March 27, 2008

denver



i'm warm in a cold city because it is mine. maybe not for forever, but just for now. which suits me fine.

i walk round and round till blisters form on my toes and heels, till my legs ache with pain, till i've got nowhere else to go, but 16th street and wazee. back.

i eat and read and meet kind faces. i learn how to make use of waisted time. i smile at strangers and take polaroids of steam coming up from the manholes. i forget about myself.

i feel like i've known this place before. maybe in another life. maybe somewhere in the back of my mind i have always been preparing myself for denver. a city alive. home to the enlightened. a place to become something that merits virtue. an adroit community of life livers, progressively pushing towards an honest aesthetic - braving the pursuits of a living, breathing Arcadia.
denver.
4 more days.

March 18, 2008

going home



i am going home to the gulf in the salty west

i am going home for awhile, i can feel it in my chest
i am going home to see my mothers face
i am going home cause i need a clean slate
i am going home to make morning into a key
i am going home to jump up and wrestle the sea
i am going home for windows and shining moons
i am going home to face a hard truth
i am going home to hear her say zendagi
i am going home so that i can apologize
i am going home for sticks, and rocks, and shoots, and ladders
i am going home today and nothing else matters
i am going home with monarchs and bare feet
i am going home to 3 flights and it comforts me

March 9, 2008

finding mars and shooting stars




i am fervently burning for a change.
i am packing my bags and aiming for denver.
i feel like an arrow about to shoot off into the sky.
i am untying myself and i am letting all of this mess go.
i am poised and focused. i am ready to soar into the great unknown.

i am ready to travel again; to be on the open road, to pass through unfamiliar towns, each different in the some barely discernible way from the last, to meet people who will aid my passage or oppose it, to weather the weather, to feel the curve of the continent passing beneath me- the slow flow of landscape changing from one expression of itself to another. salt flats and pine trees, mountains and rivers....

and of course there is the matter of california existing somewhere out in the uncertain, but i am not going to california anymore. reasons are reasons, and this one happens to be a long boring story that, no matter how i tell it, ends the same exact way: casual sex is selfish.

this is how i choose to remember it to be:

about three and half weeks ago, at 2:45 a.m. i was restless in my bed, thinking about someone who was not thinking about me (which, if you don't already know, is the leading cause of insomnia).

i walked outside to my backyard and laid a blanket down in the grass. i stared up at the enormous sky, watching the dark night. the sky was a wheel with a crescent moon and utterly cloudless. the air was dry and the stars were sharp points in the dark. there seemed to be a great many more of them than i ever remembered seeing before. and without any foreknowledge that such an event would i occur, i witnessed a meteor shower. spouts and shoots of light, both thin and broad, arced over my head. i ran inside to get my scope and considered waking my roommates. the notion fled my mind quicker then my feet could send me back out onto the blanket, where the heavenly hosts performed just for me. i stretched out in articulations, opened the scope, and peered through the universe. i must have spent hours looking through the eye piece as if into a well. and the longer i looked the deeper down i thought i saw. the shape of creation appeared like a funnel; ages upon ages of nebulous life spinning and existing in front of my eyes. orion in his winter garb, swinging his blade below his belt. the seven sisters, once distinct but becoming a singular and blurry patch against the dark as my eyes wain heavier. and the lonely moon, so blue, streaking across infinity, in whatever phase she was scheduled to show at this particular moment on this particular night.

it's alarming, really, how the wheels of the world work- the shifting constellations and orbital planets, the four seasons, and 13 moons, endlessly turning in some supernatural milieu, foreign and uncharted, but still the only probable proof of time.

and time is such a calculated device, levying limits on the pieces of our lives. but without it everything would happen all at once. a beautiful and horrible explosion of simultaneous events, an instant of awful frenzy and then, ever after, black nothing....

so of course time is necessary, but nevertheless damn painful.

so here i am, 3:22 a.m. awake in the night, lying on my back under shooting stars because desire abides. the sun can not bleach it, nor the tide wash it away. how amazing for a thing as vaporous and fickle as desire to survive against all the depredations of science. the world can ardently toil away in all of its mysterious fashions, with its pathological rotations, it's weather patterns, and changing positions, but neither the phases of the moon or the divisions of the year can curb this feeling.
desire is all we have that stands proof against time.

February 12, 2008

rooftops and such

ambulance



we climbed up to the heavens. suspended beneath the sky.

and it was there i saw the center. i prey, the apple of your eye.


it was dark and it was hungry. and still it willed itself to me.

it opened up. and it swallowed me whole. showing no mercy.

your hands were savage pilgrims. wandering the sea's of my skin.

and i. your crusade. a comet. electric ribbons buzzing within.

your pausing now. but it is too late. i am ripping through the sky.

tangled legs and burning flesh. two celestial bodies taking flight.

i'm breathing quick and losing touch. expanding into space.

gripping skin and shifting weight. our want has set the pace.

it's true my dear. that we are falling. but there's no need to fear.

your on fire. and i'm on fire. and we burn out in the atmosphere.

January 10, 2008

memory like a roman candal



i can't decide whether it's an illness or a sin, the need to write everything down and freeze the flowing world into one rigid form. in a way, writing a thing down fixes it in place as surely as a photograph capturing a dangerous creature - rendurring it every bit as stationary, and every bit as false to the original thing, flat and still and harmless.

i write things down because i so desperatly need to remember my thoughts, and my ideas, and all the gutts of my heart.


i constantly find myself searching for proof that i have lived - as if my scars, and photos, and trivial pocket souveniers are not enough, i need documentation.

i do admitt however, that it does seem unjust - to cause this kind of grevious harm on such a wild thing that is our memory. but defying the very nature of our minds is indeed an honorable act. for our memories are rebellous. they are unmangable little vapors - who, if we are not quick to conceal, would gladly evaporate into the atmosphere. it is true that our memories posess the greatest power over us. not only are they able to change the entire history of our lives, should we permitt them so, but they can also abandon us completely. and god forbid a memory should escape you. for there is no bigger pain to the heart, than when a memory flees us.

this all reminds me of a jack kerouac line -
"What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's goodbye (on the road)." he wrote about leaving his past behind him, and how liberating it was, to watch his memories disipate into the horizon. jack kerouac wrote to remember what he forgot.

i write what i can recall and in amazement of myself. not of the things i have accomplished or not accomplished, but of the passions i can no longer control. i write to remember, to remind myself of when i was brave, and to keep alive my desire to live.