A Deceptive July

I have reposted some of my old writing from the blog that I removed. Now It looks like I did it all this month. I have decided to try to write again...we'll see how that goes...

A Hummingbird Moment

I can feel you in the sound of a sax, and with the smell of a freshly lit cigar. The tiny knock of these cool smooth pieces play out our dance on this board before us...running away, coming together, trying to find safety…yet forced to take calculated risks. I want you when your body is warm from constant movement, and feel the need to hold you when you are laying easily, at my feet. When I peer up at you, and let my gaze stay with your eyes for a brief second too long... I wonder if, in that hummingbird moment, that you know that I am breathing a half beat more quickly than while in the presence of any other.

A deep, and constant bass line trips me repeatedly, leaving me completely unaware of anything…but a question answered tentatively in the motion of your hands, the smell of your skin as it marks my own, and the cadence of your voice as my name falls gently, from your tongue. I long for a moment that will never come – a series of notes that will never be sung... and the knowingness of this keeps you close and quiet, in my heart.

Wither

There is a small space that I never should have pretended into existance, can never reveal, and cannot seem to purge. It is tiny, dressed so simply, in the minimalism of privacy and escape. It is the sultry breath of angels and a place for echoed howls; the night’s darkness and the impurity of stolen substance. There was but a faint whisper that used to visit me there, but it has since been hushed into obscurity. I attempted to contort my body in a way that I could still hear it – like an ear pressed close to a door. But the shape that it needed me to take was impossible, and I hurt myself trying to be double jointed when I am not.

The voice is gone now, and this space is hollow. The emptiness cannot be filled with anything plausible nor can the nothingness of it be erased with time. It both scares and scars me. No longer a place of rest and refuge. Thirst unquenched, my being has given up; a sacrifice of submitted self. Through years of neglect, I have wilted like dying ivy which only needed a bit of shade. The sun, albeit necessary sometimes, was too bright, burning the leaves, and has caused them to wither. Hope, it turns out, was nothing but a barren mirage.

All the words that could be said have been spoken. The only thing left is the truth. This space, once a haven for the bare words of love's humility, is now a bit of bloated air in a stomach, churning; I cannot wretch, I cannot swallow, and I cannot spit it out.

Mourning Inamorata

The moment of all last things between us, has passed without warning. Time, trapped in a solitary embrace, will not continue to elapse without the inclusiveness of loss. I awake in mourning. My eyes bleeding from weeping, and seeing now that all the color of the world has been erased, replaced with monochromes. Grieving the opportunity to speak with different words and more emotion…or the ability to tell you that all is good, and will be alright. I am folded down the middle, and have been gently put away. Warm is just a little bit colder, light a little less intense, and it takes a little more patience now, to provoke the corners of my mouth to spread in speech, or rise in smile. I have stapled them shut, and barred the doors of chance. I will not, neither cause a scene nor any more affectionate ambuscades.

The bartender notices that I am common, and offers up another drink. Empathy is liquid. He has seen the lachrymose killing fields of love's nimiety a thousand times before in the bottom of empty glasses. Glasses looked into with sorrowful tipped heads. No one who has ever been left immediately maintains the ability to sit up straight; for insides lack the constitution, until the heart slowly returns from the throat. I am choking, and yet have not eaten for days.

No Place in this World

Kiss me for the last time instead of the first, and give me a reason to blame the emptiness on mistake. I was lost until I found your face.

There was no crime committed in the delight found in the observance of your life from careful distance, and I was never willing to trade your laugh for a taste of your tongue, nor implicate the moon in the dark details of the rush of you too near. Satisfaction was found in the unknowingness of the naked flesh. Imagination persisted, perhaps, but never gave way to common suspicions of the inevitable eventuality of your fingers on my bare back. Temptation thwarted, and still I feel the biting pain of a snare that was thought to have been avoided, intensely and properly. I am here now, left with only the dissonant sounds of loss. A leaf plucked from a branch, not yet ready to fall but nevertheless crumbling, beneath a rampage of careless feet. You did not know me long enough to witness my complete progression; nor see my beauty in the fall. I could not offer you much, not exclusivity, nor a key to this door. All I have I would give unhesitatingly; the occasional intermingling of imperfect authenticity, and a genuine and unfaltering desire to know even the worst of you, if not the whole of you.

Fumbling over the words to use, you tried to solicit my help in choosing the ones that would bring about the end. I gave you altruistic permission, and sat screaming inside. I couldn’t scare you, and then the time ran out. An old man and woman took our seats, as we walked in silence out the door.

Of all the things that I am, I showed none of them to you today. I am not nearly so strong. My fortress was only my epiglottis, trying with firm desperation to prevent any sight of liquefied eyes – swallowing any sentiment that would communicate how deeply my insides were balking your revocation. My toes cramped in a tight cringe; my insides switching places. I bit my bottom lip until it bled. How could I have let your last remembrances of my eyes lack clarity.

I wanted you to stare solidly into them, to see for yourself the doubt on your face, as you finally said goodbye.

There is no place in this world, for unusual love. The proper prototype is defined only by pragmatics.

The Meter

“Why do we have toes,” she asked him.

“So we can walk more easily,” he replied. “Form follows function.”

