No One Else Knows

nothing music ever said
or wind blew in the trees
made me feel like this
not cold, precisely, no
definitely not alone

no one else knows
no one else knows
no one else knows

the devil is in the constants
things that will not disappear
after they've been ignored
all these years

no one else knows
no one else knows
no one else knows

and so we disappear
just an ending
with all the same disgrace
we've been carrying for days

no one else knows
no one else knows
no one else knows

On Grace

Grace is the Experience of Beauty
to share with Existence its providence
But, something terrible must arise
like Angles too beautiful for the mind.
Terror begins here that loss might
be the loss of this Grace.

If stars do speak in this dimension,
thundering voices, to we two alone
how could anything of this beauty,
solace, kind not open a thousand times
to Gates of Horn like Prophets?

Brief the transformation, atoms of time
to a change of being in Grace.
I brave the Angels of Beauty now
to unlock their secrets
where we may be, where we may be.

Gratuitous Platypus Pictures

This is obviously the most important piece of literature written in the history of humanity. Fuck you Bible, fuck you Rosetta Stone, and especially you Stephanie Myers.

These are cuter than your children. Even the ones related to me.

"I present to you the awesome you can NEVER be.

"LOOK AT ME, BITCH, LOOK AT ME WHILE I SWIM OVER YOU!"

Heart of June

Your heart

(the zodiac in June)

leaning towards December

not the passage of time

this must be the rhythm

or dimensionalless pulse

do you hear the vibration

of the way you are designed?

Simple or silent orchestra

these are the stars!

Constellations speaking,

in the heart of June.

Half Existence

A feeling of things half existing
there would be a ghost if
I chose to make one up.
Here we are, learning to crystalize,
lock in our science of emotion.
And, I am everything I feel.
Tonight this is all I am,
doing everything halfway.
Not the least of things, dreaming
with a heart of fire, heart of stone.
Here are these ancient things,
ancient desires I once knew
only through inference
from secondhand sources.
Now I know too much.
Shooting at targets
no one else can see.
How do I know if
these things are real?

Haiku I

Somethings too easy -
the heart of the summer sounds.
You must close your eyes.

Untitled III

This must be where we come
to become what we are.
A universe unto its self.
Existance the only answer
to the question of creation.
A sigh of life where we do not look back
for fear of becoming that pillar of salt.

How cold the transformation
but, still I am reminded of your scent
you, a dimension all your own.
(more heart than anything)

All around me, the hazards.
I could not spare myself for any light
the distance to stars, dark matter.

The secrets and math of the cosmos
speak like Oracles to me
it is something made
to bring you to me.

I Could Not Do For Fear of Life

I could not do for Fear of Life.

That I was, and could be,

this was my greatest downfall.

This was the crux of my suicide,

that I would survive to live

and thus to pain and loss.

If before I knew only the Fear

of Youth and Early Death

this has changed to love

of self, of the earthly ethereal.

Like an Easter morning,

this is me risen all the same.

There is no healing

without some hurt.

A House Like a Double Breasted Suit

This is what happens when I look at too much modern architecture...

I want to build us a house

like a double breasted suit.

At once to hide, and also

to portray our parts,

our shoulders, our stance.

It will not go out of fashion.

The slate grey paint will not fade.

You and I shall live there.

Like men, refined, aloof, strong, together.

You Were the Stone

I've never been much for dreams
I've so few I recall in the morning
There are few that have stuck we me
like the one about you and I
shopping for produce Sunday morning.
I awoke to find you next to me
and I think you thought my joy was...
well, some form of a sickness.
You were scared to be rejoiced in.
Terrified of having someone love you,
and need you because of love,
and not the other way around.
The hard thing is you're one of the few
who understand the causal arrow
and that maybe it is out of our control.
It's been long enough you should not
still be lurking around my soul
not like this, you should be a good memory
the bad ones don't seem to have faded
something around the last two years
means I am full of things I didn't know
things that are heavy, things that won't die
things that flitter through my memory
at scents, at songs, at places, at people.
It seems like everything is connected to you.
You marked the beginning of my new life.
The one where I could believe fully
that I was good-looking and smart.
The one before that was lonely.
Some days I still wish I could turn things back.
I say that all too often as if I had a choice.
I say that with everything I know
I wouldn't go home with you that night,
and we wouldn't spend the weekend,
or the next 3 months lying next to each other.
I say that I wouldn't have taken you back 3 times.
I say I shouldn't have let you break my heart
and even when I thought the tattered pieces
were once again whole, there are still cracks.
I've let everyone else in to try to fill them in.
But, they've only been a finger in a dam.
Why you? Why the hell was it you?
I've done everything I could to hate you.
I remember all the bad things you said,
the terror and the fear and the hurt
the midnight phone calls to friends
the crushing loneliness afterwards.
Maybe I'm just broken after all.
I mean, two trips to the hospital
and I'm still crazy, so maybe
it's not you, maybe you're the scapegoat.
Maybe I broke my own heart
and you were kind enough to be the stone
I beat myself against.

The Sky Above a Utah County Labour Day

It was a cliche azure.

Not as cold as a jewel,

something inviting like

being more then half alive.

Above the not-quite-fall-post-apocalypse

I could only see it,

the Sun at the right angle

pressing on the atoms

that make up the sky

above that valley.

Peace of Mind

The silence of Peace of Mind.
Wholely beautiful like
your face, your touch, the sum
of your whole greater than
its parts, a full ocean.
A full turn, and the sun
is the duller light outside
compared to your smile.

Something Addictive

The salt of your sweat,

The scent of your beard

mingled with your sheets.

A slight hint of nicotine

or, something addictive

that I have no name for

in every fiber of you.

To an Attractive Man Walking Near a Local College

You should be an art major

studying self portraiture

I think that your medium

should be painting or drawing.

Show them not your face,

but the deeper truth of

your attractiveness.

Maybe we could all

learn something by

looking at you.

Sundials on Starships

sundials on starships
gotta keep up with the times
no place like today
even if you don't know
when that is

I'm just dreaming
of different stars

sundials on starships
have you ever seen those things
we came from
sniffing comet dust
just to get high

I'm just dreaming
of different stars

sundials on starships
why do you care what time it is?
past midnight still awake...

Why?

