Sunday mornings have a disparaging way of
making you not want to live another day...

Remembered fortune cookie fortune

"Your arrow has a better chance of hitting its target when you aim it."

Innuendo.

Vertigo

"Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere."

For the man who used to be something other than he is now.

The discreet shell of a former self
posed, slumped in a chair
pounds shed
stubble abound
but still the same shiny head.

The dragged marks and lines
a face that aged centuries in months
rehabilitation that there's no cooperating with.

Once,
the room lit up
insults were hurled and cups drained of their contents
as local and family fame built up
a mythical figure.

This man can't be the same!
A mass of irrational concern
and fear of daily events
the spectacle of what may occur
too much to overcome?

What's been said and what's been done:
for the past to lay dormant
for discourses to be rectified
unreal self-imposed expectations
too much to overcome.

But there's still that shiny head
a lamp of hope that sparkles in
a dimly lit room.

Breakfast w/ Matt

Breakfast with a bearded relative, his face obscured by stringy, dense hair, in a kitchen that, the last time I was in, was brand new, 'redone' as they say, but now just looks worn in like the wallet pocket on a familiar pair of jeans.
I can't help but smile as this seemingly domesticated animal-of-a-man wanders around his housewife's space of spices, utensils, appliances, and other garnishes of utility. He lifts a massive loaf of bread out of a newly purchased bread maker (discounted! was once $100 but is now $70!) and we take pictures of it, as if the achievement is actually ours. as he raises a knife to slice the tanned island of dough amongst a sea of marble counter top, I can't help but think of the last supper and wonder, if bread was broken then, wouldn't it just have been easier to use a knife? I mean, the crumbs...

The strong punchy aroma of coffee stings my nose in a way that suggests personal rebirth and I make a list of positive changes in my mind that I assure myself this time I will stick to.

Drifting into an imagined realm of wedlock (not for the first time, either) as my newly taken wife with her beehive of frizz for hair, a stack of facial hair that nearly reaches past her belly button, and clothes so old that they nearly crumble at between the rub of two fingers, prepares the rest of my breakfast of rice and beans, eggs, butter and jam and I feel the sort of complacency that often comes with being truly, earnestly happy.

I look at my cousin, the one person who truly knows everything about me, and think about how he has the potential to make people feel more joyful than they've ever felt and I deeply contemplate whether the same is true of me.

"Winter's chill serves only to better appreciate spring's warmth."

She wants to live in the woods
(alone)
but her body is too thinly guarded
to bear winter’s frost (without a heater).

She wants to live in the woods
(alone)
but her hands are too refined
to relate to rugged firewood.

She wants to live in the woods
(alone)
but her face is too undefiled
to become imbued with dirt.

She wants to live in the woods
(alone)
but her eyes are too poor
to see past melancholy, to discover functionality.

She wants to live in the woods
(alone)
but her arms are too scrawny and inexperienced
to lift even the smallest stones.




She wants to live in the woods, alone.
but then where would I call home?

Snow piled pathways pave the way for sidewalks to lead me to another day.
Is it early morning or twilight? It's gotten too hard to tell.
I'm living in two time zones, now:
The first is where my heart resides a sense of new purity binding me to a culture and history that seems so close to me.
The second is home,
where my heart supposedly is,
where I grew from wistful youth
and fell into the pitfalls of adolescent strain,
where the truth inside me was once a deep endless well,
where I was able to find hope within others and myself.

Imaginary wings take me from one to the other
and clocks and computers remind me of the time
when I should feel selfishness for all that I've accomplished
and when I should feel lucky for what I now call all mine.

Concrete from above

The puddles on the ground form
new foreign countries that we both run
and own
like dictators with too much oil
and gold
our numerous jets ready to be flown.

My first blizzard in years...

Through shutters the white world breathes dry air into the face of a curious adult with childlike intentions.

The inner boy wishes for a sleigh and a day off
but the outer man's back already aches with the thought of a shovel lifted high.

Outside, the dandruff of lords coats all exposed surfaces with its chill, enveloping ornate lawn objects in moments while tree branches bend like ballet dancers as the swirling chaotic static is soothed by silence.

One cannot help but sit in the soft cold wetness and stare,
stare into the stillness.

In a strange land, in my old home.

Mornings find me awake at the same time as my elders, trying to find a reason to be up aside from drinking coffee and touching fingers to keys in order to touch base with those far, far away. The setting that surrounds me - all familiarity and ease yet so foreign and demanding of effort so as to be comfortably lived in - representing the years of my life: a crack in the wall older than my niece by at least 8 years, a coke stain on the carpet from the time when I laughed too hard at a friend's joke, notebooks filled with the scribbles of a young, naive, hopeful wordsmith, photographs of the future-less deceased alongside framed snapshots of new life and new prospects for the future.

Can a person ever move through time without difficultly? or does the shift from now to then and back again always cause slight fractures in the spirit that can never be repaired? If one moves constantly in their mind - daily, hourly- and also dwells physically in what once was but could never be again does that mean they are forever disconnected from all that is here and now? or is it possible to realign onesself with the idea that present is all that there is...

Does it seem absurd that...

...at 26 years old I'm still worried about the possibility of being kidnapped?

I wrote this a few weeks ago...

...in Korea, when I thought for certain that everything was going to fall apart.

*
What does longing subsist on if not morose midnight thoughts?
words that start with H
hot, hate, hollow
fester the mind with the anticipation of pain.

The longing feasts on swells of the heart and head
and heels as they touch down on pavement seeking remedy,
not of the pharmaceutical kind, but those that coincide
with contact.

Strangers are the only ones awake, though
and their idea of contact is collision:
a shoulder smashed against another
or the outcome of a door not patiently held.

Legs continue on their aimless path
until unfamiliar terrain absolves the world of unknown persons
and presents desolation so immense that the
world's inevitable end seems to have started.

Discomfort drags a heavy body home
to the same hunger-pained longing whose growling insides
remain insatiable

But whose moans are easily replaced by the sounds
of sanctified melodies repeated like a rosary,
over and over...