“But throughout the course of time, humans have lost toe length,” she stated, “since we generally wear shoes – do we really need toes anymore? I think, we may lose our toes all together someday.”

“That’s silly,” he said. There is no evolutionary reason that we would adapt to suit footwear. Besides, that is ethnocentric. There are still many who go bare foot either due to preference or socio-economics.”

“I suppose your right,” she said. “But my toes are shorter than yours, and I am still convinced that I am slightly more evolved.”

He laughed, appropriately and then paused…“do you want to come over?” he asked quietly.

“Why…do you miss me or are you just having a tryptophan craving?” she asked with coy rhetoric – and then quickly added, “don’t answer that. I don’t care. I’ll be right over.”

The broken down beater that she drove was fickle. She hadn’t yet been able to see a pattern in its occasional inability to turn over. She laughed to herself, as it seemed that he too, was just like the car. A code encrypted in a language called “noncommittal.”

To her surprise, this particular evening, both seemed to be working to her advantage. For most, the hour was not conducive anything but sleep or bad late night t.v., but for them, these wee hours were the ones that both encapsulated, and defined, their entire relationship. She was in her pajamas, and drove the seven minute distance quickly.

“Why do you come connected with only the hours after midnight?” was the first utterance as she walked through his unlocked door.

“Perhaps because I love you darkly,” he answered sarcastically from the couch.

She paused for a minute, as his answer had taken her aback. It was like something that she wanted to hear…intermixed with something else. Like biting into a chocolate, only to find it filled with something sour.

She peered at him while he was turning the light out in the kitchen. “I was listening to an Arabic song on the way here,” she said. “I liked it, but I didn’t know what it was all about. I thought of you.”

“So is that how you love me?” he asked, “In a state of confusion?”

“Yes,” she answered bluntly, as she crawled into bed.

They were absolutely always blunt with each other. Given the time limitations placed on the length of possible discourse between them, this proved most efficient – despite the fact that this ridiculous level of honesty did nothing to help mitigate any harshness which other lovers generally try harder to ensure. Theirs was a relationship completely absent of grocery speak, debates over what restaurant to eat at, or discussion of bills or chores.

The argumentation of love is a skillful technique, and acquired only through painful practice. The fact that their love was contemplated at such a cerebral level left little room for doubt that between them there was a most quixotic chemical reaction. They were attached by it like conjoined twins who hated the fact that they were bonded in way that would surely cause the demise of one, should the other want to leave. They spoke about their feelings for each other like they were discussing a scientific experiment. Postulation, hypothesis, factors which negate the premise…there was never anything, ever, left unquestioned.

He touched her face gently, and in response to her endearments said, “I love you…though I have yet to understand, how this has anything to do with that.”

“Fine,” she said, “then I hate you,” and pounced upon widening lips.

Above everything else, she adored his smiling kiss. They had shared angry tearful kisses, disparaging kisses, and goodbye kisses…but the smiling kiss was the one that she took most pleasure from, and had frequently thought that naked body laughter was the most ideal form of orgasm.

The only thing that was both tedious and risky to question, was how normal it all was. They could be together only if they were to remain purposefully oblivious to the fact that a nocturnal relationship precluded any reference to the word normal. So too must she balk any suggestion that he was ever hurting her, for should this ever be articulated…he would leave faster than she could beg him not to. She couldn’t figure out whether or not she was grateful for such a bizarre intimacy. Eccentricity seemed to inspire wicked depth of emotion at times, but also necessitated many concessions. Concessions she made as easily as if they were small change needed to feed a meter.

Father

My father died on November 11th, 1979. He was 32 years old. Children do not completely understand death at such a young age as I was. After he passed, I still spoke of him in the present tense, and drew happy pictures in nursery school of him throwing me up into the air. My teachers were quite taken aback when my mother informed them that he had actually died, more than a year prior. I wonder sometimes if pulling him into the present with me is because he never really left me. For, I still feel him every now and again as a firm and gentle pressure upon my shoulder, during times when I am most lonely and distraught. When a young one, loses a young father – there is no amount of persuasion that could ever shake my conviction that they must continue to cradle their children in their arms forever. It is a bond impervious to division.

I used to believe that my father was the man in the moon, first actually and later as symbolic constant reoccurrence. I used to look up to the stars and try to remember his face, but children forget too much with time and the need to learn so much. When other children wished they had superpowers, I wished for a better memory. I would cry myself to sleep, until he came back to me in dream to dry my tears.

I wanted to know his voice, ached for the ability to recall him loving me, and remember the scent of his sweaters when he held me near. I know that in my birth he found a piece of completion, a tiny example of beauty, that I was undeniably perfect to him and he was proud. And I know that he wanted me close when his eyes were called to close for the very last time, so that he could take my face with him to heaven.

Perhaps all that we ever yearn to know for sure is that in the end, ours is a face which is desired, and that our children’s fingers – sometimes tiny and sometimes grown - will hold our hand as we fall into forever’s sleep. With time I wrestled between wanting him to wake, and wanting him to rest comfortably - no longer suffering from the pain of splitting headaches, and the heart wrenching knowledge that he would soon no longer be there to share life with his gift as I grew. He loved my mother in the way that only poets speak of; he loved me fully, and with sanctity. His was a spirit too strong to fade, and I am sure that it is his enduring love which has added depth to my soul, and given me reason to believe in God.