One Hundred Years of Light

there is something dark in time
the very lack of rhyme
only thoughts, the stuff of mind

but you, one hundred years of light
one hundred years of light
one hundred years of light

no hearts to destroy the paid cost
let no one render loss
where lines of emotion have crossed

but you, one hundred years of light
one hundred years of light
one hundred years of light

and like the pain of night the sooth
of dawn comes and renders light

and you, one hundred years of light
one hundred years of light
one hundred years of light

So Rare a Name

so rare a name
to put upon a shelf
and keep until darkness
and the dust
has fallen around me

tear it down
the letters they don't
mean anything else

and how could I
give up this thing now
that kept me in comfort
when betrayed
by my own mind
(and him)

There Are No Songs About Feeling Like This

The worst part is

I know you're still here somewhere.

Cannot in good faith divest myself

of your ghost, your scent on my borrowed shirts.

I still want that somehow.

I guess it's true that man is the only animal

that wants the very things that hurt him.

I've won, but only a bitter victory.

No wonder there are no songs

about feeling like this.

I do not love "because."

I do not love "because."

I only love them that they are.

How could I choose the twinkle

in her eye, the chime of his laugh?

I cannot love only pieces.

Not even the whole, but its existence.

This is enough, Oh, Maker!

That existence is, is enough to love.

In the Giving of Submission

Does softness,

that giving quality,

become men?

Boys who strike poses

and boys who like roses

amongst the coded coldness

have been called all wrong.

Simplicity in believing

I am looking for and seeing

an end to this binary being.

More then ones and zeros

soft tones and the fears of

do you see what I am feeling?

Well kept amongst these colors

folded scarves, love of mothers

do you think that we could have

a new society with some sad

self deprecated beings allowed

to love without all this fighting?

What qualities in the dark

are men allowed to have in their heart?

Some softness receiving, giving

love through sighs of submission.

without shame or heartbreak keeping

separate lives and friends

lies to wives and selves

where will this end?

Days 1-6

Day 1

Honestly, those are the moments I remember least well

But those are the ones with greatest impact

The subconscious halfway there, halfway not

of reassembling neurons, atomic realizations.

Other people's sickness, reflected in my eyes,

taught me more about my sickness then

hours of therapy, lots of pills, reading

everything I can find on the subject of

when our brains are betraying us.

Day 2

If I had to thank anyone, it was the patients.

Playing cards all of a Sunday afternoon.

Half of us half conscious, those that were

were only there to detox, not for insanity.

Crack, or liquor, or shooting up god knows what.

Screaming, or catatonia. Talking or crying.

They were the healers there, not the drugs.

Day 3

I realized on day three that I was sick.

I was more then a year is digging down to that.

More then two or three, actually.

It took everything to admit to myself

that I deserved my own compassion.

After I knew I was sick,

I knew I was better, and what I needed.

Day 4

I realized that I could do more then these people.

In a different ward, supposedly more high functioning.

No one there dreamed of impossible things anymore.

They were all full of hopelessness.

Older, road-worn, sun-beaten, the world taught them shame.

I only wanted to sing until they could sing.

Show them what they were lacking

by all my high functioning,

doing things even healthy people could not do.

Day 5 & 6

Feeling better.

Thoughts on Poetry

Poetry to me is not a mode of communication in which I seek to express an experience, whether it is the experience of a happening, a thought, or an emotion. My goal, if I have one, is to express a single moment's experience in a way that that other people may then experience it.

I seek to write in things that other people look at and feel as though they've experienced them before. I want to put words to the human condition in a way that expresses my experience of the world. I love poetry that expresses not the feeling of the moment, but the experience of the moment. To me a good writer is one, that after I have read their works, I have taken a part of them and been given the chance to live through their work. One of my favorite examples of this is Pablo Neruda's "Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market."

Among the market greens,

a bullet

from the ocean

depths,

a swimming

projectile,

I saw you,

dead.

All around you

were lettuces,

sea foam

of the earth,

carrots,

grapes,

but

of the ocean

truth,

of the unknown,

of the

unfathomable

shadow, the

depths

of the sea,

the abyss,

only you had survived,

a pitch-black, varnished

witness

to deepest night.

Only you, well-aimed

dark bullet

from the abyss,

mangled at one tip,

but constantly

reborn,

at anchor in the current,

winged fins

windmilling

in the swift

flight

of

the

marine

shadow,

a mourning arrow,

dart of the sea,

olive, oily fish.

I saw you dead,

a deceased king

of my own ocean,

green

assault, silver

submarine fir,

seed

of seaquakes,

now

only dead remains,

yet

in all the market

yours

was the only

purposeful form

amid

the bewildering rout

of nature;

amid the fragile greens

you were

a solitary ship,

armed

among the vegetables,

fin and prow black and oiled,

as if you were still

the vessel of the wind,

the one and only

pure

ocean

machine:

unflawed, navigating

the waters of death.

When I read this I feel as though I have experienced everything he felt, thought, every sideways connection of his brain in the moment that he saw this large tuna.

Your Room

My back on your bed

Seeking to memorize

angles in your ceiling

the joints of the walls

precise shades in your

decorations just like I

run fingers over you

memorize each hair

the bend of your back

the feel of each parcel

of skin, the tension of

each muscle movement

are they that different?

Where you sleep

becomes you.

I want to know them

both intimately.

You're Still Pixels

I took a picture

it did not capture your entire life

it took the essence of that moment

and it captured your smile

the turn of your eyes

the cocking of your head to one side.

I've heard pictures

they can steal your soul.

I think they give you a piece of it

that very moment

you will remember longer then others.

It's within pictures

that we find we have changed.

Our hair and clothes with fashion

the light in our eyes changes hue

the way we feel about the world

I've heard pictures

they can steal your soul

I think this time they've given me a piece of it.

Thank you for standing still.

Goddamnit, you're still pixels.

Mythology

About this one I can only say that sometimes the soul of poetry is hyperbole.

You wanted a new name.

I suggested something Greek,

no nothing like Hercules,

you were not that strong.

But something more obscure

something from a deep philosophy

or a name charged with mythology.

You wanted something that fit in

with all the modernity of your tattoos

I guess that's because we live in different worlds.

Me, an anachronism paired against your punk

your ever-present attempt for attention

to be the life of the party drinking a best friend's breast milk.

I guess there are too many pieces in us that are the same,

and I love that we understand that about each other.

Fuck, I think after a week you could break my heart.

Only a tiny crack, I haven't given you all of it,

but I want to. You are my mythology.

