It stands alone in a field of tall, yellow grass.
He is just out of its reach, shunning its shade for the bright, skin-leathering sun.
Martin imagines a seed falling from the sky and crashing into the soil with the force of--what to call it?--pure being. It sends a tree sprouting up like a mushroom cloud; full growth in 30 seconds, standing somewhere outside of time,
outside of space,
outside of Martin.
He peels away the dissecting sections of his analytical intellect like so many layers of rain soaked clothing.
He watches his silver blue soul slide out of himself, into the grizzled gray brown bark.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
These Buffalo Suck
Our relationship has become a perfect meadow. Clover, tulips, and tall grass, honey bees and
anti-personnel mines.
Our little purveyors of pain used to be stuck up in the north-west corner of the fields, sequestered away where the hills roll into the dark woods, where soft green slowly burns into shadow under the barren, steely trees.
But mines migrate. They are less the flying V and more the plodding herd of buffalo, quiet but powerful and deadly. They are so unobtrusive as to become part of the scenery itself, merely a prop for a landscape painter until they’ve migrated their way directly in front of you, seventy-three half-ton claymore mine creatures.
You can’t step on them.
They’re buffalo.
But a misplaced word, a noun where there should be a verb and they explode in a flash of orange-white light, sending chunks of blood-clumped brown fur, meat and bone flying at me in a tidal wave of passive aggressive gore and self-deprecating apologies delivered with all of the melancholy resignation to Fate of a 23 year old Japanese civilian turned once-pilot, climbing over the bright red Rising Sun into the cockpit of his dynamite-laden Mitsubishi Zero, keeping his left hand securely in the pocket of his grayish green flight-suit, thumb pressing hard and rubbing slow circles around the face of a black and white photograph.
anti-personnel mines.
Our little purveyors of pain used to be stuck up in the north-west corner of the fields, sequestered away where the hills roll into the dark woods, where soft green slowly burns into shadow under the barren, steely trees.
But mines migrate. They are less the flying V and more the plodding herd of buffalo, quiet but powerful and deadly. They are so unobtrusive as to become part of the scenery itself, merely a prop for a landscape painter until they’ve migrated their way directly in front of you, seventy-three half-ton claymore mine creatures.
You can’t step on them.
They’re buffalo.
But a misplaced word, a noun where there should be a verb and they explode in a flash of orange-white light, sending chunks of blood-clumped brown fur, meat and bone flying at me in a tidal wave of passive aggressive gore and self-deprecating apologies delivered with all of the melancholy resignation to Fate of a 23 year old Japanese civilian turned once-pilot, climbing over the bright red Rising Sun into the cockpit of his dynamite-laden Mitsubishi Zero, keeping his left hand securely in the pocket of his grayish green flight-suit, thumb pressing hard and rubbing slow circles around the face of a black and white photograph.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Going Out--a very short story
The last gulp of floral, bitter pale ale flooded his mouth, finishing his sixth pint since dinner. He couldn't tell whether it was the alcohol or the loud music that made the pulsing feeling in his chest a little less bearable than usual. He hastily called to the bartender to close out his tab, picked up his jacket off the back of the stool and dropped the receipt next to his empty glass with '1.00' scribbled on the dashed tip line. He felt the weight of all their eyes on him as he left with the young blond from across the room. “Fuck them,” he told himself. Even in his mind, his voice cracked. The neon Miller Lite and Detroit Lions signs left faint glowing trails of blue and white in his peripheral vision as he pushed his way out into the mild summer night.
He suppressed the cool midnight air with a Black clove cigarette. He basked in her fawning gaze while he cupped his hand over the lighter, enjoying the crackling burn of his first drag before offering her a slender cylinder of her own. In silence, they watched their breath diffuse into silver-white wisps slithering into the streetlight. He flicked his half-finished cigarette to the curb and sauntered over to his '99 Ford Mustang that his father had called 'Lightning Blue.' They could still hear the faint din of Friday from the bar half a block away when, feigning indifference, he gestured for her to get in.
While they ascended the second flight of beige-flecked carpet up to apartment 203, he pretended that she didn't notice the suffocating smell of cigarettes that seeped through the walls. They were silent while he fumbled for his keys. They were silent when he dropped his keys. Under his breath, he apologized for the mess; she dismissed it as nothing close to how bad hers was.
