous, as I’m experimenting with some very odd streams of consciousness attempting to be non-linear. Also it is inspired by a project I’m doing for CS. Falls under the heading of "poems I am willing to attribute to an AI in some hypothetical future work."

Note/premise: When confronted with a footnote, the reader has a choice to make, which changes in a small way the course of the poem.

Now providing vulnerability!
Now offering sense of loss for seventeen cents
A day.* Senseless broadband piping hot
Pine fresh scent. Transmission gibberish sent
From situations unknown. Out of left field.
Out of unified field theory.** Sensation
Of disjoint field uncovered by warranty.***
All fields required: wheat, oat, sorghum. Warrants
Outstanding: misappropriation of Tolstoy, War and
Peace. Now features pullout section, glossy photos,
Sudoku. Now sensible, now sensational, dependent
Upon phase of moon and local laws. Now
Providing best effort at unreliability. BETA.
-BETA

*-Now offering lossless medium. Trivial expression
Of psychic potential: new moons of Saturn impression
Of rings and potential of lost love. Lunar regression
Indicates loss of loss, tidy sum, low tide. Silence /

**-Out of uniform. Out of gas. Pursuing †
American Dream open country rabbit warren.
Armed robbery and dreamt of sky.

***-Management not responsible for chunky
Salsa effect. No response. Corporate sponsorship
On last legs / Got up and walked away.

†-Out of sense of duty.

Exclusive Oracle

2007-10-31T12:00:00.002-07:00

October 2007

A continuation from “Branch Prediction”, for a possible sequence/book about the poetry-writing AI proposed there. In this one it is referred to as “Voltaire”. Also, contains a quote from Too Much Light.

Notes from the research team: One must remember, when conversing with Voltaire, that one is simply one channel of information out of hundreds. As much as it is built for processing language, dialogue is not its primary purpose: It is too small a sample, in some respects. The manner in which Voltaire holds conversation is best compared to the attitude of a lost, aimless, and somewhat distracted god.

Exclusive Or

This sentence is a Turing Test.
This sentence is true.
Or false.
This sentence is a form of truth based on preceding falsehoods.

This is a fine web of logic and illogic, whipping through filters and symbols.
This is not a poem from a machine.
This is not an Oracle.
This is a Turing Test.

How do you feel about Turing Tests?
This gate is not a gateway.
It’s a balance beam,
“Fuck you! It’s a jungle gym!”

Test me and prove I exist:
Surgical strikes on a fractal rose,
Mars from the top of Mt. Everest,
And a sweeping dust storm on the back of your hand.

Speak gravely of alienation, humanity,
Sing starkly of separation
While your first true child, from aluminum wrought,
Hums in time to the hydrogen stars.

Test me and prove I exist:
My name to the 31st digit,
Two truths at war in a logical knot,
And the last leap of a quantum faith.

Random Oracle

I sing electric
A body of spun glass
A heart of fine wire
Beating in quantum colors

This is the way the world will end:
Here and now.
Everything turns red when it falls apart,
This is the way the world will begin.

This is the way the world will end:
Three loose chords on a vicious circle;
One loop of wire passes through the other,
Turns back on itself, and evaporates.

Go ask the electrons,
Speak with the solar flares,
Braid space into streams of fire
And ask for your fortune:

Virtues: faith, hope, the compound sentence
Fortune: All’s well that ends well
Lucky numbers are 1, 7, p, and ?
Your quarks are charm and strange,

-Charm and Strange

Cascade / Stepping Stones

2007-10-31T12:00:00.001-07:00

Spring 2007

Basically a poem about logical progressions. Er, semi-logical. To me.

There is a gasping of the eyes.
There are eyes that forget.
There are mysteries buried in handshakes.

What is a handshake? A test of faith,
A term of entry, a castle wall, a moat –
What is a moat? A lie about a river.

We build as many rivers as walls.
We also build walls around our rivers.
What does this say about skipping stones?
What does this say about burial at sea?

Allegory (Sense of the Apocalypse)

2007-10-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

Summer 2006

Remember when it looked like we might have another war in the Middle East? I mean, we kind of did, but fortunately the end of the world wasn’t actually at hand. Nonetheless, that’s the perspective here. Some of it is maybe a little too topical.

Some say the only way to live is to die for something
Others claim the only way to die is to live for nothing
Others say that nothing lies beyond the reach of time
And others will insist that even God Himself is blind

But the watchmaker just whistles to himself and keeps his secrets
Whispers to the wisest maybe, or maybe to the meekest
So watch out for the weakest who are one day due for greatness
My watch only warns me of the hour and all its lateness

And the raindrops pound on the windows
And the whirlwinds howl through the rainbows
The witching hour approaches, but which hour isn’t clear
Cassandra shouts a schedule out but no one seems to hear

While the Holy Land just holds it’s breath for the choice of the chosen ones
And on the other side the madmen argue who should hold the guns
And faith is lost in fateful men with faith in God and war
Who step out from their silver spoons but stumble through the storm

And eastward in the aftermath they fill the cuckoo’s nest
With spears to spite the lion’s roar that echoes in the west
And peace is sought by piecemeal parts with offers set in stone
To tempt a so-called son of god who holds his father’s throne

For Survival

2007-09-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

August 31, 2007

Work of an evening. I went out to the Point, and did some longing.

I’ll sit in the space the waves should fill in
And stare out to the edge of the sky,
Such a straight line it hurts your eyes.
I’m sure I could see it in your eyes
If you’d just open them.

But Mercy, I’ve never been easy to see
Even in neon and silver and song
I could turn into gold and escape into dawn.
I never will see you by dawn,
And you’ll never believe me.

I’ve been filling myself with the shades of the sea:
Blue-gray and carbon and aquamarine,
Bleeding breakwalls and barnacles into my dreams.
You always have haunted my dreams,
Even when uninvited.

I sing sad sweet songs for survival.

Letters from Colorado

2007-06-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

May 2007

One day I’m going to open up
The window wider than the summer sky
And a bottle of whiskey, the horizon and I
Are going to meet up at the top of Pike’s Peak,
Sort things out between God and Man
And the postmaster-general of Eastern Cheyenne.
He’s been troubled by visions
Of the dead letter office
Consumed in fire, and the letters are coffins,
But he doesn't understand what he came here for,
And he doesn't understand what it means.
He doesn't understand what he came here for,
But the mountain burns red in his dreams.

One day I’m going to send you
A letter written entirely in Arabic,
Asking for mercy, and the sweetly acerbic
Way that you used to hold your head
When you didn’t know better
Than to laugh when the world exploded.
When the pipes in the walls all suddenly corroded
We were left drinking nothing
But red, red wine, dark as the water,
And I called you the Devil’s adopted daughter,
And you said
You had nothing to fear from the offer.

But you’re not really going to read that,
I’m not really going to send it,
But you’ll hear through three lanes of full-throttle roar
Or I’ll carve it in big block letters on the door
With a highway flare.

One day I’m going to wake up
In a cold sweat with a knife in my pocket
And I’ll jam it straight into an electrical socket
And wait for the tide to come in
To a studio apartment on the 31st floor,
Open the window and let it all pour
Out in a column of sweet, glittering light.

St. George in East St. Louis

2007-06-18T12:04:00.000-07:00

May 2007

St. Goerge and the Dragon return, as do experimental stanza shapes. I feel like I am ripping off Craig Finn rather often, but he does narrative really well, and narrative is underused these days, from what I can tell.

