wordclusters

2011-11-18T02:56:00.002-06:00

She’s uncomfortable with the idea of you six feet beneath the soil, your body slowly decomposing despite the advertisements of the coffin you were placed in.

You were buried in one of the thrift store suits you bought in high school, the ones you said fit you perfectly so perfectly you could hardly believe it wasn’t you that had died and given them to you, it was the same suit you took along to Africa.

Your grave, ragged and raw, stone from the quarry nearby, the entire town is filled with it, some people dig their basements until they find it and stop there, that ragged run down a thirty-degree slant and then back across the headstone, nearly interrupting the run of the letters in your name.

Jeannie and Greg stole this bizarre white pig and set it next to your grave. One person’s amusement is another’s slight, according to the Crisps, whose lineage arrangements you somehow interrupted. Unintentionally, of course. As always. Sounds like it reached a boiling point last fall then simmered then finally turned cold. The beard on the gnome is coming loose. It’s weathered and old and it’s falling off and soon it will be gone.

The wind today tearing around your grave. Jeannie said she came out once and saw four birds in the sky—her four children—and suddenly one of them pulled away and vanished across the horizon. Nature gives us signs, she said. We just have to pay attention.

2011-10-23T02:45:00.001-05:00

The unpaid hands, the unheralded servants.

The necessary passed off as brilliance. The immaterial passed off as so much more.

The loss. The knowing. The somehow luck about it all.

Serves you right indeed. Somehow. Someway. Some knowing. Never all.

So why?

So why at all?

2011-09-30T03:22:00.002-05:00

i copied an illustration of a fist held high and i screen-printed it on a sign and i walked with that sign through downtown anywhere holding it head-high to obscure my eyes and when asked i said the illustration represented me and when asked about me i deferred.

2010-09-24T02:06:00.000-05:00

once i was good.

once i was honest.

once i was lonely and once i was alone.

once i missed and once i longed,

once i waited and once i left.

once i returned, again, anew.

and once again i was good.

2010-09-09T01:41:00.000-05:00

so what of those collated buildings rising stark against september rains. eight years is plenty time to memorize certain patterns.

the latest journey north is one left to recollection.

the last this, the last that.

memories and such.

you know.

goodbyes.

the ones you never want to say.

or don't much believe in.

because who knows.

always an ancient ending lying in wait for some sudden beginning.

2010-09-08T01:48:00.002-05:00

so why.

so why not.

for softness lately delayed.

so long ago.

that long ago.

and,

now.

so soon.

and soon to come.

to return to here, and here now, mired in every loss.

loss rewarded to new air-stroked fragility

loss given to curious september cold,

loss seceded to anger abandoned to sleep.

when was it you last felt young.

no need to reply with limbs stretched to sky,

just

lay

where you lay

and answer by rising to the dawn,

answer by light already now failing,

answer by every wild animal howling to reclaim dead light

answer by me

then listen

and wait to forget

wait to find

and wait to

wait for

2010-05-12T01:58:00.002-05:00

yeah, so, i miss you.

it's been so long.

and you haven't called. not once.

i mean, i don't even know where you live these days. as you said, or said in so many unspoken words, it could be anywhere.

i figured i would at least hear your voice after i left that message announcing the death of my wife, and the upcoming memorial service, which i asked you to speak at. knowing, as i do, how you have this way with these words.

two days passed and nothing and that's when i understood the depths of this silence.

and i wonder whether you ever knew.

sometimes it takes such forced exaggerations (and, honestly, outright lies) to carry you, however briefly, into our light.

you told me once that someone told you that something was wrong, or off, about you. that when confronted with the possibilities of living intimately you shut down, turned off, did whatever the term is for suddenly not caring or even so much listening. it's probably german, that term, because they have such perfectly complex single words for experiences like these.

i mean, you don't even remember the last thing you wrote to me. or the thing you wrote before that. and posted on the internet, for whatever misguided reason.

which was beautiful, all of it, really, scattershot and lovelorn and altogether wrong for the time and the day and the weather, but beautiful nevertheless.

later, when i asked you, you said you remembered it well. you nodded your head while avoiding eye contact (as you always do) and said, oh, sure, i remember that.

i never called you out on it. i should have. but of course i never will.

listen:

what are you doing?

where are you?

and what are you doing where you are?

and why?

and why aren't you here?

with me?

or with anyone, even?

not that you'll ever answer any of these questions, not even when i try to deceive you by asking one, and then asking a second, and then combining them both into a third. because i know you. better than you will ever know yourself, better than you will ever know us, better than you will ever clearly see every bathroom and bedroom and interstate rest stop we have seen together and at times experienced as one.

yeah, so, i miss you.

there. i said it.

not that you listen to such things.

i put up some new photos the other day. bet you'll hardly recognize me. or my child. you should see her hair, near down past her neck now, you should see the way she walks, with this power and confidence to send boardroom members stepping backward heel to heel. though she still trips, still stumbles, sometimes it's just a step or two and she's back again with her face in the sand, but what you're not here to see is how afterward she stands again with such grace, steps again and aglow with no recollection of ever falling before.

you should listen to how she talks. because there's nothing more pure than an incoherent sentence expressed with the most honest of want.

this, i think, is something you could appreciate. were you here to see it.

were you to answer your phone one of these days.

