Monday, June 29, 2009

jackie has entered text.

Having no faith, I don't lift my eyes in times of sorrow. I wish I believed in Jesus, and so in times of trouble I think about him like I would a fairytale, and try to extract the homily behind the stories. I've found:

Be Kind.
Think of others before yourself.
Show unconditional love.
Right your wrongs.
Honor your family.
Forgive.
Sacrifice whatever it takes for the people you love.

During my greatest test, I did none of these things.

There's something in fiction that gives us hope for our own non-fiction. If the stories can build tension, crescendo, collapse on themselves and still end with someone alive at the end, then perhaps there's hope for us real life folks, too.

Stand up, Lazarus. This is not the end.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

You are the better broken half.



Oh no malice does exist in these words I am now writing
Although one might catch the faintest glance at sorrow
I'm but trying hard to grasp all these fragments as they're passing
Piece the puzzle now before the trail grows cold

And I'm not asking for the answers in mathematical equations to be coldly calculated
By unbiased hands
For at truth I am so stricken
And I dare only to forever dance
Which proves I am the better broken half
Oh and I am but the bitter better half

In my callous speculations
They leave no room for calm or reason
I have placed myself in altars that are hollow
So adept at finding weakness
I smell fear and close my fists
Unaware the stench I'm smelling is my own
So yeah, you left me and I'm bitter
And my pride is shocked and raw
For I believe I will be changing roads no more
I know that life is full of dead ends
But I saw us as a highway
Ever stretching on from coast to golden coast
Oh, but now instead I'm singin'

Go west, Emily
Grab your boots and find yourself somewhere
I'll find another lover in the east
I said go west, Emily
Yeah you know you've got my blessing
But you can't expect these eyes of mine to watch you leave

So with no malice I'll begin just once more to tell our story
Though the ending I may never hope to know
You were a sweet and sound companion
Though our paths led us apart
And I may never sleep so soundly as I did while in your arms
Now all I ask is you remember who you loved and who you lost
Please don't bury me in silence
Or blackest shroud of thought
Don't pretend that what we had was any less than what it was
For I will not soon be forgetting the reasons why we fought so hard to make it work

But go west, Emily
Grab your boots and find yourself somewhere
I'll find another lover in the east
I said go west, Emily
You know you've got my blessing
But you can't expect these eyes of mine to watch you

Go west, Emily
Grab your boots and find yourself somewhere
I'll find another lover in the east
I said go west, Emily
You know you've got my blessing
But you can't expect these eyes of mine to watch you leave

Sunday, June 21, 2009

for the highest.

Yellow daisy behind her right ear
Black pen in mouth, blank pages in her lap,
Her only power now is her words.

If she could, she would camp out on the steep roof of that old brick house
Hold a vigil for hope, prove herself to be new
On this, the first day of summer
She would lift her eyes to the sun and let it blind her
Wash away the past two months, the ones that broke her down.

She can't, she knows that.
What she can do is wash color across page
Draw and draw and draw and wait. Rip out the page. nail it to the smudged, white door.
A record of wrongs.

All we can do in this life
Is do what we do well, do it earnestly and prolifically.
And those things we don't do well?
Those things are puzzles that we are challenged to solve, to better ourselves.
All we can do is be kind and open, hope for the highest.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

the river james.

If I had a sunflower scepter
Skeletal and black
I could change this all, I think.

If it were possible to deliver a sermon
To my own soul
And to Jack's soul-- to anyone else who would listen
I think I could just float
Up above the slippery, hazy grime of these early summer days
That are slowly breaking me down.

I went to the river to submerge, to go completely under, break the heat
But having never swam in the river, I didn't understand.
That in this River City, the swimmers don't mean swimming --
They mean standing, wading, the water isn't safe.
Nothing here is completely safe.

We sat on the shore, four of us sharing one beer, tall as it was
The herons stared from across the water, and they looked frozen
I wanted to stand up and shout --
"We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive..."

...But i'm always the one who looks crazy, so I gave it a rest.
Smoked a cigarette, drank the dregs
Walked the pipeline home.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

What they say

They say
That once you release your toes' grip on the edge
that once you do a swan dive
Off of a bridge into dark water
You realize it was wrong

That it wasn't the answer you hoped it would be
That falling, fleeing, is never the end of the sentence.
It's the confusing punctuation, the semicolon.
What now?

When you hit water
When bones shatter
They say you don't know which way is up.

Maybe if I just float here
If I just am still
I will drift to the surface.