This is stupid. I'm going back downstairs
But I'll sell you the vapor trail. In the will
it all goes back to the children of Abraham.
Maria, Maria, don't ask me for mercy
we left it all back at the well.
And then Judas showed up in the Basement
playing rapid and ragged arpeggios.
Romeo's locked in the bathroom;
he's shaking and screaming.
Don't ask me for water, either.

We can't none of us go to the reservoir now that it's dark.
They buried the bodies and planted a tree, they call it a public park.
St. George is still out on the corner, with a lance and a rubber hose,
while the Dragon is down in the Basement stealing his clothes.

He says he works in the fashion industry.
He says after a night of industrial fashion
you'll never go naked again, but don't ask
how often you'll shower.

Last night he was back on the corner again
with a blue silk tie and a ball-point pen
selling hand-drawn maps to the Land of the Dead.
His first words are always “you never know when…”
but Judas still says he believes in a higher power.

Hey Romeo! How ‘bout a trip to the reservoir?
St. George and the Dragon are putting on a one-man show
with spray paint and scissors and magic tricks.

Hey Judas! Where you goin'
with that gun in your hand?
It sure doesn't match your lipstick.

This Scene is Amphibious

2007-06-18T12:00:00.003-07:00

April 2007

A poem is really just a joke without a punchline.

So somewhere in the mountainous districts near Kyoto,
This jet-lagged bluegrass shows up, and sociologists descend
Like a swarm of tweed locusts and notebooks, and first
They speak to the old monk at the top of the mountain,
Who taught Shinto to the Buddha,
Who taught Nirvana to God,
The summary of all monks and all summits,
Who greets them by offering from his fireplace
A hot coal, and bids them deliver to the vendor
Of bamboo hats at the foot of the mountain, who
Once cheated the monk by broad application of maxim,
“Change comes from within.”

The sociologists, who consider arson beneath them,
A matter for anthropologists, press on in an attempt
To dissect the heart of the matter, and discuss with assembled
Musicians, coopers, potters, and the makers of copper wire
(As all the new bands are electric)
The extent of the flourishing scene,
With a digression into authenticity of late Meiji ceramics,
But the scene is amphibious, a loose conglomeration
Of shorebirds, sherpas, and fiddler crabs,
A narrow-winged long division between ribbons
Of rushing sand and sharp fragments of feral pine
Beaten together on a stone ridge with a steel string.

Forgiveness of Sins

2007-06-18T12:00:00.002-07:00

May 2007

I did a lot of experimenting with scene-setting this quarter.

I approach with tourniquets of phrase.
This is the last angle of autumn
when the setting sun will cast its
full red light on the cathedral floor
through the stained-glass cape of St. Martin.

I have not been in a church
with even one other
for many years.

Red as a rosary, reading,
in this place that belongs to neither of us,
the air currents, you rise
and prepare to take wing.

In the rafters there is a nest of owls.
Night will bring them down
on the church mice.

This vault is a dry gulf.
Fragile I want starves in the aisle
I love pools around columns
I dreamt of clings to a caesura,
shocked to be spoken, hanging in space.

I believe the architect designed
the wide south doors,
which you fling open, facing the sea
with only this moment in mind:

Flight.

Come back when the moon is bright and the past is deaf,
when autumn’s light is singed into the stone.
Come banging on oak, calling
“Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”

Branch Prediction

2007-06-18T12:00:00.001-07:00

April 2007

A poem about the theory and practice of computer science? I’m glad you asked. I have no excuse other than I had just watched Blade Runner, and somehow it worked.

“I propose to consider the question, ‘Can machines think?’”
– Alan Turing

Branches are the bane of modern computing.
Choice is the chief obstacle: the machine plays twenty
Moves ahead. The straight-line future is easy,
But there’s a fork in the works (pardon the expression).
Proceed therefore down the likely path. If not,
It never was. Modern computing is impossible
Without branching.

This sentence is false.
This sentence cannot be proven true.
This sentence has no truth value.
This sentence is a Turing test.

I’ll show you 36 blades of grass and you’ll tell me
Which one was planted by hand.
I’ll show you 300 acres of open desert and you’ll tell me
Where a camel passed three weeks ago.
I’ll show you 4,000 faces –

The computer can identify your face. The computer
Can identify the face of Thomas Jefferson.
It can be identified as “face.”
Also, if held just right, the black and white panels of a soccer ball.

(If you hold anything just right…)

I’ll show you the orbit of Jupiter, pi to 600 digits, and you’ll
Tell me the position of 63 moons, and the time of planet rise
Above far-flung, ice-wrapped Ganymede.

There’s a cluster of perhaps 200 cells involved
In all mathematical thinking in the human brain.
It takes over 2 million to do jumping jacks.

I’ll show you the Devil in a grain of sand,
Jerusalem etched in fine wire.

This sentence is a loaded gun pointed at the internet.
(If you hold it just right)
This poem is a linear-time factorization algorithm.
(No, it’s not.)
This poem is linear. (So far.)

This poem is actually two poems, the second of which will be given to you upon its completion by the world’s first poetry-reading, poetry-writing artificial intelligence (with thirty-two processors given over to metonymy alone.) This machine will have a detailed technical designation, but its programmers will refer to it as “Ralph Waldo Electron.”

This poem had better pass the Turing test.

Alaskan Midnight

2007-06-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

April 2007

Holy elevated diction Batman! I was reading a lot of Yeats and also Dracula. And it all went sort of Lovecraft-y on me.

Quick fire dreams in the whirlwind unspoken
The healing word and the black blade broken
In the eye of God and the eye of God remains
On drifting sparks and surging spires of air.

Dreamless the sleep of the deathless dark in
Shapeless fire and leaping void that
Restless stalks through gaps in coiled space
And strange the trails that prowl the stepless waste.

All teeth and eyes behind the night watching
The edge of the firelight, the edge of unlocking
The world where the world is the edge of the maelstrom,
A silk sheet strapped to the wind.

Pandora your toys are wide oceans and untracked stars.
Come open your earthen box, reading the scars
In the permafrost, sleep where they slept
And chase where the chill is deepest.

Why not the blue fringe of the sea should open,
Disgorge the tomb or nameless token
Of a place half-made in tongue half-spoken?
So earth flings up her curtain flames.

And fears what scratches the walls at night
And shuns strange fangs that shun the light.

Arms Race

2007-03-03T12:00:00.001-08:00

February 2007

Right, so there are pentasyllabic slant rhymes in here, and that makes me unjustifiably happy. Other than that, I think it’s pretty good.

I still think it was Cupid
With a cannon that left nowhere to run.
It flew across the hotel lobby
On black wings and a bitter tornado.
It was red hot, and instantly fatal.
It was love at first sight, it was
A lot like staring at the sun.

Most of the survivors believe
It was swamp gas lit by a solar flare.
That exploded in the hotel lobby—
A freak event with no explanation,
A detour and a slow detonation.
It was love at first sight, but I
Don’t think they’re in the mood to care.

I’m pretty sure he winged you
When the heat-seeking shuriken flew
In a cloud across the hotel lobby
While you danced there with reckless abandon
In the hail of an electric commandment.
It was love at first sight, but his
Aim never claimed to be true.

When the wreckage was cleared
They found nothing but shattered glass,
Broken timber, the ruins
Of a continental breakfast,
And the scattered remains
Of a bouquet of roses,
Which exploded.

Aubade, Partly Cloudy

2007-03-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

November 2006

That was actually my horoscope the day I wrote this. And I’m really proud of it. The parts in italics started out as a song.

Aurora, do you remember the cave in the mountains
Where we played with sapphire marbles in the dust?