were you to write back to my letter one of these days.

but listen:

i don't expect you to. i don't want you to, if you don't. go. disappear. emerge somewhere else, whether closer or farther from here. i want only to love you with every cell passing uninterrupted through this body i carry, and give each to you as you need them to continue along your restless path.

so go.

get lost.

you want this, though you believe you don't need it.

know, because i've so often tried to tell you and listened as you've parsed what you believe to be my failures, that nothing but this is real: no one can tell you truth but you.

it's a failure, sure.

but at least it's yours and only yours to carry.

or let go of.

i don't say goodbyes. don't believe in them. and not because you don't.

but because i have this idea that you'll discover yet the circular path that the better of us have walked. it grows. always larger. and always returning.

you won't remember reading this. you won't remember what i already know you will write in response. you won't remember our words and you won't remember our actions. you probably won't even remember your dreams. or ours.

but believe, please, in the path.

and try, tomorrow, to see your steps.

if even one.

2010-05-06T01:03:00.003-05:00

wait for me, i say.

i will come.

not perfect and not honest and not completely and

not ever.

though mostly,

i will come with the best i can give,

the only i can give,

and

i will come.

wait for me, i say.

please.

wait for me.

i plead not because i believe no one else will ask (though as i age, this idea comes quickly and appropriately to pass)

but because i won't.

ask, that is.

because i won't. don't.

want to, even.

sounds ambivalent.

wrong.

what's inside begs to ask, begs to plead, to define the lesser of me, the living me, everything i hesitate to give,

the every known lost love

and while there i reach not for limitless comparison but for this:

every small success sung

every slurred morning

every sawtooth smile.

so.

so wrong.

and now, seeking salvation, i ask for this:

no transcendent want,

but

every small and honest failure,

nothing larger than ourselves

no greater love than what we seek to create

(now, at least)

nothing that implies such static and damage and anger and loss

just everything that believes only in work

and in every morning loved

skin

to

skin.

2010-05-04T22:00:00.000-05:00

just wait.

honesty ambles.

but do i see what's real, do i see what i see at all.

so: is this (this will be) my best, is it (will it be) everything or anything at all.

2010-04-28T01:47:00.002-05:00

coming soon. again. new rules, new ideas.

might as well. have to. whether i want to or not.

time, finally, to throw the ball to the t-rex. and believe (or not) in the promise of how far it can run.

goodbye. for now.

2009-05-05T02:19:00.000-05:00

in less than two months i leave my apartment and my glitter.

i've sold many of my things, given away most of the rest. may even burn some of the last. who knows.

it's just stuff.

i head first to the road.

to the west coast, with my music family.

then to alaska, where i plan to think and write and write and plan and write.

then to the east coast, again with my music family.

then to a new place, probably, but more importantly to my new home.

all that time i'll be writing plenty. just not here. it's already past time to beg off this impulsive you-focused prose.

i'll be back next year with a new vision for wordclusters.

or not. you never know about these things.

if you need to find me between now and then, you know where to look.

2009-05-02T02:20:00.000-05:00

and here, suddenly, effortlessly, and without question: everything.

2009-04-19T02:20:00.000-05:00

yesterday a perfumed exhalation, a short-skirted prance toward months of sinless sweat and heady whispers of shallow sighs.

today, in twilight, a last measure of cold breath.

a reminder, still, that in bedrooms we effortlessly dispense the reverberations of these unsteady words but allow them to echo only and forever in the backyard chasms we dug and then crossed, once, using our last rickety planks.

2009-04-18T02:21:00.000-05:00

the recent search history list that appears in my google search bar, after i type in 'how to':

how to copyright a word
how to clean guitar pots
how to fix low clutch fluid
how to beat sniper call of duty world at war
how to tune a tenor banjo
how to measure a bike frame
how to get gun permit minnesota
how to get motorcycle license minnesota
how to ride a motorcycle
how to add google analytics to wordpress
how to maintain macbook pro battery
how to find cheap airline tickets
how to read longitude and latitude
how to get albuterol inhaler without prescription
how to (redacted)
how to throw whiffleball pitches
how to make crop circles
how to make love stay

2009-04-16T02:21:00.000-05:00

he's splayed on the barstool and she's standing between his legs and pretending still. left hands heavy with half-full glasses, her right hand on her hip, his on his left knee, and she sways there, suspended in the forgiving blue light of last call, feigning everything and this, too, and if a certain day and if a certain mood i would have leaned over and suggested that

this is not forever

this can be always

but i did not, of course, not, i stayed rooted to my own stool, just not that day and not that mood, just sober, in a bar, for the first time since who knows when.

discipline, no, just a little luck and this sudden wonder, suppose i'm just a little older or old enough to bury that last destructive doubt, the

if not tonight then when

2009-04-12T02:22:00.000-05:00

please, gods, give us space give us time give us at least our memories and our most honest words and lead us, eyes translucent and body shadowed, from this unknowable glass-streaked reflection saturated in brief ancient light

and please, gods, one more thing

i know it's much to ask, given this blessed circumstance, given every tacit understanding and the knowing ever-absence of a single word, given the way energies linger in electric webs wrapped to skin

but

now and never forever lend us every elemental support

give us fire, multitudes stronger than our own, to consume every distraction and impatience and imperfection and doubt, to take every unnecessary from us, even that which our muscle memories continue to cling to,

give us earth, to steady the concrete and chemical soils that pace our trembling feet, allow us to stumble only on bedrock now rising among skyscrapers and bluffs,

give us wind, to cool our already long lonely desire and then carry us across every distance,

give us water, the last of the pure sweet water that still flows in the unexplored fissures and bedrooms of this earth, to nourish us and keep us calm and confident and bold.

in exchange for this continuing faith we offer the limitless possibility of our combined energies

it isn't much

and we can't convince whether we've earned this or not, whether we ever will

but we never promised the world, only ourselves

so please

just this, just this once, just this and nothing more

lead us into this new and luminous and consuming light

allow us to see

allow us to believe

allow us to live.

