The Girdle of History

the chattering of obedient silverware

married with the hushed and quiet

fadings of laughter and lifesharings

come scampering down this

horrendously-pattered carpet,

speeding through treads created by

the boots of workers

(suspiciously like servants)

and the heels of high-brow ladies who are

wrapped up in the furs of once-alive creatures.

the comings and goings of luggage carts

and thousands of stories

are embedded into each frayed thread

(well, the reds and beiges, at least,

but perhaps not the sea-foam).

the cheap perfume aroma of far-off edibles

invade each nostril,

masking the faint odor of history

until i cannot remember who was here last

and i am once again distracted by a

thunderous commotion,

trailing behind its owner like a curious puppy on a leash.

the flesh-colored wallpaper is encrusted with

songs and tunes from who-knows-when,

like a meticulously baked pie,

drowned by the clamor of present patrons.

how i wish i could breach every layer and

play each soundtrack against the

delicate needle of a phonograph.

the padded thud of a boot against the carpet

forces images of tasseled dresses and feather boas

from the depths of my cluttered crown,

reminding me that we will all someday be

the soundwaves captured in these walls,

waiting for the day someone will set us free.

Jaws Theme

to stay afloat

in a sea so intent

on letting(demanding that)you drown

is just asking for trouble

for which no one is really

prepared(as if they can).

but kick harder,

won't you?

paddle stronger,

won't you?

tread the water.

stay afloat.

stay alive.

Cyclical Motion

the trickling stream is

destined for greater things;

poured into the sea and into the bay,

tripping into the ocean and then

upwards to the sky,

only to come back down to its

humble, bubbling brook.

so are we, destined for greater things,

always meant to come back

to where it all began.

She Was Like the Sun

the flower nods to the

illumination of the sun,

its head hanging low

with the weight of regret

that it could not bloom

fast enough, and its petals

could not be bright enough,

and it could not be vocal in its

gratitude for those nurturing rays

before the sun, falling into

its crimson slumber, closed her

eyes and fell asleep.

----------------------

I think the hiatus may be over.

I'll love and miss you forever, KG.

The Softest Fabric is A Memory

at the end of the day,

at the end of a life,

all that i have,

all that we ever have,

are the sauntering recollections

of our joy, our sadness,

our anger, and our love

to wrap around us

like a blanket,

letting us know that

it was

worth it.

Catch Up

I have returned from Missouri, with daily entries still written, posted below. The trip was wonderful and the flights, both to and from, were quick and painless (I passed out while still on the runway).

11 august 2010

if i lived here,

i'd be home by now.

how we fight and kill

and slaughter to defend our

tiny, infinitesimal section of this

hardened rock.

from a mile above,

it all seems pretty folly,

realizing that what we own

is not what we are,

and all of these things

are anything

but

permanent.

but we continue to kill

and we continue to fight,

unwilling to let go of one of the

only things that makes us

feel like we're bigger than

mortal and more residual

than gods.

but we'll cease to exist.

we'll leave it all behind,

with only the dwindling and idling

memories we have spent a lifetime

creating

remaining.

---------------------------------------------------------

11 august 2010 (post 2)

home is a state of mind,

not a place.

i realized this long ago,

feeling at home in hotel rooms

that smelled faintly of smoke

from twenty years prior,

because my family was with me.

the section of the living room

rug where i always fell asleep

felt more like home than

my bed.

this place doesn't feel like home.

because it is missing you.

and, my darling,

you are light

and you are warmth.

you are home.

---------------------------------------------------------

12 august 2010

i wonder how it'd feel to

be suspended - in time, in space,

in life.

there are moments when

it is more than enticing,

when there wouldn't even be

an ounce of hesitation if i

would but be offered this chance.

then a part of me realizes

the downfall to this idea,

to this state of existence.

peace would be abundant,

i'm sure of it,

but so would apathy.

after all, how can one feel

anything when there is

no reason to feel?

never moving forward

and never moving back.

never moving anywhere.

purpose would be just a memory,

the kind that always lingers

in the back of the mind,

until it becomes the vague outline

of what once was.

perhaps this state of suspension

would be no good after all.

perhaps we have no choice

but to continue to move and

to continue to breathe and

to continue to die and be born.

always destined for heartache,

always destined for loss and grief,

always destined for love and

joy and celebration,

always destined for something.

---------------------------------------------------------

13 august 2010

every baby will grow up

someday.

everyone on this earth was once

microscopic, tucked away inside the

womb of some woman somewhere,

destined for what seemed an eternity

of captivity and hibernation(for what

could you really know of time?)

then, released into the world,

(hopefully with welcoming arms and

opened hearts)

breathed her first breath

of this newly discovered world.

then came a life summed up in a

series of moments:

the first day of school,

the first crush(that will break her heart;

it is inevitable),

the first failed test,

new schools,

new friends,

the first love(who, most likely, will be

suspiciously similar to that first crush

from so many years ago)

and so on, for what seems like forever,

until each moment becomes a memory,

until each memory becomes a story,

passed on and passed down,

until the cycle starts again.