I'm not interested in falling for you, I've done that enough.

I am interested in the part of you that is like coming home.

We barely know each other, and we want the same things.

You offered your unconditional love for a text message.

Every atom in me screamed for it, my rational mind said

"It is too soon for this. Play it off. Don't let him know."

I want it. You are my mythology.

Usually Silent

I wrote this last year when I was doing lots of online dating. It's not about anyone in particular.

Hello,

I didn't remember your face correctly.

I think the picture did not do justice.

Maybe there is some terror

one of us is feeling without saying.

So, I will break the tension and change

everything yet again, but that hurts.

And, you know I cannot do much

without some measure of pain.

I have nothing to tell, but I can talk

all about my unique situation

and days on end I will await

for a time to trust you with it.

Because, I can see there is a difference

between telling you I hurt

and letting you be a balm for a night

or a day or a week or month

when I have broken down

and chameleon like I go back to being

invisible and staying home everynight

where I envy the worst of those

that haunt the places where

we tactlessly search for sex.

I guess being a man is

not what I expected a year ago.

I thought it was easier.

I thought it had a tangible reward.

But, it means being alone sometimes.

It means knowing that alone is not always lonely.

It means laughing in the face of my denial.

It means saying, "Fuck fear."

And, sometimes taking your clothes off

in the middle of a party

and realizing that you are imperfect

and that imperfect is what is sexy

because there is nothing better in the world

then loving something imperfect

and watching it change,

hoping that its newest incarnation

is better, or stranger, or something.

I've had my trails of tears

and I have no regrets

except for those things I did not do.

If in ten years I cannot walk

if in five years I cannot type

and every joint and bone and muscle aches

with a fire that gnaws at my soul;

if my mind betrays me again

and I see things inside out and upside down

beyond reason and normal imagination

I guess I will know that right now

I left nothing out.

I did nothing but live.

Like a man.

Mostly.

I hope you can accept that.

I mean, there are days I can't.

And this is my life.

This is just more proof

that my primary mode of communication

is disclosure and letting you know what's wrong.

Even if I am scared of it.

I think that was a lot to say for one night.

Oh, and your face,

I didn't remember it correctly,

and I meant to say that I like it a lot.

But, I don't expect to see it again any time soon.

I am crazy and I'm broken.

But, I am in love with myself.

Which is more then I can say for most people.

Close your eyes.

Give me a kiss.

Without goodbye.

But, you know,

I would like to see you again.

My phone is on vibrate.

But, usually silent.

Within Your Body

Let me linger in your body
exposed upon your heartbeat.
Let me stand in the place where
your scent originates.
And, I shall feel the way you move
that I have watched
and have wondered at your grace.

Do you not feel these walls of flesh
set up keep us separate,
to keep this hard world out,
to keep us apart?

Oh, I wish for some door
through which to enter
and stare ardent
with your eyes at your flesh
and wonder at the feel of your skin
against my consciousness!

On the Cover of a Book of Keat's Poetry

midnight found you

wrestling with angels

and the mountains

and the stones they watched

and wondered who

they should lend their strength to

when you can caress them

unlike that being with wings

Untitled 2

Dust in my eyes

song for a famine

in my mouth.

Not the dawn,

just the doubt.

And, what have

you done now?

The devil is in

the constants.

The truth is in

the changes.

Neither of which

are things I can say.

You and I

The smell of my coffee every morning,

I know I make it differently then you.

I prefer organics, fresh brewed.

You still prefer freeze-dried

"what-the-fuck-is-that?"

I think I've only see you drink cheap beer

with your brothers, mostly

or maybe when we went to a baseball game.

I prefer red wines, hard liquors, microbrews.

It's funny how similar we are not.

I want to work in science and make art.

I don't do pragmatic things,

I don't study business or engineering.

You were in the army.

The army would never take me.

But, I still see you when I go to work.

No matter how different we are

I am still the wax you molded

into a candle that still burns.

I think I prefer metaphors

and you prefer the literal.

Unnamed 1

You are like the ghost of some fallen angel,

an intangible echo of a soul unknown.

And, within the smallest atom of time

all known things begin to fade of their own accord.

How cold the horror of oblivion within your memory.

I breathed that perfume once, I prayed for it.

The stars looked down speaking in their tongue

(for once without their air of mystery)

I heard a rustle of snow and the distance of a year.

How odd that even in the dark I see your vision

though some far off country calls your name.

I am still deep within your memory you say.

I am still a danger you say.

But, soon I whisper, then silence echoes,

and the page is blank.

These Have Ended and musings.

I'm lying in bed under the oppressive heat of still summer air. I sweat in my clothes, I know I will need a shower before I got out this evening. Last night I was at a candlelight vigil for a man I barely knew, had only met once or twice. He committed suicide. I was there more for me then for anything else. It was powerful and moving, I almost did the same thing last month.

Someone sang Amazing Grace with a beautiful and pure voice. I cried. That does not happen often. I stood between two men. One who is my friend, my brother. The other who is one of many potential futures. I was there, touching them both at the same time. It made me think, it pulled my consciousness out of time for awhile.

I was there more for him then for me. I needed to see the fallout of the things I had contemplated. The ripples of life that that move around world. The ripples of death that follow those. I wonder now, is anyone untouched? None of us are virgins to death. This has ended.

And now a poem:

These Have Ended

O! Insatiable Archer, Death!

I see you still have arrows.

Your quiver does not empty

as the limits of mortal minds.

And, effortless, never errant,

I see this one has struck;

brought peace to mortal heart.

What crave thee, in Achilles heel?

We, defenseless against you

mourn each feathered shaft

and the soulless passing

of your empty shadow.

What epitath would you pen?

Within the entire graveyard,

evidence of your existence,

echoes only this:

These have ended.

These have ended.

These have ended.

A Man's Body

I don't know.
I could hang that up on my wall
if I found it as a poster.
It has such an unusual character
for a man's body.
Something I so rarely see
reflected anywhere except the mirror.
Your picture.

There is a freedom in knowing
you're not alone
no one can copy down an image
they've never seen.
But, you tried.
The only thing the truth
ever taught me
is that it hurts.

I don't know.
How can I hang up on a wall
what I want to lay next to me?
If I found you in a bed
I'd love you
in your man's body.
This is all wrong
I've said it in the wrong tone.
I'm just singing to
your picture.