2009-04-11T02:22:00.000-05:00

the strength is not always there, and not always pervasive,

particularly in these times when we wake shaking at dawn, and you see us in the streets, bright-eyed and weak-kneed and silent,

and it does not always come when we beckon, and sometimes it does not come at all, despite the best of our anxious pleas directed toward unexplored corners we cannot bear to peer around,

but still, you wonder—

why do we look so lean, why these days we look nothing but skin and bones and desire—

and often, in the absence of awareness and if only to allow you to sleep restless one more night, you allow the easy answer,

but that is never it, this, this is it:

we are hungry. always.

and never for what convinces you of salvation, never for what gives you quick comfort and every lingering doubt you refuse to recognize

and this:

we fight, always, despite often lacking every resource and direction.

we know we will never conquer worlds, not this one nor the next, we know that until collective knowledge grants us the ability to expand and compress these years, there will always be too much to explore,

and we know we will never conquer ourselves, for every same reason,

but we believe

we believe that the last of our brittle ribs now exposed will hold out,

if just for one more hour and one more love

we believe

in ourselves and in the power of our tiger marks, that we may one day grow our own claws and use them only to caress

and we believe

that every charge and parry and retreat in this eternal fight

will lead us home, well before our time.

2009-04-07T02:23:00.000-05:00

oh, i've heard the words, but they've never been yours,

just some idea given to some long wind kept you caught within

so i tell you, to eyes to lips to every indifferent absence:

this much i've given to old selves and have no interest in reclaiming

and if the enduring silence from the last of the aged leads me closer still

to eyes to lips to every second attention

then let my fingers search woozy

then let me remember first:

to eyes

to lips

and back again

and then to you.

2009-04-06T02:23:00.001-05:00

seventeen at last count, starting last night until i lost count tonight.

one: the water glass in the bedroom.

four: the maple syrup in the kitchen.

eight: the beer in the bathroom.

ten: the gin in the kitchen.

twelve: the orange juice in the kitchen.

fifteen: the plastic container filled with leftover pasta, in the kitchen.

seventeen: the water glass in the bedroom, this time across several books and the letter i had worked on for weeks and may or may not have ever mailed.

somehow these last few days i can't hang on to anything.

there's the easy metaphor, but not that it matters, really, these objects, these inchoate narratives that keep us awake long into the night (like last night, when i dreamt/longed/waited of/for you), we have to learn how to let them fall from time to time.

or did i mean you. or me.

and you.

(i nearly just wrote it to you, i did, and then i deleted it and returned here. what worries me is that i understand why).

you find the quiet tragedies, the good problems and see that you just may be able to hold on forever, if never for a straight month.

it may be that i have been drinking too much.

it may be that i have suffered distracted dreams.

it may be that i misinterpreted the first and the last of those dreams.

it may be that still, i cannot sleep, that still, i have no checklist, that when i spilled that bit of water on your letter i thought first not of how much better i could recast those words a second time but of how i could recreate that letter at all.

that still i spend a little too much time watching this all come to pass.

the maple syrup was yours. the gin mine. both now lost to this new clumsiness. i think you will forgive me if i remember the story right.

it's just the first of several, i hope, i keep meaning to write, i meant to write today, but there are always these excuses and these ways i fall asleep just before dawn and the way these recent days have left me in sleepless fire.

watching as these things—lost, dropped, neglected mistaken and otherwise—all eventually come to pass.

i'll see you twice but there won't be a second time.

or there will be.

because what do you believe.

what did i say, the only thing that counts is the whether or not we can talk to each other,

that we can believe in our collective possibility only if we never mistake each other for anything we've already come to know

i don't think that was quite right.

it may be that i simply ramble, that none of these words make much sense at all, serve only as some minor pastime for you to escape the last failed hours of the day,

after all, what did i just write to you:

now there's light whenever you want it. and we've all been caught in the possibility. wouldn't it be best if we all still awoke with the sun and slept under the moon.

2009-04-05T02:24:00.000-05:00

the illusion now revealed, though there may be magic left here yet.