He watched her shimmy out of a light blue tube top with a bulimic hunger in his eyes. Her look was confident while begging for approval. He slid up against her hips, caressing the underside of her breast while nibbling on her left earlobe. Lowering her down onto the navy sheets, he whispered into her ear to be patient—good things come to those who wait. He left her with a kiss so soft it surprised them both.
Staring into his bathroom mirror, hating the buzzing fluorescent lights that flanked his reflection, he choked down three generic extra strength ibuprofen with a swallow of what used to be his father's favorite whiskey, tossing the empty glass over his shoulder without a second thought. It hit the curved corner of the blue bathtub, shattering with an odd softness as the slide around the bend cushioned its destruction. He pressed the palm of each of his hands into one eye socket, his back heaving at every halting breath. “Is this it?” he asked the shards of glass that lay scattered throughout the bathtub, still tinted caramel with whiskey atop the baby blue porcelain.
He suppressed the cool midnight air with a Black clove cigarette. He basked in her fawning gaze while he cupped his hand over the lighter, enjoying the crackling burn of his first drag before offering her a slender cylinder of her own. In silence, they watched their breath diffuse into silver-white wisps slithering into the streetlight. He flicked his half-finished cigarette to the curb and sauntered over to his '99 Ford Mustang that his father had called 'Lightning Blue.' They could still hear the faint din of Friday from the bar half a block away when, feigning indifference, he gestured for her to get in.
While they ascended the second flight of beige-flecked carpet up to apartment 203, he pretended that she didn't notice the suffocating smell of cigarettes that seeped through the walls. They were silent while he fumbled for his keys. They were silent when he dropped his keys. Under his breath, he apologized for the mess; she dismissed it as nothing close to how bad hers was.
He watched her shimmy out of a light blue tube top with a bulimic hunger in his eyes. Her look was confident while begging for approval. He slid up against her hips, caressing the underside of her breast while nibbling on her left earlobe. Lowering her down onto the navy sheets, he whispered into her ear to be patient—good things come to those who wait. He left her with a kiss so soft it surprised them both.
Staring into his bathroom mirror, hating the buzzing fluorescent lights that flanked his reflection, he choked down three generic extra strength ibuprofen with a swallow of what used to be his father's favorite whiskey, tossing the empty glass over his shoulder without a second thought. It hit the curved corner of the blue bathtub, shattering with an odd softness as the slide around the bend cushioned its destruction. He pressed the palm of each of his hands into one eye socket, his back heaving at every halting breath. “Is this it?” he asked the shards of glass that lay scattered throughout the bathtub, still tinted caramel with whiskey atop the baby blue porcelain.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
writing with flame in my mouth
it was past midnight
and the room was illuminated
only by my computer screen
and the soft orange tip of my cigarette,
shedding ash it into a mostly empty pint of ben & jerry's.
decadent.
thought these things
curbed that shit.
isn't that the trade off for
early death?
maybe the trade is death for
the right to watch wisps of gray
dissolve into and out of the soft glow
of laptop light amid darkness
in perfect
solitude.
life comes in little drops.
tongue outstretched, i
squeeze my eyes shut and wait
for moments that make meaning.
litany of loss.
lost cigarette leaves
tobacco and plaque tasting like
life, at midnight.
i run into cliches like the
unexpected door jamb on six drinks.
no ice.
i slog through false epiphanies
like so many valu-pak coupons and
bills i shouldn't pay
stacked sixteen inches deep on my
desk next to durkheim and
the filter soaking up thawed cream.
i brushed my teeth before i smoked.
i'll sleep with this.
and the room was illuminated
only by my computer screen
and the soft orange tip of my cigarette,
shedding ash it into a mostly empty pint of ben & jerry's.
decadent.
thought these things
curbed that shit.
isn't that the trade off for
early death?
maybe the trade is death for
the right to watch wisps of gray
dissolve into and out of the soft glow
of laptop light amid darkness
in perfect
solitude.
life comes in little drops.
tongue outstretched, i
squeeze my eyes shut and wait
for moments that make meaning.
litany of loss.
lost cigarette leaves
tobacco and plaque tasting like
life, at midnight.