With all that I am, I love you father. Though your body be absent, you are never far.

Soul Questing

She wanted him to know her, and yet she did not know why. There were certain hypotheses she entertained, but they all lacked the kind of precision upon which her self reflection was usually constructed. All she was sure of was that she was always drawn to mysterious creatures, and this surely played a part - as did the kind of wonder that is predicated upon impossibility. She only ever wanted to reveal herself, to those whom she could never truly know. She pondered what it was about him that in this day-fragment could cause her to desire her intricacies be subject of a quest.

During their first few interactions she was aware that he had used, not only once but twice, her favorite words and she silently questioned whether or not he had noticed the unusual nonverbal reaction they evoked. Most people don’t react to the mere use of such words, she figured. Surely there are not multitudes of people who feel their lungs pause, mid exhale, when certain rarities of speech are employed by strangers, though she could not know for sure. This feeling of uniqueness was not due to ego. It was not self importance that drew her to conclusions that she was strange. It was because of so many moments of her past, and present, she felt like a dress that didn’t quite fit in all the proper places…often being a waist too tight; shoulders too narrow. People did not admit to the things that she felt. Perhaps if they did, she would feel a little less like the itch of wool.

She concluded that he must like books, and must look as dignified in a suit jacket as he did in this pair of well broken in jeans. The vestments which caused her to want the details of every day that he had worn them. His coat was long, and he wore glasses. She liked that about him. There are so many eyes which get hidden behind lenses, but his were framed with the beautiful accentuation of a Picasso. She thought fleetingly of the farm couple lying in a bed of straw, and embarrassed herself by the flushing of her cheeks. She wondered to what he would attribute her blush to.

She liked the easy manner that he sat in her chair. She liked the way that he paused each time she asked him something which could either be answered with depth, or far more common superficiality. She took the silence as an indication of wisdom, and his pensiveness caused her lips to curve into a most unnecessary smile. Often his responses would surprise her, and she could almost feel physically her pupils start to dilate. She actually pinched herself once or twice to bring herself back to the task at hand – to the one-sided conversation, they were unfortunately almost finished having.

The pulling away and inevitable ending of a moment is something that she had, only with great practice, learned to swallow. In her past she had been a delayer, bent on keeping on; feeling that time was but a deep fissure which geographically captured and removed forever, ones ability to see. During this farewell she did not seek to prolong the eventuality of his leaving. After all, there was no reason for him to stay, for he did not know her and had no reason to take her hand in a different way.

They would of course, resume a dyad of conversation but he would never be aware of the complexity of the unilateral exploration which she would embark upon, the minute that he entered the room.

Dear Friend

Today I felt you near, reincarnated in a fifteen year old smile. I still remember you sitting on the corner of my bed, watching me intently as I plucked the rogue hairs of my brow. My gaze darting back and forth between my eye and you - writhing around in tides of laughter, commenting that it was the funniest thing you had ever witnessed. The bright glint in your eye never moved from my face. It was your first initiation, into a private act of the opposite sex. In the fall, you drove with me – everywhere…often nowhere, just so that we could enjoy each other’s company in the privacy that is so limited during the confines of youth. We were caught between being no longer young enough for sandboxes and swing-sets, and yet not old enough for dinner invitations, so we struggled hard to find a space.

I was always casual in the context of your company. No need to be but aloof, for you always came to me without pause. Your friendship, so facile for me, that it took me the better part of a year before I even let it enter my imagination that you did not see me as just “one-of-the-guys”- girls. In the spring I let you hold me only once. You were so innocently eager, and so very real; the authenticity of a love that is shy, too young to be intentionally coy, was undeniable when you finally asked if I would let you. Though your hands were not new to my back, this time they quivered with anticipation, and I could feel your heart beating with such unequivocal rapidness. How could I have imagined that in a short time, it would stop beating all together.

When I received the news of your death, I hoped that you knew that with sobbing open arms I sent all the love that I had kept so quietly distant, upwards into heaven in the hopes that you would look down upon me then, and feel returned the quickness of my now aching heart; that you would know above all else, that your tenacious wide smile would be etched into my minds eye for eternity. You were to me a joyful steady presence that I held on the left side of my life in those years – always beside me despite something in between. You were the boy down the street who passed by my window daily – and on days you did not stop in, I could count always on your hand to move up into the air with palm toward me. While I truly believed that you would inevitably move on, move past without mark, become fascinated by another’s face and grow old – you were one of the few whom I could count on, to let that near inside.

A decade later, snow and rain has touched the grass atop your grave though I have never have visited you there. To me you do not sleep. You are the angelic laughter of children that never ceases to catch my attention, warmth on the corner of my bed, and the light refracting in a mirror. I think of you sweetly, not only but always, when I hold metal to my eyebrow. A sting incomparable to the loss of young life...but causing a smile in the knowledge that when you said you wanted to watch me again some day, that you are now watching me always.

