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| “‘My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
under my feet. After the event
he wept. He promised ‘a new start.’
I made no comment. What should I resent?’…
‘I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My humble people who expect
Nothing.’”
--Eliot
“Being [His] Wasteland (IV)”
There are no words for the feeling of my age,
not even a sense if belonging to it.
We are quieter with each light-warp-speed movement
of the tube cars passing each other in smoky, close tunnels.
Underneath the world we are falling.
And we do…nothing.
What can be done? when we walk
the streets of witching hours in the mist
only to leave no footprints in the cold, thin dew lacing the sidewalk,
we must follow those others have left.
And in the morning we can only awake
(we have no choice)
but to see wet buildings bleeding black
above a sea of black umbrellas and macintoshes,
under a sky of black that chatters
like the teeth of the meth addict wandering
winter in his shorts, muttering to
his lilac balloon.
He used to have a name,
but now his cricket legs scratch out the discordant tune
of concrete city blocks stacked
as rows of dirty dominoes.
This is a game
and we aren’t winning.
So who, who is?
The sun is a surprise, a backward bleaching
that screams your eyes awake and it is then
it comes upon us,
seeing the same neon littering the halls of academe
(in the form of crisp bags and pop bottles)
that still echo in our bones the deep beat of the bass
in the sweating mass of open-mouthed clubs, it is then
it comes upon us:
that there’s more than one kind of Wasteland.
The sun is crimson this morning,
it is groaning, flashing its skirts
like a gypsy making sure,
quite positively,
that only the blind can see here
as these old houses creak under the weight
of such modern things as us.
But still it rains, rain bloody
with our hearts and the sun
through our eyelids and
mired in contradiction we are condemned
to drown.
It is only then we know
what the waste of this Wasteland is,
what we were born from,
what he meant to say by saying:
“Senza tema d’infama ti respondo.”
Who could be held accountable to their own stillbirth?
[I give up, you win.]
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| it's been seven months since i wrote something that doesn't make me cringe.
lovely.
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| "Art can do much, but this maxim's most sure:
A weak or wounded brain admits no cure."
--Anne Bradstreet, "Prologue"
“Moving Sideways (On the Bus)”
Moving forward through the blue
and gold of evening there are butterflies
forming a crown around my head.
I die. And I am reborn with each step.
I miss you as Adam missed Eve
before God god God had the provocation
to realize that we all need
a second half to complete us.
But this is a new world, right?
I am a child, running as in fumbling as in free.
Your ghost pursues me through the darkness
of this forest I am trying, trying to escape
through by fetching my way
blind, deaf, and dumb with still knowing you.
I die. And I die. And I die.
And every time I am reborn you are recreated with me,
your presence in each world a hole in my heart,
a place that needs to be filled by only you.
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| the beginning of my year in london.
overwhelming.
and beautiful.
“Primrose Hill (I)”
This is the place I come the breathe
because to be above everything is
safer, warmer, than beneath (whatever
logic may devise.) The city moves
underneath my scuffed, black boots
like the dirty water of the Regent Canal
and I smile I am queenly up here,
untouchable and hidden from the
bustling movement that marks this
place with pagan smudges on its
clean white houses of cheekbones.
The little dogs are sneaking through
the grass like pleasant snakes to
lick my palms open to the sky. I
have more space to move than I
ever expected, more trees to feel
caressing the back of my tired neck.
The sun is out today and makes me feel—
finally—full and complete (a rarity.)
This, though, is a place of flying contradictions.
Overwhelming and comfortable.
Friendly and foreign.
Close and open.
Dark and bright.
Black and white.
What I want.
And what I have.
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| “The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on earth.”
--Salinger
“Of What You Say and What I Get”
From the rock hard bottom of the truth
signals are flying upward through the dark
and I am doing what I always do.
I am ignoring them.
You tell me this is quintessential to breathing
and being able to kiss what lies in the dark,
what is waiting for me.
But what it doesn’t know is
I am waiting myself.
Somewhere outside this place lingers
the quietude of knowledge that extends above
what this low-lying reality is screaming so soundly.
I intend to find it.
And, my God,
I hope I’ll see you
there.
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