perpetually sudden

i think about how I’ve never really known what’s in your head; the grey matter; the fizzing goop that drips through your cerebellum, you strange beast…but that I have seen it ticking from the outside for half my life;; dizzying clockwork and happenstance ticks i know so well ; i see the everything gushing from within some socket – i wish i could plug the dam for you, let you rest in sinewed arms, take away the racket and the rage, let it wash out in the rain, i wish i could soften the gears, release the valve, unfurl the sails, let fly the fluttering eye

// just the right amount of pain, right to the bloodbones, to the corner of your brain still flooded with syrup and cotton

/ my little broken treasure

/ a little puncture in the side of your brain // what is this thing we call a heart; a ball of layer upon hayer of some howling wishes cast together; hot like iron – like glass – like metal – like a forge of something past and present and never fully had

the ever present present unfolding ;; like a little handful of Jack’s ; spiky and round at the same time

/ and you, barreling towards everything as if my heart was just a placeholder / wiping my i-love-you’s off your mouth as if they dirtied your imagination / and me, a sudden gust of wind perpetually blowing; perpetually sudden

hyper-present

And of course I think of a 1000 useful things to say as I drive away

Am I your strangest friend? You ask me / I ask you if I can use that for writing / I curl my way down the little town street, I cannot escape the poetry of a night sky

I remember at all, don’t you? Don’t you swim through the brine ; through the ratted tufts of your brain? I am sorry for my insufficiencies, for my weakness of heart, for my in firmament of mind, for my recklessness of behavior. I am sorry for believing all the tales they tell us to believe. I am sorry the truth is not a clear set of silver utensils to be shined. I am sorry I cannot even set the table.

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we let the notes hit through our chests for the last time ; peel through our sinews for last time. the curtain cast its purple side-long gaze at the shadows in the wings, our false eyelashes bounced gluey-wisp replies. we danced to those legendary notes, the drumbeat hollowing in our ankles, the rhythm curling through time. i peeled through all the energy – the layers of light and vision cast about me as i spun about in circles. the stage seemed to morph around me as i moved through it – the cast glaring and leering and laughing and dancing in hopscotch halter moments – frozen bits alighting about me.

it’s something you get to keep / you never have to give it away; the gift you get on the stage; the one that burrows right inside of your ribcage; the one that becomes part of your marrow; the one that continues to breathe with you / you never have to give it away; it becomes part of your weaving, part of your body, it never dies

there are moments on stage that feel more real than real life – more present, more prescient, more alive. as if all the world were a strange synapse dream and here we have remembered that we are always just playing. and we are giving the moment meaning, and attention, and tension, and care, and we are practicing at being present for it, at having it mean a certain thing. the care for the ever unfolding moment – that sometimes reaches into reality farther than the drip-dried dream of our everyday, profane moments. the sacred is reached towards. the holy cathedral of the theatre – the sacred soul box of memories and words and lineage of ancestor tongues and human reflection of reflection of reflection of what it is to be real. and somehow, in this hallway of mirrors, this art at art at real life – reality is punctured like a hollow cloud – and you find yourself standing in something hyper-real, hyper-present, uniquely beautiful and glowing; stage lights dancing about faces of people you are endlessly putting your trust into, and are endlessly catching you.

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i am grateful for the hum of guitar chords that still walk me through my life, tuck me inside moments and find me a home inside strange little rooms in strange little cities. i am grateful for the glaze of beautiful eyes that seethe, for the hurricane of emotions i am still somehow able to feel. i am grateful to begin to feel old; to still feel young. i am grateful for you, and i am grateful for you. let me alight, and continue to burn.

where the sky meets the horizon

we are always infinite, and it is a tragedy that we live in a state of constant forgetting. infinite love, infinite imagination. firelight and wilderness.

the snow curled summit of the season keeps swirling around me – sanitized eyes and lacewig goodbyes. i keep dancing – hitting the stage and hoping the moves will move through me. i keep burning beeswax, failing to be my best self, learning through words, wrapping up pieces of myself and sending them away on the digital ocean and knowing nothing at all. believing almost anything at all. inhaling, exhaling, reaching in towards the lit furnace – jostling about my worst monsters and handing fear to the daylight. for safe keeping. for stale cleansing. for stark communication. i keep finding new ways to love my little boy, to stare into his eyes and to keep the moments frozen in time. i keep inventing new ways to breath oxygen into my body and i keep wishing my mind was a little quieter, a little gentler.

we are always infinite, and it is a tragedy we do not live where the sky meets the horizon. live in the state of rain freezing to snow – endless transformation; courage; magic. let us blanket the earth in our everythingrememberance.

ash to charcoal

strange growths in strange places / like unaccustomed travelers to my mind – how to shut it off, how to breathe out, how to remember who i was when i was barefoot and running across a bridge in Australia without a care in the world (and how to stop romanticizing the past)

new hallows now – cold bitter feet; wrapped, warped, bound, zippered, bundled bits of skin and shovels, harken the grey – harken the invisible sunset at 3:30pm where the sky just fades from ash to charcoal without a whimper or a sign to the birds. release me from this frozen tundra, let my skin feel the whip and lash of the sea once more.

slowly, brazenly, haphazardly, we bumble around our four-walled rooms, raging at the confinement of the season. slowly, humbly, mumbly, I curl myself inside out – swollen, molasses-fingered, reticent, fearless and fearful all at the same time.

white to white, the snow centers on our foreheads and presses inwards. white to white, it whirling dervishes around me – a bomb cyclone, a frozen apiary, a burned wish floating, a hungry season rotating towards the sun. white to white, we feel the color in all its everythinghue and silence. white to white – if it’s cold enough, the silence will sing.

2018

and is not the wild world calling? and is not the blue moon heralding – the call of ancient whispers turned anew / is not the world still spinning forward – and will the spring greet you again on the banks of a muddy stream – this is not a question, this is a reply. send yourself out, grow yourself wide, honor yourself truly. be honest. be clear. be productive. but be slow. be slow. be careful. own your shit. fess up, let go of being right. be grateful, be real, be giving. give more. give more. connect always. to the small and the minute. to the wide and the riverless. get oceanic. be wild, be free, don’t fear. hack at your best self with a pickaxe and don’t stop climbing. but climb slowly, consciously. pay attention. pay homage. stay focused. grow up. own up. be fearless. forgive yourself. forgive others. find hope.