The Times

Sixty-seven students dead in Chicago.

Samantha is too young to keep her shoes tied.
She drags them up the concrete bricks,
climbs using the bottom rung of the handrail.
Her sign hangs and slopes like her open mouth
at the tedious protest her mother brought her to.

Violence in Guinea!: 157
“More troops!” says McCain.
In New York there is an election runoff.

Susan sits behind a desk labeled
"info" with a piece of scotch tape.
She’s been working the polls.
Her nametag is clipped like a lapel pin
to her star spangled sweater.

A bomb in Iraq!: 9
“More troops?” says America.
Sixty-seven children dead in Chicago.

But it's not revelation, just statistics,
and Chicago is analyzing them, wondering:
can they save Samantha from her city?

Gangs in Chicago!: 67
“More troops.” says Obama.
In New York John Lin is celebrating.

On September 29th, eight in a hundred
eligible liabilities came to vote again.
2% of 8,000,000 claimed a stake in their city.

Only 56 were killed by Guinean soldiers,
at least according to the Guinean government.

Just 9 people died when a bomb exploded
in the middle of an Iraqi marketplace.

A mere 67 dead in Chicago
during a school year when over 500 were shot.

“Slow day, huh?” says the only voter to Susan.
“Don't shoot. I want to grow up,” says Samantha’s sign.

Not much different here. Turns out it didn't need to be coherent to have an unexpected power.

Tag

There is no time. The sun hangs.
Double-knotted sneakers etch
rivers and tributaries
into the boys' zigzag trail.

They escape behind the school
as parking lots empty, and
flee to the meadow to play.
Here, the poppies are taller.

Even the towering elms
and sycamore horizon,
is hidden. Their boughs are dark
this time of day, suggesting.

But they would rather play, run
by superfluous bridges
of neat cut pine, stripped, treated,
and closely latched together.

Soon the meadow, the poppies,
the wild daisies, the long necked
bells, and bright chrysanthemums
will trim back, and everything

will be overtaken by
the whiteness of winter storms,
and then winter’s muddy melt
So each day they keep running.

Each day a little faster
underneath the afternoon
sun as morning lessons cling
like a muddy step, linger,

permeate double-knotted
sneakers, before they catch up.

'Tag' is now a poem that embodies the spirit of the place I originally wrote about. It moves away from indifference, and simply appreciates a simple landscape. The world is spinning, even as the there are protests in Chicago, even as beautiful pigs are slaughtered and people wake up to the sound of trains to smoke an existential cigarette, but boys run through a meadow valuing something greater than complacency. It is my most hopeful poem, my least cynical poem, and coincidentally maybe my best.

If I could go back in time, I'd have a portfolio filled with better poems.

Optimism

I leaned over and whispered to her,
sweetheart, we're gonna fall down now.

And sure enough we did.
Now I’m haunted by a coconut monkey with bifocals.
We couldn't even remember the moment we found it.

It just sits on a dresser like a race number
slipping off the trail, or a mancala stone;
a soul; something molten and unburied.
Steam-punk heirlooms and ornate woodchips
with a hint of periwinkle blue sneaking over torn edges;
a rock not even heavy enough for a paper weight.

We weren't superstitious or anything;
we just held onto it, put it in a bag,
now it's the only thing left we didn't throw away.

So we are going over numbers again
with optimism
and chagrin.

It took five dives to get down there
all to find it was 8,000 pounds.
A number pinned to a page,
a blocked thirteen, black and ominous.
Yo-yos with knots and fragments of pottery,
interesting pieces of ancient garbage,

but, they have no sentimental value at all.
They say violins are anthropomorphic,
but ours never worked.

It had a bad bridge,
but how could we throw out the heart?

So, I'm reading over my poetry portfolio, you know, the one I handed in? Well, it's not exactly good or anything. I can't be too surprised, I wasn't exactly buoyed in reality at the time. The drifting tone, complete lack of flow, bad syntax, and even spelling errors are quite egregious for the class' expectations. So it goes, but I'll post the best ones here as I clean them up a little.