2009-04-04T02:24:00.000-05:00

a collection of light in the entrance to this warren that delivers every circuitous path to salvation

(oh, it does, oh, it must, how we've waited)

and the heralded promises held captive by another passed day

here in our eyes, pleading forgiveness and begging for every reward,

in the light, this light—

this flickering green light borne ceaselessly on—

it captures and enraptures, it separates the self, body suddenly broken and given to molecules and melodies, in every stumbling image and lyric and in every word never repeated, it shimmies and shakes just inches from the flesh and then draws nearer still, tickles like afternoon drink and the spring stubble of grass, quivers at first caress and then only with every absence as it bends nearly to the knees and returns without question, once, twice, three times, more, it looks past us and through us until we can barely stand it and then arrests our eyes in silent defense and sudden need and whispers timeless in breakbeat darkness and then without warning expands to illuminate this skyscraper predawn and catches fire before our eyes

and we lay safe below this sudden daybreak as the fire burns and burns well it takes the carpet first then the walls and the unlocked emergency doors and we lay together in smoke and heat our faces and hands warm and our lungs burning but otherwise unscathed and eyes open

and for the first time i look not at you or past you or through you but to you, only and no further,

and i see in our charcoal trail, backlit by the confluence of color now ablaze and the final dying embers given equally to our collected selves, an assurance of separate smoldering mornings and tonight's last lingering question smartly answered:

whether it is better to chase the fire or celebrate the ash.

2009-04-03T02:25:00.000-05:00

(redacted)

2009-03-31T02:26:00.000-05:00

because here's the thing:

it isn't that hard.

honest.

trust me.

(you won't)

at least this once.

(please)

if you doubt me, just stop to watch that wavering string that shivers at her ankles and swings into silence somewhere south of her thighs, the way her fingers pleat the folds of her dress.

nervous, a little.

bodies tousled and tossed to these new winds, bold and warm and strong. our first, wordless in barefoot twilight, amenable to air and everything for forever

and now

i ask you:

trust me

(you will)

because it will get harder from here, a difficulty we cannot divine,

we will leave to carry this

it will get harder still,

so

trust me

(i do)

and so this:

2009-03-29T02:26:00.000-05:00

i tossed my latest regret from my car window late last night, drove around the block just to see it illuminated in the spotty headlight beams, swerved once to make sure i crushed it good.

awoke needy the next morning and returned and there it was, flat but functional, given to light and warmth and the possibility of the day. i picked it up, examined it, saw it embossed with gravel and neglect but functional still, and returned it to my pocket.

at least for today.

and probably for tomorrow.

and, it seems, the days to come.

it is a minor poison, in moderation easily absorbed and abandoned, in overdose, as it often comes, nothing but nascent weakness and an indifference toward salvation,

and either way, you stay on your feet.

if that's what you want.

so maybe i missed the nuance, maybe i no longer trust myself to read between the lines, maybe i no longer try to understand this addiction,

the best kind, it leaves me breathless and unable to give myself to the first stair in a long flight, legs tight and heart pounding, the maybe-redacted swan song ringing in my ears,

the worst kind, leaves me to abandon the numbers and the suggestions, the easy familiarities, the possibilities of it all, leaves me to guesswork and the idea that these words, all of these words, do not count.

so what if i/you sober up.

new growths do not bloom overnight, they do not blossom under watch, they exist as skyscraper storefronts in the cities we used to call home, they sell eternity to serve our best inertia until one day we neglect the open door, and when we return they are gone, abandoned to the motions we were never able to define.

so what if i deserved this, so what if my actions requested it, so what if every subsequent noun stamps my ticket to purgatory, requests ersatz replacement for your eyes.

this time has passed, it has, and how it has passed, and

it's beyond me/you to understand this addiction that breeds bright-line mile markers and recasts connection as interrogation.

so what now?

what now?

2009-03-26T02:26:00.000-05:00

antidote
joe manning

the trouble with your little poison
is that it boils down to make its own cure
i have to love you now but i don't have to like it
and i thank god your little antidote is so pure

well there's so much to do now
and so much time
and all these books to read
all full of spanish poems that never rhyme
and i'll find one to tell me what all the gypsies know
that leaving is not the same as running

and the fortune-teller lady, she says
buddy we close at five but do come back tomorrow
so i went home and scrubbed my palms with steel wool until they bled
when i returned she looked so pleased, and told me, it'll all be fine, i swear,

so take your time
the end is nigh
so take your time
the end is coming

and my back hurts where you kicked me
and i'm cold in the places where i miss you most
but you're burnt up now, just like the letter i never gave to you
your ashes linger some bitter charcoal ghost

when the house burns down and our things are scattered on the grass
you can call me up
i'll be down at the bar
say something like:
are you sitting down
say something like:
darling, we've had a fire

so with nothing left a brother and a sister are driving
to a truck stop waystation on the county road
oh sister:
how much does our forgiveness weigh.
oh sister:
seems like such a heavy load

and she said:
it's not as much
as all the anger that you've been dragging like a body through the sand
it's not so much
as a silver dollar
that you've been holding so long in your hand

so take your time
the end is nigh
so take your time
the end is coming

2009-03-24T02:27:00.000-05:00

i didn't quite get it all done tonight.

started, most of it, completed some of it, sold some of it and

donated the rest to pedestrian passions

that paid for a song or two obsessed on the short drive home, okay, let it run past that tenth track, the last one not lost to accidental static, the last one not referencing these latest dreams saturated with the single sun that set her hair afire,

just the forgotten maybe-mistake that predicted these modern stumbles, threefold:

the first pretense

the second prelude

the third predestined

the predawn abandoned for crumbled pillars and enduring blindness, for forever dreaming—

that's what he called it, anyway:

what are you doing? i asked him that evening when he suddenly forgot the gossip, i'm forever dreaming, he said, and while this was only a week ago i already forget what word his emphasis relied on.