Safe Sex

if she does not
look back
there will be no
pillar of salt
to mine regret from

if she does not
wear white
while executing
the killing stroke
everything will be alright

if he does not
close his eyes
while they kiss

if he does not
ask her to
move in

this will be a one night stand
this will be safe sex
she won't even need
to touch him

if she does not
know her mythology

if she does not
ask for psychology

if she does not
respond to his physiology

then maybe...
this will be safe sex
without touching skin

Everything - Part 1

I am up late tonight. Luckily it is by choice today, not by pathology. I can only think of that pathology tonight. The places it has taken me, the things I haven't written about it that I am ready to. I was once told that the only things one can really write about are the things one has gotten over. I do not agree. Or, at least this is not the case for me, I write to get over things, to get things out.

I don't remember too much about April last year, and my first good descent into psychosis, into that state where my mind is not my own. I know I was scared. I know I was unprepared.

There were a lot of pills. I slept a lot. It is not half as exciting or dramatic as it seems. Movies about mental hospitals are always full of the endless war on the self. The problem is, this war is rarely fought where others can see. I do not know if someone who has not experienced such things can fully understand what it means when your mind and body betrays you so completely that your actions are not your own.

You think you own your body, that it is your last safety, it is a place of escape. When all else fails that there is some inner world where things are controllable and beyond the reach of...anything. That it is immortal, Spirit even. Or, I thought that. The part that is Spirit is more well hidden then that.

I have for so long thought that other people are different then I am, that they did not experience this lack of control, this feeling of frustration over their limitations and the lack of all the qualities they wish they possessed. This was deepest arrogance, I know.

You see, I felt geriatric at the young age of 21. I felt as though I had been betrayed by my body. I could accept that betrayal on some level because I still felt as though I had my mind when my body failed I could prognosticate endlessly, and my brain, so used to working overtime, would only sharpen and discern.

It's difficult to sort through the very nature of disease. Chronic pain and fatigue slowly sap your mental strength when you are constantly attempting to refuse them entry to the core of your being. The funny thing is the core of your being, Spirit, is never touched by these things anyway. All of your pain, mental and physical anguish, can be let through every imagined boundary...and never touch anything. It's funny, the very thing we do everything to resist isn't nearly as ad as we think.

It is late, and my mind wanders.

At 21I knew that I did not have terribly long to live, I thought I would die by 30. I do not believe that anymore, but I had every reason to think that was true. I would only know pain and pills and weekly shots and the depletion of B vitamins leading to more pills to restore some equilibrium. The daunting task of holding together and keeping a happy face. Toughing things out and being a Man. I did not think I could do it for long, to exist on only willpower is impossible for any great length of time. It is the feeling of not having eaten enough for days.

The thing I have always loved about my life is that whenever I lose faith (and, I think perhaps I use this word differently then most people would) there always comes something along to restore it. When I give up on the love of other people, that is when I feel the greatest love from other people. When I give up on being able to provide for myself, that is when I am most able to do things for myself. Maybe there is a secret in this giving up I've yet to learn.

I graduated college in 3 years. By the end of it I had a bachelor's degree and a chronic disease. According to a man I once met, they both last a lifetime.

People with rheumatoid arthritis have a higher then average suicide rate. This should be no surprise. As I said above, it is daunting. But, these sorts of mental illnesses are made no better by expectation of their eventual appearance. Mine, of course, was a whole different beast.

For me, the most important part of all of this is that I failed to have compassion for myself. Looking back I had not learned that I was just as worthy of my own patience and compassion as everyone else. I understand this better now, though learning it was a hard road.

More later.

My Womb Would Echo

I look down the hall

to where my descendants do not sit,

hear the echoes of my genes,

the fall of my footsteps,

see the unholy-waiting-for-dust,

the future of my body.

(It is a tomb of malfunctions

like the future of my race.)

Were I a woman, my womb would echo.

Instead, with a man's body I am solid inside.

My heart beat is muffled, cannot be heard.

At a quarter century, I realize

that there shall be no flesh of my flesh.

No accidents, no broken condoms,

no forgetting birth control,

no failed tubal ligation.

Were I a woman, my womb would echo.

Instead, no one will hear, or think twice,

that I will choose to be barren.

Most men would be happy

to know there was no chance of child support,

or being trapped in a marriage.

No first words or steps,

no bad drawings on the fridge,

no chance at brilliance or pride.

Were I a woman my womb would echo.

Instead, I found an empty place

in my man's heart, in which I sing.

I Go Without

I kissed your apocalypse face

left a note on your door

on the wrong side

for you

I left without words

you were sleeping

watch you doze

my love

Repeat this cycle for now

but soon you leave

and I go without

Everyone Goes Northwest

Old triggered memories
every time I turn around
we're laughing in the park
dancing with no rhythm
don't hold my hand in public
run through downtown
while drunk and wondering
will I make this train?

Every old restaurant
attached to a filament
something lights up
and we're here talking
while I'm a mile away
half the distance measured
in good and bad memory
aren't we all just solid
aren't we all just dreamers

And, O, how there's half this
empty or full, I don't know
just a feeling draining
its self away into my words
Now a love of distance
we're both better now
everyone goes northwest
without me

The Psychology of Nihilism

Stopping on just this side
when past that no one can see
just bright lights and guessing
like a prism or a book
different interpretations
the psychology of nihilism

Halfway a thousand times
you still don't reach
but could fall over the edge
no parachutes or bungie cords
are we ready for that?
the psychology of nihilism

Maybe it's all in our head
and we're just dreaming
waiting for oblivion
the meaning of life
was never a promise
but an attempt

Different Circumstances

I don't know who you are
But I feel you are my kind.
Sweet like knowing a comfortable house
A bed to rest in or a long dream.
Were we in different circumstances
I would make a love with you
That Helen of Troy would envy.

Time to Find Home

Son of another world,
we crossed paths
while I was slowly declining.
I did not know,
neither did you.
There is something about you
a mythology I built.
A drawing out of poison
or release from something.
I feel as though I am
a stranger in a strange land.
Maybe it's time to find home.

Meditation on Escapism

If there is one thing I am no good at, it is escapism. I hate it. There is something in my nature too utterly stubborn to ever allow me to just sit back and relax. I need to act, to fix, to move forward, to beat myself or my feelings into submission. I cannot simply ignore something. It will tear at me, and I'll struggle with it until there is something won. It's funny how I never consider how much it costs me to win.

