Graceful Hands - 09/30/2013

Graceful hands for graceful tasks
Striking success from the unwilling flesh
Ringing forth destiny
Willing, willing it to the fore
Twisting it out
Complacently
Yet agonizing and sweet
Graceful hands
Gracefully turning
Gracefully closing
Around your graceful neck

Untitled - around September 2013

she looked out the window at the world
slanted and cock-eyed careening away at alarming speed
the greens and browns of surburbia
speckled with the blues of swimming pools
brimming with chlorine and lazy summer affluence

Her eyes traveled out and out
to the far reaches of the distant horizon
she was mesmerised by the sky:
a strong, flat and steady blue,
white clouds bobbing cheerfully in languid clumps

then she realized that it wasn't the sky at all
it was a vast lake stretching miles into the ether
those clouds were far above
yet appeared to sit within it
lake and sky were one indistinguishable mass
water wed to air

you and i, she thought
we are lake and sky
fathoms apart
seamlessly bound to form the heavens
blue and white and shining in the sun
sparkling and waiting for the storm to come

Untitled - December 2009

Could I ever really be the same?
Could the sun ever dazzle me so brightly?
Could the air ever fill me so completely?
Could the grass ever tickle my feet so perfectly?

My emotions are multiplied tenfold
Every sensation is orgasmic
The joy in every breath is boundless
I am at the threshold of complete satisfaction

Your spit was like liquid poetry in my mouth
I could feel your fingerprints on my skin
Your breath was a wholesome vapour in my blood
I could feel your body crushing me like the deepest waters

I peeked into your eyes and stole your soul
Your glances feed into me a feverish desire
I pulled out your hair to possess you
A single strand to tie up my passion
I scratch open your skin to show my longing
Those wounds feed my intoxication

You touch me with your thoughts
You caress me with your voice
You tear me with your want
You break me with your lips
You kill me with your simple existence

Yet my only hope is to make you smile
My my only hope is that you might,
even in a fleeting moment of indifference, think about me

I remain - December 2002

It comes like a silent summer's breeze
Stiring emotions of gaiety within
Rousing hope and joy in what may yet be

Slowly it curls into an autumn wind
Rustling the leaves of desire in one's heart
It dries out the wood of those summer hopes
Setting them ablaze in a raging inferno of love...
Or maybe lust

Higher and higher do these flames rise
Consuming whatever leash we thought to keep on our feelings
The conflagration spreads, scorching to cinders
Everything we thought to keep within

And then the wind turns cold and numbing
Upon it fly the tendrils of winter
Seeking out the beating heart,
The only goal: to silence it
Carrying the ashes of the fires
The snow turns dark
It comes.
Devouring light, love and hope
Killing the peace within
The heart struggles frantically in the darkness
Only to collapse upon itself
And I remain.
A shell, gutted by that love I sought
Bleeding darkness from my eyes, so tired of crying
And yet I remain

Harvest a future

Going back to where you came from is supposed to bring with it a sense of movement, a sense of traveling forward in time, a sense that you did the right thing by putting one foot in front of the other. That was what I hoped for with my trip to Grand Rapids. I hoped that the chapter I had closed would write an ending for itself.

In a sense, it did. I traded the albatross around my neck for an iron weight within my heart. I guess I got the closure I was seeking. I got the affirmation that I had left something that could give me no more... affirmation that my happiness lay elsewhere. I confirmed that the life I was seeking wasn't a life that I could carve out from the cobblestone streets of a worn out Michigan town.

But I walked away heavier. I walked away burdened by the fear that the new path I'm on isn't any better than the old one. I didn't wonder whether I had made a mistake by leaving Grand Rapids. I wondered whether I was just living a different mistake. The thought that you never really know what you're doing until you die is a concern that's traveled with me since that trip. Total. Mindfuck.

One of my goals while there was to collect the rest of my belongings - the final vestiges of a life recalled in muddled memories of soaring happiness and extreme depths of sorrow. I sat and I pored through a box of my "art." I used to write, you know? But that was a long time ago when I was a different person... when I had passions and actually gave a shit about something. More than anything, that trip made me realize that I'm pretty dead inside.

I move forward through this world, indelibly touching those I come across, yet never touching myself. Never feeling more than a light flutter within. It's strange to look back at that sad, angry poet. I'm almost envious. The crushing misery was something. I don't know what this is. It's a semblance of a life. I go through the steps necessary to be self-contained, self-sufficient... but I'm merely a caricature of who I used to be. I'm merely a sketch of a rich and brilliant tapestry.

I don't really know how a person gets this way. I don't really understand the depths of self-loathing that are needed to erode a vibrant being within. Yet somehow, that's me. That's what I've become. I can't stare too long at it because the realization of how fucked up I am that happens over and over again is so painful that I only recede further within myself.

What I do know is that I need to change something. I need to feel again. I mean truly feel - so deeply connecting to something that it electrifies every molecule within your body, you tingle with the force of that passion, that knowing - I know that that's something I need. I can't tell you how to get it... I can't tell me how to get it.

So here's my project... here's my proposal: I use the past to harvest a future. I'd like to put all that art - those passionate memoirs of the person I used to be - out there for the world to see. In so doing, I have some vague hope that it'll spark something within and I'll regain a bit of who I was, who I am... who I should be. I mean, I don't know.... but here goes nothing.