While it was always a poem about relationships, now it has some direction to it. It’s a sad poem, but yet it fights the apathetic tone most of my poems seem to have, ultimately finding some sort of value in something. Well, go figure love would be the topic to fight such a habit.

The Existential Crisis and Solution

I'm trying real hard to resist the urge to trail off again about overwhelming workloads and how only the 5am pickax ever seems to sweep the assignments out and away.

I suppose if I ever needed proof that I was inconsistent and vexing I could just come here, but I guess there is something relieving about saying it over and over again.

Obviously, this isn't new. But from the desk of someone who has changed in every conceivable way, it surely isn't strange to desire a lucid approach to my responsibilities.

I keep telling myself that most of it will get done. I'll graduate before the summer. Though, is that really all that this is about?

Just sigh again, whatever, just put the question off, just like everything else.

Haunting Autumn Grays

Diarrheic thoughts are callously spinning the worn brown table in front of me away from perpendicular vision. I'm afraid that if I try and set my drink down everything is going to spill out.

It's probably just this whole college thing though. It'll pass. Take up a cause, go on an adventure. I could pretend like my work is substantial, if only until it ends up on someone's desk.

I want everything faster and harder; I want things saner. I want to flow; weave exuberant life in and out of viscous self. I just want to flow.

Don't you?

Fuck Magnets

I am losing my mind.

I am constantly losing more mental real estate to the trivial day to day. This is what it is like to be a person with concerns and desires, I'm sure. The discerned fact that listlessness is malaise is troubling to me, though that's is perhaps another topic I don't know how to explore.

Right now I'm losing my mind on this poem, because it is unexpectedly alright. Usually I wait to revise my poems until I have to. Usually I don't revise them.

But more than any task or poem, I have been losing my mind to something else. This something has moved in, every day seeping ever quicker into every cerebral niche. Fueled by something mysterious and hopeful, it dominates my wandering mind. Popping into my head in daily moments, I can't help but obsess over the brief and minor details. She bubbles up in a stomach drop detailing something like excitement, something like comfort, something like fear.

Because I don't know what to do.

I live an honestly stagnant life where papers don't motivate, days tick by in unexciting ways, and tomorrows beg for resolution. And I can't remember the last time I was this happy.

Sometimes that happens I think. Sometimes you're happy followed by sometimes you're sad, but this is not a sinusoidal event. This is not a bite-sized fix or an outlined mantra. This is not the calming realization in which I had reflected that things are well and how great and happy it is and certainly must feel. No, that's not even true! This is large. This is a different sort of living.

As I've aged I've learned. I've learned I don't like destinations. This life I have been living lately is living outside of commitments too long to fathom. I won't refute that I have always controlled my destiny, but these days it's just a lot easier to say.

This, is holding the compass and picking north.

The Digital One

Remember way back when, back when if you had a secret (or not so secret) crush on someone and you couldn't help but notice them that, maybe you'd give them a gift or do something special based on their perceived interests? And then they'd swoon (or, just accept it, with few words).

In this gesture was thoughtfulness. It was indicative that you were interested in, and cared about this person. And best of all it allowed for all of the heart-melting stories I've heard from parents. Stories of romance and indomitable tenacity.

Now there is just the internet, and all the details ascertained from this wasteland are creepy. We exist digitally and in turn our non-digital realities ultimately submerge into private.

Nobody hands out buttons, and flags have lost meaning unless they are photo-shopped into jpegs.

No one yells anymore! No one needs to yell anymore.

I am a little lost in this world. I don't know how to function or compete.

And people scratch their heads and wonder why so many of today's marriages meet through online dating. How else do we clash in a meaningful way? Everything meaningful has been metabolized into five or six formulaic text-boxes and the occasional status update.

Ultimately, I'm troubled that whenever I have an urge to be novel or to remind myself I exist, I open my internet browser.

Deadline Dives

I think I love the night. I think I love the deadline. The feeling of purpose breathing down my tense neck as I rove the haze-lit navy avenues with a glowing cigarette. Maybe this is why I struggle. I'm focused: focused on the momentary bliss of perfection. Nothing is late, and certain things need to be done.