I've been doing a lot of fighting. I've been trying to beat so many things into submission. I've been convinced I'm doing everything I can to live the life other people are living, the life I think I should have. Really, I've just been hurting myself by not living the life that only I can live.

I've been dwelling on the most permanent form of escapism, suicide. Today while walking to the coffee shop to read, I began to understand that suicide is just another form of escapism. I've been looking at it as release, but really it's just an attempt to escape things. Perhaps it does work. But, it is in the same way that alcohol or drugs or sex or any number of another ways we escape pain work. There's nothing to be learned from it. It means an end to that learning that we are here to do.

I feel better now. Perhaps a bit macabre still, but better. I've finally recognized something that's been holding me back, that's been keeping me from moving forward, and for me that recognition means reclaiming the parts of my world that I was giving up.

To Terra-form

There is something in your visage
in the angle of your jaw and beard
the points of your mouth when you laugh
in your scrunched up eyes when you smile
that still calls my name. (or is that a hallucination?)

I reckon my life with you as the start
of the newest one, the one I'm not settled in.
I don't blame you anymore, there is no blame.
The only thing to be had in its place is peace.
But that's not as easy as hallucinating you, again.

And this is another fossil of feeling.
Maybe they are better left buried - fuck.
leave them underground until they're old enough
to be used to fuel something else, to terra-form
and use you as another beginning, and another end.

Catharsis 1

If things were simple and I could not imagine
all these things I feel that I am missing tonight
If I were not a poet, not a romantic, not a dreamer
and I could ignore what could be or have been.
If I slept well alone or summoned the strength
to cook for myself and eat alone every night.
If I could dream of a life where I was alone
and not grasping for an unattainable possession.
If there were androids for me to fall in love with
and understand for all their simple programming.
If men could be a known quantity not this heart
rending wondering if they are telling the truth.
If I could settle for anything besides fire
and lightning and a balm for addiction.

A dreamer I'd continue to be.
Right now, I hate poetry.
I hate this mind and body.

But, I am trapped and tired.

Pablo Neruda

If only the passion with which
Pablo Neruda writes were to
be found in every kiss, every
touch, every fluttering eyelash.
If only all lips were the shape
that he implied they should be
and all hearts beat as hard
as he said his beat to see her.
If only I summoned that
natural intensity, that unbridled
that lack of boundaries,
that home-coming to a lover.
If only I did not know who
Pablo Neruda was, so that
I did not know what I am
now missing to not be him.

I used to hate hate.

I used to hate hate.
But, at a certain point
when I had learned to love fully,
I began to understand its place.

I do not forgive myself my hatred.
But, I accept that it is like love.
A river, in which one can drown
or in which one can learn.

I used to hate hate.
Until I learned how to hate myself,
and judge myself for
all of my perceived weaknesses.

I used to hate hate.
Now, I don't touch the stuff.
Like an alcoholic in a liquor store.

Like the Moon, Girl.

If your dreams, like the moon, girl,
rise and fall, only to be overshadowed
by some brighter light,
dream them only harder, brighter.

Let the moon then shine
like a blazing comet at noon.

Bring it down from its lofty solitude
to burn the impurities in the hot atmosphere.

Then your dreams, like the moon, girl,
shall change the tides.

And, we all then sail at your behest.

Long Before I Met You

Long before I met you
I learned to rest my arms on the clouds
I learned to sit in silence
I learned to bend my knees
I wore this body supple with senses keen

Long before I met you
I only dreamed of things I didn't know
I only dreamed of having a different nature
I only dreamed of being held so well
I wore my dreams light upon my shoulders

It's been a long time since I met you.

Your Broken Chemistry

A poem about six different men.

1:
Your hands in a fire
too slow to burn.
Your Broken Chemistry
some good has come of it
this time.

Translate an identity -
not everything has to make sense
in every language.

2:
Bad habits and
good intentions
things we never meant
to get the best of.
Now, you've got the rest of
the world watching.
I hope you don't mind
if Your Broken Chemistry shows again.

3:
I don't have time to watch
for consequences
just mail me a line
if Your Broken Chemistry
is so divine.
I don't give a good goddamn
or a rats ass tonight.
You're drinking bad wine,
you're not my kind,
now that all this has passed.

4:
A kiss on the mouth
don't you think that is enough?
I don't need to prove anything to you
Your Broken Chemistry
and my fucked up physiology
a lack of attraction
between magnetic particles
"science says everything"
I don't know enough tonight
to know that is a lie.

5:
I've been blaming everything
on what you're not.
This deep sea freeze
and the salt in my wounds
more insult then anything.
Is it my chemistry that's broken
and not just my physiology tonight?
Or, is it you, with your heart in a vice?
Your Broken Chemistry
does not play nice.

6:
Let me know if you've got the time
they say radioactive decay is a constant
but, sometimes things all break down
in the same moment;
so fast some of these elements
they barely even form.
And, Your Broken Chemistry
it does not have a chance
to change things
like I do even if I don't
mean to.

Why the Platypus?

Okay, have you ever LOOKED at a platypus? They are absolutely, fucking adorable.



And, as someone who enjoys anachronisms, the platypus is tough to beat. Obviously a bridge between mammals and reptiles. It's one of the poisonous mammals, one of the few monotremes. They are truly unique in the animal kingdom.

How could you find something better then that?

I've got lots of other reasons too. More on that later.

A note on the name

Synesthesia is a neurological disorder wherein the senses are not...separate. Colors have smells, sounds have tastes, numbers have colours, and quite a few other correlations are possible.

I named this blog Synesthesia in Absentia because of all the things we perceive in the world and the way they are connected. While the vast majority of people don't have a neurological disorder, everything is connected. Everything means something else. I know, I'm being incredibly vague. Fuck you. I'm a poet, the only things I know how to say are vague things. Okay, that's not entirely true.

So really, this is all about the act of perceiving things and making connections between them...when they're not there, or maybe they don't even exist.

I dropped off the "Maybe" from the title, because I realized there is no "Maybe" any more, this is a project I've continued with.

Mutually Intelligible

I am not some distant galaxy
nor particles of the Northern Lights.
I am not the distance between stars
nor the great space between atoms.
I am not written in ancient language
nor do I speak in unknown dialects.
I have whispered, "I love you"
only in your vernacular, in your ear.
I have held you until we were
one being in the sea of existance.
Yet, you said, "I don't get you."
There is a part of us in both
that reaching does not touch,
that speaking does not hear.
That Berlin wall whose history
you've never studied
is here, repeating mistakes
you did not know man has
in the past made.