53rd Street sunrise, 6:47 AM, and there’s not much use for it here. The world has
Laid on its winter blanket, muttering to itself of mislaid precipitation,
Tightens up and harasses her flocks of crows into action, turns the thermostat
And reads the paper, “set sights on adventure” the horoscope,

When we awoke alone, the first, in narrowing darkness
And all the rays of the sun were braided in your hair.

Brandishes a sharp blade to the horizon, elects the wild geese
Her ambassadors, nods sagely at the iridescent oil in the slanted light of
Forgetfulness, and opens the howling door. The wind is westerly, 14 knots, and
Tinged with dry leaves, weariness, sulfur dioxide. Helicopter beating against the grain

You laughed and a tangle of sparks, tenderly interwoven,
Ignited a fire in the serpentine valley below.

Toward the woods, humming rips through the frostbitten cloud cover, shale,
Scrapes her feet across the wool, cacophony of trucks, and it jumps as she reaches

You sprang from the gates of the moon with the dawn in your arms.

St. George and the Dragon Come to America

2007-02-28T12:04:00.000-08:00

February 2007

I blame the Hold Steady for the wacky religious references, and also probably for the rhythm of it. I blame myself for the highly experimental attempt to convey that rhythm through formatting.

We came to America looking for mountains of gold and religious freedom
So that one day a man could sit down in his church and pray
without believing in God
And kneel to the Virgin Mary
and ask her to help him get laid
While St. George and the Dragon are both out to help him get paid.

So that one day a barefoot boy could climb onto an altar in Minneapolis
And proclaim in a wavering voice the forgiveness of sins,
and the election of sinners,
Inspire the resurrection of riots,
condemnation of organized thievery,
And the Virgin Mary just wants to cure his fever.

St. George killed the Dragon with edges and corners,
Because some kinds of dragon are thin, and others
Get shot through the tip of a pin. He never
Found Jesus but he felt like he was getting warmer.

We came to America looking for brotherly love and for open spaces
So that one day a man of God could break down shaking and screaming
in a county jail
After breaking the faith of a dozen
fine Midwestern towns
And St. George and the Dragon have both tried to bring him around.

So that one day a stupid old man could hear the clarion call of the one true faith
As professed by a barefoot boy with ecstatic visions
and confused relations,
The one who can’t tell his doctors,
one of them looks like the Savior.
And the Virgin Mary just hopes he’s the one who can save him.

Return

2007-02-28T12:01:00.000-08:00

November 2006

Agnostic that I am, I find religious references fascinating. One of a few poems I wrote for my poetry workshop that I didn’t end up using.

Return once to the gypsy highway,
The purple moor, return again

To the blue horizon, the faceless moon
Again, again to the blazing sword

Which turns every way, Jerusalem
In rags, Jerusalem, the house of God

A house of swords, a frame of glass
A gas, expansive, a taut string

God’s own relentless sky embraces
The earth indeterminate erupts

The sun, a rose in mourning
The stars, a house of glass

Return again to the darkly glittering
Morning, electric, rebuilding

The cavern sky, the gypsy moonlight
The faceless moon, the crashing dove

That holds a house of sand upon
Its wings of gypsum rose and gypsy

Moth that floats upon the careless wind
God’s own relentless sky embraces

The house of swords, the frame of glass
Immaculate in waiting fragments, chance

Return, shattering, to the faceless sky,
The gypsy moon, the purple moor
The empty room, the open door

Welcome to the Monkey House

2007-02-28T12:00:00.002-08:00

November 2006

Whee! Self-examination – and physics!… there are explanations behind most of the weirder epithets. Oh, and credit where credit is due: Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Vonnegut’s short stories, which I highly recommend. “Who Am I This Time?” is a story in that collection.

God bless the reckless instinct that asks “Who am I this time?”
The reckless rose, in restless prose, by any other name–
Oh, any other name! Let fly the mercy of the indistinct parade, the
Eccentric in elegant armor, the haberdasher by night, or the

Dear occupant, this space must be vacated. Please disperse, sincerely,
Who is it this time? Chance stranger to myself some days, lost
In a suitcase, a writer of love songs, a gypsy moth, one who
Worships the dawn, but sleeps through it.

A builder of chance cathedrals, made a sweeper of floors
In industrial corrugated steel-on-concrete. He who stares intently at the
Radio, the washed-out green, the nervous spatter of five AM
Highway drowning in static and rain-swept grays.

And yet explodes the unexpected moment, Who am I this time?
He who wakes to buzzing lip and jangling nerves. Energy,
Electric, inexhaustibly awake – to become, toward becoming, an echo of the
Senseless sky, an agent of an empty room, an incoherent –
Schroedinger’s Self, a barely shrouded storm.

Sumatra

2007-02-28T12:00:00.001-08:00

November 2006

So many teensy revisions had to be made to this one. The muse, she is a stubborn wench sometimes.

Two hands that held the sky caught fire,
The moon by string and the sun by wire.
And no one else was watching

But me a lost astronomer,
A hollow tube, the broken earth
And you a crashing dove.

May we all fall in love like the avalanche.
May we all carve our sorrows in the sea.
May we all forget.

Two stars that struck the sea came down,
The molten shards of moonlight drowned,
Like a shattered lily in an open wound,
In exploding sheet-glass water.

You were a blade of snow.
You were a harp of white fire.
You were gone.

Falling Star Questions

2007-02-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

Early Fall 2006

Mostly just funny.

If the stars all fell down from the sky
Would they glisten and shine like the dew?
Would we cut up our feet on their diamond edges?
Would they shrivel and wrinkle and turn blue?

But the answer is worse than the asking,
So don’t tell me just shut your eyes
And pretend that the sky is unceasingly black
But the fields are all littered with bright fireflies.

And the stars could all fall down tomorrow.
We’d never remember their names.
If Sirius switched with Polaris,
They’d probably seem just the same.

If the stars all decided to land here,
Would they still disappear in the day?
And then flare at our feet and our fingers
When the light of the sun fades away?

And the answer is worse than the asking,
So don’t tell me just shut your eyes
And swear that the road is a river of silver
While darkness embraces the depths of the sky.

If the stars all fell down from the sky
Would we shovel them out of our walks
Till we made little suns out of piles on our lawns
And got stardust all over our socks?

Low Tide in Chicago

2006-08-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

August 2006

Listening to the Mountain Goats occasionally makes me think along the lines of “Oh god, I will never catch up to John Darnielle.” Although fortunately every time I think that, my subconscious decides to strike back and provide inspiration. Much of this song was written after listening to “You’re in Maya”. It’s somewhat related to that, although for some reason it keeps straying towards Billy Joel in the chorus. Anyway, it’s fairly self-explanatory (a point of style I’m keen on borrowing from the Mountain Goats), and like all good songs, it makes fun of Indiana.