To not do them is hallelujah terrific. Everything you do takes on a flavor so deep you can taste the atmospheric pressures. It's my daredevil cliff-dive, the moment I know I am alive. Small single digits clicking slowly on some red-glaring clock and I am eternal!

And although sometimes at the end of the night I am astonished to find the work done, I'll be the first to confess it's rarely the case. Maybe I'm just addicted to the struggle.

No one has ever told me I couldn't do anything. Never once have I felt unprepared. Is that all this is? This unholy, habitual, parasitic struggle to drink life?

Draft One: Poster Child

And then there were posters on the wall
exhorting twelve dollars prismatically
--but, only with a personal sort of palette.

Like a chin-line or father's nose,
the unfurled rectangled lines
adding up aesthetically, almost,

just almost as if to say
I know, I know you,
it's okay on these walls enclosing:

plywood furniture, a person, and an estate of ideals.
Each one constructed from the pulp
of some mashed up distant forest branching

like a family of guidelines and pretenses
to buy posters for some walls.
Every confining wall, at least,

the walls that'd otherwise be blank
and empty or worse than empty:
the walls with one unchanging color.

Like a leaf that never figured it was autumn,
like a branch that forgot to shed
or a forest unwilling to explode.

And then what? Frozen roots
destined to shrivel without
the persistent sky-born flames;

thick walk-around trunks to climb
collapsing into gray until no one remembered.
Did anyone even know before?

And the room expanded under the weight
of expression and knowledge and colors,
colors a person could inhabit

and grow. Colored in like a coloring book
numbered in by the walls that sprouted posters.
Filled in by twelve dollars at the mall.

Right now I feel like this is my opus. At this moment I am wholly proud. These moments have a way of deserting me though.

Draft One: Penumbral Pretend

Sometimes, when the full moon
is just right I pretend
I am a werewolf who
is waiting for the sun.

Sometimes, when the sun is
just right, I pretend I
am a werewolf who is
waiting for the full moon.

Oooh, if I ever wrote a personal poem this is it.

Sublimation

I want so much to say but I can't think of anything real good. I could pour more of my revealing insecurities into this cybernook, but there has been too much of that lately.

Maybe it's because my daily actions seem to embody all the originality I used to sequester in these rambles. Now these posts turn sour and presumptuous, bitter because they resort to reflecting the imperfection of reality. There is little left to sublimate.

Again, I can't help but feel there is nothing wrong. It is likely just the strangeness of that overwhelming oddity that has me off guard.

Repetition

What am I supposed to talk about? Another her? (not that she isn't incredibly attractive, uniquely desirable, and overwhelmingly more)

I am the epitome of doing fine, but I can't seem to self actualize in the ways that are most important for my heart.

My days are filled with strumming, cleaning, pedaling, and exploring; there is nothing new, nothing new, and that is old. Too old.

I need to write better.

Lengthy Conundrums

I am too saturated and open to be writing here, but I have important things to say pertaining hearts.

Mine is surly and insecure, up for grabs, and tempered for longing. It leans ways but has not ever stood. I want to tell her I care: about her and us and more and everything and always. But, that's a little ridiculous.

And moreover, relationships aren't so one sided. I may not be so confident, but that doesn't make things less strange. Let's just pretend it's just a result of miles and miles and miles.

Sigh. Time and distance will always be a dastardly mechanic. But mostly, I think I just want to slip away, away, away, into sleep or onto tundras or wherever, whatever as long as it's with her interlocking legs and arms and smile. We could discuss the weaves of understood life and liberty, delve deep for rewarding melancholy reverie and that sort of thing. That's not so ridiculous.

A Goal

My ultimate goal in life is to consistently listen to music in the most heart melting of ways.

Shady Streets

Ride bikes and hold grudges in search of meandering truths. Wear flannel and corduroy and pretend like it's unimportant. But it is.

I am steeping in memories and aiming for every forsaken curb and avenue. I am wading in protoplasmic goop and all I know is that it really is over and, actually, it really wasn't that terrific.

To my horror, my life is prescribed by my own penumbral choices and everyone else's. Frankly that is too much for the listless and uncharismatic.