There are no songs about feeling like this

the worst part is
I know you're still here somewhere
cannot in good faith divest myself
of your ghost, your scent on my borrowed shirts
I still want this somehow
I guess it's true that man is the only animal
that wants the very things that are bad for him
if it's as true as I think
I've won, but only a bitter victory
no wonder there are no songs
about feeling like this

To Know the God of Optics

Where light touches the permafrost
like a thousand glittering crystals
breaking apart the spectrum
a diffuse vision of a thousand galaxies
in the height of these mountains
rising to even greater dreams
the God of optics and calculus
this is his museum now
where nature meets the scientist
and all mysteries like the Prime Mover
disoccultulate like a lover's body
this universe, known, a comfort
I love to know.

These Primordial Circumstances

What primordial circumstance
brought about this planet
through physics and chance
accretion, thermodynamics, ellipses
and put it in the place where
every biological compound could thrive
and form through eons of mutation
things barely comprehended
in their ancient and distance space
I bless the day the first strand of DNA
came about and through the ages
of extinctions and explosions of populations
meteors and ice ages and predation
I rejoice in the supernova-ed star
that burst into the disc from which
the Earth and her neighbors are formed
every black swan every unknown
every missing link, every scientific doubt
every geological shift
every turn of the galactic center
everything to consider in the history of the universe
every quantum, every string in the theory
I love all of these
because that means there is you.

To Evening

Wrote this recently. =)

To Evening,
you sinner, thief
how could I lay here
and not know
you would leave?
And taking all of my heart
and all of his scent
upon my skin, upon my hair
you liar.

Though you return
you do not bend time
if my happiest moments
were within your arms
your burden has been dropped
somewhere along the path to day.

Oh, Evening,
Let some semblence
of that happiness return
when a man comes
once again changes
everything I thought,
I dreamed, I desired.

Return to me with that burden
to where I dreamt
joined by a man
and his scent
upon my skin, upon my hair.

To Evening,
I do not know you
as you know me.

The Trouble With Circadian Rhythms

Appropriate for my current bout of insomnia, I think.

The trouble with circadian rhythms
they do not dance within my head
my body does not move within their time
and dreaming only by day
I pass through night restless
with no man to hold me
I've no sense of this passage
the night does nothing to me
I've no chemical reaction
except to the smell of my lover
in my bed to chain me back
to this human clockwork
diurnally opposed, nocturnally desperate.
Where sleep dissipates some pain
solidifies the wisps of memory
I've nothing to show but my sheets
twisted in the shapes
I wish I dreamed in.

Braille

What did your hands read through the braille of my body hair? Did you find an interpretation for every hieroglyph? Reveal the secrets of every inch of me with only your soft, well-trained hands?

It lasted all day, just like things are supposed to. We slowly fell into comfort with each other. Under my hands I felt your tattooed skin, its bumps and untold secrets, everything covered in ink each with a story. Perhaps your skin is the more mysterious for all its many different colors. Perhaps every piercing on your body hides something I cannot comprehend, you are a labyrinth of mysteries, and I can only rejoice in that.

I've never made out in a changing room at a department store before, but it was the perfect moment in which to do it. The stars aligned, perhaps, to create that moment wherein the firefly sparks lit up behind my eyelids.

I didn't think it would turn out like this.

Stop Holding On

Stop holding on so tight to feeling a certain way. This is the advice I give to myself so often. Stop holding on to being healthy, stop holding on to the idea that you have to be happy, stop holding on to the idea that pushing yourself until you can't handle life is the only way to live. Stop. Fucking. Holding. On.

Sometimes just letting go of the idea that you're supposed to feel a certain way is the thing in the world that helps the most. It's really nice to just float along without grasping anything. Accepting that things, you mood, your health, your level of success your respect, these are all fluctuating things. Life is fickle as a plastic bag blowing in the wind, sometimes it's a gentle breeze, other times it's a hurricane.

Life changes, you change.

The first time we kissed there were sparks like fireflies all around. That's one of the saddest parts of living in this high mountain Paradis-Bolgia (thank you Dante), no fireflies here to watch from the porch or run around and play catch and release. They truly are a wonder of this world.

And a KISS! A kiss that reminds a man of fireflies should be cherished; it is joy, it is contentment, it is the childlike absorbtion of the mind in one singular sensation. How could anyone ever say that that is wrong just because in this case it happens to include same-sex attraction? I think it's the people who've never experienced that kiss that hate the love people of the world show to each other, gay straight or something else entirely.

I keep coming back to that kiss. It was not just an instance of lips touching lips. It was a full body movement, it included every muscle and bone. It had the whole of my world wrapped up in it. It was one of those moments. If a comet had fallen from the sky and killed me then and there when I stood locked with your body in the beginnings of love where only beauty existed...I would have had no regrets and nothing greater to want.

It is moments like this that keep me from moving to a high mountain monastery, taking a vow of celibacy, and never speaking again. It is that piece of the beauty of the world that I am looking for every time I look in the eyes of a man on a date. When I see into someone else I hope that they contain that same spark, that same alchemy that I've experienced before. It is those perfect happy moments that make all the hair pulling frustration of dating worth it.

You can only be as sad after a relationship as you have been happy in it. It's so dangerous. How can one resist? Man could be the only animal that does things that hurts him on purpose. Or, it could be he knows from some experience or Jungian superconcious that the joy and the pain go together, and you can't have one without the other. Which is why I choose to feel the full extent of the pain, and the full extent of the pleasure. Life is beautiful.

A Galivin Center Free Concert in July 09

We were at a free outdoor concert with your friends. The concert was well attended to the point there were too many people there for my comfort. We were both anxious you were drunk, and probably high, and so sexy mostly in black in July. God, I wanted you. Your friends were all in the same state you were in. They were all the type to let it all hang out, those are my kind of people, which I think you knew.

I got there a half an hour earlier then you did thanks to my amazing ability to find parking and navigate crowds on my own. I got to wait and watch people, which I was expert at. It was fascinating to my Anthropologist sensibilities. There were ALL TYPES there. Men and woman (and some who, like us, were both and neither). Hippies, grandparents, business men, children, all races, creeds, and probably a few extraterrestrials. No one was in their bubbles, they were all blended like when you take all your fingerpaints and mix them together.