i run into cliches like the
unexpected door jamb on six drinks.
no ice.
i slog through false epiphanies
like so many valu-pak coupons and
bills i shouldn't pay
stacked sixteen inches deep on my
desk next to durkheim and
the filter soaking up thawed cream.
i brushed my teeth before i smoked.
i'll sleep with this.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
It's all gonna break
The ice
on the
corner of
the roof
came cracking
down from
the second story,
plummeting towards
the gray concrete,
already wet from the
dripping water. The
great icicle-
three feet long!-
crumpled into the concrete,
finally breaking
with a much less
profound sound
than I thought
should accompany
the death of
that damned winter.
on the
corner of
the roof
came cracking
down from
the second story,
plummeting towards
the gray concrete,
already wet from the
dripping water. The
great icicle-
three feet long!-
crumpled into the concrete,
finally breaking
with a much less
profound sound
than I thought
should accompany
the death of
that damned winter.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
I am found guilty of 'Reverence at an Inopportune Time'
Tom Petty comes on the radio and
we think of each other.
We think of your navy-blue sheets.
Jesus dies again and
we eat him again.
The meat was tender but
you were a vegetarian.
Your velvet navy-blue sheets
smelled like death everynight,
smelled like daffodils and death everynight.
Then they tore down the door with
fire-axes and crowbars, barking
orders in a language that
no one needed to understand.
They pulled me from your navy sheets
and doused me in lemon-scented bleach
in order to loosen my grip and my tongue.
They brought me to the empty
interrogation room with the
concrete walls, two way mirror and
the table from IKEA named Herman.
Now I am here, wishing that I remembered
all the names for my furniture.
The man with wide shoulders in the deep black uniform
with the golden buttons and icy trim
slaps me across the face, again and again,
backhand and forehand, palm then wedding ring,
until I confess that I don't even know
what a daffodil smells like.
we think of each other.
We think of your navy-blue sheets.
Jesus dies again and
we eat him again.
The meat was tender but
you were a vegetarian.
Your velvet navy-blue sheets
smelled like death everynight,
smelled like daffodils and death everynight.
Then they tore down the door with
fire-axes and crowbars, barking
orders in a language that
no one needed to understand.
They pulled me from your navy sheets
and doused me in lemon-scented bleach
in order to loosen my grip and my tongue.
They brought me to the empty
interrogation room with the
concrete walls, two way mirror and
the table from IKEA named Herman.
Now I am here, wishing that I remembered
all the names for my furniture.
The man with wide shoulders in the deep black uniform
with the golden buttons and icy trim
slaps me across the face, again and again,
backhand and forehand, palm then wedding ring,
until I confess that I don't even know
what a daffodil smells like.
Climb
A Buddhist monk in yellow-orange robes
is climbing the snow-covered face
of a moderate peak in the Himalayas
alone.
The day is so clear that the snow
looks like bright light, and he feels that,
if this world were not a transient pit of nothing,
he might be walking on the mountain
face of God.
The slope is not so steep that he needs pick-axes or pulleys.
He leans forward and steps surely as he ascends.
He does not fear death. He does not even wonder
what it might be like to be climbing
the Pyrenees instead.
He knows this peak is sacred. But he does wonder why
hot dog buns come in packs of 8, and hot dogs in packs of 10.
This has bothered him ever since he was young.
Ever since it was the first question that
his parents could not answer.
He was wearing a shirt with brightly colored
Japanese robots fighting across the front
when he walked into his parents' blue bedroom
and asked. They told him, “sometimes, we can't say just how or
why the world is.”
He thought they were wrong. A few years later,
he thought that maybe it was a good idea to
give up meat altogether. He thought,
“maybe I should leave New Jersey altogether,”
“maybe I'll find Peace in the East.”
Now he prays to the Eternal Buddha as he ascends.
Now he turns his copper toned prayer beads between thumb and forefinger
as the snow's crunch beneath his feet
echoes across the gorge.
is climbing the snow-covered face
of a moderate peak in the Himalayas
alone.
The day is so clear that the snow
looks like bright light, and he feels that,
if this world were not a transient pit of nothing,
he might be walking on the mountain
face of God.
The slope is not so steep that he needs pick-axes or pulleys.
He leans forward and steps surely as he ascends.