Gasp

All of my words have been so bitter and broken. And then I compensate: I exude when I'm not exuberant; I spin hopeful positives to assuage. But just because I believe them does not mean I feel them.

It is a battle. A battle to fight, and nothing I say or do or imagine is going to change or hide that. I refuse to pretend I'm not uneasy. I am depressed. I am lonely. I am unhappy. I am between empty worlds, pondering lives and places unlikely and extreme. I want to run. I want to jump and dive and walk and prance and fly. I want to soar!

I want to escape numbness and nausea. I want to stop finding empty nooks to corporate, which is all I ever do, which is all I've ever done.

I want my life! Whatever, wherever, however, whoever, (whenever?), that might be. I want my life!

I can be happy. I knew that already though, right? I can be happy. But I already knew that.

Webs

I am between the lines where words do not exist; are just not evoked or provoked. I don't know how to feel, and often wish I didn't have to.

These days everything has a confusing edge if they even have substance at all. These days I live in a world of extremes and defiance. In empty days of summer, and I don't know who to turn to to do something about that.

But tomorrow is a curious day, always a curious day. It is always going to be a curious day, and I am always going to meander towards curious tomorrows.

Tranquility

I think the truth that all is fair in love and war is often misinterpreted. Because intrinsic inequity doesn't exactly excuse your lack of conscience.

Peace is dull but love is volatile. We strive for the wrong things in life but damned, we have little choice. I am not angry. I don't want to goad and tell or dismantle some life or love but war.

Only, I have never really had any battles to fight. And I've never felt so sure of these things.

I'd rather be forgot than forgiven. But it doesn't work like that.

Keep Moving

Let's see here: failing, flailing, and without bearing. A summer torn between numbness and nausea. Now I know these days are limited and ultimately few, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't cast a shadow on all the others, especially hers.

Perhaps it's just the painful reality of finality. Or, maybe it's really the fact that the opinions of a person who could do such painful callous things are probably just as callous. Regardless, it's time to stop talking about such things, as painful and shaking as they are.

Planning a Revolution

LISTEN! I'm drunk! I'm full of booze!

What? Are my words less poignant? Is my insight circumstantial? Fuck that! Circumstance I didn't anticipate, and even worse, the world is spinning in a sad velocity. Life is inane and who can't help but feel motivated and sane? Fuck the borders! Fuck the confiners! Let's live!

Inhale

That last week, the one that isn't over, is trying trying trying. Too much for my stomach right now, but I thought you should know.

This is when I start to pick up the pieces; so many have fallen this time. I know there is something important in records, but my creeping mind wonders whether it's an ominous trend.

I keep thinking like my struggles are poignant. But there is nothing important in a man who can't climb walls and doesn't want to walk around them anymore. Who wants to read about a man who can't fight? Who even wants to write about a person like that.

Requiting Stomachs

I wonder why the stomach churns at the thought of unrequited love. As if stagnant longing is so repulsive it makes you sick.

Maybe it's the feeling of heart strings being severed. Or maybe it's just a thought so incomprehensible that surely it must be a hallucination brought on by something you ate.

Whatever it is, it's terrible.

A Summer Sigh

Clicking on stale links, I'm always hoping my connection will help me overcome this loneliness. And it only makes sense these days, when I've never felt lonelier in this town, in this season.

This college has never made for a good home, all while my choices simultaneously sundered whatever feeling of place I had somewhere else. Sometimes I think I should be a nomad. Most of the time I'm too scared to be adventurous though.

I wish there was more to say, maybe a hopeful flip, but these are purely dark and simple matters. One day I won't be alone in a wasteland.

Spiders and Dictionarys

Maturity strikes; I'm another person now. One who can take things in stride, and bottle up the injustice of the world. Who would have thought an emotional recluse would be able to do something like that?

Everyone has their demons, it's how one decides to face them that defines 'em. I don't know if there's any meaning in a definition though.

Moving on Unprogressed

I'm not sure what new vague notions of insight are about to transcend my fingers. Things, things are happening, things have happened! And I know there's something to say about everything else.