i didn't quite get it done then, either,

but then agin, i also used to say this:

i used to tell people this was home, that, as the quote goes, i was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else. i used to believe this. and then i closed my eyes and walked far from here and when i returned i saw only the imprints of my rushed footsteps. and then i left, again and again. and saw nothing but the eternal return of the same. but this time, when these skyscraper lights came to pass, i saw three well-paced paths,

one road that coasted east and one that maundered left and one dead-center that converged on itself

and i blinked and the distinction and directions left me, i saw a bold new city built entirely around circles and closed my eyes and tripped forward, confident at least in the weight of that first footfall straight down into the backyard darkness where she, caught in the gravities, spun a good hour or more before she pressed, folded and smiled, the stone briefly translucent against the starless ochre sky, then lost

in the jagged crease of my palms,

nothing but a dream-memory come morning, if not for the shoulder-weary-sleep-loss space worried between each clenched left knuckle, a once-violent absence now valuable at least in its sense of direction,

and i don't quite get it done now, particularly not tonight, not with this distracted vision suddenly focused, so tonight i did the best with the best i had:

i looked west, i looked right, and then i closed my eyes and began to walk and when i tripped i made sure my first foot fell convincingly forward.

2009-03-23T02:27:00.000-05:00

i return to weariness and clarity, i return to dreamers and drinkers, i return to well-wishers and believers, i return to all the small failures that bred indifference,

i return to holy light reflected in stormclouds and golden rules abandoned to passing desire.

i left for you,

i return to you and you and you,

as always,

but also you.

and mostly you.

i will leave again

soon

inevitable

or not

with most everything gone, or soon to be,

returned on my way

on my way for you and

on my way to you and you and you.

or you.

2009-02-27T02:07:00.000-06:00

sometimes you ask questions, you just cannot help it, question after question, each one suggesting—okay, requesting—okay okay, demanding, every now and again—an honesty you aren't entirely convinced you deserve.

you've worked hard for this intimacy, harder than you've worked for anything else in your entire life, which may not be saying much but in these lean times something approximates everything like never before.

these questions, many times they fall victim to demure distraction and are left unanswered. which is fine. you don't really mind at all. because if you did you would say something, of course you would. or at least tell yourself you might.

other times they're answered but never in the way you expected, at first you think they were not answered at all just buried in words, though later, much later, unblinking and alone, you come to understand that misdirection is just a different form of truth all dressed up in unmentionable distance.

sometimes, you cannot help it, you ask questions.

and sometimes, hell, you just let it be.

why not.

what can you do?

and anyway what do you want to do? or better: what would you do?

because this thing, it breathes, it grows, it runs and runs and runs, and when exhausted, sleeps, it dodges definition but more importantly, complacency, it gives and takes but always challenges and eventually, as all things do and always against your complicated will, it comes to pass.

a little farther from reach than you would like, but isn't that always when it leaves you somebody and as somebody you never would have guessed,

isn't that always when you love it best.

2009-02-26T02:15:00.000-06:00

who has the bottle, because i'm hungry for the walk across that frozen lake.

2009-02-25T02:15:00.000-06:00

over there are mountains, i said.

but we cannot move them, you said. we do not have the strength.

those are the same mountains people used to climb, you said, the same mountains airplanes used to pass over.

that was long ago, i said.

long long ago, you said. but not forever.

maybe not, i said.

and over there is the river, i said.

but my father never taught me how to swim, you said. neither did mine, i said.

and now it is probably too late to learn, you said.

probably, i said.

we both looked at the river, the clouded roiled mirror, as it continued indifferent and timeless toward the sea.

over there are valleys, you said. you cannot see where they end and no one knows for sure.

i cannot run that far, i said. my lungs hurt.

you looked at me. you took two stumbling steps as if to show me that even your feet could no longer agree, they both reach toward separate journeys and discover that independence is impossible. and then continue in tandem, following unremarkable requests. and then attempt to run again from each other.

up there is the sky, you said.

up there is the sky, i said.

i said nothing. we stood and looked at that uninterrupted blue for a minute and then returned our eyes to each other.

i cannot fly, you said.

it's probably too late to learn, i said.

you nodded and sat.

so what do we do now, you said.

i don't know, i said.

you were silent for a moment. and then you said, well, over here is grass. it's brown grass, it's near-dead grass, it is sharp and finite and mostly can hardly even cover the cracked earth below, it is not long for this world, but

it is not over there, nor is it up there, it does not require promise or courage or afterthought, it simply is, it embraces but does not request strength, it does not ask for commitment, only suggests forgiveness, it just is, it simply is, and

and? i said.

you said nothing.

and after standing and watching you for a moment i sat down with you, and together we waited.

2009-02-23T02:16:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting at a small table in one of the downtown skyways, waiting for a meeting with a new editor. I got here early by accident, and I'm trying to pass the time by writing story ideas in my notebook, only I can't think of any, because there's this short man passing through the skyways and he's limping. Badly. As if his right leg were a few inches shorter than his left. He doesn't appear to be in pain, he's keeping pace with his straight-walking friend and chattering away.

I notice him because here's the thing: He's the fifth person I've seen with a limp in the last minute. One among a dozen over the last two minutes. One among countless over the twenty minutes I've been sitting at this table.

