Ambling Back Here

Well then.

To avoid this terribly awkward tension of having not called, written or even had the good notion to send any positive prayers or energy towards you–the reader of this blog–to explain my absence, I will own up to my lack of commitment and care for you:

I am sorry. I was wrong for not being straight forward. It’s not you, it’s me and my severe inability to remain consistent in anything I commit to, ever.

—

My explanation is somewhat legit, though; please hear me out.

The creative, long-sentenced, free-versed, narrative poetry thing served its purpose, but it became selfish and me seeking affirmation from the ten or so folks who actually read and responded in one way or another. I’ve gotten over my writing insecurity and I’m ready to remake this platform into something more inclusive and less about myself.

That said, I don’t think I’m going to keep this as a themed blog anymore. That leads to me getting bored, burned out and eventually dishonest on my part. Bad News Bears. I’ll just write about what I’m learning, doing, thinking, writing, where I’m going and good jokes I’ve heard… not just the silly pretentious stuff. I’m over it, for now.

Anyway, I am going to have another go at trying to blog regularly.

The Old Clock

His clock kept up with him mostly; It somehow avoided the forgotten fate of everything else that he had in his possession for a long time. He overlooked the scars on his finger from hopping over a chain link fence, the center piece on the kitchen table, the empty hangers that used to hold ferns on the porch. Things like that. The clock would get ahead more often than falling back: Sometimes claiming tomorrow to be today, others jumping several hours ahead, and others still, weeks, months without him really noticing. He didn’t want to get rid of it, as it wasn’t really his to begin with. He liked having it around, anyway. It was given to him to hang onto by someone he can’t remember ever seeing–it’d been there since before his memory had really gotten its footing. The bed he slept on was sort of the same way.

A couple days could easily go by without him giving it much notice because it sat nestled beneath his sweater and his ribcage beside the picture of his parents on their wedding day that he’d found in an old, floral-printed photo album at his grandparents house. Every one of the album’s sleeves were empty; between the back cover and the last page was a neglected pile of Christmas cards and letters from people who were dead. It was the only picture he knew still existed of the two of them. He found it nestled between a birthday card from some man named Earnest Key and a letter from some woman named Bootsie, which he really, really hoped was a nickname.

All of this to say, when he came to the point of noticing the clock again, it was sometimes off. It wasn’t really all that reliable as a clock. It worked better as a comfort thing. He liked knowing it was still ticking and still doing its best to do what it was supposed to do, which he could relate to.

Rewinding his clock felt a lot like praying to God for manna.
Or something.

Dementia Rivers (or Chariots)

I watched a woman who was slowly dying of a gradually growing gap
between family visits (and something else that required copious amounts of pain killers)
raise her right hand and slowly run her fingers through a freezing cold stream
that was meandering its way over her bed and into the next room. She was speaking
to someone who wasn’t there; or I guess more truthfully,
she was talking to someone who used to be there, and who’s being there etched such a deep ravine into her mind that they withstood the genocide of memories
led by her dementia.
Starting with birthdays, where she put things, her appointments.
Then slowly there were no more names,
her mind forgot how to move her feet when she wanted to walk down the stairs. After that, there was no hope of walking.

[ My mother’s mother, who was across the hall from this woman, was having her room decorated with poinsettias and garlands and trains with snowmen. There were cards and there were our names on November’s visitor’s log. Her hair was whiter than her teeth and skin was softer than mine or my sisters’. She was being showered with attention and conversation, so I slipped back to the hallway with my back to the forgotten, forgetful woman’s room. ]

Over and over again
she said, Don’t forget about me.
She then pleaded to be brought with them, reaching upward towards the boat on the water.
(Or maybe the golden chariot. I thought later it was maybe just a hand out of reach.)

For well over a half hour, this woman who could not stand on her own reached toward ceiling tiles that were deteriorating slower than her bones, or someone who was becoming more real as her own realness waned, I suppose.

She said that she wasn’t angry. She wasn’t angry,
she wasn’t angry.

(I’m not, I forgive you. I want to be with you. Where, where, where, where, I’m right here, right here, right here, O my God, I just, I just, just let me go with you this time. Do you know? O do you know where she is? She’s with you? I will sing for her if you think I should. Où es-tu? Où es-tu?)

The nurse came in and scared away her only familiar thing.

On Thanksgiving’s eve, I cried in a stale gangway separating thrown away people who are kept alive and entertained with televisions, pain killers and hallucinations.