---------------------------------------------------------

15 august 2010 (scribbled after a dream)

he stands in your front yard or when you least expect him. you shake your head and try to wake yourself because surely, this must be a dream. he tells you there is no point. he's real. he's there to stay, to guide you to all of the happiness that have you been seeking. but you must do what he says, this clairvoyant stranger. you tell him that you were going to see a friend and he politely responds that you are not. he explains that your friend is sleeping, having hurt his back, and you will see him tomorrow. instead, he sends you driving down long highways until you always crash, but manage to stay alive. he sends you to a film festival and tells you to buy a year-long membership (because apparently these things exist and you've got a lot to learn).

in the daylight, he looks old and frail. he carries an oxygen tank and his fine, white hair flutters with the lightest of breezes.

but he is still your sage. you must do as he tells you. he will make you a better person. a happier person. he will bring you to everything you want.

---------------------------------------------------------

16 august 2010

they say that distance

and abs(over-whelming)ence

makes the heart grow fonder.

i suppose that i must be extremely

fond of you(though i

did not need much encouragement

to be begin with).

this foreign bed

becomes vaster and more daunting

than the Sahara,

with even less inhabitants.

how i wander,

how i seek you out,

how every inch of me yearns for you.

but you are nowhere to be found

in this strange land.

you are eons away,

resting your head where mine should be,

curled amidst blankets and pillows

that should be my body.

but, my dear, my heart has grown

fonder(i thought it impossible),

suspending visions and memories of you

to keep it warm and keep it safe.

i do not worry, as i wander in

search of you.

i know i will find your arms again.

i know i will find you.

The Woman At the Berry Picking Fields

She doesn't mean it when she yells at him. She really doesn't. But she finds that her voice escapes her throat with more force than she meant to use, hitting his tiny, precious face with a current strong enough to make him cry. His lip begins to quiver. Her hands work frantically to try and salvage what she can from the grassy patches below her. Immediately, a tide of regret pulls her under. She can see the heat of his contained despair rising in his cheeks, threatening to explode.

But even though she feels the regret and she feels the guilt, she will not soothe him. He needs to learn. He should know better than to touch things he is not meant to. And so she stands, brushing the strands of dead grass from her knees, and pats him on the head the way she would pat an unfamiliar dog. She tells him to stop crying; they're in public, and no one wants to cause a scene.

Mainly Fiction, Partly Fact

These stories that he tells to these kids (who think that his words are merely history book fodder, not an actual life that he has lived) help him to relive those temporal snapshots. He likes recounting stories from the war, talking about Frankie and Johnny and all those good old boys alongside which he fought. He remembers chasing after those dames who tried so hard to look like Ingrid Bergman and June Haver, with their lips red like cherries and their skin as pure as silk. He remembers when curvaceous, full-bodied women were more attractive than thin, ghastly-looking girls (he still doesn't really understand this cockamamie trend). He remembers working in the lumber yard when he had returned home from Germany and how hard he had to try to forget the horrors he saw as they infiltrated Buchenwald. He saw the wretched faces and mangled, skeletal wires that were once breathing, living bodies as he tied up those chopped and sheared logs, once living trees. He remembers wondering why they had waited so long to do anything about it; how many could they have saved if they had acted upon it at first knowledge?

But his life went on, as it usually does, and he remembers falling in love with his wife. Well, back then, it was more convenience than love, but it ended up being love as time went on. He's not sure when that exact moment was or when he finally saw her as his soulmate, but he knows that it happened. He figures it was sometime around the birth of his first child, nine months after their first anniversary. Perhaps, he thinks, that's unfair to say; perhaps he has always loved her, from the moment they met at the diner and he kept watching the way her hair fell into her eyes as she laughed. She was beautiful back then; she's just as beautiful now, with her hair silver like freshly fallen snow and her deep eyes like onyx.

He lets out a laugh as he hears a kid talk about the "good old days," and he wonders if those days were when he was still in his mother's womb (because he certainly doesn't have enough years under his belt to have any sort of golden age). He wonders what the future has in the store for the world. He wonders if there's ever going to be an end to war and to death and destruction. He wonders what he's going to eat for supper.

He wonders.

She Was Always Such a Simple Woman

This technology thing is new to her. When she was this kid's age, telephones weren't in every apartment and every household. There was no such thing as a cell phone, and if someone had said it, people probably would have thought it was some kind of disease that only men in white lab coats with very powerful microscopes could diagnose.

She lived though eras that these kids read about in history books. She lived through the riots of the 50's (she remembered the black and white news footage of the ruins of Detroit, smoldering and glowing on her 12-inch television screen). She lived through segregation and its final days. She lived through the Free Love movement of the 60's when LSD and marijuana were just like taking a Tylenol. She was at Columbia University when the protests began, even though she was just an innocent bystander, mesmerized by the long hair and tie dye. She lived through the end of the Vietnam War and how mistreated the veterans were who came back to the country they so unwillingly fought for. She lived through the age of the disco and Studio 54. She saw the rise and fall of the Saturday Night Fevers and Stayin' Alives. She begrudgingly welcomed in the age of brightly colored lipstick, side ponytails, and bad, electronic music. She refused to accept the age of flannel and grunge.