At first I think I'm mistaken, that I have fallen for one of the easiest psychological fallacies. Look for circles and you will see them everywhere. Imagine a conspiracy theory and one will appear. So on and so forth.

Though I trust myself, at least enough. I can't help but do this everywhere I go—study people, that is—and I don't ever recall seeing limping on a scale like this.

So I start a tally on my open blank notebook page. I try to be objective, I mostly don't count the women in high heels and the sad-faced suited men who bounce as they walk, I don't count the man talking loudly to himself as he shuffles bowlegged down the path, or the diminutive woman with a cane in her right hand and a second slung over her left shoulder. I make marks and watch faces. When my new editor arrives I glance at the tally. One hundred and forty people have passed. Sixty-four of them had noticeable limps.

As he stands in line to buy us coffee, I try to rationalize the data:

Dead-cold winter in one of the coldest states in the country, cold yesterday, warmer today, and abrupt temperature change must have something to do with it.

Something's wrong with the escalator today, the black stairs sway and shimmy just before you step off, must have a similar effect to the way it's possible to jump just a few inches off the ground and come down on one leg so wrong that you can wreck a knee or ankle for life.

It's Monday. And who doesn't limp a little on a Monday?

I swing my legs back and forth under the table and feel nothing, no pain at all.

I watch my new editor walk toward my table. Not a hitch in his step.

I can't convince myself that this is merely a coincidence.

And here's the other thing: While there is a quiet sadness present in some of these limping people, others appear to be nothing if content with their current journey. They seem to understand that these are not the wounds that will eventually kill them, but just another injury reconciled and neglected, these are the unremarkable wounds that cannot be given the time to heal. So these limping people muddle through, they pass by, one awkward set of steps at a time, eyes open and heads tilted slightly toward the faded carpet.

****

Tonight I help pack the band van that will take eight of us across half the country next month in pursuit of various complicated dreams and escapes. We leave in two weeks. Tonight is just a practice to make sure we'll all fit. It seems that we will, somehow we will.

As I step out the front door of my friend's house holding several empty instrument cases, someone unfamiliar calls my name. I look up and see a casual friend from college standing on the sidewalk, a small child tucked in her right arm, a man standing beside her.

She said she was looking at the house next door to my friend that's for rent. We talk for a moment about small things while the man warms the car and then she says good night and good luck and as they pull away I stand on the sidewalk and watch, lost in this sudden and curious juxtaposition, the two of us, same age and from the same school, similar ambitions (we both worked on the college newspaper, we both now work in similar fields). Her, a child under her arm and a car waiting to take her home. Me, instrument cases under my arms and a van waiting to take me miles away.

I continue to the van and stack the cases inside the trunk and I still cannot clear my head and I return to the sidewalk and stand and look down the street and after a second or two I realize what I had seen but not processed during the chance encounter:

As she walked to the car, she limped.

Badly.

****

At my friend's house, after a two-hour conversation about the upcoming tour and a short practice and then another hour-long conversation about the upcoming tour—-things are coming together, though there are plenty of details left for the two weeks we still have in town—-I yawn and say that I am headed home.

I step out the door and down the front steps and begin the three-block walk home. I feel good. A strong day, a rare recent one, thanks to two important people in my life. I feel so good that at the first intersection I leap over the iced curb. I don't quite make it and my left leg slides forward and I swing my arms out and catch myself just before I fall and then I continue walking.

After a few steps my left knee twinges.

Then it begins to ache.

And I limp, badly, the rest of the way home.

2009-02-22T02:16:00.000-06:00

tonight on my way home i stopped for cigarettes at a convenience store off lexington avenue. the full store was closed and the cashier stood at a bank-teller window that connected her station to the shivering outside world.

i wondered what my possibilities were. i wondered if i could ask her for a frozen pizza or a bag of chips or a donut or who knows what else, if she could serve as a personal shopper, whether she would leave the counter and gather my items and return with each one, i wondered this as i ordered nothing but cigarettes and placed my money in the tray and it closed and i waited until it opened again with my purchase and change.

on the drive home i took the downtown exit and drove under the buildings until i realized that there was no street, no avenue i had not yet driven. not here and not anywhere close to here.

everywhere here real, reduced to steel and stone and accomplished stumble.

at the next stoplight i turned around and headed back to my apartment. red light, red light, green light, repeat, home.

*****

i am not here. i have not been here and will not be here.

i am not there either, of course, but that is beside the point, that comes a distant second,

i wrote those unfinished lines last night while a little (okay, a lot) high and wondering what else better i could be writing. and included those lines here instead of so many others i've written these past weeks that i've so neglected and forgotten and given away to so much ambivalence.

i can't tell you how much i wish i could shake these dreams. so much that lately i have found no reason to sleep.

tonight, sure, i wanted to write something with enough possibility that i would return later and at least nod my head once and paste a paragraph or two into a buried document that i may or may not ever use as inspiration for future commitments.

and here i am rambling on.

inventing a new character, maybe, straying toward disbelief, toward fiction, the idea that this life is nothing but story ripe for exaggeration and mystery. is this all secret here, is this make-believe, is this about you or you or you. because i have to be honest, you have been mistaken before. not you. not ever you. but you. and you. and, sometimes, you, too. as early as yesterday. or was it the day before. you didn't ask, you just said, that part about me, about the (redacted), i liked it.