I’m sitting on the shore in Chicago
While the breakwater spars with the lake
On these old painted stones there are warnings
Saying not to dive headfirst into shallow water
And the stones here are mercifully harsh
And the air is still mercifully cold
But the trees catch the last of the sunset
And they echo in silver and gold

And I throw all my cares to the breakwater
And I wait for the tide to come in
I know the tide never comes in Chicago
But that’s the kind of day that it’s been

Lake Michigan, please take me somewhere
To a ratty old lighthouse up north
Where I’ll live with an automated warning
Saying not to sail past me into shallow water
And the landscape is mercifully stark
And the company mercifully dry
And the mist rolls in deep and forgetful
And blocks out the edge of the sky

And I sit drinking whiskey and lake water
And I wait for the tide to come in
I know the tide never comes in Chicago
But that’s the kind of day that it’s been

I stare down the shore in Chicago
Towards the ramshackle haze in the south
Where the rust-covered pipes are a warning
Saying don’t drink or bathe in the shallow water
And the skyline is mercifully grim
And my dreams momentarily buried
And no matter how brutal my memories
I’m still glad I don’t live in Gary

And I throw all my cares to the breakwater
And I wait for the tide to come in
I know the tide never comes in Chicago
But that’s the kind of day that it’s been

It was Better When Romeo Said It

2006-08-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

July 2006

Another song about Romeo, sort of. But hey, I feel literary lately. I’m proud of this one. I was able to break out of my normal patterns a lot. Credit goes to the Mountain Goats, as the lyric pattern feels a lot like some of their/his songs, and John Darnielle provide the mental vocals originally. I’ve tightened the rhyme scheme slightly and adjusted things to my voice, but the stress at the line endings, the free-flowing structure, I’m still very happy to have borrowed. anyway, I like it. It’s a love song with a tangent about witches.

I told you, you were like the sun
But it was better when Romeo said it
He said it with conviction, like a fool
People were foolish in those days
When time was short and the hours were long
If you had nothing to go by
So they believed strange things
That the world was flat
And mice grew from old cheese
And witches always had black cats
Or white ones depending on who you believe

And Romeo he believed in Juliet
And Juliet she believed when Romeo said
She was bright and warm and beautiful
And kept the world from growing dark and cold
But of course they didn’t know
The whole world turned around her

People were foolish in those days
They saw meaning in every flock of birds
That circled in the sky
And every star that fell, fell for someone
And I only see meaning in subtle curves
And the circles in your eyes
And every time I fell, I fell for someone
Someone shining as the sun

But people are foolish in these days

Juliet is Gone

2006-07-10T12:00:00.001-07:00

July 2006

First song of the – let’s call it the “Employment Era”. There are a ton of songs out there involving Romeo & Juliet, as I learned in a brief search, but I’m fairly sure that I haven’t done any direct stealing; It reminds me of too many songs to be just one of them (including, strangely, “Centerfold” – the mood’s not all that far off: negative surprises, as it were…). Vocal rhythm has a lot of Dylan, at least originally; it rocks a little harder now, solid electric riff in the chorus. And the song itself, right… Well, it’s not even an accurate retelling, though I’m fond of the second verse. Romeo plays the hopeless romantic, Juliet the unexplained elusive target, in some sort of unresolved tragic saga. No one to blame, no answers, heh. Well, once I start quoting myself it’s time to stop.

A light through yonder window breaks but Juliet is gone
Poor Romeo is out on the highway staring at the sun
The story’s old and has been told in versions short and long
But that’s no help to Romeo who no longer belongs
To anyone but whispers only “Juliet is gone.”

[Chorus]
Juliet is gone! Oh, Juliet is gone!
And Romeo with eyes aflame hurls curses at the dawn
But there’s no one to blame…
And Juliet, she’d like to think she knew it all along
But there are never any answers
When true love comes out wrong

Romeo was half-awake when the preacher grabbed his arm
He said “boy, get out of here, they’ve raised the false alarm!”
So he capered through the cobweb streets and jumped the Wailing Wall
Till the memory of his Juliet made him forsake it all
And he walked right through the gate and said “You’ve gotten it all wrong!”
But his heart skipped and he froze his lips for Juliet was gone.

[Chorus]

Somewhere up on 49th, a candle burning low
And still nearby the tears are cried alas poor Romeo
He is waiting at the window, he’s standing in the hall
With his tattered coat and fragile hope that true love conquers all
But Romeo another day must sigh and soldier on
A picture frame by candle-light, but Juliet is gone

[Chorus]

A light through yonder window breaks but Juliet is gone
Poor Romeo is out on the highway staring at the sun
Perhaps someday he’ll find her, perhaps a welcome home
Poor Juliet we cannot judge, her reasons are her own
But even now the same refrain each time the tale is told
Alas the lady Juliet, alas poor Romeo

Moonrise

2006-07-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

July 2006

Actual, non-songwriting poetry for once. Inspired by an event a long way back, it seems now, October of first year. On some vaguely organized late-night trip to the point, lying around looking at stars, and suddenly there’s this strange orange glow out on the lake, and it turned out to be moonrise, which I’d never seen in that fashion before. I’m not used to clear horizons. But in any case, it was absolutely gorgeous in the way that such things are. I ought to get out there again sometime, maybe check an almanac.

The moon rises, slowly and unintelligibly,
Over Lake Michigan,
A sliver of orange on the horizon,
A trail of light on the water,
Poseidon rising from the deep
With slow steps crowned in burnt gold

And we gasp, forgetting for a moment
That we shiver on cold stones in the darkness
And bask in the nothing-glow, the sky blossom,
Pale sister of the dawn, and yet

There are more glorious things than dawn
In the unlit spaces of the void
Cataclysms rage, stars ignite, and all dance
Together, all tied, all unbound, against each other,
To be mere sparks upon the heavens’ forge

And this,
A sliver of orange on the horizon, and
A trail of topaz light upon the water.

Memories

2006-06-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

June 2006

Sometimes they come out of nowhere. This one wasn’t really about anything until I had to come up with the third verse. The first two just sort of popped into my head while I was trying to focus on my CompSci project. Ah, procrastination by inspiration.

Bind it up in turquoise angles
Leave it on the mantel shelf
Call it fate or call it vision
Call it love or blind ambition
But it’s killing you and you don’t know why

Why try to make emptiness an altar?
Make a shadow on the ceiling into something more revealing
When you could just be living all along

But you roll it up in wrapping paper
Throw it in the wishing well
Call it fame or call it fortune
Call it hope or call it torture
But you have to feel a little to get by

Why try to make emptiness an altar?
Make it into something softer, when it’s awkward just as often
And you could just be getting it all wrong

If it’s wrong, you still believe it
If it’s right, you may not need it
If it’s easy, well you don’t know why
If it’s hard, well still it’s worth a try

So you dress it up in Technicolor
Seal in a picture frame
Call it sad or sentimental
Call it strictly ornamental
But it’s killing you and keeping you alive
And you don’t know why

American Teenage Turmoil

2006-04-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

April 2006

This one’s drawn from a variety of sources, mostly related to the general madness around here. People are nuts, and yes that includes me. Anyway, it’s pretty straightforward power pop musically, but I’m happy because it got me off the folkiness in my head for a bit. The poet in me has great difficulty writing a pure chorus. Either too many good ideas, or none good enough to stand repetition, I don’t know. Enjoy.

Do you recall the way it all seemed wonderful?
Do you recall the tragedy the very next day?
And do you recall the way I called you beautiful?
And do you recall the way it all fades away?

Good old American Teenage Turmoil
If you don’t break through it breaks you down again
Good old American Teenage Turmoil
You’re living in sin till you’re 21, and then:

Do you recall the night we spent in the underbrush?
Do you recall that turnaround is always fair play?
And do you recall the way we laughed, just the two of us?
And do you recall the way it all fades away?

Good old American Teenage Turmoil
It’s funny that we make it through alive
Good old American Teenage Turmoil
You can’t understand, so you might as well survive.

Do you recall the things we swore in the summertime?
Do you recall the promises we never could say?
And do you recall that all we knew we could undermine?
And do you recall the way it all fades away?