He does not fear death. He does not even wonder
what it might be like to be climbing
the Pyrenees instead.
He knows this peak is sacred. But he does wonder why
hot dog buns come in packs of 8, and hot dogs in packs of 10.
This has bothered him ever since he was young.
Ever since it was the first question that
his parents could not answer.
He was wearing a shirt with brightly colored
Japanese robots fighting across the front
when he walked into his parents' blue bedroom
and asked. They told him, “sometimes, we can't say just how or
why the world is.”
He thought they were wrong. A few years later,
he thought that maybe it was a good idea to
give up meat altogether. He thought,
“maybe I should leave New Jersey altogether,”
“maybe I'll find Peace in the East.”
Now he prays to the Eternal Buddha as he ascends.
Now he turns his copper toned prayer beads between thumb and forefinger
as the snow's crunch beneath his feet
echoes across the gorge.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Your Unwasted Summer
We watched the trees' shadows run from West to East
across the too-green, too-well trimmed lawn.
Trapped inside the air-conditioning,
wondering why rehab centers always have names that try to
hide the fact that they are rehab centers,
I would wait. I'd wait for you to
emerge triumphant from your room. Meal times
forced you out. But then your butterfly manners
and listening heart made us all
hate your fucking MCAT prep-book.
I used to imagine that, when you closed
your plain wooden door named “3”
you didn't open the book to study at all. You just kept
trying to lift the weight of it.
It would be placed firmly on the floor, and
you would bend down like a baseball catcher,
grasp the edges, and, in complete futility, heave
like everyone who pulled before Arthur,
as though God had reached down into Middle America with both hands,
grabbing you under each armpit with his enormous thumbs
and forefingers, pulling behind you as you strained in vain.
You'd try to get it up off the floor for two or three hundred hours
I mean minutes,
raise yourself up, wipe the sweat from your brow,
shrug, put it on the desk and come out
just in time for dinner.
I transparently feigned a hatred for MSU
just to keep you out of your cave and smiling for a bit longer.
But you would always retreat eventually, leaving me alone to stare down
the sterilized motivational posters, plastered against
the noxious baby blue wall paper, all illuminated by
the horrible buzzing fluorescent lights—underneath which
we used to drink the shitty, instant, decaf coffee from paper cups.
It was beautifully cliché, and I'm sure that was the point.
But you were a great rock, and you let it all
wash over you and recede like harmless surf.
And you were also the antirock, because
your smile leveled mountains,
then built them up inside of me;
you gave me weight.
I am a Giant Redwood,
and you chopped me down and made me look at my roots to
count all the powerful layers that make up my being.
You cleared out all my dead wood. You burnt down
everything that stole my chemistry. You buckled my seatbelt,
and told me everything would be OK, and I could be as big.
Then it killed you.
Not a death of allegory, but the kind with
autopsies and paperwork, prepackaged,
“we're so sorry your ____ is dead” Hallmark cards,
and endless reassurance that
“there was nothing more anyone could do,”
all set in motion by a series of
trembling phone calls to next of kin
that unravel out into a dream-catcher of grief,
crisscrossing the whole country.
All that's left now is a gravestone that
shouts in granite,
'we couldn't save you.'
Looking back, it feels like
I survived a car wreck in
six months of slow motion.
But I was in a different city,
so I didn't have to watch you be
jettisoned through the windshield
while my seatbelt engaged
across the too-green, too-well trimmed lawn.
Trapped inside the air-conditioning,
wondering why rehab centers always have names that try to
hide the fact that they are rehab centers,
I would wait. I'd wait for you to
emerge triumphant from your room. Meal times
forced you out. But then your butterfly manners
and listening heart made us all
hate your fucking MCAT prep-book.
I used to imagine that, when you closed
your plain wooden door named “3”
you didn't open the book to study at all. You just kept
trying to lift the weight of it.
It would be placed firmly on the floor, and
you would bend down like a baseball catcher,
grasp the edges, and, in complete futility, heave
like everyone who pulled before Arthur,
as though God had reached down into Middle America with both hands,
grabbing you under each armpit with his enormous thumbs
and forefingers, pulling behind you as you strained in vain.