Where is your boat?
A. Goodwyn, Room 810, That river above your bed is for your departure, not your observance.

Words

WORDS from Everynone on Vimeo.

This is superb.

Poor Farmer’s Barley

[When I fell asleep
I dreamt I stole your money
and burnt it to ash

hundreds of dollars
with fire from my last match
trembling, sure hands

the last of it all
like I remember torch flames
sending cinders off

I was (in my dream)
flying–no–being carried
through your old window

knocking bottles and
dry sunflowers off your desk
out over the street

But the train woke me
as it passed, shaking my ears
and I hit the mug

I watched wine leak
like a cloud would rain on some
poor farmer’s barley]

Fireworks in Chicago

You! Yardbird, Drunkard, Whore!

[ Wipe the dirt from your
lips, lift your flagging head and
climb in My branches ]

Previously Published

When you fail tomorrow
(which you will, because we always do)
count your blessings out loud

and realize that while we
can manipulate their emotions and warp
making love into paltry fucking

we can not foil the consistent

good

that continues dripping from somewhere
behind the coruscated hole punches in
the black sky

onto our throbbing, undeserving heads.

Children at the Bar

I figured that since it was the first decent day since sometime in the middle of January, it was suitable that, though it wasn’t quite warm enough to, I’d have my tea and bagel outside this morning. lt was one of those situations where I pushed mind over matter so that I could be enveloped by the sunshine and ignore the fact that it was still the early half of March.

I bundled myself in a bunch of clothes from my kitchen that didn’t belong to me and rode my bike to work to meet the Saturday morning breakfast crowd. I locked my bike to a handicap parking sign (which I still feel a little guilty about, even though it wasn’t in the actual space) and took my post at the counter serving elderly folks decaf and scrambled eggs and the younger crowd an unhealthy amount of our locally roasted strong stuff (which is another thing I feel a little guilty about–though not as guilty as where I park my bike in the mornings). Around 10:30 the crowd thinned out and I was able to roll silverware and let my mind wander over Iceland and diminished scales and how I was going to use the one thousand free miles that I somehow have with US Airways.

Seven minutes after I started the far-too-familiar green linens a young boy and girl walked in by themselves. They were no more than eleven years old; both of them looked a little disheveled and overconfident. They were holding hands and they perched at the end of the bar and ordered hot chocolate and waffles. I kept looking around the Market and outside for some sort of parental unit, but it eventually became evident that these two were very much on their own in downtown. They spoke and carried themselves in the same way that adults do when discussing business deals or about how Dustin from the finance department left his wife to move to Daytona with some young girl he met on the internet, which is all I’ve been overhearing the past couple days. Topically, they talked about things that kids talk about, which I was very happy about: the “what do you want to be?” conversations are infinitely better than the ones you have when you finally become.

After about an hour of talk, swinging feet from the barstools and collecting crumbs on their clothes, their mealtime wrapped up. I set the check in front of them, not really knowing what to expect from a couple preteens having a morning on the town, free of the watchful eye of authority. The boy looked at the ticket and pushed his hand into the right pocket of his jeans and pulled out a severe amount of crumpled money along with some lint and one of those new golden dollars. I’m positive my mouth hung open a little bit as I watched well over two hundred dollars narrowly escape a treacherous fall from his fingers to the floor. He handed me a disheveled fifty and went back to their conversation of whether or not bats were actually blind.

In that moment I was so very thankful to be some minor character in, what I hoped to be, a great epic of vagabonding youngsters. I gave them their change and watched them leave, just as they had come, hand-in-hand.

I pinched myself to insure reality before going back to work.

Oceans on the Hardwood

The whiskey and wine lifted our hearts like hands lift the sick once the lights went out. The lighthouses were mounted in bottles and burned much brighter than any of us could have hoped, and I carried one to an empty room where the wax slid from the candle to my hand, my hand to my feet, and then splashing, making oceans on the hardwood. I probably would have drowned, had the lights not come home.
— — —
But alas, they did when I woke up the next morning in my brothers bed. I walked downstairs to watch the snow fall, to eat cantaloupe you sliced and drink tea I made. This morning I prayed like drunks drink and wrote like hands pray. I was baptized in reflected light and the truth of my own absolution, despite my adultery. Despite my empty journal. Despite my snatching myself away from the Good. I often forget that God isn’t a perfect version of myself.