You showed up, finally. I was nervous you weren't going to show. We'd only know each other a week or two, maybe three. You were my boyfriend by that point, it was so nice. We were on the same page, I wanted to write about Adam Smith at the time, and you didn't know who he was, I was okay with that, if everyone read the Wealth of Nations we'd all hate capitalists.

We tried to listen to the music there, but the mass of people with their soft bodies covering their hard skeletons absorbed all the sound and we barely heard anything that was just the roar of existance all around us. We ran through the crowd, two MEN holding hands in the middle of a city founded by a religious minority fearing prosecution (there's another story from the same night happening to different people at the same time when they kissed near a temple and got arrested for tresspassing according to this same former religious minority). We got dirty looks, we made out in public to piss those fuckers off. It was hot.

We went to your house for the first time, your bed was incredibly comfortable. You were so sexy, even if you were afraid of the size of your nipples.

I think before that we went to some greasy-spoon chain restuarant and I bought you dinner. It was fun. Later after we once again made that release of oxytocin and male hormones rage through our bodies we laid there and listened to your records. I think that was the first time I ever LISTENED to music.

I think your sheets needed to be washed, but I didn't care, I just wanted to be there with you.

That one November Night

The following is a mostly true (as I remember it) account. I have done my best to hide the identity of the other person in question, but some of you probably know who I am talking about. Some of it has been changed for the sake of story telling, and I make no apology for that...



I remember drinking straight up gin, from the bottle, no chaser, it tasted like a Christmas Tree. It was the begining of November. There was a protest a block away we walked around some. Our protest in your room that night was better, if a bit quieter.

We walked from your place to the train, but unintentionally met up with some friends who dropped us off at the bar. It felt good sitting next to you in their car. We both smelled like alcoholics, but you pulled it off better then I did. You had that rare ability to lucid dream under the influence and you filled me up with all the hope in the world that night.

I knew I was in love with you before that night, we'd spoken those words weeks before when we both realized, lying on my bed, that our hearts were beating with the same rythm. We were both able to give ourselves completely and consume the entire room in our love making. I think that was the night I shot over you and hit the wall.

At the bar you were charming, you knew the owner and half the staff, and I was not surprised considering your history and the fact I'd attended those harsher-then-AA classes with you, the ones the judge ordered. You weren't supposed to be drinking, we both knew. But, with all the medical testing you were farmiliar with you knew they didn't test for alcohol metabolites, they only tested to see if you had any alcohol in your system. It was so terribly easy for you to cheat the system.

We sat in the back of the bar, the same place we'd sit almost a year later and I'd remember this night with nostalgia and fear. But, tonight you talked about me, about us, about us TOGETHER. That was what clinched it for me. You talked about the one thing I think I will always strive for. A blending of lives so seamless you cannot tell where one ends or one begins. I guess that's just me being an idealistic romantic.

You talked about us moving in, you gave me a timeline, you gave me a hope for the future at a time when...hope wasn't something I was farmiliar with. Everything the year before that was shit, boring shit, painful shit, stressful shit. You were a beacon, a lighthouse.

Then we went home. I remember running by the Temple having to piss like a racehorse and you kept trying to get me to pee in the flower beds, which we both knew would get us BOTH arrested, but it would have been funny as hell. In hindsight I can't imagine who would have bailed us out, my father wasn't talking to me at the time, and your family was all so far away.

We smoked a few cigarettes, ate some snacks, which I think involved Triscuits and goat cheese and some frozen tamales. More Gin (we were both too poor at the time to spend too much money at the bar so the buzz was starting to weaken).

I wanted you in a physical way so intensely. My body was screaming to me that you should have taken me right there in the middle of the dirty kitchen floor and unleash the physical power we both held in so poorly so much of the time. The silent parts of me were screaming in banshee style, emitting gallons of phermones to attract you.

But, you were the alcoholic, and I was the naieve one. So we went to bed. You put the customary pillow between us so we wouldn't touch in the night, since you were terrified of being touched in the night. You said it was because you would overheat, I think it was because you were scared of ME. Not what I would do to you, but what I meant to you. Not that I think you would admit that now, dispite all the post-relationship exchanged 'I Love You's from both of us.

You snorred like a chainsaw. I didn't sleep much. I thought about sleeping on the couch, but I wanted to be near you. I still want to be near you, every time I hurt. It feels good to ache for you still. I am happy I had that night where every dream in the world had come true.

Comfortable Pains

This is something I wrote years ago. It i one of those pieces I read and I honestly don't know how it came out of me. I love it.

She who does not like to be a her
Who would have preferred different parts
To those she was given and all their trouble
To her a lady from hell
Who once was killed and now will kill
Dreamer of the thousand things we love
I would give a gift if I had any
To her first for her unhappiness
She is the second kind of love
An appreciation for unexpected things
I admire with these green eyes of mine
All her heartfelt yearnings for a different body
For, I feel the same in this body
Sometimes I wonder if we were souls
Misassigned to these frail frames
Neither of us really want
And now that we’ve arrived
How, God, could we change
These comfortable things
And comfortable pains

The Art of Eccentricity

At a certain point I came to the conclusion that I am quite eccentric. I have in my way cultivated oddities, intentionally chosen things for their differences from the norm. This way of life is one I have grown quite accustomed to.

Sometimes when I am home alone I sing at the top of my lungs and echo in my house. Sometimes when I am not home alone I get lazy after I take a shower and sit around in nothing but my towel. Sometimes I hum showtunes at my desk at work. Most of the time I think things at odd angles from the conversations all around me. Sometimes I can't stop paying attention to everything all around me in the world.

The world is quite beautiful when one is eccentric. I think that rather then strange eccentric may well mean one is simply unreasonably in love with the strangeness of the world. Where other people may chose to ignore or walk away from the odd or otherwise bizarre some of us walk right up to it and make pets of it.

This is not a pathology. I am not a pet to be kept for all my strangeness, for all my inability to deal with the normal world. I'm just looking at the man behind the curtain smiling. It's rather fun, once you get used to it. HE usually finds it quite disturbing.