So I clicked for this blank page.

I clicked because I'm okay. I'm okay with doubt and fear and silence and mess and future and past and, hallelujah!, present.

Maybe it's the food in my stomach, the sweat on the court, or just the words in my head, but everything is alright. At least not wrong. Not yet? Okay!

And let me take a moment out of life to understand the tidal waves and roller coasters that are the demons I see but can't conceive; fuck 'em! Fuck 'em all! I'll move on unprogressed. Frustrated and lonely, but okay for now.

I get these moments, and just like on other days, I wouldn't give it all away, no not for a moment. And it couldn't matter why.

These Days

I am not happy these days. These hot days when my past melts and my future bubbles up to magnify its empty air.

College used to be my future. Now it's something else. No matter what day it is, it's always the next when I'll start.

Well, I've been here before, and learning from mistakes isn't so easy.

So what now? Researching waste water reuse methods doesn't sound like the answer.

Unnecessary Necessities

If I said that my life was lacking bourbon and pitchers someone would say there is something wrong. Well, sometimes a little bit of booze is all you need to regain some perspective.

Around and Around

Well, the birds are going to sing. The speakers are going to play the song I pick. The world is going to spin without me.

It's the patches of solace that keep me going some days. The moment of relief in my padded life that has always been lacking, always been lacking nothing and everything important that doesn't exist. On other days, well, sometimes I don't feel so good.

A Different Thing

The song "Yesterday" by the Beatles has always hit some nerve or heart string, but the lyrics have always meant something different. Today when it came on shuffle I heard a similar song to the favorite that has marked so many moments of my life and time. It has made me cry before, and it has made me feel full or empty. I don't think I've ever seen it as foreboding or serious. In fact, it has always given me a perspective of calm acceptance.

Everyone lives in trying times. I'm not sure when it will happen, but one day I will take a serious look at my life and decide something important. Until then love will never be an easy game to play.

On Greener European Travels

(originally written May 30th, 2009)

Weeks days and hours spent in European country sides and I find my thoughts refined and my being transformed. My studies, though ever directionless, have once again been derailed and search for more bearing than ever. I still have much to think about yet.

I'll start with cheap wine, it was a constant presence throughout Freiberg to Frankfurt and all of the convoluted paths in between.

In Switzerland I sat next to a monastery with a hunk of bread, a slab of cheese, and a bottle of 4 euro rose wine. As I sipped politely and awkwardly, I reveled in my European present. It was then that I realized my American heritage, my obsession with the future and my inability to focus on the present. Europe persuaded me to forget all in that usurping moment. I never felt more present. In that park I might have existed.

Afterward, I resolved to live a fuller life, one filled with similar blissful moments concocted in the eternal present instead of the always distant future.

In Copenhagen I drank another bottle, this time a Bordeaux. I cycled alone through a city that simultaneously thrilled me while vying for my empty wallet. I soared into Christiana and knew I was on the right path. The freedom of thought and existence resided on those spray-painted streets. They were living! They were fighting! I was jealous, and in my vibrating essence I was lost in the things I vowed to return to the United States with. So I missed the raves when I chose sleep over spending more money. The next morning I knew I had failed.

So when we arrived on Samsø, I knew I had something to prove. As I sipped too heavily on a 25 kröner bottle, I discovered glass-eyed that the bottle was empty. I gulped one last gulp as I sat surrounded by sober-minded peers whom prepared for tomorrow's free-day. I assured myself and the others that no lingering state of sickness could prevent my soul from biking 50 km on sore legs the next morning. And the next morning I wearily got on my bike in calm ecstasy; I was prepared to live and then return as exhausted and sore as possible.

And as we biked through chameleon-like, never waiting weather, there were suddenly only four of us crazy cyclers who desired all the island had to offer and more. The rest had turned back and we four admired roadside cows and proposed the next adventure.

At the locked gate of the world's largest garden maze we debated the risks and glory of climbing the easy fence. With the mysterious raves of Copenhagen still leaving some empty part in my being, I fought through a churning stomach to swing my legs over to fall into the unexpected barbed wire. We decided to flee to the ocean.