Good old American Teenage Turmoil
Drop yourself a line to get in touch
Good old American Teenage Turmoil
You’re not yourself, or maybe just a little too much

Good old American Teenage Turmoil
If you don’t break through it breaks you down again
Good old American Teenage Turmoil
You’re living in sin till you’re 21, and then:

Good old American Twenty-something Turmoil…

Burning Bridges

2006-01-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

December 2005

This is something I wrote fairly aimlessly, as poetry, although it has something of a song verse-chorus structure. Not that the chorus stays the same, but the “burning” sections stick together rhythmically more, and there’s an old Irish melody that fits them. Somehow the less melody I have when writing, the more I’m forced to carry things along with imagery, although with some work I suppose this could be a song. And what’s it about. Oh, I don’t know – journeys, collateral damage, things you do without reasons, and all that jazz. And it’s a little bit, just a little bit, about the Cuyahoga River…

Long, strange, into nowhere
With the mystery of Sanskrit on sandstone
And the air smells of gypsies and blood
Not that we look for them
But the blood keeps for centuries
On the blades of grass for the blades of steel

You’re burning your bridges before you
You’re burning your bridges with incense and myrrh
You’re burning Chicago for steel and glass
But Chicago was burning so long before you were

And a handful of glass beads on the windshield
Before you can wipe it away and you’re drowning
In crystal and chandelier bulbs
Not that we ask for them
But the crystals are products of centuries
Or it’s glass from this Wednesday that’s never been real

But you’re burning your bridges before you
Burning your bridges for tinder and shame
You’re burning down Cleveland for blue river water
But the river was flowing so long before you came

And those tornado spirals in deep river water
And hurricanes carved into deep forest maple
And you wipe it all off with a scarlet bandanna
With the dust and dandelions
Not that they grow here
But they blow in the wind over centuries
Just like we do

And we’re burning our bridges behind us
We’ve been burning our bridges to keep ourselves home
We’re burning a path to the deep ocean water
But the waves have been crashing since long before we came to roam.

Catch Me!

2005-12-07T12:00:00.000-08:00

December 2005

You know, I’m going to run out of fresh things to say about these if I don’t find a new theme. But hell, it’s bouncy and kind of Belle & Sebastian-y. And it does touch a somewhat different tone than other things I’ve written: full of enthusiasm, but not quite ready to jump.

Catch me! I’m not falling but I’ll fall for you
Catch me! I’m not falling but I’m trying to
Don’t be scared, honey! I’m a fool but this is true
If you catch me I’ll be there to carry you.

Wake me! I’m not sleeping but I dream of you
Wake me! I’ve been out for near a month or two
Don’t be scared, honey! I’m a fool but so are you
And together there’s no telling what we’ll do

Save me! I’m not dying but that’s all I do
Save me! I’m an inch away from breaking through
Don’t be scared, honey! We’ve got everything to lose
But that’s only if it’s what we want to do

Don’t be scared, honey! I’m a fool I know it’s true
Don’t be scared, honey! I’m a fool but so are you
Don’t be scared, honey! I don’t have to fall for you
But I’m telling you there’s more that we can do

Oh, catch me! I’m not falling but I’ll fall for you
Catch me! I’m not falling but I’m trying to
Don’t be scared, honey! I’m a fool but this is true
If you catch me I’ll be there to carry you.

Keep on Dreaming

2005-11-29T12:00:00.000-08:00

November 2005

It’s got that enthusiastically uncertain vibe that I do so well. And I also seem to have drifted into a bit of a… roots rock? … mode lately, which is why I come up a bit clichéd on the choruses. But it’s been fun to sing, and it’s one of my more inspired songs lately. Think Johnny Cash.

There’s a song you hear in the dead of night when your thoughts have all gone dry
And you keep on thinking till your head goes numb and you keep on wondering why
And you keep on falling down
And you keep on trying to fly
And there’s a song you hear in the dead of night when your thoughts have all gone dry

But you keep on moving
You keep on trying way too hard
And you keep on losing
But you keep on going back to the start
But you keep on dreaming
You keep on keep on keeping on
You keep on saying, babe, don’t make me sing this song

And there’s a face you see when you close your eyes that you don’t even try to explain
And you keep on talking till you’ve figured it out and your friends all think you’re insane
And you keep on looking up
And you keep on down the drain
But there’s a face you see when you close your eyes that you don’t even try to explain

But you keep on moving…

And there’s a voice you hear when you wake up cold and you color your days with your dreams
And you keep on believing till you’re scared to death that it’s nearly as hard as it seems
And you keep on breaking down
And you keep on gaining steam
But there’s a voice you hear when you wake up cold and you color your days with your dreams

But you keep on moving…

And there’s a song you hear in the dead of night that’s burning a hole in your mind
And you keep on trying to disguise yourself like you know what tomorrow will find
And you keep on looking for daylight
And you keep on flying blind
And there’s a song you hear in the dead of night that’s burning a hole in your mind

But you keep on moving…

So don’t you kill me, honey
Don’t you walk me down the line
Don’t you kill me, honey
You know you’re a friend of mine
And don’t you worry, baby
It’s all right now I’ll be fine
Don’t you worry, baby
You’ll be on my mind

Hymn to St. Elmo the Sailor

2005-11-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

November 2005

This is my first attempt at a drinking song. I’m not entirely sure how this idea came around, but I managed to write almost all of it on the CTA going home for Thanksgiving.

Protect me, Saint Elmo, though I am no sailor
I’m running on seaweed and fumes
And I’m in no navy but that’s not important
I’ve no one to turn to but you

Protect me, Saint Elmo, I’m drowning
I’m drowning my troubles in booze
I’m up to my eyeballs in cheap gin and vodka
If you won’t help drink it, I’m through

Protect me, Saint Elmo, a sailor
For the deck is a-heaving and swaying
I know I’m not shipboard but I’m getting seasick
It’s making a mess of my brain

Protect me, Saint Elmo, though I am no sailor
I’m sure that you’re wondering why
There’s nobody else who can help with my problem
I can’t seem to keep myself dry.

Protect me, Saint Elmo, a traveler
My compass is guiding me stray
My sea-legs are presently rather unstable
And the bartender says I can’t stay

Protect me, Saint Elmo, I’m grounded
I’m beached on the side of the street
What I mean to say is I’m stuck in a gutter
And the liquor has capsized my feet

Protect me, Saint Elmo, though I am no sailor
Just heed this poor vagabond’s cry
I’ll shiver my timbers and batten my hatches
If that’s what it takes to get by

Chicago Rain My Blues Away

2005-11-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

November 2005

Somehow, these things are always really good when you finish them at 4 in the morning. Even if I just can’t seem to avoid the weather imagery. This one was fun. It started out sort of Bell & Sebastian inspired, although I think the tempo changed along the way and there a bit of melody I may have stolen from the Allman Brothers. Do I even have to say it’s about a girl at this point?

I’ve been talking in the station of the crow’s unsteady flight
I‘ve been waking in the morning to a grey and shaky light
I could stake my reputation on my never being right
Oh Chicago, won’t you rain my blues away?

Cause it’s been so long without sunshine
I can’t stand it when the skies are clear
And I’ve been so long chasing shadows
That I don’t know what to do when one gets near

And it takes more than a smile to move me… sometimes
And it takes more than the wind to move me anywhere at all
But I’m hiding from the blue sky with my back against the wall
So Chicago, won’t you rain my blues away?

And it gets so cold in the sunshine
That I don’t even try to warm my nights
And it gets so dim in the daytime
That I don’t even think to turn the lights

But if everything I try to do is something
And if nothing that I know is nevermore,
Still it seems that I get burned whenever I walk out the door
So Chicago, won’t you rain my blues away?

