Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Recovering from the Bomb


As hard as it is to act like things aren’t ok when they are, it’s a lot harder to tell yourself things are ok when their not.

He has a beautiful day, laughing with friends, gardening with family, performing before an audience and everything is right in the world. He’s a person who has worked very hard to be able to cry when there’s nothing wrong. A friend once said he had a large back, large I tell you full of stab wounds, but it was beautiful. Like a sunset, and pictures couldn’t capture it’s beauty. But everything was fine now. After spending a wonderful night warming houses, seeing movies, laughing so hard that apple juice came out of every orifice on his face, he went to bed, and everything was right. They talk about the calm before the storm, just before everything is ripped up and destroyed, and it’s beautiful. In Pearl Harbor it was a beautiful it was a beautiful day, with people playing baseball and life was good, On September 11th it was a calm tranquil morning, with beautiful weather and a soft song playing on the radio.

Then the storm hit, the bomb was dropped, and the only way you can express yourself is that you crashed.

Right now he is the victims, the crater, ground zero. It’s dark, and the cloud of dust and debris blocks the warmth and comfort of the sun. He doesn’t cry, not usually, he can’t remember losing control. (he has this thing about control) He will when he wants to; in classes, on stage, making fun of overly dramatic productions. And he is good at it. But when he sat there, looking at the bomb come down, everything slowed, like sitting inside the cab of that car that was just smashed, clinging for something to hold on to.

No handle or belt will protect you, you’re spinning out of control and those are the facts.

Trying his hardest to be strong, to smile like everything’s ok at every positive thing that wizzes past him, but that’s all these positive things are doing, wizzing past him as he is staring at the oncoming bus of bitter reality. Tears stream down his face, but he’s not crying, he doesn’t cry, he won’t lose control. He focuses on everything but the morbid situation, the smell of a freshly cut lawn, the fact that one eye tears up more than the other, and that sick thing in his stomach that tells him this is really happening.

This is really happening.

Now the storm has moved on, the planes have left, and the news crews are nowhere to be seen. Now nothing is there but the sad reality, and that sick thing that keeps you from escaping it. This won’t be like this forever, one day there will be a beautiful monument in it’s place so that all will know how strong things are here now, but the monument is yet to come, and for now,

We’re still recovering from the bomb.

Monday, March 05, 2007

Love song



S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.


LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Contact



My mouth tastes of Orange Juice and isolation as I sit and ponder on the future that massacres all comfortable pensivity.
My robust diffidence leaves me making conversations with myself to stay in company.
I'm once more surrounded, but still I find myself detached from verisimilitude.

I'm deaf blind and dumb.

I ache for conversation, but I don't know how to reach out,
How to disseminate,
How to communicate,
What to say.
For someone so conversant as I am inescapably speechless.

I need a friend here.
Not someone like Cameron with whom there is latent competition,
Not someone like Michael with whom there's nothing left to say,
And not some girl with whom I'll ache for a confirmation of my desirability.
I want to talk to someone, anyone, I need to know people here want me.
But all I get is an evasion.

Touch me.

All I need is contact.

Friday, September 15, 2006

I can't feel you...



I'm not alright.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Crash and burn



The embers crack and sizzle as they slowly die out in the fire that was my self-assurance. Once a towering inferno, dancing and boasting a strength and resolve unmatched and untouchable, it now sits, a lifeless mass of dirt and ash.

I’m scared.

I feel like a lump of coal being crushed and trying to hold up over a lifetime of dark solitude underground. Though the end result may be beauty. I’m beginning to question if the end is worth the means.

I’ve found a new game. I walk across campus with someone I’ve never met. It’s usually a beautiful woman or someone out of my league. I act like we’re in a fight and because of which we aren’t talking. I find it astounding that you can walk half a mile with someone and have them not even acknowledge you exist.

I’m beginning to thrive on that. The reticence has become my sanctuary.