Social Accidents

In the midst of copasetic coincidence you appear in the corner of my periphery…and then your words fade, even though still you speak. I become aware that I am watching your mouth, your eyes, and the shape that your eyebrows take while you are thinking something happy. I am watching. Waiting for you to light another cigarette – wishing it were my fingers that you were taking to your lips. My attention drifts to times when I was closer to your face, and the lines on your aging face mark the pathways of recall to your jaw in the foreground of every horizontal picture, and times when I could read your breath like Braille as it fell with changing cadence upon my bare shoulder.

Returning to your words, I notice the marked difference in sequence…for in between “I” and “you” belongs a word that no longer fits any better than your fingers anymore upon the nape of my neck, nor inches, nor anger. I can still feel the space between bodies and words like a shock. Yesterday you were the face that appeared behind an opening door, while today you are the back which leaves without the need to mark your imminent absence with goodbye…the juxtaposition of opposites in compound. You did not come here to see me, and it was only by social accident that your utterances graced the hollow of my ear, yet still I am left with the realization that there is nothing which has become more ideal to me than shape of your mouth, and the interpretation of your eye language in the company of others; those so completely unaware of the impact of externalities upon me, when you make another smile.

Keep On

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened, had I kept driving. How you urged me with so much winsome laughter and inviting innuendo, to cast aside all responsibilities and go out with you into a new mysterious place in time. I don’t know if it was how the breadth of your shoulders filled the small bucket seat next to me, or if it was the coffee resting precariously in my lap – but I felt anxious. You were so unknown to me, yet the urge to know you longer made me shift positions repeatedly. I started to speed again. Your camera and books were the only thing that you had with you, yet you were so prepared to be gone for so long; the impulsiveness made my foot heavy.

Imagining the feeling of being disappeared by a mesmeric stranger was a temptation unrivaled by any I had ever previously experienced. I am sure that you must have questioned why I had so eagerly offered you a ride. I am sure that you must have suspected that it was not only because I was nice. Notwithstanding that the arrangement was that you were to make it possible to drive this rattling tin can again, if I would allow you to borrow it for a while…what followed next was an offering that was not part of the deal. Upon return, I offered you a ride – half way back…to spend a few hours with you, before I was to leave you at the next ride and go back to sticky work at the ice cream store, prepare papers and participate in the cleaning of the apartment. But what if I had just kept driving? The suggestion, so seductive lingered for so long in the back of my mind.

Would we have tangled limbs in a mountain lake? Would your camera be witness to my waking self, on the edge of a brand new pillow? Would we go on making new arrangements…repeatedly?

“Happy Birthday” was what I said to you, instead of goodbye. I handed you a card with a cryptic message, and you kissed the corner of my mouth in reciprocity for a safe midway arrival. As I drove home, you read the card repeatedly – or so you said, and wondered why I felt it was so necessary to turn around and drive away. Those few December days, could have led into January nights you said…if only… I had kept driving. Though we tried to talk over the distance, I never did... ever see you again.

Doldrums and Dull Dreams

so i had a dream the other night...which is not out of the ordinary. i usually dream, and usually i anticipate that my dreams will be fanastic...especially juxtaposed against the absolute drudgery of these current days...i am so bored that i find myself daydreaming more often than normal. flights of fancy. leaping into devious distraction. i imagine myself rolling in mudpuddles wearing nothing but a raiders ball cap, and then sitting dirty - drinking tea with poets and elfen creatures.

the other night i had a dream, so disturbing that it has rattled me ever since. in this particular dream. i replicated a real day. i dreamed of dog defication duties, and emptying the lint catcher. not only was i bored in my dream, but i was actively aware that i was having a boring dream....one which i could not awake from.

"why am i having such a dull dream?" i would say to my sleep self. there was no answer and no end. it went on and on forever...blowing my nose, putting socks in the the washing machine, scraping a piece of melted wax off of my desk....

i think i woke up once when my dog pounded my back with her paw (she was obviously having a far better dream than I was, and for a minute i wanted to dream that i was her) but of course this was an elusive wish... instead, I soon fell back into more prosaic pictures of myself doing absolutely nothing interesting at all...(except now with the addition of someone without a face occassionally running up to me out of nowhere, and pushing me hard from behind, before running away again)...now i was irritated AND bored...

today i am afraid of dreaming for the first time in my life. i am feeling absolutely avoidant...of having another one of these mundane atrocities strike me in my sleep. i wonder if being bored for too long can actually make oneself boring. i think it is entirely quite possible...for i have nothing inspiring to say, nothing wiitty and surely nothing intelligent.

i feel like plankton. scrape me from the bottom of the boat and carry on with your adventure, for lately i am attached unilaterally...rather than interacting with anything with even the slightest amount of symbiosis.

The Naught Times

Tonight I stumbled across the one thousandth thing that you’ll never say to me. It caught me off guard, as it came to me so directly after imagining the one thing that you and I will never do. It is interesting to think in elements of nothing. For you anyway, it seems to bring me closer than thinking from the typical present perspective of possibilities, predicated by “Should-Will-Want-To’s.” It takes nimbleness however, to navigate the land of Naught correctly. There are traps set everywhere…white elephants, and endless daily details which were not attended to closely enough to warrant consideration at the time.