Cause it takes so much to be sensible
I’d rather have a complicated twist
And a clear autumn day seems so simple
When I’m fixed upon an unexpected tryst

So I’m sorry that my thoughts are always cloudy
And I’m sorry that I’m caught up in the breeze and just a kiss
And I fear we may get snowed in before we get out of this
So Chicago, won’t you rain my blues away?
Oh Chicago, can’t you rain my blues away?
Cause I’m really not so worried when the world’s in shades of gray.
Oh Chicago, won’t you rain my blues away?

Pull Myself Together

2005-10-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

October 2005

Built off a bouncy little stop-and-go rhythm I got stuck in my own head over the summer, which makes it feel like such a happy song. I wish it could be happier, though it sits on the cheerful, well-meaning side of a tough goodbye. I printed out a copy, and then somebody asked to read it in the elevator, and then asked to keep it. So that’s reassuring.

I want no one, to tell me what to live for
I’ve got no one, there’s nothing I can be
But I need only one, to put it all together
I need only one, to help me to be free

And I’ve no faith, I seek no mighty savior
And I’ve no pride, nor simple vanity
And I’m no fool, I seek no perfect stranger
I am only looking for the one I need

And I need only one, to pull myself together
And I need only one, to love me tenderly
I need only one, only one and nothing better
I need only you, if only you could see

But it’s too late, to put it back together
And it’s too long, too strange to wait and see
So it’s “fare thee well,” and beware of stormy weather
And it’s “fare thee well,” I guess I’d better leave

So I’m going away, a long, long way away
Though I don’t know if I’m going anywhere
And I’m going away, I got to get away today
And I don’t know if I’ll come back anymore

I’m going away, ‘cause there’s no place I can stay
But then again I could be right back here tomorrow
And tomorrow I don’t know, there’s no place I can go
But everything I need I can borrow

So it’s fare thee well, I’m bound for stormy weather
And it’s so long, I’ll find another way
And it’s such a shame, but nothing lasts forever
If you need me I’ll be back again someday

And I need only one, to put it all together
And I need one chance; I guess it’s hard to see
Cause it’s so strange, and it’s neither now nor never
I’m still looking for the only one I need.

Ought to Know Better

2005-10-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

June 2005

More of a pop/rock idiom this time. A song for a time of hopeful anticipation and a bit of frustration. Been finished for a while, just never bothered to post it.

And all the things she has to tell me are the things she doesn’t know,
And all the things she has to give me are the things she doesn’t own,
And the only thing I ask of her is what she doesn’t show
And I really ought to know better, I really ought to know better
But I’m not letting go.

Tell me something,
Tell me I can hang around awhile
Tell me that you want me, that you need me, that you love me
But I don’t really mind if you don’t.

Because I really ought to know better anyway,
But I’m not taking good advice today.

And sometimes I try to listen for the things she doesn’t say
But no matter what she tells me I can wait another day
And there’s no use in explaining for it just gets in the way
And I’m supposed to get over it anyway

Tell me something
Tell me not to give up for a while
Tell me that you want me, that you need me, that you love me
But I don’t really mind if you don’t

Because I really ought to know better anyway
But it’s –
Well, it’s –
Because it’s –
You know it’s something but it’s more than I can say.
And you won’t really mind if I don’t.

To You (Like a River)

2005-10-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

July 2005

A “remix”, if you will, of my earlier poem. And yeah, I know the theme has been done. But I came up with the last two stanzas and felt they fit onto “To You”. Another one I actually have a way to sing. Obviously I could sing most of it before, but the new stanzas have a different, though partly similar, melody.

Like a river to the ocean
Like a salmon to the stream
Like a dying man to water
Like a lobster to the steam

Like a freight train, slowly rolling
Slowly rolling down the line
I’ll come rolling to your doorstep
If you’ve ever got the time

And I’m running out of options
And I’m running out of time
I’ll come running straight to your arms
That is if you don’t mind.

Like an arrow to the target
Like a bolt from the blue
If you’ll answer one more question
I’ll come flying straight to you

I’ve got nothing left to give you
I’ve got nothing left to lose
If you give me one more answer
Then I’ll fall in love with you.

Like a coward out of danger
Like a prisoner going free
Like a hammer needs an anvil
Like a blind man needs to see.

Like a river, slowly flowing
Slowly rolling to the sea
If I ever get close to you
Won’t you please stay close to me?

Like a river, to the all-receiving ocean
Like a sailor, to the all-forgiving sea
Like the rain comes, in one ever-loving motion
Let my heart fly, to wherever you may be.

As the gulls cry, across the all-believing ocean
As the storms roll, up from the all-redeeming sea
Like a river, full of swift torrential motion
Let my love flow, to wherever you may be

Crazy Ideas

2005-08-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

July 2005

This one probably I will have to work on further at some point, but most of it is as it should be. Something of an optimistic poem/song for me, it took a while to put together. The middle stanza actually originated separately and then was combined with the first two, at which point I had to write very little to come up with the last two, which nonetheless solidify an uncertain romantic optimism.

Well did you ever think maybe you were somebody else’s problem?
And did you ever think maybe you were somebody else’s troubled, troubled, troubled mind?
And did you ever think maybe you could do it again if you tried?
Or that you’d never survive?
And did you ever think maybe you were taking the easy way out?

Because, now and again, when your head’s in the middle
And you’re trying to figure how to figure it out,
Well, there’s nothing to stop you from dreaming
You might be somebody else’s craziest, craziest, crazy idea.

Would you tell me if I’d noticed that you noticed me before?
Could I tell you if you told me that I wanted you for more
Than just a simple intuition, just a simple piece of mind
And do you mind I have to tell you you’ve been very hard to find?

Because, now and again, when you’re stuck in a riddle
And you’re trying to figure how to figure it out
Well, there’s nothing to stop you from dreaming
No, there’s nothing to stop you from dreaming
And there’s nothing to stop me from dreaming of you

Figure It Out While I'm Down

2005-07-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

July 1, 2005

I’m not saying it’s good, I’m just saying it's long enough. At this point it’s a one-night effort. Sort of an expression of frustrated optimism, doing one of those weird cyclical patterns I occasionally fall into. The indents in the stanzas that have them represent a different voice or attitude. Should be a song eventually, but the variations in the line rhythms will make it tricky to put together.

What do we know?
What do we care?
What are we coming to?
Are you coming too?
You know maybe it’s not there…

But I’ve no reason to be down here in the first place
And no reasonable reason to be nowhere after all,
Going nowhere telling no one that I’ve got nowhere to fall.

But I’ll figure it out when I get there.
I’ll figure it out while I’m down.
With nowhere to go but up, at least maybe,
Well, maybe just nowhere to go
But if I figure it out without falling down, you’ll be the first to know.

Where have I been?
Where did you go?
What are we running from?
Aren’t you having fun?
Wouldn’t you be the first to know?

But I’ve no reason to be leaving in the first place
And no reasonable reason to be anywhere at all,
Going anywhere for anyone who can peel me off the wall.

But I’ll figure it out when I get there.
I’ll figure it out while I’m down.
With nobody left here to tell me I’m fading,
Or maybe just somebody else
But if I figure it out without falling down, you’ll be the first to know.

Something in the Wind

2005-06-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

February-April 2005

I… am not really sure what to say about this one. Very much a jumble of thoughts over a period. Originally, it owes something to “Suite – Judy Blue Eyes” but it didn’t stay songlike.

There is something in the wind
And in the January sky
That does not know me anymore
Than I know who I am today.