i nodded. i said, i'm glad you liked it. i said nothing at all.

or am i digging deeper still.

mostly it's hard to tell.

i was talking to this friend last night. or the night before. lately these things tend to blur. possibly it was even tonight. she said she's happy, she leads a charmed life, she has beautiful friends and boundless opportunities and commitments (tent stakes) in this city, she said she also has these small struggles and sometimes she forgets how good things are, but mostly she's aware and she would not trade that or the whole messy rest of it for anything. not for anything at all.

shortly before i left her and her drugs for the night i asked her if she ever thought about setting a fire to her place and walking out the front door and locking it and disappearing into the night.

when do we leave, she said.

you mean we have to do this together, i said.

no, she said. but hey, if you're going to do it too, we might as well have something to talk about later on.

*****

when i was a sophomore in high school this girl asked me to her prom. i said yes. i drove to her place and she drove us there.

i was nervous. i liked her. i also felt obligated to be there with her.

we spoke only a few words during the event.

later, on the boat that paraded the promgoers around a local lake, i still was silent, not knowing what to say and feeling quite anxious about it, and she said, a penny for your thoughts.

i gave her a penny.

she laughed.

and we did not speak again for the rest of the night.

*****

sometimes i play this game.

i imagine my phone rings.

i imagine i answer the phone.

i imagine he or she says hello.

hello, i say.

how's it going, they say.

good, i say, because i'm not sure i want to really commit myself to more than one word, at least not at this point in the conversation, mostly just because i'm curious why they're calling.

(pause)

here's the thing, they say.

what's going on, i say. is everything all right?

yeah, of course, they say, of course it is, everything's fine. it's just that

(pause)

what, i say?

it's just that

(undefined)

and i want you here.

maybe this is fiction.

or maybe not.

after all, i know too many who have left these limits.

and tonight, i think, even as i plot my ticket or the location of my car keys, i think:

what will you say next?

2009-02-20T02:19:00.000-06:00

not last year, or the year before, or anytime previous, would or could this have happened.

but here, now, tonight.

this lost evening, these responsibilities i had already committed to neglecting, and then that familiar voice alive in the dark hallway before me.

first thing's first.

liquor store.

we stood staring at the endless whiskeys and you said that every now and again you consider quitting this, all of this. because what good does it do us, you say. i say nothing. and i shuffle to the right, to a new display.

i'm feeling tequila tonight, i say. once or twice every cold winter, you know, i just feel it, i say. understanding that this will be the second time.

you laugh.

i'm feeling everything tonight, you say.

i laugh. because i want to. and hell, doesn't that feel good.

you say:

awhile ago i was watching this nature show, or thinking about a nature show, i don't really remember, but it was about a lion in africa and how the lion will just devour a deer, but not a deer, you know, whatever the equivalent of a deer is that runs in front of a lion in africa and is inevitably torn apart. and that's just how it works, there are lions and there are the rest of us and sometimes we are one or the other but in the end we're just the deer and we get eaten, because none of us can escape our predators and even if we do none of us live forever.

i nod my head and pull a bottle of tequila from the shelf and walk quickly to the checkout counter so you don't see how i have started to cry at the truth of this.

next thing:

the college home of my childhood friend. to deliver his liquor, another ten months before he can do this himself, welcome the expanse that we too seriously, on weekday afternoons, call a candy store, call survival, call salvation. to deliver a trunkful of all of that gut rot that sang to the sky for both of us so many years ago, that now we can barely look at without cringing, maybe because our tastes have matured. maybe because this headiness has long passed us by. maybe because we're just getting older.

and older still.

a blink, maybe two, and we are gone.

so he's home and so we consider leaving but of course we don't. what better can we offer ourselves. who is waiting for us back home. we scoff at this, we corrupt this, what can we be if not enablers. tonight a light checklist and still nearly a hundred dollars and misguided advice we pull from our pockets, scrawled across crumpled receipts. i take my phone from my pocket, out of habit, and then replace it and then pull it back only so i can turn it off. not that i don't trust the numbers and names that sometimes appear backlit and urgent. only that there are nights that don't count. or nights that i pretend that's the truth.

one mile and gone.

seven hundred or more abandoned and we might as well never have been here in the first place.

this reminds me of so many of our adventures, unplanned and then occasionally given to such senseless cruelty and recklessness. like that time at that party where we flirted, purposeful and cold, with those girls who seemed to seek nothing more profound than small conversation and connection on a weekend night turning day. do you remember, we teased them and then left and drank whiskey from fast-food cups in my car and pissed in the snow and returned to the party and mocked them, and then we left and i drove home while way too drunk to drive, the fifth or seventh time of too many times.

but we're older now, we are, you told me this some time ago, and we were drinking and i'm still not sure whether she, in the other room, she, your princess, i'm not sure whether she heard you at all, but i suspect you talked just loud enough so she did, and you said:

i can't do it any longer, i love her, i do, and how could i be that guy, you know, i can't just drink and wander and never come home at night, and i used to think i only did that because it was what she wanted, but eventually, it took me a long time, probably too long and i'm happy she waited for me all that time, it took me a long time but i came to understand that she wanted me no matter what.

you said:

i love her so much. i never expected this but i love her so much.