I think it was there that I became mad, mad to fight a burdening complacency. I wanted some demonstration of carelessness, something to hallmark my bitterness towards my uneventful vacation and life that was always thinking towards the next place, next year, next town.

And we pulled our shirts off and we ran blindly into the frigid water that we decided was pleasant and habitable even though it was unpleasant and uninhabitable. I suppose it was fulfilling, especially when we shivered and reflected forty seconds later.

When I collapsed that night, profoundly spent and absolutely sure my day was one I could have done no better in living through, I felt relieved. I felt embodied in my actions. I was alive.

In Frankfurt, I found myself full of Bordeaux and blunts. As I stood outside the club messed up I stared at the mechanics of bouncers, stamps, and flashlights, the procession of youth, hipsters, and friends of the scene. I searched for all the reasons not to enter the club that did not pertain to my tiredness, empty wallet, or my stupor's penchant for embarrassment.

Whether or not I found any, I stumbled back to my hotel as life passed me by again. I was more concerned with tomorrow's chores and joys to remember my extravagant circumstances.

I want to devour life but I don't know how. Or at least I simply did not care that night.

No matter the definition I found in Europe, I felt my studies unravel. Ultimately I saw culture that was similar if not identical to the slightly more west America. The culture I thought responsible for America's inaction was only guilty for the problem, not the lack of solution. Europe's perceived problems were the same, their proposed solutions no different. The only difference was their visible action.

What is most strange is that in Europe's concern I felt an essence that was capable of appreciating the present. Their perseverance to preserve their future is what separates the two continents. Perhaps America is too mired in its past of individual ideals and concepts to be able to find a communal future, the type of future sustainability begs.

As for me, I'm to mired in the future. I'm paralyzed, in my studies and in my life. Europe and its cheap wine represented that too, too well.

Swirling

I guess I feel like I need to put something here.

When I decided I didn't understand time, distance, or family I was on a beach somewhere far away. Since then I haven't had many moments to dwell on the things that eluded my thoughts' tendrils last week.

Well, I guess that leaves family. I don't know how to tell someone I love that something is going to kill them. And what's worse is if they decided not to listen.

I am no longer scared of most things, but my fear is impermeable and now compartmentalized. Just like the rest of my thoughts, ideals, life, love, and etcetera. Everything I am is separated and organized into maintainable blobs of understandability.

Is that okay? Or should I doubt that bit of normalcy too?

Leftovers

My work is separate from me just like my past moves and bowels.

I'm embodied in the melody that invigorates. Invisible extensions of my being in a three-four-step or a one-two-punch. It's the rhythmic choices that immediately define me, not the leftovers I find places to store after the needle spins off track.

I am the constipated struggle.

Them and They

It's harder to find words when you're sober. Blurry moments persuade inhibition. Well, if I regret would it excuse?

The questionably evil, multi-purposed, and anonymous "they" always tell me that I'm not just here to learn about wetland ecology and sustainable development. They tell me that more importantly than anything I might come across in my studies of American political thought, that I'm here to prepare for a stupidly real world. The same one that they've been threatening to toss me into unprepared for like 21 years.

I dunno, they always turn out to be pretty insightful somehow.

I'm learning a lot about relationships. About pitfalls and venom. All the things that had looked pretty hard to trigger from the third person, but I guess it ultimately comes down to experience rather than knowledge.

Absent Creations

Hesitant laughs are all I can muster as my future (my carnal futuristic idolatry??) is ripped to shreds. There's gotta be something missing, maybe. THERE'S JUST GOT TO BE A REASON.

Heh-heh. It'll be all-right. I'll pull through this just like the last 5 semesters. Just like the last 5 semesters. Just like the last lifetime of feeling biased and uncomfortable. Just like the paper-mache world propped up with cheap acrylic painted cardboard crashing down like stars from some obligatory self-imposed heavens.