And now, she finds herself in the 21st century, holding onto a device that she still can't comprehend, that responds to her body when she touches it. She can't resolve the gaps in her brain from when she was small to this very moment in time. All she knows is that her husband had somehow figured it out enough to leave her a quiet, unnoticeable note on this crazy, new gadget that told her he loved her. And she wishes, in this moment, that she could have told him that she loved him when he was still alive, and she's making a promise to herself that she's going to tell her son - her precious baby boy - that she loves him each and every day. And she's going to figure out how to use a video camera and she's going to figure out how to make a voice memo so that, come the day when her son is sitting down to tell his daughter about the parents who raised and loved him so, she will be able to see them and she will be able to hear them.

The thing of it is, is that she doesn't want to be remembered for great things. She knows that she hasn't done anything great in her life thus far, at least nothing worth noting. She's another face on another body, taking up space and breathing in this air.

But, aside from it all,

she just wants to be remembered.

No Matter How Hard You Flap Your Arms, You're Bound to This Earth

crash.

shatter.

destroyed.

lifeless on the on-ramp

of some nameless,

numbered

exit

on some highway

in some city

in some state,

just like all the others.

the flickering of

red and white,

warning passersby

and those

stupid enough

to think that they can

escape their eventual fate

blind and almost bring us

to that end

sooner than we had hoped.

he was only trying to get

home.

"one more curve and one more

exit, and i will scoop my daughter

up

in my arms

and never let her go," he told himself

as the searing lights grew

larger,

closer,

until they were pressed against

his fractured body,

bruising and devastating

his existence.

i am quickly

distracted

by the displays of this

so-called "freedom"

and the drunken desire

to light any(every)thing on fire.

outstretch my arms.

make myself weight(it is an illusion)less.

where do you think you are

going? you've

got to get home.

you can't stop for him.

but don't worry.

we'll all get there someday,

too.

John Lennon Got It Right - Life Happens When You're Busy Making Other Plans

she wonders how

she got here.

only a child

for a fleeting(ever so

fleet

ing)moment

until she awoke one

morning and found that

she had been deceived(she was

no longer the innocent

babe

of yesteryear;

her hands were gnarled

and her skin like a

cartographer's creation;

she had never

agreed

to this metamorphosis).

From Behind the Epidermal Road Map

Don't look at me that way. I see the disgust you try so hard to shove under the proverbial rug in your eyes. But that rug is as gossamer as netting. I can see right through it. I can see right through you.

You think I was always this way. You think that my bones have always creaked and my life was always lonely. I had friends once, you know. Dorothy, Mildred, Gertrude, Penelope, all of them. We grew up together, living in the same brownstone back before Brooklyn was the home of tattooed kids who graffiti walls and break into homes. Before the age of so called "communication" that you read from an eye-strangling screen, we would meet at the corner and walk to get penny candies from the general store (if you were lucky, your mother gave you a nickel). I had friends once.

Dorothy, well, she just about lost her mind after Fred was killed in the war. She didn't know what to do with herself; he was her life. I always told her that she had to find her own purpose for living, that living entirely for someone else was suicide. She never listened to me, though. She was always the defiant one. We eventually lost touch. The last I heard, she was living out her days in some insane asylum upstate. I randomly caught wind that she had died a few years back, but never had any sort of confirmation from her family. They never liked me much.

Mildred killed herself after her second child died. She had miscarried the first one, seven months into it. She was going to name it Henry if it was a boy and Rebecca if it was a girl (this was before the age of taking the obligation out of loving your child, no matter what the gender). When she finally carried a child to term, she found him (his name was James) floating face-down in a pool when he was four. It was too much for her. Her husband found her hanging three feet from the ceiling.

Gertrude died the way we all want to die: peacefully, in her sleep. She wasn't sick or in pain or suffering. She had lived a good life. Escaped most heartache and trouble - though no one can escape it all. But she was happy. She brightened everyone's life with her stories and with her presence. Everyone was almost grateful when she passed - not because she was gone, but because we knew it seemed only right for her to go as calmly as she lived.

And Penelope .. No one's heard from her in years. I don't think she's died, but I've no real way of looking it up. I don't know how these electronic things work these days, and I don't talk to the grandkids who could help me figure it out. My assumption is that I would've heard something about a service or a wake if she had finally kicked the bucket. Since I haven't, I figure she hasn't, either.

No, I wasn't always this way. I loved the way you do - how I adored my Jimmy, but that's a story for another time. I laughed at the same jokes you laugh at. I cry at the same things that break your heart. I raised two children, both of whom have moved away and onto bigger, better things than I. The world had a place for me once.

Once.