Remember the day that we never spent together? What a glorious, uncharacteristic day it was, so absolutely void of anything remotely mundane. You surprised me with a bottle of wine, and we laughed – reminiscing about the time that we never sat together, flushed on sake and singing a capella karaoke in the key of drunk. And how afterward, we did not walk together in silence for quite an unusually lengthy amount of time, and you did not ask me, “what are you not thinking right now?” Somewhat uncomfortable now and trying to change the subject, I did not ask you about the book that you are not reading. The street lights cast distorted long shapes in front of us…two bodies, curiously casting one shadow. You asked me what it was that I was not saying. I wanted to know what it was that you were not feeling…but instead, I said something else. “Naught Discourse” is completely facile; its luxury found in the ubiquity and endless availability of honest answers.

Gin and Platonics

In the dark cool night, faces remind me of other faces, and bring me to the humbling realization that my existence was forgotten to so many whom I never truly knew. I become no longer aware of what expression my face should make. I do not belong here anymore. I do not feel that I am different, yet all of it has changed; all but tiny shattered fragments which we try meagerly to put together, so temporarily. Names beget other names…and questions, so superficial, glide off drunken tongues. Returning to try again, to find new ways to play… always hoping that the outcome may be different, all the while knowing that the game has been eternally fixed. It alwasy ends the same. Whose idea was it to take me, completely, out of the picture? I did not mean to be gone for so long…

Talking across the surface of what once felt so deep…you ask me how it is that I can feel anxious and calm, both at the same time. How can I answer? How can I explain that your face brings me peace, but each word spoken reminds me how far we have grown from each other? How can I let you touch me…when all it does is bring me right back to moments when you were the only friend in the world, who could calm me so quickly, with the brush of your thumb across my back? And mostly…how can I say hello and goodbye to you, all over again, with the sparseness of mere minutes in between?

Please tell me that you remember, with similar affection, the times that we spent, wrapped in each others arms, carving out a kind of friendship that that was created from moment to moment…When each day was different, and we never acquiesced to popular constructions. We so hated to play by other’s rules, and sometimes by our own. Do you blame me for slipping away? Do you feel that I have betrayed myself…or perhaps betrayed you? Were there expectations after all? The future was never more than an unborn idea…and how we would remain in it, together, so casually just taken for granted. Perhaps I should have told you…that there was nothing more that I ever wanted, than to know for certain that you would carry me in your heart to whichever ends of the earth you feet would take you to…for I knew that you would go…and go I wanted you to... to feed your inquisitiveness with discovery.

Why is it, that love is viewed with such contempt? Why is it seen to be finite, by so many? I love, so deeply…so truly…and with expected distance…so many of those who live, quietly, in my past…where, there is no spite…and where one love does not take from another. So many loves coexist within the confines of subconsciousness. Like the tide, the present and past roll over and over, and you return to me now and again, like a smoothed stone, or a hollowed shell. The calmness of holding it in the palm of my hand…and the anxiousness of knowing that I cannot hold it long enough.

Addendum to Profanity and Pain

As an addendum to the previous post about fuck and root canals, I wish to also add that I now have a piece of dental instrument stuck in one of my canals, forever. See...this is where "fuck" may not have been necessarily appropriate...as imagine my reaction, had instead of saying "oh would you look at that" as the dentist held up his tiny little drill to show his assistant that the end had broken off IN MY TOOTH - that he had said "FUCK!" Conceivably...I may have lurched a little bit...More.

Apparently one of my canals doesn't go straight up into my palate but goes side ways like a sharp right angle, and I am told that in digging into this canal that the end of his instrument-torture-device-type-thing cracked off in an unretrievable way. But it was also lunch time and it didn't appear from MY perspective that he tried very hard to dig it out. I heard his stomach rumble. I think he just thought "oh screw this, I'm hungry." So he pushed the melty poly-fill type material into the canal in the hopes (he fucking said HOPE - like that is a terribly confidence inspiring word after such a "whoops") that it would just become a tiny piece of steel contained in my new tooth mortar...Like my own personal fossil of the experience. How nice. Maybe I can be one of those people who pick up radio signals in my head now. (With my luck it will be a station that is "All Clem Snide and nothing but.")

The kicker of ALL kickers: He says that my tooth will be sore for a few days, and to take Advil every three hours for the next couple of days. If his fingers were still in my mouth I would have bitten him. "That may hurt for a while...take Advil fucker." I think...that if you break metal into someone's root canal AND LEAVE IT THERE, that this should at least...at the very least...equate to a prescription of something a little stonger than wimpy Advil. Don't you? I am insane? Delerious from pain? I saw a whole tank of Nitrous Oxide...none of which he offered to ME by the way - and as I left...I kept wondering, if a root canal gets Advil - even when something goes horribly wrong with the procedure - then what on earth kind of ungodly procedure is the fucking gas for???!

Profanity and Pain

Post root canal, the only word that seems fitting to slur with a frozen face...is FUCK! I say this with no shame...as I am getting more comfortable with this word when it is used appropriately. A "bad" word?...what really is that? A word cannot BE bad, because a word cannot BE anything - except perhaps used inappropriately.