you said:

sometimes i come home sober and sometimes i come home something else but i always always always come home. and things have never been better.

you said:

from now on i will come home sober. sometimes i will have been drinking and sometimes not but from now on i will come home sober.

i blink.

twice.

three times.

i turn away and walk quickly to the door.

my friend, he's ten months away from every poisonous consumption this country reasonably allows and yet he's older then both of us.

he and his friend and you and i, we play beer pong—the first time for you and i—until the day turns cold and dark. my partner, he looks at the tequila, he says, is that good?

sure, i say, it's good. it's not top-shelf but it's not bad. i pull from the bottle. he says, how do you do that. i say, it takes awhile. when i started college i didn't even like beer and now i can hardly stand mixing my booze with anything, no matter how cheap it is. i love it best the way it is.

he looks at the bottle, curls an eyebrow with half curiosity and half dread. he says, hell, i'm not there yet. i can't drink anything straight. i guess i'm a long ways away from that.

i know, i say. but don't worry. you'll get there. just give it time. i couldn't even drink beer at first but now look at me.

he gives me a look that i can't figure and then he turns and heaves the plastic ball toward the stack of cups and drops it dead into the center of the first one.

later on this childhood friend and i, we sit, and we talk, as adults, for the first time. a talk about love and loss and regret.

of course i had to ask. i saw all those facebook updates. our new universal outlet for subliminal desire, for passive-aggressive expression, for anything and everything we haven't quite yet learned how to put into words for her. or her. or her.

we sat on that radiator that he and his roommates pay too much to keep warm and he told me that he once had a crush on her. he was fifteen and she and i both pretended we were older than we were and that our struggles were more important than they were and maybe that's why we left each other under circumstances i still struggle to recall.

and i tell him that last night i dreamt about her, for the first time in years and maybe for the last time ever. who knows where she came from. and i turn my head and for the second time tonight i turn away, if only for a moment. saccharine, sentimental, every one of those dismissive bromides and yet here they are at every turn of phrase, at every closed eye.

i did too, i say. i did too.

and i nearly continue, i nearly tell him about four restless hours resolved into a sagged mattress i somehow suspect came from my parents' room, how she told me that i taught her how to love when she dreaded it most, how my left hand held hers and how my right hand reached for that bruised space between her shoulder and neck, how she turned to me and she smiled and how the light dispersed erratic and bold through her hair and how she smiled wider yet and that's when i thought of that description from that willa cather novel, how i loved her perfectly just then and only then, how i descended and how she waited, how she was naked and then she was clothed, how she shivered and then she was bold, how she was here and i was here when i was always always there, how i reached for her with every hunger and anxiety and how, just as i moved my open palm to her face,

how she she became dream and day

and how

i awoke despite every effort

and how

and how

i have failed to sleep since then

two days

three, maybe—

i say to him, it's so nice you have nothing to wake up for tomorrow—

and he says i do, i have class and this and that and the other thing, he says, i don't really want to get up but i have to, you know,

and i realize

that i am the only one unable to keep pace.

but of course none of this is the point, not at all, and eventually i realize this and allow him to talk.

i miss you, he says (while you sleep, perched against bottles, calm amid your dreams). i miss both of you.

and then he tells me how he misses her, this he whispers, because she is close, so close, just a room away but distracted enough that whispers still count for something.

this girl, the next girl, gone, he says, he says this more eloquently than i can now remember, but in so many words, he says this and nothing more:

gone because they are not her.

he says, she's moving out. i can't wait. and i can't imagine not having her close.

i nod my head.

he gets it. of course he does. took me some six years to figure this out and already, yet unable to enter liquor stores, he gets this and so much more.

older and older still.

when i stand to leave i plan to hug him fiercely but he moves first. and i can hardly let him go.

next, home.

your home, because what is mine but a mattress and unopened books.

we pass the tequila bottle and we play with your cats for awhile, and you tell me how you couldn't imagine not living with animals, how you had forgotten this after your last cat ran away years ago, how you now remember how any dependence can pull you out of yourself, allow you to be larger than yourself, even if it's the simple ritual of feeding an animal every morning.

later we discuss the beauty of modern pop music and get lost watching videos of the latest kanye west songs. i wasn't even aware he had a new album out, but you, you're near-obsessed with it and i love you for it, and we give some of the hits a listen, and now, at home and much later, i still can't shake so many of the lyrics, and i won't repeat any here, i won't, but i will, but i won't, i nearly did but i can't. because you can all find the record and the lyrics if you want and they will count when they will and pass when they will.

and then later later later later i leave, because there is always a time to leave, you have yawned two or three times and i am already thinking about how i will ramble through this missive and what essential things i will forget.

because of the tequila. because i have done nothing but long and linger these past three empty weeks. because of you. and you. and you.

i thank you for allowing me to fulfill my otherwise lost night, for giving me the strength to return home with a half-empty bottle of tequila (my doing, mostly) and wake up hours later to continue with this and that and the other thing while dreaming of things near and others that will never come to pass, for the hope of clarity amid this bender, for the foresight to not sell and shuck and slink and sprint—

after all, i told you, as much as i hate it, it rings true: I was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else—

so here i am, allowed nothing and everything more than to stay and sit and shimmer and shine, shuddering as i sometimes do.