"You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you." -Rwandan proverb

Flames in flames

In the embers flight,
Pasts float in the night.
Fire burns paper's pulp, ink is no more.
Words that were meant to scorn, and lust, none shall now mourn.
Even in the firey wake, our baptism is half-done.
Our sins are embedded further, than the flames can ever come.

7-29-08

Whitman for Wednesday

OUT of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander’d alone, bare-headed, barefoot,
Down from the shower’d halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories, sad brother—from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous’d words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither—ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man—yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them—but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.

What would you confess?

http://www.postsecret.com/

Every time I think...I think of this.

Today's muck

I. Faith

Feeling it burn

Opening up

It flickers

It dances

It moves when I breathe.

It comes close to burning my skin,

but I pull away before the lick.

The anticipation is enough to elevate my heart rate.

My pupils dilate.

My mouth is ready.

II. Gutter

I like the curve of it

How it nestles

Fits neatly in my hand

Responds well to my touch

I push

It pushes back.

Harder

Harder.

III. For the next one

I want to make out with the least available person on the planet.

I want to be ignored by her friends and sit annoyingly by at a party.

I want to wrestle with her demons and lose.

I want to wear the badges and bruises of defeat.

I want to hear her confess her sins in her sleep.

I want to wake up and question the lines of her face and her journal.

I want to watch her from a distance as she flirts with other mates.

I want to drunkenly argue about how much I care and how much she doesn’t.

I want to despise her family and avoid trips to see them with every excuse in the book.

I want to confess my sins in the night.

I want to ignore her.

I want to write lines.

I want the right lines.

IV.

Love

I want to drown by the power of a damn bursting open

Replenishing the valley it left dry.

In secret

Hidden in plain sight,

Like a stop sign late at night,

   headlights illuminate the possibilities

 run it

  stop it

   begin again

The smell of sweetness in the late summer air

  Dry grass longing for a drink

     Craving the heaviness of rain’s lonesome fall

Walking down the flight of stairs,

Feeling the hardwoods under foot,

Onto the porch

   To watch the shadows

      My familiars

        My friends

Air

Light

Night

The possibilities.

Post #187: A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

http://deoxy.org/koan/1

My Type

My ideal

is covered in angles

bones that stretch out

   and force the flesh to hide them.

 My love

  a few scars

   especially on the myocardium.

At night

I can hear her breathe

                                                                                                                                

I can feel her warmth

I can taste the significance of all she is on my tongue.

Her personality

The complexity of a forgotten forest at the end of someone’s unfinished novel

Still stuck in the teeth of a typewriter

Stored in a dead relative's basement.

Her wit like Englishmen in a pub

Her sex like sailors ashore after lost for decades sending S-O-S, S-O-S, hoping that the sea would take them, and carry their voices home.

Her beauty like a painting you missed the first time at the museum

  It stops you on the way out

    As you fumble with your ticket stub and keys

      And finally see the work hanging on the wall

        Ready to explode off the canvas

          Ready to take you

            Ready to make paint chips of your being

              Ready to weave you into the very thing you desire.

My kind of poet

Poet Neil Hilborn

Such a great poem.

careless

I was fine

Till this morning

When I woke up

empty.

Worried about the alarm

But it’s my day off.

And tonight,

I will drink

Be filled

But the void remains

I will sit with another

Under the night’s sky

Last day of the meteor shower

Romance and hopeful kisses will be

And yet,

I still remain

Empty.

McDaniel always pierces me

“Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.”


I want that.


“I used to think love was two people sucking
on the same straw to see whose thirst was stronger,

but then I whiffed the crushed walnuts of your nape,
traced jackals in the snow-covered tombstones of your teeth.