In and of itself, the word “fuck” is a four letter word which said, with sharp monosyllabic staccato, sounds fantastic. When we write it, we shouldn’t have to spell it “phuck,” or change it to “fahk” in a pathetic attempt to be sneaky and "get away with something." (oh hee hee) If changing an f to a ph makes a bad word suddenly palatable for those who would otherwise be offended, well that’s just…fucked up. (see: no other word worked there better…I tried and deleted a few different endings to that statement and none of them gave me the statisfaction that fuck did - becuase I feel strongly about this...and it irritates me to no end to see the variations of spelling for these sorts of words that somehow make them "better" despite meaning the same thing)

The word is "fucked"…not fukt….it is "fucker"…not fukr….for that isn’t cute either. Fuck is not supposed to be cute…nor is it supposed to be sneaky. It is supposed to be blatant and dissonant. It is supposed to be rebellious and is supposed to be said with a certain degree of emphasis. Fuck is the verbiage of the minority to the majority…the underdog to the bigger dog...the vernacular of independence. It is not a comma, nor should it EVER be used in place of “um” or “ah” when we speak. One should not say that you “fuckin’ went to the store yesterday,” fuck doesn’t like to be used that way…it is not a word in place of a breath and does not wish to be sullied by being placed in that predicament. Fuck is a grand superlative – positive or negative – but whichever end of the polarities it is being used, it is an uber word…for which no other word will do. You can say you fucking hate something, or fucking love something but don't say you fucking like something a little bit. That's just incorrect usage of a big word in a mediocre way. And never ever take the "g" out of "fucking" - because "fuckin'" makes it similarly just average. If you want "average" say gosh darn it.

Now some will come at me with the logical statement, that words can be “bad” if they hurt people. This however, is irrelevant to “fuck” unless a "you" comes afterwards (an actual rather than "royal you.") There are definitely derogatory words out there, but whom may I ask, is hurt by just “fuck”? Fuckers? I have never heard of, nor been to the land of Fuck, and I have not ever heard anyone refer to their background as “a mix of Swedish and Fucker," and until I do, I will continue to use the word fuck - blatantly...operating under the belief that if anyone is offended by this restrained and proper usage, that they are just simply, too fucking easily offended...or, they have never had a root canal.

Cranky

What is crankiness and where does it come from? When you don’t want to feel cranky – why does it bug you with such unabashed persistence? Hanging around, bugging the hell out of you, refusing to just go away…crankiness is the kid you hated in elementary school living inside you. It serves no purpose. Other emotions allow for growth and expression of self…depression, angst, sadness, despair…these are all emotions that I happily call “friend”. You can cry in a beer with a friend, but crankiness just makes you want to smack them and throw the beer at the bartender. I am searching for a positive spin on crankiness and the only thing that I can come up with, is Lewis Black. He may well be, the only living antidote to my crankiness…but at the moment I can’t find new Lewis Black material and that makes me even more cranky. Maybe I should hide CD’s of Lewis Black around the house for those times when I am jonesing.

Tonight I tried to eat a million things that I thought I felt hungry for, and none of them were at all even close to satisfactory. I had donuts, pizza, two hotrods, a hard rootbeer float (Rootbeer and Dooley’s), a chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream bar, another hotrod, and Cheddar and Sour Cream chips. Still fucking hungry and now MAD that I feel I have now exhausted my options…but Peanut Butter!! First on bread and then a whole spoon of it straight…five minutes go by…I think my peanut friend has helped…two more minutes pass. I shake my head like Lewis, mutter fuck and eat cheese. Unfortunately the cheese I ate was cranky too and started a fight with the hotrod. Now my stomach hurts, and I am still… cranky.

I finally lay on the couch in a position where I feel temporary comfort. Whine. Snuff…whine. Dog needs out. They have extrasensory ability to tell when I have just reached a state of physical comfort that wishes to remain in absolute stasis…but alas it is my duty. I let him out, and for 10 minutes he sniffs around before he relieves himself…and I am left wondering the thought that I am usually left with, and that is: that I would give the right half of my ass to know what a “good spot to poo” smells like. I say to him "The one you just picked now you passed by yesterday while I waited in -40 degrees for you to find a spot the smelled good enough to shit on?? Why now? What has changed?" It is 4am so no one can hear me talk to the dog like that. Not that I care much right now. There is no method in this madness...and that pisses me off.

Crankiness is a hell that I can only imagine to be the worst imaginable. If there were nothing there but the existence of cranky…that would be enough. Fuck fire. Fuck brimstone. Put a whole whack of cranky people together and watch them all tick each other off. In that case, I would like to tell Lewis Black to go to hell, as that would actually be a compliment. “No I don’t hate you…I NEED you there...in case I was wrong.”

Back from the shit mission to settle back into my spot, only to find that my drink is empty. Yah, that whole “half full half empty thing” that’s great for encouraging optimism, but it doesn’t work when it’s just all gone…how are you supposed to look at that differently? I’m thirsty. As I make a Caesar, I contemplate the fact that Worcestershire sauce is bizarre. No really. Read the story. Who the fuck would taste something that was a year old while spring cleaning? I ate a week old chicken salad sandwich once. It gave me the runs.