I don't wanna create. But I wanna show you I could. I wanna show you these hands that won't ever work an entire day are precious and perfect and unfathomably potent. That underneath all of the still unfilled fill-in-the-blanks and all of the the falling stars of heavens under the sun, there's something here! There's something underneath this pale veined skin and you can tell me that it will be better than all-right. Tell me it will be better than all-right; it will be better than all-right because the world submits to me and my subtle genius and my ambushed psyche. And the world bends to the gravity of all that these hands refuse to produce and I will move forward unsucceeding, heroic, and vague. Just like the last 5 semesters. Just like the last lifetime of feeling transparent and apologetic.

Dear Daniel, judgment day is approaching. And I'm scared to say you aren't prepared.

Because it never was about a shoddy future or a tendency to laugh instead of moan. It has forever been about you. You. What are you?

Tired

I'd rather be poignant than purposeful, potent, or pointed.

The Horizon is a Red Line

Callous conundrums are like drops of rain shying my overwhelmed or decisive umbrella.

Latitudes and Longing

Sometimes it makes sense to reflect, but I don't think this is the moment. Right now I'd rather be looking forward, working forward, mostly I'd just like to be reveling in the present. But the future is difficult to ascertain here in Wellesley, Massachusetts. And the present is in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

I can recount three excursions to college, briefly punctuated by smoky returns to the house I'm sitting in, the home I'd lived in for 20 years. What is ultimately disturbing is that this untimely reflection forces me to admit that these years (divided by school days, night fun, dorm stays, and burn runs) have done nothing to solidify a past I no longer care about.

You see, here in Wellesley, there is a box of stories on top of a hill that overlooks the town. From this bluff you can see church towers scraping skies and sometimes even sunrises or sets between obligatory green inhales. And, well, it only makes sense now; now that I have to drive four hours just to visit a hometown friend in a hometown so far from home, that my story got washed away while I wasn't on this side of somewhere.

It only makes sense now; now that Cottonwood and Sagamore, Meadowbrook and Louis vomit a mysteriously familiar unfairness; now that streets that I once walked down in apathy seep with their own indifference. It only makes sense now that I should ponder a regret that I'm older now and don't recognize my own stomping grounds.

This time I don't feel anything. Wellesley is a hollow town where I did not grow up. I grew up in my memories, I grew up with my friends who I continue to hug outside of Wellesley's timeless borders.

Even if my heart swells every time I think of the fire-engine jungle-gym, the overgrowth behind Bates Elementary, the tennis courts, and the Brook Path. Even if my heart swells every time I think on Peter's Pizza dressed in baseball fatigues, or leaving backpacks outside Linden Deli. Even if my heart swells every time I remember lunch specials at Tian Fu, mornings at Magus, frisbee at Dana Hall, stealing CDs from Sam Goody, and clambering up on top of a roof with a bong because it's Wellesley, and despite the worldliness of our teen-aged lives in which we hardly struggled, we could not think of anything better to do.

I feel nothing for this town. This time I'm ready to leave.

Back

Lost in a maze of one-way streets; I drove into a haze of sepia.

No Need for Time Travel

Sometimes even overburdened and hopeless perfectionists with sinusitis can be content and happy. Especially when they close their eyes to see a lingering heart-melting smile imprinted on the back of their eyelids.

Consolations (Draft Two)

Merv sat in his bed effortlessly. From his lips permanently parted, thick marshmallow wisps drifted out like notes to a consoling song: silent and forgiving, dancing on the soft breeze of the under-used heat vent.

The light persisted through half drawn blinds, the white scored by parallel slats of grays and black. Only, with his back leaning against the cold window, just the top most bars allowed the staccato flits to filter through. There was a charred blunt in the ash-tray and the sunny glow of another as he drew in heavily.

At first the rays lit haze, like a prism that had almost run out of color. But the smoke filled the room, swirling in and out, slowly and persistently folding over the dim corners.

In the darkness, he didn't want to see himself anyway. He didn't want to see baggy hanging eyelids, the melancholy absence of latitude in his stupor. It was too late to cry now. Too late to feel emotion, he decided. His love was falling out of parted lips, like on so many other occasions, but now it left in a requiem fog. It left him feeling emptier, as empty as he felt. As empty as his smokey room.

