Cracker Jack

Oh Cracker Jack

you buy me some

Cracker Jack

and I just wanna

Cracker Jack

Timothy Olyphant.

CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM ONLY PLZOKTHX

Arsenic of SIlence Poured By You-Not-Me

I buried you. With my hands, I wrote to you, snowflakes against a windowpane. Me: ineffectual. You? Cold, sheltered inside. With my mouth, I told my story, again and again and again, until it became just that: a story. It wasn’t something that happened to me. It wasn’t MY story. It was a story. With my voice, I screamed; I screamed until there was no sound left for you. There will be no more screaming for you, because of you. I’m saving what’s left. In my head, it was my fault for misinterpreting the situation. In reality, it was your fault for not caring about the situation. Or hating that you cared, for caring but not wanting to care.



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I killed you. By forgetting long walks in a park in the dark. By trying not to see your eyes in the eyes of more that came. By not letting the loneliness that we shared (share?) break through my façade. By not letting them see that, at least, in my eyes. By not hearing those silences, by not hearing your heartbeat through your thin shirt on a boat moored in a pond that was nowhere. A pond that wasn’t a lake, a boat that wasn’t a vessel, a light-blue button-down shirt that was armor and a heart that it shielded. But I heard it.

I heard it beating when we rolled down a hill (that flattened), when we sat in an amphitheatre (that wasn’t), when we sat in a boat (that couldn’t) and when we sat in a gazebo that was…everything that meant nothing, and you pulled me to you. I wish that you had used your hands to pull me, your arms, your anything physical that I could blame, that I could revile, that I could shy away from in park-post-mortem. But you didn’t. You let this moth flit to you, with her eyes wide, her lips parted (Dior Berry Foolish Cherry No. 24), hopes a-wondering if this, this was what it meant to wait, and not speak, and know and want, and have it happen. No. And what pulled her? It? Knowing that you had me entranced, fascinated by this moving, musical, magical man, alone in his indifference and deep difference, you told me that I wanted you, that if I were closer: maybe! maybe I could hear your heart beating. But what you didn’t know, my darling, was that I heard it from far away too.

I murdered you. With the arsenic of your silence, I infused the connection, the bond that had no need for words. With the knife of your betrayal, I severed the understanding that we had that there was magic, that we were surrounded in every aspect of our beings by something better, nobler, braver than us.

Do you know what the paradox is? The knocks against the inside of the coffin indicate that it is I who am to blame for killing you, thinking that I can let you out. Writing to me was banging on your coffin of guilt that you wanted out of. You forgot about the mausoleum of memories of us that I was trapped in for so long.

But I did hardly any of that. You killed us first. You are only dead to me in our world that we built by seeing dependence and feigning independence, by knowing love and then forfeiting friendship. You let yourself be alive, in your own fashion of being alive, to everyone else. So then, I didn’t kill you. You killed us first, and I? I was reborn because:

I buried you.

For SAM

This is dedicated for you,
who are in love,
who have been in love,
who - I hope - will always be in love.

Thank you for bringing back romance,
and roses, candles, songs,
balloons, pianos, and gifts,
and would-you-marry-me down on your knees,
into our lives.

maybe you thought we thought you were naive,
and as a matter of fact,
I think sometimes we did,
but don't let it discourage you from falling,
falling all the way through.

because maybe,
we were just missing our younger hearts,
maybe we were just missing the carefree feeling of taking chances,
maybe we were just missing the memory of being swept off our feet,
and washed away by waves of exultation and romanticism.

This is dedicated for you,
a good friend,
who filled our nights with wondrous tales,
of love fulfilled,
over late night lattes,
or beer,
or wine,
or the occasional straight vodka and leftovers.

I remember that night you were saying,
that you let your wild side roam free as your imagination followed the tracks of our adventures.

but you know what,
I think our imagination runs free with yours,
as you are living our painfully romantic sides,
that we have been painstakingly trying to curb,
in exchange for pragmatism,
and logic.

Thank you, SAM,
and I am wishing you a pleasant journey.

Ann Arbor, 01.21.2009

Two more poems

These are from the plane.

Safety First

Well aren't we in a fine mess?
We started this ride
with our
seatbelts unbuckled
and look where it got us: stuck in a tree with no way down and no way to call for help.

If either of us jumps
both branches will
break.
But someone needs
to send a signal
to save us from
this sticky situation.

On the bright side,
getting up here was fun.

That really long line at the end of the first line is really one long line and not two lines (and look where it got us....help). Also blogspot's pissing me off so I'm done trying to put eight spaces before "seatbelts unbuckled" and four before "break" but they're supposed to be there.