I am listening to Johnny Cash do Rusty Cage. I love it. Johnny covering Soundgarden. This is actually making me less cranky…although it could be the vodka…or both. This is long and but I don't care. However, my dog’s head is heavy on my foot now and I shall attempt sleep...it better come quickly, I have no patience to wait for it tonight.

Mothers

What is it about a blank page that calls me? I long to paint something on it with words…but tonight I feel like I am finger painting with chocolate pudding. “Look Mom!” she says. She is four years old and her artwork is a masterpiece to her, especially given the fact that it is somewhat edible. That is an attractive combination to a child.

“I can erase it with my tongue,” she giggles. “Oh don’t do that sweetie…let it dry. I will put it on the fridge. It is wonderful,” she says holding a warm cloth – prepared for action. It is the amazing act of a mother to save a child from licking pudding off of dirty paper…while at the same time elevating esteem. Mothers must be tricky at times.

Mothers love you in a way that makes all of your weaknesses seem like little gifts. Even when one is disparaging ones character traits they all of a sudden become normalized by familial embrace. “Well that sucks honey…but you came by it naturally.” I inherited a nocturnal gene, a longer nose than I would have given myself if I were in charge, a hostile womb, and biting temper. However…these are all mitigated by the fact that I inherited them from the people I love most, and there is a comfort in that. I am not speaking inheritance solely by genes, but so to those passed through family memes – for it is not only blood but time and togetherness that influence who we are.

I don’t have to be a Picasso for her to be proud of me. I could be a finger painting made with pudding...and I feel like that at times. Yet she would put me on my grandmother’s fridge, and be proud of everything that their womanhood has created. When I think of heaven, I think of a place God has papered with our worst art. When I think of God I think of my mother…loves total lack of pretension…and the beautiful exaltation of imperfection.

Looking Left

I seem stuck in perpetual queue, and the score of my life is bad hold music....craving a sound bite of your body. I want words to be the virginal conduit between us, despite fear of death by way of elocution. There is nothing that I have ever enjoyed being stuck in my ear…except your voice.

Someone has turned my world hollow. Amidst a cacophony of echoed irritation, I wish to amplify the sound of water being thrown over burning embers...unique and fleeting...as were you. If you must only say goodbye say it repeatedly, and I will attempt to filter out the din of everything but. Looking left, I remember you best.

Snide

I absolutely believe that objectivity is an illusion, and that all things are a matter of perception. However tonight I am feeling conflicted between this ideology and the fact that I hate Clem Snide Truly, I cannot conceptualize how anyone could enjoy Eef’s voice. It is not the music that is bad…it is just... his voice. The first few beats of a song starts, and I start to unconsciously move with it a bit…and then…I hear his voice and I actually feel like I want to smack him. Have you ever wanted to smack a singer before? It’s a bizarre urge.

I read somewhere, someone comparing his voice to Mark’s from Red House Painters. Who, with the semblance of good taste to enjoy the abilities of Koselek, could possibly make this comparison? I want to smack them too. Like RHP's...like Clem Snide...but don't compare them. Mark’s voice may be considered somewhat “whinny” by some, but it is not grating. Eef’s voice grates me like it was a Kitchen Classic grater…” - not your average grater.”

One may offer a retort such as this: "the lyrics are what gets me…"
Well then…be gotten and away with you.

“'cause I have a lot of things to say
and you'd be wise to listen good
I think that hunger, war and death
are bringin' everybody down

when it's my moment in the sun
I'll share my problems with the world
and psychosomatically I'll sing
to God and all his pretty girls “

That’s just…not good. Plain and simple…I don’t want to give Clem Snide superlatives of even the negative sort. However, “It's the tender malapropisms followed by a good LA LA LA LA that make Clem Snide a great band,” said a bad reviewer. Malapropisms is a good word….in fact, it is one of my favorite words. I am no stranger to pleasure derived from the creative contortions of linguistics…but come on…there is a difference between purposeful absurdity, a witty play on words, and pulling a word out of your ass, even if you do enjoy a good la la la. I think that they would do far better to sing blah blah blahs. At least then it would appear they may be mocking themselves…which I would enjoy.

Right now I am listening to “The Dairy Queen” and again…what the fuck? (forgive me) There is good in there…intermingled with a lot of everything else, but it gets lost. Maybe it is actually the dissonance between the juxtaposition of a likable element, and the abhorrent in a song which incites the violence of a pacifist. Take for example, this Dairy Queen song - first off, the first thing we hear is the annoying sound of a car alarm/horn. Bad. Get rid of that. Then, some really melodious music starts. Good. Keep that. Then I hear Eef. Throw the CD out the window of a moving car and back up over it.

I am also becoming aware that I think I hate Clem Snide because they took their name from a Burroughs’ character. If you are going to do that, then you’d better be good. You can be rough around the edges…there is nothing shiny and perfect about Burroughs…but damn, you’d better have at least the lyrical talent to back it up.

Interplay

Where do people live when they are not with us? Like a highlight on a solid form…we carry with us the silhouette of loved ones, but not the detail…

The detail lives in these brief times of resurgence, and they are magnified by the relativity of all things which came before - the inability for a shared moment to exist, nor be lost forever…a life of interlacing threads of time…your face in a golden field of Manitoban mustard…your fingers in a drop of rain.

