General Semantics

You want me to deny magic. Of course, it sounds pretty easy, but once you have actually seen it. Once it has been proven without a doubt it gets harder to pretend it doesn't exist. Well, I don't know if I should call it magic, general semantics gives it a term. It's actually identified as "object level" or something we know but can't verbalize. We experience objects of perception for which there is no way to verbalize. You want me to not see the space that is there, the gap that is between us. It's not air and it's not denial. It's just there. I'm not as good at self-delusion as I used to be. It makes me want to try a drug habit or dream therapy. This reality we created, well it's sort of unreal. Words are supposed to help us own things, we name our children, we name our duties, Adam named the animals, god named the water. Voices center at both creation and madness. It's the magic of loss, it's the magic of madness. The last words I didn't speak, when you were holding my hand. Our hands looked beautiful together. They belonged together, but that is the folly of the object level perception. I try an sweep it away, but it has to substance, no mass and therefore cannot be moved. It can only be.

Stillborn

Nothing could bring it to life. It had hands, an eye, a belly, a few toes, all the parts necessary for life. The heart never developed quite right. I worked into it with my fingertips, shaping slick chambers and connecting valves. We were making our attempt at being gods. I breathed and sang songs into the little thing, because it held promise. Promise is always something when you have nothing, and all beginnings have nothing. We mourn separately. We can’t compose rainbows of regret. We have no rituals of atonement. Now you see, I cannot stay here and be humiliated by you anymore. I cannot make it live. I will not be loved in pieces for it, but rather I need to be loved as a whole. We can love the failed life in pieces, we can build it a sepulchre. You have come to the wrong place. No one is perfect. I am not sorry.

Epitaph

You have read upon my countenance the marks of bad qualities, which were not existent but they were assumed to exist and so they were born. With you I was modest yet I was accused of slyness. I grew secretive. I profoundly felt both good and evil. Yet you did not caress me, you insulted me. I grew vindictive. I was gloomy at times, and you became more merry and talkative. I felt myself higher than you. I was rated lower and I grew envious. I was prepared to love you and yet not be understood. I learned to hate. My colourless youth flowed by in conflict with myself and you, so fearing ridicule I buried my best feelings in the depths of my heart. There they died. I spoke the truth, and I was not believed. I began to deceive. Having acquired a thorough knowledge of the world and the springs of society, I grew skilled in the science of life and I saw how you without any skill were happy, enjoying gratuitously the advantages which I so unweariedly sought. Despair was born within my breast, not that despair which is cured at the muzzle of a pistol, but the cold, powerless despair concealed beneath the mask of amiability and a good-natured smile. I became a moral cripple. One half of my soul ceased to exist; it dried up, evaporated, died, and I cut it off and cast it from me. The other half moved and lived at the service of all; but it remained unobserved because you refused to acknowledge that the half which had perished had ever existed. But now, the memory of it has been awakened within me by your empty promises and this is its epitaph.

Untitled

You chip away the name
as if only half of you lie below that gravestone
a mirror image breathing and hearing
an echo of you, I heard the sound too

You awoke,
the dead still love you,
the worship of the words
words which left your throat,
but had no air
they had breath
without thought

Enough to cough, or dream
and make music in your mind
mirror of this, her face, the rainfall
on the dirt
forever struggling to dig itself out

Simplicity

At the vault near a plane
they hear of those devils moving forward,
all the mammals forget.
Those beasts obey before a moment passes
and why they stay away
because the pride is made of clay.
Then she within them praises and remains awake.
So at the orb of stronger glass
your turn your eyes outward, ignore what just occured.
Simplicity won't falter when they walk.

She

She willingly should be stopping and closing those dark eyes
or she stubbornly won't be speaking her mind aloud.
She can only look ahead, and ahead there are longer days
so she ties up the laces and straightens her back
because the effort can't afford delay.

How dare you!?

I saw him, walking out of Schnucks with a glum look, the white beard, the red suspenders...yes, it was definitely Nick. I know I should have stopped and offered my umbrella to him, but I needed pita bread and hummus like crazy so I just walked on. Perhaps I should have known by his melancholy expression what was to become of him.

After I returned home and bgan unloading my bags from the trunk, I noticed a red hat with white lining and a puff ball at the tip - LYING BENEATH THE TIRE OF A VEHICLE.

I wanted to leave a note on the windshield "How Dare You!", but of course my hands were loaded with shopping bags. Poor Nick.

I was released from Jury Duty today (awesome), and went to lunch with the gentleman sitting next to me in the juror box which lead onto a long walk through downtown, a few beers and a discussion of books and music. We also watched a taxi cab ram into the back of another car. Of course, we fled. The mere thought of being a witness to anything was dreadful enough after sitting in a courtroom for a day.

Still, it was fun making a new friend. I made a few others (we were a wild crew, shushed several times by the deputy) too. Who would have thought jury duty could actually be... entertaining?