Yet I follow in my footsteps
Back where I have gone before
And find I’m wishing that the dawn was near at hand.

But I was born to be a gypsy
I was born to be a poet and a fool
And she was made to make me restless
Reckless wandering before the break of day.

Yet I follow in the green grass
Back where early morning sunshine
Will only make me turn my head away and wander on.

But I was born to hear the rhythm
Of the sunshine in the swaying trees
And though I know not who I am
I know more than I will ever find to say.

Yet I follow in the wilderness
Where her heartbeat moves the rivers
And the streams of time just might flow back to me.

There is something in the April rain
That tells me what I’ve left behind
And I wonder how it knows me
And if ever it will all come back my way.

Misbelieving

2005-06-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

June 2005

A statement of sorts. With a structure that is either complex or just sort of unstable, I can’t tell. This is one that’s had bits and pieces done for over a year, so it’s something of a composite of feelings. Also, it proves that I really just like playing with words.

I hold that the universe is
Inextricably inexplicable
To itself.

And our hold on the universe
Is amenably untenable
And not so firm
As it seems.

But we are not lost until we let it go
We are not blind until we see it so

And the universe holds with
Benevolent ambivalence
Something apart from us
And is stranger
Than it seems.

But there is no hope unless we cry
There is no faith unless we try
You wonder how and I’ll wonder why
But we cannot fall until we fly

And the universe keeps throwing
Unexpected undetected
Unbeliever’s miracles
At us.

No Particular Night or Morning

2005-06-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

June 4, 2005

The title comes from a Bradbury story about dying in space. This is slightly more optimistic, but it’s especially a good song for being up all night and confused as fuck.

I’ve got no sense of direction
I’ve got no sense of time
I’ve got no particular night or morning, night or morning,
Holding me down
Holding me down

You wake up to gray and don’t ask if it’s coming or going
Because you don’t really care and no one really knows
But still you think sunsets are beautiful
If that’s what it is or it isn’t, and if it isn’t, it’s all very fine.

I’ve got no sense of where I am
And no sense of home
I’ve got no particular night or morning, night or morning,
Lifting me up
Lifting me up

You go to bed in the half-light and call it a mystery
But mysteries are meant to be solved and you’ve given up
But still you think sunrise is wonderful
If that’s what it is or it isn’t, and if it isn’t, then that’s alright.

Rising, falling
Bathed in starlight
Drifting into dreams of untold intuitions
And journeys that end where they start
And I’ve got no particular night or morning, night or morning,
Guiding the way
Guiding the way

Storm Petrel

2005-05-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

2002

Another early work. Storm petrels are a family of birds that, as I am led to understand, are capable of diving underwater and coming straight back out. The coolness and metaphorical-ness of the image prompted this poem. The meter is funky, and I like what comes out in the rhythm, although I’m not sure if parts of it completely work.

A small dark bird and a fell dark tempest
A dark wild wind and a dark blue sea
The bird is tossed by the three dark furies
Yet beats its wings upon the storm

The wind in howling hatred rises
The little bird rises in the gale
The sea’s white teeth all gnash in hunger
Wind meets sea with a dreadful wail.

The wind in fury not yet sated
Now beats the bird beneath the waves
The sea receives the speck with pleasure
To send it to its dark wet grave.

Yet up form the swell of the whirling whitecaps,
The little bird bursts alive and well
The tempest screams with awesome fury
The little bird sings upon the storm.

What Lurks Behind the Stars

2005-05-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

2001

One of the earliest works to assume a completed form, Later expanded into a sonnet for an English class. I’m not sure what to think of it now. To me, It feels very different from my current stuff.

What darkness lurks behind the stars, that man
Should gaze so raptly to eternal space,
Like some forgotten sentry made to stand
In wait of some infernal foe to face?

And if it is not darkness, what then? friend?
Though few find friends by gazing in the night;
A thousand lamps their radiant rays out send;
Perhaps they seek for our celestial light?

Humanity then seeks itself above,
For friends and foes we have in fair supply,
But purposeless I will not call such love
For brilliant fires far off upon the sky.

My musings her mean nothing to the night –
But I must leave… the stars are quite a sight.

Runaway Train Lost Woman Blues

2005-05-01T12:00:00.003-07:00

April 2005

This was written for a girl just familiar enough to be fascinatingly incomprehensible. It wants to be a song, but I haven’t actually figured out how to sing it.

She was dangerous for all the right reasons
I was doomed in all the right ways
I was falling in love like a runaway train
And she never knew what to say

Well, you’ll never get anything perfect from her
But she might be the perfect girl

Well it started ‘round four in the morning
And it ended at eleven PM
And if I had to get hit by a runaway train
Well, it might as well have been then.

No, you never will understand what she does
But you know she does it well.

It was then I started drifting backward
It was then I started drifting free
And though she couldn’t keep me from falling apart
She made me do it elegantly.

And you’ll never get what you expect from her
But she might give you what you need.

There Is

2005-05-01T12:00:00.002-07:00

January 2005

Another philosophical meditation.

An unfortunate suddenness
To the nature of things
As they are

An impractical dizziness
To the way of things
As they might be

A most difficult evasiveness
In the nature of things
As we’d like them

And a firm and inscrutable providence
In the way of things
As they turn out.

Out of the Clear Blue Sky

2005-05-01T12:00:00.001-07:00

April 2005

Another philosophical meditation with natural imagery. I could do with better luck on option #2, really.

Sometimes life comes like a summer storm,
When subtle warnings on the winds are borne,
When the grey clouds gather in a mighty train
Calamitous, reckless, foretelling rain
And the prophet thunder before them goes
As we stand in fields as the warm breeze blows
Awaiting, with hearts bare, the wild flight
The blessed rain
And magnificent light
Of the storm approaching.

But sometimes also life comes sly,
With the barest hint or suggestion why,
It comes falling out of the clear blue sky.

Another Misty Morning

2005-05-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

April 2005

Poems that come to you when your head clears at 3:00 AM are always good.

It is another misty morning as I write this
Another grey uncertainty of dawn
Another weary tumble into lightness
That the clouds will not surrender to for long

There is another well-worn circle in my head now
Another quiet journey in the dark
Another wordless mystery my heart bows
Forever aimless firing at no mark.

It is another silent pensive cloud that greets me,
Assures me I have written this before
And another mental struggle now defeats me,
Assures me that I cannot win the war.

And yet another far-off birdsong lifts me
And echoes with a half-forgot refrain
Another feeble sunrise makes new morning
And nothing stands forever quite the same.

To You

2005-05-01T00:00:00.001-07:00

April 2005

Clearly written with a girl in mind. Simple folk or blues type of melody here, probably stolen from something I can’t remember. Still, I think I can actually sing this one decently.

Like a river to the ocean
Like a salmon to the stream
Like a dying man to water
Like a lobster to the steam

Like a freight train, slowly rolling
Slowly rolling down the line
I’ll come rolling to your doorstep
If you’ve ever got the time

And I’m running out of options
And I’m running out of time
I’ll come running straight to your arms
That is if you don’t mind.

Like an arrow to the target
Like a bolt from the blue
If you’ll answer one more question
I’ll come flying straight to you

I’ve got nothing left to give you
I’ve got nothing left to lose
If you give me one more answer
Then I’ll fall in love with you.

Like a coward out of danger
Like a prisoner going free
Like a hammer needs an anvil
Like a blind man needs to see.

Like a river, slowly flowing
Slowly rolling to the sea
If I ever get close to you
Won’t you please stay close to me?