The Egg

It's so comfortable in here.
No bright lights to hurt my eyes,
No loud noises to hurt my ears.
I've been here as long as I can remember.
Plus, there's a nice little seat here,
and I can even fall asleep.
There's nothing I need that I don't have now.

"What happens when you run out of food?"

I'm not there yet.

Dense Like Me

He awoke, of his own, natural, accord, to the sunshine and the glow coming off of the snow. Not having a watch or a clock, he didn’t know the time; he didn’t have either of these things for as long as he could remember, and for as long as he could remember he didn’t know the time. Jackson had been in this cabin, one he built for himself, in the green, thriving woods of northern Michigan for what seemed like a very long time.

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It might have been such, he just couldn’t know for sure, as he stopped keeping track of the days long ago. Then again, what makes a long time is wholly subjective when time is essentially obsolete. Whether it was half past 2 in the afternoon or a quarter to 6 in the morning…it does not matter, because among the tall trees everything seems to stop as if the cold has frozen the gears of time together. Jackson felt like he could empathize with such an idea as he got out of bed and stretched his creaking limbs and smoothed over his beard with the back of his hand.
The cabin was very small and subdued. It was the only structure for miles around, yet it did not stand out in any particular way, in such a way that some might call it bland, and others, cozy or traditional. It consisted of a small bedroom with a window facing the direction of the river, a window which always let the sunlight through in uncomfortable patches when the blinds were down but open.
There was also a small kitchen with a beaten old stove and a stainless steel sink with little pieces of rusted metal which had peeled off various pots and pans. There was no immediate need for him to clean that sink up, so the little pieces always continued to float around like flotsam and jetsam in the lukewarm water.
Finally, there was a small table with a flimsy-looking wooden chair tucked underneath it. The chair looked very old. Jackson often thought how he would not be surprised to know that there were termites in the limbs of that old chair. He had lots of time to think about things like this.
The table had a few things on it: some books and a few empty notebooks. Jackson always hoped that the books would say something to him, personally and directly, that would inspire something of his own worth committing to paper, an inspiration pushing him towards a new direction and perhaps even reform. However, as mentioned, all the notebooks he had brought with him, back when he had decided to stay out here for good, remained empty. He liked to think that something would be there before all was said and done; hopefully long before that.
That was the cabin. It was certainly not much to look at, but who was looking anyways? One can always find a way to rationalize anything away.
Jackson walked to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of black coffee (he had no sugar) and took it with him as he walked out the door in his rough denim pants and a thin white shirt. The sun was out and it was very bright. As he stood there, his steel-toe boots sunken in the snow half a foot down, the cold air and the bright light emanating from above and reflecting from underneath him, he felt that peculiar crispness that made him feel alright despite the fact that he was outside in a t-shirt. The crispness of that time of day and that time of year, which he had come to know over time, was one time when he felt there was something inside him worth looking at. He was not too sure. The cold air cycled through him, from nostrils to lungs and elsewhere, cold and pure oxygen temporarily quenching an uneasy sense of frustration radiating from his stomach, a visceral dilemma which often drove him to reassessment. He watched the steam rise up from his mug in the light.
He had not been here forever; no, not forever, of course, although it might as well have been. It was not worth thinking about, Jackson felt, because he was there and what’s done is done. But, yet, he could not help it, as is nature, the human nature.
The coffee was very bitter, but its warmth gave him strength as it matriculated through his body, down his throat and into his stomach, all the while giving him a kick to the brain. It felt fine to be out there in the sun with the white snow, alert but apathetic, not bound to anything in particular. If it wasn’t for the cabin, he might as well have been driftwood.
Jackson felt obligated to do something with the momentary rush of intracranial stimulation. He went inside and put a coat on after setting down his mug on the table with the books. His hands and his cheeks were red from the cold, he just noticed.
He walked out through the snow and into the woods down towards the river. The snow on the tree branches fell as he tapped them, falling down in clumps and the remainder fluttering down like so much dust suspended in the air. The sunlight shot between the trees and illuminated this downpour, threatening to melt it in midair, cutting it’s marvelous descent short. A rabbit dashed across the snowy patch before him, perhaps in pursuit but more probably in flight. It’s ears were pinned back like wings, and before long he lost it in the great white.
His small wooden vessel was standing up against a tall fern tree trunk that seemed to defend it from nothing, but just in case…
With great vigor, Jackson moved the small canoe away from the tree trunk, setting it with the keel down on the tightly-packed snow. He could see his breath before his face as he labored, picking it up from one end, dragging it through the snow towards the river, about thirty feet away from the tree. He was breathing heavily but kept it up until he reached the very edge of the cool water. He set the end which he had been dragging down into the water and went around the other way to push the back end into the river. Slowly, the canoe edged into the water with his help, and he jumped in before it got too far so that he didn’t get his boots wet. Drifting, he took the oars back down underneath his feet with the intention of simply sitting for a while.
Jackson sat out there in the cold. He couldn’t imagine how it might be if he, by chance, fell in that water, in that river out there amongst the emptiness. The thought made him tremble slightly, making him wish he had another cup of coffee to wrap his stiff fingers around.
Chunks of ice floated about the river, some seemingly as big as him, as if he could lay across them and get back to land if the need arose. They were like little islands, once much bigger that they were now, beaten on by time, the Sun, and the cyclical nature of the seasons. In this way, you could say the river was Pangea, over and over again. In a funny way, Jackson felt like one of those icy islands sitting out there, floating around aimlessly, roasting. He was so cold, the air piercing through him and his clothes as if they were made of some sort of sieve-like paper, that he felt like he might as well have been an iceberg, even just a small one. Yeah, an iceberg. That’s the way to be. Jackson laughed loudly to himself. He laughed even louder a second time because he knew nobody could hear him.
An iceberg…yes. An iceberg. A part of a larger sheet of ice, maybe even the whole river. Then it, the larger sheet, breaks off into smaller pieces. They drift and they drift, not knowing where they go, and eventually, they get tired and melt away, becoming a part of the water they perched on for so long in a token of reciprocity of the basest kind. It is a graceful disappearance, an exit by dissolution into its maker, a necessity in order to give birth unto itself another time. The whole thing was so noble if you really thought about it right. Jackson wanted to say things were not so basic, but truly, they were and are. Jackson thought about this, and hard. None of it warmed him, but it reminded him of where he was, sometimes literally but other times not. He fought the urge to jump out of the boat. The Sun shone down on him, reflecting off a piece of ice in such a manner that he had to look away. He looked back after the light’s intensity had declined like the tides of the ocean. For a moment, he saw a face in the ice, a face from long ago of someone who might have been anywhere. The Sun disappeared behind a cloud.
Jackson sat in the boat, stretching his legs out onto the empty seat on the other end of the boat. The vessel floated on straight and true, past the ice with a fleeting, beautiful face, a visage comprised of the elements, elements that had long left Jackson. The retrospective view was his fate. Jackson thought about grace and exits, and how he said no to it all; all this as he floated to the edge of the world or the end of the river, whichever came first.
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Again, any feedback is appreciated!