You'd try to get it up off the floor for two or three hundred hours
I mean minutes,
raise yourself up, wipe the sweat from your brow,
shrug, put it on the desk and come out
just in time for dinner.
I transparently feigned a hatred for MSU
just to keep you out of your cave and smiling for a bit longer.
But you would always retreat eventually, leaving me alone to stare down
the sterilized motivational posters, plastered against
the noxious baby blue wall paper, all illuminated by
the horrible buzzing fluorescent lights—underneath which
we used to drink the shitty, instant, decaf coffee from paper cups.
It was beautifully cliché, and I'm sure that was the point.
But you were a great rock, and you let it all
wash over you and recede like harmless surf.
And you were also the antirock, because
your smile leveled mountains,
then built them up inside of me;
you gave me weight.
I am a Giant Redwood,
and you chopped me down and made me look at my roots to
count all the powerful layers that make up my being.
You cleared out all my dead wood. You burnt down
everything that stole my chemistry. You buckled my seatbelt,
and told me everything would be OK, and I could be as big.
Then it killed you.
Not a death of allegory, but the kind with
autopsies and paperwork, prepackaged,
“we're so sorry your ____ is dead” Hallmark cards,
and endless reassurance that
“there was nothing more anyone could do,”
all set in motion by a series of
trembling phone calls to next of kin
that unravel out into a dream-catcher of grief,
crisscrossing the whole country.
All that's left now is a gravestone that
shouts in granite,
'we couldn't save you.'
Looking back, it feels like
I survived a car wreck in
six months of slow motion.
But I was in a different city,
so I didn't have to watch you be
jettisoned through the windshield
while my seatbelt engaged
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Walt Whitman's Shirtsleeve
I am never buttoned.
My off-white cotton is too thick for cocktail parties,
and usually hangs in loose ruffles about his wrist.
But I am not a static portrait;
we are far too full to be a statue.
Rolled-up, I embrace the commanding curve of his bicep.
At full length, I kiss the supple curves of his lovers.
Pressed firmly at the small of her back,
caressing the cotton of her magenta dress,
we waltz endlessly to the cattle's low.
The olfactory impact of her lavender perfume might intoxicate,
were we not also bathed in this barn's dry scent of straw.
We dance out under weeping willows,
canopies of stars and wood.
Her violet fabric twirling billows
wider than I ever could.
But I too cannot be encompassed,
like da-Vinci's prostrate man.
An infinite undying fortress,
smaller than a grain of sand.
But those days now bygone fancy,
years that passed are half a score.
Now an age where all men can see
what the bayonet is for.
I hear them pray into the darkness,
what to do when friends 'come wraith?
Echoes back with frigid fullness,
guide thy hand with steadfast
indifference.
I heed their prayers.
Why fear the coming
metamorphosis?
Though the warp and weave in
tatters, I yearn not for
reattachment.
Now, I'm
serenaded everyday
with unbelievable
percussion.
Leave disenchantment to
dead poets and
the future.
I am brimming with rubies.
I embrace
the flood.
My off-white cotton is too thick for cocktail parties,
and usually hangs in loose ruffles about his wrist.
But I am not a static portrait;
we are far too full to be a statue.
Rolled-up, I embrace the commanding curve of his bicep.
At full length, I kiss the supple curves of his lovers.
Pressed firmly at the small of her back,
caressing the cotton of her magenta dress,
we waltz endlessly to the cattle's low.
The olfactory impact of her lavender perfume might intoxicate,
were we not also bathed in this barn's dry scent of straw.
We dance out under weeping willows,
canopies of stars and wood.
Her violet fabric twirling billows
wider than I ever could.
But I too cannot be encompassed,
like da-Vinci's prostrate man.
An infinite undying fortress,
smaller than a grain of sand.
But those days now bygone fancy,
years that passed are half a score.
Now an age where all men can see
what the bayonet is for.
I hear them pray into the darkness,
what to do when friends 'come wraith?
Echoes back with frigid fullness,
guide thy hand with steadfast
indifference.
I heed their prayers.
Why fear the coming
metamorphosis?
Though the warp and weave in
tatters, I yearn not for
reattachment.
Now, I'm
serenaded everyday
with unbelievable
percussion.
Leave disenchantment to
dead poets and
the future.
I am brimming with rubies.
I embrace
the flood.
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