I find that I have often given up my eccentricities to a certain extent when it comes to being in relationships. I keep forgetting to cultivate the oddities that I love within myself because I think they will make other people uncomfortable. This is a mistake. If other people are uncomfortable then maybe they need to learn something, or go the fuck away. A good friend taught me the wisdom of "Namaste - OVER THERE!" (for those not farmiliar with the Sanskrit greeting "Namaste" it means roughly "I honor the spirit in you that is also within me" and is pronounced "nah-MAH-stay")

So, I don't think I'm going to compromise myself anymore. I am odd and beautiful and I want to dance crazy in the rain listening the Arcade Fire and sipping a merlot making out with a good looking man.

Maybe I'm not all that Eccentric (depends on who you talk to) but whatever I am, I am at least really good at it.

A few poems

Old Mining Town
with ancient windows

that time has proven liquid
and dust piled upon dust
some human element

missing from this place

has left it's imprint

and looking on

taking in the scope

of joys and left behinds

the old bones of

not-so-ancient civilizations

show that things are changing

and we're always in

the process of ending

especially when the coal

you mine takes the last

train that's coming through

in the delicate arch

from southward sun
a beam did cross
your face while in
architecture I could
never engineer
and a fascination
with the insides
outsides, crosssides
of an inhospitable land
in your boyish way
you did fix a fear
mostly mine.

A Virgin Wood

help me Orpheus
one more song to sing
of men in woods
where I have yet to go
and traversed paths
that seem the need
of being cut anew

and that there
a virgin wood
where all paths
have been walked
and all tears shed
to me still seems
a mystery though I
have walked in there
I do not believe
I ever really arrived

Picturing People in Underwear

So, I was struck today by an interesting facet of my personality. I've heard it said many times before that if one is nervous when addressing a crowd, one should picture said crowd in their underwear. I find this to be insanely ineffective, instead I find it much more helpful to picture myself in my underwear.

Now, to give you some background on this, earlier this year I was in a contest that involved me addressing a crowd in a variety of outfits, one of them a bathing suit.

It was a thousand times easier for me to address the crowd dressed in only my (very tight) bathing suit then it was for me to address the crowd in any of my other outfits, no matter how sexy or dapper they may have been.

I would rather stand in front of a hundred thousand people in the buff then address them looking absolutely perfect in the nicest clothing possible. I know, so weird.

I'm going to have to contemplate the whys and wherefores of this.

Until then, see you in my underwear.

I wouldn't say I'm very good at dreaming. It's a skill I was born without, but sometimes I do it rather well. It's funny how the littlest things one can come into contact with can have such an disproportionate affect on one's psyche.

Last night I had a dream I remembered well. I'm sure Freud would have a hay-day with it. I will have to sit and contemplate it for awhile.

Right now I'm listening to Mika's "Life in Cartoon Motion" waiting for the coffee to kick in at 1pm and just feeling rather relaxed despite what I have to do later this evening.

I was reading something from Pema Chodron the other day. She talked about how when we let go of hope and fear we can begin to really live and deal with things as they are rather then as we wish them to be. I love it. Life is a much more curious place when one leaves hope and fear behind. It's more beautiful to deal with things without all the extra perceptions that hope and fear give us about the world.

I bring that up because today I have no hope and no fear. It's a beautiful day to live in this very moment. Later today I will be addressing a crowd of anywhere from 20 to 300 people. Speaking in front of crowds used to make me nervous and scare the shit out of me. Lately this fear has lessened as I've gotten over the HOPE that I will impress people. Isn't that funny? What I was hoping for was the thing that was holding me back from reaching my full potential in front of people.

When you act from the firm bedrock of your inner-self instead of from the ever-shifting perceptions you create around you a myriad of things occur that you would not have thought possible otherwise. You engage people, when you communicate from your heart you can open up theirs. I have heard this called compassionate communication. Compassionate to yourself and to others. It is the only way to connect to other people, and it can be terrify to talk to others without any of your protections in place, to read from the book of your heart with no editing.

Quentin Crisp said, "No man is boring who will tell you the truth about himself." I think he was fixing the quotation of another author, I have no current inclination to look it up. But, when you tell the truth about yourself to other people, when you show them a glimpse of the universe of yourself that is like a distant star so much of the time, you both gain something. You both gain that moment of solidarity, of humanity. It is the very thing we are all looking for. The funny thing is everyone is running around looking for it in sex, drugs, self-help books, paper cuts, and term papers. The greatest music is that which gives you that moment of solidarity.

Mme. Tetrazzini talks about how music only lasts until the note stops echoing. We think we have overcome this with recording. But really, most modern music with its slick production and pitch correction has only put the wall up in front of us even more. How can someone sing from their heart into a microphone in a square room with no one around? And even if they did how could you hear it through all the added reverb and effects added in?

And right now I have hopes and fears for everything I just wrote, but I recognize them as hopes and fears, and that is okay. They are there, I am here.

I think the human body is a beautiful, mysterious thing. It is so delicate and so rugged. The body is a piece of art, both Male and Female forms astound me.

So much value is placed on perfection of the body in an aesthetic sense. I prefer the perfection of the body in an acceptance sense. If we let go of the idea that we can make it an absolute ideal and begin to see it as it is, we can begin to improve from the solid space impermanence.

The only true beauty is unconscious of its status as desirable. It is created in spontaneity, perhaps it is merely discovered without its value known at the time.

I love artistic male nudes. My desktop background is Eakin's "The Swimming Hole." I live for the moments of such comfort as the men portrayed there have. There is no weight on their shoulders. There is only the moment of exist at their leisure.

Lady Chatterley's Lover, et al.

D.H. Lawrence said, "Ours is a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically." When ever someone uses the word tragic I prefer to replace it with the word absurd and things are then as they should be.

I recently had someone tell me that whenever they are in a public situation they think of what I would do and do exactly the opposite, I was quite proud of this.

It is not that I wish to be known as a fool, but life has made us all fools. I think this is where the tarot deck gets things wrong. When we approach life as though we are always 'The Fool' things may not always go smooth, but they certainly go funny.

Reading Lady Chatterley's Lover the other day I was struck most by how much I wanted to be Lady Chatterley, or perhaps by how much I was already her. I want nothing more then the blending of being, the intellectual intercourse that leaves one breathless and yearning for more and the sheer physical passion that encompasses so much of life. The beautiful thing is that when I live correctly I can all of it from friends, strangers, lovers, enemies, dreams, reality, letters, words, places, and names.

So that is just a piece of everything I've thought in the last 15 minutes. Most of it was witty, at least in my mind. And, some of it had to do with Jackson Pollock.