In Retrospect

Sparkling light, incandescent and free
Eyes closed, there you’ll be
In the fore of thought
Too bright, away it can’t be bought
No sum owns it, the idea,
No object of prosperity.
The old Good, the now Bad
Captivating, yes, walking away but
Looking back, don’t! or stone
Standing still, you will be, but
Too late, eyes in back
Search from whence you came
Blind to the other way, opposite
A backwards conundrum
Frozen in a spot, uncomfortably
And without recourse.
Like an ancient eyeing the arrival
of something grand, but
something not such, yet
grand for you, who’s to say no?
All that lives is a memory,
To reinforce the creaking stony joints
From breaking entirely, underneath
Between the ears, a force
The gravity of realization: Oh.

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Any feedback is appreciated!

Persecution

You.
The Killer
The knife that slithers
Through my throat to slay a miser;
Erythrocytes flow profusely from the lesion.
Seems like I lack neurotransmitters
Afflicted by numbness
The sinner
You.

~~~~~
wrote this some time in july...
i dont know if it makes any sense but... just wondering what kind of feedback i'll get =)

Two Poems

I wrote two poems when I was waiting for the bus back from the Honda dealership. I actually don't like either one, but I'll put them up because they're all I've written since I've been out here.

I'm bursting with feeling
But I can't let it out.
Like an aluminum balloon
Will fill up and be tied,
So I am filled with
Emotion stuck inside.
Don't know what type
Of air is in me
But there's too much.
And I can't find the words
that will untie the knot.

Here's the second. If anyone has ideas for titles, let me know. I guess I can call the first Aluminum Balloon

In the city
The noise is suffocating
The lights blind
The sidewalk pedestrian.

Gone are the days
When the moon and stars
Were streetlights to guide
Down the path of fallen leaves
Between tall trees.

Now the springiness
Missing from the concrete
Wreaks havoc on knees and feet
And bullies aside the grass.

That last stanza's got some issues. Especially with the springiness and the concrete and the missing wreaking havoc... Ideas to make that clearer?