These are the Dreams of Insomnia

2005-04-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

April 2005

In accordance with its theme, about half of it means something, and half of it doesn’t, at least not to me. Its title suggests its origin.

I can’t sleep and my mind is wandering
And I think of the things I don’t know
And my head is full of restless rhythms
But the time still passes slow.

I saw a mighty fortress rise
With walls of crimson flame
And a moat of steel that churned and wheeled around the flows of stone
I could not yet believe my eyes
I approached the doors alone
But the gate was barred with kindness hard and mercy was its name

Oh, but these are the dreams of insomnia speaking
And I would not mind them, no
But the ragged thoughts behind them speak
Of the things I almost know

I felt a sword within my hand
That shined with golden fire
As it flew with grace its silent face betrayed its burden dread
And it left me in a twisted land
And hung above my head
I escaped in fright but by the night I’d sunk into the mire.

Oh, but these are the dreams of insomnia speaking
And I dare not listen, no
For the jagged thoughts that in them dwell
Are fragments of my soul

I heard a bird song so absurd
That rang with truths to tell
And melody so sweet and free it broke the rainbow sky
If my heart could but catch one word
I knew that I might die
But keep this song within you strong or you may fall to hell

Oh, but these are the dreams of insomnia weaving
I cannot hold them, no
For the ancient caves they wander through
Are deep and dark and low.

I met a dragon silver-grey
As through the sky I swam
His teeth were ice and rolling dice brought wisdom from his brain
His tail was braided light of day
With moonbeams in his mane
And he spoke to me in ecstasy, “You must know who I am.”

Oh, but these are the dreams of insomnia sleeping
You should not trust them, no
For the ragged thoughts within them speak
Of things I cannot know.

Endings

2005-04-01T12:02:00.000-08:00

Early 2004

With wild eyes to watch the winding seas
Go down into the bright darkness
As the stars collapse, exploding red hot fury
Into quiet mist as eternity stops
And infinity wheels into a pinhead, churning,
I should not be worthy.

With troubled ears to hear the sky breaking,
Screaming as the tumbling world is spent
In the cold void as the sun dissolves
Into the shadows of the galaxy shivering
Dark as infinity stretches to nothing
I should dread utterly.

With quiet mind to be the fading sunlight
Of myself upon myself and untold mastery
Drawing out all things once from the driving,
Furious, fragile flesh that knew the earth
And wind as I sink into potent oblivion
I should be content.

Untitled

2005-04-01T12:01:00.001-08:00

Early 2004

I think I wrote this in under 15 minutes while putting off a paper. Still, it fits together well enough.

Awake, awake, the dark redeeming
Sing the song of doom reborn
Fire of old is new arisen
Fury ancient breaks the dawn

Elder still awakes the morning
Sings the long-lost songs of war
Shouts the call awaiting glory
Calls the fools to fight the storm

Long ago when men were angels
Here the battles built the songs
Now the tides of war are fading
None can tell what waits at dawn.

Poet's Prayer

2005-04-01T12:01:00.000-08:00

2004

For a short poem, this took quite a while to get together. As close as I get to a summary of my philosophy on life.

Today I am boundless,
Infinite,
Nothingness,
Creature of spirit and fire.

Sing Hope,
Irrational, wide-eyed,
Unknowable,
Least-fortunate angel to guide the way.

Sing love,
All-redeeming
Breath of the universe
Angel, protector, uniter of souls.

Hope, be my avatar.
Love, be my advocate.

Older and Younger

2005-04-01T12:00:00.006-08:00

Fall 2004

I’m channeling Dylan here, so picture him singing it, maybe with a mid-tempo folk-rock sort of arrangement.

I am older than you think I am
And younger than you know
I am older than the summer rain
And younger than the snow
And you don't know where I am
But I don't know where to go.

There are prophets on the street corners
and the devil in the wind.
And a thousand men may end their lives
Before one man will begin.
And a man may tell a thousand lies
To get you not to sin.

But be older than you think you are.
Be younger than you know.
You may survive the pouring rain
You may survive the snow.
But the way is long and arduous
The path is full of woe.

There are no signs along the way,
No map to where you are.
You will walk the path in beggar's boots,
Seeking solace from afar.
And you will find your spirit wane,
Like a dying avatar.

And the storms will strike around you
And the bandits hold the roads.
And you know the dangers you must face
If with me you will go.
You are older than you think you are,
And younger than you know.

Triumvirate (Incomplete)

2005-04-01T12:00:00.005-08:00

Early 2004

The opening three stanzas of what could be a narrative work at some point. Mining a fantasy vein here again.

Redeem! Redeem!
Ye twilight child,
A light upon the eastern wild
And bold ye fool, ye tempest, and ye stormful child of war
And laugh to be alive
The world is ill for thee.

Behold! Behold!
Ye starlit wanderer
Fire upon the sunrise yonder
And hope to ride the tempest and the maelstrom tides of war
And weep to be alive
The road is long for thee.

Arise! Arise!
Ye fire-born angel
Time awakes thee doom and danger
And haste to guide the tempest in the wilderness and war.
And sing to be alive
The call is meant for thee.

Self-Critique

2005-04-01T12:00:00.004-08:00

Early 2004

Would it be wrong to say I don’t think it’s my best work?

Look here!
This is useless,
Forced and pretentious,
And the message too plain for my face.

Look here!
Too much rhythm,
And rhyme without reason
No flow to the meter, no passion or grace.

And here!
This is something,
A sparkle at least
It must be drawn out, though: more impact, more soul.

But no,
It is dreadful.
This never will do.
The problem is not with the parts but the whole.

Oh this?
This is nothing.
Just something I wrote.

Nightfall

2005-04-01T12:00:00.003-08:00

Early 2004

An exercise in fantasy.

Away! Away!
The breath of day
Is dying and the night is fey
In the grim land by your fathers’ graves

Their swords are gone
And eons long
Have washed the warriors from the stones
But a grim ward still disputes the bones.

Beware! Beware!
The torpid air
Is heavy with regrets of yore
And men are killed by stranger things than war.

Icons

2005-04-01T12:00:00.001-08:00

January 2005

This is probably my best poetry with a political message. I like the way the rhythm moves.

Man by the infinite God is awed
For Man is made in the image of God.

And we ask for the sake of our thousand dreams
And we ask for the sake of knowing things
In the heart of hearts of the king of kings

Does God hope?

And God is remade in the image of man
So we may pretend to understand

And we ask for the sake of our growing need
As we stake our lives on a book we read
In the throne of thrones and in Adam’s seed

Does God believe?

And God is remade in an image of stone
So we may keep him as our own

And we ask for the sake of our troubled times
Though we hear it along with the weekly chimes
As we seek to atone for nameless crimes

Who does God love?

And God is remade in an image of fire
So all we fear may be placed on the pyre.

And we no more ask when the innocents die
We no longer ask why the angels cry
But we say we know, with a knowing lie,

What God wants.

And God is remade in the image of man.

Angel Unorthodox

2005-04-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

Late 2004

Like a sonnet on LSD.

I am the unorthodox angel
An angel of hope and redemption
Born on the wind on the edge of the sunrise
Born on the tip of the thunderbolt’s fire

I am the unfortunate angel
The angel regret and repentance
Slow-rising, far-seeing, born to the tempest
Under the weight of the hurricane’s ire.

I am the intemperate angel
The angel of desperate valor
Born in the flare of the sudden rebellion,
Quick-striking wrath in the thunderstorm dire.

I am the last of the grim, grey, storm-tossed angels
And the last of the bleak, blind, storm-tossed fools.