The intensity of interplay between loss and connectedness, gives way to dream. I fall through the crevice of sanity, to your doorstep once again. To the place where hunger pangs were never felt, and books would bring us together. Are you home, friend? Will you invite in the remembrances of me, and kiss the memory of my cheek? Will you shake the philosophy from my coat, like drops of rain, clinging to the idea we shared something real. This is the kind of love that lingers on the lips of the beast called nostalgia. And while most frequently this burden is carried through the sadness of age, every now and again, it exists on a warm breeze, during those moments when we are chilled, completely, to the bone.

Almost Drunk

Today I got the most interesting spam. Generally, and quite obviously, I hate spam…but if every spam were like this one, I may be forced to change my opinion. This spam was from “Tinkled S. Timidity” and the content was this: “There was a door to which I found no key: There was the veil through which I might not see.." I enjoyed this spam so much, I felt compelled to reply…but sadly I still felt it generally inappropriate to respond kindly to spam...

As I write this, I have become aware that I am in that mood – the one where I want to listen to one song and one song only – on repeat, a thousand times over. Right now I seem to be coming back to David Gray…”This Years Love”... which lately by the way, I seem to be hearing in every popular blockbuster flick... I have since decided that I would like to have that job…the one who gets to score the movie. How fucking cool would that be? "What do I do? Oh I'm the person that gets to select the songs for the movies you watch..." (how do people get those jobs?) My resume: "Um...I've done it with the movie of my own life, many times over??" Bollocks.

Right now my playlist just flipped to Echo and the Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon”. Another song that has cropped up in two movies I can think of off the top of my head…."Grosse Pointe Blank" and the far better, "Donnie Darko". I won’t even comment on how odd it was to hear “Last Goodbye” start to play in Vanilla Sky.The song that is burned in my soul for eternity. “Do you want to hear Jeff Buckley or Vicki Carr?” she says. “Both…at the same time,” he answers. I laugh out loud as I write this, as the song that is next on my playlist, is Nick Drake. Yes...you guessed it...which movie...The Royal Tennenbaums.

Faith

...and in the event that life changes radically, and without warning we are swept like weeds caught in waves from the ocean floor. Tumbling, crashing, catching stones and sticks. These are the times of no control. No conviction deep enough to change minds, and share the deepest human sadness. We feel, and grieve and at times there are no words to describe the pathos of one sweet day.

These are moments of unparalleled joy, to find a thought that brings peace over the body and dry tears, if but only for a moment. People bring inexplicable complexity to our lives. Who are you, really? Do we ever truly know beyond the faith that we graciously bestow upon another. Do we risk everything to gain nothing? Or is this the salt the burns the wound and heals the rift of flesh.

Are you taking me places that I am meant not to see? Will you capture me and wrap around me like a warm breeze, and hide me from the world. These are moments that I think that I am most pitiful, and blessed all at once. Are we responsible for this? The design is convoluted and unclear to me now. Emotions pre-exist time, and all attempts to savor the epoch of my imagination are lost in the ages. I want to crawl toward you until my hands bleed. I want to see past your face, to your vulnerabilities and cradle your kindness in my chest.

These are times when I peer upon myself through a kaleidoscope of confusion. I touch you in diamonds of blue and green. Remember childhood? The age when we lacked the words to express the depth of experience that was flooding into our souls, and changing us with every second. To crave something so distant, and be filled with such fevered expectation…the longing of solitude, and the sound of your existence through time. It were as if you were imprinted on my body… behind my knee, collarbone and back. In the distance of you, I remember being close. In the closeness of you, you feel immeasurably farther away.

In the paradox of all things brand new, and familiar all the same, there is a constant fluctuation between clarity and blindness. In my imagination you are sharing a thought with me, which neither of us can touch. In my mind’s eye you are all that is cozy, and slip down my throat like wine. You are like a flame that I watch, but cannot feel. I wish…no, I long, to separate myself from all that is real, and exist like a haze, floating on the periphery of time. A color that can evoke a feeling…a smell, the can bring back the past for one fleeting moment. I exist in the thoughts of others… in memories and fantasy. You create me, and I am in love with the creation of you.

Linguistics of Missing

What does it mean…”missing”? Is it just another word for wanting? Is that true? I do…miss you. A word reserved for what is lost…and yet here I am…and there I was…haphazardly spitting out all the wrong words…rather than the ones that would make it known, just how important all that we were, has been, to all that I have become. Why do we torture ourselves with such evenings of masochistic reminiscence? To come back only to remind each other that we will surely go away, again? Somber glances between eyes which once gazed upon each other’s possessions…Belongings which have since changed homes and hands. Buzzards now flock around the discarded pieces that contextualized our once so frequent interaction. I remember the slant of the ceiling, the weight of the water glasses we drank from, books on the table, and the curve of your chairs.

And so I sit here now, running over statements made to appease the discord of not knowing how to end a conversation, with someone who once knew almost all of my idiosyncrasies. The silence, once so comfortable, prominently stood so starkly naked and vulnerable, signaling with brutal acuity that far too much time has elapsed, since I last gazed across the night to your face. I will never apologize, neither for treating the past with unconditional sacredness, nor for entertaining you in my imagination for longer than your body before me.