Collegiate Studies

Well, earlier I was talking to a dude I know; he described his interest as a hunger. It isn't about the knowledge for him, but like an empty, longing for cerebral reaction. It's not an objective--like for me--it is the action of engrossing, of pitting one's mind against the abstract jungle-gym-labyrinths of theory and application. That's meaningful for some, I guess.

Fear of Judgment

I've decided to stop feeling bad about being disinterested and ambivalent towards my studies, at least as long as I'm passing. It's such a waste of opportunity, I know, and there is so many interesting things to learn, I know, but I can't argue with the immovable any longer. I am here for a degree.

Finding an impossible way into graduate school is as far off as I want it to be, and in honesty I wish it did not stand in the way of my goals. I still do plan to go, someday, and yes, perhaps the most ludicrous aspect of attaining the plainly stated will be overcoming my stagnating GPA.

But I've decided to stop feeling bad about being disinterested and ambivalent towards my studies, at least as long as I'm passing. And I know, I know, it's a waste of time and money, but you work with what you have. Right now, I have 3 years of college credit and a desire to be happy.

And fuck you if you think I need more than that. And fuck you if you think I should have more than that.

This damn world and its judgment, I've decided to stop feeling bad about being disinterested and ambivalent towards my studies, at least as long as I'm passing.

Consolations (draft)

Merv sat in his bed effortlessly, his lips permanently parted. The thick marshmallow wisps drifted out a consoling forgiveness.

With his back leaning against the drawn blinds, only the top most bars allowed staccato flits of light to filter through. There was a charred blunt in the ash-tray and the sunny glow of another as he drew in from its long crispy barrel.

At first the light illuminated rays of haze, like a prism that had run out of color. But as the smoke filled the room, it swirled in and out until it folded over the dim ambiance. He didn't want to see himself right now anyway.

He didn't want to see. Baggy hanging eyelids and a melancholy absence of latitude in every other part of his complexion. It was too late to cry now. Too late to feel emotion, he decided. His love fell out of parted lips, like on so many other occasions, and it left him feeling emptier, as empty as his smokey room.

Planning

I want to write my generation's book, and I think I know just how to do it.

Self Image

I think I might be a monster, or at least look like one.

Perspective on the Rocks

I've been overwhelmed with reflection. The kind that blinds you so bad you have to remind yourself to breathe regular.

Is it existentialism or realism? Or just escapism at its most neurological. I know it's easy to rationalize avoiding the meaningless. But it's hard to hold on to any present perspective when it's always being rocked by all those persistent perspectives past. Oh well, I think I can at least forgive myself this one.

All I'm saying is, whoever said hindsight is 20/20 must have been a lot older than 21.

Lows

Sometimes the world sings to me, other times it sighs. Sometimes the world sings with me, other times it shits on my chest.

And maybe, sometimes I even let it.

Solidary Solace

This fortunate one--and coincidentally this party--is impossibly dedicated to all of my friends. For all of them who couldn't make it, or didn't make it. And for all of my friends over the last 21 years who've faded or forgotten, persisted or manifested.

For all of my friends, wherever they may be tonight, I love you all, this is for all of you.

Inexplicable

Ridiculousness cannot be painted or sung, it can only be lived. Expression is limited, but experience is not.

I used to think quite contrary, but the external world simply has more to offer than imagination ever could.

Weight

There is something lonely in discovering a person's sadness. I think it has to do with my desire to share. Burdens, memories, sorrow; I enjoy knowing I'm not alone. Can I assume the same for everyone else?

IsReal

There is nothing definitive about Israel.

This is apparent in her amorphous "winter" horizons; filled with alternating cacti and firs, sharing only creed with their neighboring bamboo. And all because the land of milk and honey isn't dry yet; snaking hoses make sure that a country that salutes white and blue blooms unyielding green.

The jungles were surreal, and the desert was solace. I imagine summer must be rough.

On the plane ride home, I spent hours arguing the irrationality of the deafening black and white border that defines rightousness with a surprisingly open, orthodox jew. All the while a few kilometers below death was forgiven.

Many days I witnessed fanatacism.

But everyday I gorged on insufferable beauty.