I used to think love was a non-stop saxophone solo
in the lungs, till I hung with you like a pair of sneakers

from a phone line, and you promised to always smell
the rose in my kerosene. I used to think love was terminal

pelvic ballet, till you let me jog beside while you pedaled
all over hell on the menstrual bicycle, your tongue

ripping through my prairie like a tornado of paper cuts.
I used to think love was an old man smashing a mirror

over his knee, till you helped me carry the barbell
of my spirit back up the stairs after my car pirouetted

in the desert. You are my history book. I used to not believe
in fairy tales till I played the dunce in sheep’s clothing

and felt how perfectly your foot fit in the glass slipper
of my ass. But then duty wrapped its phone cord

around my ankle and yanked me across the continent.
And now there are three thousand miles between the u

and s in esophagus. And being without you is like standing
at a cement-filled wall with a roll of Yugoslavian nickels

and making a wish. Some days I miss you so much
I’d jump off the roof of your office building

just to catch a glimpse of you on the way down. I wish
we could trade left eyeballs, so we could always see

what the other sees. But you’re here, I’m there,
and we have only words, a nightly phone call - one chance

to mix feelings into syllables and pour into the receiver,
hope they don’t disassemble in that calculus of wire.

And lately - with this whole war thing - the language machine
supporting it - I feel betrayed by the alphabet, like they’re

injecting strychnine into my vowels, infecting my consonants,
naming attack helicopters after shattered Indian tribes:

Apache, Blackhawk; and West Bank colonizers are settlers,
so Sharon is Davey Crockett, and Arafat: Geronimo,

and it’s the Wild West all over again. And I imagine Picasso
looking in a mirror, decorating his face in war paint,

washing his brushes in venom. And I think of Jenin
in all that rubble, and I feel like a Cyclops with two eyes,

like an anorexic with three mouths, like a scuba diver
in quicksand, like a shark with plastic vampire teeth,

like I’m the executioner’s fingernail trying to reason
with the hand. And I don’t know how to speak love

when the heart is a busted cup filling with spit and paste,
and the only sexual fantasy I have is busting

into the Pentagon with a bazooka-sized pen and blowing
open the minds of generals. And I comfort myself

with the thought that we’ll name our first child Jenin,
and her middle name will be Terezin, and we’ll teach her

how to glow in the dark, and how to swallow firecrackers,
and to never neglect the first straw; because no one

ever talks about the first straw, it’s always the last straw
that gets all the attention, but by then it’s way too late.”


And that.


“Hey you, dragging the halo-
how about a holiday in the islands of grief?

Tongue is the word I wish to have with you.
Your eyes are so blue they leak.

Your legs are longer than a prisoner's
last night on death row.
I'm filthier than the coal miner's bathtub
and nastier than the breath of Charles Bukowski.

You're a dirty little windshield.

I'm standing behind you on the subway,
hard as calculus. My breath
be sticking to your neck like graffiti.

I'm sitting opposite you in the bar,
waiting for you to uncross your boundaries.

I want to rip off your logic
and make passionate sense to you.

I want to ride in the swing of your hips.

My fingers will dig in you like quotation marks,
blazing your limbs into parts of speech.

But with me for a lover, you won't need
catastrophes. What attracted me in the first place
will ultimately make me resent you.

I'll start telling you lies,
and my lies will sparkle,
become the bad stars you chart your life by.

I'll stare at other women so blatantly
you'll hear my eyes peeling,

because sex with you is like Great Britain:
cold, groggy, and a little uptight.

Your bed is a big, soft calculator
where my problems multiply.

Your brain is a garage
I park my bullshit in, for free.

You're not really my new girlfriend,
just another flop sequel of the first one,
who was based on the true story of my mother.

You're so ugly I forgot how to spell.

I'll cheat on you like a ninth grade math test,
break your heart just for the sound it makes.

You're the 'this' we need to put an end to.
The more you apologize, the less I forgive you.

So how about it?”
― Jeffrey McDaniel


Yes.

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/73204.Jeffrey_McDaniel

Interesting interview

"We’re naturals. It makes sense. We all do this everyday: focus on a series of small and meaningless tasks to pass the time, try to preserve our memories without wallowing in grief, and hope our lives will add up to some kind of tribute. Of course we’re good at scrapbooking. Scraps are all we have."

http://therumpus.net/2013/08/the-rumpus-interview-with-justin-st-germain/

late nights

Because I can't stay so far from not knowing the truth. I'd rather have the loss than the not knowing.
I'm a slave to it.
Fuck.

I want to throw myself at it 
over and over
until I break.

http://inenglishpleaseblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/03/word-of-the-week-28/